“Did you come up here with Cal?” She struggled to keep her tone light. “If you two want to borrow a canoe or a couple of kayaks, by all means—” But she broke off abruptly. The way he stared at her was as frightening as anything she’d witnessed in her years as a prosecutor and a judge.
“That’s not why I’m here. You know that, Judge.”
“I only know you’re a business consultant of some kind.”
“Cal and I did a few deals together. And Harris,” Jesse added with a cold smile. “Oh, wait. Let’s be accurate. J. Harris Mayer. Always a stickler for accuracy, your friend Harris.”
Bernadette gasped, her knees weakening. “I haven’t seen Harris in ages.” She didn’t dare say she knew he was dead. “I didn’t realize you two knew each other.”
“He’s the one who introduced me to Cal.”
She was too shocked to respond. What else didn’t she know? Yesterday, she’d learned about Cal taking women here to the lake—and Harris’s murder, she thought. She’d tried not to envision him lying dead in the run-down rooming house, but rather how he’d looked during his many visits to the lake with his wife and children, in happier days, before he’d let his compulsions dominate him. Or maybe they always had, but he just hadn’t been caught and exposed.
“Aren’t you going to ask me how I know Harris?”
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. Just tell me what you want.”
Jesse pointed at her, almost with glee. “I know Harris because of you.”
“I don’t understand. I didn’t meet you until Cal introduced us—”
“I know. Complicated. But Cal and Harris are irrelevant right now.”
His stark words jolted Bernadette. “Jesse,” she said, her voice cracking, “where is Cal?”
Ignoring her question, he glanced at the shed, the brush, as if he hadn’t noticed them before. “I heard about the marshal attacked out here.”
It was you, you bastard.
Bernadette could see that he was enjoying manipulating her. As surreptitously as she could, she took another step back. She knew the lake, the woods around her house. If she could get away from him, she’d have at least a chance to run, elude him until she could get help.
But if she was right and he was the man who’d attacked Mackenzie last week, he could know the area as well as she did.
Get to your car. It’s your best hope. And keep him talking until you can make your move.
She tried to steady herself. “Jesse, why are you here?”
“I’m like you. I don’t want to get bit by what Cal’s into.”
She faked a laugh that sounded even more hollow and weak than she’d expected. “You’re a wealthy, respected businessman. How could anything in which Cal might be involved hurt you? And he and I are divorced. I’m not worried—”
“If you cooperate, he’ll live,” Jesse said abruptly. “If you don’t, it’s simple. He’ll die.”
Bernadette went still. She felt the blood draining out of her head, but tried to force herself to assess her situation objectively. She needed a weapon. There were tools in the shed. The sticks she used for toasting marshmallows near the fireplace. Rocks.
But before she could figure out what to do, Jesse produced an assault knife, pointing it at her in an obviously well-practiced move. “No one’s protecting you, Judge.” His tone was mild, even matter-of-fact. “No one can save you. You have to deal with me and only me.”
“All right.” She was surprised at how calm she suddenly sounded. “Tell me what you want.”
He ran his thumb along the smooth edge of the blade. “You’ve alienated a lot of people, haven’t you, Judge? Your pretty marshal friend, for one.”
His eyes flashed, and with a deep sense of revulsion, Bernadette realized he was attracted to Mackenzie. “Mackenzie knows I care about her.”
“You don’t give her enough credit,” Jesse continued, as if they were teachers discussing a student progress report. “She’s good at what she does. She’s still new, but she has sharp instincts. I’ve seen them at work. Hell, I almost got my ass kicked because of them.”
“What do you want? I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.”
The matter-of-fact tone vanished. “I want what your ex-husband stole from me.”
What? Bernadette pushed back her confusion and shock. And her fear. This man thrived on his sense of power and control over others. Over her. She had to use that to keep him talking.
“I don’t know anything about that,” she said. “Cal and I live separate lives.”
“Think, Judge. Focus your mind. Your ex-husband’s in a tough situation.” Jesse paused, watching her reaction, relishing it. “If I’m not able to get back to him soon, he’ll die before anyone can find him. It’s a nice day, but he’s cold, wet, hungry and thirsty. He’s also scared. You don’t like that, do you? The idea that he’s scared?”
“I don’t know anything about your dealings with Cal. If you give me more to go on, perhaps I can help you.”
He nodded toward the open shed. “Let’s take a look in there. Okay, Judge?”
As if she had a choice in the matter. But she knew she had to do what she could to delay him. “Why?”
“Because I’ve been trying to think like Cal, and I figure he’d hide what I’m looking for in a place where he could secretly stick it to you.”
“But—”
Jesse shook his head. “No more stalling, Beanie.” He waved his knife at her in a threatening manner. “Into the shed.”
If he killed her, she thought, she hoped he’d make a quick job of it. If he was as skilled a fighter as he wanted her to believe, he could kill her instantly with a quick, targeted stab to the heart.
Don’t go quietly. Fight him to the end.
Surprised at her steadiness, she went ahead of him into the shed. Her knees were shaking, but not, she hoped, visibly. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her tremble in fear.
She noticed the tools hung neatly on hooks and nails, each a potential weapon. She’d never attacked anyone before in her life, but she knew she could do it if she had to.
“I searched Cal’s condo,” Jesse said, remaining between her and the shed’s only door. “I went through your house in Washington. You didn’t even know, did you? You should have a better alarm system. It’s not 1950 anymore.”
Her heart thumped wildly in her chest, but she manufactured a smile. “You’re probably right. Look, if Cal stole something from you, I don’t blame you for being upset.”
Jesse didn’t seem to hear her. With his free hand, he pulled something out of his shirt pocket—thick paper, folded in half.
A photograph.
He flipped it onto the floor in front of Bernadette. “Pick it up.”
She hesitated. Jesse wasn’t allowing himself to be distracted from his search for whatever it was he thought he’d find there. She knelt down slowly, the image on the paper at her feet taking shape.
It was a picture of Cal, the man with whom she’d once planned to spend the rest of her life, in bed with a pretty, fair-haired woman.
In my bed here at the lake.
The bastard hadn’t even had the courtesy to use one of the guest rooms.
“You took this picture?” she asked, angling a look up at Jesse.
“It was easy enough. If they’d been upstairs…” He shrugged, obviously pleased with himself. “That would have been more difficult.”
“Have you ever spied on me?”
“I wasn’t spying. I was collecting information—intelligence, if you will, that I could use when I saw fit. I don’t believe for one second that Cal feels inferior to you. You worried about that, didn’t you?”
Bernadette stared at Jesse as he spoke so calmly and rationally, as if they were best friends discussing personal matters over a beer. “I—” She couldn’t focus on what to say. “Jesse, please. Tell me why you’re here. What do you want?”
“He’s shallow,” Jesse said. �
�Your ex-husband. He doesn’t believe in anything but his own bank account and his pleasures. That kind of cynicism is tough.” He gave her a long look, as if he expected her to see something she hadn’t noticed before. “Why aren’t you cynical, Beanie Peacham?”
The voice…the eyes…
Bernadette clutched her chest and sank onto her knees. “Oh, my God.”
Jesse smiled and lowered his face to hers. “You remember me now, don’t you?”
Thirty-Three
The cool breeze off the water made Mackenzie shiver, but it felt good. A year ago on a beautiful Saturday in August, she’d have been kayaking by now, contemplating what life would be like if the Marshals Service accepted her for training.
Now, she knew.
She started onto the bottom step of Bernadette’s screen porch, but saw the shed door propped open and headed down the slowing lawn. If Bernadette was preoccupied with Harris’s death and in a prickly mood after Gus’s revelation about Cal, she would turn to activity—to doing something useful. She’d mow, dig weeds, finally paint her flea-market table.
“Hey, Beanie,” Mackenzie called, in case Bernadette hadn’t heard her car in the driveway. “Gorgeous day, isn’t it?”
As she approached the shed, she resisted an outright shudder and pushed back the overpowering sense of dread she’d felt so often as a child when she’d get near it. She’d envision monsters in there in the dark, as if somehow the prospect of monsters would mitigate the blur of real memories she had—of her father’s blood and moans, of her own terror and guilt. Ever since that awful day when she’d found her father, her memories of what had happened were jumbled up with nightmares, trauma, fear and confusion over which of the images stuck in her head were real and which weren’t.
She heard a sound—a groan—and immediately drew her gun.
“Beanie—what’s going on?”
But there was no answer. Careful not to expose herself more than was necessary, Mackenzie moved toward the shed, the door swung open. She squinted against the bright sun and angled a look inside.
“Beanie?”
“I’m okay.” Bernadette’s voice was high-pitched, laced with fear. “He’s gone…”
She staggered into the doorway, her face ashen as she gripped her left shoulder with her right hand. Blood oozed through her fingers and down her wrist.
With her free arm, Mackenzie caught Bernadette around the waist and held on, taking her friend’s weight. “I’ve got you. It’s okay. Is anyone—”
“No one’s in the shed. He heard your car and ran.”
They edged out of the shed. Bernadette looked on the verge of passing out, but she rallied as she sat on the grass, her hand still clutching her shoulder.
“Who ran, Beanie?” Mackenzie asked.
“Jesse—Jesse Lambert.” Bernadette grimaced, sinking slightly. “Damn, this thing hurts. At least it’s not deep.”
“Let me see.”
Bernadette shook her head, with the authority of a woman accustomed to commanding a courtroom. But her eyes, normally a light green, were dark and glassy with pain and fear. “He says Cal will die if I—” She broke off, wincing in pain, then continued. “He wants something Cal stole from him. I don’t know. I couldn’t make sense of half of what he said.”
Mackenzie noticed something—a paper of some kind—stuck in Bernadette’s bloodstained hand. “Beanie, what’s that?”
She seemed confused. “What?” But she drew her hand from the wound in her shoulder. A photograph, smeared with blood, stuck to her palm. “Oh.” She stared at it, then pried it loose. “Here, see for yourself.”
Mackenzie made out the bloodstained image.
Cal’s blonde. She felt a pang of sympathy for her friend. “This Jesse showed the picture to you?”
“As if it were a trophy.”
“I’m sorry you had to see such a thing.” But Mackenzie shifted her attention to Bernadette’s wound, a slash across the meat of the shoulder and down to the collarbone. “Here.” She pulled off her jacket. “Use this for compression. Hold it as tight as you can against the cut. Okay?”
“He didn’t want to kill me. He could have, but he—” Bernadette stopped herself, taking the jacket, pressing it against her bleeding shoulder. “I can call the police.” She gave Mackenzie a weak smile. “As backup for you. I know—you are the police.”
“I can’t leave you. If he doubles back—”
“You won’t let him.” Bernadette staggered to her feet, pushing away Mackenzie’s hand and looking back at the shed. “This man…Jesse…I should have recognized him….”
Mackenzie stiffened. “Why, Beanie?”
But when Bernadette turned back to her, Mackenzie could hear her father arguing with a man twenty years ago.
“Find another place to camp, Jesse. You’re trespassing. Time to move on.”
She’d been hiding in the trees, playing spy. Her father and the younger man didn’t know she was there.
“You remember him now, don’t you?” Bernadette asked quietly, but she didn’t wait for an answer. “Your father kicked him off the property.”
“I know. I remember.” Mackenzie’s voice was just above a whisper. “He was worried about my safety—and yours.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Bernadette said.
Mackenzie forced herself out of the past. “It doesn’t matter right now. Andrew Rook is on the way. He shouldn’t be too far behind me.” She saw that Bernadette’s color had improved, and she seemed focused, able to handle a call to 911. “If he gets here before I’m back, tell him to meet me at the clearing we went to last Saturday.”
“Mackenzie—”
“I can’t take the time to explain now. Beanie, are you sure you can do this?”
“Yes.” She gave a faltering smile. “I know you marshals don’t like federal judges to get slashed, but please don’t worry about me. Just go, Mackenzie. Do what you have to do. Be safe.”
Mackenzie waited just long enough to make sure Bernadette wasn’t going to pass out on the porch steps before, gun in hand, she ducked through the brush, a barberry scratching her arm as she fought her way out to the trail along the lake.
A red squirrel scurried in front of her.
“Be out of here by noon or I call the police.”
Not a nightmare, she thought. A memory. But she felt the pull of her own healing knife wound and focused on the present. On finding Jesse Lambert, the man who’d attacked her, the hiker and Bernadette—and who’d tried to kill her father all those years ago, and just last week had succeeded in killing Harris Mayer.
Mackenzie knew she had to find Cal, because if he’d stolen from this man—this Jesse Lambert—then Bernadette was right.
Jesse would kill him.
Thirty-Four
Rook pulled in behind what he assumed was Mackenzie’s car in Bernadette Peacham’s lake house driveway. The judge, he noticed, drove a basic sedan that wasn’t fancy, expensive or new. But she had this place, he thought as he got out of his car. He stood in the shade of a tall maple, its leaves rustling in a steady breeze, the air cooler than it had been last week. T.J. was en route. He’d made a joke about all roads leading to New Hampshire, but it fell flat, neither he nor Rook in any mood for humor. The search of Jesse Lambert’s condominium had yielded information on a small plane that was now parked at an airstrip about an hour’s drive from Cold Ridge.
Rook appreciated the clear air and the view of the sparkling lake, but he felt a ripple of uneasiness. Why wasn’t Mackenzie out here already, pressing him for details on what he and T.J. had found in Washington?
He walked around to the front of the house, hearing the door to the screen porch bang shut.
Clinging to the rail with one hand, Bernadette Peacham staggered down the steps. “Agent—” She clutched a bloody hand to her shoulder. “Agent Rook…we have a situation here.”
He leaped to her side, grabbing her around the waist. Her hands and the front of her shirt were smeared wit
h blood, but Rook saw it was from a cut in her shoulder. “Here, sit down.” He lowered her onto a step. “Where’s Mackenzie?”
“You have to go after her. I’ve called 911. The cavalry’s on the way.”
He heard a vehicle in the driveway behind the house.
“Gus,” Bernadette Peacham said, then tried to smile. “I recognize the rattle.”
“Tell me what happened,” Rook said.
“Mackenzie’s gone after Jesse Lambert. He’s—”
“I know who he is. He stabbed you?”
She nodded. “To give himself a head start. He—he has Cal stashed somewhere. I think Mackenzie knows where.”
Gus Winter rounded the house. “Beanie—” His gaze took in the bloodstains, her pale face. “Ah, hell.”
“Don’t get hysterical, Gus, for heaven’s sake,” she said sharply. “I’m fine. You and Agent Rook need to go after Mackenzie.”
Gus sat next to her on the steps. “Rook’ll go. He’s armed to the teeth. I’ll sit here with you.”
Bernadette gripped his hand, her eyes shining with tears, but she rallied, looking up a Rook. “She said to find her at a clearing—”
“I know the spot.”
“The local police must be right behind you,” she said, but Rook was already on his way across the lawn and into the woods.
Mackenzie crossed the rock-strewn stream in a single leap and cleared the mud on the opposite side with inches to spare. A small victory after last Saturday’s miss. With her weapon in hand, she headed up the trail, listening for anything out of the ordinary—the crack of a fallen branch, excited birds, chattering squirrels. Anything that suggested that Jesse Lambert had taken cover nearby.
She wasn’t worried about him shooting her sniper-style. He liked knives.
And he liked getting under her skin. No fun in just shooting her.
She moved steadily, familiar with every exposed root and rock on the trail, focused on what she needed to do now—not on what had happened twenty years ago.
That could wait.
She heard a distinct rustling sound in the undergrowth to her left. It stopped abruptly.
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