by Blake Pierce
Crack!
He whipped her, and a fierce stinging sensation erupted on her right hand right across the knuckles—followed by a blinding pain that raced along her left cheek as he whipped again.
She felt blood flowing instantly, racing down her fingers and face. She saw him coming at her, diving from the top step. She fired blindly, knowing that the pain in her hand affected her shot.
Still, she heard him cry out in pain, as the shot took him low in the stomach.
Amazingly, the shot only slowed his progress. Once again, his full weight slammed into her and she went falling backwards down the stairs.
She grabbed for the wall, again dropping her gun, but it did no good. They both went falling down the stairs and when Mackenzie’s back hit, it exploded in pain and the wind went rushing out of her.
They tumbled down the remainder of the stairs in a bundle of arms and legs. When they finally hit the floor, Mackenzie’s back was a spasm of pain and the blood from her face was coating her neck and soaking into her shirt.
The killer was getting to his knees now, drawing back the same whip he had attacked her with on the stairs. He turned and whipped the original object of his madness, the woman in the pink bra, who was standing and gaping, frozen in fear. It slapped her across the shoulder, bringing up a red whelp right away, her blood splashing against the hallway wall.
With the woman falling to the ground and wailing, Mackenzie tried to launch her own attack but her back didn’t seem to want to work for a moment. She felt paralyzed and wondered if she had snapped her spine on the way down the stairs.
The killer turned his attention to her and drew back the whip. The smile on his face was a thing of madness, a smile that belonged in asylums and nightmares.
“I will raise a city in your name,” he said as he readied himself to bring the whip down on her.
Mackenzie could only flinch, waiting for the whip to come down on her flesh with that sick cracking noise, its barbed end to pierce her flesh and disfigure her for good. She wondered what she would look like when he was done—if she survived at all.
Suddenly, there came a booming noise in the kitchen. Mackenzie didn’t understand what it was until she saw a body appear in the hallway. It came racing down the hall and leapt for the killer.
The killer, caught in mid-turn, was tackled to the ground. It wasn’t until the two bodies started fighting for position on the ground that Mackenzie saw, to her shock, who the other person was.
Porter.
It made no sense. A part of Mackenzie wondered if she had hit her head on the way down the stairs and was seeing things.
But as her back finally started to loosen up, she groggily got to her knees and saw what was happening before her. Porter had saved her. He was now fighting with the killer, positioned on top of him and delivering a deft right hand to the face.
With black dots racing in her vision, Mackenzie looked around for her gun. The floor felt like it was swaying beneath her and she could actually smell her own blood now. It was coming out of her cheek in what felt like a river and—
Suddenly, she saw her gun. It was inches from the killer’s hand and he was clearly reaching for it.
“Porter,” she croaked, still finding her back untrusting and her legs wobbly.
She tried to run forward but her back locked up and she went to her knees in a grimace of pain. She could only look on helplessly as the killer grabbed her Glock.
Porter noticed it just in time, reaching out to stop the killer from getting the gun into position to fire.
But Porter lost his balance atop the killer as he did this and the killer took advantage, rolling away, sending Porter to the floor, and grabbing the gun.
The killer stood and fired.
The gunshot was deafening and the roar of pain from Porter was far too brief. Mackenzie’s heart fell, hoping it didn’t mean what she thought it did.
Mackenzie pushed past the flaring pain in her back and stumbled forward. The killer stood there, his face now also bloodied from Porter’s attack, and Mackenzie attacked him from behind, driving an elbow hard into the space between his shoulder blades.
He went falling to the floor, the gun flying from his grasp.
Mackenzie cried out from the pain in her back as she followed up by driving her knee into the center of the man’s back. She could practically feel the air rush out of him and she took advantage of this right away.
She grabbed him by both sides of his head, her right hand nothing more than a glove of blood from his whip attack, and raised it several inches from the ground. Then, with a scream that was a sublime mixture of pain, frustration, and victory, she slammed his head into the wooden floor.
He groaned and gasped.
She did it again, in a quick machine-like motion. Up, then down.
This time, he made no noise.
She rolled off of his back and leaned against the wall. She slid over to Porter and her heart swelled when she saw that he was moving. There was blood coating the left side of his head and he was holding his ear like a frightened child.
“Porter?”
He didn’t respond. He did, however, roll over and look at her.
“White?”
He looked worried, wiping blood away from his face.
“The damned gun went off right by my ear,” he said, his voice loud. “I can’t hear a thing.”
She nodded, arching her back and trying to stretch out the pain. But the pain was there to stay, or so it seemed. She reached over to the killer and placed her hand to his neck. It was hard to tell through her own surging adrenaline and heartbeat, but she was fairly certain there was a pulse there.
Mackenzie lay on the floor next to Porter and slowly pulled her cell phone out of her back pocket. When she scrolled for Nelson’s number, she left bloody streaks all over the phone.
As the phone started to ring in her ear, she reached out with her free hand and found Porter’s. She gave it a squeeze and despite the sticky blood coating her fingers, Porter squeezed back.
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
Three days after the Scarecrow Killer had been taken into custody, Mackenzie returned to the same hospital she had left just two days previous with fourteen stitches in her cheek and five along the top of her right hand. She went to the third floor and entered a room that was being occupied by Porter. Seeing him in a hospital bed broke her heart, especially considering how he had ended up there.
He smiled at her when she came in. There was heavy padding and bandaging along the left side of his head but she was relieved to see that all of the IVs had been removed since she last saw him.
“There she is,” Porter said.
She smiled, marveling at how much their relationship had changed.
“How are you, Porter?”
“Well, the good news is that I can hear you, which is something the doctors weren’t too sure about two days ago. The bad news is that I can’t hear you very well. The worse news is that my right ear is never going to look the same again. It seems the bullet actually tore off part of the top.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Well, what was I supposed to do?” Porter asked, a little ill-tempered. “Your FBI buddy calls me and tells me that you’re planning on trying to find this guy’s lair all alone. I had to help.”
She shook her head and squeezed his hand.
“How did you find me, anyway?”
“I may have broken into your house,” Porter said with a sly smile. “I saw the map you made, pinpointing the location at the center of the cities. Then when I reached the area, I heard gunshots—I guess that’s from when you got the jump on him in the shed. So I just followed the commotion.”
“Porter, thank you so much. I would have died—”
He shook his head, his jaw set.
“Hell no,” he said. “You would have gotten him somehow.”
Mackenzie nodded, touched by the compliment, but wasn’t so sure. She could still see the killer’s face w
hen she closed her eyes, raising that whip, preparing to kill her. She had awakened the last two nights in a panic attack, sweating, alone in bed, and wondered if she would ever stop seeing it.
She found herself getting lost in reverie, and wasn’t sure how much time had passed when Porter spoke again.
“So, how’s your back?” he asked, quickly changing the subject, probably sensing what was happening to her.
She smiled, forcing herself to snap out of it, forcing herself to stay upbeat. After all, she’d come here to comfort Porter, and she owed him at least that much.
“I had my final X-ray this morning,” she said. “Everything checks out. No spinal injuries, just a bad sprain. I was lucky.”
“To look at the stitches in your face and my mangled ear, I’m not so sure lucky is the word I would use.”
Mackenzie went to the visitor’s chair by the head of the bed and looked at him with as much sincerity as she could muster.
“I came by to thank you,” she said. “And to say goodbye.”
He looked alarmed.
“Goodbye?”
She braced herself.
“Yes. Nelson had to make a hard decision. When things got out that I caught the killer after he had taken me off the case, it got ugly.”
“He actually fired you?”
“No. He suspended me for six months. And after he did that, I quit.”
Porter sat up in bed, grimacing but still managing to sneer at Mackenzie.
“Why the hell would you do that?”
She looked to the floor, unsure how to explain it.
“Because,” she said, “I spent too much time trying to prove that I wasn’t just some young naïve girl that was looking to out-work a mostly older male police force. Now, if you add to that a renegade who openly disregards the chief’s rules, that’s just something else for me to live down.”
He frowned, silent for a long time.
“What do you plan on doing now?” he asked. “You’re too good of a detective to be anything else.”
She smiled and said: “I’m considering other opportunities.”
He grinned at her for a moment and then chuckled.
“You’re going to the FBI, aren’t you?”
She was sure she did a poor job of hiding her shock. She returned his smile as he reached out and took her hand. It reminded her of their final coherent moments in the killer’s house and she found herself wanting to tell him what she had in mind for her future. She left it quiet, though. Now wasn’t the time.
He’d hit the nail on the head and it had surprised her. Had he always been so perceptive? Had he been hiding some sort of genuine care for her beneath the snark and impatience all this time?
“You are,” he said. “And good for you. Let’s be honest here—that’s where you belong. You were always too good for this place. I know that and you damn well better know it. I always rode you so hard because I wanted you to be better. I wanted you to get the hell out. And it looks like I did a fine job.”
She had expected a reprimand, and she was so touched and relieved by his warmth and his genuine happiness for her.
For the first time in a very long time, she felt tears of gratitude. She managed to keep them in, though, letting the silence speak for them as their hands remained clasped together in a solemn gesture of a friendship that had developed far too late.
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
It hadn’t taken her long to pack. She managed to fit about half of her clothes into two suitcases and put the other half in a cardboard box which she labelled PLEASE DONATE using a Sharpie. Another box contained assorted items such as several paperback books, an old iPad, and a record player she’d once wanted to repair but never got around to. It was labelled the same way.
She had called Zack, fully aware that he was at work and would not be able to take her call. She left him a message that she now regretted as she wheeled her suitcases to the front door. It had been brief and even now, as she looked around at the house, unnaturally empty and cleaned, she wondered if she’d owed him more of an explanation.
That was ridiculous, though. If she owed anyone an explanation, it was herself, for staying stuck in this lifestyle as long as she’d had.
“I’m heading out of town for good,” she’d said. “The house is paid for up until the end of next month. It’s yours if you want it. If not, the lease will expire and become available. All of your stuff is still here, so come get it whenever you want. You can have the furniture, TV, and anything else we went halves on. I’m starting a new chapter in my life and it’s clear that you aren’t in it. Please respect my wishes and don’t bother calling. Take care, Zack.”
The bit about a new chapter was clichéd, but true. It was why she could so easily leave behind thousands of dollar worth of furniture and appliances. It simply wasn’t worth the arguments she’d have with Zack over them. It was also why she was leaving half of her clothes. She could buy new clothes—clothes that she’d always wanted to wear but had hesitated to because of what Zack might think, or how Porter or Nelson might react.
This new life she was walking towards offered a new vision of herself that she had only dared to dream of before now. What was the alternative? Was she supposed to stay here and suck up her suspension, then return to work with one more mark against her in a sea of aging men that saw her as an empty threat?
No thanks.
The house had never been so quiet. It was nearly as serene and still as murder scenes she’d seen—almost as stoic as that first cornfield where they’d discovered the first victim. Anything of hers that remained in this house was dead. She felt that with certainty as she reached for the doorknob.
When Mackenzie opened the door and stepped outside, she felt an unseen weight dissolve from her. It only increased as she rolled her suitcases across the small yard and to her car. She put the suitcases in the trunk, slammed it closed, and got behind the wheel.
When she backed out towards the street, she didn’t give the house a second look. Her future was in the other direction. All the house represented was a past that she could already feel sliding from her shoulders, a burden she had carried for far longer than she should have.
*
The papers had finally gotten tired of the story. Mackenzie had read it five different ways and no matter how it was told, she still felt as if she were reading about someone else. She had not granted interviews, allowing lazy reporters to assume things. She’d even gone online to the Oblong Journal to see if Ellis Pope had written anything about it.
He did not disappoint. He told a story about a violent young woman who thought she was the Punisher, going against her chief’s wishes and nabbing the bad guy anyway. While the article had been scathing and hateful, the comments section tore Pope down, heralding Mackenzie as a bad-ass and, according to a few posters, a hottie.
She was reading that particular story on her iPad in the airport when her flight was announced. She grabbed her bags and thought about the call she’d had earlier in the morning with Ellington. It still felt like she had dreamed it all, even as she started towards the gate.
“I wanted to call to let you know that they’ve asked me to be a part of your initial meeting,” he’d said. “Is that going to be okay with you?”
“Yes, that’s fine.”
“You excited?”
“I am. But I’m nervous more than anything else.”
“No need to be. Everyone here is psyched that you’re coming. And now it’s more than just my praises. The news has been exceptionally kind to you lately. And the fact that you’ve been humble about it—that speaks volumes.”
“Thanks again, by the way,” Mackenzie said.
He’d chuckled then and said: “Special Agent White. That sound good to you yet?”
She began to board the ramp to her flight, and stopped to look back at the airport one last time. She expected to take it all in, one last look at her home—but instead, to her horror, she saw the moment she had slammed t
he killer’s head into the floor again and again. She recalled how savage it had made her feel—how absolutely untamed and unpredictable. It had scared her in the days that had followed, but she also knew that it was a part of her now—a part she’d known existed ever since she’d found her father’s body.
Now that she had let that part of her out and accepted it as her own, how would that alter the way she worked from now on?
She supposed there was no better way to tell than with a new job where no one knew her. While she wasn’t naïve enough to think that it could be a true fresh start, she did, for the first time, believe that she was capable.
She shook away the image and walked down the concourse. A plane was waiting for her.
And so was a new future.
NOW AVAILABLE!
BEFORE HE SEES
(A Mackenzie White Mystery—Book 2)
From Blake Pierce, bestselling author of ONCE GONE (a #1 bestseller with over 600 five star reviews), comes book #2 in a heart-pounding new mystery series.
In BEFORE HE SEES (A Mackenzie White Mystery—Book 2), FBI agent-in-training Mackenzie White struggles to make her mark in the FBI Academy in Quantico, trying to prove herself as a woman and as a transplant from Nebraska. Hoping she has what it takes to become an FBI agent and leave her life in the Midwest behind for good, Mackenzie just wants to keep a low profile and impress her superiors.
But all that changes when the body of a woman is found in a garbage dump. The murder bears shocking similarities to the Scarecrow Killer—the case that made Mackenzie famous in Nebraska—and in the frantic race against time to stop a new serial killer, the FBI decides to break protocol and give Mackenzie a chance on the case.
It is Mackenzie’s big break, her chance to impress the FBI—but the stakes have never been higher. Not everyone wants her on the case, and everything she touches seems to go wrong. As the pressure mounts and the killer strikes again, Mackenzie finds herself as a lone voice in a sea of experienced agents, and she soon realizes she is in way over heard. Her entire future with the FBI is in jeopardy.