Before He Takes

by Blake Pierce

  Mackenzie felt the same way but didn’t want to seem quite as indignant. She placed the call to Bateman and noticed that he sounded a little frustrated when he answered.

  “This is Bateman,” he answered.

  “We just spoke with Miller Rooney and it’s pretty clear he’s not involved in this. How are things there? Any luck on those train maps and schedules?”

  “Some,” he said. “Right now we’re working on trying to determine where a row of pines might be that close to the tracks. I’ve placed a call to the Forestry Department, but we won’t hear from them until tomorrow morning.”

  “Don’t hesitate if you need anything.”

  “Same to you,” he said, but it was clear that he didn’t really mean it.

  Over the course of the last two days, something had happened that had shifted his attitude. Mackenzie wondered if it was the mere fact that she and Ellington were showing him up and running things here. Or maybe he was feeling just as lost and defeated as she was.

  She hated to feel so passive about making very little progress on the case—especially after Delores Manning had managed to escape—but she also knew that there was nothing she could do. The idea of returning to the files on her father’s case popped up in her head but that was somehow even more depressing. So for now, she was fine with wasting an hour or two at the bar with Ellington.

  She supposed there were worse ways to spend downtime on a case that seemed to have no leads, clues, or end in sight.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  They returned to the Bent Creek Bar, receiving their first drinks at 9:30. Mackenzie was tired and hoped a few drinks would ensure that she’d sleep well tonight. She knew that if she returned to her room with the least bit of energy, she’d end up with her nose buried in her father’s files. And that would mean a restless night’s sleep that would be plagued with nightmares.

  There was surprisingly little conversation between them. What was discussed was not nearly as serious and businesslike as Mackenzie had pictured Ellington to be. It made her feel irresponsible, but she also needed it. The last true friend she’d had was no longer in the bureau—she had, in fact, left the academy just after graduation. It had been a very long time since Mackenzie had just been able to speak to someone about nonsense.

  “So,” Ellington said. “These band T-shirts that you are going to make a lot sexier…what bands are we talking about?”

  “Oh, we don’t need to go there.”

  “But we do. What have you learned about me this week? For starters, I like the Stones and I hate Skynyrd. That’s all you need to know about a man right there. So now it’s your turn.”

  “I may or may not still own a Nine Inch Nails shirt.”

  “Really? I did not peg you as a former goth.”

  “I wasn’t. I just liked that kind of music. “

  “That’s a relief,” Ellington said. “I had you pegged as one of those boy bands freaks.”

  “In other words, you think very little of me.”

  “That’s so far from the truth you can’t even see it,” he said. “What I’ve seen out of you these last few days has been remarkable. I knew you were good—I knew it from the first time I saw you in Nebraska—but you’re an exceptional agent. McGrath thinks so, too.”

  “Well, I’m not feeling like it right now,” she said.

  “I think the maps and train info we get will help,” he said.

  Mackenzie noticed that her beer was empty but rather than ordering another, she stood up. She dropped a ten on the bar to pay for their drinks. “I’m going to call it a night,” she said. “I’m incredibly tired and I can’t remember the last time I got more than six hours of sleep.”

  “More than six hours?” Ellington said. “You’re telling me it can be done?”

  He finished off his own beer and got up with her. “Well, I’m not drinking alone. And there’s worse ways to punch a clock.”

  They left the Bent Creek Bar together, heading back across the parking lot to the Motel 6. Ellington remained with her as she walked to her room. She pulled the room key out of her pocket and put it into the lock, wondering if he was waiting for an invitation to come inside.

  “You did great today, White. If I may be so bold, I’d like to make a prediction. We will catch this guy within the next forty-eight hours.”

  “That is pretty bold,” she said.

  “Optimistic,” he said. With that, he smiled and said, “Goodnight, Mackenzie.”

  He walked to his door the next room over and gave her a little wave. Mackenzie unlocked her own door and stepped into her room. She held the key in her hands for a moment as a thought came to her mind. Actually, it wasn’t so much a thought as it was an urge.

  A bold statement, she thought.

  Pocketing her key, she walked back out into the night and approached Ellington’s door. She knocked twice and waited. She heard him moving around inside, coming for the door. When he opened it, he looked a little confused.

  “Everything okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I was just thinking about another bold statement.”

  Before he could ask her what she meant, she stepped into his room and kissed him.

  It took him a moment to understand what was happening but when he did, he returned it. The kiss was quick and urgent, a five-second connection that they both broke at the same time. They stood there, about a foot away from one another, sizing each other up.

  He’s going to give me the “I’m not into you like that” speech now, Mackenzie thought. Oh my God, how did I read this so wrong?

  But then he was stepping toward her. He placed one hand on her hip and the other along the side of her neck. There was the slightest hesitation between them before they were kissing again. This one was a bit slower but no less urgent. What she had not expected was how quickly they both sank into it. This second kiss was not awkward at all. It was fluid, there was an undeniable heat in it, and, if she was being honest with herself, it was sexy as hell.

  From the expert way he kissed her, their tongues meeting and their lips never breaking from one another, to the way his hand gripped her hip, it was nearly perfect. It was so perfect that she wasn’t aware that he had gently pressed her against the wall until she felt it pressing lightly against her shoulders.

  She let her lips and her hands control her in that moment. She finally broke the kiss, but only to place her mouth on his jaw, and then his neck. Her hands, meanwhile, found the buttons on his shirt and started to undo them. In response, he started to do the same. As he worked at her buttons, his hands slipped beneath her shirt and she felt like some anxious little school girl as a shudder passed through her.

  With both of their shirts open, she felt flesh on flesh. She drew him closer to her, pressing him against her. There was now more than heat to their kiss, but some sort of spark that she had not expected, some building tension that had been slowly forming between them since she had first seen him in Nebraska almost a year ago.

  She trailed her hand down his sides, then she was grazing his chest and going for the button of his pants.

  He stepped back, pulling away. The kiss had been so intense that he was out of breath. He was looking at her with a conflicted expression. She saw want and raw lust in his eyes, but there was something else, too.

  “Mackenzie,” he said. “I can’t even believe I’m about to say this, but…I can’t.”

  “What is it?” she asked. She had no intentions whatsoever of pleading with him but she could not remember being so physically drawn to anyone before. She was still reeling from the kiss; she felt like there was a slight tilt to the floor.

  “Trust me,” he said, “I want to. I’ve wanted to for quite some time. But…I can’t be that guy. My divorce was just finalized a few weeks ago. If we go through with this right now—”

  “Oh, I see,” she said. And she did see. But it did nothing to subdue the frustration it made her feel. She started to slowly button her shirt back up,
doing her best not to seem like she was pouting.

  “I should have stopped it sooner,” he said, starting to button his own shirt. “But my God, Mackenzie…I’ve been wanting to kiss you for longer than I care to admit.”

  “I know the feeling,” she said. And she decided that would be the end of it. She was not going to say anything else about it. As far as she was concerned, she could wake up tomorrow and go on living as if the last minute or so of her life had never happened.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Don’t be. I started it. It’s okay, Ellington,” she said, making sure to use his last name as a way to show him that she was going to be all business from here on out. “I’m just going to head back to my room and go to sleep. More than six hours, remember?”

  He nodded. She looked directly at him for the first time since he had pushed away from her. The fact that he looked at odds with himself made her feel a little better. At least it wasn’t just her that was torn over what had just happened.

  “Goodnight,” she said, opening his door and making her exit.

  Ellington returned her good night but the door closed between them before he could get it all out.

  ***

  She again felt massively immature as she tried going to bed. She was sexually frustrated and visions of Ellington with his shirt unbuttoned would not leave her mind. She nearly got out of bed to return to the few files she had regarding her father but fought the urge. She managed to fall asleep shortly before midnight, the toll of the day finally catching up to her.

  In her sleep, she recognized the edges of a nightmare creeping in. She’d had so many of them over the last eighteen years or so that her sleeping mind was aware of them before they got started. In the quiet of her motel room, she let out a little moan of fear in her sleep.

  In this nightmare, she was standing in the middle of a large field. The house she had grown up in for most of her childhood stood in front of her but behind that, there were the thick woods of Iowa, the forests that surrounded State Route 14. As she stared at the house, she heard someone approaching from behind her.

  She turned and saw her father standing there—alive and unharmed. He smiled at her and placed an arm around her.

  “You look like you’re lost,” he said.

  “I feel lost,” she admitted.

  “This place,” he said, gesturing toward the house, “will always be your home. You’ve gone here and there since I’ve been gone, but you always come back here, don’t you?”

  She looked to the house and realized that she hated it with the same ferocity one might hate another human being.

  “I come back for you,” she said.

  “I know,” Benjamin White said. He then reached into the pocket of his pants and pulled out a business card. When he handed it to her, Mackenzie was not at all surprised to see that it was the business card for Barker Antiques.

  “I don’t know what this means,” she said.

  “You will. Just don’t give up on me, kid.”

  He then reached behind him and pulled something out of the waistband of his pants. He showed it to her and she jumped back. He held a Colt .44 revolver in his hand—the exact type of revolver that was believed to have killed him. Slowly, he brought the gun to his head.

  “I’ll be here until you figure it all out,” he said, grazing the barrel of the Colt against his head. “But I also feel like I’m the reason you keep coming back here…coming back here and forgetting about people like her.”

  When he said her, he nodded to the front porch of the house. There, she saw Delores Manning, splayed out on the steps. She was clearly dead, covered in an excessive amount of blood.

  “Daddy, I’m so lost.”

  “Then find yourself,” he said.

  She opened her mouth to argue but the thunderous report from the Colt seemed to shake the day. In a spray of red, her father crumpled to his knees and fell face down on the grass.

  Mackenzie screamed and went to her knees. Her scream tore through the nightmare like a screeching wind, but was not quite as loud as the thunderous echo of the gunshot that had claimed her father.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Missy Hale watched the first snowflake plop against the windshield and said, “Shit.”

  It was bad enough that she was starting her day out incredibly early, but the snow in the forecast was just the icing on the cake. There had been enough snow in the last few days of her travels and as far as she was concerned, spring could not get here fast enough.

  Maybe if she could get through her next stop quick enough, she could be back in Des Moines by eleven o’clock. She’d made the day’s big stop, at the Bent Creek Slaughterhouse, at 7:45. Now as the morning crept toward 9:00, she had one stop left to make—some small-time farmer who had been dodging the government on waste regulations for months now. As a researcher and liaison for the Department of Agriculture, dealing with waste was definitely one of the more humbling parts of Missy’s job. There were some days when she needed to take two showers just to make sure she got the stench of pig and cow manure out of her hair.

  Another snowflake hit her windshield, then another. She came to the end of the long access road that led to the slaughterhouse and put on her right turn signal. She started down the road, glancing over to the street address of the next farm. It was on the other side of Bent Creek but she knew the area well enough to know that she could take a quick detour off of the main highway, taking State Route 14 out to the opposite side of town.

  Missy drove for another five miles, getting closer to the actual signs of life within the little town of Bent Creek. The snow was still whispering down and the skies overhead showed signs of something much more significant in the next few hours.

  When she was less than half a mile away from her turn-off onto State Route 14, she caught a glimpse of a flashing red light on the side of the road just ahead. She slowed down and looked in that direction as she approached the light. She came to what looked like the entrance to what had once been a service road or basic rural dirt road. There was a truck pulled into it, about ten feet off of the road. The driver’s side door was open and a man was bent over inside, his legs out on the ground but the rest of him hidden. From what she could tell, he looked very still. That, plus the flashing of the hazard lights, raised an alarm.

  Slowly, she pulled over to the side of the road, coming in behind the truck. Closer to the truck, Missy could now see that the man’s legs were limp. She had no idea what had happened here, but the man was hurt. Maybe he’d been out driving, had some kind of heart episode or massive headache, and pulled over to the side of the road, hoping his hazards would attract someone.

  She got out of her service truck—a standard model for the Iowa Department of Agriculture—and pulled her coat’s hood up. She hated even the feel of the damned snowflakes falling on her cheeks and nose.

  “Hello?” she said. “Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

  She took another step forward and started to feel uneasy.

  If you think he’s hurt and want to help, call 911 from your cell phone. Just…get back into your truck.

  But the limp stature of those legs told her that this man was seriously hurt. She should at least check his condition before calling. The person on the other end at 911 would ask for details anyway.

  “Sir?” she said, stepping forward. She could now see into the truck. The man had a hood pulled over his head, joined to a thick coat. “Are you okay?”

  And then, in a flash, the man moved.

  She screamed but only for a moment. Something hard hit her in the center of the forehead and everything in her body shut down temporarily. She got a look at the man for just a second before she went to the ground in a whirl of blackness.

  ***

  He’d been careful this time. He’d checked the schedule and had a pretty good idea of when the woman would come out of the slaughterhouse. He’d worked there before—he had even seen Missy Hale a few times while on staff.
So he knew she’d be done by 8:45 or 9:00. He’d parked here, knowing that no one would recognize the old pickup truck. It had been sitting on his property for two years, under a tarp. The farm-use tags on it were fakes and while they could be traced, they’d be traced to some poor sap in North Carolina.

  He’d seen her truck coming down the road and played dead, making sure to put the hazards on. He knew she’d pull in behind him, which would make getting out of here a little difficult.

  And then, of course, he thought he might have hit her far too hard. He’d used a simple hammer, striking her with the edge of the head. He’d expected her to get woozy, not to black out completely.

  But it was done now and he couldn’t change it. So he had to work with what he had.

  He also knew that while traffic on this road was practically non-existent after 8:00, he had to anticipate the occasional stray or wandering car. So he had to move his ass.

  He looked at his watch as he started for State Route 14. From the moment Missy had pulled in behind him to his return to the main road, less than ninety seconds had passed. Ahead and behind, there was no traffic on the road.

  The snow was coming down faster now. While others would bemoan the snow, he was happy to have it. It covered everything, washed everything away.

  Hopefully, it had covered up any evidence Delores Manning had left behind during her run through the forests yesterday. He supposed there was a chance that she had told the authorities everything she could. He fully expected the police to show up at any moment. And if they did, that was fine. He was ready for them. Hell…maybe they’d even understand why he was doing it.

  If not, though, he had plenty of ammunition.

  Besides, as beautiful as the snow was and as excited as he got about a confrontation with the police, he had more pressing things to worry about for the moment.

  For instance, he could not wait to shove Missy Hale into the very same container that had held Delores Manning until yesterday morning.