Abandon - Carla Neggers

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from behind her seat. “Good luck finding your hiker. Did you want to talk to Carine?”

      “No—she’d call if she ran into the hiker. I plan to be back in time to pick up the baby. You two just relax and have a good time.” He scrutinized Mackenzie for a moment. “You look stressed. When you were a college professor, you never looked stressed.”

      “I did. You just never noticed.”

      “Maybe because you weren’t carrying a gun.”

      As soon as she climbed out of his truck, Gus took off. Mackenzie carried her backpack along a stone walk to the front of the house, its cedar shingles in need of a fresh coat of dark brown stain. Its shutters, a deep evergreen, were so nicked and scarred they probably should be replaced altogether. As with almost everything else in Bernadette Peacham’s life, money wasn’t the issue. She had ample funds to do whatever she wanted. Time, inclination and a tendency to overcommit were another matter.

      The lake sparkled in the bright afternoon sun, and Mackenzie welcomed the cooler air, the familiar sights and sounds. She headed to the screen porch. A drop-leaf table she knew Bernadette meant to paint was there, in the same condition as when she’d brought it home from a yard sale two years ago. She often said that her life was so filled with deadlines, she appreciated having a project with no firm end date. She’d get to the table when she got to it.

      The door into the kitchen was unlocked. Feeling herself begin to relax, Mackenzie found a note from Carine indicating she was off for a quick walk with Harry, her eight-month-old.

      Which meant, as Gus had predicted, she was looking for any sign of the missing hiker.

      Carine had left paper bags stuffed with groceries on the table, enough to feed two women for a week, never mind twenty-four hours. Mackenzie ripped open a package of marshmallows and popped one into her mouth as she headed down a short hall to a linen closet. In her haste to get out of Washington, she hadn’t packed a swimsuit, but the closet, overflowing with a mishmash of towels, facecloths, sheets and extra blankets, yielded a fuchsia two-piece tankini and a beach towel—pink dolphins against a turquoise background—from her pre-law-enforcement days.

      She ducked into the bathroom, which, like the rest of the house, had changed little over the years. Bernadette fixed things at the lake as needed. She didn’t renovate.

      Once she’d changed into the swimsuit, Mackenzie locked her 9 mm Browning in a small safe in the pantry. Then she headed back out to the porch and down to the water. She passed the shed her father had built for Bernadette, where the bloody accident that had almost killed him had occurred, and walked out onto the wooden dock. He’d been cutting wood for the new dock that day.

      But she pushed the images back and stood at the end of the dock. Even in August, the lake would be cold.

      With an ease that surprised her, Mackenzie dived in without hesitation, trusting herself to remember that the water off the dock was deep enough. She wouldn’t risk smashing her head on a rock or scraping a knee on the rough bottom of the lake.

      She surfaced almost immediately, squinting up at the clouds as she took in a breath and tried to stay focused on her surroundings, the feel of the breeze on her wet face and hair.

      Don’t think about Washington.

      About Rook.

      In a few moments, she adjusted to the cold water and flipped onto her back. The nearly cloudless sky was all she could see as she floated, going still, tilting her head back the same way she had as a girl, when the lake had been her refuge, and her keenly intelligent, eccentric neighbor had been her salvation in the tense, frantic months of her father’s long and uncertain recovery. He couldn’t return to the carpentry work he knew and loved. She’d later learned that money was tight. Her mother, who’d worked part-time as a teacher’s aide, had turned to full-time work, every ounce of her energy going to keeping food on the table and helping her husband get back on his feet.

      Mackenzie dived again, remembering telling her parents not to worry about her, that she’d be fine. She’d always loved roaming the woods, catching frogs on the lakeshore, watching the loons. With her father needing so much of her mother’s attention, Mackenzie had figured her propensity to wander could finally be a help instead of an annoyance and a cause for concern. She’d relished her time alone in the woods.

      Eventually, though, she’d decided to hitchhike into town, and Nate Winter, then a teenager, had picked her up and taken her to his uncle at his store, where she’d promptly stolen a jackknife and a couple of packs of waterproof matches.

      Almost twenty years later, she couldn’t remember the emotion that had driven her to pocket things that weren’t hers, only the deep shame and anger—at herself, at everyone—when Gus had caught her.

      And Bernadette’s talk. Mackenzie remembered that. The law, Bernadette had explained, wasn’t about seeing what you could get away with. Red lights weren’t to be obeyed just when a police car was in sight. They were there for the welfare and safety of everyone.

      She’d never mentioned Mackenzie’s parents and how preoccupied and overwhelmed they were. In retrospect, Mackenzie understood that was why Gus had taken her to Bernadette and not them.

      Blunt and straightforward, their neighbor had offered Mackenzie use of her library of books at the lake. She could take them home with her, or she could sit out on the porch or the dock and read to her heart’s content. When Bernadette was in Washington, she allowed Mackenzie to let herself into the lake house for a fresh supply of books.

      As she swam back to the dock now, Mackenzie felt the tension of the past two days fall away.

      She climbed out of the water, shivering when the breeze hit her wet skin. She grabbed her towel, quickly drying her arms.

      The door to the utility shed off to the right of the dock had blown open. Bernadette often didn’t bother with the padlock. There was nothing of great importance in the shed—canoes, kayaks, paddles, life jackets, swimming noodles, lawn mower and garden tools.

      Even so, it wasn’t Mackenzie’s favorite place.

      Its wide door, stained the same dark brown as the house, creaked in a gust of wind.

      She draped the towel over her shoulders and stepped off the dock onto a path of gravel and sharp stones that she’d avoided on her run down from the house. As a kid, she wouldn’t have even noticed the stones under her bare feet.

      She heard a rustling sound in the brush between the shed and the shoreline and stopped, peering into the tangle of small birches and pines, thigh-high ferns, blackberry vines and invasive Japanese barberry so thick with thorns, nothing could get through it.

      Wild turkeys? A squirrel?

      Behind the shed were woods laced with paths that led to favorite spots along the lake, connected with trails that eventually snaked up into the mountains.

      Mackenzie listened for a few seconds, but when she heard nothing more she draped her towel over one shoulder and reached for the shed door.

      A guttural sound—a low growl—came from the brush. She turned quickly, just as something leaped out of the bushes, coming at her.

      A man. Dark hair, a beard.

      Mackenzie jumped back, but he was diving for her, slashing at her.

      A knife.

      She reacted instantly, adrenaline flooding her senses, and hooked her beach towel around her right arm to block another slash of his knife. Quickly, she grabbed his wrist, pointing the knife to the dirt path, and simultaneously locked his elbow in place with her other hand. She gave his wrist a sharp, hard twist away from her.

      He groaned in pain, but still gripped the knife.

      With the side of her foot she delivered a quick, hard kick to the inside of his knee.

      The knife dropped from his hand, and he screamed in pain, sinking to the dirt.

      Maintaining her hold on his forearm,

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