LITMIR.BIZ

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He had to cancel dinner with Mackenzie. He had a job to do.

      Two

      Mackenzie Stewart shoved a flannel shirt into her backpack with more force than was necessary. She had the air-conditioning turned up, but she was hot—hot and agitated and in no mood to have Nate Winter, perhaps the most observant man on the planet, in her kitchen with her.

      Although it wasn’t technically her kitchen.

      She was a temporary resident in a corner of a historic 1850s house in Arlington. Nate’s archaeologist wife, Sarah, was in charge of getting it open to the public, a task apparently fraught with twists, turns and setbacks. Just when she thought everything was under control, the place sprang unexpected, unexplained massive leaks. Some people were convinced the leaks were the work of the ghosts of Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee, long-rumored to haunt the house. Mackenzie didn’t believe in ghosts. She blamed worn-out plumbing.

      Nate and Sarah, pregnant with their first child, had moved into a house of their own in the spring. Sarah had offered the caretaker’s quarters to Mackenzie when she arrived in Washington six weeks ago. While she looked for a place of her own, Mackenzie could be a presence at the historic house, discouraging ghosts and potential vandals, and staying alert for new leaks.

      She zipped up her backpack. She was in shorts, but was still hot. “Nate, did you and Sarah ever encounter Abe and Bobby E. while you were living here?”

      Sitting at the small kitchen table, Nate watched her with a level of scrutiny that got to most people. He was a feet-flat-on-the-floor senior deputy marshal, tall, lean and notoriously impatient. He, too, was from Cold Ridge, New Hampshire, and Mackenzie had known him all her life. He was like the big brother she’d never had, and he didn’t scare her.

      “I never did,” he said.

      “Meaning Sarah did?”

      He shrugged. “You’d have to talk to her.”

      Mackenzie suspected that if Nate had his way, her first assignment as a federal agent would have been in Alaska or Hawaii, not his backyard. He worked at the U.S. Marshals headquarters in Arlington, and she was assigned to the Washington district office—still too close for his comfort. If she flamed out on her first assignment, better she wasn’t right under his nose.

      If he’d really had his way, she’d be writing her dissertation and teaching political science back in New Hampshire, uninterested in dipping a toe into his world.

      Since he didn’t have his way, he was doing what he could to help her get acclimated to her new profession. Which, on most days, she appreciated.

      “You’re taking a long weekend,” Nate said.

      “That’s right. I worked it out with my chief.”

      “You’ve only been in D.C. for six weeks.”

      His tone was mild, without any detectable criticism, but Mackenzie knew he didn’t approve. She still had boxes stacked against a wall in the kitchen, and bags of paper cups and plates were on the counter, signs she hadn’t fully moved in yet—physically or emotionally. She could feel Nate wondering if she’d changed her mind about staying, about remaining in law enforcement at all.

      He’d never believed she’d get through the weeks of rigorous training at the federal academy. He wasn’t alone. No one had believed it. Not one solitary person, including her own mother. They didn’t lack faith in her or want her to fail—they just didn’t believe she was meant to be a cop of any kind.

      To be fair, Mackenzie wasn’t sure she’d believed it herself, but when she finally secured her spot at the academy, she went all-out. She didn’t let doubts—her own or anyone else’s—deter her. She refused to let anything derail her, not her size, her level of fitness, her temperament, her sense of humor. She figured she’d either discover she hated law enforcement and quit, or she’d shoot off her mouth and get the boot.

      “Why take a personal day now?” Nate asked.

      Because she needed to get her head screwed back on straight after making the classic new-in-town mistake of dating a guy she’d met in the rain. At first she thought Rook was a good-looking Washington bureaucrat. Instead, he turned out to be an FBI agent, violating one of the rules she’d established for herself at the academy—no getting involved with other law enforcement officers.

      But she told Nate, “I’m still getting acclimated to the heat.”

      “You didn’t have trouble with the heat in Georgia.”

      The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center was located in Glynco, Georgia, a hot climate, but Mackenzie refused to let Nate throw her off. She wasn’t telling him about Rook. Period. “I didn’t say I was having trouble.”

      “You were in town last night for a literacy fund-raiser.”

      She glanced at him. “How do you know?”

      He shrugged. “Someone mentioned it.”

      “Who? Beanie?”

      “No. I don’t see a lot of her.”

      “She invited me. She wanted to introduce me to people. I only stayed a half hour. I think she’s just trying to be a friend now that I’m in Washington, but she’s not quite sure what to do with me.”

      Nate stretched out his long legs. “Next time, tell her to invite you for pie and coffee.” He paused, watching as Mackenzie used her foot to push her backpack against the wall next to the door. “Who did you see at the party?”

      She hadn’t expected that question. “What do you mean? I saw Beanie. She introduced me to a few people, but that’s about it.”

      “Did you see Cal?”

      “For about ten seconds. He showed up late and left early.”

      Nate got to his feet. He seemed more settled since his move to USMS Headquarters and his marriage to Sarah Dunnemore, but he was hard-bitten, impatient, unrelenting. When he was seven—before Mackenzie was born—his parents had been caught up in the mountains, on notorious Cold Ridge, in unexpected, frigid, difficult conditions. They’d died of hypothermia and exposure before help could reach them, leaving behind Nate and his two younger sisters, Antonia, five, and Carine, just three. Their father’s twenty-year-old brother, Gus, just back from Vietnam, had stepped in to raise his orphaned nephew and nieces.

      “I think it’d be smart for you to make new friends,” Nate said now.

      “Cal’s not a friend. I’ve never had much use for him.” Mackenzie let out a breath, aware that she’d let Nate throw her off balance. “I don’t know if I’d call Beanie a friend in the sense you mean. I’ve known her all my life. She’s a good neighbor.”

      “A neighbor in New Hampshire. Not here. Here, Mackenzie, she’s a member of the federal judiciary. You’re a deputy U.S. marshal. There’s a difference.”

      “Thanks, Nate, I couldn’t have figured that out myself—”

      “I’m trying to look out for you.”

      She knew it was true, but her usual good nature had taken a thrashing when she got back last night and listened to the voice mail from Rook. He hadn’t even had the decency to ax her in person.

      “Sorry, Mac, can’t do dinner. I’ll see you around. Maybe we’ll run into each other on the job. Good luck.”

      Low. Very low.

      The “good luck” had really ticked her off.

      “Mackenzie?”

      She jerked herself back to the present. Thinking about Rook wasn’t smart. If she even pictured him in her mind, she swore Nate would know. Somehow, he’d figure it out. She made herself smile at him. “Sorry. I let the heat get to me.”

      “It’s about forty-seven in here with the way you have the air-conditioning

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