“I don’t know – and I wasn’t stabbed. Stabbing is when the knife goes straight into you.” She looked over at him, silhouetted against the fire and dark night. “This was a cut.”
The missing hiker, on the other hand, had been stabbed in her lower abdomen. She had come out of surgery, and her prognosis for a full recovery was excellent. Everyone – Gus, especially – would hate seeing a woman who’d come to the White Mountains to hike with friends end up stabbed, fighting for her life. That she’d survived the attack was a miracle, but the profilers, Mackenzie knew, would add it to the mix. Why hadn’t their perp stabbed the woman repeatedly? Why had he done so once, and run?
Was he deranged?
Mackenzie thought of his eyes. The eyes of a man in the midst of a psychotic breakdown?
She set her stick in the grass. “Have you talked to Beanie?”
Gus pulled his blackened marshmallows out of the fire. “No, why would I?”
“Because you’ve known her since kindergarten.”
“Before that. I didn’t go to kindergarten.”
He ate the top marshmallow, his prickliness more pronounced than usual. Gus and Bernadette both had deep roots in Cold Ridge, and as different as they were, they each planned to spend their last days there.
Mackenzie stared up at the starlit sky. If she sank any deeper into her chair, she’d become a part of it. “You and Beanie are going to end up in the same nursing home, you know. It’d serve you right.”
He gave Mackenzie a quick grin. “Probably would.”
“The police and the FBI don’t think this guy had anything to do with her.”
“What’s your gut say, Mackenzie?” Gus leveled his gaze on her. “Think it was random, him showing up here?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t.”
He turned back to the fire and lowered his remaining marshmallow into the flames once more, presumably to char the one square millimeter he’d missed. “Wishing you’d stayed in academia right now?”
“I’m wishing I’d worn a black swimsuit today.”
He laughed, but Mackenzie couldn’t summon the energy to respond in kind. She closed her eyes, trying to listen to the crickets and the soft lapping of the lake against the rocks. Instead, she heard the rustling in the brush from this afternoon, and chastised herself for thinking it was an animal, harmless, normal.
She felt the smooth edge of the assault knife cut across her skin. She hadn’t done so at the time – somehow, her mind hadn’t let her feel it – but she did now.
Had her attacker meant to kill her?
Had he just wanted to scare her, humiliate her?
Had she stopped him, or had he let her stop him?
Her mind drifted, and she saw herself diving into the lake, swimming underwater, recalled the feel of the sun and wind on her face when she’d surfaced. Then climbing back onto the dock. Hearing the rustling sounds. Her utter lack of any sense that she was in danger.
Wild turkeys, squirrels. That was what she’d thought she’d heard.
“Time for you to call it a night.”
She opened her eyes, realized that she’d zoned out. It was Rook who’d spoken. He was sitting in the Adirondack chair next to hers.
“Where’s Gus?”
“He left ten minutes ago. You’re done in, Mac.”
He was right. The adrenaline and meds had drained her, more than any loss of blood or the brief, futile fight with her attacker had. “Yep, bedtime.” But she smiled at Rook. “I’ll toast one last marshmallow and head in.”
She thought he would argue with her, but he took Gus’s abandoned stick and stabbed a marshmallow. “I’ve never been much on marshmallows.”
“What? How’s that possible? Everyone likes marshmallows.”
“Too sweet.”
“Ah. Now that makes sense. Nothing too sweet for our Special Agent Rook.” She handed him her stick, and he skewered another marshmallow and returned the stick to her. “You want to tell me what you’re doing up here?”
“Mac, you know I can’t.”
“Anything to do with J. Harris Mayer?”
He looked at her. “Cal Benton stopped by your place last night and asked if you’d seen him.”
She sat up straight. “How the hell do you know -” She broke off, shoving her stick straight into the fire Gus style. “Nate Winter told you. So that cinches it. You’re looking for Harris, too.”
“You know him well enough to call him Harris?”
“Not necessarily. I just do.”
“Have you had any contact with him since you came to Washington?”
She shook her head. “No.” She yanked her marshmallow out of the flames just as it was about to catch fire, and turned to him, trying to summon the strength and focus to figure him out. “Rook, are you interrogating me?”
“I’m toasting a marshmallow.” He let it puff up with blackened blisters, then winked at her, pulled it out of the fire and ate it in one bite. “Perfect.”
“Bet the inside was still hard.”
Her marshmallow fell off the end of her stick into the fire.
Rook got to his feet. “I’d say that’s a sign.”