“Don’t be afraid to ask for help. You’re not in this thing alone. Understood?”
“Yes, understood.” Still, she knew – as did Nate – that raising the alarm over as dubious and amorphous a call as the one she’d just received wouldn’t inspire confidence. “Say hi to Sarah for me. She’s doing well?”
“She’s heading over there tomorrow to mark out a new dig.”
“Alone?”
Nate didn’t answer right away. “No,” he said finally. “She won’t be alone.”
When Mackenzie hung up, she realized her wet feet were cold – surprising, given the relentless heat. She headed to her bedroom, wondering if she’d overreacted to the call. She’d been in the middle of studying the sketch, reliving the events of last Friday, and, admittedly, was a little off balance.
Not just a little.
Maybe it was the ghosts, she thought, pulling back the covers on her bed, and imagining Rook with her in the process. Damn near making love to him hadn’t exactly helped her get centered. What should she make of their relationship?
She sighed. “Nothing. That’s what you make of your relationship.”
Because to do otherwise was to distract her, distract him and risk another axing by voice mail. Too much was up in the air. Tonight they’d let their hormones and emotions get away from them, but so be it. It was time to be sensible. She needed to stay focused on her work, on healing. And on assisting investigators in any way she could to find their knife-happy guy in New Hampshire.
Without, of course, crossing too many lines.
Not that showing up at Harris’s house in the middle of an FBI search had crossed any lines. She hadn’t realized the search was under way – why would she? Cal Benton had turned up asking about Harris before she’d left for New Hampshire, and Rook had gone there looking for him. And Mackenzie knew Harris, if not well.
Stopping by his house after work made perfect sense.
Nor, she thought as she undressed, mindful of her stitches, did she regret letting Rook back into her kitchen.
“Letting? You all but dragged him,” she said aloud.
But she didn’t laugh or even smile at her attempt at humor as she fell into bed. She liked being around him. She had since they’d ducked out of the rain together.
He was here because he’s working an investigation.
A point to remember. Andrew Rook was a tough-minded, focused law enforcement officer. If he thought she had information the FBI had a right to, it’d be under the hot lights with her.
Cal.
But Cal’s illicit weekend was a personal matter unrelated to Rook’s investigation.
Mackenzie’s feet finally felt warm. She kicked off the covers, feeling a dull ache in her injured side. Maybe she should rethink her decision to keep quiet about Cal sneaking off to Bernadette’s lake house for a fling. The facts were what they were. She hadn’t created them – and just who was she protecting by staying silent? Was telling herself that she was just minding her own business and being discreet a rationalization?
If it was her investigation, she’d want to know all the facts about any parties involved, and decide for herself what was material and what wasn’t.
Probably Rook would, too.
On her way to work in the morning, Mackenzie checked in with Gerald Mooney, her state police contact in New Hampshire. “An organic farmer came forward,” he said. “He thinks he might have picked up our guy hitchhiking.”
“Where?”
“Sorry, I can’t give you any details until we have more solid information.”
Meaning until they’d checked out the farmer and where he’d picked up and dropped off his hitchhiker, followed any trail the hitchhiker had left and all the spokes off that trail. In other words, they wouldn’t tell her more until they were satisfied they wouldn’t jeopardize their investigation. Above all, Mooney wouldn’t want to say anything that could get out and end up alerting the attacker and causing him to hurt someone else.
Mackenzie was the “victim,” and she didn’t like it.
“Is news about the farmer out?” she asked.
“Partially. Let’s just say it’s a strong lead. He doesn’t own a television. He didn’t see the sketch until he was in town to pick up supplies and happened to notice it up on a community bulletin board.”
“What about the other victim? How’s she doing?”
“She’s out of the hospital. She has a long recovery ahead of her. What about you?”
“I get my stitches out tomorrow. I’ll be doing jumping jacks before you know it.”
She thought Mooney might have chuckled. “I’ll keep you posted as I can,” he said.
An organic farmer. A hitchhiker who fit the description of her attacker. Mackenzie debated thinking up an excuse to fly to New Hampshire, but when she got to her desk, Joe Delvecchio, her chief, a stocky, no-nonsense man in his early fifties, dumped a stack of files on her desk.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“You’re a Ph.D., Stewart. Go through the files and see what you make of them. Meeting at one.”
“ABD.”