His what? “Zee, this isn’t funny.”
Her knees pressed into his shoulders, grinding his chin into the wet pavement. He made a move to turn over, but she leaned harder on his back.
“Sorry, Gid. Nothing personal.” Then she started barking out commands again, as if she was a bad actor in a television drama.
He didn’t move. This was some kind of a bizarre dream. Had to be. “Are you joking?”
“Like I said, I’m sorry.”
Anger began to bubble in his gut as his thoughts came back online. He figured she was trying to create some zany footage for her podcast, but her phone wasn’t in her hand. There was no one else around to catch it on video.
“Mackenzie, I’m about to toss you off of me like an old backpack, so you’d better have a good explanation—”
“No, Gid,” she said, sad and sweet, and then her voice rose to a sharp command. “Give me your wallet.”
He saw from his uncomfortable position that her antics had attracted attention. The rotund man who’d just exited the coffee shop jerked a look at them, spun around, and bolted inside.
“Zee,” he said through gritted teeth. “I don’t know whatyou think you’re doing, but now we’re gonna have cops involved. Get off me. We’ll tell them it was a joke.”
She didn’t move.
“Quit messing around.”
“We’ll be done here soon.” She pulled the wallet from his back pocket.
“Mackenzie, so help me ...” He started to roll over, but the coffee shop door flew open, and a uniformed cop with a damp coffee splotch on his shirt barreled out, gun drawn.
“Police!” the cop roared. “On your knees, hands up.”
The cop hustled over, ordered her onto her belly, and cuffed her hands behind her back. A second officer appeared to check her for weapons. Gideon climbed to his feet, all the while trying to understand what had just happened.
With her cheek pressed to the asphalt, Mackenzie gave him one lingering smile.
****
Hours later, Mackenzie sat in her stiff coveralls in a holding cell, waiting. The bare cement space, gray upon gray, was cool, and she wished she’d been allowed to keep her jacket. At least they gave her soft slip-on shoes, but they didn’t do much to warm her toes.
The jail was charged with energy, a hum of urgent chatter and feverish movement in the corridor that made her think the officers were dealing with increasing flood-related issues. That’d be ironic, if the dam really was going to fail immediately, like she’d casually hinted to Gideon’s student. The beginnings of a smile curved her lips whenshe flashed on the memory of Gideon’s face, made even more vibrant by his outrage.
Why did he have to be so handsome? And why had the man actually believed her about her reason for needing a ride to the coffee shop? He was smart, savvy, clever, and yet he’d acquiesced. Guilt over how he’d refused to help her go after Bullseye, maybe? She swallowed a sudden lump in her throat. Ends justified the means, in this case. The impending trouble with the dam might even work in her favor by adding to the distraction level in the jail. All sufficient thoughts to push away her unease at duping Gideon.
Arms folded around herself, she waited. Through the narrow rectangular cell window, a slice of the wall clock was visible. Eleven a.m. No wonder her stomach was growling. She’d skipped the free breakfast bagel and reconstituted eggs at the hotel in order to be sure she didn’t miss Gideon before he led his student into the wilderness or outright canceled his class due to the rain. The run from the hotel was easy, fairly flat if somewhat muddy, and she’d made good time—but now she regretted that she hadn’t hammered down at least half a bagel beforehand.
Her stomach rumbled again, and she tried to find a more comfortable position. Hopefully a meal of some kind would be offered. And she’d wait until it was provided and eat it without complaint, whatever it was. She’d been a hairbreadth away from putting on a badge herself, and she knew serving in law enforcement was an impossible job. No need to make it any more difficult for them by asking for food or anything else. Hunger could wait anyway. There was only one thing on her agenda. Her informant.
Pleased as she was that her podcast had thus far contributed to the solving of three cold cases she’d highlighted, the last few months had focused mostly on Aaron’s murder. Recent episodes outlined Aaron’s last moments. She publically theorized from the very first session that her brother had died meeting a dealer who worked for an operation run by a shadowy boss nicknamed Bullseye. She’d overheard Aaron say that name while on his cell phone.
Lorraine, the woman she had arranged to talk to in Oakleaf, would provide details about that very clandestine network, but she was scared. Confirmation, that was all Mackenzie needed. Some mortar to cement the facts.
Lorraine’s untimely arrest had thrown a wrench into the plan, but not an insurmountable one. Gideon’s presence in the area was a happy accident that made Mackenzie’s altered scenario easier to execute. He was her ticket in, and she’d punched it.
The new plan was still the longest of long shots, a reckless attempt, but it had been now or never. Lorraine’s fear was palpable in their brief messages. She believed she was being watched, targeted even, at her place of work, a shipping company owned by Bullseye. She’d disappear the first moment she was able to, so the meeting had to happen now. With an arrest pending, Mackenzie wasn’t sure if Lorraine was trustworthy or not. Mackenzie had no other choice.
There wasn’t a guarantee she could even locate and talk to Lorraine, but she figured she’d have a slim chance since it was a small-time jail with a communal eating area, according to her research. Slim chances were better than none. It wouldn’t take long. A five-minute exchange. Thatwas all she needed. Worst case, with the help of her jail accomplice, a filing clerk she’d paid handsomely, perhaps she could slip a written message with the first of her two vital questions.Is Bullseye headquartered here in town?
The answer had to be yes. She believed it down to the cell level. She’d meticulously tracked every tiny tremor of activity through various social media avenues and on web channels where people spoke in code looking to score drugs or dealers arranged sales. If there was a dark cyber alley, she’d crawled down or slithered through it. As much as she could, she protected herself, never showing her face or broadcasting her location, using a virtual private network to conceal her IP address, stripping metadata from images.
She had scores of fake identities she used to monitor the stinking channels of her cyber web for all the cold cases she’d investigated. Some tidbits she’d gleaned from local police reports, all public information she’d scoured, analyzed, mapped, cultivated, obsessed over, like Gollum with his ring.
