Before He Preys. Блейк Пирс

that had brought her father’s killer to justice, he was ordered to stay at home and rest. She tended to him as well as she could, discovering that she could be quite nurturing when she needed to be. After Ellington had fully recovered, her days were pretty standard. They were even enjoyable despite the horrid degree of domestication she felt.

      She would go to work and stop by the firing range before returning home. When she got home, one of two things happened: either Ellington had already prepared dinner and they ate together like an old married couple, or they went directly to the bedroom, like a newly married couple.

      All of this was going through her head as she and Ellington were settling down for bed. She was on her side of the bed, half-heartedly reading a book. Ellington was on his side of the bed, typing out an email about a case he had been working on. Seven weeks had passed since they’d closed the Nebraska case. Ellington had just started back to work and the routine of life was starting to become a stark reality for her.

      “I’m going to ask you something,” Mackenzie said. “And I want you to be honest.”

      “Okay,” he said. He finished typing the sentence he was on and stopped, giving her his full attention.

      “Did you ever see yourself in this kind of routine?” she asked.

      “What routine?”

      She shrugged, setting her book aside. “Being domesticated. Being tied down. Going to work, coming home, eating dinner, watching some TV, maybe having sex, then going to bed.”

      “If that’s a routine, it seems pretty awesome. Maybe don’t put sometimes in front of the sex part, though. Why do you ask? Does the routine bother you?”

      “It doesn’t bother me,” she said. “It’s just…it feels weird. It makes me feel like I’m not doing my part. Like I’m being lazy or passive about…well, about something I can’t really put my finger on.”

      “You think this stems from the fact that you’ve finally wrapped your dad’s case?” he asked.

      “Probably.”

      There was something else, too. But it wasn’t something she could tell him. She knew it was pretty difficult to emotionally hurt him but she didn’t want to take the chance. The thought she kept to herself was that now that they had moved in and were happy and handling it like pros, it really only left one more step for them to take. It was not a step they had discussed and, honestly, not a step Mackenzie wanted to discuss.

      Marriage. She was hoping Ellington wasn’t there yet, either. Not that she didn’t love him. But after that step…well, what else was there?

      “Let me ask you something,” Ellington said. “Are you happy? Like right now, in this very moment, knowing that tomorrow could very well be an exact duplicate of today. Are you happy?”

      The answer was simple but still made her uneasy. “Yes,” she said.

      “Then why question it?”

      She nodded. He had a good point and it honestly made her wonder if she was overcomplicating things. She’d be thirty in a few weeks, so maybe this was what a normal life was like. Once all of the demons and ghosts of the past had been buried, maybe this was what life was supposed to be like.

      And that was fine, she supposed. But something about it felt stagnant and made her wonder if she’d ever allow herself to be happy.

      CHAPTER TWO

      Work was not helping the monotony of what Mackenzie was coming to think of as The Routine – capital T and capital R. In the nearly two months that had passed since the events in Nebraska, Mackenzie’s case load had consisted of surveilling a group of men that were suspected of sex trafficking – spending her days sitting in a car or in abandoned buildings, listening to crude conversations that all turned out to be about nothing. She’d also worked alongside Yardley and Harrison on a case involving a suspected terrorist cell in Iowa – which had also turned out to be nothing.

      The day following their tense conversation about happiness, Mackenzie found herself at her desk, researching one of the men she had been surveilling for sex trafficking. He was not part of a sex trafficking ring, but he was almost certainly involved in some sort of deranged prostitution set-up. It was hard to believe that she was qualified to carry a weapon, to hunt down murderers and save lives. She was starting to feel like a plastic employee, someone who served no real function.

      Frustrated, she got up for a cup of coffee. She had never been one to wish anything bad upon anyone, but she was wondering if things in the country were really so good that her services might not be needed somewhere.

      As she made her way to the small lobby-like area where the coffee machines were housed, she spotted Ellington putting the top on his own cup. He saw her coming and waited for her, though she could tell by his posture that he was in a hurry.

      “I hope your day has been more exciting than mine,” Mackenzie said.

      “Maybe,” he said. “Ask me again in half an hour. McGrath just called me up to his office.”

      “For what?” Mackenzie asked.

      “No idea. He didn’t call you, too?”

      “No,” she said, wondering what might be going on. While there had been no direct conversation about it with McGrath ever since the Nebraska case, she had just assumed that she and Ellington would remain partners. She wondered if maybe the department was finally deciding to separate them based on their romantic relationship. If so, she understood the decision but would not necessarily like it.

      “I’m getting tired of riding my desk,” she said as she poured her coffee. “Do me a favor and see if you can get me on whatever he sticks you on, too.”

      “Gladly,” he said. “I’ll keep you posted.”

      She walked back to her office, wondering if this small break in normalcy might be the one thing she had been waiting for – the crack that would start to chip away at the foundation of routine she’d been feeling. It wasn’t often that McGrath summoned just one of them to his office – not recently, anyway. It made her wonder if she was perhaps under some kind of review that she didn’t know about. Was McGrath digging harder into the last case in Nebraska to make sure she had done everything by the book? If that was the case then she might be in some hot water because she had most definitely not done everything by the book.

      Sadly, wondering what the meeting between Ellington and McGrath was about was the most interesting thing that had happened in the last week or so. It was what occupied her mind as she sat back down in front of her computer, once again feeling like nothing more than another cog in the wheel.

***

      She heard footsteps fifteen minutes later. This was nothing new; she worked with her office door open and saw people walking back and forth up and down the hallway all day. But this was different. This sounded like several pairs of footsteps all walking in unison. There was also a sense of quiet – a hushed tension like the atmosphere just before a violent summer thunderstorm.

      Curious, Mackenzie looked up from her laptop. As the footsteps got louder, she saw Ellington. He quickly glanced through the doorway, his face tight with an emotion she couldn’t quite place. He was carrying a box in his hands while two security guards followed closely behind him.

      What the hell?

      Mackenzie jumped up from her desk and ran into the hall. Just as she was coming around the corner, Ellington and the two guards were getting on the elevator. The doors slid closed and once again, Mackenzie just barely caught sight of that tense expression on his face.

      He’s been fired, she thought. The idea was absolutely ridiculous as far as she was concerned, but that’s what it seemed like.

      She ran to the stairwell, pushing the door open quickly and heading down. She took the steps two at a time, hoping to make it out before Ellington and the guards did. She rushed down the three flights of stairs, coming out along the side of the building directly next to the parking garage.

      She came out