by Blake Pierce
She steadied herself and tried to find the balance between hurrying and making sure she didn’t fall to her death. She had to be aware of each movement, trying to ignore that she was suspended in the air, clinging to a rock wall where one incorrect motion could kill her. It was easy enough, one hand moving and then the next. She did it with such ease during some transitions that it made her wonder how she had so easily given up on it much earlier in her life.
She could do this. She could make it to the top and then she assumed the chase would continue. And if she ever got her hands on Pinkett—
That thought crashed to the bottom of her mind when she heard something clattering beside her. A piece of the rock wall and come loose and fallen. She watched it fall down, shrinking as it went, reminding her how high up she was.
For a sick moment, she felt gravity like an actually physical presence. And it was trying to pull her off of the wall.
She reached for the next bolt and heard that clattering again—rock striking rock multiple times. But it was coming from overhead.
She peered up, craning her neck, and saw what was really going on. Pinkett stood at the edge of the summit. He held something in his hands as he leered down at her. She was pretty sure it was a collection of sizeable rocks.
Shit…
As she watched, he threw another one down. And this one looked like it had the proper aim. Mackenzie could only watch hopelessly as the rock rushed down toward her, growing larger by the second.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
The rock struck her between the neck and her right shoulder, just above her breast. Had it struck her about an inch or two higher, it would have probably shattered her collarbone. It made a meaty sound as it rebounded from her and continued on its way to the ground.
A shock of pain flared through her and her muscles reacted as they normally would. Her right hand released the bolt it was clutching. And as part of the shock, the rest of her body responded in kind. Her right knee buckled, causing her foot to slip away from the bolt it was standing on. When the right side of her body faltered, her left side overcompensated for balance. Her legs were both dangling in the air, her full weight held by only her left hand.
She could feel her grip weakening, the muscles in her palm and fingers trembling. The pain below her right shoulder was tremendous but the adrenaline rushing through her muted it enough for her to stretch it up in order to regain the bolt she’d been holding. She wasted no time, right away going for the next one.
She looked up and saw that Pinkett was still there. He had another rock in his hand and threw it down hard. She could tell right away that it was going to miss—though not by much. It went sailing by her left arm by no more than a foot. She went to the next bolt, then the next, taking less than five seconds to clear them.
She knew this made her an easier target for Pinkett, but she was okay with that. She steadied herself, unmoving as she clung to the bolts in a strange X-shape along the wall. She peered up and slowly started to lower her right arm. Her left hand was starting to ache from the climbing, but she currently trusted it to support her weight than her right arm which was starting to tingle from the blow she’d taken moments ago. Besides…she had other plans for her right hand for the moment.
She waited for Pinkett to draw back with the next rock. There were less than twenty feet between them now—probably closer to fifteen. She could see the rock in his hand as he hefted it up. It was the size of a softball; if it struck her in the head, it might kill her before the impact below would.
As he held it up, prepared to bring it down, Mackenzie acted as quickly as she could, not wanting to giver herself away. She drew the Glock carefully, nearly dragging it along the rock wall—which would have slowed her progress and likely affected her left-handed grip. But her movement was fluid and when she aimed and pulled the trigger all at once, she had to arch her back the slightest bit.
When she got the shot off, there was a paralyzing moment where she thought she had released the side of the wall. A cry rose up in her throat, as she was sure she was falling.
But she hugged the wall, dropping the Glock in the process. She heard the clattering noise as it bounced down the wall. She also heard the plinks and clacks of Pinkett’s projectile again as the rock intended for her bounced down the wall several feet away. She took a deep breath, steadied her nerves, and glanced up.
Aaron Pinkett was nowhere to be seen.
Not wanting to waste a second, Mackenzie started climbing again. Her muscles were on fire and there was a fear in her stomach like she had never felt before. She had nearly died far too many times in the last minute or so and it felt like she was on adrenaline overload. She took the last few bolts to the summit like a madwoman. She was so spiked with adrenaline that she had to blot her sweaty hands against the rock wall after every bolt but she still made it to the top quickly.
She was partially expecting Pinkett to be right there at the edge, waiting for her. After all, wasn’t that what he had been doing? Wasn’t that how he had killed the climbers so far? Waiting for them finish their climb?
As her hands reached up for the solid ground at the summit, she was expecting him to stamp on her hands of kick her in the face. But she pulled herself up off of the wall, sliding onto the rocky ground at the top. She let out a strangled little moan, swallowing down what she felt might be a legitimate freak-out. She made it; she was alive. But it wasn’t until now, at the end of it, that she realized the amount of jeopardy she had been in.
Had things gone even the slightest bit different, she would have left Kevin in this world without a mother.
She scrambled to her knees, struggling to find her feet. She realized then just how much the climb had taken out of her. If her shot had missed Pinkett, there was no telling how far away he was. And if he had a head start, he’d never catch her.
She looked ahead and saw a small jutting area of rock, about ten feet wide and fifteen feet long. Beyond that, there were tall weeds and encroaching trees. Behind those trees, another rock wall began. This one was much higher than the one she had just scaled and, a bit further up, connected with an even larger rock wall to make up a small mountain.
But her eyes were drawn away from the mountain. She looked to the tall grass, where something was moving. It was a hunched shape, barely having made it into the grass. Mackenzie walked in that direction, beyond relieved to be putting distance between herself and the rock wall she had just conquered.
After taking three steps across the rock rocky ground, she saw the blood. There wasn’t much, but just enough to make a trail to follow. It led her to the grass, some of which came up to her waist. There was more blood on the grass and it looked to be a larger amount. As she made her way deeper into the tall grass, she noticed another of those footpaths that had flattened a thin portion of the weeds. It was headed straight and bearing to the right.
She reached for the Glock that was no longer there and then balled her hands into fists—which made her right shoulder feel as if someone had set it on fire.
The shape moving through the grass was Pinkett. He was about ten feet in front of her, trying to get to his feet but unable to do so. He scooted forward on his knees as he made a strange choking sound.
Mackenzie closed the distance between them. She knelt down next to him, stopped him from making his way through the grass, and pushed him over.
Her bullet had taken him in high in the chest, slightly left of center. Another two inches and it would have erased the left side of his throat. As it was, the wound was spouting blood. It was hard to tell if he was going to make it.
He had a dazed, otherworldly look in his eyes, a look she had seen many times—the look of someone fighting for life, someone between two worlds. He spotted her and actually smiled.
“I did it,” he said softly, almost sad. “I made it up…”
She thought back on all the suffering he had caused, and more than anything she wanted to let him die.
She paused f
or a moment, considering it.
But only for a moment. She could not let him die. Whether he deserved it or not, it was not the humane thing to do.
Mackenzie tore at the grass around her, making a heaping handful of it. She wadded it up and then pressed it against Pinkett’s wound.
He struggled against her, writhing. But again, he smiled and repeated: “I did it. I really did it. Ha!”
He struggled against her though, as if he did not want her help. Ironic, she realized. Fighting with this man to save his life.
Finally, he was too weak to fight anymore. He gave up, and let her staunch it.
He lay there, staring up to the sky and the mountain ahead of them, letting out a series of wet breaths.
His gaze fell upon her. He stared into her eyes, and it was like staring into the very soul of evil. It was a look, she knew, that would haunt her forever.
She forced herself to look away as she took out her phone and prepared to call for help.
Finally, the nightmare was over.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
Kevin was screaming and, quite frankly, it was like music to Mackenzie’s ears.
It was time for his nighttime bottle—the one he seemed to be the most impatient for. But he was down to only one feeding a night, so Mackenzie was not going to complain. She got out of bed, placing a gentle hand on Ellington’s arm as she felt him trying to edge out of bed.
“Don’t even think about it,” she said. “I’ve got him.”
He only grunted. He’d suffered three broken ribs from Pinkett’s blow with the baseball bat. His doctors were making him sleep in a slightly elevated sleeping position, which he hated. Given the way their last day in Wyoming had played out, she was well aware that she was fortunate to have come away with nothing more than a massive bruise on the right side of her chest.
She crept into Kevin’s room and picked him up. It took some effort to get him comfortable on her left side, but he seemed content enough as she gave him his bottle. She sat down in the rocking chair with him, rocking in the darkness. She closed her eyes and took it all in, well aware that two days ago, she had come just a few fingers from never seeing him again.
She had assumed that once she and Ellington got home, there would be a lot to adjust to: the strange tension between them and Ellington’s choice to join her while leaving Kevin with his mother, Mackenzie’s recently resurfaced memories, Ellington’s broken ribs. But none of that had come up yet. So far, there was an unspoken peace between them, a gratitude fueled by the fact that they were all back together, the three of them, a family.
Mackenzie was surprised—startled, really—to find that all of her time and energy had not gone directly to dissecting the memory of her younger self on that rock wall, her wounded instructor below. No, instead, her thoughts had been centered on Aaron Pinkett. He had still been alive when help had arrived in the form of a Jeep about half a mile from where she had done her best to keep him alive. As far as she knew, he had been alive—albeit in critical condition in the hospital—when she and Ellington had caught their plane back home.
Bur she kept seeing that faraway look in his eyes as death had tried to creep in. He’d looked like a normal man, though she supposed everyone did when they were that close to death. And as she had done her best to keep him from bleeding out, she had also had to wrestle with the fact that they had not known, to that point, if he was even the killer.
There was enough evidence in his little shack to assume that he was. There were bits and pieces of climber detritus from other climbers, as if he had been making a collection: discarded strands of rope, rusted carabiners, even an old discarded shoe. They’d also found an old Moleskine notebook that served as a journal of sorts—notes that proved Mackenzie’s theory correct.
Pinkett had lived in shame of his fear of heights. He had grown into adulthood not envying those without the phobia, but hating them. It was a rage that he decided to carry out in grisly ways. Mackenzie had not stuck around to read all of the entries in the notebook, but she did see where Pinkett had specifically named Mandy Yorke and Charles Rudeke in his rantings.
She shook the thoughts away as she heard the familiar sucking noises that signified that Kevin’s bottle was empty. She looked down and saw that he was fading fast again, his belly full and his cheeks dimpled with a tiny smile. She held him a while longer, as if trying to burn the feel of it into her memory.
That way, perhaps deciding to take a case or not take a case would not be such a dilemma in the future. She kissed the top of his head as she placed him back into the crib and then walked to back to her bedroom.
Ellington was still awake, sighing heavily as she reclaimed her place beside him.
“Still hurting?” she asked.
“It’s actually not so bad right now. I was just thinking about how stupid I was to come out there. I was selfish…and certainly not putting Kevin first.”
“True. But if you hadn’t come, Timbrook would have been with me when we chased Pinkett behind his house. She was already hurt. That blow could have really put her out.”
“Is that the glass-half-full approach?”
“It’s an I’m-glad-the-glass-isn’t-broken approach.”
She leaned over and kissed him softly on the mouth before she put her head on her pillow. As she drifted off to sleep, she again thought of that look on Pinkett’s fading face and prayed it would not follow her into her dreams.
***
When the FaceTime tone sounded out from her phone, Mackenzie was doing her best to fold one of Kevin’s onesies—something she had still not quite gotten the hang of. It was Sunday, five days after she and Ellington had arrived back home from Wyoming. She was expecting McGrath to touch base any day now, but he never FaceTimed.
She grabbed up her phone and was delighted to see Timbrook’s name on the display. She accepted it and smiled as Sergeant Timbrook’s face filled the screen. She looked much happier than she had for most of Mackenzie’s visit to Jackson Hole.
“Good morning, Sergeant,” she said.
“Hi, Agent White. Sorry to bother you on a Sunday…”
“You’re not bothering me,” Mackenzie said, and meant it. She could hear Ellington somewhere in the apartment behind her, talking in his too-cute baby voice to Kevin. It made her heart happy—made her feel like today was going to be an amazing day.
“I was mainly just calling because I thought you might want an update. The doctors have officially given Pinkett a positive diagnosis. Something went wrong two days ago and there was a blood transfusion involved, but he’s mostly recovered. They expect him to be discharged sometime in the next few days.”
“Were you able to find anything else to help convict him?”
“We did, actually. In turns out that some of the discarded rope we found in his shack once belonged to Mandy Yorke. But even beyond that…he gave a full confession last night.”
“What?”
Timbrook nodded. “Yeah. He broke down…right after the doctors told him how close he had come to dying—how lucky he was. He just broke. He admitted to all of it. He smashed Bryce Evans’s head in with a hammer before Evans fell. He cut Mandy Yorke’s line as she was climbing Exum Ridge, right as she neared the summit. And with Charles Rudeke, he was waiting at the top of Devil’s Claw and just pushed him.”
“Did he explain why?”
“He did, but it seems like gibberish. He did admit to being angry, being absolutely overwhelmed with fear when it came to heights. Said this was his way of processing through it, of, and I’m quoting here, getting rid of the demon of fear. Said he had nothing against the people he killed…just that he envied them enough to kill them. If he couldn’t do it, why should they? That sort of thing.”
“My God.”
“Anyway…you were such a huge help, I thought you’d want to know.”
“Absolutely. Thank you. And hey…Timbrook. Don’t be a stranger. Check in with me from time to time, would you?”
The suggestion seemed to both surprise and delight Timbrook. She smiled and said, “Sure. I can do that. Thanks, Agent White.”
They ended the call and Mackenzie turned toward the sound of Kevin cooing. Ellington was bringing him into the living room, the two smiling at one another as Kevin grabbed Ellington’s nose and gave it a squeeze.
“Was that Timbrook?” Ellington asked, his voice a bit cut off from his nose being held hostage.
“Yeah.”
“Any new information on the case?”
She nearly told him all of it, glad to know that she had been able to help bring Aaron Pinkett to justice. But she looked at them both—the boys in her life—and the need to focus on the success of the case faded. She smiled, her heart turning happily in her chest.
“Not right now,” she said. “Maybe later.”
“You okay?” Ellington asked.
Mackenzie smiled, walked across the room, and wrapped her arms around Ellington. She kissed him softly on the mouth. Kevin squirmed between them and she placed a kiss on top of his head.
“Yes,” Mackenzie said. “I’m great.”
And God, did it feel good to say that and actually mean it.
NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER!
BEFORE HE STALKS
(A Mackenzie White Mystery—Book 13)
From Blake Pierce, bestselling author of ONCE GONE (a #1 bestseller with over 900 five star reviews), comes book #13 in the heart-pounding Mackenzie White mystery series.
When bodies are found dead on the rainy shores of Puget Sound and there are no leads in sight, FBI Special Agent Mackenzie White is assigned the case. Believing this to be run-of-the-mill homicides that will let her ease back into the field, Mackenzie soon realizes she’s in for more than she bargained for.
