Sleuthing for a Living (Mackenzie & Mackenzie PI Mysteries Book 1)

by Jennifer L. Hart

  My knee was bouncing spastically. I wanted to pace in the worst way but was afraid to telegraph my nervousness, lest it worry Mac more. She looked thoroughly freaked out. But the damn knee had a mind of its own and jiggled away.

  "There has to be something. They wouldn't drag you down here in handcuffs for jaywalking."

  Mac shook her head. "I really don't know. Hunter didn't say anything to you?"

  "No," I snapped, the rage building to toxic levels. "He didn't."

  "It's not his fault, Mom. He was just doing his job."

  I didn't acknowledge her logic. My mind was preoccupied with one glaring fact: Hunter Black worked murder investigations. There was no way Mac could have anything to do with a homicide case.

  The door opened, and Len shuffled in, followed by a glaringly handsome man in a rumpled suit.

  I hopped out of my chair, ready to block my offspring bodily if necessary. "What's going on?"

  The stranger was young, only a few years older than Mac. His hair was slicked back, revealing high cheekbones, a sharp blade of a nose, and piercing blue eyes. His body was lean and athletic. He looked more like a displaced surfer dressing up in his father's wardrobe than a cop. When he spoke I noticed the distinct lack of accent. "Ms. Taylor, Ms. Taylor, I'm Detective Carson with the Cyberterrorism Unit."

  "Cyberterrorism?" Mac and I said in unison. We exchanged a look, and I swallowed hard before adding, "There must be some mistake."

  "Hear him out, girls," Len advised.

  "I'm here to offer Miss Mackenzie the Second a deal."

  "We still don't know—" I began.

  "I hacked into the police database," Mac confessed as though someone were holding her feet to the fire. "It was me. Well, Pete helped."

  Carson nodded. "You did a damn good job of it, too. Left virtually no tracks. If it had only been the once, I might not have caught on."

  Mac blushed and looked away as though he'd told her she was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen.

  I'd known she'd accessed Hunter's files, but I hadn't realized she'd hacked into the police database to do it. And she'd done it more than once? A sinking feeling took up residence in my stomach. For me—she'd broken the law for me. I must be the worst mother on the face of the planet.

  "How bad is this?" I turned toward Len, but it was Detective Carson who answered.

  "It's not good. The Commonwealth could ask for the maximum. A three thousand dollar fine and up to two and a half years in prison."

  Prison was on the table? I swallowed hard. "But she's only sixteen."

  "Cybercrimes are different." Len patted my hand. "They could try her as an adult."

  My heart was pounding, and I had the urge to confess, to tell them it wasn't Mac, that I had done it. It was unlikely anyone would believe me. My chest tightened, and I couldn't seem to get enough air.

  Just when I was sure the terror would drown me, Detective Carson tossed me a life preserver. "That's if we pursue criminal charges. We don't want to do that, however. What we want is for Mackenzie to work for us."

  "Work for?" Mac asked.

  "Technically volunteer for. We can't afford to pay you. Or Pete, we want him too. I'll be speaking with him in a few."

  "But how can she? She's only in tenth grade," I reminded them.

  "Mo-om." Mac's tone was incredulous.

  I gave her a palms-up gesture. "Well you are. He can't expect you to quit school for this." I looked over at the cop for verification.

  He shook his head "The position is as a consultant only. Think of it as a part-time job—after school, weekends, holidays."

  I looked to our attorney. "And they'll drop the charges, all the charges?"

  Len nodded. "That's what he claims. If Mac agrees, they'll go ahead and draw up the paperwork, and I'll go over it with a fine-tooth comb before she signs it."

  "Mac?" I asked. It didn't sound like we had much of a choice. Either agree to the deal, or roll the dice with a court case and risk her having to do jail time.

  "I want to do it." She wasn't looking at me. All her attention was fixed on Carson.

  "Excellent," he said and grinned, flashing even white teeth. "You'll start tomorrow. I'll email you with details of your first assignment."

  "Will I need to come here?" she asked almost eagerly.

  "Only on occasion. We have a closed circuit network that you can access with any top-secret information. I can show you the lab if you'd like, Mackenzie."

  "I go by Mac." My daughter leapt up like an eager puppy, ready to follow wherever Carson went.

  He opened the door.

  "Carson," I called when Mac was out in the hall.

  He looked back at me, his charming grin fading.

  "Keep in mind that she's sixteen, and I have an awesome attorney. No funny business."

  Carson blanched visibly but nodded. "Nothing like that, ma'am."

  "I think you scared the poor boy." Len chuckled.

  "Not nearly enough. Did you see the way she was looking at him? Computer geeks aren't supposed to look like that," I grumbled. "And he called me ma'am."

  "He's also the reason your daughter isn't facing criminal charges," Len pointed out.

  "You'll have to forgive me. I'm a little soured on cops at the moment."

  He tucked an arm through one of mine. "I'll say this for you Miz Mackenzie. You throw the most entertaining dinner parties."

  * * *

  Later that night, I peeked in on Mac, sleeping soundly in my bed. When she was a baby, I used to sleep in the same room with her, lying awake, listening to her rhythmic breathing. After tonight's scare I might just renew the habit.

  Restless, I prowled through the apartment, looking for something—anything—to take my mind off the awful events of the day. First finding out Brett was the same lying bastard he'd always been, then The Captain berating Agnes, Mac getting hauled out of our home in handcuffs, and Hunter's hands on me, keeping me from launching myself at the police.

  Brett was who he was. The same went for my parents, and the Mac situation had resolved itself, at least temporarily. I paused and turned toward the door, my blood boiling with the urge to settle a score.

  I locked the apartment and crept across the entryway until I was standing in front of Hunter's door, knocking before I'd even thought it through.

  He must have been standing on the other side of it because the door swung open immediately. I waited for him to say something. He didn't.

  "Can I come in?" I asked. "I really don't want to say what I came here to say out in the hall where anyone can hear."

  He stood aside, and I marched in, trembling with rage.

  "Before you say anything," Hunter said. "I found out about the charges at the last second and asked to come with the team."

  If he thought that would somehow diffuse me he was dead wrong. "Why?"

  "Because I didn't want you to go through that alone."

  "You held me back," I accused, stepping closer to him, lifting my chin.

  "Because I didn't want you to get arrested for obstruction of justice or assaulting a police officer," he responded.

  The reasonableness of his answer pissed me right off. "You could have told me."

  "How? Telephone? Text? I could have lost my shield."

  Hot tears were stinging behind my eyes. I blinked them back, furiously. "You have an answer for everything don't you?"

  "Red." He didn't move any closer. "There's nothing I could have done to stop it."

  "That's what Mac said."

  He tipped my chin up "But you don't believe it?"

  I jerked my face away. "No, I don't. You don't just sit on the sidelines when people you care about are in trouble."

  "She broke the law."

  "Because of me!" I shouted. "Because she was trying to help me with a case."

  Hunter was quiet.

  "Don't do that," I snapped. "Don't just stand there and say nothing. It makes me want to hit you."

  "Go ahead." His tone was
flat, his stance stoic.

  "What?"

  "I said go ahead and hit me."

  I stared at him, searching for the trap. "So you can arrest me for assaulting a police officer?"

  "I'm off duty. If you need a punching bag, I'm volunteering. It wouldn't be the first time." A faint tinge of bitterness crept into his tone.

  "You mean on the job."

  He didn't answer, but something shifted in his dark eyes. The mood between us altered, the air ceased crackling with heat, and instead chilled me to my core. I recognized a deep pain, something that stretched out over years that took root in childhood and that, even as a fully functioning adult, you never managed to completely shake off. I saw that same nebulous something in my own eyes at times.

  My rage dissipated, and when I stepped closer it wasn't to strike but to soothe. "Tell me."

  He looked away first. "I don't talk about it. Ever."

  I chose a line Mac sometimes used to bait me. "You wouldn't have brought it up if you didn't want to talk."

  He glanced back at me, then, "What did you see when you were in here last time? You never said."

  I hadn't. He knew I'd snooped, had probably invited me in for that very purpose. "I saw your screensaver, if that's what you're asking."

  Hunter nodded once. "You saw my family then, probably noticed the lack of resemblance between me and anyone else. To answer your unspoken question, yes, they adopted me."

  I reached out, took his hand in mine and squeezed once. "How old were you?"

  He squeezed back and didn't let go. "Eight. They found me on the side of the road in New Mexico, covered in blood. Put something of a damper on their family vacation."

  The lack of comfy furniture in the small space bothered me. This wasn't the sort of story a man should stand through while reliving. For lack of anything else, I pulled out one of his massive dining table chairs and guided him into it, before settling in across from him.

  "My dad, Mr. Black, I mean, was a police officer. I think that's the only reason he stopped. A cop can't ignore a child covered in blood, even if the rest of the world could. And his wife was a nurse so out of all the people who could have picked me up, they were the best. It was the best and worst day of my life."

  "How badly were you hurt?" I had images of an eight-year-old boy flung from a moving vehicle and left to die alone and scared.

  "I wasn't hurt. It wasn't my blood."

  I blinked but didn't say anything. I could pull the story out of him, one back and forth question at a time, but he needed to open up on his own timeline.

  "My father, my biological father, I mean, he was a drunk. A mean drunk. Alcoholism is very common on Native American reservations, especially impoverished ones."

  "I've heard that."

  His gaze slid to mine. "We didn't have to live in squalor. My father was a big man, like me. When he wasn't lost in a bottle he was a hard worker. There were some good times. But that was almost worse. You can get used to any kind of ugly situation, but when you believe it to be over and think yourself safe—" he broke off, shaking his head.

  "Did your mother know? That he hit you?"

  His hand had been resting palm down on the glass-topped table but at my question, he clenched it into a fist. "She knew. Usually she patched me up after he passed out, if she wasn't too badly hurt herself. Before you ask, she stayed because she had nowhere else to go, no family, no friends who would take us in. The situation escalated, but she was trapped. We both were at his mercy. And he had very little of that to spare."

  I was afraid to twitch, to draw a deep breath or do anything that would prevent him from talking. My heart went out to him as I imagined the terrifying unpredictability of his childhood.

  "Things got better for me when I went to school." Hunter's gaze was unfocused. "We were bused off the reservation, and I was away from home for hours and hours. But I was always worried about what was going on back there, what he was doing to her while I was safe, and what I'd come home to. I think it was the guilt that made me pick fights with him. If he wore himself out beating on me then he wouldn't hurt her too badly."

  "But you were just a little boy," I whispered, my heart breaking.

  He looked at me then, his intensity scorching me where I sat. "I never had the luxury. My mother begged me to stop goading him, told me I should keep my head down and not rile him the way she did. I didn't listen because, well, her approach wasn't keeping her any safer. And there was some satisfaction in taking potshots at the old man. Some little revenges to show him he couldn't break me."

  "Oh, I know that feeling," I mumbled. "It's heady."

  "And in my situation, dangerous. The day of the blood he'd been drinking since he rolled out of bed, and my mother had taken me into town for new sneakers. I was growing like crazy then. Most clothing items lasted three months, tops. We had donations, but people rarely think to donate shoes. So it was an ongoing expense. That's what started it, the cost of a twenty-dollar pair of sneakers.

  "She didn't even have her coat off when he landed the first blow. She went down hard, and I immediately put myself between the two of them. He snarled at me to get out of the way, that this was between them. I told him they were my feet and my sneakers so I wasn't going anywhere. He picked me up by my shirt and tossed me into the kitchen wall. I hit so hard it cracked the plaster."

  "Hunter," I begged, not wanting to hear anymore.

  He blinked, shook himself. "Well, it went on like that for a while, me refusing to stay down no matter how sore or dizzy because I knew he'd keep going after her if I gave in. He kept ranting and railing until finally my mother got up. She told him she was leaving him, that she'd had enough, and we were going. Her hands were trembling, and her voice shook, but she stood there and refused to give in. I'd never been so proud of her.

  "She went down the hall to their room, and he followed. She called to me, told me to take any clothes that fit and put them in the shopping bag we'd gotten with my new shoes. I did, loading up the bag as full as it would get. I remember feeling, light, hopeful. My father was shouting, swearing, telling her he'd kill her before he'd let her leave. Then I heard the crash from the other side of the wall."

  A chill crept through me, and I knew this story wasn't going to end on a high note.

  "I dropped the bag and ran to see what had happened. My father stood there in the room, still shaking, and my mother—" He broke off to clear his throat. "He'd shoved her through the window. She was lying outside the house, cuts all over her body. A jagged piece of glass was sticking out of the side of her neck, the blood spurting out, like a fountain. I ran outside, stripped off my shirt, trying to stop the bleeding but it was too late. She was gone.

  He came out then, started howling like he hadn't just killed her. He killed my mother and wept over her body like he had any right to mourn. I remember looking down at the new sneakers that had started the whole thing. They were stained with her blood. I took them off and started walking and made it about two miles before they found me."

  My throat had gone dry, but I managed to choke out, "I'm so sorry."

  His gaze refocused, and he reached for my hand. "I've never told anyone that story. At least not with so much detail."

  "But your parents, the people who adopted you, I mean."

  "Oh, they found out what had happened through police reports. My father had disappeared by the time they arrived. They caught up to him a few weeks later though, passed out in a new place with a new woman like nothing had changed. He's serving a thirty-five year sentence for manslaughter and aggravated assault."

  His story explained so much about him. Why he became a cop. Why he insisted on playing by the rules. Why he didn't smile much. Why the idea of me putting myself in danger upset him so much. He'd already seen one young mother's death and was doing everything in his power to prevent another.

  "I'm so sorry about your mom," I whispered and reached for his hand.

  "So am I." He tangled our fingers together
. "Sorry, I didn't mean to burden you with all that."

  "Burdens are meant to be shared. It makes them less…burdensome."

  That provoked the half smile. "Burdensome?"

  I rubbed my tired eyes with my free hand. "It's late. I should be getting back home." Though the likelihood of me sleeping after hearing such a story was nil.

  "Stay. And not because you feel sorry for me or because you think I need comforting. Stay because you want to and because I want you to more than I've wanted anything in a long time."

  "Hunter," I protested.

  Without warning he pulled me off my chair and onto his lap. His free arm went around my waist like a steel band. "Say yes," he whispered and then kissed me in that all-consuming way of his.

  Again I melted into him, and again he was the one to pull away first.

  His hand traveled up to spear into my hair as he nipped my bottom lip. "I want you, Red. Say yes."

  "Is that an order? Because I don't take orders well."

  No answer.

  I ran my fingers through his silky dark hair, studied his every earnest feature. He was so tempting, and I wasn't the kind of girl to say no to temptation for long. "Yes."

  A slow grin spread over his face, stealing my breath. His smile intoxicated me faster than my mother's horrible cocktails and made my head swim. "Come on, I want to show you my bedroom."

  I rose, and he took my hand, leading me toward our destination.

  He didn't turn on the light, just shut the door closing us into the moonlit space.

  I didn't look away from him as I said, "Nice room."

  Then he kissed me until I lost all sense of time and place.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Private investigators who lack professional skill cause more problems than they solve. If this lack results in injury or loss to another party, the PI can be held liable for malpractice.