Before He Longs

That’s why when she took the sleek and familiar nine-millimeter in her hand, it was claiming. It was like returning to an old friend that knew who she really was. She smiled at the feeling as she stepped into the entryway of the bureau’s new simulated active shooter arena. Based on the idea behind the infamous Hogan’s Alley—a tactical training facility designed to look like any urban street and used by the FBI ever since the late ’80s—the new arena boasted state of the art equipment and new obstacles that most agents and agents-in-training had yet to experience. Among the equipment were robotic target arms equipped with infrared lights that worked much the same way as laser tag. If she did not down a target fast enough, the light on the arm would flash at her, triggering a small alarm on the vest she was wearing.

She thought of Ellington and how he had referred to it as the bureau’s take on American Ninja Warrior. And he wasn’t too far off as far as Mac was concerned. She looked up to the red light in the corner of the entryway, waiting for it to turn green. When it did, Mackenzie did not waste a single moment.

She entered the arena and instantly started looking for targets. The place was set up almost like a video game in that targets popped up from behind obstacles, corners, and even from the ceiling. They were all attached to robotic arms that remained hidden and, from what she understood, never popped the targets out in the same timed progression. Therefore, on this, her second time through, none of the targets she had downed the first time would come out when it had the previous time. It would always present itself as a new course.

Two steps in, a target came popping from behind a strategically placed crate. She popped it down with a round from the nine-millimeter and instantly started strafing forward looking for more. When it came, it came from the ceiling, a target roughly the size of a softball. Mackenzie put a round directly through its center as another target came from the right. She blasted through this one as well and continued into the room.

To say this was cathartic was an understatement. While she did not resent the wedding planning and the direction her life was taking, there was still some kind of freedom in allowing her body to move instinctually, reacting to intense situations. Mackenzie had not been part of an active case in nearly four months now, focusing on closing up the few loose ends in her father’s case and, of course, the upcoming wedding with Ellington.

During that time, she had also gotten something of a promotion. While she still worked under Director McGrath and reported directly to him, she had been tasked with becoming something of his go-to agent. It was another reason she had not worked actively on any case in nearly four months; McGrath was busy trying to determine just what role he wanted her to play within the pool of agents under his watchful eye.

Mackenzie moved through the course like something mechanical, like a robot that had been programmed to do this very thing. She moved fluidly, she aimed with precision and speed, she ran expertly and without hesitation. If anything, the four months parked behind a desk and in meetings had given her more motivation to take part in these kinds of training exercises. When she did get back out into the field, she fully intended to be a better agent than the one who had finally wrapped up her father’s case.

She came to the end of the arena without really being aware that she was done. A large rolling metal door sat in the wall ahead of her. When she crossed the yellow line along the concrete of the arena that signified she was done, the door rolled upward. She then stepped into a small room with a table and a single monitor on the wall. The screen on the monitor showed her results. Seventeen targets, seventeen hits. Of the seventeen hits, nine were bull’s-eye hits. Of the other eight, five were within twenty-five percent accuracy of being bull’s-eyes. The overall rating for her course run was eighty-nine percent. It was five percent better than her previous run and nine percent better than any of the other one hundred nineteen results posted by other agents and trainees.

Need more practice, she thought as she exited the room and headed for the changing room. Before changing, she took her cell phone out of her backpack and saw that she had a text from Ellington.

Mom just called. She’ll be here a little early. Sorry…

Mackenzie sighed deeply. She and Ellington were seeing a possible venue for the wedding today and had decided to invite his mother. It would be the first time Mackenzie had ever met her and she felt like she was in high school again, hoping to live up to the scrutinizing eye of a watchful and loving mother.

Funny, Mackenzie thought. Exceptional gun skills, nerves of steel…and still afraid of meeting my future mother-in-law.

This domesticated-life stuff was really starting to irritate her. Still, she felt that stirring of excitement as she changed into her street clothes. They were going to see the venue of her choice today. They were getting married in six weeks. It was time to be excited. And with that in mind, she headed back home with a smile on her face most of the way.

***

As it turned out, Ellington was just as nervous about Mackenzie meeting his mom as Mackenzie was. When she returned to his apartment, he was pacing in the kitchen. He didn’t look worried per se, but there was a nervous tension to the way he moved.

“You look scared,” Mackenzie said as she took a seat on one of the barstools.

“Well, it just occurred to me that we’ll be seeing this venue with my mother exactly two weeks after my divorce was finalized. Now, you and I and most rational human beings know that these things take a while because of paperwork and the snail-like pace of the government. But my mother…I guarantee you she’s hanging on to this little bit of information, just waiting to spring it on me at a very bad time.”

“You know, you’re supposed to make me want to meet this woman,” Mackenzie said.

“I know. And she’s lovely most of the time. But she can be…well, a bitch when she wants to be.”

Mackenzie got up and wrapped her arms around him. “That’s her right as a woman. We all have it, you know.”

“Oh, I know,” he said with a smile and kissed her on the lips. “So…you ready for this?”

“I’ve put away killers. I’ve been in some high-octane chases and have stared down the barrels of countless guns. So…no. No, I’m not ready. This scares me.”

“Then we’ll be scared together.”

They left the apartment in the casual way they had been doing ever since they had moved in together. For all intents and purposes, Mackenzie already felt like she was married to the man. She knew everything about him. She had gotten used to his light snoring and even his tendency toward ’80s glam metal. She was starting to truly love the little touches of gray he was already getting along the base of his temples.

She’d been through hell with Ellington, encountering some of her tougher cases with him by her side. So surely they’d be able to tackle marriage together—temperamental in-laws and all.

“I have to ask,” Mackenzie said as they got into his car. “Do you feel any lighter now that the divorce is final? Can you feel the space where that monkey used to be on your back?”

“It does feel lighter,” he said. “But that was a pretty heavy monkey.”

“Should we have invited her to the wedding? Seems your mom might have appreciated that.”

“One of these days, I’ll find you funny. I promise.”

“I hope so,” Mackenzie said. “It’ll be a long life together if you keep missing my comedic genius.”

He reached out and took her hand, beaming at her as if they were a couple who had just fallen in love. He drove them toward the venue where she was pretty sure they were getting married, both of them so happy that they could practically see the future, bright and shining just ahead of them.

Chapter Two

Quinn Tuck had one simple dream: to sell the contents of some of these abandoned storage units to some schmuck like the ones he saw on that show Storage Wars. There was decent money in what he did; he brought home almost six grand every month on the storage units he maintained. And after knocking the mortgage on his house out last year, he’d been able to save just enough to be able to take his wife to Paris—something she hadn’t shut up about since they’d started dating twenty-five years ago.

Really, he’d love to sell the whole place and just move away somewhere. Maybe somewhere in Wyoming, a place no one ever yearned for but was still fairly scenic and inexpensive. But his wife would never go for that—although she’d probably be happy if he got out of the storage unit business.

First of all, most of the clients were pretentious dicks. They were, after all, the types of people who had so many belongings that they had to rent extra space to store it all in. And second of all, she wouldn’t miss the random calls on a Saturday from finicky unit owners, complaining of some of the dumbest things. This morning’s call had come from an older woman who rented two units. She’d been taking things out of one of her units and claimed to have smelled something awful coming from one of the units near hers.

Usually, Quinn would say he’d check it out but do nothing. But this was a tricky situation. He’d had a similar complaint two years ago. He waited three days to check it out only to find that a raccoon had somehow managed to get into one of the units but not get back out. When Quinn found it, it had bloated and swollen up, dead for at least a week.

And that’s why he was pulling his truck into the lot of his primary unit space on a Saturday morning instead of sleeping in and trying to coax some mid-morning sex out of his wife with promises of that Paris trip. This storage unit complex was his smaller one. It was an outdoor complex with fifty-four units in all. The rent for these was on the lower end and all but nine of them were rented out.

Quinn got out of his truck and walked out among the units. Each square of units contained six storage spaces, all the same size. He walked to the third block of units and realized that the woman who had called this morning had not been overdramatic. He could smell something wretched as well and the storage unit in question was still two whole units away. He took out his keyring and started cycling through them all until he came to the one for Unit 35.

By the time he got to the door of the unit, he was nearly afraid to open it. Something smell bad. He started to wonder if someone, somehow, had accidentally trapped their dog inside without knowing it. And somehow, no one had heard it barking and whimpering to get out. It was an image that stripped away all of Quinn’s thoughts of getting freaky with his wife on a Saturday morning.

Wincing from the smell, Quinn inserted the key into the lock of Unit 35. When the lock popped open, Quinn removed it from the latch and then rolled the accordion-style door up.

The odor hit him so strongly that he took two heavy steps back, fearing he might actually puke. He held his hand to his mouth and nose, taking one small step forward.

But that’s the only step he took. He saw what the smell was coming from by simply standing outside of the unit.

There was a body on the floor of the unit. It was up close to the front, a few feet away from the stacked things in the back—small lockers, cardboard boxes, and milk crates filled with a little of everything.

The body was a woman who looked to be in her early twenties. Quinn could not see any clear wounds on her, but there was a fair amount of blood puddled around her. It had gone beyond wet or sticky, having dried on the concrete floor.

She was pale as a sheet and her eyes were wide and unblinking. For a moment, Quinn thought she was staring right at him.

He felt a little cry rise up in his throat. Backing away before it could escape, Quinn dug his phone out of his pocket and called 911. He wasn’t even sure if that was who you called for something like this but it was all he could think to do.

As the phone rang and the dispatcher answered, Quinn tried to back away but found himself unable to take his eyes off of the grisly sight, his gaze locked with that of the dead woman in the unit.

Chapter Three

Neither Mackenzie nor Ellington wanted a big wedding. Ellington claimed he had gotten all of the wedding nonsense out of his system with his first marriage but wanted to make sure Mackenzie got everything she wanted. Her own tastes were simple. She would have been perfectly happy in a basic church. No bells, no whistles, no fabricated elegance.

But then Ellington’s father had called them shortly after they had gotten engaged. His father, who had never really been part of Ellington’s life, congratulated him but also informed him that he’d be unable to attend any wedding that Ellington’s mother was at. He did, however, compensate for his future absence by connecting with a very wealthy friend in DC and booking the Meridian House for them. It was an almost obscene gift but it had also put an end to the question of when to marry. As it turned out, that answer was four months after the engagement, thanks to Ellington’s father booking a particular date: September 5th.