Before He Preys

He nodded, taking a seat at the desk. “Mackenzie, I’m sorry. I was a different guy back then, you know?”

She was angry for a moment, but she wasn’t sure at who: Ellington or the woman. “What sort of harassment?” she asked.

“I was training this younger agent three years ago,” he said. “She was doing really well so one night, a few agents took her out to celebrate. We all had a few drinks and she and I were the last ones left. At the time, the thought of hitting on her had never crossed my mind. But I went to the restroom and when I came out, she was right there waiting for me. She kissed me and it got heated. She pulled away – maybe realizing it was a mistake. And then I tried to go back in. I’d like to think that had I not been drinking, her pulling away would have been the end of it. But I didn’t stop. I tried to kiss her again and didn’t realize she wasn’t returning it until she pushed me away. She pushed me off of her and just stared me down. I told her I was sorry – and I meant it – but she just stormed out. And that was it. A sad little encounter between bathrooms. No one forced themselves on anyone else and there was no groping or other misconduct. The next day when I got to work, she had asked to be transferred to another agent. Within two months, she was gone, transferred to Seattle, I think.”

“And why is she bringing this up now?” Mackenzie asked.

“Because it’s the popular thing to do these days,” Ellington snapped. He then shook his head and sighed. “Sorry. That was a shitty thing to say.”

“Yes, it was. Are you telling me the whole story? Is that all that happened?”

“That’s it,” he said. “I swear it.”

“You were married, right? When it happened?”

He nodded. “It’s not one of my prouder moments.”

Mackenzie thought of the first time she’d spent any significant time with Ellington. It had been during the Scarecrow Killer case in Nebraska. She had basically thrown herself at him while she had been in the midst of her own personal dramas. She could tell that he had been interested but in the end, he had declined her advances.

She wondered how heavily the encounter with this woman had been weighing on his mind during that night when she’d offered herself to him.

“How long is the suspension?” she asked.

He shrugged. “It depends. If she decides not to make too big of a stink about it, it could be as little as a month. But if it goes big, it could be much longer. In the end, it could lead to a total termination.”

Mackenzie turned away this time. She couldn’t help but feel a little selfish. Sure, she was upset that a man she cared very deeply about was going through something like this, but at the root of it all, she was more concerned with losing her partner. She hated that her priorities were so skewed, but that’s the way she felt in that moment. That and an intense jealousy that she loathed. She was not the jealous type…so why was she so jealous of the woman who had reported the so-called harassment? She’d never thought of Ellington’s wife with any hints of jealousy, so why this woman?

Because she’s causing everything to change, she thought. That boring little routine I was falling into and growing comfortable with is starting to crumble.

“What are you thinking?” Ellington asked.

Mackenzie shook her head and looked at her watch. It was only one in the afternoon. Pretty soon, her absence would be noticed at work.

“I’m thinking I need to get back to work,” she said. And with that, she turned away from him again and walked out of the room.

“Mackenzie,” Ellington called out. “Hold on.”

“It’s okay,” she called out to him. “I’ll see you in a little bit.”

She left without a goodbye, a kiss, or a hug. Because even though she had said it, things were not okay.

If things were okay, she wouldn’t be fighting back tears that seemed to have come out of nowhere. If things were okay, she wouldn’t still be trying to push away an anger that kept trying to claw its way up, telling her that she was a fool to think that life would be okay now, that she was finally due a normal life where the haunts of her past didn’t influence everything.

By the time she reached her car, she had managed to bring the tears to a stop. Her cell phone rang, Ellington’s name popping up. She ignored it, started the car, and headed back to work.

CHAPTER THREE

Work only provided distance for a few more hours. Even when Mackenzie checked in with Harrison to make sure he didn’t need assistance on the small wiring fraud case he was working on, she was out of the building by six. When she arrived back at the apartment at 6:20, she found Ellington behind the stove. He didn’t cook often and when he did, it was usually because he had idle hands and nothing better to do.

“Hey,” he said, looking up from a pot of what looked like some sort of stir-fry.

“Hey,” she said in return, setting her laptop bag down on the couch and walking into the kitchen. “Sorry I left the way I did earlier.”

“No need to apologize,” he said.

“Of course there is. It was immature. And if I’m being honest, I don’t know why it upsets me so much. I’m more worried about losing you as a partner than I am about what this might do to your professional record. How messed up is that?”

He shrugged. “It makes sense.”

“It should but it doesn’t,” she said. “I can’t think about you kissing another woman, especially not in a way like that. Even if you were drunk and even if she did initiate things, I can’t see you like that. And it makes me want to kill that woman, you know?”

“I’m sorry as hell,” he said. “It’s one of those things in life I wish I could take back. One of those things I thought was in the past and I was done with.”

Mackenzie walked up behind him and hesitantly wrapped her arms around his waist. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“Just mad. And embarrassed.”

Part of Mackenzie feared that he was being dishonest with her. There was something in his posture, something about the way he couldn’t quite look at her when he talked about it. She wanted to think it was simply because it was not easy to be accused of something like this, to be reminded of something stupid you’d done in your past.

Honestly, she wasn’t sure what to believe. Ever since she’d seen him walking by her office door with the box in his hands, her thoughts toward him were mixed up and confused.

She was about to offer to help with dinner, hoping some normalcy might help them to get back on track. But before the words could come out of her mouth, her cell phone rang. She was surprised and a little worried to see that it was from McGrath.

“Sorry,” she said to Ellington, showing him the display. “I should probably take this.”

“He probably wants to ask if you’ve ever felt sexually harassed by me,” he said snidely.

“He already had the chance earlier today,” she said before stepping away from the sizzling noises of the kitchen to answer the phone.

“This is White,” she said, speaking directly and almost mechanically, as she tended to do when answering a call from McGrath.

“White,” he said. “Are you home yet?”

“Yes sir.”

“I need you to come back out. I need to speak with you in private. I’ll be in the parking garage. Level Two, Row D.”

“Sir, is this about Ellington?”

“Just meet me there, White. Get there as quickly as you can.”

He ended the call with that, leaving Mackenzie holding a dead line in her hand. She pocketed it slowly, looking back toward Ellington. He was removing the pan from the stove, heading to the table in the little dining area.

“I have to grab some to go,” she said.

“Damn. Is it about me?”

“He wouldn’t say,” Mackenzie said. “But I don’t think so. This is something different. He’s being really secretive.”