Before He Envies

“You did good, Mackenzie. But did you really think you could keep him from me? Why would you want to, anyway? Was I that bad? Was I?”

Mackenzie opened her mouth to say something, to demand that her mother hand over the baby. But when she opened her mouth, all that came out was corn silk and dirt, falling from her mouth to the floor.

All the while, her mother smiled and held Kevin close to her, nuzzling him to her breast.

Mackenzie sat up in bed, a scream pushing behind her lips.

“Jesus, Mac…are you okay?”

Ellington was standing at the doorway to the bedroom. He was dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of jogging shorts, an indication that he had been working out in his little space in the guest bedroom.

“Yeah,” she said. “Just a bad dream. A very bad dream.”

She then glanced at the clock and saw that it was almost eight in the morning. Somehow, Ellington had allowed her to sleep in; Kevin had been waking up around five or six for his first feeding.

“Has he not woken up yet?” Mackenzie asked.

“No, he did. I used one of the bags of frozen milk. I know you wanted to save them up, but I figured I’d let you sleep in.”

“You’re amazing,” she said, sinking back into the bed.

“And don’t you forget it. Now go back to sleep. I’ll bring him to you when he needs to be changed again. Fair deal?”

She made an mmm sound as she drifted off to sleep again. For a moment, there were still ghost images of the nightmare in her head but she pushed them away with thoughts of her loving husband and a baby boy who would be happy to see her when he woke up.

***

After a month, Ellington went back to work. Director McGrath had promised that he would get no in-depth or intense cases while he had a baby and nursing mother at home. More than that, McGrath was also quite lenient in terms of hours. There were a few days when Ellington left at eight in the morning and returned back home as early as three that afternoon.

When Ellington started going back to work, Mackenzie truly started to feel like a mother. She missed Ellington’s help very much on those first days, but there was something special about being alone with Kevin. She came to know his schedule and quirks a bit better. And although most of her days involved sitting on the couch to heal while binging shows on Netflix, she still felt the connection between them growing.

But Mackenzie had never been one to sit around aimlessly. She felt guilty for her Netflix binges after a week or so. She used that time to instead start reading true crime stories. She utilized online book resources as well as podcasts, trying to keep her mind active by figuring out the answers to these real-life cases before the narrative reached the conclusion.

She visited the doctor twice in those first six weeks to ensure that the scar from the C-section was healing properly. While the doctors beamed over how quickly she was healing, they still stressed that a return to normalcy so soon could cause setbacks. They warned against something as common as even bending over to pick something up from the floor that had any significant weight to it.

It was the first time in her life that Mackenzie had ever truly felt like an invalid. It did not sit well with her, but she had Kevin to focus on. She had to keep him happy and healthy. She had to keep him on a schedule and, as she and Ellington had planned during the pregnancy, she also had to prepare for separating from him when it came time for him to start daycare. They had found a reputable in-home daycare and already had a spot reserved. While the provider cared for children as young as two months old, Mackenzie and Ellington had decided not to put him into care until five or six months. The spot they had reserved opened just after Kevin tuned six months, giving Mackenzie plenty of time to feel comfortable with not only Kevin’s own development, but to prepare herself for the separation.

So she had no problem waiting to heal so long as she had Kevin there with her. While she did not resent Ellington for returning to work, she did find herself wishing he could be there during the day from time to time. He was missing all of Kevin’s smiles, all of the cute little mannerisms he was developing, the coos and the variety of baby sounds.

As Kevin started to hit milestone after milestone, the idea of daycare began to loom larger in her mind. And with it, the idea of returning to work. The thought of it excited her but when she looked into her son’s eyes, she did not know if she could live a life of running into danger, a gun on her hip and uncertainty at every corner. It seemed almost irresponsible for both her and Ellington to work such dangerous jobs.

The prospect of returning to work—to the bureau and anything remotely dangerous—became less and less appealing as she grew closer to her son. In fact, by the time the doctor cleared her for light exercise a little shy of three months, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to go back to the FBI at all.

CHAPTER THREE

Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming

Bryce sat on the edge of the rock face, his feet dangling out into the open air. The sun was setting, casting a series of golds and bright oranges that flared into red closer to the horizon. He massaged his hands and thought of his father. His climbing gear was behind him, stowed away and ready for the next adventure. He had a hike of about a mile and a half before he’d return to his car—making a total of about six miles he had covered on foot—but for now, he wasn’t even thinking about his car.

He wasn’t thinking of his car, his home, or his new bride. His father had died one year ago today and they had scattered his ashes here, right off the southern edge of Logan’s View. His father had died seven months before Bryce had gotten married and just a week shy of what would have been his fifty-first birthday.

It was right here, on the southern face of Logan’s View, that Bryce and his father had celebrated Bryce’s first full scale of the view. Bryce had known that it wasn’t considered that difficult of a climb, though it certainly had been for his seventeen-year-old self that, to that point in his life, had only scaled much smaller rock faces further out in Grand Teton National Park.

Honestly, Bryce didn’t see what was so special about this place. He wasn’t sure why his father had requested his ashes be buried at this site. It had required Bryce and his mother to park down at the general use lot a mile and a half away from where he now sat—where, a little less than a year ago, they had scattered his father’s ashes. Sure, the sunset was pretty and all, but there were lots of scenic views along the park.

“Well, I came back up, Dad,” Bryce said. “I’ve been climbing here and there, but nothing as brutal as the stuff you did.”

Bryce smiled at that, thinking of the picture he had been given shortly after his father’s funeral. His father had tried Everest but had busted his ankle after only a day and a half of climbing. He’d climbed glaciers in Alaska and numerous unnamed rock formations all throughout the American deserts. The man was like a legend in Bryce’s mind and that’s the way he intended to keep it.

He looked out at the sunset, sure that his father would have enjoyed it. Though, honestly, with all of the sunsets he’d seen from different vantage points in his climbing years, this one was likely just a generic one.

Bryce sighed, noticing that the tears weren’t coming as they usually did. Life was slowly starting to feel more natural without his dad. He still mourned, sure, but he was moving on. He got to his feet and turned to pick up the backpack with his climbing gear. He stopped short, though, alarmed at the sight of someone standing directly behind him.

“Sorry to startle you,” the man standing less than three feet away from him said.

How the hell did I not hear him? Bryce wondered. He must have been moving very quietly…and on purpose. Why was he trying to sneak up on me? To rob me? To take my equipment?

“No worries,” Bryce said, choosing to ignore the man. He looked to be in his early thirties, with a thin growth of beard covering his chin and a thin beanie-style stocking cap covering his head.

“Nice sunset, huh?” the man asked.

Bryce picked up his bag, hefted it on his back, and started moving forward. “Yeah, it sure is,” he answered.

He started by the man, intending to pass him by without so much as another glance. But the man reached out and blocked his path with his arm. When Bryce tried to step around him, the man grabbed him by the arm and shoved him backward.

As he stumbled back, Bryce was very aware of all of the open space that was waiting less than five feet behind him—somewhere around four hundred feet of open space, at that.

Bryce had only thrown one single punch in his life; it had been in second grade, on the playground, when some jerk kid had told him some dumb Your Mama joke. Still, Bryce found himself making a fist in that moment, fully prepared to fight if he had to.

“What the hell is your problem?” Bryce asked.

“Gravity,” the man said.

He made a motion then, not a punch but more like a throwing action. Bryce threw a wrist up to block it, realizing what was in the man’s hand just as he caught the golden glitter of the sunset’s reflection off of its metal surface.

A hammer.

It struck his forehead hard enough to make a sound that, to Bryce, sounded like something that might come out of a cartoon. But the pain that followed was not funny or comical at all. He blinked, absolutely dazed. He took a single step back, every nerve in his body trying to remind him that there was a four-hundred-foot drop behind him.

But his nerves were slow, the blunt attack to his forehead sending a blinding pain through his skull and a numbing sensation down his back.

Bryce crumpled, falling to one knee. And that’s when the man reached out with his foot and kicked Bryce directly in the center of the chest.

Bryce barely felt the impact. His head was a blazing fire. But the kick sent him flying backward, his side striking the ground hard enough to send him bouncing back even farther.

He felt gravity claim him at once but was confused as to what, exactly, had happened.

His heart raced and his pain-filled mind went into panic mode. He tried to draw a breath as his muscles took over, flailing for any sort of purchase.