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Before He Envies

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.

But there was nothing. There was only the open air, the wind off his descent passing by his ears and, seconds later, the briefest explosion of pain when he hit the hardpan dirt below. In the single breath left within him, he saw the red tint on the side of the wall he had just climbed, his final sunset ushering him out.

CHAPTER FOUR

What had at first felt like paradise quickly started to feel like a prison of sorts. While she still loved her son more than she could even start to explain, Mackenzie was getting stir-crazy. The occasional stroll down the block just wasn’t cutting it anymore. When the doctor had cleared her for light exercise and to start picking up the pace around the house, she instantly thought of jogging or even some light weights. She was out of shape—perhaps more than she had been in over five years—and the abs she had often prided herself on were buried beneath scar tissue and a layer of fat that she was unfamiliar with.

In one of her weaker moments, she started to weep uncontrollably one night when getting out of the shower. Ever the dutiful and loving husband, Ellington had come rushing into the bathroom to find her leaning against the sink.

“Mac, what is it? Are you okay?”

“No. I’m crying. I’m not okay. And I’m crying over stupid shit.”

“Like what?”

“Like the body I just saw in the mirror.”

“Ah, Mac…hey, you remember a few weeks ago when you told me that you’d read that you would start crying over random things? Well, I think this is one of them.”

“That C-section scar will be there for the rest of my life. And the weight…it’s not going to be easy to get it off.”

“And why does this bother you?” he asked. He wasn’t taking the tough love approach, but he also wasn’t coddling her. It was a stark reminder of how well he knew her.

“It shouldn’t. And honestly, I think the crying is over something else…it just took the sight of my body to bring it all out.”

“There’s nothing wrong with your body.”

“You have to say that.”

“No I don’t.”

“How can you even look at this and want it?” she asked.

He smiled at her. “It’s quite easy. And look…I know the doctor cleared you for light exercise. So, you know…if you let me do all of the work…”

With that, he gave a flirtatious glance back through the bathroom door and into the bedroom.

“What about Kevin?”

“Taking his late-afternoon nap,” he said. “He’ll probably be up in a minute or two, though. Just so happens, though, that it’s been a little over three months. So I don’t expect anything that happens in there to take long.”

“You’re such a dork.”

He responded with a kiss that not only cut her off but instantly erased the way she had been feeling about herself. He kissed her deeply and slowly and in it, she could feel the three months that were pent up within him. He led her gently to the bedroom and, as he had suggested, he did all of the work—carefully and with skill.

Kevin’s timing was perfect. He woke up three minutes after it was over. As they walked into the nursery together, Mackenzie pinched his butt. “I think that was a little more than light exercise.”

“You feel okay?”

“I feel exceptional,” she said. “So exceptional that I think I might try the gym tonight. You think you can watch little man while I head out for a bit?”

“Of course. Just don’t overdo it.”

And that was all it took to get Mackenzie motivated. She never half-assed anything. That included working out and, apparently, being a mother. Perhaps that was why a little over three months after bringing Kevin home, she felt guilty for going out for the first time. She’d gone to the grocery store and the doctor before, sure, but this was the first time she had headed out knowing that she would be away from her baby for more than an hour or so.

She got to the gym just after eight, so most of the crowd had thinned out. It was the same gym she had frequented when she had started with the bureau, before she had relied on the bureau’s own facilities. It felt good to be back here, on a treadmill like anyone else in the city, fighting with the out-of-date resistance bands and working out just to be active.

She only managed half an hour before her abdomen started to hurt. She also had a severe cramp in her right leg which she tried to work out but to no avail. She took a break, tried the treadmill again, but decided to call it a day.

Don’t even try to be hard on yourself, she thought, but it was Ellington’s voice in her head. You’ve grown a human inside you and then had it cut out. You’re not going to go back into this thing like Superwoman. Give it some time.

She had broken a sweat, and that was good enough for her. She went back home, showered, and fed Kevin. He was so content that he fell asleep while nursing, something the doctors advised against. But she allowed it, holding him there until she, too, felt tired. When she put him down for bed, Ellington was at the kitchen table, working on some research issues with his current case.

“You good?” he asked her as she passed back through the living room.

“Yeah. I think I might have overdone it at the gym. I’m a little sore. Tired, too.”

“Need me to do anything?”

“No. Maybe in the morning help me out with some light exercise again?”

“Happy to help, ma’am,” he said with a smile over his laptop screen.

She was smiling, too, when she went to bed. Her life felt complete and she had a sore cramping in her legs, the feeling of her muscles starting to learn what they had once been used for. She drifted off within a minute, freshly exhausted.

She had no idea that she’d have the dream of the huge cornfield again, of her mother holding her baby.

And, likewise, she had no idea just how badly it would affect her this time.

***

When the nightmare stirred her awake this time, the scream did come out of her mouth. When she sat up in bed, she did so with so much force than she nearly fell off the mattress. Beside her, Ellington also sat up, a gasp rising in his throat.

“Mackenzie…what is it? Are you okay?”

“Just a nightmare. That’s all.”

“Sounds like it was terrible. Is it anything you want to talk about?”

With her heart still hammering in her chest, she lay back down. For a moment, she was sure she could taste the dirt from the nightmare in her mouth. “Not in depth. It’s just…I think I need to see my mother. I need to let her know about Kevin.”

“That’s fair,” Ellington said, clearly still baffled by the nightmare and its effect on her. “That makes sense, I guess.”

“We can talk about it later,” she said, already feeling the lure of sleep. The images of the nightmare were still there with her, but she knew if she didn’t get back to sleep soon, it was going to be a long night indeed.

She woke up several hours later to the sound of Kevin crying. Ellington was already starting to get out of bed, but she reached out and placed her hand on his chest. “I got him,” she said.

Ellington didn’t put up much of a fight. They were slowly starting to get back on a relatively normal sleep schedule, and neither of them were keen to start testing it. Besides, he had a meeting in the morning, something about a new case where he was going to be the lead with a surveillance team. He’d told her all about it over dinner but she had been too lost in her own thoughts. Lately, her attention had been all over the place and it was hard to focus—particularly whenever Ellington talked about work. She missed it and was envious of him but could not quite dream of leaving Kevin just yet, no matter how good the daycare was.

Mackenzie went into the nursery and gently took him out of the crib. Kevin had gotten to the point where he would put a stop to his crying (mostly) the moment one of his parents came to him. He knew he was going to get what he needed and had already learned to trust his own little instincts. Mackenzie changed his diaper and then set herself down in the rocking chair and nursed him.

Her mind drifted to her parents. She could obviously not remember feeding as a baby. But the mere idea that her mother had once breastfed her was too much to even imagine. Still, she now knew that motherhood brought with it a whole new filter through which to see the world. Perhaps her own mother’s filter had been skewed—and perhaps even totally destroyed when her husband had been murdered.

Have I been too hard on her all this time? she wondered.

Mackenzie finished feeding Kevin, thinking long and hard about her future—not just for the coming weeks, when her maternity leave would come to an end, but to the months and years ahead and how she might best spend them.

CHAPTER FIVE

Mackenzie’s clothes were finally starting to fit again, and a few repeat trips to the gym had her feeling as if regaining her physique from a year or so ago might not be as hard as she thought. She was nearly fully healed from the surgery and she was beginning to remember what her life had been like before she had loaned out her body to the growth and development of her son.

As Mackenzie’s maternity leave drew closer and closer to its end, she started to understand that it was going to be harder to go back to work than she had thought. But even before that, there was the issue of her mother to contend with. It had come up here and there in conversations with Ellington ever since she had last had the nightmare but she had made sure not to commit. After all, it was not normal for her to have a strong desire to see her mother. She usually avoided any interaction with her or even conversations about her at all costs.

But now, with only eight days remaining in her maternity leave, she had to make the decision. She had been using Kevin as the primary excuse not to make the trip, but he had been in daycare for a week now and seemed to be doing quite well with the adjustment.

Besides, in her heart, she had already made her decision. She was sitting at the bar between the kitchen and the living room, already certain that she was going to go. But actually pulling the trigger on the trip was much different than accepting the idea of it.

“Can I ask you what might sound like a dumb question?” Ellington asked.

“Always.”

“What’s the worst that could happen? You go, it’s awkward and nothing is accomplished. You come back here to your happy baby and drop-dead sexy husband and life resumes as normal.”

“Maybe I’m afraid that it will go well,” Mackenzie offered.

“Now that, I’m not too sure about.”

“What if it goes well and she wants to be a part of my life? Of our lives.”

Kevin was sitting in the bouncer seat, staring at the little aquatic creatures mobile attached to the front of it. Mackenzie looked at him with the last comment, doing everything she could not to think of that image of her mother from the nightmares, sitting in that damned rocking chair.

“You’d be okay here with Kevin, by yourself?” she asked.

“I think I can handle him. We can have some dude-time.”

Mackenzie smiled. She tried to picture Ellington the way she had originally met him nearly two and a half years ago, but it was hard to do. He had matured beyond measure, but at the same time, had also managed to become more vulnerable with her. There was no way he would have showed such a nurturing or goofball side of himself when they had first met.

“Then I’m going to do it. Two days, that’s it—and that’s just  so I won’t be constantly traveling.”

“Yeah. Get a motel room. A good one, with a hot tub in the room. Sleep in. After six months of learning to be a mom and constantly adjusting sleep schedules, I think you’ve earned it.”

His encouragement was genuine and though he had not said as much, she was pretty sure she knew why. He had essentially given up on any sort of normal grandparent scene on his side of the family. Perhaps if he could mend some fences with her mother, Kevin might have some kind of normal grandparent. She wanted to ask him about this but decided not to. Maybe after she got back and knew whether the trip had been a bust or not.

She grabbed her laptop, sat on the couch, and went online to purchase her tickets. When she finished filling everything out and hit that final mouse-click, she felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders. She shut the top of the laptop and let out a sigh. She looked down to Kevin, still in his bouncer seat, and gave him a bright smile, sticking her nose out at him. She was rewarded by a slowly dawning smile.

“Okay,” she said, looking back at Ellington. He was still in the kitchen, cleaning up from dinner. “Tickets purchased. My flight leaves tomorrow at eleven thirty in the morning. You okay to pick little man up from daycare?”

“Yes. And that will start two days of absolute man-fueled debauchery. I’m afraid neither of us may ever be the same.”

She knew he was doing his best to keep her thinking positive. It was helping to some extent, but her mind was already on something else—one last errand she wanted to tackle before leaving DC.

“You know,” she said, “if it’s okay with you, I might get you to drop him off at daycare, too. I think I need to speak with McGrath.”

“You finally make a decision about that, too?”

“I don’t know. I want to go back. I don’t know what the hell else I would do with my life, honestly. But…being a mother…I want to give Kevin what I never had when it came to a parent, you know? And both of us working as FBI agents…what kind of a life would that be for him?”

“This is all heavy stuff,” he said. “I know we’ve talked it out a few times before, but I don’t think it’s a decision you need to make right now. I think you’re right; talk it over with McGrath. You never know what that man is thinking. Maybe there are ways around it. Maybe a…I don’t know…maybe a different role?”

“As in, no longer an agent?”

Ellington shrugged and came over to sit beside her. “That’s why I feel like I can actually understand what you’re going through,” he said, taking her hand. “I literally can’t see you being anything other than an agent.”

She smiled at him, hoping he knew just how good he was at knowing exactly what to say. It was just the boost she needed to pick up the phone and place a call to McGrath after hours. She hadn’t done it much in her career—and never when it wasn’t about a case—but she felt the urgency of it all of a sudden.

And it only grew stronger as she listened to the phone start to ring in her ear.

***

She fully expected McGrath to be irritated by meeting with her at such an early hour. But when she found his office door already open at eight o’clock, McGrath was already perched behind his desk. He had a cup of coffee in his hands as he went over a small stack of daily reports. When he looked up to her as she entered, the smile on his face looked genuine.

“Agent White, it’s so good to see you,” he said.

“Likewise,” she said, taking a seat on the opposite side of his desk.

“You look well rested. Is the baby finally on a normal sleep schedule?”

“Normal enough,” she said. She already felt awkward. McGrath was not one who typically engaged in small talk. The idea that he truly was glad to see her back in the building crossed her mind and made her feel almost guilty for the reason behind the meeting.

“Okay, so you asked for this meeting, and you have about half an hour before my next one,” he said. “What’s going on?”

“Well, my maternity leave is up next Monday. And if I’m being honest, I don’t know if I’m ready to come back.”

“Is it a physical thing?” he asked. “I know healing from a C-section can be exhausting and take a great deal of time.”

No, that’s not it. The doctors have basically cleared me for just about everything. If I’m being honest, I just feel torn about what to do.” She was alarmed to feel the stinging of tears at the corners of her eyes.

Apparently, McGrath saw them too, and felt for her. He did his best to appear casual as he leaned forward and spoke, looking away to give her the dignity of wiping her tears away before they escaped.

“Agent White, I’ve been with the bureau for almost thirty years now. In my time here, I’ve seen countless female agents get married and have children. Some of them left the bureau or, at the very least, took on a role with less risk. I can’t sit here and tell you that I understand what you’re going through because that would be a lie. But I have seen it. Sometimes it was with agents I would have never expected to walk away. Is this sort of where you’re headed?”

She nodded. “I want to come back. I miss it…more than I care to admit, really. I honestly don’t even know what I’m asking for. Maybe a few more weeks? I know that’s sort of asking for special privilege or whatever, but I just can’t make this decision right now.”

“The best I can do is to give you another week. If you want it. Or you can come back and I can just assign you something of a desk job. Research, numbers, mobile surveillance, something like that. Would that interest you?”

Honestly, none of it interested her. But at least it was something. It was McGrath giving her the proof she needed that there were options available to her.

“Maybe it would,” she said.

“Well, take the weekend to think it over. Maybe get away somewhere and sort out your thoughts.”

“Oh, I’m going somewhere, all right. Back to Nebraska for a visit.”

She wasn’t sure why she had told him that. She wondered if McGrath had always been this easy to speak to or if he perhaps had some kind of softer aura about him, making him more approachable. It was weird. She’d only been away for three months and McGrath suddenly seemed like a different person—more caring, more friendly.

“Good to hear it. Leaving Ellington alone with the baby? Isn’t that a bit brave?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a smile. “He seems to be looking forward to it.”

McGrath nodded politely but it was clear that his mind was elsewhere. “White…did you ask for this meeting to ask my advice? Or just to get a gauge on how I might react if you told me you were thinking of walking away?”

She only shrugged as she answered: “Maybe a bit of both.”

“Well, I can say without a doubt that I’d much prefer for you to stay. Your record speaks for itself and, as much as I hate to admit it, your instincts are almost supernatural. I’ve never seen anything quite like it in all my years with the bureau. I do believe it would be an absolute waste for you to leave your career behind at such an early age. On the other hand, I’ve raised two children—one boy and one girl. They’re both grown now, but raising them was one of the most enjoyable and rewarding experiences of my life.”

“I had no idea you had kids,” she said.

“I tend not to talk too much about my personal life while at work. But in a case like this, with something as valuable as your career on the line, I don’t mind giving you a behind the scenes peek.”

“I appreciate that.”

“So…go enjoy your weekend back home. Do you want to meet again on Monday to figure out what comes next?”

“That sounds fine,” she said. But Monday seemed every far away. Because as she got up from the chair, she knew that her next stop was the airport. And after that, she’d be back in Nebraska.

As she made her way back through the FBI building, she felt as if she were setting a trap for herself. For most people, the ghosts of their pasts tended to haunt them. But as she prepared to head back to Nebraska to meet with her mother, Mackenzie felt as if she was not only awakening those ghosts, but giving them ample opportunity to prepare for their haunting.