Abandon

Carla Neggers

To Bettye-Kate Hall

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

One

Andrew Rook focused on a seed that had broken loose from a thin slice of lemon in his ice water, because if he didn’t distract himself, he was going to jump across the polished, black lacquered table and throttle J. Harris Mayer, the would-be informant who had set up this meeting.

If they switched drinks, Rook thought, maybe Harris would choke on the lemon seed.

They were sitting along the back wall of a quiet bar in an upscale hotel four blocks from the White House. In his day, Harris had served two presidents. But it wasn’t his day anymore. He was an outcast, caught five years ago in a gambling scandal that had cost him his job and his reputation, if not his trust fund or his freedom. Many people—including Rook—believed criminal charges should have been filed against him, but Harris, once a federal judge, had managed to skate.

“We’ve been here a half hour,” Rook said. “Get to the point.”

Harris ran a pinkish fingertip along the rim of his beer glass. He was sixty-nine but looked older. His hands were trembling and heavily veined, a wet cough sporadically rattling his thin frame. Brown spots and moles dotted his fair, finely wrinkled skin and showed through his thin white hair. He wore a starched shirt and a sport coat with one of his ubiquitous bow ties, and his wingtip shoes were polished but had just enough sign of wear to suggest he was a man, nonetheless, who still got around Washington—who still mattered.

Lifting his beer, Harris gave a paternalistic tut-tut. “You have a short fuse, Special Agent Rook.”

“You might want to keep that in mind.”

“I chose you because you’re a rising star with the Bureau. You’re familiar with fraud and corruption investigations.” Harris spoke with a nasal, affected patrician voice. “You need to learn patience.”

Rook grabbed his glass and took a long drink. He didn’t care if he swallowed the damn lemon seed. Patience. He’d been patient. For three weeks, he’d played Harris’s game, treating seriously his vague tale of Washington intrigue, blackmail and extortion. Financial shenanigans. Sordid secrets. Fraud. Possible conspiracy. Harris Mayer knew all the buttons to push to get and keep Rook’s attention.

Now it was time for results. So far, Harris had produced nothing of substance, and Rook couldn’t waste any more time indulging an old man’s fantasies of regaining lost prestige, being a player again.

He set down his glass, hard. Harris didn’t seem to notice. Rook wore a dark gray suit, not a cheap one, but not as expensive as most of the suits the other men in the bar had on, including his wannabe informant. Rook hadn’t worn a bow tie since first grade.

“Are we waiting for someone to show up?” he asked.

“Ah. There we are. The federal agent at work, applying his deductive reasoning to the situation at hand.” Harris licked his thin lips. “Of course we’re waiting for someone to show up.”

Rook considering shoving the lemon seed up Harris’s nose. “When?”

“Anytime now.”

“Here?”

Harris shook his head. “Observe the guests walking up the hall to the ballroom. Beautifully dressed, aren’t they? I still have my tuxedo. I haven’t worn it in a long time.”

Rook ignored the small play for sympathy. The table Harris had chosen provided a strategic view of everyone in the bar, as well as everyone who passed by in the gleaming, glittering hall. About two hundred guests were gathering in the ballroom for a cocktail reception to benefit a local literacy organization. Rook had recognized a number of high-powered guests, but no one involved—at least as far as he knew—in criminal activity.

Harris could call the shots tonight. He was the informant. It was his show.

“There’s Judge Peacham.” The old judge almost chortled as he gestured toward the hall, smiling as if he were in possession of a secret that confirmed his natural superiority. “I knew she’d be here.”

“Why do I care if Judge Peacham is at a charity function?”

“Just wait.”

“Mr. Mayer—”

“Judge,” he corrected with a sniff. “It’s still appropriate to refer to me as Judge Mayer.”

“Seeing Judge Peacham again doesn’t help me.”

“Shh. Patience. We might have to go into the hall. I hope not—I’d prefer Bernadette not see me.”

Bernadette Peacham paused in the hall just outside the bar, her attention focused on something—or someone—behind her. For the past ten years, she’d served as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Before that, she’d been a federal prosecutor and a partner in a prestigious Washington law firm. But her roots were in New Hampshire, where she owned a lake house that had been in her family for more than a hundred years. She often told people she planned to die there, as her parents and her grandfather had.

Rook had done research on Judge Peacham, and he’d testified in her courtroom a half-dozen times in the three years since he’d worked out of the Washington Field Office. He didn’t know if she’d recognize him if she walked into the bar, but she’d sure as hell recognize J. Harris Mayer, the old friend who had lured her to Washington thirty years ago.

She’d never win any awards for best-dressed judge, Rook thought with amusement. Tonight’s outfit looked as if she’d pulled it out of a paper bag stuffed under her desk in her chambers. Apart from the obvious wrinkles, the black floor-length dress and brightly colored sequined shawl somehow didn’t go together. Not that Rook had an eye for clothes, but Bernadette Peacham was a train wreck when it came to style. No Botox and face-lifts for her. No hair dye, for that matter. Damn little makeup, either. People tended to notice her because of her presence and her obvious intelligence and grace. At fifty-seven, she was regarded as a firm, fair, articulate trial judge and, despite her generous nature, no one’s fool.

She was perhaps Harris Mayer’s last friend in the world, not that he would let friendship or anything else stop him from feeding her to the wolves.

Or, if it came to it, the FBI.

Harris would calculate the benefit to himself and act accordingly.

Rook drank more of his water, although he was only a notch less impatient than he’d been five minutes ago. “It looks like she might be expecting someone to join her. A date?”

“Oh, no.” Harris shook his head as if Rook couldn’t have come up with a dumber idea. “She hasn’t started dating again since her divorce was finalized earlier this month. Cal still lives with her, you know. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

“Maybe it was an amicable divorce.”

“No such thing.”

Her marriage to Cal Benton, a prominent Washington attorney, had surprised people far more than their divorce two years later. It was her second marriage; her first, to another lawyer, had lasted three years. No children.

“Supposedly he’s not getting a dime from her,” Harris continued, his voice more shrill now, as if he was growing impatient himself. “That can’t make him happy, but it doesn’t matter—Cal will never be satisfied. He’ll always want more of everything. Money, recognition, women. Whatever. For some people, there’s never enough. Cal is one of them. I’m one of them.”

“I can’t launch an investigation because you think Bernadette Peacham deserved better than Cal Benton—”

“I’m well aware of what you require to proceed.” Harris regarded the woman in the hall with a sudden, almost palpable sadness. She’d been a protégée, and she’d left him in the dust in terms of her career, her reputation, her ever-widening circle of friends. His expression softened and he said quietly, “We’re not here because of Bernadette’s love life or lack thereof.”

Rook didn’t respond. Harris had lived in social and professional exile for a long time, but, as prickly as he was, he was observant, experienced and very smart. He had a long career behind him, and even now, people owed him favors and came to him, quietly, for advice.

He gave Rook a supercilious smile. “Thinking you’d be smart not to underestimate me, aren’t you?”

“I’m thinking you need to get to the point.”

Harris leaned over the small table and said in a dramatic whisper, “Don’t forget. I know where a lot of the bodies in this town are buried.” He sat back abruptly and grinned, his teeth yellowed from age, cigarettes, drink and neglect. “Figuratively speaking, of course.”

Rook sucked in his impatience. “If you’re looking for action at my expense, Judge, you’re looking in the wrong place.”

“Understood.” Harris nodded wistfully at the middle-aged woman in the hall. “Bernadette used to stop by my office just to say hello, grab a cup of coffee. We don’t see each other that often nowadays.”

“It’s to her credit she didn’t drop you altogether.”

“I suppose it is. Ah. Here we are.” Harris seemed relieved. “Finally.”

Another woman came into their line of sight.

Rook took in her dark red hair, her big smile as she greeted Bernadette Peacham.

Hell.

Harris’s eyes lit up. “Mackenzie Stewart,” he said with relish.

She was barely thirty and slim, wearing a slip of a deep blue and carrying an evening purse just big enough for a .38 caliber pistol. Rook didn’t know women’s purses. But he knew guns.

“She’s a deputy U.S. marshal,” Harris added. “A fugitive hunter, a protector of the federal judiciary. A fellow federal agent. Doesn’t look like Wyatt Earp, does she?”

Rook kept his reaction under tight wraps. He wasn’t there to entertain Harris. “All right. You’ve had your fun. What’s going on?”

The old man’s eyes lost some of their spark. “Deputy Stewart isn’t here in a professional capacity. She’s not protecting Bernadette. In fact, she’s known Bernadette all her life.”

Well, hell, Rook thought. A half-dozen dates, and more or less all he’d learned about Mackenzie was that she was new in Washington, new to the Marshals Service and a native New Englander blessed with great legs, a kissable mouth and an unstoppable sense of humor.

They hadn’t gotten around to discussing which state she was from and what friends she might have in Washington.

The two women continued on down the hall toward the ballroom.

“Bernadette saved her,” Harris said.

“Saved her how?”

“When she was eleven, her father was maimed in a terrible accident while building a shed for Bernadette at her lake house. He was laid up for months, and Mackenzie was left on her own for much of the time. She got into trouble. Stole things. She blamed herself for what happened.”

“Why? She was eleven.”

“You know kids.”

Actually, Rook thought, he didn’t. He tried to picture Mackenzie at eleven. Freckles, he guessed. He bet she’d had a million freckles. She still did.

Harris lifted his glass, almost in a toast, and took a long drink, his eyes darker, more focused, ending any doubt in Rook’s mind whether the outcast judge should have faced charges for his gambling shenanigans five years ago. The man thrived on risk, playing it close to the edge. “You didn’t know your marshal grew up across the lake from Bernadette, did you, Special Agent Rook?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“They call Bernadette Beanie. Everyone in her hometown. Not here in Washington. Beanie Peacham. I never have.” Without waiting for a response, Harris belched and got to his feet, gesturing to his near empty glass. “Government will pay?”

“I’ll pay. Hang on, and I’ll walk out with you.”

The old man laughed, clapping a bony hand on Rook’s shoulder. “You’ve taken this news well, I have to say.” The affected lockjaw accent was back. He dropped his arm to his side and winked with amusement, a sense of drama. “Don’t worry. We’ll talk again.”

Rook let Harris go. Management of confidential informants was a tricky business under the best of circumstances. As a prosecutor, a judge and an advisor to two presidents, J. Harris Mayer had seen all kinds who’d come forward with tips, information, theories, evidence, although he’d probably never imagined himself in that role. But he would know how to play it.

Even now, after almost a month, Rook couldn’t say for certain if he was dealing with a man in the know, with secrets that troubled him, or a rambling, self-important has-been desperate to be part of something important again.

Or both, Rook thought, watching Harris turn briskly down the hall toward the hotel’s main entrance. Whether he was on the level or a phony, he clearly hadn’t made up the friendship between Mackenzie Stewart and Judge Peacham.

“Just your luck, pal.”

Rook had met Mackenzie three weeks ago, on the night Harris had sent him to a Georgetown restaurant to witness Bernadette Peacham having dinner with her ex-husband, the significance of which remained a mystery to Rook. As he’d left the restaurant, the oppressive heat had given way to a steamy, torrential downpour. He’d found himself ducking into a coffee shop to wait out the rain, at the same time as a slim, blue-eyed redhead.

Not entirely a coincidence, apparently.

They’d exchanged phone numbers and met for a movie a couple of nights later.

So much for his relationship with Mackenzie Stewart, Rook thought. He couldn’t date someone who was even peripherally involved in his investigation. He left a few bills to cover his and Harris’s tab. He and Mackenzie had a date for dinner at his place tomorrow night. His nineteen-year-old nephew, who was living with him, would be off to the beach with friends for the weekend. Perfect timing.

Not anymore. After Harris’s little bombshell, Rook had no choice. He couldn’t mix business with pleasure. He had to cancel dinner with Mackenzie. He had a job to do.

Two

Mackenzie Stewart shoved a flannel shirt into her backpack with more force than was necessary. She had the air-conditioning turned up, but she was hot—hot and agitated and in no mood to have Nate Winter, perhaps the most observant man on the planet, in her kitchen with her.

Although it wasn’t technically her kitchen.

She was a temporary resident in a corner of a historic 1850s house in Arlington. Nate’s archaeologist wife, Sarah, was in charge of getting it open to the public, a task apparently fraught with twists, turns and setbacks. Just when she thought everything was under control, the place sprang unexpected, unexplained massive leaks. Some people were convinced the leaks were the work of the ghosts of Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee, long-rumored to haunt the house. Mackenzie didn’t believe in ghosts. She blamed worn-out plumbing.

Nate and Sarah, pregnant with their first child, had moved into a house of their own in the spring. Sarah had offered the caretaker’s quarters to Mackenzie when she arrived in Washington six weeks ago. While she looked for a place of her own, Mackenzie could be a presence at the historic house, discouraging ghosts and potential vandals, and staying alert for new leaks.

She zipped up her backpack. She was in shorts, but was still hot. “Nate, did you and Sarah ever encounter Abe and Bobby E. while you were living here?”

Sitting at the small kitchen table, Nate watched her with a level of scrutiny that got to most people. He was a feet-flat-on-the-floor senior deputy marshal, tall, lean and notoriously impatient. He, too, was from Cold Ridge, New Hampshire, and Mackenzie had known him all her life. He was like the big brother she’d never had, and he didn’t scare her.

“I never did,” he said.

“Meaning Sarah did?”

He shrugged. “You’d have to talk to her.”

Mackenzie suspected that if Nate had his way, her first assignment as a federal agent would have been in Alaska or Hawaii, not his backyard. He worked at the U.S. Marshals headquarters in Arlington, and she was assigned to the Washington district office—still too close for his comfort. If she flamed out on her first assignment, better she wasn’t right under his nose.

If he’d really had his way, she’d be writing her dissertation and teaching political science back in New Hampshire, uninterested in dipping a toe into his world.

Since he didn’t have his way, he was doing what he could to help her get acclimated to her new profession. Which, on most days, she appreciated.

“You’re taking a long weekend,” Nate said.

“That’s right. I worked it out with my chief.”

“You’ve only been in D.C. for six weeks.”

His tone was mild, without any detectable criticism, but Mackenzie knew he didn’t approve. She still had boxes stacked against a wall in the kitchen, and bags of paper cups and plates were on the counter, signs she hadn’t fully moved in yet—physically or emotionally. She could feel Nate wondering if she’d changed her mind about staying, about remaining in law enforcement at all.

He’d never believed she’d get through the weeks of rigorous training at the federal academy. He wasn’t alone. No one had believed it. Not one solitary person, including her own mother. They didn’t lack faith in her or want her to fail—they just didn’t believe she was meant to be a cop of any kind.

To be fair, Mackenzie wasn’t sure she’d believed it herself, but when she finally secured her spot at the academy, she went all-out. She didn’t let doubts—her own or anyone else’s—deter her. She refused to let anything derail her, not her size, her level of fitness, her temperament, her sense of humor. She figured she’d either discover she hated law enforcement and quit, or she’d shoot off her mouth and get the boot.

“Why take a personal day now?” Nate asked.

Because she needed to get her head screwed back on straight after making the classic new-in-town mistake of dating a guy she’d met in the rain. At first she thought Rook was a good-looking Washington bureaucrat. Instead, he turned out to be an FBI agent, violating one of the rules she’d established for herself at the academy—no getting involved with other law enforcement officers.

But she told Nate, “I’m still getting acclimated to the heat.”

“You didn’t have trouble with the heat in Georgia.”

The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center was located in Glynco, Georgia, a hot climate, but Mackenzie refused to let Nate throw her off. She wasn’t telling him about Rook. Period. “I didn’t say I was having trouble.”

“You were in town last night for a literacy fund-raiser.”

She glanced at him. “How do you know?”

He shrugged. “Someone mentioned it.”

“Who? Beanie?”

“No. I don’t see a lot of her.”

“She invited me. She wanted to introduce me to people. I only stayed a half hour. I think she’s just trying to be a friend now that I’m in Washington, but she’s not quite sure what to do with me.”

Nate stretched out his long legs. “Next time, tell her to invite you for pie and coffee.” He paused, watching as Mackenzie used her foot to push her backpack against the wall next to the door. “Who did you see at the party?”

She hadn’t expected that question. “What do you mean? I saw Beanie. She introduced me to a few people, but that’s about it.”

“Did you see Cal?”

“For about ten seconds. He showed up late and left early.”

Nate got to his feet. He seemed more settled since his move to USMS Headquarters and his marriage to Sarah Dunnemore, but he was hard-bitten, impatient, unrelenting. When he was seven—before Mackenzie was born—his parents had been caught up in the mountains, on notorious Cold Ridge, in unexpected, frigid, difficult conditions. They’d died of hypothermia and exposure before help could reach them, leaving behind Nate and his two younger sisters, Antonia, five, and Carine, just three. Their father’s twenty-year-old brother, Gus, just back from Vietnam, had stepped in to raise his orphaned nephew and nieces.

“I think it’d be smart for you to make new friends,” Nate said now.

“Cal’s not a friend. I’ve never had much use for him.” Mackenzie let out a breath, aware that she’d let Nate throw her off balance. “I don’t know if I’d call Beanie a friend in the sense you mean. I’ve known her all my life. She’s a good neighbor.”

“A neighbor in New Hampshire. Not here. Here, Mackenzie, she’s a member of the federal judiciary. You’re a deputy U.S. marshal. There’s a difference.”

“Thanks, Nate, I couldn’t have figured that out myself—”

“I’m trying to look out for you.”

She knew it was true, but her usual good nature had taken a thrashing when she got back last night and listened to the voice mail from Rook. He hadn’t even had the decency to ax her in person.

“Sorry, Mac, can’t do dinner. I’ll see you around. Maybe we’ll run into each other on the job. Good luck.”

Low. Very low.

The “good luck” had really ticked her off.

“Mackenzie?”

She jerked herself back to the present. Thinking about Rook wasn’t smart. If she even pictured him in her mind, she swore Nate would know. Somehow, he’d figure it out. She made herself smile at him. “Sorry. I let the heat get to me.”

“It’s about forty-seven in here with the way you have the air-conditioning cranked up.”

“It’s seventy-two. You’re just used to the Washington weather. If you had to go back to New Hampshire—”

“I’d get good gloves for the winter.”

She grinned at him. “Are you saying I can’t take the heat?”

He didn’t smile back. “Mackenzie, I know you’re new in town, but you have to trust me.”

Obviously, he knew something was up with her. He started to go on, but she raised a hand. “I appreciate your help and support, Nate. Don’t think I don’t. I just…Give me this weekend, okay?”

Even that didn’t satisfy him. “Your parents are house swapping with an Irish couple. You’re staying at Beanie’s place on the lake?”

“Do you know everything, Deputy Winter? Beanie offered—”

“When?”

“I stopped by her office after work.”

Mackenzie didn’t explain further. She hadn’t mentioned Rook’s voice mail, but Bernadette had obviously sensed something was wrong and immediately invited Mackenzie to stay at her place at the lake. “I’ll think of you while I’m sweating here in Washington and falling asleep at my desk.”

Sweating, Mackenzie believed. Washington was in the middle of a heat wave that was brutal even by its standards. But Bernadette Peacham’s work ethic—her ex-husband would say workaholism—would never permit her to fall asleep at her desk.

Nate ran the toe of his running shoe along the bottom edge of Mackenzie’s backpack, as if it might yield some of her secrets. “I’m not going to lecture you,” he said.

“I appreciate that.”

“You’ve been here only six weeks. Any sense that you’re distracted—”

“I’m not. I’ll be back at my desk first thing Monday morning, hunting fugitives.”

Her stab at humor didn’t seem to register with him. “Sarah wants to have you over to dinner.” He gave a half smile. “She has a new casserole recipe she wants to try.”