“Not without a warrant.”

Without a warrant, anything he found while deliberately searching Bernadette’s lake house would be subject to suppression in a court of law.

Although he didn’t exactly deny that he wouldn’t like to take a look around.

The police had checked the house for any sign of an intruder, but that was as far as they could go, too, without any evidence to justify a wider search.

Of course, Mackenzie was Bernadette’s houseguest and friend. She could poke around in the house without a warrant. But Rook would never ask her to, and she wouldn’t know what to look for without his help.

What are you thinking? She gave herself a mental shake. Bernadette was a respected federal judge who happened to have known J. Harris Mayer for decades, long before his downfall.

“Need a hand getting up out of that chair?” Rook asked.

“Nope. Thanks. I can manage.” But Mackenzie reeled slightly as she stood up. Rook had the grace – or the good judgment – to let her steady herself, and she blew out a breath. “Not one of my finer days.”

“See how you feel about that tomorrow.”

She started to argue with him, but saw he was serious and wasn’t patronizing her because she was less experienced in law enforcement. “I’ll do that.”

He waited for her to take the lead back to the house, but she turned to him, the darkness and the dim light from the screen porch casting his angular face in shadows. Sexy shadows. “Thanks, Andrew. For helping out today. For staying tonight.”

“Not a problem.”

“All in a day’s work?”

“Mac -”

“You could have just told me that our relationship was interfering with your work. At least you could have thought up a good lie. Told me there was someone else.”

“There isn’t.” His gaze on her was unwavering. “I shouldn’t have left that voice mail. I should have at least stopped by to explain things.”

“Then you might have caught Cal Benton knocking on my door, and could have asked him why he was looking for Harris Mayer. He thought I’d seen him at a fund-raiser I attended with Beanie – Judge Peacham – on Wednesday.” Mackenzie frowned at Rook. “Ah-hah. Now it makes sense. Cal saw you and Harris together at the hotel, didn’t he?”

Rook stepped up onto the porch with her. “None of that matters. I cut things off with you because I didn’t want to put either of us into a situation we’d regret.”

She surprised herself with a laugh. “Hard for me to think I’d regret sleeping with you, even if you dumped me ten minutes later. I might kick myself on a certain level, but another, no way.”

He smiled. “Still feel that way?”

“I rarely change my mind.”

“Mac.” He brushed a few stray curls off her forehead and let a knuckle drift across her mouth. “I’m glad you weren’t hurt any worse today. I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner to back you up.”

She tried to smile. “You’re not making it any easier for me to think you’re a snake in the grass.”

He kissed her softly. “Good. I’m not big on snakes.”

He didn’t wait for her to respond, and moved past her, opening the door to the lake house. Mackenzie walked in, grateful that she didn’t fall flat on her face, and he didn’t end up carrying her, after all.

Eleven

Jesse washed the dried blood off his hands in the brown-stained sink of a gas station bathroom more than an hour’s drive from the lake where he’d slashed Mackenzie Stewart. He’d taken a little-used trail out to a side road before the cavalry could hunt him down. An organic farmer who supplied area restaurants with fresh produce picked him up. Jesse got the spiel about eating organic.

The blood mixed with the hot water and the crud in the sink.

“Hey, at least blood’s organic.”

His voice sounded hollow, and his reflection in the dirty mirror made him look like a cadaver. Violence wore him out, drained him in a way nothing else did. The level of brutality he could summon at will shocked him every time. He didn’t know where it came from. His well-to-do, respectable family in Oregon had seen the propensity for violence in him early, how a violent outburst would settle him down, calm him. He hadn’t had anything to do with them – or they with him – since he’d dropped out of high school and headed east.

Until today, he’d never hurt anyone in the mountains. But the conniving Harris and Cal had left him with no other choice. Jesse was so pent up with anger, he needed to blow off some steam. He wanted his money, along with their little insurance policy to get him out of their lives and never to return – whatever it contained. Pictures, DNA, fingerprints, bank accounts, addresses of properties he owned, names. His life.

If he was caught searching Judge Peacham’s property for the money and materials, he had to be sure no one linked him with her, her ex-husband or her no-account friend Harris.

There were easier ways, perhaps, to accomplish that mission than by attacking the female hiker that morning, but he’d succeeded in throwing off the police. They were hell-bent on finding a scary, unhinged lowlife who struck women at random.

He hadn’t gotten any of his first victim’s blood on his hands. But she hadn’t kicked him, either.

He dried his hands with a stiff brown paper towel, crumpled it up and tossed it into an overflowing, filthy trash can. Too late to worry about leaving behind DNA. One speck of blood in the sink, and the cops would trace it back to Miss Mackenzie, figure out he’d been there washing up.

But he’d planned for that in the hours after confronting Harris Mayer.

J. Harris Mayer.

J for Jackass, J for Jerk…

Actually, the J stood for John. How anticlimactic was that?

Jesse pushed back the uncomfortable reality of just how close he had come to messing up today with the redheaded marshal, and focused instead on the task at hand.

It was past ten, dark and chilly. He unzipped the backpack he’d hidden in a cluster of rocks off one of the trails above the lake, after he’d attacked the hiker. She’d come damn close to tripping over it – as good a reason as any to pick her to stab. He could have killed her on the spot, but alive, she’d be able to confirm any description of him if he had to attack again.

A shrink might call that a rationalization to commit violence, but whatever. It had worked.

The backpack was filled with supplies, although there was nothing the police could trace back to him should they have managed to get to it before he had. His decision to head down from the hills to the lake carrying only his assault knife had paid off. Agile, not weighed down by gear, he’d made a quick getaway.

He pulled out clean hiking pants, a clean shirt and clean socks. Horn-rimmed glasses with plain lenses. A Red Sox cap. He was in Red Sox country – when people saw his cap, they wouldn’t think, Oh, that must be the man who stabbed those two women today.

The beard was a problem, but he figured dealing with it now would only draw more attention to him. Go into a gas station bathroom with a beard and come out with one, no one would notice. Come out without one, everyone would notice.

Once transformed into a respectable-looking, inexperienced hiker – not the fit, half-mad hiker police were looking for – Jesse slung his backpack over one shoulder, exited the bathroom and bought a Coke and a bag of Frito’s, with silent apologies to his organic farmer, and left the gas station.

He noticed splattered blood on his right hiking boot.

Deal with it later. Stay focused.

He walked down the pitch-black road, the scattered houses near the gas station giving way to impenetrable woods. He heard animals rustling in the brush. Bats swooped across the starlit sky. The air was cool now, but the wind had died down and the mosquitoes hadn’t yet found him.