Mackenzie was the “victim,” and she didn’t like it.

“Is news about the farmer out?” she asked.

“Partially. Let’s just say it’s a strong lead. He doesn’t own a television. He didn’t see the sketch until he was in town to pick up supplies and happened to notice it up on a community bulletin board.”

“What about the other victim? How’s she doing?”

“She’s out of the hospital. She has a long recovery ahead of her. What about you?”

“I get my stitches out tomorrow. I’ll be doing jumping jacks before you know it.”

She thought Mooney might have chuckled. “I’ll keep you posted as I can,” he said.

An organic farmer. A hitchhiker who fit the description of her attacker. Mackenzie debated thinking up an excuse to fly to New Hampshire, but when she got to her desk, Joe Delvecchio, her chief, a stocky, no-nonsense man in his early fifties, dumped a stack of files on her desk.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“You’re a Ph.D., Stewart. Go through the files and see what you make of them. Meeting at one.”

“ABD.”

“What?”

“All But Dissertation. I don’t have my Ph.D. I joined the service to get out of writing my dissertation -”

His glare stopped her. “Meeting’s here. Happy reading.” He took two steps, stopped and turned back to her. “Next time you get a weird phone call, you call me. You don’t call Nate Winter.”

Ah. So that was it. “Got it, Chief.”

But he wasn’t finished. “And if you get an itch to go visit some old friend the FBI happens to want to talk to, don’t scratch it.”

“Harris Mayer isn’t a friend -”

“We work with the FBI in this office. We don’t work against them.”

Mackenzie started to speak, then decided to keep her mouth shut.

The chief softened slightly. “If I didn’t think you weren’t smart, I’d have given you more time to go through those files.”

“Thanks, Chief. I appreciate that. Did you hear about the organic farmer and the hitchhiker?”

“Is this like a knock-knock joke or something?”

She rocked back in her chair, wondering if he’d add another fifty files to her stack if she told him about her contact with the detective in New Hampshire. But she hadn’t done anything wrong, and neither had Mooney.

Delvecchio stared at her, apparently expecting an answer – or maybe a funny joke. She gave him the rundown of what Mooney had told her.

“Progress in the investigation,” he said. “That’s good news.”

“It’s gutsy for this guy to hinge his freedom on getting someone to pick him up hitchhiking.”

“Think that’s what he did?”

She considered the chief’s question and shook her head. “He had a plan B and a plan C. He’d have hijacked a car, or stolen one – and he probably had another knife squirreled away.” She paused, but Delvecchio didn’t comment. “Which doesn’t make him sound like a deranged hiker to me.”

The chief looked at her with something approaching satisfaction. “We’ll find him, whoever he is.” He pointed to the stack of files. “You just do your reading.”

“It won’t take me until one,” she said. “I had to read four hundred books in five months studying for my orals.”

Delvecchio didn’t respond to her humor, although what she’d said was true. For a split second, she thought she might have gone too far, but he sighed. “See? Smart. That’s what everyone says about you, Stewart. You’re smart. You’ll be running the damn show around here in ten years if you get your head screwed on straight.”

“My head -”

But he walked away, and Mackenzie knew she’d been dismissed. She grabbed the top file. It was on a cold fugitive case. All the files were on cold fugitive cases.

Why wouldn’t Delvecchio think her head wasn’t screwed on straight?

“Gee,” she said to herself, “let’s think a minute.”

She’d dated an ambitious, well-regarded, tough-minded FBI agent who broke all her rules about staying away from law enforcement types and happened to be investigating – on some level – a federal judge who was her lifelong friend. Even if Bernadette wasn’t suspected of wrongdoing, Delvecchio wouldn’t like having one of his new deputies in the middle of an FBI investigation.

And she’d found herself in a knife fight while wearing a pink swimsuit. She’d blocked a slash of her attacker’s knife with a beach towel.

She’d recognized her attacker, but couldn’t place why or where.

To top off her bad luck, she’d received a creepy phone call in the middle of the night and hadn’t called Delvecchio.

Lots of strikes against her, Mackenzie thought. Time to duck and cover. The best way to prove herself right now was to walk into the one o’clock meeting prepared, knowing every damn file the chief had given her to read.

The meeting lasted for an hour, but bled into another meeting that last for two hours. Mackenzie’s eyes were rolling back in her head when she returned to her desk. But it was solid work – the start of a joint task force to pick up fugitives who’d been on the lam for way too long. If she hadn’t wowed anyone with her expertise, insight and command of her particular stack of files, she’d at least held her own.

“Nice job in there,” a senior deputy said as he passed her desk. He didn’t even give her a chance to thank him. But she didn’t want to get a reputation just for research and analysis – she wanted to do fieldwork.

She’d head to the firing range. She was getting her stitches out in the morning. Shooting a few rounds wouldn’t hurt.

Like all her plans since her morning coffee, that one went out the window when Juliet Longstreet turned up. Just back from specialized training, Juliet was tall, blond and very fit, an experienced marshal who was also from northern New England – Vermont – and had experience with a case that had reached into her personal life.

She’d also worked with Nate Winter for a time in New York.

“Ethan and I want to take you house hunting tonight.” Ethan Brooker was a former Special Forces officer, now a White House advisor; he and Juliet were engaged to be married in the fall. “We’ll grab a bite to eat on the way.”

“Is noncompliance an option?” Mackenzie asked.

Juliet grinned. “No.”

“Then I’d be delighted.”

“Good. We’ll meet you back here in an hour.”

Mackenzie realized she wouldn’t even get a chance to head home and change her shoes. She saw Nate’s fingers in the house hunting idea. Had he put Juliet and Ethan up to it out of concern for her welfare – or out of concern over what she’d do next?

Maybe, Mackenzie thought, Juliet and Ethan were just trying to befriend a new deputy in town who’d just survived a knife fight.

Probably not.

But sooner or later, she’d have to find a place to live. The leaks would be fixed, and the house eventually would open to the public.

If the leaks were the work of the resident ghosts, Mackenzie didn’t want to be around for what they cooked up next.

“I’ll be ready,” she told her new friend.

Juliet nodded, obviously satisfied. “Do you have enough to keep you busy for the next hour?”

“You bet. If I look the slightest bit bored, someone will shove a stack of files at me. Idle hands and all that.”

“You’re learning.” Juliet grinned. “See you soon.”