“I do -”

She shook her head. “You don’t. Your parents do, and I do, but we’re all going to live to a hundred. You should have a spot now, while you’re young. Let your children grow up here, even if it’s only for summers and holidays.”

Mackenzie stared at her, not quite grasping what Bernadette was saying. “I can’t afford a place in Washington, never mind two places.”

“I’m giving you the land,” Bernadette said, exasperated. “I had a waterfront lot surveyed when I drew up my prenuptial agreement with Cal. I just haven’t gotten around to doing anything about it. I’m not trying to steal you away from your family, Mackenzie. But I’ve no one else, and you love it here as much as I do.”

“I do.” Knowing Bernadette as well as she did, Mackenzie didn’t let her emotions get the better of her. “Thank you.”

Bernadette smiled, obviously relieved. “You’re welcome.” She nodded out toward the lake. “I think your FBI agent likes it here, too.”

“Beanie – I don’t know if Rook and I will work out.”

Gus grunted, coming onto the porch from the kitchen. “You two? You’re lifers.”

“It’s true,” Bernadette said. “Everyone can see it.”

But Mackenzie had no intention of discussing Rook or her love life with either of them, and she excused herself and ran outside, out to the end of the dock. She was barefoot and wearing shorts, and she was tempted to dive into the lake with the same abandon as she had a little over a week ago, before Jesse Lambert had come at her with a knife.

What was it Delvechhio had told her last night?

“Give yourself a day to put this behind you. Be back at work on Monday.”

That meant she wasn’t fired for having too much baggage.

It meant catching a plane back to Washington tonight.

And that meant she had the afternoon. She glanced back at the porch, where Gus and Bernadette were arguing about something, and then squinted out across the lake, trying to spot the two FBI agents in their kayaks. But there was no sign of them, or of the loon she could hear warbling out by the opposite shore.

Bernadette was right, Mackenzie thought. She loved it here.

With a running start, ignoring the healing knife wound on her side, she leaped into the cold, deep water.

Bernadette struck a match and touched the tiny flame to the edge of rolled-up newspaper. “It’s the obituaries,” she said, feeling Gus’s eyes on her. “Somehow, I think Harris would approve.” But not Cal, she thought. Irony had never suited him.

Gus said nothing.

She sat cross-legged in the grass as the fire burned through the newspaper and caught the kindling. By Gus’s standards – by her own, really – it was early yet for a fire, not yet dusk. And warm. But she’d wanted one.

She winced, feeling a tug of pain in her hip. “It used to be easier to sit cross-legged. I’m creaking these days.”

Gus grunted without sympathy. “Getting out of Washington more often would help. You sit too much.” He settled back in the old Adirondack chair. “You should go mountain climbing while you’re up here.” Then he added simply, “I’ll go with you.”

There were no deep corners, no layers and odd places, with Gus Winter. He’d seen war, he’d endured the tragic loss of his brother and sister-in-law and he’d stepped up to raise his orphaned nephew and nieces – and yet the complications of his life had never become excuses for him, rationalizations for bad behavior.

“That’d be good.” Bernadette kept her eyes on the fire. “I have regrets, Gus.”

“Tell me about it.”

She straightened her legs, relieving the strain on her hip. Her injured shoulder ached, too, but she didn’t want to take more pain medication. Without looking at Gus, she said, “I won’t survive the scandal of what Cal and Harris did. Who Jesse is. That so much of it went on for years under my nose.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“It doesn’t matter. I won’t survive it, and perhaps I shouldn’t. I should have pressed Harris for the truth about what was going on with him five years ago. I knew for months something was wrong with Cal.” She noticed the newspaper turning black, crumpling into the ashes. “I’m too trusting. People won’t see that as a good thing in a judge.”

“Cal didn’t get mixed up with Jesse Lambert because of you. Neither did Harris. They had their own reasons.” Gus pulled himself out of the Adirondack chair and sat in the grass next to her. He was fit, but not as limber as he’d once been. He grinned at her. “Remember sitting next to each other in first grade when they sent in that clown?”

“It was a juggler.”

“Same difference.”

“You misbehaved, as I recall.”

He shrugged. “I always misbehaved. When I started climbing mountains, I did better. When I came back from Vietnam, I had a lot on my mind. I’d spend days at a time on the ridge. Then Harry and Jill died up there.”

“You’re a hero to a lot of people, Gus.”

“Just did what I had to do. That’s what you’re doing now, isn’t it?” He looked at her with those penetrating blue Winter eyes of his. “Beanie, what do you want?”

“Want?” She heard her voice crack and looked away from him. “I don’t even know. Right now, sitting here with you in front of the fire is good enough.”

“You’re thinking about quitting, aren’t you?”

Her eyes filled with tears. “Retiring, not quitting. I never expected to go out of the courtroom on a board. I always knew one day I’d come back here. Gus, I want to be here listening to the loons and growing tomatoes.”

“You’d miss locking people up.”

“That’s a simplistic reduction of what I do.”

He grinned. “You’d miss your gavel.”

She rolled her eyes. He was baiting her, enjoying himself. Trying, she thought, to get her going, distract her. “I will not miss my gavel. One day, Gus, I swear -”

“One day when you’re up here for a court break, you can explain to me what you do.”

“You know what I do.”

“I know who you are. There’s a difference.”

He leaned back on his elbows. “We’re going to grow old together, Beanie Peacham.”

She smiled at him. “I hate to tell you, Gus, but we’ve already started.”

Thirty-Seven

The glasslike lake reflected the dark evergreens along its shore and the grays of dusk. Mackenzie, changed into dry jeans and packed for her trip back to Washington, jumped from an exposed rock to a bigger one at least ten yards into the water. She was just below the clearing where Jesse had taken Cal – and where, it turned out, Bernadette had carved out a lot for her.

If she didn’t make her peace with this place now, Mackenzie thought, she never would.

She heard a movement on shore behind her, but this time it wasn’t a knife-wielding lunatic. Rook emerged from the cover of the pines and hemlocks, dressed casually and as striking as ever.

Mackenzie grinned at him. “I can’t go anywhere without the FBI following me.”

“You marshals.” He jumped lightly onto her rock without teetering even a little. “Enough room here for the two of us.”

“Always so confident.”

“Did you break open more of your wound jumping into the water earlier?”

She angled a look at him. “You saw me?”

“T.J. brought binoculars. He wanted to check out the loons. Says you count as a loon all by yourself -”

“Where is he now?”

Rook gestured back toward Bernadette’s house. “He’s saying goodbye to Gus and Judge Peacham. He’s catching an earlier flight to Washington. He can pave the way with our superiors.”

“Meeting with the big guns of the FBI?”

He nodded.

“You’re still one of their rising stars. T.J., too.” She dipped a toe in the water, which felt colder than it had out by the dock. “Jesse could have killed Beanie yesterday.”

“Mac -”

“The only reason he didn’t is because he wanted her to delay me, so he’d have more of a head start. It didn’t do him any good.” She pulled her toe out of the water, remembering Jesse Lambert’s eyes yesterday when she’d confronted him. But she pushed the image out of her mind and continued. “Beanie says she had no intention of making it easy for him to kill her. She was going to fight back with whatever she could reach.”