Before He Preys

A TRACE OF DEATH (Book #1)

A TRACE OF MUDER (Book #2)

A TRACE OF VICE (Book #3)

A TRACE OF CRIME (Book #4)

A TRACE OF HOPE (Book #5)

PROLOGUE

Once, when she was a girl, Malory Thomas had come to this bridge with a boy. It was Halloween night and she was fourteen. They’d been looking down into the water one hundred and seventy-five feet below, looking for the ghosts of those who had committed suicide from the bridge. It was a ghost story that had circulated through their school, a story Malory had heard all her life. She let that boy kiss her that night but had pushed his hand away when it went up her shirt.

Now, thirteen years later, she thought of that innocent little gesture as she hung from that same bridge. It was called the Miller Moon Bridge and it was known for two things: being an awesome and secluded make-out spot for teens, and the number one suicide location in all of the county – maybe in the entire state of Virginia for all she knew.

In that moment, Malory Thomas did not care about the suicides, though. All she could think about was holding on to the edge of the bridge for dear life. She was clinging to the side with both hands, her fingers curled against the rugged wooden edge of it. Her right hand could not get a good grip because of the enormous bolt that went through the wood, affixing the strut along the side to the iron beams beneath it.

She tried to move her right hand to get a better grip but her hand was too sweaty. Moving it even an inch made her fear that she’d lose her grip completely and go falling all the way down to the water. And there wasn’t much water there. All that awaited her below were jagged rocks and countless coins stupid kids had tossed off the side of the bridge to make pointless wishes.

She looked up to the rails along the edge of the bridge, old rusted trestle rails that looked ancient in the darkness of the midnight hour. She saw the shape of the man who had brought her here – a far cry from that brave teenage boy from thirteen years ago. No…this man was hateful and dark. She did not know him well but knew enough to now know for sure that something was wrong with him. He was sick, not right in the head, not well.

“Just let go,” he told her. His voice was creepy, somewhere between Batman and a demon.

“Please,” Malory said. “Please…help.”

She didn’t even care that she was naked, her bare rear end dangling from the edge of the Miller Moon Bridge. He had stripped her down and she was afraid he would rape her. But he hadn’t. He’d only stared at her, run a hand along a few places, and then forced her to the edge of the bridge. She thought longingly of her clothes scattered on the wooden beams behind him, and had a sick sort of certainty that she would never wear them again.

With that certainty, her right hand cramped up as it tried to get used to the shape of the bolt beneath it. She cried out and felt all of her weight slip over to her left hand – her much weaker hand.

The man hunkered down, kneeling and looking at her. It was like he knew it was coming. Even before she knew the end was there, he knew it.

She could barely see his eyes in the darkness but she could see enough to tell that he was happy. Excited, maybe.

“It’s okay,” he said in that odd voice.

And as if the muscles in her fingers were obeying him, her right hand gave up. Malory felt a tightness all the way down through her forearm as her left hand tried to hold up her one hundred and forty pounds.

And just like that, she was no longer clinging to the bridge. She was falling. Her stomach did a cartwheel and her eyes seemed to tremble in their sockets as they tried to make sense of how fast the bridge was moving away from her.

For a moment, the wind rushing past her felt almost pleasant. She tried her best to focus on that as she scrambled for some kind of a prayer to utter in her final moments.

She only managed a few words —Our Father, who art…– and then Malory Thomas felt her life leave her body in a sharp and crushing blow as she slammed into the rocks below.

CHAPTER ONE

Mackenzie White had fallen into something of a routine. This did not sit particularly well with her because she was not the kind of woman who liked routine. If things stayed the same for too long, she felt they needed to be shaken up.

Only a few short days after finally bringing the long and miserable chapter of her father’s murder to a close, she had come back to her apartment and realized that she and Ellington were now living together. She had no problem with this; she had been looking forward to it, actually. But there were nights during those first few weeks where she lost some sleep when she realized that her future now seemed stable. For the first time in a very long time, she had no real reason to chase hard after anything.

There had been her father’s case, eating at her since she had first picked up a badge and a gun back in Nebraska. That was now solved. There had also been the uncertainty of where her relationship with Ellington was headed. They were now living together and almost sickeningly happy. She was excelling at work, gaining the respect of just about everyone within the FBI. Even McGrath seemed to have finally warmed up to her.

Things felt stationary. And for Mackenzie, she couldn’t help but wonder: was this simply the calm before the storm? If her time as a detective in Nebraska and an agent with the FBI had taught her anything, it was that life had a way of snatching away any sort of comfort or security without much warning.

Still, the routine wasn’t all bad. After Ellington had healed up from his wounds following the case that had brought her father’s killer to justice, he was ordered to stay at home and rest. She tended to him as well as she could, discovering that she could be quite nurturing when she needed to be. After Ellington had fully recovered, her days were pretty standard. They were even enjoyable despite the horrid degree of domestication she felt.

She would go to work and stop by the firing range before returning home. When she got home, one of two things happened: either Ellington had already prepared dinner and they ate together like an old married couple, or they went directly to the bedroom, like a newly married couple.

All of this was going through her head as she and Ellington were settling down for bed. She was on her side of the bed, half-heartedly reading a book. Ellington was on his side of the bed, typing out an email about a case he had been working on. Seven weeks had passed since they’d closed the Nebraska case. Ellington had just started back to work and the routine of life was starting to become a stark reality for her.

“I’m going to ask you something,” Mackenzie said. “And I want you to be honest.”

“Okay,” he said. He finished typing the sentence he was on and stopped, giving her his full attention.

“Did you ever see yourself in this kind of routine?” she asked.

“What routine?”

She shrugged, setting her book aside. “Being domesticated. Being tied down. Going to work, coming home, eating dinner, watching some TV, maybe having sex, then going to bed.”

“If that’s a routine, it seems pretty awesome. Maybe don’t put sometimes in front of the sex part, though. Why do you ask? Does the routine bother you?”

“It doesn’t bother me,” she said. “It’s just…it feels weird. It makes me feel like I’m not doing my part. Like I’m being lazy or passive about…well, about something I can’t really put my finger on.”

“You think this stems from the fact that you’ve finally wrapped your dad’s case?” he asked.

“Probably.”

There was something else, too. But it wasn’t something she could tell him. She knew it was pretty difficult to emotionally hurt him but she didn’t want to take the chance. The thought she kept to herself was that now that they had moved in and were happy and handling it like pros, it really only left one more step for them to take. It was not a step they had discussed and, honestly, not a step Mackenzie wanted to discuss.

Marriage. She was hoping Ellington wasn’t there yet, either. Not that she didn’t love him. But after that step…well, what else was there?

“Let me ask you something,” Ellington said. “Are you happy? Like right now, in this very moment, knowing that tomorrow could very well be an exact duplicate of today. Are you happy?”

The answer was simple but still made her uneasy. “Yes,” she said.

“Then why question it?”

She nodded. He had a good point and it honestly made her wonder if she was overcomplicating things. She’d be thirty in a few weeks, so maybe this was what a normal life was like. Once all of the demons and ghosts of the past had been buried, maybe this was what life was supposed to be like.

And that was fine, she supposed. But something about it felt stagnant and made her wonder if she’d ever allow herself to be happy.

CHAPTER TWO

Work was not helping the monotony of what Mackenzie was coming to think of as The Routine – capital T and capital R. In the nearly two months that had passed since the events in Nebraska, Mackenzie’s case load had consisted of surveilling a group of men that were suspected of sex trafficking – spending her days sitting in a car or in abandoned buildings, listening to crude conversations that all turned out to be about nothing. She’d also worked alongside Yardley and Harrison on a case involving a suspected terrorist cell in Iowa – which had also turned out to be nothing.

The day following their tense conversation about happiness, Mackenzie found herself at her desk, researching one of the men she had been surveilling for sex trafficking. He was not part of a sex trafficking ring, but he was almost certainly involved in some sort of deranged prostitution set-up. It was hard to believe that she was qualified to carry a weapon, to hunt down murderers and save lives. She was starting to feel like a plastic employee, someone who served no real function.

Frustrated, she got up for a cup of coffee. She had never been one to wish anything bad upon anyone, but she was wondering if things in the country were really so good that her services might not be needed somewhere.