Page 10 of Twelve
How many other things haven’t helped?I wondered.How many times has someone told you what you’re feeling, what you experienced, how to heal?
I’d both been there and done that.
Stop projecting.That warning came to me in Agent Sterling’s voice. My old mentor hadn’t just taught me how to profile. She’d taught me to separate my instincts from the rest of my subconscious.
She’d taught me to recognize when I identified with a victim.
“What the adults said, the teachers and the parents and theexperts—it didn’t help. When the police blocked off the cliffs…” Mackenzie brought her eyes back to stare directly into mine. “The next body was found next to the church. They say she jumped off the steeple.”
“She?”
“Kelley.” Mackenzie’s response confirmed for me what I’d suspected—she knew the third victim.From church? Through her brother?
That was information I could get from a source other than Mackenzie. She’d brought us here to tell us something specific. This wasn’t an interrogation, and if I tried to turn it into one, I’d be treading dangerous ground.
I had to let her say what she needed to say. I had to listen. I had to believe her.
“Kelley didn’t jump?” I was very careful not to tack the phraseyou thinkon the front of the sentence this time. I was—almost certainly—not the first person Mackenzie had told this to.
If anyone believed you, you wouldn’t be up here. You wouldn’t need me.
“I saw the body.” Mackenzie repeated what she’d said earlier. “I saw the way Kelley landed. The way her bones broke. She didn’t jump.”
Lia stepped into my peripheral vision. With the boards across the windows, the chances that Mackenzie would see her standing there were slim. I allowed myself one second to glance sideways.
Lia gave a brief nod. Mackenzie was telling the truth as she knew it—no doubt, no embellishments.
“You don’t believe me, either.” Mackenzie stood suddenly.
A second looking away was a second too much. She’d taken a risk telling me her truth, knowing that I might just be another in a long line of adults to dismiss it. She’d asked for the FBI. Here we were.
There was nothing left for her to ask for.
You expect me to humor you. To lie to you. To try to manipulate or control you.
From somewhere in my memory, I could hear a male voice saying,Breathe, sweetheart. Just breathe.
The muscles in my jaw tightened. I wasn’t going to humor Mackenzie—or lie to her.
I was going to listen. And ask: “How would Kelley have landed if she’d jumped?”
Mackenzie hadn’t expected the question, and that was a mark in my favor. She rose up on her toes—just slightly, her hands held out to either side. “It depends. On how close she was to the edge, how she moved. There wouldn’t have been room for a running start, but she could have taken a step. Did she hold one foot out over the edge and jump from the one that remained? Did she just step off? Did she leap? Did she hold her arms out to the side and fall? How did her knees bend, how did she leap? Were her toes pointed?”
As she spoke, Mackenzie’s body echoed her words in tiny, almost imperceptible ways. There was something graceful about even the subtlest of her movements, something remarkably unperturbed, considering what she was saying—and the fact that a strong wind could take her off that edge.
“She could have landedsomany ways.” Mackenzie went suddenly still. For the first time since we’d started speaking, my stomach clenched. “She didn’t.”
Didn’t land the way she should have.
“I know I sound crazy.” Mackenzie knelt again—too fast this time, too suddenly. Behind me, her mother whimpered. The girl should have fallen. She should have at least stumbled or wavered, but she didn’t. “I know that you think I’m just a kid. But I’m not. I know bodies. I know how they move. When I spar, I can see other people’s moves coming. When I dance, I always know exactly how I look without ever glancing in the mirror.”
Celine came to stand beside me. She caught my gaze, and I knew exactly what she was thinking.
“I’m that way,” Celine told Mackenzie. “With faces.”
Sloane was that way with numbers, Michael with emotions, Lia with lies.
I was that way with people—with what they wanted and needed and what they were willing to do to get it.
