Page 31 of Twelve
“It’s not your fault you’re different,” the crisis specialist was murmuring. “I’m betting that no one asked you, back then, if you wanted to be saved. If there was anything left worth saving.”
Lightning flashed behind Mackenzie, sending an almost tactile shock through the room. But Mackenzie didn’t jolt. Her muscles held steady. As rain and wind beat at her, her eyes stayed focused.
On the man in front of her.
“You told yourself that you came up here for Kelley, but, Mackenzie? If this were just about Kelley, you wouldn’t still be out there.” Quentin Nichols sounded tender.
He sounded sure.
“There’s no shame,” he said, “in taking control and deciding for yourself what you need.”
Control. Decide.His word choices were deliberate—and given the way Mackenzie’s mind worked, terrifying. He shifted his weight forward, so slightly that it might not have been visible to his target on the ledge.
She would have felt it all the same.
You know what she needs.I silently addressed Quentin.You know that left to her own devices, she might not do it.
“He pushed Kelley.” I said the one thing guaranteed to draw the UNSUB’s attention my way—the one thing sure to break through to Mackenzie. “She wouldn’t jump, so he pushed her.”
“I let her go,” Nichols corrected, his attention still focused on Mackenzie, his tone still gentle. “Kelley was hurting. Some pain gets better—but some doesn’t. What you’ve lived through, Mackenzie? The fight you fight every day? It’s not going away.”
It felt like he was telling me that—not just her.
“Part of you will always be in that shack,” he continued softly, the sudden cruelty of that statement jarring. “And as long as you’re there—the man responsible wins.”
“No,” I said, my voice like a gunshot that ricocheted through the lightroom. “You win, Mackenzie, because you’re alive. Because you survived. Because that son of a bitch is in the ground, and Mackenzie McBride is still dancing.”
“Step back from the window.” Celine had her weapon raised and aimed at Nichols. The crisis negotiator didn’t even seem to register it.
Mercy is what matters. What you and only you can give Mackenzie—no one can take that away.
“Your FBI friends think you’ll come in,” he told the girl on the ledge. “They think I’m the one keeping you out there. They think you’re that easily manipulated—that you’re helpless and weak, and if they tell you fairy tales, you’ll believe them. But I’ll tell you the truth.” He paused, his expression tender. “I had a sister like you. Bad things happened to her. Like you. I didn’t understand then, but I do now. Some wounds can’t heal. Somepeoplecan’t heal.” He took a step toward her this time—a full step. “But you don’t have to do this—you don’t have toendthis—alone.”
“He killed Kelley,” I repeated, close to shouting now to be heard over the storm, to make her hear me. “Hewantsyou to jump.” No matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t tell Mackenzie that everything he’d said was a lie, because it wasn’t. Even when wounds healed, the scars remained. She’d always feel them.
But this was her body. Her choice. Her life.
“Dance,” I told her. She was on a ledge. It was pouring rain. That was the last thing I should have advised, but in that four-by-four shack, when she was just a little girl, Mackenzie had danced—hours upon hours, again and again, because it washerbody.
Because no one was going to take that away.
“Don’t listen to him, Mackenzie.Dance.”
Slowly, she raised her arms, rounding them in front of her, then allowing them to part. She shifted her weight to one foot, the other toe pointing.
For the first time since we’d entered the room, Quentin Nichols turned to face Celine and me head-on.
“Hands in the air!” Celine barked. “On the ground!”
On some level, I was aware that Michael and Lia had joined us, that Celine had backup. But my attention was focused solely on the man in front of me.
The man who was close enough to Mackenzie to reach out and touch her.
“I didn’t plan this,” he told me.
You didn’t search Mackenzie out. You didn’t groom her. You didn’t lead her slowly toward this, day by day.
“You planned the others,” I countered. “You found them. You listened to them.” I swallowed. “You made them trust you.”
