Justice for Mackenzie (2 page)

Mack watched as he teetered and then lurched to the side, trying to avoid dropping the tray on the little girl’s head. Inevitably, the tray slid, unbalanced by his sudden movement, and all the glasses fell to the floor in a loud, very noticeable crash.

Mack took a few steps away from the mess on the floor and kneeled down to speak to the child, wanting to make sure she’d gotten there in time to keep her from getting cut by the glass.

“Are you all right?” Mackenzie looked at the nametag attached to the startled girl’s sparkly dress. “Cindy? Did the glass hurt you?”

Cindy sniffed and shook her head, putting her thumb in her mouth and sucking hard.

Mackenzie looked up to see a woman striding toward them, and Cindy reached up for her as she got close.

“I’m so sorry, Ms. Morgan,” Cindy’s mom said as she comforted her daughter.

Seeing Cindy’s mom relieved Mackenzie. She liked kids, but wasn’t very good with them. “It’s okay; I’m just glad Cindy’s not hurt. Go ahead and take her to where the other kids are getting ready, I’ll take care of this and we’ll start the show in a bit. All right?”

“Sure. And thanks. I’ve never seen someone move so fast before.”

Mackenzie nodded absently, already turning back to the waiter. Relieved, she saw two of the caterers there, already cleaning up the mess.

“Are you all right, miss?”

Startled, Mackenzie looked up—right into the eyes of the man she’d been admiring earlier.

Wow. He was even better-looking up close. She briefly noticed the Texas Ranger star on his chest and nodded her head in answer to his question. Damn, Rangers were the best of the best in the state. They had a great reputation and she knew he was way out of her league. Besides, as much as she might want to, she didn’t have time to chitchat.

“Yeah, I’m good. It’s inevitable that something like this happens with this many people around. You’re okay too, yeah? Was anyone hit by the glass? Crap, I gotta make sure they put up a ‘wet floor’ sign, I don’t want anyone slipping. Just what I need, to have a cop slip and hit his head. I’d probably get sued or something. That would be bad karma for sure. Anyway, yeah, I’m good, I gotta get going. Got a shit-ton of stuff to do. Glad you’re okay too.”

Mackenzie shifted away from the Ranger, knowing she was babbling but not able to stop. She had a tendency to go on and on, especially when she was nervous. She moved away from the man with a pang of regret. She wasn’t being coy, she really
didn’t
have time to talk to him. She had a show to get started and a mess to make sure was cleaned up.

Dax watched as the brunette walked away from him and over to a woman in black pants and white shirt, who looked as though she worked for the catering company. He smiled, not taking his eyes from the curvy woman’s backside. She’d adorably talked on and on, not quite looking him in the eye. It was a refreshing change from the women he encountered on a daily basis. They either flirted shamelessly with him solely based on his looks and the fact he was a Ranger, or they were shifty and elusive, lying their asses off to get out of whatever crime they’d committed.

“Come on, Dax. Get your ass back over here. Calder wants to know what the hell you were thinking, siding with the firefighters over the officers last week,” Cruz yelled from the table.

Dax took one last look at the woman, now talking with the lady from the catering company, and sighed. He didn’t know her, and had really only said a couple of words to her, but she was cute babbling on with him. Not only that, she had the kind of body he was most attracted to. But he’d had issues in the past with women not wanting to put up with his crazy schedule, and figured with his luck, this woman would probably not be any different.

He turned and headed back to the large table with a deep breath. It would be a long night, taking the good-natured ribbing from his friends. He wouldn’t change it for the world.

Dax looked across the police vehicle at TJ. He’d never forget when he met the Highway Patrolman for the first time. TJ had called in the Rangers when the report of a dead body had been made off one of the many rural highways that snaked around San Antonio. Dax met TJ at the scene and they’d immediately clicked. After a long investigation, the men had become friends.

At the moment, TJ was technically off duty, although they were in his official vehicle and they were driving to a steak place that had just opened and had gotten rave reviews. They’d finally synched their schedules and were headed for dinner.

“How’s that serial case you’ve been working on?”

Dax sighed. They’d talked about it for a bit at the charity talent show they’d attended a couple of weeks ago, but it’d gotten worse since then. “Sucks. This guy is good.”

“How many bodies have been found so far?”

“Five. All buried alive and called in. Who knows how many more there are, because it’s not like we’d ever find the bodies if the bastard didn’t let us know where they were.”

“What does Calder say about cause of death?”

As one of the medical examiners for Bexar County, Calder was responsible for figuring out the cause of death for all persons who died suddenly, unexpectedly, or violently.

“Asphyxiation, of course. The bastard buries them alive and Calder estimates they stay alive for anywhere from two to ten hours. Fucking torture.”

TJ didn’t have much to say. It was inevitable that their talk turned to work whenever they got together. Both men were committed to their jobs and getting bad guys off the streets, one way or another.

Just as Dax was about to try to change the subject to something a little less depressing, a blue Honda Civic going the opposite direction flew by them. TJ flipped on the rear-facing radar just in time to clock the car going eighty miles an hour in a sixty zone.

“Hang on.”

Dax held on and didn’t bother to protest as TJ slowed just enough to make a safe U-turn and then stepped on the gas to catch up to the speeding car. While technically off duty, every law enforcement officer knew they were never
really
off duty. Someone going that fast could easily kill someone, and it was TJ’s duty as an officer to stop them.

Dax grinned as they quickly made up the distance between them and the car. Dax didn’t get to work patrol anymore, so it was adrenaline-inducing to be involved in a high speed chase once again. The Honda was no match for the Crown Victoria with its powerful engine, and TJ quickly caught up. He flicked on the police lights while simultaneously radioing the license plate to dispatch. The driver in the car immediately pulled over to the side of the road after seeing the flashing lights in her rear-view mirror.

“Thought you were off duty, TJ,” the dispatcher on the other end of the radio said with laughter in her voice.

“Yeah, well, you know how it is.”

Dax and TJ pulled over to the shoulder behind the vehicle waiting for dispatch to get back with the vehicle information. They didn’t have to wait long.

“Blue, 2011 Honda Civic. Registered to a Mackenzie Morgan, age thirty-seven. Five feet four, one hundred-forty pounds. San Antonio resident. No priors, no record.”

“Ten-Four. Thanks.” TJ told the dispatcher he’d be out on the traffic stop and put down the mic.

“Sorry, Dax. I’d love to let her off with a warning to speed this up, but I’ll have to play it by ear. I’ll try to keep it short so we can be on our way. I’m starved. Be right back.”

Dax watched as TJ eased out of his patrol vehicle and carefully made his way to the driver’s door. The most dangerous part of any traffic stop was making the initial contact with the occupants in a vehicle. There was no way to know if the person or people in the car had weapons and if they would open fire on an officer as he or she came up to the car.

Dax could see the woman in the car holding on to the steering wheel with both hands, as she’d probably been taught.

TJ stood a foot or so away from the door and leaned over a bit, talking to the woman. Dax watched as she reached over to the glovebox and handed some papers out the window to TJ, most likely her license and registration.

Dax couldn’t see much of the woman from his vantage point in the front seat of TJ’s cruiser, but he could imagine how she looked from the description relayed by the dispatcher. Short and probably curvaceous. Just his type. Oh, Dax had dated all shapes and sizes of women, but he always came back to what he liked best. At an inch over six feet, Dax liked the feeling of being taller and bigger than the woman he was dating. He liked it when she fit into the bend of his arm. Dax hated when a woman was skin and bones. There was nothing like being able to have some flesh to hold on to while pounding in and out of her body.

Dax shifted in his seat. Jesus, he had to get ahold of himself. He was too old to get an erection imagining what the anonymous woman might look like. It’d obviously been way too long since he’d gotten laid. He’d have to see what he could do about that.

TJ turned and came back to the vehicle after a lengthy conversation with the woman in the car. He sat back down and pulled the laptop mounted in the center console to him. He quickly punched in the information from the driver’s license in his hand.

“So?” Dax asked, “What was her sob story?”

TJ grinned. “You wouldn’t believe it. She was actually really cute.”

“Cute?”

“Yeah, she started babbling like I don’t think I’ve heard anyone do before. She wasn’t really trying to get out of the ticket, and she wasn’t trying to excuse herself…she was just spilling her guts.”

Dax tilted his head. What did TJ’s words remind him of?

“She babbled about how she’d had a terrible day at work with her boss from hell. Then she explained she had to go home and be tortured by her family for being single and childless.
Then
she went into the cutest fucking rant about how she hated when people would zoom by her on the highway and not even care they were going so fast. Somehow she then changed the topic and began to talk about eighteen-wheelers on the roads before I cut her off.”

“What was her name again?” Dax asked, the niggling feeling even stronger. He still couldn’t figure out why he had it though.

“Mackenzie Morgan. She’s clean. She’s never even had a parking ticket before, at least not here in San Antonio. I’m going to let her off with a warning.”

“A warning? That’s not like you. You must’ve
really
thought she was cute.”

Laughing, TJ handed over the driver’s license to Dax while saying, “Yeah, she’s cute, but that’s not why I’m letting her off. She was honestly mortified she’d been going so fast.”

“Suuuure that’s the reason.” Dax laughed then looked down at the license he held in his hand. Surprisingly, the picture actually wasn’t as horrible as most tended to be.

Mackenzie A. Morgan. Just as the dispatcher said, she was nine inches shorter than he was. She had brown hair in the photo and was smiling crookedly. Dax had the thought that even her eyes were smiling. Why did she look so familiar to him?

TJ just shook his head at Dax and held out his hand for her license. After Dax handed it over, TJ got out of the car. Before going back to the Honda, he said, “Besides, it’s just too much trouble to write up the ticket. We have reservations.”

Dax laughed out loud as TJ headed back to tell Mackenzie the good news. TJ had always been a sucker for a pretty face, and Ms. Morgan was certainly one of those.

TJ was gone a bit too long to deliver a simple warning to the woman, and Dax frowned, not liking the feeling in his gut.

Fuck, it was jealousy. He was jealous of his damn friend. It looked as if they were in another in-depth conversation and Dax saw the woman shaking her head several times. His leg bounced up and down with impatience. How could he be jealous of his friend? Fuck, it was just a traffic stop, one of thousands TJ had made over his career. It wasn’t as if he was arranging a date with the woman…was he?

Dax himself had pulled over his share of people before he became a Ranger, so why was this one different? Dax didn’t want to admit it, but it was because of the woman behind the wheel. He hadn’t seen her face in person, just the image on her driver’s license, but he still had a feeling he knew her. His gut was screaming at him, but he didn’t know why.

TJ finally nodded at the woman and came back to the patrol car. He sat down and pulled the laptop over to him to close out the traffic stop. Dax watched as the Honda pulled sedately away from the side of the road and continued on until it was out of sight. Feeling as if he’d somehow lost something important, and that he should’ve at least gotten out and met the woman—even if that would’ve been highly unusual—Dax frowned. It was too late now.

“What was that about?”

“Damn. Did I say she was cute before? Because she was even more adorable the second time. I told her she was off the hook and gave her the warning and she broke into another long soliloquy about how relieved she was and how I’d protected her clean record.”

“So she was flirting with you?” Dax asked sharply.

TJ looked over at his friend. “That’s not how it was.”

“Then how was it?”

“Look, I don’t pick up women I pull over, Dax, Jesus. Besides, she’s not my type. She just started babbling again about how thankful she was. Oh, she also mentioned she’d just helped with the same charity event we were at the other week. She told me she always knew cops weren’t the hardasses we tried to portray and she thanked me for all the money her group raised that night.”

“Holy shit, that’s it!” Dax exclaimed.

“What’s it?” TJ asked, his face scrunched up in confusion.

“That’s where I recognized her from. I saw her that night, at the charity thing. Remember when the waiter dropped the tray?”

“Vaguely.”

“She was the one who came over to help.”

“And? I don’t get your point, Dax.”

Dax remembered how the woman had babbled on and on with him before abruptly turning away to take care of business. He smiled. “Can I have her number?”

TJ looked at his friend in disbelief. “What?”

“Her number. I know it’s in the computer. Give it to me.”