Before he Kills (A Mackenzie White Mystery—Book 1) by Blake Pierce Page A

soon, bringing them to the end they both wanted without an extensive
knock-down-drag-out fight.
    In the end, all she said was, “You’re
right. I’m not happy. Right now, I have no time for a live-in boyfriend. And I
certainly don’t have time for arguments like this one.”
    “Well then, sorry to waste your time,”
Zack said quietly. He picked up his beer bottle, gulped down what remained in
it, and set it hard on the table—so hard that Mackenzie thought the glass might
break.
    “I think you should leave for now,” Mackenzie
said. She held eye contact with him, holding his gaze so he’d know this was non-negotiable.
They’d had fights in the past where he’d almost packed his things and
left. But this time, it needed to happen. This time, she’d make sure there were
no apologies, no makeup sex, no manipulative conversations about how they
needed each other.
    Zack finally looked away from her and
when he did, he looked furious. Still, he made sure to leave a few inches
between them when he stomped past her and toward the bedroom. Mackenzie
listened to him go, standing in the kitchen and idly stirring her tea.
    So this is what I’ve become, she thought. Alone,
cold, and emotionless.
    She frowned, hating the inevitability of
it all. She’d once had a mentor who had warned her about this—how if she
pursued a career in law enforcement with high ambition, her life would become
too busy and hectic for anything resembling a healthy relationship.
    After a few minutes, Mackenzie heard
Zack start muttering to himself. As drawers in the bedroom opened and closed,
she heard the terms fucking bitch, work obsessed, and heartless
fucking robot.
    The words hurt (she didn’t try to
pretend to be so hardened that they didn’t), but she shrugged them off. Instead
of focusing on them, she started cleaning up the mess Zack had accumulated
during the day. She cleaned up empty beer bottles, a few dirty dishes, and a
pair of dirty socks as the man who had created the mess—a man she had, at one
time, fallen in love with—continued to curse and call her names from the
bedroom.
     
    *
     
    Zack was gone by 8:30 and Mackenzie was
in bed an hour later. She checked her e-mail, seeing a few reports flying back
and forth between Nelson and other officers, but there was nothing that needed
her immediate attention. Satisfied that she might actually get a handful of
uninterrupted hours of sleep, Mackenzie cut off her bedside lamp and closed her
eyes.
    Experimentally, she reached out and felt
the empty side of the bed. Having Zack’s side of the bed empty wasn’t too
jarring because he was often not there when she went to sleep because of his
work shifts. But now, knowing that he was gone for good, the bed seemed much
larger. As she stretched out and felt that empty side of the bed, she wondered
when she had fallen out of love with him. It had been at least a month, she
knew that for sure. But she’d said nothing in the hopes that whatever had
existed between them might resurface.
    Instead, things had gotten worse. She
often thought that Zack had sensed her becoming more distant as her feelings
had died down. But Zack was not the type to acknowledge such a thing. He avoided
conflict at all costs and, as much as she hated to admit it, she was pretty
sure he would have stuck around for as long as possible just because he feared
change and was too lazy to move out.
    As she sorted through all of these
things, her cell phone rang. Great, she thought. So much for sleep.
    She switched her lamp back on, fully
expecting to see Nelson’s or Porter’s number on her display. Or maybe it would
be Zack, calling to ask her if he could please come back. Instead, she saw a
number she did not recognize.
    “Hello?” she said, doing her best not to
sound tired.
    “Hi, Detective White,” a man’s voice
said. “This is Jared Ellington.”
    “Oh, hi.”
    “Did I call too late?”
    “No,” she said. “What’s up? Do you have
something