know what’s stopping me.”
He shrugged as he opened the door. “It’s okay,” he said. “Just…I can’t really do this much longer.”
“I know,” she said sadly.
“Goodnight, Mac.”
He closed the door and Mackenzie was left alone. She stood in the kitchen, looking at the clock. It was 1:15 and she wasn’t remotely tired. Maybe the little exercise at Hogan’s Alley had driven too much adrenaline into her bloodstream.
Still, she tried going to bed but spent most of the night tossing and turning. In some sort of half-sleep state, she had dreams she barely remembered, but the one consistent thing to each of them was the face of her father, smiling, proud of her that she had made it this far – that she was graduating from the academy tomorrow.
But despite that smile, there was another consistent thing to the dreams, something she had long ago gotten used to as a frequent haunt once the lights went out and sleep came: the dead stare in his eyes and all of the blood.
CHAPTER TWO
Even though Mackenzie had set her alarm for eight o’clock, she was stirred awake by the vibrating of her cell phone at 6:45. She groaned as she came awake. If this is Harry, apologizing for something he didn’t even do, I’m going to kill him, she thought. Still half-asleep, she grabbed her phone and read the display through hazy eyes.
She was relieved to see that it wasn’t Harry, but Colby.
Puzzled, she answered it. Colby was not traditionally an early riser and they hadn’t spoken in over a week. Anal retentive to the core, Colby was probably just freaking out about graduation and the uncertainty of the future. Colby was the one female friend Mackenzie had here in Quantico, so she had done whatever she could to make sure the friendship stuck – even if it meant answering an early call on the morning of graduation, after she’d only gotten four and a half broken hours of sleep the night before.
“Hey, Colby,” she said. “What is it?”
“Were you asleep?” Colby asked.
“Yeah.”
“Oh my God. I’m sorry. I figured you’d be up at the crack of dawn this morning, with everything that’s going on.”
“It’s just graduation,” Mackenzie said.
“Ha! I wish that’s all it was,” Colby said in a slightly hysterical voice.
“Are you all right?” Mackenzie asked, slowly sitting up in bed.
“I will be,” Colby said. “Look…do you think you could meet me at the Starbucks on Fifth Street?”
“When?”
“As soon as you can get there. I’m heading out now.”
Mackenzie did not want to go – she really didn’t even want to get out of bed. But she had never heard Colby quite like this. And on such an important day, she figured she should try to be there for her friend.
“Give me about twenty minutes,” Mackenzie said.
With a sigh, Mackenzie got out of bed and took care of only the basics in terms of getting ready. She brushed her teeth, tossed on a hooded sweatshirt and running pants, put her hair in a sloppy ponytail, and then headed out.
As she walked the six blocks down to 5th Street, the weight of the day started to sit on her. She was graduating from the FBI academy today, just before noon, nestled in the top five percent of her class. Unlike most of the graduates she had gotten to know over the last twenty weeks or so, she would not have any family in attendance to help her celebrate this accomplishment. She would be on her own, as she had been for most her life, since the age of sixteen. She was trying very hard to convince herself that it didn’t bother her, but it did. It did not create sadness within her, but a weird sort of angst that was so old its edges had become dulled.
As she reached the Starbucks, she even noticed that traffic was a little thicker than usual – probably the family and friends of other graduates. She let it slide right off her back, though. She had spent the last ten years of her life trying not to give a damn about what her mother and sister thought of her, so why start now?
When she stepped into the Starbucks, she saw that Colby was already there. She was sipping from a cup and staring contemplatively out the window. There was another cup in front of her; Mackenzie assumed it was for her. She took a seat across from Colby and made a show of how tired she was, narrowing her eyes in a grumpy fashion as she took the seat.
“This is mine?” Mackenzie asked, taking the second cup.
“Yes,” Colby said. She looked tired, sad, and all around grumpy.
“So what’s wrong?” Mackenzie asked, skipping any attempt Colby might have of beating around the bush.
“I’m not graduating,” Colby said.
“What?” Mackenzie asked, genuinely surprised. “I thought you passed everything with flying colors.”
“I did. It’s just…I don’t know. Just being in the academy burned me out.”
“Colby…you can’t be serious.”
Her tone had come with some force but she didn’t care. This was not like Colby at all. Such a decision had come with some soul-searching. This was not a fluke, not some drama-filled last gasp of a woman plagued with nerves.
How could she just quit?
“But I am serious,” Colby said. “I haven’t really been passionate about it for the last three weeks or so. I’d go home some days and cry by myself because I felt trapped. I just don’t want it anymore.”
Mackenzie was stunned; she hardly knew what to say.
“Well, the day of graduation is one hell of a time to make this decision.”
Colby shrugged and looked back out the window. She looked beaten. Defeated.
“Colby…you can’t drop out. Don’t do that.” What was on the tip of her tongue but she did not say was: If you quit now, these last twenty weeks mean nothing. It also makes you a quitter.
“Ah, but I’m not really dropping out,” Colby said. “I’ll go to graduation today. I have to, actually. My parents came up from Florida so I sort of have to. But after today, that’ll be it.”
When Mackenzie had started the academy, the instructors had warned them that the drop-out rate among potential agents during the twenty-week academy session was around twenty percent – and had been as high as thirty in the past. But to think of Colby among those numbers simply didn’t make sense.
Colby was too strong – too determined. How the hell could she be making such a decision so easily?
“What will you do?” Mackenzie asked. “If you actually leave all of this behind, what do you plan to do for a career?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe something along the lines of preventing human trafficking. Research and resources or something. I mean, I don’t have to be an agent, right? There’s plenty
