Mackenzie ignored the pull of pain in her side as she pushed through ferns to a narrow trail her attacker must have followed yesterday. The police had already been here with search dogs. But she wanted to satisfy herself; she couldn’t just sit on the porch and swat mosquitoes.

Rook, of course, was right behind her. He hadn’t left for Washington yet. And he still hadn’t explained his reasons for being in New Hampshire. “I knew you were tight-lipped even before I realized what you did for a living,” she said without looking back at him. “A straight-arrow type. Not a rule breaker.”

“Are you a rule breaker, Mac?”

“I haven’t been in law enforcement long enough to know.”

“I’m talking about personality.”

She glanced back at him at last. If there was a sexier man on the planet, she didn’t want to meet him. But if Rook wasn’t on her heels, Gus Winter would be. He would pester her nonstop about overdoing – and he wasn’t as good-looking. “I’m creative and results-oriented. How’s that?”

Rook smiled at her. “Sounds like an academic’s spin.”

Was that why he’d dumped her? Because he’d heard she wasn’t a by-the-book type? But she hadn’t gotten into hot water in her six weeks in Washington…Nate. Had he suggested to Rook that she might not be his type? Which would mean her connection to Bernadette wasn’t the reason for the breakup by voice mail?

If only Rook was just some sexy guy she’d dated a few times who’d decided it wasn’t going to work out. But it was worse than that. She liked him. She enjoyed his company.

Over and done with.

What she wanted now were answers. Why was he in New Hampshire, why was he looking for Harris Mayer and who was the man who had attacked her yesterday?

Would he attack someone else because she’d failed to take him down?

Mackenzie pushed her way through another patch of knee-high ferns growing in the light shade of the birches and beech trees along the lake. Her side ached, but she was doing much better than when she’d rolled out of bed, thinking she’d have to face Rook with dark circles under her eyes and her hair sticking out. Breakfast had helped. She wasn’t going to collapse in front of an FBI agent, especially not one she’d almost slept with.

The trail became soft and damp as they came to a trickling stream that emptied into the lake. She paused as Rook came up beside her, then pointed across the rock-strewn creek. “There’s a clearing on the other side of that hill. Thought we could check it out.”

“Need a hand crossing?”

“No.”

She jumped over the narrow stream as she answered, but one sneaker landed in a squishy, near-black stew of dirt and rotted plant matter. Normally she’d have cleared the mud by a good eighteen inches. She jerked her foot out of the muck, prompting a jolt of pain from her cut, and bent forward, hands on her knees, teeth gritted as she bit back a curse and waited for the pain to subside.

“There.” Mackenzie straightened slowly and smiled at Rook, who’d cleared the mud easily. “Stitches are all intact. I’m rusty on crossing streams.”

“You didn’t take any pain medication this morning, did you?”

“None of the stuff with the codeine. I took a couple Tylenol.”

“You don’t have to be out here. It’s not your job to find the man who attacked you.”

“Not yours, either.”

She continued through a patch of invasive Japanese honeysuckle and barberry that Bernadette had been battling for years. Walking helped clear her head. She’d looked at dozens of mug shots yesterday at the police station after her trip to the E.R. She’d done dozens of different computer searches for her fugitive, using different sets of criteria. Beard, no beard. Blue eyes, no eye color. Restricted geographic location, virtually unrestricted geographic location.

Looking at too many faces wasn’t a wise idea. She needed to stick to shots of real possibilities. She didn’t want the faces on the computer screen to start to blur with the one in her mind of the actual perpetrator. She was trained to recognize features that could be plugged into a database or help with a sketch, but eyewitness accounts, including hers, were notoriously unreliable.

But she’d seen this man before, somewhere. She was sure of it.

Last night, she’d found a pad of paper and a pencil in her nightstand, and had jotted down everything she could think of about the attack. She didn’t censor herself. Whatever came into her mind went on paper. Colors. Thoughts. Smells. Tastes. Where she’d felt the breeze. How she’d thought it was wild turkeys she’d heard in the birches.

The exact moment she’d realized she’d been cut.

When she’d felt the blood. The pain.

The lapping of the lake water on rocks and sand, and the chirping of birds in the distance – and nearby, too. Something else. Not birds – a red squirrel, chattering in one of the hemlocks.

She wrote down a description of the spit on her attacker’s beard. The touches of gray in his dark hair.

His eyes.

Had he guessed he seemed familiar to her?

Did he know where they’d seen each other before?

Mackenzie had a good memory, but nothing she did helped place the man who’d jumped her with an assault knife. She understood that the investigators suspected her attacker had seemed familiar to her because of some kind of life-and-death defense mechanism.

In other words, that she’d unconsciously made up any recognition.

But she hadn’t.

As Mackenzie reached the clearing, the lake sparkled through the trees, a view she’d always loved. “I used to camp out here.”

Rook stood next to her. “On your own?”

“Sometimes. I was never afraid. I don’t know why, because I’d hear animals out here at night.” She smiled. “Of course, my parents and Beanie weren’t far away.”

“Did you always want to go into law enforcement?”

“Never, actually. That came later, when I was working on my dissertation and realized I yearned for something different for myself. You?”

“Always.”

“I can go back to academia if the Marshals Service kicks me out.” She started to pick up a small stone and flip it into the water, but her bandaged side reminded her that probably wasn’t a smart idea. She sighed. “There’s nothing here. He’s probably hiking in Wyoming by now.”

She turned back. When they reached the stream, she didn’t try to cross it in a single leap, but jumped to a rock in the middle, then to the bank. Rook again made it across in one long stride.

Gus and Carine were waiting for them on Bernadette’s porch. Carine had Harry, who was cooing to himself, tucked on her hip. She seemed more herself after their recent scare. Rook quickly excused himself and ducked inside.

“Just checking on you,” Gus said. “There’s nothing new. Beanie called last night. She didn’t want to disturb you. She said to use the house as long as you need to.”

“I appreciate that, but I’ll be getting back to work as soon as I get the okay from the doctor.”

He didn’t argue with her. “Rook’s leaving?”

“He has a flight tonight. Mine’s not until tomorrow -”

“You won’t be ready to fly tomorrow,” Gus said.

Carine grinned suddenly. “You two. I swear you’ve been arguing since Mackenzie could talk. We can’t stay, but if there’s anything you need, just let me know.”

“There isn’t right now, but thanks.”

After they left, Mackenzie sat in a comfortable wicker chair on the porch, closing her eyes and smelling the clean air, enjoying the relatively low humidity. She could have had this life: a house on a quiet lake, a job that would allow time there. But she’d walked away from it, and now she wondered if the attack yesterday meant that her new life had intersected, somehow, with her old one.

That was a problem for another time, she thought, unable to stop herself from drifting off.