Trouble Maker: A MacKenzie Family Novel (The MacKenzie Family) (7 page)

“Cat’s already talking about getting an appointment for us to get family photos taken,” Thomas said, referring to his wife.

“I hope she dresses you and the kids in matching sailor outfits,” Beckett said deadpan. “Now maybe one of you will explain why I should care about a photography studio. I’m sure it’ll do a great business. It’s smart of whoever put it in.”

Thomas’s smirk was identical to his brother’s. “That’s what we’re trying to tell you. Marnie Whitlock is back in town. It’s her place. She showed up last week out of nowhere and offered Aunt Mary and Uncle James full market value if they’d sell her the little house she and her family lived in. They tore that place down after Marnie went with social services. Harley would never let them do repairs on the house so it eventually became uninhabitable.”

Beckett hadn’t moved since the moment Thomas had said Marnie’s name. His body felt like lead, and his brain was slow to process the news. In fact, everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. He could see Thomas’s lips moving, but he couldn’t hear the words. Only the blood rushing through his head and the sound of his heartbeat rabbiting in his chest.

He’d thought about Marnie every day after she’d left. Then as the years passed he thought of her every other day. And then it lessened to a couple of times a week as life got busy. But he still thought of her. The last he’d heard she was living in Savannah, Georgia, and had made quite a name for herself.

She’d been his first love. It had been wonder and fascination and innocence, and who knows if it would’ve lasted, but she’d had his complete focus from the moment he’d come home from college that summer until her life went to hell. He hadn’t had the guts to tell her then. She’d taken his breath away, and he’d wondered why it had taken him so long to notice.

He’d come home from college feeling a little out of place in his parents’ home, wondering how things had changed so drastically. How
he’d
changed. And then he caught a glimpse of Marnie while he was visiting the MacKenzies one afternoon, and something clicked. She’d always been beautiful. Maybe it was the way the light hit her face or glinted off her hair. Whatever the case, he’d noticed. And that was all it took for her to occupy his every thought.

There had just been something about her that had caught his attention and he couldn’t let it go. Maybe her laugh—how rare it was—but when she did it was full and deep and much too adult for someone so young. Or maybe it was those glimpses of the woman she’d be that drew him. Her hair was dark and thick as a mink’s pelt and her eyes were dark chocolate and slumberous. Her lips full and unpainted and her skin smooth and flawless. She was…different.

From that moment he’d been desperate to see her. Almost like a compulsion. She’d haunted him for the last fifteen years. He hadn’t realized the horrors she’d lived with on a daily basis, and he’d hated himself that he hadn’t been able to stop it. There had been no good-byes between them. There hadn’t been time. One day the social services van had pulled up and she was gone, despite the fact that the MacKenzies had tried desperately to adopt her as their own.

Beckett scooted out of the booth and slapped Thomas on the shoulder. “Thanks for buying my lunch. Gotta go.”

He left the diner without looking back, and the sound of his friends’ laughter followed him out the door. His focus was intent as he stepped on the wooden sidewalk and stood in front of the vacant shop. He could hear the sound of a saw and someone swinging a hammer, but there was no sign of Marnie. He tried the knob, but it was locked, and disappointment rose up inside of him.

For the majority of his life he’d thought of her. And when she’d left with social services he’d felt helpless, and guilt ate at him for not stopping Harley from taking her that night. He could’ve prevented the whole thing, but he just hadn’t been strong enough.

He hadn’t known how to make contact with her or even if she’d want him to after he’d let her down like he had, but several years before, while he’d been sitting at his desk late at night going over the books for the ranch, she’d come into his mind. And for the first time he said to hell with her privacy and Googled her name.

His jaw almost hit the floor when pages of information and photographs came up. Case after case she’d helped the police solve. He remembered how accurate she’d been the night she’d seen Harley kill Mitch Jones, and all he could think was what a terrible burden she must carry.

He kept up with her as the years went on, as her photography was selected for gallery showings and pictures of her surfaced where she wore chic black dresses and held onto the arm of a man who looked at her like a prize. It was then he stopped checking on her. Seeing her with another man, in another life, hurt more than it had any right to.

Beckett rattled the knob once more and then walked back to his truck. Some days it didn’t pay to go to lunch.

Chapter Six

Her return to Surrender was inevitable.

For fifteen years Marnie had seen Surrender in her visions. They were sparse at first—her mind had only been so strong after she’d watched her parents die. And for the first time in her life she’d developed the control to stop the visions as they started—slamming down a heavy metal door in her mind. Trauma did strange things to the brain.

They’d taken her away on her seventeenth birthday, so she’d only spent a year in foster care. It hadn’t been so bad. Actually, it had been pretty amazing. She’d had secondhand clothes that fit her and three meals a day. And there was never the hiss of the belt as it was pulled through belt loops or the sharp crack as it connected with flesh.

She’d survived. And between scholarships and working full-time, she’d managed to make her way through college. She’d taken a photography course on a whim. A way to fulfill a fine arts credit and try something new. But instead she’d found a calling. A purpose. And a way to tell stories. There was always beauty through the lens, even when life wasn’t so beautiful.

After college she’d ended up in Nebraska for a couple of years, then Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia. Never staying long in any one place. Never growing roots or making friends because there was an intimacy to friendship and relationships that wasn’t worth the pain or heartache. She’d learned that lesson well enough. She missed Darcy terribly. And the rest of the MacKenzies as well. They’d been her true family and she hadn’t even realized it. And then there was Beckett. Love like that wasn’t worth it in the long run. Nothing should be so painful.

As she’d aged she’d learned to control her gift. And if she could help others like she’d needed to be helped, then she’d do whatever she could, even at the cost of being ridiculed or ostracized.

Not everyone wanted her help, but there were enough who’d witnessed her gifts with their own eyes to use her. There were some progressive police departments who wanted to solve crimes badly enough that they’d bring her in, often as a last resort. She didn’t do it for money. In fact, she always refused payment of any kind. She wasn’t a charlatan. And she didn’t need or want the money. Growing up poor had its advantages. She was used to a frugal life of hard work.

Her time behind the camera paid the bills—taking portraits of children and shooting wedding after wedding. But it was the photographs she took outside of those events that held her heart. She was fascinated by faces. Old, young, man, woman, child. It didn’t matter. Every face had a story. She’d often wondered what story hers had told as a child. And if anyone had bothered to look at it through the lens of a camera.

She’d built her portfolio over the years, and little by little, some of her pieces had started to sell. She’d scrimped and saved and opened her first studio in Savannah. And then Clive Wallace had walked through her doors one rainy afternoon and looked at her and her work with a critical eye that had immediately set her on edge. She didn’t know him or even recognize his name. But he was one of the biggest art dealers in the world. And he wanted her work. And as she’d discovered later, he’d wanted her too.

Her life had been a whirlwind for almost two years—working almost nonstop and collecting enough pieces for a show in his New York gallery. It was some of the best work she’d ever done. Her focus was sharp and she thought maybe that was the life she was supposed to lead. A rags-to-riches story where good triumphed over evil.

The show was a success and the money started rolling in. And Clive became her lover, even though he was almost twenty years older and much more experienced. He was exciting and showed her things naïve girls from Nowhere, Montana, didn’t often get to see. And sometimes—he was able to make her forget where she came from.

And then she’d gotten a phone call from Lieutenant Navarro in Miami. He’d seen reports about the work she’d done for other departments and he wanted her help. Off the books because his captain wasn’t as open to the woowoo kind of stuff as he was.

She wasn’t a stranger to the news—her face had appeared on camera several times after helping with particular cases—but she didn’t crave the attention. Clive wanted her to take the job because the publicity would be good for her next showing. So they’d gotten on the next available flight and headed to Miami.

There’d been a series of kidnappings—all infants between the ages of six weeks and nine months old. The cops had tracked down a nurse at one of the hospitals and she’d admitted to selling patient information to an unknown third party. She entered the information on a website that was set up online and then they deposited money in her bank account. Two other nurses at other hospitals also confessed once the clues led to them.

But the nurses had no idea what had happened to the babies that had been kidnapped. Their involvement didn’t reach that far, though they’d each be doing a stretch behind bars. But the cops were stumped on how to find the children or where they’d ended up. And the hope of finding them was almost none.

It was an extensive and brilliantly executed kidnapping network. They’d scam parents who thought they were going through legitimate channels to adopt a child, and then place the stolen child in with the parents who paid enough money.

When she and Clive had arrived in Miami they hadn’t been greeted with open arms by the city or by the higher-ups in law enforcement. And to make matters worse, the media had been notified of her arrival and were waiting to greet them at the airport, turning the whole thing into a three-ring circus. She’d found out later Clive was the mastermind behind that fiasco.

It had only taken her a matter of hours to get to the bottom of things, and thank God she’d made friends at the FBI during various cases over the previous decade. Once she’d found out the mayor, the CEO of the hospital, a captain at the police department, and a state legislator were involved, she knew she needed to call in someone who could take over and get those children back to their rightful parents.

They’d been fortunate that all the data had been meticulously kept—which children were taken from which families and what state and family they’d been sent to. It was an undertaking that would take months to clear, but she’d been able to tell them where to look and who to look at.

And Clive had been right. The combination of her popularity as a photographer and the coverage from the press over the kidnapping case had made her show sell out in less than an hour. She hadn’t liked the attention. And she hadn’t liked the feel of using one gift to help make the other gift profitable. The whole thing felt dirty.

Then she’d found out
why
Clive had orchestrated the press to coincide with the Miami kidnappings. Unbeknownst to her, he’d signed legal documents in her name making him her business manager and in control of the majority of her assets. He also owned her name, and because her name represented the work she did, he owned that as well. She’d trusted him, and because she’d trusted him she hadn’t used her powers to look and see what he was really like on the inside until it was too late.

She knew how men like Clive worked. She’d seen him in action during business deals. He was a man who got what he wanted, no matter the cost. And she’d never be able to beat him if she tried to take him to court to reclaim what was hers. He had too much money and too much influence.

But Marnie had always been resourceful. He never should’ve underestimated a girl who’d been raised learning how to stay out of Harley Whitlock’s way. So she’d taken the money in her savings and hidden it in a different account with only her name on it. And she’d added to it when Clive gave her a small percentage of her sales every two weeks. She’d quietly told the landlord of her studio she wouldn’t be renewing her lease and she’d packed her personal belongings and favorite photographs she’d taken for her personal pleasure and not one of Clive’s galleries.

He’d told her repeatedly that he’d take care of her and she never had to worry about money again. Then he’d kept her on a tight leash, doling out small amounts of “play money,” as he called it, so she had to keep coming back for more.

It was about that time that the visions of Surrender went from the occasional and sporadic to every day. She knew it was time to return home, though she didn’t know what waited for her there. Her visions were oftentimes restricted when it had to do with her own future. She’d see places or small flashes. Only enough to show her a direction. And that direction had led her back to Surrender.

Clive had never been abusive. Not like her father. But he was controlling. And he’d essentially bought her, though she’d been too naïve and dazzled at the time to realize it.

When she’d finally told him she was leaving, that she wanted out of their relationship and partnership, he’d spewed such filth and hatred at her that she wondered what she’d ever seen in him to begin with. But at least he’d let her walk out the door with her belongings and the small van she’d had for years to haul equipment for photo shoots.

He’d started calling the banks and cutting off her credit cards and access to them when she’d walked out the door. He’d underestimated her. She didn’t care about money. She’d never had money before and it didn’t matter. But she’d be damned if she’d escape one prison only to be held in another. So she’d walked out the door and toward freedom for a second time in her life, with a smile on her face.