Chapter 17
MAX
Was this what a broken heart felt like?
Because I felt like I might throw up.
I didn’t go far after I left her. Just enough that I could breathe. I needed to think before responding to her.
Every time I was around her, I lost my mind. I went from flirty to devastated to angry to fucking obliterated in under five minutes.
I hadn’t meant to tell her I loved her. It just fell out of my mouth.
I was so fucking in love with her, I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
She was the goddamn love of my life. Every time I closed my eyes, it was her.
Her hair, her laugh, the curve of her mouth when she smiled, the fire in her eyes that made me want to break every rule I’d ever known.
And she was killing me. She was playing a game with me.
Because she was hiding things. I could see it in her eyes, in the little hesitations, the way she measured her words. Every secret she kept, it hurt. And I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
Even though I knew.
I had always known there was more. I just didn’t know how deep it went.
The puzzle pieces were starting to fall into place quickly. I felt bad because I was watching her struggle with her internal conflict. I knew she couldn’t tell me, but I was hoping that the fiery Mackenzie, the one who didn’t follow the rules, would break through, and she would ignore her orders.
But she didn’t. And I think that hurt the most, because she had always told me everything, except this.
It always started the same.
Around 2 or 3 a.m., I’d feel her shift restlessly beside me. A tremor would pulse through her legs. Her breath would catch, ragged and uneven. Sometimes she’d mumble incoherent fragments, other times she’d whisper desperately, “Don’t go, please don’t go.”
I’d glean pieces of her story she’d never spoken aloud, glimpses from her nightmares. Now, those fragments haunted my mind, drifting endlessly through my thoughts.
“Dad… running… hiding… can’t see him.”
“You promised not to go.”
“I dropped her.”
“I’m so fucking tired of always pretending.”
“Don’t go in the basement.”
“Max, I see you.”
“He’s gone. He’s gone.”
“They’re watching us. They’re always watching us.”
Each line replayed in my head. She’d been drifting from memory and fear, and I held her all night as she moved from scene to scene in her dreams.
I wanted to tear down every wall she built around herself. I wanted to see every dark corner, every hidden piece, and claim it. I didn’t know who to reach out to. I didn’t know who could help her. Did I call her mom? Did I call her uncle? I figured that it wasn’t her uncle.
She doesn’t know I stay awake most nights, and I lie there listening, counting the spaces between her breaths, memorizing the shape of her fear. I Google the names she mutters in her sleep. I’ve started keeping notes on my phone—times, details, and fragments of phrases.
I wanted to save her, to shield her from the darkness threatening to consume us.
My love for her was a fire that haunted my restless nights.
The image of her lying vulnerable, dreaming in secrecy, shattered my resolve.
I couldn’t afford to lose her. Every fragment of my soul was entangled with hers.
Desperation drove me to the edge, seeking answers in the shadows.
Last night, I infiltrated the system that holds sealed juvenile records. Specifically, the confidential database used by federal protection agencies. The one I shouldn’t have even known about.
It wasn’t my proudest moment, but I was already reading all of Jackson’s sickening messages to her.
As soon as I cracked the code, her secrets spilled out like they had been lying in wait for me.
Her old address, her original birth records, and FBI relocation logs.
Disturbing, twisted details about her father: a man who wore a deer skull and mutilated 21 women. A true psychopath.
A newspaper clipping from the Ashbourne Gazette piqued my interest.
It was clipped from the October 17, 2012, edition. Mackenzie would’ve been almost twelve years old, a few months before she met me.
POLICE HUNT FOR ALLEGED SERIAL KILLER AFTER BODY FOUND IN RAVINE
ASHBOURNE, N.Y. - State and federal authorities are intensifying their search for a suspected serial killer dubbed ‘The Butcher’ after the dismembered remains of a woman were discovered late Thursday in a wooded ravine outside Ashbourne.
Investigators say the victim, an unidentified female believed to be in her late twenties, is the 21st woman linked to the killer over a span of five years across three states.
Law enforcement officials describe a “signature” at each scene.
Victims are found with ritualistic injuries, and several crime scenes have contained animal bones and antlers arranged near the bodies.
“We are dealing with an extremely organized and sadistic offender,” said Special Agent Tony West of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit during a Friday press briefing.
“He is mobile. He is meticulous and escalating. We are asking the public to remain vigilant and to report any suspicious activity immediately.”
Neighbors in the rural outskirts of Ashbourne reported hearing sirens and seeing emergency vehicles converge on the ravine just after midnight.
“We’ve seen the missing posters on TV, but you never think it’s going to be here,” said local resident Marlene Cooper. “Now everyone’s looking over their shoulder.”
Authorities have released very few details, citing the ongoing investigation.
However, authorities have confirmed that the murders appear to be connected by a combination of forensic evidence and a pattern of interstate travel.
Sources close to the case say at least one potential witness and her family have been placed under federal protection, though officials declined to comment on the claim.
Anyone with information about ‘The Butcher’ is urged to contact the Ashbourne Police Department tip line or the FBI field office in Albany.
It all clicked into place. Her drawings.
Her pushing me away. She had been living in a state of terror her entire life.
It sickened me to know she had endured such horror, that her father was still out there, on the run, hunting her.
She never knew when he might return, and that thought haunted me as well.
I should’ve felt guilty for hacking into her life like this. But I didn’t. Because I needed to know. I needed to know her completely. I should’ve stopped there, but the urge to push forward gnawed at me.
I wrestled through layers of encryption, frustrated at first, but ultimately breaking through. A sick pride surged within me.
Strangely, I’d started to see patterns in her files—unusual names recurring, the same obscure organizations lurking in the background. Contacts that made no sense, hidden connections between people she trusted. She was involved in something far larger than she realized… and so was I.
My brain didn’t register it when I first saw it.
THOMAS MCKINNON, CIA, 07-18-82.
LEGACY PRIORITY HANDLER.
DO NOT DISTRIBUTE.
For a second, it was just text.
Then my stomach dropped. The name sharpened on the screen, everything else smearing into a peripheral blur. Thomas McKinnon. My dad.
Why the fuck was my dad’s name on these files?
The room seemed to tilt, like the headboard had slipped a few inches back. I blinked, read the line again, slower this time, making myself pick through each word. Then I scrolled down into the metadata.
Dates. Classification tags. Internal routing codes I didn’t recognize. I traced phone numbers back to satellites and followed chains of command that didn’t belong to any sheriff or county patrol. This wasn’t just high-level. This was untouchable, vault-level, oath-sealed, dangerous, CIA-real shit.
And I had fucking found it.
That was the part that scared me the most—how straightforward it had been. No encrypted drive, no air-gapped server, no impossible backdoor. Just… there. Too easy.
The ease of it felt wrong, like a door left wide open in a bad neighborhood. Either someone wanted this to be found, or they were confident no one like me would ever come looking.
Why the fuck was my dad involved in this? I’d grown up thinking he ran a car dealership. Boring invoices, late nights at the office, a normal life. I had never—not once—considered CIA.
But as I stared at his name, old scenes started slotting into place in my brain. The whispered arguments in the kitchen I’d written off as work stress. The “old friends” who showed up late and never gave their last names. My dad’s half-smiles and deflections whenever I asked what he actually did.
It added up now, and it made me feel stupid for not seeing it.
What really fucking pissed me off, though, was that he wasn’t just in some random document. He was threaded directly through Mackenzie’s case file.
He had known who she was all along.
Her file flagged her under something called the Legacy Program.
What the fuck did that even mean?
If he’d known who she was all along, then what did that make us? Had our meeting been an accident, or something scheduled years before I’d ever walked into Camp Blackshear? Had we both been dropped onto the board, nudged along by invisible hands?
For the first time, it occurred to me that maybe none of this had started with me at all.
Jackson kept referencing a game in his texts to Mackenzie, and now Mackenzie was questioning me about a game. We’re we in a game now? Did she know?
Anger flared inside me. I felt the root of betrayal settle. The man who taught me right from wrong, who kissed my forehead when I was sick, was part of something monstrous. Something that was terrorizing the woman I was deeply in love with.
I closed the laptop, hands trembling. Someone would notice eventually. That I had hacked in. I didn’t do a great job of covering my tracks on this one. But for now, I had a plan. I needed to protect her from Jackson, from her father’s world, from everything that was hunting her.
Including the CIA and the FBI. I didn’t trust those fuckers.
I had no idea what the fuck I was up against, but I loved her enough that I would enter the game with her. I was quickly realizing that everyone here at Blackshear was a predator.
Even in her sleep, Jackson was there. Inside her brain, haunting her.
He’d already shown me he didn’t play by any rules.
Every ping, every shadow, every move was unhinged.
He was a predator who wouldn’t stop until he’d taken everything.
I needed to figure out a way to ensure she was completely safe from him.
I had watched her as she slept. The rise and fall of her chest, the soft curve of her lips, the fragile way she clutched my hand. Obsession clicked into place. Possession. Protection. Love. Something primal that didn’t care about right or wrong.
I couldn’t stop thinking about her, memorizing her. The twitch of her lip when she lied, the twist of her bracelet when she was anxious, the way her pupils dilated when I whispered things that made her body react without her knowing.
I’d follow her into hell. I’d walk through fire, bleed, burn for her.
Her cries, her nightmares, her secrets, even the darkness she carried—all of it belonged to me now. I would guard her, whatever it took.
Because I loved her. Completely. The closer I got to her, the more it burned. If this obsession were to destroy me, I’d wear it like a crown. She was mine, in ways she didn’t even know, and I’d be her king if she let me.
I closed my eyes and shoved my hands into my pockets.
I let the dark settle around me, thinking about everything I had discovered.
The stars now reflected off the water, bright and sharp, reminding me of our tattoos, of the light she brought into my life.
She was the only light that made this chaos bearable.
I was going to fucking marry her. Not for show.
Not for romance. Okay, a little bit for romance.
But mainly for protection. The only way I could guarantee she’d be safe from Jackson, from the shadows circling her, from the world she didn’t even understand she was part of, was by having her take my name.
My dad was CIA, so he had to earn us some protection, right?
He’d protect his daughter-in-law. I just needed to figure out how to make her say yes. And the first way to get her attention was to ignore her, because Mackenzie loved the chase.