Chapter 29
MAX
Ihadn’t wanted to return to camp.
Mackenzie was scared, even though Jackson was no longer there. I also felt uncomfortable, thinking about what had happened and what could have happened.
But we only had one week left, and Mackenzie still had no idea that the camp was being watched. I knew we had protection, and all eyes were on us.
I’d tried to get us moved into our own cabin, but the camp shot me down. I bitched about it to West, but he just said simply, “I’m a ghost here, Max. I can’t pull any strings.”
Privacy was a fantasy. Counselors complained about us taking over the back room, saying they could hear us fucking. Now that we were married, it apparently became a big problem for everyone. I didn’t give a damn. I fucked Mackenzie every single minute, every single second of the day.
I couldn’t get enough of her.
We couldn’t keep our hands off each other. It was like an addiction, how badly we wanted each other. We were pulled to each other, like moths to a flame. We tried not to circle each other, but it didn’t matter. We always ended up back in bed together.
I never took my ring off. I showered, swam, even slept with it on, and every time Mackenzie’s hand brushed mine, I’d catch a glint of her ring and feel that possessive burn in my chest. It was like a low, violent itch.
The band wasn’t just proof she belonged to me.
It was a warning. A promise that if anyone tried to take her away, I’d tear the world apart with my bare hands.
At night, I watched her sleep, memorizing the way the band circled her finger; proof she belonged to me.
When her new driver’s license came in, and she changed her name to Mackenzie McKinnon on her counselor badge, it was honestly the happiest day of my life.
She was mine. Fucking mine.
Max and Mackenzie McKinnon. Forever. Heart eye emoji or whatever the fuck it was. I wanted to shout it from the rooftops.
We were reckless. Brushing fingers under the table in the dining hall.
My hand slid under her shirt during movie night.
Stealing kisses in the woods and pinning her against a tree when the kids weren’t looking.
Every chance I had, I pulled her back into bed with me.
We’d moved our mattresses from our twin bunks to the floor to make one big bed for the two of us.
She immediately started birth control, to my chagrin.
I wanted to throw her birth control pills out the window to stake my claim deeper.
But it wasn’t just the sex. She was different now—wild, unfiltered. She let me see all of her. Her fears. Her secrets. Her darkness. She told me everything that she could remember.
About him. The “Butcher.” To my dismay, there was a lot she remembered.
We laughed until our stomachs hurt. I carried her across the lake dock on my back.
I changed her bandage and cleaned her wound.
She was my best friend and the love of my life, all wrapped up in one beautiful, dangerous girl.
I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve her, but I knew I never wanted to go back to the way things were before her.
We were perfect. She was perfect.
Fortunately, we managed to get Mackenzie out of her dorm at GCU and rent a house off campus with a fenced-in backyard. I was so excited thinking about our future.
“We’ll get a dog. Two. There’s plenty of space in the backyard to set up a soccer net for you to practice and for me to practice throws. And at night, we’ll fuck in our own bedroom,” I had told her one night. I kissed her hard, “and make lots and lots of babies.”
“Max… what is your obsession with babies?”
“I’m serious,” I cut her off. “I want to put a baby in you. Right now. So you’re mine forever.”
“You’re not ready for a baby. We need to grow up a bit.”
“I’m ready.” I blinked, pulling back just far enough to hide my face.
Truth was, the more I thought about getting her pregnant, the more sense it made.
She couldn’t get hurt if she were pregnant.
People don’t drag a woman with a swollen belly into the line of fire.
They don’t put a gun to the head of someone carrying a baby.
And if she were home with me, heavy with my kid, she wouldn’t be running off to places I couldn’t follow.
Mackenzie didn’t know, but West had told me something that chewed at me every night: the Agency had pulled her and her mother out of the witness-protection program.
Whatever perimeter of protection they had surrounded them was gone. I was it now.
West didn’t sugarcoat it. He’d come to me with an option I couldn’t refuse the first day we had gotten back to camp, and he had pulled Mackenzie’s protection team.
TONY WEST
We’re going to run you through a security vet—nothing public, a shadow clearance.
Keep an eye out for a secure message in the next 24 hours.
When it hits, answer via the encrypted channel I set up. Don’t forward it. Don’t talk about it.
ME
What do I tell Mackenzie?
TONY WEST
Lie to her.
I could justify what I was doing a thousand ways. Protection. Duty. Love. But the truth was smaller and uglier: the line between protecting her and owning her was razor-thin. And I walked it every day, bleeding for it and loving the sting.
My size, my presence, I was a shield, sure. But I was also a threat. Even if I never used that threat on her, she felt it: the way her body curled into mine, the way she leaned on my chest like it was the only safe place left.
I told myself I was doing all of this—the control, the guarding, the possessiveness–to keep her alive.
But I was paranoid as fuck.
Jackson wasn’t just some asshole with a grudge.
His threats had teeth. He knew things about her father, shit nobody should ever have known, and that made him dangerous in a way we couldn’t map.
The problem was he’d vanished after the stabbing.
Gone dark. No trail. No pattern. Nothing for the FBI to lock onto.
“That’s the worst kind,” West said one night when I called him in a pure panic. “When someone disappears, you don’t know where to push. Keep an eye out. We don’t know his plan, but your marriage to Mackenzie will likely prompt him to act. Don’t trust him. Don’t let her out of your sight.”
West meant every word. We scoured every camera feed, every thread he might have left online.
We pulled every lead. Every time we thought we’d pinned him—an ATM camera, a traffic cam—the footage would smear at the exact frame his face should’ve been in, a digital blind spot like he’d reached through the wires and erased himself.
The bureau flailed at the edges. Jackson had gone off the grid on purpose.
Every noise in the dark, every stranger on the trail, felt like him. I watched the tree line until my eyes blurred. I listened to every voicemail, every dropped call, like a code only I could break.
But that wasn’t all.
Heather had started acting strange, stranger than usual. The jealousy wasn’t subtle anymore. It oozed out of her. One afternoon in the dining hall, I had my hand on Mackenzie’s knee, feeding her strawberries off my plate, when Heather leaned in close.
“Ever wonder what would happen if we all switched roles for a day? I think Max would finally see what it’s like being with a real woman. We’d look good together.”
The strawberry slipped from my fingers, hitting the plate with a soft, wet thud.
“What the fuck?” I muttered.
Heather didn’t flinch. She just smiled, slow and knowing, like she was letting me in on a secret only she understood.
Then she picked up her tray and walked away, humming under her breath like nothing had happened.
I pictured her hands, the way she gripped her tray.
Strong. Too strong. For a split second, I saw those fingers on Mackenzie’s throat instead, and bile climbed in my throat.
But my stomach turned. It wasn’t a joke. Not with the way she looked at Mackenzie, like a rival to be erased. I felt it in my bones. We were on a collision course, and everyone was becoming a predator.
Some of them just hadn’t decided who to eat yet.
MACKENZIE
The next morning, sunlight streamed through the cabin window, hot against my skin. I blinked against the brightness. My hand shot out from under the covers, fumbling for my phone.
8:30 a.m.
Shit!
I scrambled, quickly remembering it was Saturday. No campers today, thank God. I hadn’t slept this late all summer.
Max was still out cold beside me, face buried in the pillow, one arm locked tight around my waist. He was snoring softly, lips parted, hair sticking up in a thousand directions.
Unfairly gorgeous, even like this. Usually, he was already up by now, halfway through his workout.
But last night had drained both of us. Honestly, every night had. He couldn’t keep his hands off me.
I rolled up out of the covers and swung my feet to the floor, half-asleep. I was heading for the bathroom when a ping from Max’s phone stopped me. Three more pings chimed in quick succession.
I told myself not to look. The last time I invaded his privacy like this, I had read those text messages that continued to haunt me. But the nosy part of me, the one who’d always wanted to know, reached out and touched the screen.
He was my husband, after all, I rationalized. I needed to see who he was messaging. There was no harm in that, right?
He was still asleep, chest rising and falling, hair stuck to his forehead. I watched him for a few moments before I entered his passcode, and the phone silently unlocked.
The messages filled the screen.
UNKNOWN
Mr. McKinnon. Congratulations. You’ve been personally invited to an initiation hosted by The Alliance.
2300 South Clearing, 13:00 Sunday.
No weapons. No phones.
Good luck.
There was an image attached. A circle enclosing a jagged starburst, thirteen uneven points like cracked glass. Tiny harsh marks rimmed the circle, not letters, just scratches that felt coded.