Page 17 of Twelve

He—or she, my profiler brain filled in.Or they.The possibilities were myriad, and I could start sorting through them just as soon as Mackenzie was in.

“Sometimes you win,” Celine replied evenly, taking Mackenzie’s question at face value. “Sometimes you lose. But I can promise you that we will fight like hell for Kelley. And our track record?” Celine pressed her palm flat against one of the boards. Not the one Mackenzie was leaning against. Not too close. “It’s not exactlynormal.”

You’re different, Mackenzie, but so are we. We see you. You aren’t alone.

“You’re good at what you do?” Mackenzie’s voice was hoarse.

“We found you, didn’t we?” Lia’s tone bordered on flippant, but somehow, that made her words sound less like a rhetorical question and more like an inviolable, uncontested, naked truth.

You won’t ever be normal, but you’ll be okay.

“You can trust them, Mackenzie.” That statement came from behind me.The psychologist.I’d almost forgotten she was there, that there was anyone in this room besides Mackenzie and the three of us. “We’ve talked about trust, haven’t we?”

That was the exact wrong thing to say. I caught Mackenzie’s gaze with my own, willing her to look at me—and at Lia and at Celine.

We’re not humoring you. We’relikeyou.

Before I could say that, Quentin Nichols stepped forward. “You tell us when you’re ready for us to remove the barricade,” the crisis negotiator said. “You’re the one in control here, Mackenzie. It’s your decision.”

Emphasizing her control of the situation was a good move. It was the right move, one I might have made if he’d given me the chance. But he hadn’t, and my gut said that the words would sound different to Mackenzie coming from him.

He’s male.

“Stay back.” Mackenzie jerked her head off the board, so suddenly that I was afraid it might send her flying backward. It didn’t. “You don’t get togiveme control. You don’t get to stand there and say…”

“Breathe, Mackenzie,” the psychologist murmured behind me.

I snapped so Mackenzie didn’t have to. “She’s already breathing. She’sfine.”

But I knew:You’re not fine, Mackenzie. You haven’t been fine in a very long time.Something had triggered her, taken her back to a place she didn’t want to go. She was fighting that—would fight it—tooth and nail.

As long as Mackenzie stayed where she was, she was in control. On the ledge, it washerbody,herchoice,herlife.

Her eyes stared past me, past Lia, past Celine, past her own mother.

Straight to the psychologist—and then to Quentin Nichols.

You’re small. And he’s not. He has power. And you don’t.Mackenzie took a step backward. It was a small one, but…

“Mackenzie,” Celine said calmly, “I need you to stand very still.”

I slid sideways, blocking Mackenzie’s view of the men in the room as best I could. The fireman, at least, had the presence of mind to keep his mouth shut. I didn’t trust Quentin Nichols to do the same.

Mackenzie probably wasn’t his first jumper. This wasn’t his first rodeo. But whether he saw it or not—shewasdifferent.

A clap of thunder boomed in the distance. Mackenzie raised her head to the sky. Her body didn’t shake. She didn’t waver.

“You need me to stand still,” she repeated back to Celine. “And I need you to find the person who murdered Kelley.”

This is control. This is setting your own terms.

“How are we supposed to find the killer if we have to stay here and babysit you?” Lia didn’t pull her punches. She wasn’t a profiler, but she did have a history of trauma and a deep-seated loathing for being treated like she was traumatized.

“You don’t have to stay,” Mackenzie said fiercely. “I can take care of myself.”

We’d been so close to her coming in. If it had been just us in the room, we could have done it. I sure as hell wasn’t leaving her alone with the people who’d botched this enough to keep her out there.

This is control.I wanted to believe that we could undo the damage, talk her down, but everything inside me said that now that she’d set her terms, she’d stick to them.Your body. Your life.