“There are three cases.” Sloane had gotten better, over the years, at easing me into her calculations, but I knew from experience that soon, the numbers would be flying fast.
Fast was good. Mackenzie wasn’t backlit anymore. I hadn’t realized it out on the landing, but in a room with a window, it was clear that the sky outside had begun to darken.
It looked like it might storm.
“The first case I analyzed,” Sloane said brightly, “was a female, seventeen years old, sixty-four inches tall, approximately one hundred and forty-two pounds fully clothed. She was found in a supine position on uneven ground with a negative twelve-degree incline.”
No one else could hear Sloane, but I could feel the eyes of every person in the room on me, gauging my reaction. Mrs. McBride. The psychologist. The fireman. The crisis negotiator.
Mackenzie.
“Photographs of the scene have allowed me to pinpoint the likely launch point. Working backward from the point of impact, taking into account wind resistance, vertical and horizontal distance traveled, and a range estimate for the victim’s muscle density—”
“Sloane.” I kept my interruption gentle.
Obligingly, my favorite human calculator cut to the chase. “She jumped.”
I couldn’t let my breath hitch in my throat or allow even a flicker of surprise to show on my face. Mackenzie was watching.
I’d expected Sloane to tell me that the victims had been pushed. “Second case,” Sloane continued in a tone that anyone who didn’t know
her well might have mistaken for cheerful. “Male, eighteen, seventy-point- two inches tall, one hundred and thirty-one pounds. Different landing pattern, different launch point on the cliff, different point of impact—same conclusion.”
I wouldn’t let my insides lurch. I wouldn’t let myself look at Mackenzie, out on the ledge.
The boy jumped. I’d been so sure that Mackenzie was a Natural, that she was right, that I could use that to bring her down off the ledge. Now, when I got off this phone, I’d either have to lie to her or tell her that she was wrong.
That I didn’t believe her.
That I was just like everyone else.
You dance five days a week. You do martial arts. You exert control over your own body when you feel like you have control of nothing else.
Right now, your body is on the ledge. Your body could jump.
“Cassie?” Sloane’s voice broke through my thoughts. “You didn’t ask me about the third victim.”
In the distance, I heard thunder. I’d come into this assuming we were working with a ticking clock, but if a storm was rolling in off the ocean— we had to get Mackenzie down. Even someone who had incredible control of her own body could fall if the surface she was standing on got slick.
If there was a strong enough wind.
“What about the third victim?” I said. “Kelley.”
I asked that question, because I wanted the still-listening Mackenzie to know that I’d tried. I wanted her to know, regardless of the outcome, that I’d gone into this in good faith. Kelley was the only one of the three victims Mackenzie had referenced by name.
Kelley was the one who mattered to her.
“Greater vertical distance traveled, less horizontal,” Sloane rattled off. “Post-mortem X-rays suggest moderate forward rotation, despite a feet-first landing. I modeled a scenario where she stepped off the ledge with one foot and shifted weight, leading to a free fall, as well as trajectories with a greater lead-up and initial vertical push—”
“Translation?” I cut in.
“The first two victims jumped.” Sloane paused. “The third didn’t.”
I stopped breathing, and then, without warning, the air came whooshing out of my lungs. She was right. Mackenzie was right.
“I’d need better photographs of the area surrounding the launch point, as well as a more detailed analysis of weather conditions, to rule out a fall, but the most likely conclusion is…”
I finished Sloane’s statement for her. “The third victim was pushed.”
I shouldn’t have felt relieved. No part of me should have been grateful that a teenage girl had been murdered. But the third victim was the only one Mackenzie had actually seen, the one she’d based her conclusion on.
She was right. And that meant that I didn’t have to tell her that she was wrong. It meant that I’d been right, too—about Mackenzie’s ability, about the circumstances that had honed it.
Mackenzie McBride was a Natural.
“Kelley didn’t jump.” I stated the truth, plainly and loud enough for everyone in this room—and just outside of it—to hear. Mackenzie deserved to know that she was right. She deserved for everyone in this room to know it.
She deserved to be told something other than to calm down and breathe.
If someone pushed Kelley… My brain snaked its way to the obvious conclusion. We’re not just looking at suicide contagion.
We were looking at an UNSUB who’d used a duo of tragic deaths in an attempt to disguise a third.
