Before He Envies

Blake Pierce is author of the bestselling RILEY PAGE mystery series, which includes fifteen books (and counting). Blake Pierce is also the author of the MACKENZIE WHITE mystery series, comprising thirteen books (and counting); of the AVERY BLACK mystery series, comprising six books; of the KERI LOCKE mystery series, comprising five books; of the MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE mystery series, comprising three books (and counting); of the KATE WISE mystery series, comprising four books (and counting); of the CHLOE FINE psychological suspense mystery, comprising three books (and counting); and of the JESSE HUNT psychological suspense thriller series, comprising three books (and counting).

An avid reader and lifelong fan of the mystery and thriller genres, Blake loves to hear from you, so please feel free to visit www.blakepierceauthor.com to learn more and stay in touch.

Copyright © 2019 by Blake Pierce. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Jacket image Copyright Robsonphoto, used under license from Shutterstock.com.

A JESSIE HUNT PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE SERIES

THE PERFECT WIFE (Book #1)

THE PERFECT BLOCK (Book #2)

THE PERFECT HOUSE (Book #3)

THE PERFECT SMILE (Book #4)

CHLOE FINE PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE SERIES

NEXT DOOR (Book #1)

A NEIGHBOR’S LIE (Book #2)

CUL DE SAC (Book #3)

SILENT NEIGHBOR (Book #4)

KATE WISE MYSTERY SERIES

IF SHE KNEW (Book #1)

IF SHE SAW (Book #2)

IF SHE RAN (Book #3)

IF SHE HID (Book #4)

IF SHE FLED (Book #5)

THE MAKING OF RILEY PAIGE SERIES

WATCHING (Book #1)

WAITING (Book #2)

LURING (Book #3)

TAKING (Book #4)

RILEY PAIGE MYSTERY SERIES

ONCE GONE (Book #1)

ONCE TAKEN (Book #2)

ONCE CRAVED (Book #3)

ONCE LURED (Book #4)

ONCE HUNTED (Book #5)

ONCE PINED (Book #6)

ONCE FORSAKEN (Book #7)

ONCE COLD (Book #8)

ONCE STALKED (Book #9)

ONCE LOST (Book #10)

ONCE BURIED (Book #11)

ONCE BOUND (Book #12)

ONCE TRAPPED (Book #13)

ONCE DORMANT (Book #14)

ONCE SHUNNED (Book #15)

ONCE MISSED (Book #16)

MACKENZIE WHITE MYSTERY SERIES

BEFORE HE KILLS (Book #1)

BEFORE HE SEES (Book #2)

BEFORE HE COVETS (Book #3)

BEFORE HE TAKES (Book #4)

BEFORE HE NEEDS (Book #5)

BEFORE HE FEELS (Book #6)

BEFORE HE SINS (Book #7)

BEFORE HE HUNTS (Book #8)

BEFORE HE PREYS (Book #9)

BEFORE HE LONGS (Book #10)

BEFORE HE LAPSES (Book #11)

BEFORE HE ENVIES (Book #12)

BEFORE HE STALKS (Book #13)

AVERY BLACK MYSTERY SERIES

CAUSE TO KILL (Book #1)

CAUSE TO RUN (Book #2)

CAUSE TO HIDE (Book #3)

CAUSE TO FEAR (Book #4)

CAUSE TO SAVE (Book #5)

CAUSE TO DREAD (Book #6)

KERI LOCKE MYSTERY SERIES

A TRACE OF DEATH (Book #1)

A TRACE OF MURDER (Book #2)

A TRACE OF VICE (Book #3)

A TRACE OF CRIME (Book #4)

A TRACE OF HOPE (Book #5)

CHAPTER ONE

Mackenzie took a deep breath and closed her eyes, bracing herself and trying to stop the pain. She had read so much about the whole breathing method thing and now, as Ellington rushed her to the hospital, all of it seemed to have slipped right out of her head. Maybe it was because her water had broken and she could still feel it along the leg of her pants. Or maybe it was because she had felt her first legitimate contraction about five minutes ago and she could feel another one coming on.

Mackenzie pressed against the passenger seat, watching the city pass by in a blur of darkness, sprinkling rain, and streetlights. Ellington was behind the wheel, sitting rigid and staring out the windshield like a man possessed. He laid down on the horn as they approached a red light.

“E, it’s okay, you can slow down,” she said.

“No, no, we’re good,” he said.

With her eyes still closed against Ellington’s driving, she placed her hands on the large bump of her stomach, grappling with the idea that she would be a mother in the next several hours. She could feel the baby barely stirring, perhaps just as scared of Ellington’s driving as she was.

I’ll see you soon, she thought. It was a thought that brought more joy than worry and for that, she was grateful.

The streetlights and signs went blaring by. She stopped paying attention to them until she saw the directional signs pointing toward the hospital emergency room.

A man stood outside at the curb, waiting for them under the awning with a wheelchair, knowing they were coming. Ellington carefully brought the car to a stop and the man waved and smiled to them with the sort of lazy enthusiasm most nurses in the ER at two in the morning seemed to have.

Ellington guided her to it as if she were made of porcelain. She knew he was being overprotective and urgent because he, too, was a little scared. But more than that, he was good to her. He always had been. And he was proving now that he was going to be good to this baby, too.

“Hey, hold on, slow down,” Mackenzie said as Ellington helped her into the wheelchair.

“What? What is it? What’s wrong?”

She felt another contraction coming but she still managed to flash a smile at him. “I love you,” she said. “That’s all.”

The spell he’d been under for the last eighteen minutes—between hopping out of bed to her announcement that she was going into labor to him helping her into the wheelchair—broke for a moment and he smiled back. He leaned down and kissed her softly on the mouth.

“I love you, too.”

The man at the wheelchair handles looked away, a little embarrassed. When they were done, he asked, “You guys ready to have a baby?”

The contraction hit and Mackenzie cringed against it. She remembered from the reading that they would only get worse the closer the baby came to arriving. Still, she looked past it all for a moment and nodded.

Yes, she was ready to have this baby. In fact, she could hardly wait to hold it in her arms.

She had only dilated four centimeters by eight o’clock that morning. She had gotten to know the doctor and the nurses well, but when they switched shifts, Mackenzie’s mood started to change. She was tired, she was hurting, and she simply didn’t enjoy the idea of another doctor coming in and poking around under her gown. But Ellington, as dutiful as ever, had managed to get her OBGYN on the phone and he was doing his best to get to the hospital as soon as he could.

When Ellington came back into the room from making the call, he was frowning. She hated to see him having crashed from his high of being her protector last night, but she was also glad she was not the only one who was experiencing a mood swing.

“What is it?” she asked.

“He’ll be here for the delivery, but he won’t even bother coming over until you’re at least at eight centimeters. Also…I was going to bring you some waffles from the cafeteria, but the nurses say you should eat light. They’ll be bringing you some Jell-O and ice chips any minute now.”

Mackenzie shifted in the bed and looked down at her stomach. She preferred to look there rather than the machines and monitors they had her hooked up to. As she traced the shape of her stomach, there was a knock at the door. The newer doctor came walking in, holding her charts. He looked happy and fully refreshed, coming in off of what appeared to have been a restful night’s sleep.

Bastard, Mackenzie thought.

The doctor thankfully kept the conversation to a minimum as he checked her over. Mackenzie didn’t pay much attention to him, honestly. She was tired, drifting off to sleep even when he put the jelly on her stomach to check the baby’s progress. She drifted off into a half-sleep for a while until she heard the doctor speaking to her.

“Mrs. White?”

“Yes?” she asked, irritated that she could not get a small nap in. She had been trying to sneak them in between contractions…anything for just a bit of rest.

“Are you feeling any new discomfort?”

“Nothing other than the same pains I’ve had since we got here.”

“Have you felt the baby moving a great deal in the last hours?”

“I don’t think so. Why…is something wrong?”

“No, not wrong. But I believe your baby has turned. There’s a very good chance that this will be a breach delivery. And I’m getting an irregular heartbeat…nothing terribly out of the ordinary, but enough to raise concerns.”

Ellington was at her side at once, taking her hand. “Breach…is that risky?”

“Hardly ever,” the doctor said. “Sometimes we know the baby is already breach a few weeks out from delivery. But your baby was in the correct position during the last checkup…was even perfectly positioned when you checked in last night. But he or she has turned a bit and unless something drastic changes, I don’t see your kiddo getting back into the right position. Right now, it’s this heartbeat that I’m concerned about.”

“So what do you recommend?” Mackenzie asked.

“Well, I’d like to do a thorough check on the baby just to make sure its sudden position change has not placed it in distress—which is what the erratic heartbeat might be. If it hasn’t—and there’s no reason to believe it has—then we will schedule an operating room for you as soon as we can.”

The idea of skipping traditional labor was appealing, sure, but adding surgery to the birth process didn’t particularly sit well with her, either.

“Whatever you think is best,” Mackenzie said.

“Is it safe?” Ellington asked, not even attempting to hide the tremble of fear in his voice.

“Perfectly safe,” the doctor said, wiping away the excess jelly from Mackenzie’s stomach. “Of course, as with any surgery, we have to mention that there is always a risk when someone’s on the table. But cesarean deliveries are very common. I’ve personally performed more than fifty. And I believe your OBGYN is Dr. Reynolds. She’s older than I am by a stretch…don’t tell her I said that…and I guarantee she’s done more than I have. You’re in good hands. Shall I reserve a room?”

“Yes,” Mackenzie said.

“Great. I’ll get a room and make sure to let Dr. Reynolds know what’s going on.”

Mackenzie watched him leave and then looked back down to her belly. Ellington joined her, their hands interlocking over the temporary home of their child.

“That’s sort of scary, huh?” Ellington asked, kissing her on the cheek. “But we’ll be okay.”

“Of course we will,” she said with a smile. “Think of our lives and our relationship. It almost makes sense that this kid would come into this world with a bit of drama.”

She meant every word of it, but even then, in one of their most vulnerable moments together, Mackenzie was hiding more fear than she cared to let on.

Kevin Thomas Ellington was born at twelve twenty p.m. He weighed seven pounds six ounces and, according to Ellington, had his father’s misshapen head and red cheeks. It wasn’t quite the delivery experience Mackenzie had been expecting but when she had heard his first little cries, taking in his first breaths, she didn’t care. She could have given birth to him in an elevator or some abandoned building. He was alive, he was here, and that was the important thing.

Once she heard Kevin’s cries, Mackenzie allowed herself to calm down. She was lightheaded and out of it from the anesthesia from the C-section procedure and felt sleep pulling at her. She was dimly aware of Ellington at her side, complete with his white operating room cap and blue gown. He kissed her forehead and was doing nothing to hide the fact that he was openly crying.

“You did amazing,” he said through his tears. “You’re so strong, Mac. I love you.”

She opened her mouth to return the sentiment but wasn’t fully sure she’d said it. She drifted off to the beautiful sounds of her still-crying son.

The next hour or so of her life was a fragmented kind of bliss. She was mostly under and still feeling nothing when the doctors sewed her back up. She was out of it completely when she was moved to a recovery room. She was barely aware of a series of nurses looking over her, checking her vitals.

However, it was when one of the nurses stepped into the room that Mackenzie started to get a better grip on her thoughts. She reached out clumsily, trying to garb the nurse’s hand, but missed.

“How long?” she asked.

The nurse smiled, showing that she had been in this situation many times before. “You’ve been out for about two hours. How are you feeling?”

“Like I need to hold the baby that just came out of me.”

This elicited a chuckle from the nurse. “He’s with your husband. I’ll send them both in.”

The nurse left and while she was gone, Mackenzie’s eyes remained on the doorway. They stayed there until Ellington entered shortly afterward. He was pushing one of the hospital’s little rolling bassinets. The smile on his face was unlike any she had ever seen from him before.

“How you feeling?” he asked as he parked the bassinet by the side of her bed.

“Like my insides have been ripped out.”

“They were,” Ellington said with a playful frown. “When they brought me into the operating room, your guts were in a few different pans. I know you inside and out now, Mac.”

Without having to be asked, Ellington reached into the bassinet and took out their son. Slowly, he handed Kevin to her. She held him to her chest and instantly felt her heart reaching out. A surge of emotion passed through her. She wasn’t sure if she had ever experienced tears of happiness in her entire life, but they came as she kissed the top of her son’s head.

“I think we did good,” Ellington said. “I mean, my part was easy, but you know what I mean.”

“I do,” she said. She looked into her son’s eyes for the first time and felt what she could only describe as an emotional click. It was the feeling of her life being forever changed. “And yes, we did do good.”

Ellington sat down on the edge of the bed. The shifting hurt her abdomen, the surgery now barely more than two hours ago. But she said nothing.

She sat there in the crook of her husband’s arm with their newborn son in her arms, and could not remember a single moment in her life when she had felt such absolute happiness.

CHAPTER TWO

Mackenzie had spent the last three months of her pregnancy reading just about every book on babies she could find. There seemed to be no unequivocal answer as to what to expect the first few weeks back home with a newborn. Some said that as long as you slept when the baby slept, you should be okay. Others had said to sleep when you could with the help of a spouse or other family members who were willing to help. All of it had made Mackenzie sure that sleep would only be a precious memory of the past once they got Kevin home.

This proved correct for the first two weeks or so. After Kevin’s first checkup, it was discovered that he had severe acid reflux. This meant that anytime he ate, he had to be held upright for fifteen to thirty minutes at a time. This was easy enough, but became grinding during the later night hours.

It was during this stretch of time that Mackenzie started to think about her mother. On the second night after being instructed to hold Kevin upright after feeding, Mackenzie wondered if her own mother had dealt with anything like this. Mackenzie wondered what sort of baby she had been.

She’d probably like to see her granddaughter, Mackenzie thought.

But that was a terrifying concept. The idea of calling her mother just to say hello was bad enough. But then throw in a surprise granddaughter, and that would be chaotic.

She felt Kevin squirming against her, trying to get comfortable. Mackenzie checked the bedside clock and saw that she’d had him upright for a little over twenty minutes. He seemed to have dozed off on her shoulder, so she crept over to the bassinet and placed him inside of it. He was swaddled and looked quite comfortable and she took a final look at him before returning to bed.

“Thanks,” Ellington said from beside her, half asleep. “You’re awesome.”

“I don’t feel like it. But thanks.”

She settled down, getting her head comfortable on the pillow. She had her eyes closed for about five seconds before Kevin started wailing again. She shot up in bed and let out a little moan. She bit it back, though, worried that it might turn into a bout of weeping. She was tired and, worst of all, she was experiencing her first toxic thoughts about her child.

“Again?” Ellington said, snapping the word out like a curse. He got to his feet, nearly stumbling out of the bed, and marched to the bassinet.

“I’ll get him,” Mackenzie said.

“No…you’ve been up with him four times already. And I know…I woke up for each and every one of those times.”

She did not know why (probably the lack of sleep, she thought idly), but this comment pissed her off. She practically lunged out of bed to beat him to the wailing baby. She rammed her shoulder into him a little harder than necessary to be considered playful. As she picked Kevin up, she said: “Oh, I’m sorry. Did he wake you?”

“Mac, you know what I mean.”

“I do. But Jesus, you could be helping more.”

“I have to get up early tomorrow,” he said. “I can’t just sit…”

“Oh God, please finish that sentence.”

“No. I’m sorry. I just…”

“Get back in bed,” Mackenzie snapped. “Kevin and I are fine.”

“Mac…”

“Shut up. Get back in bed and sleep.”

“I can’t.”

“Is the baby too noisy? Go to the couch, then!”

“Mac, you—”

“Go!”

She was crying now, holding Kevin to her as she settled back into bed. He was still wailing, slightly in pain from the reflux. She knew she’d have to hold him upright again and it made her want to cry even harder. But she did her best to hold it back as Ellington stormed out of the room. He was muttering something under his breath and she was glad she couldn’t hear it. She was looking for an excuse to explode on him, to berate him and, honestly, just to get out some of her frustration.

She sat back against the headboard holding little Kevin as still and upright as possible, wondering if her life would ever be the same.

Somehow, despite the late-night arguments and lack of sleep, it took less than a week for their new family to slip into a groove. It took some trial and error for Mackenzie and Ellington to figure it out, but after that first week of the reflux issues, it all seemed to go well. When the meds knocked the worst of the reflux out, it was easier to manage it. Kevin would cry, Ellington would get him out of the crib and change his diaper, and then Mackenzie would nurse him. He was sleeping well for a baby, about three or four hours at a stretch for the first few weeks following the reflux, and wasn’t very fussy at all.

It was Kevin, though, who started to open their eyes to just how broken the families they had come from were. Ellington’s mother came by two days after they got home and stayed for about two hours. Mackenzie had been polite enough, hanging around until she realized it would be an opportune time for a break. She went to the bedroom to sneak in a nap while Kevin was preoccupied with his father and grandmother, but Mackenzie was not able to sleep. She listed to the conversation between Ellington and his mother, surprised that there seemed to be some attempt at reconciliation. Mrs. Nancy Ellington left the apartment about two hours later, and even through the bedroom door, Mackenzie could feel some of the remaining tension between them.

Still, she’d left a gift for Kevin in her wake and had even asked about Ellington’s father—a subject she almost always tried to avoid.

Ellington’s father never even bothered to come by. Ellington made a FaceTime call to him and though they chatted for about an hour and a few tears even came to his father’s eyes, there were no immediate plans for him to come see his grandson. He’d started his own life long ago, a new life without any of his original family. And that, apparently, was how he wanted it to stay. Sure, he’d made a sweeping financial gesture last year in regards to trying to pay for their wedding (a gift they eventually denied), but that had been help from a distance. He was currently living in London with Wife Number Three and was apparently swamped with work.

As for Mackenzie, while her thoughts did eventually turn to her mother and sister—her only surviving family—the idea of getting in touch with them was a horrifying one. She knew where her mother was living and, with a little help from the bureau, she supposed she could even get her number. Stephanie, her younger sister, would probably be a little harder to track down. As Stephanie was never one to stay in a place for very long, Mackenzie had no idea where her sister might be these days.

Sadly, she found that she was okay with that. Yes, she thought her mother deserved to see her first grandchild, but that would mean opening up the scars that she had closed up a little over a year ago when she had finally closed the case of her father’s murder. In closing that case, she had also closed the door on that part of her past—including the terrible relationship she’d always had with her mother.

It was odd just how much she thought about her mother now that she had a child of her own. Whenever she held Kevin, she’d remind herself of how distant her mother had been even before her father’s murder. She swore that Kevin would always know that his mother loved him, that she would never let anything—not Ellington, not work, not her own personal issues—come before him.

It was this very thing that was on her mind on the twelfth night after they had brought Kevin home. She had just finished nursing Kevin for his late-night feeding—which had started to fall somewhere between one thirty and two in the morning. Ellington was coming back into the room from having placed Kevin in his crib in the next room over. It had once been an office where they had stored all of their miscellaneous bureau paperwork and personal items but had easily become a nursery.

“Why are you still awake?” he asked, grumbling into his pillow as he lay back down.

“Do you think we’ll be good parents?” she asked.

He propped his head up sleepily and shrugged. “I think so. I mean, I know you will. But me…I imagine I’ll push him way too hard when it comes to youth sports. Something my dad never did for me that I always feel I missed out on.”

“I’m being serious.”

“I figured. Why do you ask?”

“Because our own families are so messed up. How do we know how to raise a child the right way if we have such horrible experiences to draw from?”

“I figure we’ll just take note of everything our parents did wrong and don’t do any of it.”

He reached out in the dark and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. She honestly wanted him to wrap her up in his arms and spoon her, but she wasn’t fully healed up from the surgery just yet.

They lay there next to one another, equally exhausted and excited for their lives going forward, until sleep took them both, one right behind the other.

Mackenzie found herself walking through rows of corn again. The stalks were so high that she could not see the tops of them. The ears of corn themselves, like old yellow teeth poking through rotted gums, peeked out into the night. Each ear was easily three feet long; the corn and the stalks on which they grew were ridiculously big, making her feel like an insect.