Free Before he Kills (A Mackenzie White Mystery—Book 1) by Blake Pierce

he is,” Porter said. “But we
need to speak with him.” He then took his badge out of his interior coat pocket
and flashed it, returning it back as if he had just pulled off a magic trick.
“But he needs to speak to us or I can make some calls and make it really official. It’s his call.”
    “One second,” the bartender said, not
wasting another minute. He walked to the other side of the bar and went through
double doors that reminded Mackenzie of the kind she’d seen in saloons in those
cheesy Western movies.
    She looked back to the stage where there
was now only one woman, dancing to Van Halen’s “Running with the Devil.” There
was something about the way the woman moved that made Mackenzie wonder if
strippers lacked dignity and therefore did not care about exposing their
bodies, or if they were just that confident. She knew there was no way
in hell she could ever do something like that. While she was confident in many
things, her body was not one of them, despite the many lewd glances she
received from random men from time to time.
    “You look a little out of place,”
someone beside her said.
    She looked to her right and saw a man
approaching her. He looked to be about thirty years old and as if he had been
sitting at the bar for a while. He had that sort of gleam to his eyes that
she’d seen in many a drunken altercation.
    “There’s a reason for that,” Mackenzie
said.
    “I’m just saying,” the man said. “You
don’t see many women in places like this. And when they are here,
they’re usually here with a husband or boyfriend. And quite frankly, I don’t see
the two of you,” he said, pointing to Porter, “as being an item.”
    Mackenzie heard Porter chuckle at this.
She wasn’t sure what annoyed her more: the fact that this man had gotten brave
enough to sit beside her or that Porter was enjoying every minute of it.
    “We’re not an item,” Mackenzie said. “We
work together.”
    “Just here for the after-work drinks,
huh?” he asked. He was leaning in closer—close enough for Mackenzie to smell
the tequila on his breath. “Why don’t you let me buy you one?”
    “Look,” Mackenzie said, still not
looking at him. “I’m not interested. So just move along to the next unwitting
victim.”
    The man leaned in closer and stared at
her for a moment. “You don’t have to be a bitch about it.”
    Mackenzie turned to him finally and when
they locked eyes, something in the man’s gaze shifted. He could tell she meant
business, but he’d had a few drinks too many and apparently just couldn’t help
himself. He placed a hand on her shoulder and smiled at her. “I’m sorry,” he
said. “What I meant to say is, well, no, I meant what I said. You don’t have to
be a bitch about—”
    “Get your hand off of me,” Mackenzie
said softly. “Last warning.”
    “You don’t like the feel of a man’s
hand?” he asked, laughing. His hand slid down her arm, groping now rather than
simply touching. “I guess that’s why you’re here to look at naked women, huh?”
    Mackenzie’s arm came up with lightning
speed. The poor drunk man didn’t even realize what had happened until after
she’d thrust her forearm into his neck and he was falling off of his barstool,
gagging. When he hit, it made enough noise to attract one of the security
guards that had been standing by the edge of the lounge area.
    Porter was then on his feet, stepping in
between the guard and Mackenzie. He flashed his badge and, to Mackenzie’s
surprise, stood nearly toe-to-toe with the much larger guard. “Slow down, big
boy,” Porter said, all but rubbing the guy’s face with his badge. “In fact, if
you want to avoid the spectacle of having someone arrested in this seedy
establishment, I suggest you toss this jack-off out of here.”
    The guard looked from Porter to the
drunk man on the floor, still coughing and gasping for air. The guard
understood the option he was facing and nodded. “Sure thing,” he