Justice for Mackenzie by Susan Stoker Read Free Book Online Page A

time she expected to be home. Even though she was thirty-seven years old, she wanted to be safe. She’d call Laine after the date. It was their ritual whenever one of them went out.
    Mackenzie thought hard about calling the local Rangers’ office and checking on Daxton that way as well, but then decided she was being an idiot. She’d seen him at the charity event with a table full of other officers. Hell, he’d been with the Highway Patrolman when she’d been pulled over. If Daxton was lying, he was an expert. Mackenzie went back to the door, took off the chain and opened it all the way.
    “Hi, Daxton. It’s great to meet you.” Her smile was bright and welcoming, as if this was the first time she’d opened the door that night and she hadn’t demanded he show his IDs to her and treated him like a criminal.
    Dax chuckled. Damn, she was charming. She pulled him out of his bad mood easily. “Hey.”
    “Here’s your ID back. Sorry about that.”
    “Don’t be sorry. You have no idea how hot that was.”
    “Uh, what?”
    “Yeah, hot. I see all sorts of shit in my line of work. I love knowing you’re cautious. I just wish more people were like you.”
    “Oh, well, okay.” Mackenzie handed Daxton his Ranger ID.
    “What’d you do with it when you were in there?”
    “Uh…” Mackenzie was unsure if she should tell him. “I don’t know…um…I’ve never dated a cop before.”
    Dax stood there watching Mackenzie with an amused glint in his eye. “Okay.”
    “And I’ve never been in trouble before. I mean, really in trouble. I got detention in high school once, but it wasn’t my fault. Stupid Darci Birchfield decided to pick on one of the guys on the chess team and I told her if she didn’t lay off him she’d answer to me, and she didn’t lay off him, so she answered to me and I got a full week of detention for it. But she never messed with him again. I had to endure Bobby thanking me for the rest of our high school years, and shit, he still sends me a Christmas card every year, but still…it was totally worth it.”
    Daxton leaned against the wall next to the door, loving how fucking cute she was. He crossed his arms over his chest, holding his cowboy hat in one hand, and settled in to listen to Mackenzie babble.
    “Okay, I also got in trouble at work last year for telling one of the other managers to go fuck himself, but that wasn’t my fault either. He was totally harassing one of the lesbian women I work with. Calling her a dyke and shit like that. That’s just not cool. I mean really, in today’s day and age, that crap is totally uncalled for. So I told him off, explaining how a dyke was actually an artificial wall used to regulate water levels, and called a levee here in the States. Okay, I probably also used some other not-so-nice words as well, but he turned around and complained to HR about me , when he was the one being an asshat. I was sent home for a week, paid, while an investigation was conducted, but was called back after only three days because Ginger totally told HR what a dick Peter was and that I’d been defending her, and since everyone in the office backed Ginger, they ended up letting Peter go and not me.”
    Mackenzie paused, biting her lip. Shit. She’d done it again. She tried to finish her thought quickly. “So, I’ve never really been in trouble, or even been around any cops, other than the charity thing each year, so I have no idea what’s legal and what’s not, so I’ll tell you what I did if you promise not to arrest me. I’m claiming ignorance here.”
    “What’d you do, Mackenzie?” Dax asked with no animosity in his voice.
    “I took a picture of your ID and sent it to my brothers and best friend so if I end up dead in a ditch somewhere tonight, they’ll know who it was who took me out. I totally planned on deleting the picture when I got home, though. It’s not like I was gonna put it on the Internet for someone to make a fake ID from or