The Literary Works of
Mary Carroll McKenzie
Legacy Of Lies
Book 1 of the Rhodes Legacy Series
by Mary Carroll McKenzie
Zara stared at the ancient microfilm machine at the local records office. The handsome clerk had raised an eyebrow when she asked for adoption records from two decades ago, but her student ID and a flirty smile had eventually won the clerk over. Now, she was scrolling through old legal notices and financial statements, her eyes scanning the text for anything that stood out.
Suddenly she stopped and stared. She couldn't believe what she was seeing! She read it three times to be sure.
She jotted down the details in her notebook, her heart pounding with excitement. This might be the missing link! The more she learned, the more she felt she was on the cusp of discovering something huge.
A sudden beep from her phone startled her. She glanced at the screen: Unknown Number. Zara hesitated before picking up. “Hello?” Silence on the other end at first. Then a voice, low and distorted, as though run through a filter: “Stop looking. You don’t know what you’re getting into.” Zara’s breath caught. “Who is this?”
“Someone who doesn’t want to see you hurt.” A pause. “Walk away from this case before it’s too late.” The line went dead. Zara sat there, her heart pounding against the walls of her chest like a jack hammer. Her first instinct was fear, but the more she thought about it, anger flared. Who did they think they were, telling her what to do? She refused to be intimidated. With renewed determination, she turned back to the microfilm. Now she had a new reason to dig deeper.
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The caller hung up, her hand shaking. She’d done it—she’d warned Zara. The phone felt like a lead weight in her palm. She didn’t dare say more, didn’t dare let her real voice be heard. But maybe, just maybe, it would be enough to scare her away from the case. Yet deep down, somehow she knew better. She set the phone aside, tears stinging her eyes. She prayed Zara would heed the warning. Prayed it wouldn’t all come crashing down. But she feared it was already too late.
Line of Duty
Book 2 of the Rhodes Legacy Series
by Mary Carroll McKenzie
Zara wasn’t late, but she felt like she was. The whole day had started off strange—dark clouds rolling in like a warning, traffic slower than usual, her favorite coffee shop had even been out of oat milk. She’d just finished a meeting with two junior agents about internal review protocols. One of them, Valerie Grant, had texted her halfway through: "You’re gonna owe me coffee for sitting through this snoozefest."
Valerie had always been the cheerful type—not bubbly, but sharp with her humor, always two steps ahead on intel reports. They weren’t best friends, but they were real ones. The kind you trusted.
Now, as Zara stepped off the elevator into the underground garage, she spotted Valerie waiting near her SUV, holding a file folder in her hand like a trophy. “There she is!” Valerie called out, grinning. “I rescued your handwritten notes before Jenkins could walk off with them like a raccoon with a sandwich. You seriously still take notes on paper?” Zara walked toward her, coffee in one hand, phone in the other. “Old habits. They don’t get hacked that way.”
Zara was five steps away when the ground lurched. There was no warning. Just a flicker—a shudder in the air, a metallic hum—and then the world erupted. A pulse of white-hot force slammed into her chest, hurling her backward. A car horn wailed in the distance as shrapnel scattered like confetti through chaos and pressure knocked her sideways.
One second, Zara was walking. The next, she was flying—coffee spilling, file folder sailing out of Valerie’s hand like a kite without a string. Zara hit the ground with bone-jarring force, pain shooting up her arm. A scream caught in her throat, tangled in smoke and dust. It took a full ten seconds before she could even move.
The SUV was basically gone. What was left of it burned silently. A blackened crater. Shrapnel embedded in the concrete wall beside her. And Valerie— Zara pushed herself to her knees, throat raw, eyes wide. “Val?” she croaked. "Val?" No answer. The explosion hadn’t just hit the SUV. It had vaporized the space around it. And the person beside it.