Thicker Than Water (21 page)

“The first thing is to find out if he's alive,” Julie said. “That's all I need you to help me do. That's all.”

He nodded. She wanted him to help her, but she wasn't willing to give him the whole truth, and that would make it more difficult. “Jones, there's more. I know there's more. How long were you there?”

“Eleven months, two weeks and three days,” she whispered, almost involuntarily, her voice sounding haunted. Her hand crushed the napkin into a tiny ball, and then she dropped it. Swallowing hard, she slid her hand across the table, covering his with it. He almost fell out of his seat, he was so surprised by that. She was touching him. Holding his hand, for the love of Christ!

“I need your help, Sean. Please, don't press this. Just help me find out if he could still be alive.”

Her hand was warm, her eyes, soft and pleading. And even though he knew it was all just an act, he nodded. “Sure. I'll help.” He cursed himself and all his sex for being so easily influenced by big brown eyes and feminine pleas. He was a sap.

No, he wasn't. Because he
would
find out the rest. All of it.

She nodded. “Thank you, Sean.”

The waitress brought their sandwiches, and Jones dug into hers. They didn't discuss the case anymore. Sean had a theory, though, percolating in his mind. If she'd been there as long as she said, then Dawn had not only been born on the compound but conceived there, as well. Which meant someone else in the compound had to have fathered her.

What if it wasn't Julie this guy was after at all? What if was Dawn?

* * *

Julie returned from lunch feeling good about the way things had gone with MacKenzie. She thought she'd won him over—that he would continue to take her side over Lieutenant Jackson's. He had to, to ease his guilt. It was lousy of her to use that knowledge to manipulate him, but she had only done what she had to do to protect Dawn.

And she'd done it without giving away too much information. If anyone could find out the truth about Mordecai Young's fate, it would be Sean MacKenzie.

Now if she could only keep him from finding out the rest in the process.

She and Sean parted in the hall, and she headed for her own office, then paused at the large manila envelope that was in the mail bin on the outside of her door.

Frowning, she picked it up, went into the office and, after closing the door behind her, tore it open.

Two tiny newspaper clippings were all the large envelope contained. Julie shivered a little as she realized they were obituaries, each one including a black-and-white photo of a vaguely familiar female face.

Teresa Sinclair. Sharon Beckwith. The names were different, but the faces…

She looked closer, and the information clicked into place. When it did, she dropped the entire package from suddenly numb fingers. Tessa and Sirona. They were dead. Both of them!

“Oh, God, oh God, no…”

Julie bit her lip until she tasted blood and ordered herself to calm down. Take a breath. She didn't have time to panic. Dawn didn't need her panic-stricken, but strong and capable and sharp.

She took a couple of breaths, forced herself to pick up the envelope and clippings, and to read the obituaries carefully. Neither of them listed the cause of death, just the polite rendering of the victim's age and surviving family members. They'd died only a couple of days apart, both within the last two weeks. One in Rochester, one in Albany. Sirona had left children behind, for God's sake.

She thought of Dawnie, waking one morning to find her mother dead.

She thought of herself, waking one morning to find her mother dead.

Tears burned paths down her face.

“Stop it, goddammit. Think.”

Blinking her eyes clear again, if not entirely dry, she turned
the envelope over. It was addressed to her here at the office. It was marked Private. And it was postmarked…

“Cazenovia,” she whispered.

Jesus, it had been mailed from her own town.

S
he had to go home. She had to get to the bottom of this. Find out how they'd died and who the hell had sent her this envelope, and she didn't want to do it from here. Not with MacKenzie watching her every move and suffering from this hero-delusion, all just to ease his own guilty conscience.

Cramming the clippings into a pocket, she hurried out to her car and drove home. There were still twenty minutes before she had to pick up Dawn from school. Close enough so anyone who noticed her absence would assume that was where she had gone. She went into her house, up to her bedroom and into the closet. It took her a few minutes to find the false board in the back. She hadn't needed to open it in a very long time. Not since she and Dawn had moved into this place. She took the metal security box out and turned the combination padlock to the four numbers of Dawn's birth
day. Then she opened the box and removed the tiny address book from inside.

Her eyes strayed to the photographs in the bottom of the box. Their edges were starting to curl and yellow. They'd been tucked into the pockets of one of Mordecai's duffel bags full of ill-gotten cash. Somehow Julie hadn't been able to make herself throw them away.

The best friend she'd ever had in her life, Lizzie, smiled up at her from the bed where she'd just given birth. Her blond hair was untidy and her striking blue eyes damp. She was holding her baby daughter cradled in her pale arms. Julie remembered when Mordecai had snapped that photo. It had been only a short time after Julie had helped Lizzie through the delivery, as soon as she'd cleaned everyone up and changed the bedding. God, Lizzie had been so happy.

But the image in the photo was replaced by another in Julie's mind. The memory of Lizzie lying limp on the basement floor while the house burned down around them. The blood that stained her clothes, and the way she'd used the last of her strength to push her most precious possession into Julie's arms and to mutter a barely coherent plea.

Julie blinked out of the memory and moved the photo aside. Beneath it were two others. Sirona, with her olive skin and black eyes. Tessa, the green-eyed redhead.

Julie lowered the lid of the metal box, clinging to the address book. They couldn't exchange addresses before they had gone their separate ways, because those were apt to change. So they'd only shared the names they would use and the cities in which they would stay, promising to keep their numbers listed. They'd made a pact, back then, three teenage girls scared to death of being found out, never to contact
each other again unless it was absolutely necessary. It was necessary now.

Hands trembling, Julie checked the clock. Fifteen minutes until she had to pick Dawn up from school. She flipped open the book. Tessa had been planning to go by Teresa Smith and to live in Rochester. Sirona was using the name Sharon Brown and living in Albany. They'd all agreed to keep their numbers listed under the names they had chosen, even if they were to marry or change them. Just so they would be able to get in touch.

Julie dialed Information and asked for both listings, scribbling the numbers and the date in her little book. Then she dialed the first number.

“Hello?”

“Hello. I'm calling for Teresa Smith. Is she there?” She closed her eyes, praying Tessa would come to the telephone, that the woman in the obituary hadn't been her at all.

There was a pause. Then, “Do you mean Teresa Sinclair?”

Her throat went dry. “It was Smith when I knew her.”

“Yes, that was her maiden name.” The woman on the other end cleared her throat. “Who's calling?”

Julie sighed, swallowed her fear. “I'm an old friend of hers. I actually knew her when we were both in our teens. My name is Julie.”

“I'm sorry, Miss. Teresa…is—she's passed away.”

Julie felt her heart sink. “I'm sorry,” she said, but her throat had closed tight, and the words emerged in a coarse whisper. Her eyes welled. She cleared her throat forcibly, willed words to emerge again. “I know I shouldn't ask, but…can you tell me what happened to her?”

The voice of the woman on the other end sounded equally
taut when it delivered the one-word reply. “No.” Then the connection was broken.

Closing her eyes, fearing with everything in her what she would find, she dialed the second number, the one listed under Sharon Brown, but she held little hope that the dead woman, Sharon Beckwith, was anyone other than her own Sirona.

“Beckwith residence,” a voice said.

Julie didn't bother speaking. The greeting confirmed what she'd already known, sensed. Sirona aka Sharon Brown, had been living as Sharon Beckwith. And she was dead. She wouldn't offend this family by asking questions. Leave them in peace. She hung up the phone.

For a long moment she sat on the bed, her head lowered, her chest feeling hollow, as if her heart had been removed. Sirona and Tessa. They hadn't been close at the compound, but during those hours of hell, they'd shared something powerful, something that bonded them more closely than sisters. Together they'd seen Lizzie die. Together they'd rescued her tiny daughter from the flames. Together they'd descended into darkness and emerged into the rising sun.

That was when they'd chosen the baby's new name, the three of them. Dawn.

They'd hidden out together in a warm, hay-scented barn. Sirona had sneaked away for a few hours and then come back with some clothes she said she'd stolen from an unattended dryer in a nearby town's only Laundromat. They cleaned up as best they could, divided up the money, bought some bottles and formula for the baby, and bus tickets for themselves.

There had been tears and fierce embraces when they'd said goodbye at the station. Julie had missed those two
women to the point of pain, as much as she'd missed her own mother. The only person she'd grieved more deeply had been Lizzie.

She had never ever trusted anyone else with the truth about Dawn. She never would.

Lowering her head, Julie whispered a prayer for the two women who had become her sisters. Then she opened her eyes and told herself she didn't have time for emotions and sentiment. She had to find out what had happened to them.

She would just have to find another source for the information. It shouldn't be too difficult for a reporter. She reached for the telephone again but stopped when she noticed the glowing numbers on the digital alarm clock beside her bed. Time to pick up Dawn. This would have to wait.

She went into the bathroom to rinse the tear tracks from her face with cold water. Then she went to pick up her daughter and hoped Dawn wouldn't see that her mother was in mourning.

* * *

“Hey, Jones, where you been?” MacKenzie asked when she walked into the studio. He was sitting in the dark, at the news desk, mentally rehearsing for the evening broadcast, just over a half hour from now. The place was abandoned, though soon it would be bustling.

“I just picked up my kid.”

“That I know. I was munching snacks with her in the green room while you were holed up in your office for the past hour.”

She shrugged. “Since when am I not allowed to spend some quality time in my office chasing down a few leads?”

“Leads on what?”

“Nothing I'm ready to talk about with you.”

“I thought we were partners?” He gave her his most innocent expression.

She only shrugged.

There was something going on with her. He could see it. And if he wasn't mistaken, and he didn't think he was, she'd been crying recently. “Is everything okay?” he asked. Dawn had seemed fine, but Jones looked as if she'd been hit with a brick.

“Fine.” She slid into her own chair, pulled open the drawer hidden on her side of the desk and set up the small round mirror. She flipped a switch, and the mirror lit up. Then she reached for the makeup she kept with it.

MacKenzie was still watching her, still searching her face for clues. She sighed, looking up from the mirror, a compact at the ready in her hands.

“Do I have spinach in my teeth or what?”

“You look like a nervous breakdown waiting to happen, Jones.”

“Gee, thanks. You sure do know how to charm a girl.”

“Only girls who are willing to be charmed, which excludes you entirely. Give me that thing.” He snatched the compact from her hands, flipped it open and removed the soft circular pad.

“What are you doing?”

“Aw, come on. I let you do me. Now you have to let me do you.” He gave her an evil wink and was pleased when her lips pulled into an unwilling smile even as she shook her head in disapproval.

“You are a master of subtlety, MacKenzie.”

“Close your eyes, Jones.”

She closed her eyes and leaned slightly forward. Sean rubbed the little pad around on the hard surface of the pressed powder, then touched her face with it, brushing it over the slightly reddened areas around and beneath her eyes. He smoothed it over her too-pale cheeks, then dropped the pad back into the compact and closed it.

She was still sitting there, still leaning forward, eyes closed. As if waiting to be kissed, he thought, and then he thought how funny it would be if he did that. Kissed her.

But instead of laughter, he felt something else bubbling up inside him as that idea crossed his mind. Something hot and really uncomfortable. And he realized he would
like
kissing Julie Jones. He would like it quite a lot. In fact, once born, the idea didn't seem willing to go away.

“Are you done?”

“I haven't decided.”

She opened her eyes. “I have. You're done.” She turned back to the mirror, reaching for tubes and pencils and brushes, wielding them as if she had eight arms instead of two.

“We got an interview with Nathan Z, you know.” He only said it to change the subject.

“I didn't even know that was in the works.”

“Yeah, well, you've been a little…distracted.”

Sighing, pausing with a lipstick in her hand, she looked his way. “I know I have. I'm sorry about that, MacKenzie.”

“Hell, it's not your fault. Any red-blooded woman would be distracted with a gorgeous partner like me around all the time. It's really no wonder you can't focus on your work.”

She smiled slightly. “Yeah, that must be it.”

“Of course that's it. You're not the first female to fall victim to my allure.”

“Nor the last, I'll bet.”

He sent her a wink. “Maybe. If you play your cards right.”

She actually laughed, then, a soft, less-than-full-body chuckle, but still…“Better get a shovel. The bullshit's getting pretty deep in here.”

He grinned at her. “Allan's setting up an appointment for the interview tomorrow or the day after. Z's people had his press kit sent over today so we'd have plenty of background.”

“Yeah? Anything interesting?”

“A signed copy of his new book.” He reached for it and slid it across the desk to her. It was a hardcover volume with a starry night dust jacket and the words
Messages From God
by Nathan Z splashed across the top.

“I thought Dawn might like it,” Sean said. “Just wanted to check with you first.”

“She'll love it. What did he write?”

“I haven't looked. Doesn't matter, Dawn's gonna love this even more.” Sean dipped into a pocket and brought out four paper rectangles, holding them up in a fan pattern. “Four tickets to a taping of his show. Right here in the city. Tonight. Dawn can bring a friend. You up for it?”

Julie swallowed hard. “I don't know.”

“Come on, it'll get your mind off things. Besides, we'll be more prepared to interview him if we get to see him in action.”

“I suppose that's true. It's just with so much else going on, I don't think I can possibly…” She turned the book over, and stopped talking. Her eyes seemed to narrow, her brows drew together.

Sean glanced at her. “What?”

“Nothing. I…I changed my mind. Let's go to that taping tonight.”

“Great. I'm gonna tell Dawn before we go on the air. Is she still in the green room?”

Julie nodded, and Sean hurried out of the studio, calling. “Back in five.”

* * *

The studio was empty now. Dark, with the hot stage lights turned off. Cameras stood like space-age robots, heads nodding in temporary slumber. Cables snaked over the floor in every possible direction.

Julie thought she heard movement behind her. She came out of her seat so sharply she almost lost her balance. She saw nothing in the shadowy room. And yet she felt something. Something dark. She shivered, rubbed her arms. She was just letting all this go to her head. That was all.

Swallowing hard, she returned her attention to the book on the news desk and the author photo on the back of the jacket that had so captivated her. No wonder. The man was striking, but it wasn't as if she hadn't seen him before, on his television show the few times she'd glanced at it while Dawn was watching. He kept his head cleanly shaved, and he had the most penetrating brown eyes. But it was none of those things that had caught her attention. It was the knowing smile he wore. There was something about it that made her mind itch.