Thicker Than Water

by Maggie Shayne

  “Anytime, Lieutenant.”

  Julie swallowed hard and hurried past them while the cop’s back was still facing her, ducking into her own office and quietly closing the door before she could be seen. “Thank you, Ms. Marcum,” she said into the telephone. “I appreciate your help with this.”

  “No problem. Be sure to call if there’s anything else I can do.” The woman hung up, and Julie hit the cutoff button on her cell and dropped it into her bag. Then she turned to open her door just enough to peer outside, so she could watch Lieutenant Jackson heading back down the hall.

  The last thing she felt like doing was talking to that cop today. The woman was dangerous, because she had something to prove. She was one of the few women to have achieved the rank and status she had with the Syracuse Police Department. She had to solve cases, make arrests, come off as being as tough and efficient as any of the male detectives, if not more so, in order to keep the approval of her superiors, and she had to do even better than that to earn the respect of the men and women who served under her.

  And besides all of that, she was beautiful. It might serve as a detriment to her on the job, but it had certainly earned her some notice from MacKenzie.

  The man in question had come out of his office, and he now stood there in the hallway, watching the woman as she walked away, apparently mesmerized by the sway of her hips. Julie looked at him, eyes narrowing; then she looked down the hall at Cassie Jackson again, trying to see her this time through MacKenzie’s eyes.

  She was beautiful, yes. She also exuded sex appeal like a scent. It wasn’t intentional, Julie thought. She didn’t dress provocatively or flirt, or toss her hair or wear a lot of makeup. No, she did the opposite, in fact. She dressed down, starched button-down shirts and shapeless pants and blazers. She kept her hair in buns or ponytails, and wore barely any makeup at all.

  She would appeal to a man like Sean MacKenzie, though. Cassie Jackson was sexy, smart, independent and tough as nails. What was not to like? If she were a man, Julie thought, she would date the woman herself. How could MacKenzie help but be attracted to her?

  A woman like Jackson was smart enough to know that, and to use it to her advantage. She could probably get any information she wanted out of MacKenzie, including the fact that he had no idea whatsoever what time Julie had arrived at the hotel that night. No, that was wrong. He did have some idea.

  What if he’d talked to Lieutenant Jackson? He never took his eyes off the woman as she left. If he hadn’t spilled his guts yet, Julie worried that he would very soon.

  She closed her eyes and her office door at the same time. He’d offered to help her. And while she hadn’t exactly thrown his offer back in his face, she hadn’t taken him up on it, either. God, what the hell had she been thinking?

  She lowered her forehead against the cool surface of her office door. Someone knocked on the other side, and she jerked her head up fast, then stepped back and opened it.

  Sean MacKenzie stood there, looked her up and down, and frowned. She looked like hell, and she knew it. “They’re waiting for us in the newsroom.”

  She nodded, turning her back and wishing for a makeup mirror. “I’ll be there in a sec.”

  “Didn’t sleep, huh?” He came in, closed the door behind him.

  “Not a lot, no.”

  “Worry will do that to you.”

  She paced across the office. “Why didn’t you come into the house when you came back by this morning?” she asked him. When he only frowned, she went on. “I saw your car go by around six-thirty.”

  “Oh. Um. Yeah. Well, I didn’t want to wake you.” He rubbed the back of his neck, and she noticed how tired he looked—almost as if he hadn’t slept any more than she had. It occurred to her that she’d never actually seen his car leave last night. She’d only assumed, when she saw it pulling slowly away this morning, that he had left and come back, maybe just to check on them. But now she wondered.

  “Sean, did you spend the night in your car?” She knew by the look on his face that he had. “You did. You slept in your car outside our house all night.”

  He looked at the floor. “Guilty,” he said. “I was afraid Dawn’s stalker might come back.”

  She blinked in stark disbelief. He’d posted himself outside her house like a guard on duty. Sean MacKenzie, the antihero, had stayed up all night to protect her daughter. My God.

  She licked her lips, unsure just what the hell to say to such a startling revelation. “I want to talk to you, Sean. But…later.”

  “Yeah?” He lifted his brows. “You finally decide to let me help you, Jones?”

  She pursed her lips, lowered her head. “I don’t see that I have much choice.”

  When she looked up again, he was frowning. “You sound like you’re agreeing to make a deal with the devil.”

  “Isn’t that what I am doing?”

  He smiled a little. “Quit with the flattery, would you?”

  She swallowed hard. “We’ll talk later.”

  “One thing you should know first, Jones. When we both arrived at the Armory Square Hotel that night, at the same time, you took the stairs and I took the elevator.”

  She frowned at him. “Why did I do that?”

  “Because you usually take the stairs. I’m not sure why, but my guess is that it has something to do with keeping your butt as cute as it is now.”

  She blinked in confusion.

  “And because Jax has the elevator surveillance tapes that show me going up alone.”

  The light dawned. “Oh.” She lifted her brows. “You…you told her all that, just now?”

  “Only because she asked nicely.”

  Julie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Now her nemesis and arch enemy had joined her daughter in lying to the police to protect her. When had the world tilted off its axis?

  “We’ll talk more later,” he said. “At lunch, all right?”

  “All right.”

  “For now, let’s get to work. And try to wipe the shocked expression off your face, Jones. It’s downright insulting. It’s as if you’ve never seen me do anything nice before.”

  He turned and left her office. And Julie stood there, stunned to her toes. Sean MacKenzie had spent the night in his car, watching over her and Dawn. He had lied on the air, making himself her alibi in front of the entire viewing audience, and then he had lied to a lady cop who looked like a swimsuit model.

  He was either up to something—or he was not the man she’d always believed him to be. Or maybe the guilt he’d been bearing in the years since he’d witnessed the raid on the Young Believers was far, far heavier a burden than she had realized.

  That had to be it. But that MacKenzie was capable of remorse that ran this deep, of hiding it so well and for so long, of being willing to help even his worst enemy to make reparations…those were revelations she had never expected.

  * * *

  Sean knew damn well that the last thing Julie Jones wanted to do was trust him with her secrets. It seemed the morning dragged on forever, and he felt both nervous and disgusted with himself for feeling that way.

  But finally he and Jones were sitting in a secluded booth at a diner around the corner from the station. She was on the edge of her seat, folding her napkin into an accordion while the waitress poured their coffee, took their sandwich orders and got out of the way. And still she said nothing.

  “Well?”

  She looked up at him, blinking. “I don’t want to need your help, Sean,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes. “But I guess I do.”

  He nodded, watching her, weighing her every expression, every breath. She’d called him “Sean.” He didn’t think he remembered her ever calling him that. “I want something in return, Jones. I’m not gonna help you if you won’t return the favor.”

  She lifted her eyes to his, waited.

  “You have to tell me about the compound. What it was like there. How you survived. Who else made it out.”

  She licked her l
ips. “I ran away just before the raid. It was dumb luck.”

  She was lying. She didn’t lie well, or maybe she did, but not to him. He could see through her like a freshly washed windowpane. “Then there’s no reason to believe there could have been other survivors?”

  She shook her head firmly, side to side. Then stopped. “No reason, aside from that anonymous telephone call. We have to find out if Mordecai Young somehow got out alive,” she told him. “That’s the main thing.”

  He nodded. “Then it makes some kind of sense to you that he would come after you and Dawn?”

  She blinked in surprise. “We survived the raid. That would be reason enough.”

  We survived. He frowned at her. “We? So you’re admitting Dawn was there with you?”

  She closed her eyes, bit her lip, and he knew she was wishing she could take the words back. But it was too late. “Yes. She was there with me.”

  “She was born there, wasn’t she?”

  “That’s got nothing to do with any of this.” Jones had picked up another napkin and was folding it into a paper hat this time, her hands unsteady. “The point is, the authorities think Mordecai Young died in that fire. If he’s alive and they find out, he’ll be arrested and prosecuted for what he did.”

  He watched her hands, mesmerized by them. The quick, jerky motions. She was pouring her nerves into her hands and into the napkin, so they wouldn’t show on her face or in her voice.

  “So your theory is that he’s been alive all this time but is only coming after you now?”

  She nodded.

  “Why would he wait so long?”

  “Maybe he didn’t know I was alive until now.”

  “And he wants to silence you.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Harry Blackwood knew you and Dawn were there, didn’t he? He was blackmailing you. That’s why you were at the hotel the night he was killed.”

  She stopped folding. Her eyes shot to Sean’s, and she seemed to give his words careful thought before finally nodding. “Yes, but I didn’t kill him.”

  “I know that, Jones.”

  She sighed, lowering her head.

  “You think it was Young, don’t you? That he murdered your blackmailer and planted the weapon in your house to frame you for the crime.” Again she nodded. “It doesn’t make any sense, Jones,” Sean said.

  “Why not? If I’m in prison for murder, I won’t be any threat to him.”

  “You could testify just as easily from inside a prison cell as you could from anywhere else.”

  “But I’d have a lot less credibility as a convicted murderer.”

  He didn’t agree with her, but he didn’t press it. She wasn’t telling him everything. It was that simple. This would all make sense, but only when he had all the pieces.

  “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.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  She 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 birthday. 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?”