Thicker Than Water

by Maggie Shayne

  “I’ve suspected it for a long time now, Mom.”

  “Why?”

  Dawn shrugged. “I don’t know. The fact that we look nothing alike. I mean, not even things that should be passed down. And then there were the things you told me about my father. That he was a high school boy who was killed in a car accident before you ever told him you were pregnant. That his family was ultrareligious and telling them about me would only have made them feel worse. That you had no living relatives of your own.” She shrugged. “I just started adding it up. I’ve been trying to work up the courage to come out and ask for a while now.”

  Licking her lips, Julie met her daughter’s eyes. “I didn’t give birth to you. But I was there when you were born. I delivered you, Dawnie. I was the first person to hold you. To feed you. To bathe you. Your…mother…” She had to force the word out. It was not easy to refer to another woman as her daughter’s mother. “She was my best friend.”

  “Was?”

  “She died when you were only a few months old. The last thing she asked me to do was to take care of you.”

  “And you agreed.”

  “It wasn’t even a question, Dawn. I loved you as if you were my own already. I did from the moment you opened your little eyes and looked into mine. Lizzie and I, we used to say you were our baby. Both of ours. That’s how we thought of you.”

  “Her name…was Lizzie?” Dawn smiled through gathering tears.

  Julie nodded. “She was wonderful, Dawn. A wonderful, smart, beautiful woman. She loved you so much.”

  “What was her last name?”

  Lowering her head, Julie sighed. “We never shared last names. We were both runaways, and…last names were something we avoided using at all.”

  “You were runaways?”

  Julie nodded.

  “How old?”

  “I was seventeen. I think she was about the same.”

  Dawn seemed to absorb that slowly, to let it sink in.

  “You look like her,” Julie said. “Sometimes, when I look at you, I think I’m seeing her again.”

  “I wish I’d known her.” Then she shook her head slowly. “God, seventeen. I’ll be seventeen next summer. I can’t even imagine having a baby—much less taking care of someone else’s.”

  “You were never someone else’s,” Julie insisted. “We were like sisters, Lizzie and I. I loved you, Dawn. I would have fought anyone who tried to take you away. No one had to force me to take care of you.”

  Tears welling in her big eyes, Dawn said, “Oh, Mom, how could you think I would feel differently about you because of this?”

  Julie stroked Dawn’s hair, then pulled her closer and held her. “Because I should have told you sooner. Because you had every right to know.”

  Dawn nodded. “You should have told me sooner.” She returned Julie’s fierce hug. “And now that you’ve started, Mom, you have to tell me the rest.”

  Julie stiffened.

  Dawn pulled away and looked her in the eyes. “All of it, Mom. I know there’s more. I know all this has something to do with what’s been going on. And you have to tell me. No matter what it is, it’s about me, and you have to tell me.”

  Julie nodded, wiping tears from her eyes. A car passed them, a dark car with tinted windows, enough like the car Dawn had described following her before that it reminded Julie how exposed they were out here on the roadside. “I’ll tell you all of it, honey.” She put her own car into gear and pulled back onto the road, picking up speed as she went. “But let’s get to that cabin first, okay?”

  “Okay. But as soon as we do…”

  She never finished the sentence. The car that had just passed them slammed on its brakes and spun in a complete circle in the road.

  “Dawnie?”

  “Mom?”

  “Honey, did you tell anyone we were leaving before we left this morning?”

  The black car was speeding back toward them. God, it was going to hit them head-on!

  “Oh, God. I’m sorry, Mom. I did. I e-mailed Kayla. Mom, look out!”

  Julie jerked the wheel to avoid the oncoming car and hit the brakes, but the car skidded out of control. And then Julie lost all sense of direction as her world spun around, to the sounds of crushing metal, shattering glass and her daughter’s scream.

  * * *

  Sean felt a full-body shudder ripple through him for no good reason the instant before his desk phone rang and he grabbed it.

  “Got that number for you, MacKenzie. It came from a diner called Jenny’s, up in the Adirondacks.”

  “Address?”

  “The address will tell you nothing. I got directions instead. Take the thruway to 365 and cut through Rome. From there, take 28 North into the Adirondacks. Start looking once you see Raquette Lake. It’ll be on the right-hand side, on the stretch between Raquette and Blue Mountain Lake. It’s only a twelve-or thirteen-mile stretch. You should be able to locate it.”

  Sean yanked one of the maps from his top drawer. He kept a bunch of them, as most reporters did, just in case he had to cover a story in an area unfamiliar to him. He wrestled the map of the Adirondack Region open and traced the route with his fingertip. “That’s gotta be over a hundred miles,” he said.

  “Yeah. Take you two hours.”

  “The hell it will.” Sean hung up the phone, refolded the map incorrectly and headed outside to his Porsche.

  * * *

  Dawn lifted her head and tried to take stock. Everything hurt. Moving hurt more.

  She pressed a hand to her forehead, hissed and pulled it away again. Blinking, she looked around her. Her lap was full of tiny bits of shattered glass and coated in powder from the deflated air bag. She seemed to be at an odd angle, as if the nose of the car were pointing downward, while the back was up. Her seat belt was the only thing that kept her from falling forward against the dash.

  Then she caught sight of her mom, slumped over the steering wheel, and it all came clear. The car, the wreck. She reached out a hand, touching her mother’s shoulder, shaking her gently. “Mom? Are you okay?”

  Her mother made no reply. Dawn shook her a little harder, realizing that once again her mother had forgotten to buckle up. Her throat closed up tight. “Mom?” There was still no response, and Dawn gently pushed the hair away from her mother’s face, the better to see her. Her head was bleeding.

  God, she was hurt—they needed help. Dawn had to find help. She tore her attention from her mother to look beyond the car. It wasn’t easy to see through the spiderwebbed windshield, but her own side window was completely demolished, probably thanks to the tree limb sticking in through it. The car was nosedown at a sharp angle. Swallowing hard, Dawn tried to open her door, but the tree was blocking it. She looked again at her mother, tried again to rouse her, and battled the tears and panic that were trying hard to take over. Her mom needed help, and there was no one but Dawn to get it for her.

  She freed herself from her seat belt and climbed over the seat, into the back of the car. That door opened without resistance, so she got out, shocked when she took a look around. The car was partway down a steep wooded hillside and could easily have plummeted a lot further if not for the tree that had stopped it. The nose of the car was caved in against the trunk of a giant pine. That tree had probably saved their lives.

  Turning, Dawn looked upward, to where the road must be. It surprised her how far away it was, but she almost sagged in relief when she saw someone standing up there, looking down at them.

  She cried out, waving her arms. “Help! We need help down here!”

  The person—whoever it was—started down the hill, slipping and sliding a lot of the way. As he drew closer, she saw that he was completely bald and dressed all in white. It didn’t take him long to reach her, and only then did Dawn gasp in surprise and relief. Nathan Z himself smiled at her, like an angel sent from heaven to rescue her. It was a reassuring smile meant to offer comfort, and it worked.

  “Thank God you’re all right,�
�� he said. “When I saw the accident, I was afraid…” He looked toward the car. “Your mother?”

  “She’s hurt. Badly. I can’t wake her.”

  He shook his head slowly. “She shouldn’t have jerked the wheel and slammed her brakes like that. All she had to do was pull over.”

  “Please, do you have a cell phone or—”

  “In the car,” he said. “Come on. Hurry.” He took her arm, helped her along as he started back up the hillside.

  “I don’t want to leave her!”

  “We’ll call for help and come right back to her,” he promised. “They’ll want your names and information about your mom, and it’ll be faster if you can give it to them yourself.”

  She looked back toward the car, and the tears flowed this time.

  “Trust me, child. She’s in the hands of spirit. She’ll be all right. As long as we do our part. She needs our help.”

  “Couldn’t you…you know, do something for her. Make sure she’ll be all right until we get back?” She blinked through her tears at the man.

  His lips pressed tightly together, but then he sighed and nodded. He moved closer to the car, wrenched open the driver’s door and put his hands on Julie’s head. Then he tipped his own head back and closed his eyes. “Be well,” he whispered.

  “Please, please, please be okay,” Dawn added.

  Z backed away from the car, closing the door again; then he returned to Dawn. “She’ll be okay. I promise you.”

  Nodding, Dawn believed him. “I promise, Mom, I’ll be right back.” Then, with Z’s help, she made her way back up the hill, using saplings to help pull herself along. “We have to call the police, too,” she told him. “Some maniac ran us off the road.” The same maniac who’d been following her the other day. That same black Jag, with the custom chrome wheels. She’d been so sure she was only being paranoid when she had thought she’d seen the same car earlier that day. There were probably lots of black Jags around. But she should have known.

  The man clambered up the last few steps to the roadside, turned and reached back down for her. “Come on, you’re almost there. Are you sure you’re not hurt?”

  “A little bump on the head. It’s Mom I’m worried about.” She let him take her hand, and he pulled her up easily. Dawn brushed the bark and dirt from her hands, took a single step toward the waiting car, then stopped in her tracks.

  The black Jag sat there, waiting.

  She shot her gaze to Nathan Z, her eyes wide and confused. “It was you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean. Get in the car, Dawn. Sit down and rest, and we’ll place that phone call.” He stood near the passenger door, holding it open for her.

  She hadn’t told him her name! Dawn moved backward, glancing frantically up and down the road, seeing no other traffic, no buildings, no help. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m not getting in that car with you. You’re the one who’s been following me. The one who ran us off the road. I don’t understand. Are you some kind of maniac or what?”

  “Now, Dawn,” Z said softly. “That’s no way to talk to your father.”

  Shock hit her like a tidal wave, and Dawn backed away, shaking her head from side to side. “No. No, you aren’t…”

  Nathan Z calmly pulled a gun from his pocket and pointed it at her. “Get in the car like a good girl. I promise this will all make sense to you once I have the chance to explain.”

  * * *

  Julie felt something stinging her eyes, blinked them open and tried to wipe the sting away. Her hand came away bloody. She lifted her head, blinking her vision into focus, and it all came rushing back. The black car. The accident.

  “Dawn!” She scanned the car but didn’t see her daughter. The back door was open, though. “Dawnie!” Julie wrenched her own door open and clambered out of the car, but the second she put weight on her left foot, it seemed to crumple underneath her, and she landed hard on the ground. Then she sat there, panting against the pain, realizing something was wrong with her foot, or, more precisely, her ankle. She tugged the leg of her jeans up just a little but couldn’t see beyond the cross trainers and ankle socks. Gently, every move causing excruciating pain, she loosened the laces of the shoe and took it off. Then she peeled off the sock. God, it hurt.

  The ankle was swollen to twice its normal size and mottled with deep purple. She closed her eyes and wondered how it had swollen up so fast. That thought made her turn her wrist to look at her watch.

  God! She must have been lying unconscious in the car for more than an hour.

  She looked around as panic set in. “Dawnie! Where are you? Dawn!”

  The only replies to her calls were the sudden flapping movement of startled birds and the echo of her own voice from the steep mountains all around her. Beyond that, there was nothing. A hundred feet above her, she saw the guardrails that marked the side of the road. Much further below her, a little stream meandered, vanishing in thick forest, then appearing again.

  Where the hell was her daughter?

  Swallowing hard, she told herself that Dawn had probably been uninjured. She’d been wearing her seat belt. The air bag had deployed. Julie hadn’t fastened her belt, and her own air bag hadn’t been reset since her last fender bender. Dawn must have been unable to rouse her mother and gone for help. That must be it.

  But deep down, Julie feared something far worse. She’d seen that car, the black car that had run them off the road. The cat that was its hood ornament. A Jaguar. It had to be Mordecai Young. It had to be. He’d promised he would come and take Dawn if Julie didn’t hand her over. What if that was exactly what he had done? Run them off the road, stuck around to survey the damage he’d wrought and then taken Dawn away.

  Julie looked at her watch again. One hour and ten minutes. The bastard had a head start. But she would catch up. No way was he taking her baby from her.

  Julie used the still-open car door to pull herself upright and got back onto the front seat. She found her cell phone on the floor, reached for it and turned it on. And oddly, the only person she could think of to call, besides nine-one-one, was Sean. Even more oddly, there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that he would come just as fast as he could. It wasn’t even a question.

  The phone beeped once, and she looked at the screen. No Signal glowed up at her.

  “Dammit!” She threw the phone down, reminding herself that there were no cell towers permitted within the Adirondack Preserve. Too harmful to the wildlife. Which was why she’d used the pay phone to call her boss in the first place.

  Fine, she would just find a phone. She would find a phone, and she would get help, and then she would track down Mordecai Young. After that, God help him. She might not have felt capable of murder before, but she felt willing and able now. He’d pushed her too far. And if he hurt Dawnie…

  “No. He won’t. He won’t hurt her. She’s his daughter. Why would he hurt her?”

  Julie got out of the car, hitting the trunk release as she did, and then hopping on one foot to the rear. She leaned over, tugging open a suitcase and rummaging through it for something to use to wrap her foot. She would never make it up the hillside if she couldn’t protect it somehow. Settling on several pairs of nylons, she dropped to the ground again, wrapping them around and around her ankle so tightly that she bit her lip until she tasted blood. Layer upon layer, she built a soft but firm nest for the injured ankle, knotted it off and finally got herself upright again. Gingerly she lowered the foot, put some weight on it. Pain shot up her leg, and she cried out.

  “Okay, okay,” she told herself, breathless, dizzy with pain. “Just think.” She looked around her and spotted a tree limb lying on the ground. It was as tall as she was and a couple of inches in diameter. After hopping over to it, she picked it up. It was solid.

  Good. She nodded firmly and turned to face the steep climb. “This is going to hurt like hell, Jones,” she told herself, using Sean’s name for her without bothering to analyze why. “But losing Dawn would hu
rt a lot more. Remember that.” Grating her teeth, she started forward, distracting herself from the pain by trying to recall the last inhabited building they’d passed on the way up here. Sadly, the last one she remembered was the diner. It had to be at least a few miles back.

  Halfway up the hill, she stepped down onto a rock that slid out from under her injured foot, twisting the ankle so hard she screamed in agony. The sound echoed around her, and then dizziness closed in. She clung to the hillside, fighting to stay conscious. She wouldn’t give in to the pain. She couldn’t. Drumming up every bit of strength, she forced herself to push on, growling with the effort, with the determination, like a mother lion in defense of a cub. Inch by blindingly painful inch, she clawed her way up that hillside, and finally she half climbed, half fell over the broken guardrails onto the road’s grassy shoulder. She lay there for a moment, waiting for the pain to ebb, waiting for the strength to return, for her heart to stop pounding and her lungs to catch up with her body’s demands for oxygen.

  The pain didn’t ebb, and her heart didn’t slow, and she didn’t catch her breath. Precious minutes were ticking by. She clutched her makeshift crutch in her hand, pushed herself upright with it and started limping back toward the diner.

  * * *

  “Where are you taking me?” Dawn asked softly.

  Z had a way of looking at her that gave her the absolute creeps. It was almost…adoring. But he was a stranger to her. He had no business looking at her that way.

  “To one of my houses,” he said. “You’re going to love it there, honey. It’s a mansion, really. Pool, hot tub, we even have our own lake.” He reached across the car as if to stroke her hair, but Dawn ducked away from his touch.

  He let his hand hang in the air for a moment, his eyes looking wounded. “You’re not even giving me a chance.”

  “A chance to do what? I don’t even know you.”

  “A chance,” he said, his voice soft, “to be your father. I am, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know. I don’t know any such thing.” She lowered her head. “You used to be…one of my heroes. Now you’re nothing. Less than nothing.”