She went stiff in her chair. “If they alarm him…”
“I know. I mentioned that. She assures me they’ll be under instructions to use unmarked cars and to do very careful drive-by recon. Nothing that might tip him off.”
She pursed her lips. “What about when they figure out where he is? What then?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sean, he won’t give her up without a fight. My God, it could turn into the raid on the Young Believers all over again.”
He licked his lips. “Don’t think I haven’t thought of that.”
“I want that list. I want to find out where he is before they do.”
He nodded slowly. “I asked for it, but Jax wouldn’t budge. I could go over there, try to lift a copy.”
“And get yourself arrested.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time.”
She pursed her lips. “I don’t know. I have to think.” Leaning down, she picked up her crutches, got to her feet. “Let’s go talk to Rodney, then we’ll head into the newsroom, work from there.”
“You need some sleep.”
“I need my daughter.”
He bit his lip, nodded. “Okay. However you want to do it. You’re calling the shots on this.” He got to his feet, leaving his food barely touched, and headed for the front door ahead of her. Taking her jacket from the coatrack, he draped it over her shoulders, then opened the door for her.
“Bring the cordless phone. My cell’s still in the car.”
“It’ll ring that far from the base?”
“Halfway. Leave it at the edge of the lawn. We’ll hear it if it rings.”
He nodded and went back in for the phone, giving her a head start. Not that it mattered. She moved at the speed of a tortoise, she thought. Still, she was nearly at Rodney’s front stoop by the time he caught up. She could see the old man, sitting there on his screened-in front porch, in his wicker rocking chair. Odd, this late in the fall. It was chilly enough that he had to wear a jacket. His back was toward her, but she could hear him clearly as she drew near. Being hard of hearing himself, Rodney tended to speak more loudly than was necessary.
“I told you everything I know,” he was saying into the telephone. “Julie is home now. She’s with that MacKenzie fellow.”
Julie stopped in her tracks, frowning. She felt Sean come up beside her and sent him a quelling look. He went silent and listened.
“No, her injuries aren’t serious enough to stop her. She’s on crutches. Left ankle’s all wrapped. And she must have hit her head, too. It’s been patched up.”
Sean looked down at Julie, his brows drawn together.
“Lieutenant Cassandra Jackson, she’s the one in charge,” he said. “Yes. Yes, I’ll call you the second anyone makes a move. I will stay by the phone. Call me back as soon as you know what I should do next.”
Nodding at something the other person said, he lowered the telephone into its cradle. Julie sent Sean a look, then started forward. He dashed ahead of her up the two steps, opened the porch’s screen door and held it for her. At the creak of its hinges, Rodney swung his head around fast, then surged to his feet, looking guilty as hell.
“Rodney,” Julie said slowly. “I hope to God that conversation wasn’t what it sounded like. Because it sounded as if you were keeping someone informed of my every move. And I can only think of one person who’d be interested in that kind of information.”
Rodney blinked. “I don’t under—”
“Dawnie’s kidnapper,” she said. “Are you working for him, Rodney? Have you been keeping him apprised of our situation this whole time?”
The old man’s brows shot upward, and his jaw dropped.
“Don’t look so wounded!” she shouted. “It’s obvious you’ve been reporting to someone. Who the hell else could it be?”
Rodney licked his lips and shot a look toward Sean as if seeking assistance, but Sean only returned a firm, steady stare. “Tell us, Rodney. Tell us the truth.”
Sighing as if from the very depths of his being, Rodney nodded. “Yes, I suppose it’s time. You’re not going to like it, Julie. But…well, maybe you’d better sit down.”
“I’m not sitting, and this isn’t going to be a long conversation. If you know where my baby is, just tell me. Just tell me, for the love of God!”
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know where she is, child. Lordy, if I did, I’d be on my way there myself. I might know, though. In a little while.” He glanced at the telephone. “When he calls back.”
“When who calls back?” Sean asked, his voice so sharp it was almost frightening.
Rodney said, “Sit down, listen, and I’ll tell you.”
“Rodney…” Julie began.
He sighed. “Fine. Fine, I’ll just blurt it out, though this isn’t the way I would have preferred to tell you. Julie, the man on the phone just now—it was Larry Jordan. It was your father.”
He didn’t need to tell her to sit down again. Her one good leg dissolved, and she was just lucky Sean was close enough to catch her as she lost her balance and began going over backward. He gripped her around the waist, then took the crutches away. He leaned them against the wall, then helped her to a chair and lowered her into it, taking another one close beside her.
“I think you’d better explain yourself,” Sean said. He was looking at Jones, his expression worried, searching. “Julie told me her father went to prison for murdering her mother.”
“She told you the truth,” Rodney said. “And there he’ll remain, most likely for the rest of his days. But he’s not the same man he was when he did what he did. I can attest to that. He’s changed.”
Julie dragged her eyes upward to focus on his pale blue ones. “I don’t give a damn how much he’s changed,” she whispered. “But I would like to know just how you know so much about him, and why the hell you’re keeping him posted on my life.”
Rodney licked his lips. “I was his cell mate for twelve years, Julie.”
She blinked, stunned. “You were in prison?”
Rodney nodded. “Armed robbery. I did twenty-two years. Every last day of my sentence. For the last twelve, Larry and I were cell mates. More than that, we were friends. He saved my life once, when I got on the wrong side of a thug with a shiv. I owed him and swore I’d pay him back one day. He called me on it when I was about to be released. Asked me to find his little girl, to watch over her the way he would do if he were able, and to let him know, sometimes, how she was doing.”
Sean licked his lips, looked at Julie. She sat there, trembling all over. “How dare he ask about me? How dare you tell him anything about my life? About my daughter? He killed my mother!”
“I know. And it haunts him. He makes no excuses. The man was a drunk—a mean drunk—and he knows it. He knows he deserves the time he’s doing. He knows you have every reason to hate him forever, and he doesn’t expect any less. But, Julie, that’s between you and him. What’s between him and me is that he saved my life. I owed him. I used every cent I could get my hands on to pay a private eye to help me track you down.”
“So you found me, and then you moved in next door and pretended to be my friend?”
He shook his head. “Pretended? Now, you know better. You’re angry and overwhelmed and worried, and I don’t blame you. But you know better, Julie. I love you and that girl of yours as if you were my very own. You know that.” Tears welled in his eyes.
She was furious. She wanted to lash out at him, to rage at him. But she couldn’t. Sniffling, she said, “We loved you, too, Rodney. And we trusted you. But you betrayed us.”
He lowered his head. “I gave my word. The man is paying for his crime, Julie. His heart is broken. And you can’t possibly hate him for what he did as much as he hates himself.”
“Don’t even think of asking me to forgive him.”
He shook his head slowly. “I wasn’t. He knows that’s never going to happen.”
Sean placed a hand on Julie’s shoulder
, quieting her for a moment. “Rodney, when we came in, you said you might know where Dawnie is when someone called you back. How is that possible?”
He nodded rapidly. “Yes, yes, that. Well, you told me it was Mordecai Young who took Dawnie. And of course you know every one of his associates didn’t burn with him in that raid wound up in prison. Turns out one of them, a fellow by the name of Gray, was the no-account who called himself Young’s lawyer back then. He was taking a portion of the drug money for his services and covering Young’s ass in court. For a while, anyway. He’s in Attica. Same prison where I was. Same prison where Larry still is.”
Sean blinked, sending Julie a look that told her this was Very Good News. But before she could search his eyes for clarification, he was focused on Rodney again. “So he’s going to question Gray?”
Rodney licked his lips. “If Gray knows anything, he’ll give it up. Larry’s been in that prison a long time. He’s respected, has a lot of men loyal to him. Gray will talk.”
“And then he’s going to call you back? Are you sure? Isn’t his phone time limited?”
“He said he’d bribe a guard. It’s not all that tough to arrange. If he can’t get out, he’ll pay someone else to use his own phone time to get a message to us.”
“How long do you think it’ll take?”
Before Sean finished the question, the telephone rang.
“Not long,” Rodney said. “Not long at all.”
* * *
The map lay unfolded on the seat beside her, held open by an English Eleven textbook and an attendance folder, illuminated only by the dashboard lights. Ms. Marcum ran a finger along the narrow twisting line as she maneuvered the car over the road it represented, her eyes darting between the two. She’d heard all about this place from Mordecai, over and over and over again. But she’d never been there, outside of the lush, vivid descriptions he had painted in her mind’s eye with his words. And she knew the address. Number One Pine Tree Lane, Heaven, Virginia. He’d told her the mansion was the only house on the road that wound around an unnamed peak in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Pine Tree Lane turned out to be little more than a worn dirt track cut into the mountainside by years of use. No pavement, not even any gravel, and not a streetlight for miles and miles. Her headlights didn’t seem to penetrate very far ahead of her, and she had to drive slowly, even though everything in her was urging her to hurry. It had been a long time. Too long.
Finally the house came into view. “Oh, my God,” she whispered as she guided the car into the driveway, and its headlights illuminated the front of the place. “It’s incredible.”
Her hands trembled on the wheel as she braked to a stop. Then, reluctantly, she put the car in Park and turned it off. She had to draw on every ounce of courage she possessed to make herself turn off the headlights, get out and walk along the flagstone path through the moonlit night. She stood outside the car for a moment after closing the door as soundlessly as she could manage and just listened. Insects whirred and chirped and buzzed, and somewhere a bullfrog croaked. She heard the soft breeze in the pines, whispering a thousand secrets to the night. She heard a splash and recalled Mordecai mentioning a crystal mountain lake. So many memories. Shards like shattered pieces of a fallen mirror, some so sharp they drew blood when she touched them.
She forced herself to move forward, walking slowly, hearing the echo of her own steps on the flagstones, wondering if he could hear them. Mordecai was a careful man. She imagined him inside, watching her approach, and so she walked slowly, keeping her hands out to her sides, so he could see she was carrying no weapons.
She reached the front steps, which marched upward between giant columns to the massive front door, and hesitated before mounting them. She strained her eyes toward the windows but could see nothing beyond them. Nothing moved. She heard no sounds coming from within.
Swallowing hard, lifting her chin, she mounted the steps and walked slowly up them. At the top, she kept going across the porch to the beautiful door with its stained-glass oval and its lion-headed knocker. Trembling like a dry leaf in an autumn wind, she reached toward the knocker.
A light came on, glaring down on her from above, blinding her, and the door flew open. She tried to shield her eyes from the glare and to see who stood there in the open doorway, but she could only make out a dark silhouette.
“Who are you?” a man’s voice asked. “What do you want here? Are you lost?”
Blinking still, she held one hand over her brow, like a salute, and that shadowed her face enough so she could stop blinking. “Mordecai?” she asked.
He said nothing. “How do you know that name?”
“Don’t you recognize me?” She swallowed her fear and took a single step closer to him. It was as far as she could go without crossing the threshold.
“I thought you were dead, Mordecai,” she whispered. “For the longest time, I thought you were dead.”
A hand shot out, gripping her upper arm. He drew her inside, closing the door after her. She blinked in the dimness, willing her eyes to adjust, and as they did, she saw him standing there, staring at her in dawning wonder. He stared for a long time, and, finally, he cupped her face between his palms and leaned even closer. “My Lizzie? My God, is it really you?”
She nodded. “I came as soon as I knew you were alive, Mordecai. God, you don’t know how long I’ve dreamed of this. Prayed for it. I thought I’d die without you.” Closing her eyes, she moved mere millimeters closer and pressed her mouth to his. He was stiff, but he didn’t pull away. It was only as her tears ran over her cheek, onto her lips and his, that he shivered and closed his arms around her and returned the kiss. When he finally lifted his head, he was smiling, his eyes were damp.
“I have Sunny here.”
“I know.”
“You know?” Suspicion clouded his eyes immediately.
“I’ve been watching over her, you know, from a distance. I teach at her high school.”
“And yet you never let on?”
She shook her head. “No. There—there was so much going on. It’s…it’s a long and complicated story.” She let her eyes roam his face. “You must have one of your own. God, Mordecai, you look so different.”
“I was badly burned.” He lowered his head. “You…I thought you were dead, but you and those others, you left me there. Left me to die.”
“No, Mordecai. Not me. I never left you. I never would.”
“But—”
She pressed a forefinger to his lips. “I was shot, bleeding. I was dying. I knew I was. I wanted to get Sunny out of there, but I knew I wouldn’t be going with her. My destiny was to die there, with you. When that ceiling collapsed on you, I knew I wouldn’t leave, even if I could. As it turned out, Fate agreed with me. I passed out just a few yards away from you. I thought the next time I saw you we’d both be in heaven.”
He smiled slowly, no longer suspicious of her, and stroked her hair. “And so we are.”
“And we have our Sunny back again?” she asked, her voice a breathy whisper.
“We do.” He leaned down to kiss her again. “She’s fine. Upstairs in her rooms.”
“Have you told her—who she really is?”
“She knows I’m her father. And that Julie Jones is not her birth mother. I told her about you. But like me, she thinks you died.” He sighed, smiling. “God, it’s a miracle. She’s going to be so happy.”
Lowering her head to his strong shoulder, she let him stroke her hair. “I want to see her. Can I see her, Mordecai?”
“In a little while,” he said. His hand felt good in her hair. Good and tender and loving. She’d loved him so much once.
She still did. Despite everything.
“I love you, Mordecai,” she whispered.
“Come, then. Come with me. Let me be with you again, the way we used to be. God, I’ve missed you so much, Lizzie.”
He scooped her into his arms and started up a broad, curving staircase. She kissed him
enthusiastically, let him run his hands over her as he took her along a hallway and through a set of double doors into a darkened room. She felt the bed beneath her back as he lowered her onto it, felt the cool air on her skin as he began to undress her.
* * *
Sean kept his hands on Julie’s shoulders. She’d surged to her feet when the old man picked up the phone and was probably battling the urge to shout at him to hurry up while he listened. Finally he nodded and repeated an address. “Number One, Pine Tree Lane, Heaven, Virginia,” he said.
Sean scrambled for a pen, found one on a nearby table and scribbled the address. But then he realized Rodney was talking again. “I’ve told her everything, Larry,” he was saying to the man on the phone. “Yes, in fact, she’s here right now.” He paused, looking intently at Julie, and then he said, “I don’t know. I’ll try.” Then he slowly moved the telephone toward Julie, holding it out to her. “Will you talk to him?”
Sean dropped the pen, seeing the stark-white color of Julie’s face as she stared at the telephone. She backed away, knocking over a chair in the process, and shook her head rapidly from side to side.
Rodney drew the phone back to his own ear. “Sorry, Larry. It’s too sudden. All right. Yes, I’ll let you know as soon as Dawn is safe.” Nodding, he said, “Yes, I’ll tell her.” He looked at Julie again. “He loves you, and he’s sorry for what he did. He’s praying for Dawnie.”
“I don’t want his love, or his apologies,” she said, lunging forward again, shaking off Sean’s grip on her shoulders. “And I don’t need his prayers.” She yanked the telephone out of Rodney’s hand and shouted into it. “Do you hear me? I don’t need anything from you! Not ever!” Then she tugged the phone away from her ear, staring at it, and Sean moved closer, took it from her and heard the dial tone that told him her father had already hung up. He replaced it in its cradle, wishing to God he could do something to ease the pain in Julie’s eyes.
“At least we have a lead now. We know where she might be.”
“Larry was pretty sure,” Rodney said. “He said that according to Young’s former lawyer, that’s the place where he always planned to go one day, and he transferred ownership to one of his aliases before the raid.”
Thicker Than Water Page 30
