by Vicki Hinze
The downside was they were justified. The upside was, if they knew how much more than all of them combined she hated herself, they’d consider their own dispensation of hatred toward her an unnecessary duplication. Wasted emotion.
You can take it, Mandy. Their disdain is cubic zirconia. Yours is diamond. Harder. Deeper and more dense. Far stronger.
She kept talking to herself, preparing for the onslaught. Truthfully, she despised having to talk to herself like this, and she really resented feeling so negatively about herself, but she’d been backed into a corner now and, while she’d tried, she couldn’t fight her way out of it alone.
Jackal had to have been watching her all this time. Or had he come back after her mother’s death? Her instincts hadn’t warned her of a thing out of the ordinary. Not once had she suspected she was being followed or monitored in any way.
Except . . . She had sensed her father at the funeral. Could it have been Jackal she’d sensed there instead? Had there been other signs of her being followed and she’d just missed them? Or maybe Jackal had somehow tapped her secure phone and he’d just waited for her to get weak enough to call Tim so he could locate him?
She had no clue, but oh how she hoped she hadn’t led Jackal to Tim and now to the entire team!
Rattled by that most of all, she tugged at the hem of her gray sweat top, refusing to squirm outwardly where they could see it, and just waited. This inquisition was going to be bad. But it wasn’t as if she hadn’t known that before getting here. Under the circumstances, it couldn’t be anything else.
Tim moved to the kitchen bar, filled a glass with water and then gulped it down. When he’d drained it dry, he set the glass on the bar and took a seat next to Joe.
As if waiting for Tim, Mark stood up, moved to her left, then signaled to Nick. He pushed a button on his electronic equipment to start video recording. Her heart sank. So her humiliation would be on record for the duration, and only heaven knew who all would end up seeing it. Great.
“Mandy,” Mark said. “Would you please state your name, the date and time, and that we have your permission to record your statement.”
She shot Tim a hard glance. This would have been difficult enough with him questioning her, but . . . “Madeline Nicole Dixon. You have my permission to record this statement.” She’d forgotten the date and time. Before she could add them, Mark did.
“Saturday, October 25th.” He paused and checked his watch. “Four twelve A.M.” He took two steps toward her. “Last night at your home in Maddsen, you received a phone call. Would you tell us about it?”
“Actually, I received two calls.” She had to strive for accuracy. Her credibility was already in trouble and it’d soon be worse. That made it all the more critical her responses were as explicit and as precise as possible. “Tim phoned me first, and then later, while Tim was on his phone with you, Mark, I received a second call from a man who identified himself as Jackal.”
“It’s the call from Jackal that’s of interest to us,” Mark said. “What did Jackal say?”
“He threatened me. Said if I told Tim anything, he—meaning Jackal, not Tim—would kill us both.” The memory sent an icy chill up her spine.
“Jackal threatened you and Tim, then. Not just Tim.”
“Yes.”
“How are you connected to Jackal?”
“I don’t know that I am connected to him at all.”
“But you knew who he was, and you obviously considered his threat viable.” Mark lifted a hand. “If you don’t know him, then why do you fear him?”
She could hedge. She glanced at Tim and decided against it. There had been too many secrets between them already, and keeping them buried hadn’t spared anyone from anything. Her mother was dead. She’d lost Tim. Now Jackal had made it clear that Tim, she, and all the Shadow Watchers were still at risk. “Because of his exact words.”
“Do you recall them?”
She would remember them even in her grave. “If you tell Tim anything, I’ll kill you both—just like I killed . . . your mother.” Her voice faded. She swallowed trying to force the fear out and some strength back into her tone. “Until that moment, I believed the police--that my mom’s murder had happened in a random break-in. That’s what they felt certain happened.” She risked glancing up at Mark. “Discovering it wasn’t . . . shocked me.”
“I can see that it would.” Mark’s expression softened slightly.
Or it seemed to her that it shocked her. She started to add that to her statement but, right now, she couldn’t even be sure it was accurate. She did know one thing, and she didn’t hesitate to disclose it. “Until that call, I’d never before heard Jackal’s voice.”
Mark glanced at Tim then back at Mandy. “But you have met him.”
How did she answer that? How could she honestly answer it? “I don’t know. Not to my knowledge.” But if not, why would what she did matter so much to him? It didn’t make sense. None of it made any sense.
“So you’d never before heard the name Jackal.” Mark sounded a little confused. “Yet the man identified himself as Jackal to you? Why would he do that and believe you’d know him?”
“I didn’t say that I had never heard his name. I said I’d never heard his voice. I’m not sure why he’d do anything since I’m not sure who he is, and even if I did know his identity, I still couldn’t crawl inside his mind and explain his motives or actions, Mark.”
Jackal had expected her to know his name; she recognized that much in his tone. Looking down at her sneakered feet, she swiveled her gaze back to Mark, avoiding Tim for fear of seeing skepticism in his face. She didn’t think she could bear being honest about everything and seeing doubt in him. Not in him. She could and would admit the truth, but she couldn’t look at him while she did it. That much courage was beyond her; out of reach. “I’d heard his name one time before. Nine months ago.”
Tim stiffened.
“Tell me about that.”
She cleared her throat, took a drink from the glass of water Lisa passed to her. Mandy’s hand shook, nearly sloshing it. “It was the morning I broke my engagement to Tim.” Think steel. Tim had told her that phrase a thousand times. It worked for him. Maybe it would work for her. Think steel. “My mother called me early—it wasn’t even dawn yet. She said I needed to come over to her house right away. It was an emergency.”
The images from that morning flooded her mind. The fear. The rushing. She’d spilled half a cup of scalding hot coffee on her favorite charcoal skirt. It was heavy enough to keep the scalding liquid from burning her skin, but the skirt was history. So were Mandy’s nerves.
Her mother never threw around words like emergency and Mandy would have had to be unconscious not to hear the fear in her mother’s voice. Raw. Stark. Fear in her had been even more rare than the emergency word.
“So you went straight over to your mom’s to see what was wrong.”
“Yes.”
“And what did you find?”
Mandy exhaled a slow, heavy breath. “She was beyond afraid and crying.” Wadded tissues had littered the floor near the wastebasket. “She and my father had been in an awful argument.”
“I thought your mother lived alone.”
“She does—did. My father . . . is Charles Travest.” She wished for the thousandth time she’d told Tim about her father long ago. “My mother was his mistress for nearly thirty years. He’s an attorney in Jacksonville.”
Intercepting a subtle nod from Mark to Nick, she saw Nick out of the corner of her eye take to a computer. Already running a check on her dad, she supposed. “He didn’t live with us; he never has. He came to see my mother on Tuesdays. Only on Tuesdays.” Her voice cracked. She gave herself a second, and then went on. “He’s not something I choose to talk about for obvious reasons. I’m his dirty little secret. Well, me and my mother.” Mandy didn’t look at any of them. She feared she’d see their condemnation or, worse, their pity. “He acknowledges that he’s my father to me and my mother, but his n
ame isn’t on my birth certificate or anything else. He’s always taken care of us but I’ve never had a real father-daughter relationship with him. I’m tolerated,” she said without heat. “Fondly most of the time, because he truly loves my mother—“ At least, Mandy had believed that he did. Now, with him not even showing his face for her mother’s funeral, well, Mandy just didn’t know much of anything anymore.
Joe interrupted, his voice soft, his tone gentle. “Fondly tolerated, but not loved.”
“Yes,” she said, hoping they moved on to something else quickly. Before she had too much time to think and be sad and remember just how alone in the world she was now. She’d always felt it was the two of them, her mom and her against the world and they could face anything together. Now she had to accept that her mother hadn’t completely stood with her, either. She’d lied to Mandy for years, and obviously lied by omission to her for her whole life. That was a hard, bitter pill to swallow. Resentment welled inside her, made her stomach tumble.
She worked to settle the upset. To be reluctant to judge, which was admittedly harder. There had to be much more she didn’t know than the little she did.
“I’m sorry, Mandy,” Mark said.
His regret sounded genuine. Stiffening against it—she couldn’t afford any more weakness—she sniffed. “Thanks. But we don’t choose our family, do we? It is what it is, and what it is must be accepted.”
“I hear that,” Joe interjected, adding a heartfelt headshake.
A memory of Joe flashed through Mandy’s mind. Him once warning Sam to back off in commenting on Joe’s family. Yeah, they’re all thugs, thieves and outlaws, but they’re my thugs, thieves and outlaws. Remember that, bro. She shifted on her seat. With his family, Joe surely understood her uncomfortable predicament.
She didn’t look at Tim to see how he’d taken her revelation.
“So what you’re saying is you think your father is Jackal?” Sam asked, tired of waiting for her to get around to voicing her suspicions straight out.
“No, actually I don’t.” Mandy swiveled to look at Sam, feeling tight and wound up and a shade shy of panic. While she’d prefer to avoid the subject of her father altogether, she wasn’t foolish enough to believe she could do it here. Not with Tim’s team, and not now. Yet, the last thing she needed was for anyone to ask questions that upset her father’s nice little life. These men could definitely create havoc for him.
Be honest, at least with yourself, Mandy.
Okay. I don’t think he’s Jackal, but I don’t know if he is or isn’t. Mom had him and me. I’m not Jackal. Who else is there? And—oh, this sounded lame even to her-- what I have with him isn’t much, but he is all the family I’ve got left. I don’t want to lose him, too.
Logical. Reasonable. But honestly, she’d never really had him so she couldn’t lose him. Still her mother would be devastated if after all this time Mandy created problems for him in his other life.
“Mandy?” Tim nudged her, wanting more of an explanation.
“Sorry.” Because she owed him one, she took in a steadying breath, then answered. “There wasn’t what I considered a viable alternative, so I did wonder if my father could be Jackal, but it just didn’t fit.” She sat forward, braced her arms on her knees. “Mom was so upset that morning because she’d been paid a visit by Jackal. That’s what she called him. If he and my father were one and the same, she’d have said, your dad, but she didn’t. She said Jackal. So he has to be someone else.”
“Your mother and Jackal met?” Tim flattened his feet on the floor. “She knew him?”
“Apparently, she did. Though I never saw him, and she’d never before spoken of him. I’ve wracked my brain trying to figure out how she’d known him or who he could be, but you know how she was, Tim. She didn’t go much of anywhere or interact with anyone else.” She glanced at Lisa. “Mom was one step shy of being a recluse. I think maybe she suffered from that fear of leaving her house.”
“Agoraphobia?” Lisa asked.
Mandy nodded.
“Sounds possible if she lived as isolated as you believe.”
Looking back to Mark, Mandy added, “Frankly, I don’t know what I can believe anymore, and I have no idea who Jackal could be.”
Clearly disappointed by that disclosure, Mark asked, “What did he want from her?”
“She said he was livid about my engagement to a spy—his words, not hers or mine—and he gave me until noon to break the engagement. If I refused . . . “ Mandy couldn’t say it. The words would not come out of her mouth.
“He’d kill you or your mother?” Mark suggested.
Mandy stared down at her hands, laced in her lap, and gave him a negative nod.
“He’d kill me?” Tim speculated.
Mandy shot her gaze to him. “Not just you.” Her chin quivered. “All of you.”
“The whole team?” Mark asked, his voice incredulous.
She nodded. “And your families. He named you all, one by one.”
That caused a stir.
Mark lifted his hand, silenced everyone. “So you concocted the story about meeting another man and falling in love with him and broke your engagement to Tim to protect us.”
Again, she nodded. “I was afraid you’d go after Jackal and he’d kill all of you.” She licked at her parched lips. “If by some miracle either Tim or I lived, that would destroy us. You. Your families.” She shook. “I didn’t want to lie, but what else could I do? I couldn’t endanger you like that.”
“Why not?” Nick asked, his disbelief evident in his deep, dark tone.
“Excuse me?” She didn’t track his line of thought or his skepticism.
“Tim, I get. But why would you care if Jackal killed us?” Nick’s shoulders lifted and fell. “You don’t know us that well, so why would you care?”
He had to be kidding. He didn’t look like he was, but he had to be . . . didn’t he? She looked to Tim, who shielded his thoughts. So did all the others.
They all wanted to hear her reasons. What was the matter with them? Humanity 101 covered it sufficiently, but evidently not for them. Infuriated enough to not bother to try to hide it, she glared at them. “Right now I’m half-wondering myself. But at the time, I had two reasons.” Lisa gave her a supportive nod and, encouraged, Mandy went on. “One, you’re human beings and I think you’re more than capable of getting yourselves killed without any added help from me.”
That stunned them silent, and she half-wished she’d kept her temper in check.
“She’s got a point on that one.” Finally, Joe backed her up, an amused twinkle lighting his eyes. “What’s the second reason, Mandy?”
She looked directly at Joe and let him see her sincerity. “Tim loves you—all of you and your families.”
The men looked at Tim. “Don’t get big heads,” he told them. “I love puppies, and chocolate chip cookies, too.”
“Yeah.” Sam whacked Tim on the shoulder. “You help old ladies cross streets, too. You’re just a boy scout with a big heart, bud.”
“Careful, Sam. I know where your skeletons are buried.”
“We all know where all our skeletons are buried.” Sam grunted. “I gotta say, Tim, that’s one weak and pitiful attempt at a threat, buddy. You need some lessons from Nick.”
“Don’t drag me into this—and, for the record, I keep all my skeletons in tombs where nice bare bones belong.”
“Not all of ‘em.” When Nick glared at Sam, he snorted, then looked back to Mandy. “Okay, enough. Let’s get back to business. We need to look at this a little differently now.”
“Now that you don’t hate me anymore?” She dared to hope but doubted anyone would be that forgiving.
“We didn’t hate you,” Sam said, not missing a beat. “We just didn’t like you anymore. You can’t spit out Tim and expect us to like you, Mandy. It ain’t natural.”
“True,” she said. Did that mean they did like her now that they knew she’d forfeited her future partly for them and
wholly for Tim? “That’s fair.”
Lisa passed her a small bowl of nuts and whispered. “They like you again or they wouldn’t be needling each other. Now they’ve got to figure out if they can trust you.”
Mandy glanced up. Lisa was speaking in earnest, helping her. “Thanks.”
Mark dragged a hand through his hair. “Can we get back to the matter at hand?”
“I was going there, bud.” Sam lifted an impatient hand. “So, Mandy, you’d never met Jackal or even ever heard of him, but through your mom, he tells you that unless you ditch Tim, he’s going to kill all of us and you and your mom, so you made up a lie and ditched Tim. You bailed to protect us all. Is that right?”
“That’s pretty much it,” she admitted.
Sam shoved his cap back, his tone decidedly skeptical. “So why did you believe him? I mean, these were threats coming from a stranger? Why didn’t you tell Tim and see what he said? Or even run it by us?”
“I suggested doing exactly that—to my mother,” Mandy told Sam, remembering her mother’s reaction. She’d been in a full-fledged revolt about that. A cold shiver crept up Mandy’s spine. “She said if I did, we’d both be dead within minutes of talking to him or any of you. Then, you’d never know anything about Jackal, much less what he knew about you.”
“Was that her fear talking, or did she really believe it.”
“No doubt, Sam. She believed it.” Mandy paused to sip at her water. Her mouth felt dust-dry. “After seeing her reaction, I believed it, too. I’ve never seen my mother like that. She was scared to death.” Placing the glass back on a little table Lisa had positioned near her elbow, Mandy added, “She came up with the other man story. It seemed like the right thing to do for everyone’s sake.” It’d devastated Tim and her, but at least they’d stayed alive to be devastated. Her mother had too until now. “Mom felt strongly ‘another man’ was the one story that would keep Tim from asking a lot of questions. I agreed.” Losing out to another man. Men found that hard to stomach and discussed it as little as possible.
“In a situation like this, the fewer questions, the better,” Mark said. “Logical.”
