Thicker Than Water (2 page)

He held out a hand toward Lizzie. “Help me. Help me, and I'll get you out of here.”

Lizzie got slowly to her feet and edged closer to him. She stepped carefully over and around the burning beams that crisscrossed his torso. Then she knelt beside Mordecai. “I loved you,” she told him.

“You still do, you know you do. It'll be like I promised, Lizzie. You and me and Sunny, the plantation house in Virginia. A real family.”

“Just like you promised,” she whispered. Then she reached out…and snatched the chain with the key dangling at its end from around his neck. She looked past him then, at the other girls. “Come on.”

The flames blazed higher. Soon they would all be trapped. They hurried forward, and the four women ran as Mordecai cried out to them to save him. Then the rest of the ceiling came crashing down, and he was silent, buried under flaming debris.

“Hurry!” They made it to the secret door that was hidden behind a set of false shelving, and Lizzie took the baby from Jewel's arms and handed her the key. Then she leaned back against the wall, as if she could barely stand on her own.

“Lizzie?”

“Just get the door.”

Jewel nodded, hurrying to fit the key to the lock, taking off the padlock, opening the door onto a pitch-dark tunnel. The air that wafted from it smelled of earth and cool dampness but, blessedly, not of smoke. “It's open. Come on.”

She turned back to Lizzie, who had slumped to a sitting position on the floor. Lizzie leaned close to her baby, kissed her cheek. Then she lifted her gaze to Jewel's again. “Take her,” she said, her voice so hoarse and weak that Jewel could barely hear her over the fire.

Jewel dropped the key, taking the baby from Lizzie's arms, tucking her into one of her own and reaching down with her other hand to help Lizzie. Lizzie only shook her head from side to side and let her upper body fall backward to the floor.

“Lizzie!” Jewel leaned over her.

“Take her. Take her, Jewel. She's yours now.”

“Get up, Lizzie. Come on, I'll help you.”

“Take the money. There's so much of it, there in the tunnel. Duffel bags full of it. Take it and make a good life for my Sunny.”

“I'm not leaving you!”

Lizzie smiled gently. “No. I'm leaving you.” She pressed her hand to her belly again. “It wasn't glass, honey. It wasn't glass at all.” Her eyes fell closed.

Jewel shook her, but there was no response.

Someone tugged Jewel away. Sirona. Tessa was already
moving past them into the tunnel. “You have to go. You have to get the baby out,” Sirona said gently.

“I can't leave her!”

“She's gone, Jewel. She's gone.”

The fire surged closer, brighter and hotter. Jewel got up and handed the baby to Sirona; then she took Lizzie by the wrists and dragged her limp body into the tunnel. She couldn't bear the thought of her being burned, or ending her life so close to Mordecai Young. She pushed the door closed behind them, then turned to take the baby from Sirona again.

As she moved through the seemingly endless tunnel, she wondered how her life had managed to change so drastically over the course of one short summer. First her drunken, abusive father had hit her mother one too many times and wound up in prison for murder. Then the streets, where Jewel had fled to avoid ending up a ward of the state. Then this place, this supposed underground haven for runaway teens.

And now? What now?

She made her way through the tunnel, Sirona and Tessa flanking her. Eventually it grew lighter, and she spotted the duffel bags resting on the ground along the wall. She said, “Grab those and bring them. We'll split up what's inside once we get out of here.
If
we get out of here. And then we'll go our separate ways.” She looked sternly at the two girls. “None of us can tell what happened here. Not ever, do you understand? If we do, little Sunny will end up a ward of the state—just like I almost was—or worse yet, with Lizzie's family, whoever they are. And that couldn't have been good, or Lizzie wouldn't be…” She swallowed hard, lowered her head. “She never even told me her last name.”

“I was in the system,” Sirona said. “It's no place for Sunny. It's okay. We'll never tell.”

“There's enough money in those bags for all of us to start fresh, start new lives. We can never look back from here. Never. It's a pact. Understand?”

They both nodded.

“Good. Then let's go.”

Sirona and Tessa each grabbed a bag and followed Jewel along the last leg of the tunnel. It angled slowly upward from deep in the earth, growing lighter and lighter, until finally it opened into sunlight.

They climbed out, helping each other. “It's morning,” Sirona whispered.

Jewel turned to look back at the flames and smoke rising in the distance from what had been the Young Believers' compound. Every building on the place must be burning, she thought. And everyone left behind must be dead.

But that was behind her. She turned her back on all of it and faced the slowly rising sun that shone its red-orange light onto her and onto the baby.

Her baby now.

“It's Dawn,” she whispered.

Sixteen Years Later
Syracuse, NY

M
ascara tears were so far beneath her that she could barely believe they would dare skim down her face. She speed-yanked a half-dozen tissues from the hotel-issue dispenser and wiped the trespassers off. Then she cranked on the cold water, splashed her face and went still, staring at her reflection as the water dripped from her chin.

What would Dawn think of her if she saw her mom like this? Was this the way she was raising her daughter to be? Weak? Compliant? Afraid?

No.

“I'm not paying the scrawny little bastard anymore,” she whispered to her reflection. She stood a little straighter, lifted her chin a little higher. “No more. It's over. One way or another, it's finished.”

She opened her purse and yanked out a compact. She
wouldn't give the bastard the satisfaction of knowing he'd made her cry.
No one
made her cry. Hell,
she
was the one who was known for making other people weep. On the air, in front of the entire city. This idiot had jerked her around long enough. The fact that he'd dared to even try—the fact that she had let him get away with it, even for a little while—it was beyond the pale.

“What the hell was I thinking?” she asked her reflection, while her hands moved to automatically and expertly return her face to a state of near perfection. “I'm not some little nobody. I'm Julie Fucking Jones.”

The doorknob of the hotel's bathroom jiggled. She sent it a burning glance. “Keep your pants on, Harry. I'll be out by the time room service gets here with your goddamn celebratory champagne.”

Footsteps moved rapidly away from the bathroom door.

She paused, glanced down at the mascara she'd just pulled out of the handbag, and grimaced at it. “Waterproof, my ass.” She flung it at the wastebasket, then snapped the bag shut and turned on her heel to return to the other room—to end this thing, as she should have done six months ago.

She flung open the door and stepped through it. “I don't know why it took so long,” she said, her voice as firm and strong as it was when she was on the air. “But you've finally pushed me too far. It's finished, Harry. You're not getting another nickel from me. You can drop this now, or I'm going to go to your brother and tell him everything.”

He sat in the small armchair, right where he'd been when she'd excused herself to go to the bathroom and gather her courage. As if he'd never moved. His back was to her. She could only see the top of his head. The little pink patch where
his black hair was starting to thin. He said nothing, probably too surprised. She couldn't imagine why he hadn't been expecting this. Did he really think she would let him keep pushing?

“You can do whatever you want with the evidence, I don't care,” she lied. She
did
care. “If it goes public, Harry, you'll go to prison. I'll see to it, even it means losing everything. Nobody wrongs me like this, much less threatens my daughter, and gets away with it. Nobody.”

She strode straight past him to the nightstand, wondering at the metallic smell in the air. He always brought copies of the damning evidence to these meetings. Always promised they were the last copies in existence as he sold them to her for large amounts of cash. Always insisted on closing the deal with a glass of champagne. And a month later, he always showed up with another set of demands. She looked down at the table. But the envelope was gone.

She turned slowly to face Harry. “All right, what did you do with the…”

Her voice tripped over a heartbeat when she faced him fully. He sat in the chair, just as he had before. Only now he was dead. The white dress shirt he wore was completely soaked in blood. So were his hands, and the chair itself, his shoes and the beige carpet underneath them.

Her gaze slid to his face again. The slightly open mouth. The wide, sightless eyes. The dark, gaping, bloody crescent in his long, skinny neck. Her body began to shake. A tremor formed somewhere down deep and worked its way outward to her hands and knees and even her head, lips, eyes. Fear gripped her heart like an icy fist as her gaze danced around the room. But no one else was there. Not now. She checked
the tiny closet just to be sure, but it was empty. She was alone in the room, and Harry Blackwood was dead.

A wave of nausea rose up in her stomach as she lunged toward the door to turn the dead bolt. She barely got it done before she had to run for the bathroom again, and while she leaned over the toilet, she got so dizzy she nearly fell in.

When she could finally stop retching, she braced one hand on the tank to hold herself upright, knocked the lid down, flushed. Then she turned weakly to the sink to rinse her mouth.

It was as she turned the taps off again that she found herself blinking down at her hands on the knobs. And slowly a line of news copy printed itself across her mind.

Respected News Anchor Sole Suspect in Brutal Murder. Fingerprints Found at Scene. Blackmail Plot and Scandalous Past Uncovered.

“Details at eleven,” she whispered softly. She was swimming in motive. And standing in the middle of a visit that spelled opportunity in 30-point type. She closed her eyes. “No. No, goddammit.” Yanking tissues again, she used them to wipe the faucet and valves, the toilet tank, its handle and anything else she had touched in the bathroom. She tossed the used tissues into the wastebasket, and then grabbed a washcloth from the stack, wet it and wiped down the counter, the doorknob, everything. She removed the plastic bag from the wastebasket and carried it with her back into the main part of the hotel room. When she bent to wipe off the nightstand she had touched moments ago, an icy chill whispered along her spine. The envelope. Where was the envelope? What if the killer had taken it?

“Jesus. What is this? How could anyone know what was
in that envelope? And why would they take it if they didn't know, and…”

No time, not now, her mind whispered, and she found herself nodding in agreement. She had to move; she had to be smart, eliminate any hint of her presence and get the hell out of here, all unseen. She could not afford to panic.

Moving silently and quickly, her entire body still trembling, she wiped down the dead bolt, the doorknob, every surface and door frame in the room, anything she had even been close to, just in case she had rested her hand on any surface. She was careful, and she was thorough. She searched as she wiped. Every cupboard and drawer. She found a stack of self-help books by self-proclaimed psychics on the nightstand: John Andrews and Sylvia Brown and Nathan Z. But the envelope wasn't there. It wasn't under the bed. It wasn't in Harry's coat pockets or his shaving kit, and those were the only things in the entire room that belonged to him.

When she finished her search and her wiping, she dropped the washcloth into the wastepaper bag and looked around the room. There were two glasses on the table.

Her eyes were drawn back to the dead man in the chair. Her shaking intensified, and her breath began to rush in and out too quickly.

“Focus, dammit!” She barked the words aloud, forcing her attention to the job at hand, told herself to hurry before room service brought the champagne. She focused again on the two glasses. One nearly empty, one half full of whiskey. She picked up the fuller one, which had been hers. It had her prints on it, and maybe her lipstick. She downed the whiskey fast, grating her teeth against the burn and welcoming the warmth that spread outward from her belly when it landed. Then she
added the glass to her bag of rubbish and backed toward the door. She yanked her tan trenchcoat from the back of the desk chair where she'd left it, hurriedly put it on, and used the sleeve to wipe off the back of the chair, where it had been hanging. Then, on the edge of panic again, she checked the large inside pocket. But the bundle of cash was still there. A sigh of relief tumbled from her lungs. She took the scarf and oversize sunglasses from another of the deep pockets and put them on. No one had recognized her coming in. She'd always done her best not to be noticed or recognized when meeting with her blackmailer to pay him off. She had become adept at that over the last six months. Thanks to Harry.

She took her small handbag, then pulled her coat sleeve over her hand to open the door and close it behind her, wiping the outer knob clean. At the elevator, she used that same coat sleeve to push the button. The car came to a stop. She tucked her little bag of rubbish underneath her coat as the doors slid open.

A short, round woman of Hispanic descent, wearing a teal designer knockoff dress, glanced at her, then looked away. At all, thin man with skin so pale he seemed colorless stood beside her in a cheap suit. He didn't make eye contact at all. Julie stepped into the elevator, then went stiff from head to toe when a loud rattling sound came along the hall. As the elevator doors slid closed, she saw the young man, pushing the room service cart along the hall. Along for the ride were a champagne bottle in an ice bucket and two glasses. He stopped in front of Harry's room.

Sickening fear choked Julie as the elevator doors closed and the car began to drop. That man. He would be opening Harry's door about now. Finding his body. Shouting in horror. Jesus, she had to get out of here—fast.

The couple got off at the lobby. The moment they did, Julie reached out to wipe the button marked 12 clean of any prints she might have left on it on her way up earlier. She kept her back to the security camera, using her body to block her hands from its all-seeing gaze as she worked. She rode the elevator down to the lower level parking garage, and then she got off and hurried to her car. Her heels were loud in the darkness, clicking over the concrete. They sounded like gunshots to her raw senses.

She dipped in her pocket for her keys. Pushed aside the ever-present notebook, the mini-cassette recorder, the pen…
Goddammit,
where were her keys?

She stood where she was, ten feet from her Mercedes, closed her eyes and prayed as she slowly, methodically, searched every single pocket, without luck. She searched the small handbag, as well, but the keys were not there.
God, please, tell me I didn't leave them in Harry's room.
She couldn't have. She couldn't—

“Calm. Slow. Just think.”

Drawing a calming breath, she hit her mental rewind and then tried to replay the events of the last hour.

She knocked once. Harry opened the door and stood there smirking at her as she pushed past him to go inside. “I thought that twenty grand I paid you a month ago bought me the last copies.”

“I know,” he said, having the good sense to look guilty. “I lied. But this time, I swear, I brought the originals.” He turned and pointed toward the nightstand where the envelope rested. “Look for yourself, if you don't believe me. I mean it, Jewel, this is the last time you'll ever hear from me.”

She shook her head slowly, not looking at the items in the envelope. She knew well enough what it contained. The photo
graphs of her at the compound. Proof that her daughter's birth certificate was a fake. “No. No, you're lying, just like you've been lying all along. This is never going to end, is it, Harry? You'll keep on bleeding me until there's nothing left, and then you'll sell the evidence to the highest bidder anyway. Won't you?”

“Come on, you know I won't do that. I promise. This is the last time.” He walked away from her, sat in the chair and poured whiskey into two glasses. “Have a drink. You're so damn tense you're making me nervous, and the customary champagne isn't here yet. Damn slow room service.”

She moved forward, slapped her keys onto the coffee table and picked up one of the glasses. After taking a slug, she set the glass down again.

“People trust you, you know. They respect your opinions. They count on you to be practical and levelheaded and reliable. That's why you're so good at what you do, Jewel.”

“It's Julie.”

“Sure. Now. You're good, and you know it. That's why the networks have started sniffing around you.”

She looked at him sharply. “How the hell do you know about that?”

He shrugged, drank his whiskey. “I hear things. What, you think I don't keep track of you? I probably know more about your life than you do. You know your station's been talking to male news anchors?”

“What do you know about any of that?”

He smiled. “I know your ratings have been falling since your former coanchor retired. I know you prefer to keep the spotlight all to yourself. I know—”

“You just keep your nose out of my career, Harry. None of it has anything to do with you.”

He shook his head as if she were being ridiculous, then faced her squarely. “I need fifty thousand this time. Cash.”

Her throat tried to close, and she felt tears burn her eyes. Angry tears. Outraged tears. “You're fucked, then, because I only brought twenty.” She yanked a fat wad of cash, bound in a rubber band, from the inside pocket of her coat, showed it to him.