Thicker Than Water (20 page)

“No. I don't. He was driving a dark sedan with tinted windows. Dawn said it was a Jaguar.” Julie got out of her car and hit the lock button on the key ring, hiking her leather shoulder bag higher on her shoulder.

“Dawn really knows her cars,” Ms. Marcum said, sounding amused. “If she says it was a Jaguar, it probably was. I'll be extremely vigilant, Ms. Jones. I promise you that. Dawn is very special to me.”

“I know that, and I can't tell you how grateful I am. You're special to her, too. Her favorite teacher. She says so on almost a daily basis.”

“That's so sweet.” The woman sounded a little choked up, the words emerging tightly in a voice gone hoarse.

“I really have been wanting to get together with you,” Julie
went on. “It's not a lack of interest on my part, just that my life has been so busy lately.”

“Please don't apologize. I'm the one who had to miss last month's parent-teacher day, after all.”

“You couldn't be expected to show up with the flu.”

“Still…”

Julie had paused near the entry doors but got moving again now. “I'll be dropping Dawn off in the morning and picking her up after school from now on. She's under strict orders not to leave the building until I arrive.”

“Good. And if there are days when you're running late to pick her up, feel free to call me. Dawn can keep me company in my classroom until you arrive. Let me give you the number of my cell, so you can call me directly without having to go through the office.”

She rattled off the number as Julie dug into her shoulder bag for a pen while walking along the hallway toward her office. She scribbled the number on the back of a gas receipt, then paused outside Sean MacKenzie's office door, because it was standing open and Lieutenant Cassie Jackson was standing in the doorway.

“Thank you for your
cooperation,
Mr. MacKenzie,” she said. The emphasis she put on the word made Julie wonder just how
cooperative
MacKenzie had been.

“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 lips. “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.