Thicker Than Water (30 page)

“He was badly burned in the fire the day of the raid.” Julie picked up the shirt, put it over her head, then pulled her arms out of the hospital gown and thrust them into the shirtsleeves. Then she tugged the gown out from underneath, and tossed it onto the bed. “That's everything I know, Lieutenant. Everything. I'd like to go look for my daughter now.”

Jackson cleared her throat. “Ms. Jones, you've admitted to being in the room when Harry Blackwood was murdered, that he was blackmailing you, and that the murder weapon might by now have your fingerprints on it. I can't just let you walk out of here.”

“You can't stop me, either.”

Jackson stood between her and the door. She didn't pull her gun, but she thought about it; Julie read it in her eyes. The
detective shot a glance toward Sean, wordlessly asking him to choose sides.

“She's not going to skip on you, Jax,” Sean said. “She's not going anywhere until her kid is safe and sound. You know that.”

“I can't just let her walk.”

“I can't let you take her in. Not yet.”

“I could arrest you for obstruction.”

“You're going to want some backup before you try.” He nodded at the gun. “Unless you're willing to shoot me over this.”

“Goddammit, MacKenzie!”

He put an arm around Julie, shocking the hell out of her. Jackson looked angry enough to take him up on his challenge to use her gun on him, but she didn't. She stepped aside and let them pass, Julie hobbling on her crutches, surprised that she wasn't already in handcuffs.

“I'm going to need to know where you're staying. How to reach you.”

Julie was almost grateful to the cop. Jackson didn't have to let them walk out of there, not really. She had a gun, handcuffs and plenty of reasons not to let them go. Maybe she wasn't the bitch Julie had wanted to think she was.

“Back home, Jones?” Sean asked.

“Yeah. As fast as you can get me there.”

Sean nodded and helped her to the exit, even while a nurse came running after them with a form for Julie to sign.

“Once you're back home, don't leave the area. Stay local,” Jackson called after them.

Julie didn't even look back. She let Sean help her out to his car, got in the passenger side and sat there stiff with tension
until he'd cleared the parking lot and hit the open road. Only then did she lean back and close her eyes. “Thanks for that,” she said when he got in.

“You're a slow learner, you know that?”

“What?”

“Buckle your seat belt, for chrissakes.”

She did so, giving herself a lecture for not having done it right away. He was right; she
was
a slow learner. “Guess I'm still trying to figure out what's in this for you.”

“Like I said, you're a slow learner.”

She shrugged, tipping her head to one side. “It's a lot to wrap my mind around, MacKenzie. I never expected that when my entire life went to hell, my worst enemy would turn out to be…”

He looked at her, waiting. “Go on. To be what?”

“The only person in the universe on my side.”

He smiled a little. “I'm not the only one.”

“No? I didn't see anyone else sitting by my bedside when I woke up in that hospital. Much less facing down that bulldog of a cop to get me out of there.” She shook her head slowly. “So how many times have you saved my ass now?”

“More than you've saved mine. Guess you owe me.”

“Guess I do.”

He looked sideways at her. “So are you ready to pay up?”

“How?”

“Tell me. Tell me about that day. The raid. How you survived.”

She lowered her eyes.

“Jones, that day has been replaying in my mind for sixteen years. I have to have the television or radio on all the time—even when I'm asleep, which isn't often—because if it gets too
quiet, I live it again. It haunts me. I need to know. I need to hear it. All of it. And we've got a couple of hours on the road ahead of us. So tell me.”

* * *

Sean drove, but he found it difficult to keep his attention on traffic while Jones tried to begin her story.

“The compound wasn't such a bad place—at least, not at first.”

“Back up a little,” he said.

She blinked, looking across the car at him. “I don't—”

“What were you doing there? How did you end up there in the first place?”

She frowned a little—maybe as surprised as he was that he wanted to know those things. Things about her. Shrugging, she said, “It's not a pretty story. And it's not all that relevant.”

“It is to me.”

Jones turned her head, pretending to look at the passing scenery, giving a shrug that he thought was probably supposed to seem careless. “My father was a drunk. One day he hit my mother a little too hard. She died. He went to prison.”

“Hell.”

She shrugged. “It was only a matter of time. I think Mom knew it. I know I did. I used to sit up nights, planning to kill him myself before he could kill her, but it took me too long to work up the courage to actually do it. I still blame myself for that.”

He frowned hard. “How old were you?”

“When she died? Sixteen, same age Dawn is now.”

“Did it—” He almost couldn't force the question out. “Did it happen in front of you?”

“I was in my room. That was the drill, you know? We had it down to a science. When he came home drunk, I went to
my room, locked the door and didn't come out until after he'd gone to work the next morning. Then I'd go wake Mom, clean her up, drive her to the clinic sometimes for stitches or a cast, or whatever.” She shrugged. “That last time, though, when I went to check on her in the morning, she wouldn't wake up.”

“And your father?”

“He'd gone to work as usual. Probably didn't even realize he'd killed her. He didn't like looking at her on those mornings—probably couldn't stomach seeing his handiwork once the booze wore off.”

“Jesus.” He pictured her at sixteen, trying to wake her dead mother. His throat got tight, and he had to blink his eyes clear. “What did you do?”

“I called the police. Then I went to my room and packed my things, and I was gone before they got there. All I could think was that I didn't want to be there when my father came back, if he came back at all. It was only later that it occurred to me that if I went back, I'd be a ward of the state, probably get stuck in a foster home somewhere.” She shook her head. “I didn't want that.”

“How did you live?”

“On the streets. Shelters. Took odd jobs when I could get them. Stole when I couldn't.” She shrugged. “That's where I met Lizzie. She was a runaway, like me.” Lowering her head, she said, “I really loved her. She was my family, you know?”

He nodded.

“She met another girl who told her about this haven for runaways that was run by a New Age guru, and she was bound and determined to go there. Hell, I wasn't going to let her go without me. She was all I had.”

He shook his head slowly. “But when you saw the place—the fences, the guards…”

“Wendy, the girl who took us there, made it all sound perfectly reasonable. Most of the girls there were underage. The authorities might come and try to take them. The fences were to keep people out, to protect us, not to keep us in.”

He nodded.

“We were kids, what the hell did we know?” She sighed, looking at him again. “We moved into a bunkhouse with a bunch of other girls, shared all the work—cooking, cleaning, the gardens and greenhouses where Mordecai was growing opium and marijuana. We had campfires and sing-alongs at night. And every day started with a sermon from Mordecai. He talked about love and light and healing.” She shook her head slowly. “The kicker is, he's good. He was so good. Had such a positive message, and some of the things he could do—” She shook her head slowly. “And hell, what he gave us was a lot better than what we'd had in our pasts. For a while it seemed like paradise.”

“And then?”

Her lips thinned. “He was drugging our meals. He started out with real mild stuff, so we wouldn't catch on. But we did. I did, anyway. We were supposed to feel happy and calm all the time, and it worked. It did. We lived in a numb-brained state of bliss. But I knew something was wrong. Lizzie didn't believe me. So I started sneaking food from the kitchens and gardens, hiding it around the place, and I convinced her to stop eating the meals we were given and eat the stolen food instead. It didn't take long for the chemicals to wear off.” She ran a hand slowly along the dashboard. “It was about that time that another girl told us she thought we were being held
prisoner. She said she'd told Mordecai that she wanted to leave, and he told her that wasn't allowed, so she was planning to sneak out. One night she disappeared. We didn't see her for several days, and we figured she'd made it. But then one of the guards came carrying her body in through the gates.” Her hand stilled; she licked her lips.

Sean's stomach clenched a little, her words bringing vivid visual images into his mind.

“The story we got was that she'd run away and been killed by some maniac on the outside. That it was a lesson to all of us, a message from the Creator warning us that it wasn't safe out there. That the outside world was dangerous, and that we were only safe in our haven, under the protection of Mordecai. Everyone bought it.” She shrugged. “Maybe it was the drugs. I only know that Lizzie and I knew better. We knew they'd killed her, and we knew the same thing would happen to us if we tried to get out. We also knew we couldn't stay there.”

He reached out a hand, touched her hair. The white bandage was stark, with her dark hair spilling around it.

She looked at him. He bit his lip and drew his hand back to the steering wheel. “So what did you do?”

“We came up with a plan. It wasn't all that complicated, but if we had kept on eating the drug-laced food, we never could have pulled it off. It was simple, and pretty obvious. Get close to Mordecai. Become his favorites. His ego worked in our favor. He bought it from the beginning.”

Sean didn't like what he was thinking. He didn't like it at all.

“We volunteered for every job that put us close to him. We flattered and flirted and fawned over him. Within three months, he'd moved us both into the house.”

“You had sex with him?” He took his eyes off the road to look at her as he asked the question.

She returned his gaze, not flinching. “I didn't have a choice. Neither of us did.”

“I wasn't judging you, Jones.”

She hesitated, then went on. “Lizzie—I don't know, something happened to her. Mordecai was handsome, charming, very attentive. She forgot it was a game. She fell for him for real. He started spending more and more time with her and less with me, which was fine by me. Except…I could see her changing toward him. Softening, you know? I was worried she'd change sides on me. And then, the next thing we knew, she was pregnant.”

“It's lucky you both weren't.”

She shot him a look. “Not so lucky. Turns out I can't have kids. Of course, I didn't know that at the time.”

He could have kicked himself for the callous remark. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. I've got Dawn. She's all I need.”

He winced at the reminder of how much the girl meant to her.

“I delivered her, you know. Mordecai brought in books and film strips on natural childbirth, made me study them until I was damn near brain-dead.” She shrugged. “He may have even stopped drugging our food—hers for the sake of the baby and mine so I wouldn't screw up the delivery. Though neither of us dared put that to the test.”

“And the delivery went all right?”

“For Dawn and me. Lizzie—she was weak after. She'd lost a lot of blood, and it didn't seem to me as if she was recovering as fast as she should. I begged Mordecai to take her to a
hospital. He refused, and she wouldn't even argue with him. She was convinced by then that Mordecai loved her, loved the baby, wouldn't let any harm come to either of them.”

“And did he? Love them?”

She tipped her head to one side. “I think he did, in his own twisted way. Kind of like a duck hunter loves his favorite Lab, you know? He saw all of us as his property, but especially Dawnie and Lizzie and me. We belonged to him. At the end I thought Tessa and Sirona were gaining favor over us, but he adored us as long as we showed him absolute, unflinching devotion. So that was what we did. Lizzie really felt it. Until the day of the raid.”

“And what happened that day?” he asked, half afraid to hear her describe it, afraid it would increase the burden of guilt he'd lived with all this time.

“When the soldiers came, he left us. He left us locked in our room, took the baby with him. There was gunfire, and then there was all this smoke, and we realized the house was on fire.”