Thicker Than Water (12 page)

“The caller said, ‘He knows,'” Westcott explained. “'He's alive, and he knows,' whatever the hell that means.”

Julie shook her head. “We
have
a story. A good solid story—the biggest murder investigation to hit the state in ten years. That's where we should be focusing our attention, not on some crank caller telling ghost stories.”

“Well yeah, if it
was
a crank,” Westcott said. “But, Julie, what if it wasn't? What if Mordecai Young really is still alive?”

If Mordecai Young is still alive, Julie thought, turning her back on both men and clenching her fists so hard her nails cut smiles into her palms, then he's coming. He's coming…for Dawn.

Aloud, she said only, “He can't be.”

W
hen the news director left her office, Sean stayed behind, closing the door, turning to face her. She was sitting in her chair, elbows braced on her desk, forehead resting in her palms. He said, “Okay, he's gone. You can quit pretending you're not about to burst into flames over this anonymous tip.”

“Why are you still here?”

She said it without looking up. Sean took it as further evidence that Dawn's notion that her mother was in some kind of trouble and his own gut instincts were dead-on target. Just what the hell was she hiding? If her performance at the scene of Harry Blackwood's murder, her breaking and entering at Harry's apartment and her disappearing house keys and panicked reaction to them hadn't been enough to convince him of that, then this was. The way she looked right now. She looked drained. She looked…scared.

“Dawn's worried about you.” He knew that would get a reaction, and he was right.

Her head came up fast. “What did she say?”

“Not much. She doesn't trust me a hell of a lot more than you do. Yet. Though, uh, I guess you must trust me a little. You trusted me to bring her to you.”

The frown lines between her brows eased. “Don't let it go to your head, MacKenzie. Don't think for one minute I'm not on to your game.”

“You're gonna have to be more specific, Jones. I have a dozen games going at any given time. Which one are you ‘on to'?”

She pressed her lips together, gave him a smug look that was a little more Jones-like than the one she'd been wearing earlier. “The one where you kiss up to my daughter, pretend to be her friend and then pick her brain for dirt on her mother.” She shrugged. “Or the one where you convince me you really do like her, so that I let my guard down and trust you with the blade that can slit my throat.”

He frowned at her. “Now
that
is an
interesting
choice of words.”

She averted her eyes.

“I like your kid, Jones.”

“Why, MacKenzie?”

He shrugged. “Why not? She's smart, and she's sharp, she's got good taste in music and radio-shock jocks, and she knows as much about cars as I do.”

Julie sighed. “She subscribes to a half-dozen car magazines.
Moto-trend, Car and Driver…
”

“Besides all that, she's nothing like her mom. So what's not to like?” He met her eyes. “And you're a liar if you say you don't believe that, or you'd never have let me go get her.”

“Don't flatter yourself. I was worried enough that I'd have asked
anyone
go get her at that point.”

“You didn't ask anyone. You asked me. There were twenty other people around the newsroom you could have asked. But you asked me.”

“I didn't ask. You offered.”

“You took me up on it. And now that you mention it, I completed the mission in spades, and I haven't heard a word of thanks, other than from the kid herself.”

She glared at him. “You're gonna milk this for all it's worth, aren't you?”

“Yep.” He crossed his arms over his chest and tipped his head to one side. “Well?”

Julie pursed her lips, rolled her eyes and, finally, nodded. “Thank you, Sean.”

“You're welcome. Now, see? Was that so hard?”

She sighed. “I really am grateful, you know. Probably more than you can imagine.”

“Yeah. I picked up on that.”

She lifted her brows in question.

“You were as glad to see her as if I'd delivered her from the jaws of a hungry shark, instead of just from an empty house.”

Jones looked him squarely in the eye. “I was worried. Don't forget, my house keys and Harry's killer vanished in the same place.”

“Oh, come on. The murderer was long gone by the time you got there.” She looked away so fast he couldn't mistake it. He'd hit on something, some clue as to what she was hiding. He came around her desk, then crouched in front of her chair and spun it to face him, keeping his hands on either arm
so she would stay put. From there, he tried to study her more closely. “Just what time
did
you arrive at that hotel, Jones?”

“About a minute and a half before you did,” she snapped. “I told you last night, I heard the call on my scanner, just like you did.”

“The one at your house.”

“Right.”

“But I was at your house, and I didn't see any scanner.”

She hesitated just long enough to give away the lie. “I keep it in my bedroom.”

If he could read her eyes—and he was pretty sure he could—she would have a scanner in that bedroom before she slept tonight, just in case he checked. But he didn't believe for a minute that she had one there now. “There's still the distance,” he said. “I live twenty minutes closer than you, Jones. And I left the second the call went out. There's no way you could have beaten me there from Caz if you left at the same time.”

She lifted her head again, met his eyes, and hers were steady, level and determined. “Then I guess I must have heard it on the scanner in my car. And I guess I must have been closer to that hotel than you were when I did.”

He narrowed his eyes on her. “I guess that must be it.”

She nodded. “Then we should let it go, shouldn't we?”

Jesus, what the hell was this? “Yeah. I guess we should.” Bullshit. He was just getting started. “So what do you want to do with the tip on Mordecai Young?”

She shook her head slowly. “Nothing. I think it's a hoax.”

“It probably is,” he said. “But I want to follow up on it anyway.”

“Of course you do. This is right up your alley, after all, along with Elvis sightings and alien abductions.”

He pressed a hand to his heart. “I'm wounded! I have never covered an alien abduction story in my life.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Come on, Jones. If there's any chance, even a slight one, that he didn't die in that raid, don't you think there are people who have a right to know? The families of the kids who died there, maybe?”

She was staring at some unseen spot, beyond the walls that surrounded them. “You're right,” she said. “We need to make sure.” She seemed to shake herself then, bringing her focus back to his face. “You know, for a second there, you actually sounded compassionate. As if you were thinking beyond sensationalism and ratings.”

He fought down the anger. “You think I'm that heartless?”

She shrugged, and it made him even madder.

“I was there, Jones.”

When her head came up, her dark brown eyes locked on him, looking way more stunned than they ought to, and he wished to God he could take the words back. She didn't need to see the one and only chink in his defenses. His only soft spot. Dammit, what had he been thinking?

“You were—you were there?”

He shrugged as if it were no big deal. “Yeah. Me and my cameras. It was a colossal fuckup. Dead kids everywhere. Mordecai Young, too, they said, when they got around to identifying the bodies.”

“You have footage?” she asked.

He licked his lips, formed his words carefully. “The feds confiscated the tapes. Hit me with a gag order. If I'd written the story, my career would have been over right there.”

She was searching his face, shaking her head slowly. “I can't
believe it,” she said softly. “I can't believe Sean MacKenzie ever let the government tell him what he could and couldn't report.”

He had to look away from those eyes. “It's not something I'm proud of, Jones. But I was a kid, just starting out. I didn't have any clout at all in the biz. I'd have lost my job, probably my whole career.” He shook his head slowly.

“You've felt guilty ever since, haven't you? That's why you're such a rogue reporter, with your exposés and your inside dirt. It's all backlash.”

“You see right through me, Jones. I'm just a tortured soul, in search of redemption.” He sent her a look. “So you wanna have sex with me now?”

The look on her face went from one of sympathetic understanding to one of disgust faster than his Porsche could go from zero to sixty. “You are such an asshole.”

“Ah, come on, I'm sure with the love of a good woman I could be whole again.”

“Go to hell, MacKenzie.”

He grinned at her. “Been there. They threw me out ‘cause I made the devil look good.” He turned, starting for the door. “Tell you what. I'm going to milk my sources on this Mordecai Young sighting, you milk yours, and we'll meet after the evening broadcast to compare notes.”

“Okay.”

He stopped with his hand on the doorknob, glancing back at her, surprised by her easy agreement. “Okay? Just like that?”

“Yeah. Just like that.” She shrugged. “I'm not stupid, MacKenzie, and I'm not blind. I can't deny you're good at digging up dirt. In this case, my need to know outweighs my concerns about your sleazy methods and shady sources.”

He tipped his head to one side. “Damn. You keep flattering me like that and I'll start thinking you have a crush on me.”

“Oh, I'll crush you all right—by showing you up so badly on the air tonight.”

“That's the lamest comeback you've ever thrown at me. You're off your game, Jones.”

“And still kicking your ass, MacKenzie. Even on my worst day.”

He studied her face for a moment longer, waxing serious in spite of himself. “So what makes today your worst day?”

She looked back at him, just as serious. “It's the day they hired you.”

He smiled. “Much better.” Then he left her office.

* * *

Dawn spent the afternoon doing homework and digging through computer files, including Sean MacKenzie's notes on the Harry Blackwood murder. She got a little queasy when she read that the man's throat had been cut “practically from ear to ear.” Sean's notes were extremely detailed. Of course, they were for his eyes only. None of this stuff could be shared with the general public without the police department's okay. He also mentioned in his notes that her mother had been there either just before or just after he had arrived at a little after midnight. In parentheses he'd made a note to himself: “details in private files.”

Frowning, Dawn searched for the files marked Private, but they were password protected, every last one of them.

Sighing, she exited the program and shut down his computer. Then she started loading her homework and textbooks into her backpack, but she paused in the process, staring down at the towel-wrapped shape in the bottom.

She had to get rid of that thing. But where?

“Dawn?”

She looked up fast. Sean stood in the office doorway.

“How's it going?” he asked.

She stuffed her books into the bag on top of the weapon. “Got the homework all done.”

“Great. Listen, your mom and I are about to go on the air. You wanna go for pizza after?”

“Pizza's always good.”

He nodded. “An hour, then. You gonna watch us?” He nodded toward the TV-VCR mounted high on the office wall.

“Sure. You gonna wear that?”

He glanced down at himself. He was wearing faded blue jeans and a skintight black T-shirt. “Hell, I forgot.” He came the rest of the way inside, yanked a short-sleeved black button-down from where it lay on top of a pile of boxes and pulled it on. He had a layer of five-o'clock shadow, but Dawn had the feeling it was staying put. The shirt was the only concession. He was a nonconformist. A rebel.

Her approval of him moved up another notch.

“An hour,” he told her.

“See you then. Break a leg, huh? And make my mom look good.”

“She doesn't need me for that, kid.”

Dawn's brows went up as he ducked back out of the office. “Well, now,” she muttered to herself. “That's…interesting.”

Dawn flicked on the television set to watch the evening broadcast. While the opening credits rolled, she opened one of the boxes that were stacked in the corner of the office and began taking things out of it, placing them around Sean's office.

She watched the two of them on the screen. Her mother seemed distracted, not her usual polished, professional self. Sean, on the other hand, was ultra-attentive. And sometimes, when he looked her mom's way, it was almost as if…

“Almost nothing,” she muttered, smiling a little as she stared at the TV screen. “He
likes
her.”

* * *

“Our top story tonight,” Julie said, reading the teleprompter, “is the apparent murder of Harry Blackwood. Blackwood was found in an Armory Square hotel room last night, and police are now placing the time of death around midnight. Cause of death has still not been released, and the police are reporting no suspects or leads at this time.”