Praise for the novels of
MAGGIE SHAYNE

“A tasty, tension-packed read.”

—Publishers Weekly on Thicker Than Water

“Maggie Shayne demonstrates an absolutely superb touch, blending fantasy and romance into an outstanding reading experience.”

—Romantic Times on Embrace the Twilight

“Maggie Shayne is better than chocolate. She satisfies every wicked craving.”

—Bestselling author Suzanne Forster

“Maggie Shayne delivers sheer delight, and fans new and old of her vampire series can rejoice.”

—Romantic Times on Twilight Hunger

“Shayne’s haunting tale is intricately woven…. A moving mix of high suspense and romance, this haunting Halloween thriller will propel readers to bolt their doors at night!”

—Publishers Weekly on The Gingerbread Man

“Shayne’s talent knows no bounds!”

—Rendezvous

“Maggie Shayne delivers romance with sweeping intensity and bewitching passion.”

—Bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz

“Shayne’s gift has made her one of the preeminent voices in paranormal romance today!”

—Romantic Times

MAGGIE SHAYNE
THICKER THAN WATER

This book would not have happened if not for the assistance of some very special people, and I wish to acknowledge and thank them. I dedicate this book to the following wonderful, talented people. I feel lucky to share the planet with every one of them.

To Gayle Wilson, whose words of wisdom broke the dam! I was stuck fast, but you inspired me at NJRW, 2002.

To Molly Herwood, who went above and beyond to help me find the information I needed.

To WTVH-5’s Maureen Greene and Melissa Medalie, who helped me get inside the head of a news anchor. To photojournalists John and Al, who changed my entire concept of this book’s hero. And to everyone else in the newsroom at WTVH-5 Syracuse, for your invaluable assistance and inspiration.

To David O. Norris, veteran cop, skilled P.I. and Captain of the Genesee Belle for unwavering support and tireless advice, and for helping me get the “cop stuff” right.

To my precious husband, Rick, who stands between me and the world like a suit of armor. Without you, I’d be done for.

I’d also like to thank those I think of as “my team.” My agent, Eileen Fallon, for her solid guidance, wise advice and for her steady hands at the helm of my career. My editors: Leslie Wainger, who has been in my corner, supporting me and believing in me from the very start, and to Dianne Moggy and Amy Moore-Benson, who had the faith to embrace both sides of this writer’s split personality by welcoming both my vampires and my suspense novels into the MIRA family. My editors deserve sainthood for putting up with an author who changes the story while the back cover copy is being written—and never once flinching or complaining.

Thank you, all. My life is richer (and my books are better) because of you.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Epilogue

Prologue

“Can’t you see that we’ll die if we don’t get the hell out of here?”

“We won’t, Jewel,” Lizzie whispered. “Mordecai would never let anything happen to us. Not to us.” Her voice changed to a singsong kind of coo. “No, he wouldn’t. Not to his own baby, would he, Sunshine? No.” She sat cuddling her newborn daughter in the rocking chair Mordecai Young, “the reverend,” had brought into their quarters.

They no longer had to room in the barracks with the other so-called Young Believers. Mordecai Young had moved his special girls into the spacious attic of the main house, where he could be closer to them.

“Lizzie, you’re being stupid. You’re forgetting the plan.” Jewel paced the length of the large room, growing more and more agitated. “And it was working so damn well.”

Lizzie looked at her and for a moment Jewel thought she saw the sharp mind and clear eyes of the girl her friend had been six months ago. “It was,” Lizzie said. “We made him believe we loved him, didn’t we? And it worked.”

It had worked. Mordecai had made them his right hands. They had access to the house. They ate better. He never hit them anymore.

“But, Jewel, I’m not acting anymore. I love him.”

“He’s a criminal. Jesus, Lizzie, he takes in runaways and makes us into slaves. He has armed guards and those dogs of his patrolling the compound in case any of us try to leave. We’re fenced in, fed all the drugs he can slip into our food to keep us complacent while we listen to his sermons and cultivate his crops. And you’ve seen the weapons room. He’s got more firepower than the freaking National Guard down there!”

Unmoved by Jewel’s impassioned speech, Lizzie stroked a forefinger along her baby’s whisper-soft cheek. “He’s my daughter’s father.”

“He’s a drug dealer with a Messiah complex, Lizzie. And this is no place for a baby.” She moved closer, ran a palm over Sunny’s silken baby hair. “We have to get out—for her sake.”

Lizzie closed her eyes. A tear squeezed through her lashes. “I know. I know you’re right. I just…I don’t think he means to be…I think he really believes the things he tells us.”

Maybe he did, Jewel thought. Maybe he really did believe he was more enlightened than the rest of the world, or that he’d been chosen by God to be his new messenger and ordered to create this compound. And that the marijuana crop didn’t do much real harm, and that it was the good he could do with the money it brought in that made it all right in the eyes of the Almighty.

Yeah, maybe he really did believe all that. Which made him insane, and even more dangerous.

“He loves her. It’ll kill him to lose her.”

“He wants to control her,” Jewel insisted. “He named her. He sets her schedule. When she eats, when she sleeps, when she’s bathed, how often you get to hold her. He sees her as something he owns, just like us.”

“It’s just his way.”

Jewel thinned her lips. “Tonight,” she said. “I made a special snack for the dogs. It ought to put them out of commission. We’ll tell the guard at the gate that Sunshine is sick and that Mordecai ordered us to get her to a hospital. If he gives us any trouble—” She took the paring knife out of her jeans pocket. “I snatched this from the kitchen tonight.”

“My God, Jewel!” Lizzie’s eyes widened. “Why can’t we try to go out through the tunnels?”

“How, when he keeps the only key on a chain around his neck?” Jewel put a firm hand on Lizzie’s shoulder. “I’m seventeen years old, Lizzie. I am not going to spend the rest of my life in this prison. And neither is she,” she added with a nod at Sunshine. “I love her, too, you know.”

“I know you do.” Lizzie sighed, lifting her eyes. “What about Sirona and Tessa?”

“I don’t know. Since he moved them into the main house, he’s been visiting us less and less at night. I think he’s going to get tired of us soon, anyway. We lose favor, we end up back out in the barracks. And you know that wouldn’t be good for the baby.”

“I know.” She looked more sad, though, than afraid. Sad that her lover was spending time with other women. She’d never minded sharing him with Jewel. But that was different. They were like sisters, the two of them.

“I’d like to take Sirona and Tessa with us, but I’m not sure we can trust them not to run straight to Mordecai if we tell them our plan.”

“I don’t like them, anyway,” Lizzie said.

She was pale and far too thin. She’d been bleeding heavily since giving birth—too heavily, in Jewel’s opinion, but then again, what did she know? It had been seven weeks. She thought it should have stopped by now. Lizzie wasn’t the same spunky, fun-loving girl she’d been when Jewel had met her on the streets. They’d heard rumors of this place, that it was a dream come true for runaways.

It wasn’t a dream, it was a nightmare.

They both looked up quickly as they heard his unmistakable footsteps, coming up the stairs. The door opened, and he stood there, with his warm brown eyes, long, mink hair, and neatly trimmed beard. He wore white robes and sandals, and he looked for all the world like Jesus. But when he spoke, the illusion was shattered by his soft Southern twang.

“I need to take li’l Sunshine now. Bedtime.” He smiled as he looked at the baby.

Lizzie kissed her child’s forehead and hurried to hand her over to her father. “Good night, my sweet baby.”

Jewel watched him take the baby. He stared down at the child adoringly, his brown eyes softer than ever. “You’re a special li’l girl, you know that? The daughter of the Son. You’re blessed, my Sunshine. You’re blessed.” Then, as he turned and carried the baby away, he began to sing. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…”

“Mordecai,” Jewel said, knowing he would be angry at her interruption, but daring it all the same.

He turned, scowling at her.

“I’m worried about Sunny. Do you really think it’s safe for her here, with the drugs and the weapons and all?”

“Do you think I’d risk my only child?” he asked.

She licked her lips. “I just—I overheard you talking to one of the guards today. You said there had been some kind of…government men asking questions in town.”

He walked closer to her, his face gentle—right up until his fist connected with her jaw, knocking her backward to the floor. Lizzie shot to her feet, rushing to where Jewel landed.

“Let that be a lesson to you about eavesdroppin’,” Mordecai said. “Haven’t I taught you better?”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, a hand on her face, not daring to get to her feet. Lizzie was leaning over her, hands on her shoulders, but she turned now to the man who stood nearby, cradling the baby in his arms.

“You didn’t answer her question, Mordecai. What happens if these government men try to come in here? What we’re doing isn’t exactly legal. And you have all those guns—”

Sighing, he gazed down adoringly on his child. “It’s as I’ve always told all of you, mankind is not ready for a soul like mine. They may very well try to kill me, in the end. And if they do—well, now, what better place for my only child than with her daddy?”

“You—you mean…?”

“Death is nothing to fear, you know. Haven’t I taught you as much? Haven’t you learned a thing in your time here?” He shook his head slowly, then turned and carried the baby out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him.

Lizzie hurled herself after him, only to collide with the door. When she went to tear it open, it had been locked from the outside. She pounded on it uselessly, then collapsed against the wood, sobbing.

Jewel got to her feet and went to her friend, sliding her arms around her and pulling her close.

“Oh, God, you were right, Jewel. You were right. He doesn’t care if Sunny lives or dies!”

“It’s all right. It’s going to be all right. We’ll get out of here, and we’ll take her with us. Everything will be okay.”

“I thought he loved her,” Lizzie sobbed. “I thought he loved us!”

“He only loves his own crazy ideas. He loves the power he has over all of us. He loves being in control and this God complex of his. And he loves money. God, he’s got scads of it down there somewhere.”

Lizzie lifted her head. “I know where he keeps it. It’s in the escape tunnel.” She stared hard at Jewel. “It’s almost as if he knows something horrible is going to happen. It’s like he’s…preparing for it.”

“Yeah, well, we won’t be here when it does. And neither will our baby.”

As it turned out, she couldn’t have been more wrong.

They awoke to the sound of gunfire, rapid and loud.

Jewel leaped out of bed and ran for the door. “It’s coming from inside the house!” The knob wouldn’t turn in her hand, though.

Lizzie was at the window, looking out. “From outside, too! There are soldiers!” Her entire body jerked backward when the glass shattered, and she hit the floor.

“Lizzie!” Jewel ran to her, sliding across the floor on her knees when she got close. “Lizzie, my God.” There was blood on the front of her nightgown.

Lizzie sat up, pushing Jewel’s hands away from her belly. “It’s okay. Just a little cut. The glass.”

Jewel shook her head, terrified her friend had been hit by a bullet. “Are you sure? Let me see.”

“I’m fine, Jewel.” Lizzie pressed her palm to the bloody spot on her nightgown. Jewel tried to shift it aside to see the damage, but Lizzie pushed her away. “We have to get the baby out of here!”

“I know, I know.” Jewel helped her friend to her feet, watching her face, worried.

Lizzie went to the locked door. The gunshots were ringing out faster, louder, than before. Then something even louder than a gunshot shook the entire house, and Jewel thought she smelled smoke. Lizzie gave up twisting the knob, stood back, and kicked the door. It was an old door, and the wood began to split under the pressure of her foot. She kicked again, and then Jewel was beside her with a small metal chair in her hands. Using the chair as a battering ram, she slammed it against the door. The two took turns attacking the door, until it finally gave way under the assault. The smoke smell was stronger now, as they raced down the stairs to the second floor nursery.

But Sunny’s crib was empty. “Oh, God. Oh, God, where is she?” Lizzie moaned.

“Mordecai must have her!”

Jewel gripped her friend’s arm and tugged her out of the nursery. They ran together down to the ground floor. Fire and smoke were everywhere. The front door was open, but instead of running out of the house, people were running into it, bullets chasing them down. Some lay on the floor, dead or dying. Others stood at the windows, firing shots at the army of men outside. The front of the house was completely engulfed in flames.

“He couldn’t have got out that way!” Jewel cried.

“The basement. He must have taken her to the tunnel.”

As they ran for the basement, Jewel tripped over someone, turned to look, and saw Sirona, cowering in a corner, sobbing. Tessa was nearby, sitting on the floor looking shocky, her face blank, her body rocking.

“Come on, come with us,” Jewel said, bending to grip Tessa’s upper arm, jerking her to her feet. Sirona followed wordlessly. Lizzie was several steps ahead of them by then. The fire was spreading—chasing them it seemed. “Hurry!”

They made it to the basement stairs, then down them. It was dark, but Jewel saw Lizzie come to a sudden stop ahead of them and heard her as she shouted, “How could you? How could you try to save yourself and leave the rest of us to die?”

Jewel raced closer, shocked into stillness when she saw Mordecai there, cradling little Sunny in his arms.

“Go back to your room!” he shouted. “You have no idea what’s happening here!”

“I know exactly what’s happening.” Lizzie’s voice was weaker than before. The red stain on the front of her nightgown was larger now, spreading. There was an explosion from somewhere close. It was deafening, and it shook them physically. A loud roar followed, and Jewel felt the heat.

“Give me my daughter,” Lizzie said.

Mordecai lifted one hand, and Jewel stiffened when she saw the gun he held. “Go back or die right here.”

Jewel ran at him. He was so focused on Lizzie that he didn’t see her fast enough to fire, and she hit him with every ounce of strength she possessed, knocking him right off his feet and wrestling the baby from his arms as she fell on top of him. The gun skittered across the concrete floor. Jewel tore herself and little Sunny from Mordecai’s arms, and then it seemed like the end of the world as the beams and boards above them came crashing down like some fiery avalanche.

She was knocked to her knees, and when she managed to get up again, holding the screaming baby close, choking on the smoke and heat, she saw Lizzie on her knees. Sirona and Tessa hovered two feet away, looking terrified in the dancing light of the flaming beams that littered the floor now. And beneath one of those beams, Mordecai lay, trapped.

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.

Chapter One

Sixteen Years Later

Syracuse, NY

Mascara 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 photographs 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.

“You’re fucked, then, ‘cause I can start the rag sheets’ bidding at seventy-five, and it’ll only go up from there. Come on, what happened to all that cash you stole from Mordecai?”

“It’s gone, Harry. I bought a house, a new identity, got an education. All I have now is what I earn at the station—”

“Which you’ll lose—if I share your secret with the world.”

“You wouldn’t dare…”

The look on his face told her that he would dare. God, she had to stop him. She held the cash out to him, silently pleading with him to take it and leave her alone. But he only looked at it as if it were something that smelled bad and then looked away. Julie stuffed the money back into her coat pocket and began to shake. She’d already paid him more than two hundred thousand dollars over the last six months. Her 401K was drained, and she’d had to sell stocks at a loss to get this additional twenty thousand for him.

“Well? Can you get another thirty or do I place a call to The Exposer?”

“I…don’t know. I…I don’t know how I can get another thirty. I don’t know.” She got up, paced back and forth. She was hot, sweating with it, so she peeled off her coat and hung it over a chair near the door. She needed to think, to clear her head. “I need to use the rest room,” she told him.

He shrugged. “It’s over there,” he said, nodding toward the door on the far side of the room. “Don’t be long. Time is money, babe.”

So she went into the bathroom….

“And when I came out, he was dead,” she whispered.

Blinking back to the present, she gave her head a firm shake. “The keys were on the coffee table. Dammit, why didn’t I see them when I was cleaning up?”

Because there were a dead man and a pool of blood in the room with you, some cynical voice inside her taunted. You may have been a little distracted.

“No. That’s not it. Maybe they got knocked off the table. Onto the floor. They must have. They were probably right there, on the floor, or maybe under the edge of a chair, or…” She shivered as her mind raced on. Maybe they were under that blood-soaked chair where she’d left Harry. Maybe they were on the blood-soaked carpet. “Oh God, oh Jesus.”

She had to go back.

The idea of walking back into that room sent her heart racing. Her knees felt weak, and she leaned on a support column to keep from falling over. This was idiotic. She didn’t hyperventilate, and she didn’t faint. It wasn’t in her to faint. But she felt goddamn close to it right now.

Just figure out what to do. Think, dammit!

Dawn. She could call Dawn. Have her bring the spare keys from the rack in the kitchen. She shouldn’t really be driving on her own. She only had her learner’s permit. But in an emergency…

Yeah, that’s the answer, Julie. Bring your daughter into this mess.

No. She couldn’t call Dawn. She didn’t want Dawn within a million miles of this nightmare. Dawn needed to be protected at all costs. Dawn was everything to her.

So think of something else, then.

But there was nothing else to think of. If the police found her keys in that room, that put her there. She had to go back. She wanted to argue with the calm, cool voice in her head. The news anchor voice. But she couldn’t. It was right.

She took a steadying breath, straightened her spine and took another. She’d been standing here, fighting panic and racking her brain, for twenty minutes. She could stand here all night, and it wouldn’t change the facts. She had to find a way to get back inside that room and get her keys before the police did. There wasn’t really a choice here. Turning, she walked firmly, steadily, to the elevator, stuffing the small garbage bag from Harry’s room into a large overfilled Dumpster on the way. Once again she used her coat sleeve to hit the elevator button.

The elevator went up, but not far. It stopped on the lobby level. The doors opened, and two men in police uniforms got on. “What floor did he say?” one was asking.

“Twelve. The manager who called it in is up there with the fellow who found him.”

Like a flash, Julie’s hand shot out to hit a button. Any button besides 12, because these two were cops, and they would damn well notice if 12 was the only button lit, and then they’d want to know why she was going there.

The doors slid closed, and one of the cops, a solid looking man with a face like a road map, hit the button marked 12, noticed it was already lit and glanced her way. The other one stood back. He was taller, leaner and younger. But if anything, he looked even meaner than his partner. Neither was familiar to her, and she considered that a lucky break. But the shorter one glanced at her briefly, then, with a frown, looked at her again.

The car stopped on the third floor, and the doors slid open. She left the elevator as if her feet were on fire, acting as if she were looking for her room key as she did.

When the doors closed again, she stopped, braced her hand on a wall and tried to stop shaking. The police were here already. Now what the hell was she going to do?

A door opened somewhere further down the hall, so she moved in the opposite direction, spotted the stair door ahead of her and headed toward it as if it were a haven.

It was cool and dark in the stairwell. Every breath echoed. But at least she was alone. She could think. She had to get back into that room before the cops found her keys. But how?

Sean MacKenzie didn’t like looking at dead people. You never really got used to it, he supposed. According to his police scanner, there was one waiting for him at the Armory Square Hotel. He’d been up. Lately, sleep was not an option. And trying to sleep when he couldn’t was sheer hell. So he spent a lot of time cruising the city, scanner on, looking for stories.

He had no idea how much it had paid off until he stood outside the door to room 1207, staring in at the body in the chair. His throat was slashed, and there was blood everywhere, and it was goddamn creepy the way the eyes stayed open and seemed to stare right at him. And then he recognized the stiff, and his heart skipped a beat.

“Jesus Christ, isn’t that Harry Blackwood?” he whispered to himself.

“My God, I think it is.”

He damn near jumped right out of his skin when that answering whisper came from so close beside him. He jerked his gaze to the side and saw his nemesis standing right beside him. Julie Jones.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Getting a story, just like you,” she told him.

“You don’t get stories. You read them.”

The two police officers had moved from the main room into the bathroom, checking it out. Other cops, homicide detectives, would be arriving any second to help secure the crime scene, and the two journalists would be tossed out on their asses.

“Have they found anything?” she asked him.

“You think I’d tell you if they had?”

She shrugged. “Don’t tell me you’re going to try to scoop me on the hard facts, MacKenzie. We both know you make them up as you go along.”

“At least I got my job based on my talent and not on my cleavage.”

She shot him a hate-filled glance. He mirrored it back at her. Then he yanked his camera out of the case that hung from his shoulder and snapped several photos of the dead man. The camera was the quietest one he owned, and he didn’t use the flash. It was a tacky and cheap thing to do, and he would probably be barred from selling the photos, Harry being who he had been, black sheep of a political family that rivaled royalty in New York State. But the photos would be worth some nice cash if he could get away with it.

She said, “You’re a ghoul, MacKenzie.” Then she shouldered him aside. “I’m going in there.” And she walked right into the room.

He reached out to grab her arm, to stop her, but his reaction wasn’t fast enough. She walked right into the crime scene. Granted, there was no yellow tape across the door just yet, but she still knew better. What the hell was she thinking?

She stood near the glass-topped coffee table, her back to him, a notebook in her hand, scribbling rapidly. Only it was odd, because she wasn’t really looking at the notepad as she wrote on it. She was scanning the room, craning her neck, looking at the floor, peering underneath the table. Sean didn’t see all that much of interest besides the body. What was she looking for?

The two cops came from the bathroom, one of them carrying a small zippered plastic evidence bag in his hand. Mac shoved the camera back into the case and backed off just a little, out of the line of fire, but still close enough to see. He was going to relish watching Julie Jones get her ass toasted for this temporary bout of idiocy or whatever had made her walk into that room. He didn’t really think she’d been sitting at the anchor desk long enough to have forgotten the procedure for crime scene reporting. The press did not trample crime scenes. Even he knew that much.

The cops froze in their tracks at the sight of her.

“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing in here? This is a crime scene!”

She jerked her head up sharply, and Sean saw the moment the cop recognized her. The most famous news anchor in Central NY. “I’m reporting. That’s what I do,” she said. She tucked the pencil behind her ear and started to open the little handbag she carried. “I have ID, if you—”

“Get your fucking ass out of here before I haul you in on an unlawful entry charge!”

It must have startled her, because she dropped the bag. Several items spilled out of it when it hit the floor.

“Jesus, you’re contaminating the hell out of my crime scene,” the second cop said, pushing past the first one toward her. He dropped to his knees on the floor, scooping up her items and shoving them back into her bag, then rising and pushing it into her hands even while shoving her bodily out the door. “You saw her drop that shit, didn’t you, Klein?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine. There was nothing on the floor when we came in. It’s fine, just get her the fuck out before we end up explaining to the lieutenant how she got by us, all right? Jax will have us doing paperwork for a freaking month if she hears about this.”

Julie was pawing through the open bag as the cop shoved her out into the hallway. He caught sight of Sean. “You with her?”

“I’m just waiting for a statement.” Sean held up both hands, backing off.

“Stay out here.” The cop glanced at the camera bag. “And no photos.”

“Yes, sir.”

Julie was still digging through the purse. “Hey, hey, wait a minute. Where are my keys?”

Both cops turned. They did not look amused. Probably had visions of that paperwork mountain and an unpleasant session with their superiors dancing in their heads, Sean thought. He knew Lieutenant Jackson, and they were right. She would have them buried in paperwork for this.

Jones went through the items in the purse, taking them out one by one. A cell phone, a pack of gum, a business card case, an earring. “I can’t find my keys,” she said again.

“Jesus, lady, are you saying you lost ‘em in here?”

She searched all of her pockets. Made a big production about it, Sean thought. “I had them. And now I don’t. That’s all I know.”

One cop closed his eyes, sighing and shaking his head.

The other one was talking fast. “What do they look like?”

“The key ring is silver, in the shape of my initials. J. J. It’s got several keys on it. House, office, garage, file cabinet, my car, my daughter’s Jeep.”

As she kept talking, the other cop got back on the floor, looking underneath the chairs, shaking his head in disgust when he found nothing.

The other one said, “Look, if we find your keys, we’ll get ‘em to you, okay? That’s the best we can do for you, lady, and lemme tell you right now, if you breathe a word to anyone about this, I’ll see to it you never get any kind of cooperation from our department again. No tips, no exclusives, no press releases, and we’ll keep you so far away from crime scenes from now on that you’ll have watch someone else’s news show to get the details.” He glanced at Sean. “That goes for both of you. Understand?”

“Yes. Yes, of course I do,” Julie said quickly. “Thank you, Officer. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m so sorry.” She yanked the card case from her purse again, took out a card and handed it to him. “When you find the keys, just call me, all right?”

He muttered something unintelligible.

The other cop came forward. “Look, go wait in the lobby. Homicide and Forensics are on the way. I want you two out of here.”

“Can’t we at least get a statement?” Sean asked. And he couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t asked it first. Was she that rusty when it came to actual reporting? The elevator pinged and opened, and several plainclothes cops got out, including the one Sean thought of as the sexiest cop on the force—and maybe also the scariest—blond-haired, blue-eyed Lieutenant Cassandra Jackson.

“You want a statement?” she asked, honing in on the conversation as she strode toward the room. “Here’s your statement. ‘An unidentified man was found dead in the Armory Hotel. Police suspect foul play and an investigation is underway.’”

Sean had started to write, then lifted his head. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Oh, come on, Jax. It’s Senator Blackwood’s lowlife brother, and his throat’s been cut!”

“That’s Lieutenant Jackson to you.” She took his camera bag from his hand, took out the camera and easily popped open the back. A second later his film was hanging from her hands like crepe paper. She stuffed it into the deep pockets of her olive drab trench coat. “Cause of death will be determined at the autopsy. The identity is unofficial until next of kin are notified and come in to verify it.”

“We won’t release his name until we get the okay,” Julie Jones offered. “Just so long as you give us the okay before you tell anyone else.”

“Uh—both of us, that is. Not just her,” Sean put in, sensing that Jones was trying to scoop him, as usual. He had to admit, though, he was a little relieved that she was finally acting like the professional he reluctantly knew her to be. He tugged a card from a pocket. “My beeper number is on that.”

Jax took it and nodded. “As if I don’t have ten of these?”

“Yeah, but you never call.” He gave her his most charming smile.

She returned a wink. “I’m way more than you could handle, MacKenzie.” Then she rolled her eyes. “Fine, fine, you two get the scoop. But only if you get out of here right now and let my people do their job.”

“Deal.” Sean turned to head to the elevator, surprised when the normally aggressive Julie Jones turned around and followed him. Something was up with her. He wanted to know what.

He got into the elevator; she got in beside him. The doors slid closed. She sighed audibly, and he swore her body sagged.

“Do you have another set of keys?” he asked.

“Not on me.”

“So then…you need a ride home?”

“I can get a cab.”

He shrugged. “I could drive you.”

She narrowed her eyes on him. “Why?”

“Why not?”

Frowning as if she trusted him about as far as she could throw him—a sentiment he understood well, since he felt the same way about her—she finally shrugged. “What the hell. Okay, fine. Drive me home.”

Chapter Two

Sean walked Julie Jones out of the hotel to his Porsche Carerra GT, which he figured would have impressed the socks off most women. With her, though, he wasn’t expecting a hell of a lot.

She looked at the shiny black car, then at him. “Midlife crisis?”

Ignoring her, he depressed the button on his electronic key ring. The door locks popped open, the headlights came on, and the engine started. He opened her door for her.

“Am I supposed to take off my shoes or just sprinkle myself with holy water first?”

“Just get in, would you?”

She did. He closed the door and went around to his side. She was making with the sarcasm, yes, but not in her usual way. It was almost automatic. Almost as if she were speaking with her mouth while her mind was somewhere else. The zings were hardly worthy of her and nowhere near up to her usual standards. She’d been zinging him for so long, she could probably do it in a coma.

He shifted into gear and pulled the car away from the curb. “So what was with the little crime-scene-trampling demonstration back there?” he asked.

She blinked at him. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“What, do you think I’m as gullible as those cops are? I know you, Jones. You’re a pro. You knew better than to walk in there like that.”

Her eyes were huge and dark, and she blinked them now, using them to their full potential as proof of innocence. “I was just so stunned at seeing a New York State Senator’s brother like that.”

“Bullshit.” He shifted, told himself to keep his eyes on the road. It wasn’t easy, because she was wearing a skirt, and her legs were a longtime weakness of his. She had this skin…It was the first thing he’d noticed about her. Her skin. Smooth, almost luminous, bronze satin. The color didn’t fade, even in the winter months. He had often wondered about her ethnic background, but how did you ask someone a question like that in the age of political correctness?

“Turn here,” she said. “Take 92.”

“Huh? Oh!” He got his mind back on his driving and took the turn she indicated. “I forgot you live all the way out in Cazenovia.”

“Caz is only twenty minutes away from downtown.”

“Yeah, by air.” She sent him a look. He ignored it. “We got off the subject. Why were you so determined to get into that room?”

“I just wanted a closer look at Blackwood. I wasn’t sure it was him.”

“Uh-huh.” She was lying through her teeth. “And what was up with emptying your purse onto the floor?”

She looked at him fast, almond-shaped brown eyes beaming purity, almost willing him to buy into it. “It was an accident.”

“The hell it was.”

Once she realized innocence had struck out, arrogance arrived to take its turn at bat. She folded her arms across her chest, straightened in her seat and faced him squarely, chin pulled in and slightly downward to give the illusion she was looking down her nose at him. She reminded him of royalty when she copped that attitude. Like some kind of queen who would have your head if you pissed her off much more than you already had. “If I say it was an accident,” she assured him, “then it was an accident.”

It was really too bad he hated her guts. He lifted his brows and tipped his head to one side. “If you say it was an accident, then you’re lying through your pretty teeth, because that was no accident.”

She rolled her eyes. “Your powers of observation stink, MacKenzie. No wonder you got passed over for the anchor seat I won.”

“They passed me over for that job because you’re easier on the eyes than I am, sweetie, and because your boss was narrow-minded enough to think he needed a male-female team. Don’t even think for a minute it had to do with talent. It was those big brown eyes and that sexy little body.” And that skin, he thought to himself.

“Right.” She tossed her head, shook her hair a little. “You honestly think the viewing public watches the evening news just to ogle me?”

“Hell, I watch the evening news just to ogle you. And I don’t even like you. Much less your presanitized, government-approved idea of news.”

“You’re an animal.”

He shrugged. “I’m also the guy whose beeper is going to go off when they release the name of the victim. So if I were you, I’d be nice to me.”

“I gave the lieutenant my number, and I have no doubt she’ll call me first.”

“Yeah, well, I gave her my beeper number, and that’s way easier and quicker for her. So I have no doubt she’ll call me first.”

She sniffed. “For a date, maybe.”

He lifted his brows. “She always seems to look me over pretty thoroughly, now that you mention it. Gotta be that MacKenzie magic.”

She pursed her lips, looking as if she would like to strangle him. “Guess I must be immune.” Then she focused on the road ahead. “Turn left here.”

He did. Then he drove along a tree-lined lane, with rich, gorgeous homes scattered a half acre apart from each other and fifty yards away from the road, to be closer to the lake.

“Right there.” She was pointing out her place, a brown cobblestone split-level, with a lawn and gardens that were manicured to perfection, and with the midnight-blue of Cazenovia Lake as a backdrop. He almost gaped as he pulled into the long paved driveway.

“You, uh, live here?”

“Yeah.”

“The station pays that well?”

“Not quite. I bought it with some money I inherited a long time ago.”

“Uh-huh.”

She got out of his car. He shut it off and got out, as well, though she hadn’t invited him in. She sent him a frown, but he pretended not to see it.

“You gonna be able to get in without your keys?”

“Of course.” She walked over the flagstone path, up the front steps to the door and poked the doorbell.

Oh, so that was it. She didn’t live alone. He racked his brain for tidbits about Jones. Getting dirt on her would make his freaking year. But there was never much to find. She guarded her privacy like a goddamn pitbull. She wasn’t married, he knew that much. Maybe she had some stud living with her. He expected someone too young, too skinny and probably unshaven to open the door when he heard footsteps approaching. It would be just like Jones to go for some underfed, left-wing Bohemian type.

“It’s me, hon,” Jones called. And her tough as nails newswoman voice had gone all sugary sweet. It was enough to make him puke.

The door opened.

The teenager on the other side was pale and blond and cuter than hell. She smiled as if she really meant it. “Hi, Mom. Forget your key?” Then she caught sight of him and smiled even wider. “Hey, you brought home a date? Wow, we should declare a national holiday. And he’s cute, too. You wanna come in?” she asked him.

“Sure,” he said, at the same time Jones said, “No.”

The girl smiled wider. She could have been a supermodel with a smile like that. “I’m Dawn.”

“Sean MacKenzie.”

“So are you coming in or what?” She stepped back. Julie rolled her eyes but walked in and didn’t blow a gasket when he walked in behind her.

“You want coffee or soda or anything?” Dawn asked.

“Coffee would be great, thanks.” The living room was two steps up, and it resembled, Sean thought, a woodland paradise. Hanging plants everywhere, dark wood furniture and a small bubbling fountain full of tumbled stones in the far corner were what produced the effect, he realized. The colors were earth tones, greens and browns, with touches of russet and mustard in the throw rugs and pillows. It was a great room, though it was dim, lit at the moment only by the TV, the screen of which was frozen in place.

Dawn hurried through the room, under an archway into the kitchen, flicking on the light as she did. “Go on in and sit. Help yourself to popcorn,” Dawn called. “I was just watching Nathan Z’s Power Hour.”

“You taped that thing again today?” Julie asked.

“Oh, come on, Mom. It’s Ms. Marcum’s favorite show, you know, though I personally think Van Praagh is better. He’s on right after—I taped them both.”

“Efficient of you.”

“I think he really helps some of those people.” She shrugged. “Besides, he’s about to go big time. I read his cable show’s going into syndication.”

Julie rolled her eyes and headed for the sofa. Sean followed, leaned over her shoulder. “I didn’t know you had a daughter,” he whispered.

“Now you do.”

“She’s a doll. She looks nothing like you.”

Jones sent him a scowl. “Gee, thanks.”

“What is she, fifteen?”

“Sixteen,” she said. “Barely. Just got her driving permit.”

He frowned. “Sixteen? Hell, Jones, what did you do, give birth at the age of ten?”

“Trying to flatter me now?”

“Here we go.” Dawn came in with a mug in each hand, handing one to her mother and the other to Sean. Jones sat in a nearby chair, so Sean took a seat on the sofa and glanced at the hottest New Age guru of the season in freeze-frame on the television screen. Dawn plopped down beside him, folded her legs under her and picked up the remote. Then she paused and looked at him, frowning. “Wait a minute. Are you the Sean MacKenzie? From the radio?”

“Yep. That’s me.”

“Oh, God, I love your show. I listen to it all the time.”

That put a smile on his face. “Really?”

“Oh, yeah. Mom does, too.”

“Does she really?” He slanted Julie an amused look.

“What’s not to love?” Dawn went on. “You’re totally irreverent. I never know what you’ll say next.” She pursed her lips. “I don’t always agree with your politics, but your taste in music is awesome. Especially for someone your age.”

He had sipped coffee, beaming at her praise, but the last line had him damn near spitting hot java out his nostrils. Jones wasn’t so reserved. She laughed out loud, smiling at her daughter.

He swallowed, cleared his throat. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Sometimes Ms. Marcum tapes your morning broadcast and lets us listen to it during study hall. You know, after she’s edited out all the swearwords and stuff.”

He leaned toward Julie. “Ms. Marcum?”

“Favorite teacher, English Eleven.”

“Got it.”

“She says you’re relevant and thought provoking.”

“Ms. Marcum has excellent taste.”

“Don’t let it go to your head, MacKenzie,” Julie said with a nod toward the TV. “She just told you the woman’s favorite show is Nathan Z’s Hour of Wasted Air Time.”

He frowned, then returned his attention to the teenager beside him. “So do you like my show better than your mom’s?” he asked, just to wipe the smug look from Jones’s face.

Dawn frowned in thought, then sighed. “I guess I can’t really compare. I mean, Mom does news.”

He blinked as if she’d hit him between the eyes. “Ouch.”

“Oh, crap, that’s not the way I meant—” Dawn looked from her mother to Sean and back again. “I didn’t mean you don’t do news. I mean you do, sort of, it’s just…different. It’s like comparing Howard Stern to Barbara Walters, you know? You run this irreverent, wild commentary on the most notorious events and people, with your opinions right out there. Exposé stuff, mixed in with music and guests. And she just reports the news, sensational or otherwise, from an unbiased point of view. It’s totally different.”

“He entertains and I inform,” Jones clarified.

“I enlighten. You enable,” he said.

“I report and you sensationalize,” she countered.

“You report what the powers that be want you to report. I pull the curtain away and expose the little man at the controls behind it.”

They glared at each other.

Dawn said, “This wasn’t a date, was it?”

He slugged back his coffee. “Nope. It was just a nice guy giving a colleague a ride home.”

“Colleague,” Jones muttered, shaking her head.

Sean put his cup down and got to his feet. “It was nice meeting you, Dawn. Thanks for the coffee.”

“Nice meeting you, too, Sean. Play some Stroke Nine for me tomorrow, will you?”

“You got it.” He started for the door.

Jones strode along beside him, and opened it when he reached it.

“Nice kid,” he said. “Amazing, with a barracuda like you for a mom. Who was her father? Ghandi?”

“Go to hell, MacKenzie.”

He rolled his eyes, sighed, forced himself to turn back. “You really listen to my show every day?”

“Yeah. So I know how not to report the news.”

His temper heated.

“You really watch my show every night?” she asked.

“Yeah. It’s the best sleep aid I’ve ever tried.”

She pursed her lips.

He smiled at her. He didn’t think he had ever enjoyed fighting with anyone the way he enjoyed fighting with her. “This is great,” he told her. “It’s been too long since we had a good sparring match. Not since that tornado hit the state fair.”

“I figured you finally realized you’d never win one and just gave up.”

He held her eyes for a long moment and noticed that the shadow from earlier in the evening was still there, hiding behind her make-believe smile. Something was wrong with his favorite enemy, and knowing it made his own smile fade. “So are you gonna tell me what you were up to in that hotel room tonight, or do I have to go digging for it?”

The color left her face in a rush. “I told you, I just had an off night. Will you let it go?”

“No way in hell.” If looks could kill, he would be a dead man, he thought. He sighed. “So are you gonna call me if you get word they’ve released the stiff’s name for public consumption?”

“Probably not.”

“That’s good, ‘cause I’m not calling you when Jax beeps me.”

“Fine.”

“Good night, Jones.”

“’Night, MacKenzie.”

She closed the door on the pain in the ass, pseudophoto-journalist turned tabloid radio jockey. But the second she did, everything she’d been through tonight came rushing back. For a little while sparring with MacKenzie had taken her mind off it all. Now that he was gone, there was nothing to keep the horror at bay.

She told herself she’d done nothing unethical. It wasn’t as if she had killed Harry. She had only taken precautions to see to it that no one else might think she had. So she’d wiped away a few fingerprints and sneaked out of the room. So what? And lied to the police, her mind added. And contaminated a crime scene.

Hell. It occurred to her that she just might have inadvertently wiped away the fingerprints of the real killer.

“Mom, come here!”

She turned to see Dawn leaning over to peer out the window. “What, hon?”

“Look at his car. God, it’s a Carerra!”

Julie moved toward her, frowning. “He’s such a liar. He told me it was a Porsche.”

“It is a Porsche! That is so cool!”

Smiling, Julie locked the door and walked back to the living room. She heard MacKenzie’s muscle car roar away, and then Dawn rejoined her. “Did you actually ride home in that?” she asked.

“Mmm-hmm.” She shrugged. “If I’d known how much it would impress you, I would’ve made him let me drive. Think he would’ve let me?”

“Not if he’s ever seen you drive.”

Julie grabbed a handful of popcorn and threw it at her daughter. Dawn caught a few kernels and tossed them back, laughing. “It’s true, Mom. You’re a terrible driver, and you know it.”

“I get by.”

“You don’t even buckle up.”

“I do when I remember.” Julie leaned back on the sofa, and Dawn sank down beside her, close to her. Julie picked up the remote. “So can we ditch the Z-man here and watch a movie or what?”

Dawn nodded, curled her legs beneath her and leaned against her mother. Julie slid an arm around her daughter’s shoulders, held her close and hit the buttons, killing the video and surfing the channels instead.

“Are you okay, Mom?” Dawn asked suddenly, staring up into her mother’s face, searching it with her eyes.

“Of course I’m okay. Why? Have I done something to make you think otherwise?”

Dawn shrugged. “I got the feeling something’s been wrong…lately, you know? As if maybe someone were—I don’t know, bothering you, I guess.”

Dawn’s perceptiveness never ceased to amaze. They were as tuned in to each other as any mother and daughter had ever been. “Well, there was a bit of a problem, and work’s been giving me headaches. Ratings are down. I’m probably going to end up with a new partner within a couple of weeks. But things are calmer now. And there’s nothing for you to worry about.”

“I got the feeling it was something besides work and ratings.”

Julie nodded. “Too sharp for me. It was, but it’s okay. It’s over.”

“Did it have anything to do with him?”

“Who? MacKenzie?”

Dawn nodded. “Was he the one giving you a hard time?”

“No. He’s got the moral values of an earthworm, but he would never do anything like that.” Or she hoped in hell he wouldn’t, Julie thought. Because if he started digging and he found out the truth—but no. He wouldn’t find anything.

“That’s a relief.”

“Why?”

Dawn shrugged. “I like him, Mom.”

“Blech. Honey, you have terrible taste in men.” Julie ate a handful of popcorn and looked at her beautiful, precious daughter. God, how would Dawn feel if that evidence of Harry’s ever went public? She lowered her eyes, pretended to watch TV. It didn’t matter what she had done today. She would do whatever she had to do to protect Dawn from anything that might threaten her happiness. Especially the secrets of their past.

She would do whatever she had to. Always.

Chapter Three

An hour after collapsing in her bed, Julie sat up, her eyes flying open wide and her heart hammering in her chest as the thought that had jolted her awake echoed endlessly in her mind.

“His apartment,” she whispered. “God, the police will go to Harry’s apartment. They’ll search his place for clues, and that damned Detective Jackson won’t miss a thing. She’ll find everything Harry had on me and Dawn. Oh, God.”

She flung back her covers, put her feet on the floor and fought to catch her breath. There had never been any love lost between Julie and Cassandra Jackson. Julie hadn’t worked with the woman often, but whenever she’d been compelled to seek out Lieutenant Jackson for information, she’d hit a brick wall. She didn’t know why “Jax” disliked her. Maybe it was the natural enmity that tended to form between the police and the press, but she didn’t think so. The woman didn’t seem to have the same attitude toward MacKenzie.

She was going to have to stop Jackson from getting her hands on that evidence. It wasn’t too late, she told herself. The cops wouldn’t have gone there tonight, would they? No, not in the middle of the night like this. They would want to clear it with the senator. Discuss it with him, make sure it was handled with finesse. And they would need a search warrant, too. They would want to make sure it was all done legally. Hell, Harry was the victim in this, not the suspect. They had no reason to go charging in like bulls, offending a New York State senator in the process.

“Okay, good, then.” She got to her feet, yanked open a dresser drawer and dug for a pair of jeans, then hopped on one foot while pulling them over the other. “They might have put a cop on Harry’s place, just to watch it. Maybe not, though. But even if they did, that’s okay. I can handle one cop. Maybe two. It’ll be fine. Hell, they’ll probably be sleeping in their car at this hour.”

She pulled on a sweatshirt, white socks and a pair of running shoes from underneath the foot of her bed. Harry’s condo was in one of the renovated old buildings downtown, within walking distance of the War Memorial at the Oncenter and City Hall. She hoped to God the security was as lax as it had been the one time he had insisted she meet him there. Even so, getting into the building would be the hard part. She tied her shoes, her mind racing. You needed a key card, or to have someone inside buzz you in from upstairs. She wouldn’t be likely to catch someone else going in at this time of the night and be able to slip in with them.

She hurried out of her bedroom, into the upstairs hall, and thought of her car, still parked in the hotel’s garage. She was going to have to take Dawn’s Jeep. Not that Dawn would mind, really, although she would pretend to, and probably gripe about her mother’s notoriously poor driving skills being turned loose on an innocent Jeep.

Julie paused at her daughter’s bedroom door and peeked in. Dawn was sound asleep, her back to her mother, nothing visible but the shape of her body underneath the blankets. The radio was playing softly beside the bed. She always fell asleep with her music playing. All the better, Julie thought, and she pulled the door closed and tiptoed to the stairs, down them and out to the garage.

Sean hadn’t gone home at all. He’d driven around for a little while, wondering who, among all the man’s known enemies, would have had the best motive to murder Harry Blackwood. The senator’s brother had a less than stellar reputation. He drank. A lot. He gambled. And it was widely known that he liked his women. In fact, the big scandal of the last election had involved allegations from a prostitute who claimed Harry was one of her best customers. The guy was a lowlife.

But now he was a dead lowlife, and Sean wanted to know why. In fact, he wanted to know a lot more than he already did about Harry Blackwood and his sleazy side. A guy like that must have more than a few skeletons in his closet. And the public would want to know. Within twenty-four hours this was going to be the biggest story in the state. People would be clamoring for inside dirt, and he was just the man to provide it. His value as a reporter, he thought with a slow smile, was about to sail through the roof. And that new job he’d been thinking he didn’t stand a chance of landing might just be in the bag. He could use this.

Meanwhile Channel Four’s ratings were sinking, had been ever since Julie Jones’s former coanchor had retired and she’d begun sitting alone at the evening news desk. She was good, he thought. But he was better. People liked the dynamics of a male-female anchor team. She couldn’t give them that. People also liked dirt, and she wouldn’t give them that, either.

He was about to leave her in the dust.

People’s dirt, he knew from experience, turned up in people’s garbage. So he used his cell phone and directory assistance to get the exact address, minus the apartment number, and he drove to Harry’s building. He parked his car where it seemed relatively safe and took what he needed from the glove compartment. The Dumpster Diving Kit, he called it. He always carried one. He’d thought once or twice that he ought to patent it and sell it to journalists the world over.

Harry had lived in a good neighborhood; he had to give the guy that much, Sean thought as he locked his car and walked casually toward the alley beside the building. The building was a century-old brick structure that had been in pretty decent shape up until the city’s recent downtown restoration efforts. Now it was like new again, sound, clean and safe, even while keeping its original look.

He used a small penlight to guide his feet. No rats scurried out of its beam, and there were no homeless old men to trip over. Yep, a nice neighborhood. Toward the far end of the alley, he found what he needed. The Dumpster. The lid was raised, and the garbage chute angled into it from the side of the building.

Digging through garbage was never a pleasant job but almost always a profitable one. Sean opened the gallon-size zipper-seal freezer bag and took out a pair of yellow rubber gloves. He had found some of his very best material in the garbage. He’d learned of extramarital affairs, celebrity pregnancies, addictions, nose jobs and political corruption from various piles of refuse. Occasionally he found stuff that was too lowbrow even for his radio show. Stuff that would be considered beneath him, though granted, according to most of the respected press, that was a very narrow area. When he found stuff like that, he never used it for his show. He had to preserve what little journalistic integrity he had. So he would simply sell it to the tabloids, which were always more than willing to keep his name out of it. It was a tidy little side business. Hell, it had paid for his Porsche.

At worst, this Dumpster should provide something kinky enough to bring a good price at the tabloids. At best, it would provide a motive for Harry Blackwood’s murder and enough leverage to move him up a few rungs on the journalistic ladder.

He pulled on the yellow rubber gloves, then took out the white surgical face mask and tied it around his head. Then he found a small broken crate lying on the ground, and he flipped it upside down beside the Dumpster to use as a makeshift stepladder. It was dark. He put his penlight in his mouth and peered down into the depths of trash.

Most of the garbage was bagged. People were neater these days than they’d been ten years ago. He reached for a plastic trash bag, picked it up by its knotted top and let it dangle and turn in slow-mo, shining his light and peering through the transparent sides until he spotted a name on a discarded envelope or sheet of paper. He repeated this process over and over, tossing the bags aside when he found any name other than Harold R. Blackwood. Harry had lived alone, as far as Sean knew. He wouldn’t likely have anything addressed to anyone else. There! Harold Blackwood. Apartment 624.

He tossed the bag to the ground to be examined later and kept on digging for more, stopping only when headlights spilled into the alley from the street beyond and he heard a car pulling to a stop out in front of the building. The engine shut off. The lights went out.

He glanced at his watch. 2:00 a.m.

Okay, it was probably nothing, but he had a little nerve at the base of his skull that tingled when there was a story nearby, and it was tingling now. Maybe he’d better check it out, just in case….

He jumped down from the crate and picked up the bag he’d retrieved, peeled off his gloves and face mask, tossing them into the trash, and then he walked back up the alley to the street.

A powder-blue Jeep Wrangler had stopped there, and the woman who got out of it was…He had to blink and look again. There was no mistake. She was none other than Julie Jones.

“Well, I’ll be,” he muttered. Licking his lips, he set his trash bag down and pressed himself closer to the wall so he could peer around it and watch her without being seen. “What the hell is she up to now?”

She walked up the broad stone steps of Harry’s building, then paused at the front door, biting her lip and squinting at the security panel. Finally she pushed a button. She was only three yards away from Sean. She kept her finger on the button until a groggy, angry voice came over the intercom in reply. “Who the hell is this?” it demanded. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“I’m sorry to wake you, but I forgot my key. Could you just buzz me in?”

“Fuck off, lady,” the man said.

She waited a couple seconds, then hit the same button again. The voice returned. “You want me to call a cop?”

“You want me to keep my finger on this button until they get here?”

“All right, all right. Jesus.”

The guy buzzed her in. Sean heard the deep drone of the buzzer and the door lock disengaging, and shook his head in amazement, both at her brass and at the fact that her ploy had actually worked. Jones opened the door and walked through. Swearing under his breath, Sean lunged out of his spot, running in three long strides to the stairs. The door was already swinging closed and Jones was striding toward the elevators, her back to him. He flung himself bodily, landing chest first on the stairs, arms stretching doorward. He just managed to thrust his fingertips into the opening before the door slammed on them.

Clenching his teeth and swearing under his breath, he pulled himself forward, grabbed the door with his free hand and pulled it open. Then he got to his feet and stepped inside. His fingers throbbed. Shit. He rubbed them and shook his hand as the door fell closed behind him. Then he heard the elevator ping and looked ahead to see its doors closing, as well.

Crossing into the lobby, he dug through his memory for the number he’d seen on that envelope—624, that was it. Sixth floor. There was only one elevator, and he didn’t want Jones getting too goddamn far ahead of him. Nor did he relish the thought of being caught there in plain sight should the irate neighbor Jones had bothered with the buzzer decide to call the cops after all.

He looked around, found the stair door and took that way up. Five flights. He hurried, because he didn’t want Jones out of his sight long enough to do anything he would regret not seeing. He figured it took him a minute or so before he made it to the sixth floor landing, opened the stair door and stepped quietly into the hall. Or as quietly as he could manage while panting for breath. His heart was pounding hard enough to wake the residents of the entire floor, and he told himself he was too old for this kind of cloak-and-dagger bullshit.

Then he shook his head. Getting too old, maybe. But he wasn’t there yet—he’d managed to catch up to her. Jones was walking down the hall, peering at the numbers on the doors of the condos on this floor. He walked forward, stepping just as softly as he could manage. She was wearing jeans now. Her hair was a mess, and her sweatshirt was baggy. This was not a Julie Jones too many people would recognize.

Then she stopped suddenly and just stood there, staring at one of the doors. And when he got a little closer, Sean realized why. It was Harry’s apartment door, and it was standing wide-open.

Someone had been there first, and even as he wondered whether they might still be around, Julie Jones walked inside.

Swearing under his breath, Sean rushed ahead and paused momentarily outside the door to look in at Jones as she tiptoed through the apartment like some kind of goddamn cat burglar. He knew it was freaking insane, but he had to find out what she was up to. My God, he didn’t have dreams this good. Oh, he’d fantasized lots of scenarios involving Julie Jones over the years, getting the best of her being his second favorite. But this was better than anything he could have made up. So he crept in after her.

Harry’s living room looked like some dated idea of a playboy’s love nest. Black leather furniture, white shag carpet, wall-size stereo system, wet bar. Jones moved through it into a hallway and went through a door about halfway down. God, he hoped she wasn’t heading for the bedroom. He could only imagine what that would look like.

She wasn’t. He moved quietly to the door she’d entered. She’d left it open, so he could look inside. It was a study or library. Desk, chair, file cabinet and a big-screen TV that would have seemed out of place if not for the wall of videos.

He thought they were books at first, in the muted light. But no. VHS tapes. One entire wall housed a built-in cabinet that must have been full of them. Right now, its doors were flung open wide, and video cassettes lay toppled on the shelves and strewn over the floor. The file cabinet nearby was open wide, too. File folders and papers were thrown everywhere.

Jones stood there, looking at the mess, shaking her head from side to side as if the sight rendered her unable to move or speak. She pressed her hands to either side of her head, fingers digging in her own hair. “Oh, Jesus, look at all this,” she whispered.

“Jones.”

She whirled when Sean said her name, one hand clenched in a fist and the other pressing to her chest as if to keep her heart from busting out.

“Easy, easy, it’s just me.”

“MacKenzie. What the hell are you doing here? Are you following me?”

“Hell, no. I was getting some background for my story.”

She tipped her head to one side and lowered the fist. “How?”

He opened his mouth, closed it again.

“Well, you sure as hell couldn’t be interviewing neighbors at this hour. What were you doing, digging through the trash?”

It was supposed to be a sarcastic little barb, and he would be damned before he admitted that it was dead-on target. There was nothing wrong with digging through the trash. “You’re the one breaking and entering,” he reminded her.

“The door was open.”

Arguing in whispers was an interesting concept, he thought. Each of them tried to whisper more forcefully than the other.

“It was,” she said, apparently mistaking his silence for doubt.

“I know, I know, I saw.” He took her arm. “Let’s get out of here before both our asses wind up behind bars.”

She tugged her arm free. “You go on. I have to look around some more.” Her eyes were on the scattered files, scanning them as if trying to read the labels.

“Jones, someone broke in here tonight.”

“Obviously.”

“Well, has it occurred to you that it might have been the killer?”

“Gee, no, I hadn’t thought of that,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“He might still be around here somewhere, Jones. Did you think of that?”

That brought her head up. Her eyes leveled on his, widening a little. Her body went so still that he didn’t think she was breathing for a second. The idea of someone else in the apartment frightened her. Good. She should be frightened. But after a second, she seemed to decide her reasons for being there outweighed her fear.

“Maybe you should go check out the rest of the place,” she suggested. “Make sure no one else is around.” Then she turned away from him, dropping to her knees to scan the file folders littering the floor.

“Right, and leave you here alone to abscond with whatever evidence you find.” He knelt right beside her, checking the videocassettes. Some were commercially made, with printed labels, films that sounded like porn, with titles like Mistress Mary’s Discipline and Dungeon Lover. Others had white labels on them with handwritten titles. Sean pulled out his penlight for a better look, because the handwritten ones were harder to read in the dark. He flicked the light on and read them aloud in a whisper. “Vanessa. Marianne. Barb & Sally.” He looked at Jones. She was still pawing frantically through the files that carpeted the floor. “Just what is it you’re looking for?”

“I’m not looking for anything. I’m just looking.” She took his light from his hand, shining it on papers with an air of impatience, then stopping the beam on something that lay on the floor, something that reflected the light with its glossy surface. Photographs, Sean thought, but as soon as he thought it, she dropped an empty folder on top of them.

“What was that? Was that something?”

“No. Nothing.” She shone the light elsewhere; then, getting to her feet, she scanned the few files still in the open drawers.

“What is it you expect to find in the files, Jones?” He got up, too, brushing off his pantlegs, waiting for a chance to see what it was she had covered up.

“How would I know?”

“Then why do I get the feeling you’re looking for one that says Julie Jones on it?” Then he lifted his brows. “Or should I be looking for a tape with that label instead?”

She turned toward him, probably about to tear him a new one, he thought, but then she went still at the sound of a bell—just one single ping. “What’s that?”

“The elevator.” He grabbed the light from her, shut it off and ran back through the apartment to the still-open door. He peered out into the hall. She came up behind him a couple of seconds later. “Is it…?”

Lieutenant Jax was striding down the hall toward them, flanked by the same two cops from the hotel room. Sean ducked back inside. “Police,” he whispered. “Come on.”

The two of them ran through the apartment, ducked back into the study and closed the door behind them. Sean went to the window and parted the curtains, looking for a balcony. What he found was even better. Thank God this was an old building. He yanked open the window, turned and held out a hand to Jones. “Come here.”

“What the hell are you doing?” she whisper-shouted at him.

“Fire escape. Come on. Hurry.” Taking her hand in one of his, holding the curtains for her with the other, he helped her out first, then climbed out after her. As he did, he glanced back into the room, at the floor. And, yes, it was dark, and his light was in his pocket now—but he didn’t see the file folder covering up the photographs anymore. It had been kicked aside, and he didn’t see the photos at all. Maybe they’d been kicked aside, too, but he didn’t think so.

He had an inkling that those photos were in Jones’s pocket by now. Sighing, he closed the window behind them and turned to where she stood on the black metal landing, looking down at the skeletal flights of iron stairs and the street below. “You all right?”

The wind blew none too gently, and it carried a bite of autumn chill with it. She nodded but didn’t speak. She kept looking down, and he thought maybe heights were not her favorite thing in the world. He had no idea why, but he squeezed past her, so he was in front, then reached behind him and caught her wrist in his hands.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Relax, Jones. This is strictly business.” He pulled her hand up, pressed it onto his shoulder. “Just hold on to me, okay?” And then he started down the fire escape’s zigzagging stairs.

She stayed right behind him, her hand closing tight on his shoulder, the second one quickly following suit on the other side. The fire escape was a good one, as fire escapes went, but even the best of them tended to sway and jiggle. Every time this one did, her nails dug into his flesh, right through his clothes. He moved slowly, carefully, because the thing was noisy. He figured he had maybe five minutes, maximum, before the cops noticed the window unlocked and came outside to check. It might be far sooner. Jax was sharp; she didn’t miss much. If he’d been alone, he could have taken it twice as fast and been gone by now, despite the noise.

He told himself he ought to do it and leave Jones to face the music. But instead he kept to the slow pace all the way to the bottom, where the fire escape ended with a good ten feet left between it and the ground.

“Put the ladder down,” Jones whispered, pointing urgently at the folded up ladder that would extend almost to the ground, when released.

“No way. You think Jax would miss something like that?”

“Then how are we—”

“We jump.”

She shook her head side to side, backing up a step.

“Come on, Jones, it’s not that far.”

She met his eyes. “You go first.”

If he did, he thought, she wouldn’t go at all. And for some reason, the idea of her getting caught wasn’t one he relished as much as he thought he should. “We’ll go together.” He slid his arm around her waist, pulled her to the edge. She resisted, but he said, “Trust me, Jones. I won’t let you get hurt.”

She looked up at him—surprised, maybe—but just when she opened her mouth to argue, he tightened his grip on her waist and jumped. She clutched him as they fell, even though it was only a second until they hit the ground, falling apart. He got to his feet first, reaching down to help her up. “You okay?”

“Fine.”

“Told you so.”

She released his hand and brushed herself off. Sean could barely believe they’d made it undetected. He took Jones by the arm and led her around the building, via the alley he’d been in earlier. His bag of rescued garbage still sat right where he’d left it, near the front corner of the building. Her Jeep was just beyond it, parked by the curb. There were plenty of other vehicles parked the same way up and down the street, so he figured the cops wouldn’t have had any reason to note her plate number. He looked at some of the cars more closely. The dark sedan in front of the building hadn’t been there before he’d gone inside. It was, he assumed, what the cops had driven here, and it was empty. He strained his eyes for a closer look. Yep. Crown Victoria.

Quickly he led Jones to the Jeep, opened the driver’s door. Hell, she hadn’t even locked it, and the keys were dangling from the switch.

He glanced back at her. “Go on, get in and get the hell out of here.”

She nodded, but she didn’t get in. She gripped his eyes with hers instead. Big, brown and scared right now. It almost knocked the wind out of him. He had never seen Julie Jones look like that. Never.

“You’re not going to tell anyone about this, are you?” she asked him.

Shit, for a second he thought she was going to thank him for helping her out. He was an idiot. “Not until I know what’s going on, Jones. But believe me, I will find out.”

“Don’t,” she whispered. “This has nothing to do with you.”

“But it does have something to do with you, doesn’t it?”

She pursed her lips, then turned away and got into her Jeep. He closed the door as she started it up. Then he yanked the door open again. “Put on your seat belt, Jones.”

Pursing her lips, she pulled the belt around her, yanked her door closed and popped the clutch. The Jeep jerked, nearly stalled, but managed to take off. He heard her grinding gears and winced. Poor freaking car. If the transmission survived long enough for the kid to get her license, it would be a miracle.

When her taillights were out of sight, Sean jogged into the alley, grabbed his bag of garbage and then ran a block to where he’d left his car. He didn’t relax until he got home, safe and sound. And even then, the questions kept going round and round in his mind. What was Julie Jones hiding? And what did she have to do with the murder of Harry Blackwood?

Julie pounded the steering wheel with a fist. She hadn’t found the documents. There hadn’t been anything there with her name on it, but that didn’t mean a thing. Any one of those dozens of folders and reams of papers could have been the one she was looking for, but she hadn’t had time to check them out.

What if the police found the truth in that mess? What if they found out about Dawn?

God, if it hadn’t been for that bastard MacKenzie showing up, she could have scooped them all up, thrown them into a trash bag from Harry’s kitchen and carried them home.

If it hadn’t been for MacKenzie showing up, I’d have been caught there, red-handed, an inner voice whispered. I never would have found that fire escape in time to avoid the police, much less had the gumption to go down it in the dark.

Oh, God, the police. She imagined them—the two officers, and that bitch Detective Jackson—were gathering up the papers and documents and videotapes one by one, even now. They would probably sit in a roomful of cops and go over all of them. If they found out the truth, her life would be destroyed. They would take Dawn away from her. Track down her birth mother’s relatives—the very same people Lizzie had been compelled to run away from all those years ago—and hand her over to them.

Dawn.

Shivering all over, Julie kept steering the Jeep with one hand, dipping into her jacket pocket with the other. She pulled out the two photographs she had found on the floor, both of them taken in a place so jarringly familiar that the sight of them had almost floored her. They’d been taken at Young Believers’ compound.

She looked at them now, tried to make out the faces in the group shots. And finally she realized why one of those faces seemed so familiar. The young man with the three-piece suit and the automatic rifle was Harry Blackwood.

“He was there,” she whispered. Not as one of the inmates, though. Those who lived at the place didn’t wear suits but plain, functional clothes more suited to working in the greenhouses and gardens. No, Harry must have been one of Mordecai’s visiting dignitaries. The men who brought large sums of money in exchange for some of Mordecai’s crops.

Julie lowered the photos toward her pocket, glanced up at the road and saw the glowing orange eyes and red-brown coat in her headlights’ beam. Startled, the deer froze in the middle of the road. Equally startled, Julie jerked the wheel hard to the left and jammed her foot on the brake. The Jeep’s rear end skidded right, so she jerked the wheel right, overcorrected, and sent it skidding the other way. Her body jerked hard against the car’s motions, but the seat belt kept her from being whipped across the seat. She thought she was going into the brush at the side of the road for sure, but somehow she pulled out of the skid, and the back end’s fishtailing slowed and finally stopped. She forgot about the clutch, and the car bucked and then stalled.

She sat there, the car at a cockeyed angle on the shoulder, watching the deer bound merrily away into the woods, and she thought how right her daughter was about her driving skills. Damn deer anyway. Thank God she hadn’t wrecked Dawnie’s sixteenth-birthday present or she would never have heard the end of it, even though her insurance would have covered the damage.

She told herself it didn’t matter. She hadn’t wrecked the Jeep, or hit the deer or anything else. She hadn’t been hurt, and she supposed that might have turned out differently if Sean hadn’t reminded her to buckle up. Though she would be damned before she admitted that to him.

Pulling herself together, she pushed down the clutch, restarted the engine, pulled back onto the pavement and drove slowly the rest of the way home, her full attention on the road the entire time. She pulled the Jeep into the garage, closed the door and crept into the house as quietly as she could. She checked all the locks, shut off all the lights. God, it was 3:30 a.m. She had to get up again in a little more than three hours.

She tiptoed up the stairs and paused outside her daughter’s bedroom door to peek inside. Dawn was lying in the bed, exactly the way she had been before. She hadn’t so much as moved in her sleep.

What had at first seemed reassuring changed in an instant as Julie stared in at the bed and realized what she was seeing.

She pushed the door open further and stepped inside. “Dawn?”

Dawn said nothing. Julie moved closer to the bed, reached down to touch Dawn’s shoulder. “Dawnie?”

Still nothing. She pulled the covers back.

Pillows lay beneath them, lined up to resemble the form of a sleeping sixteen-year-old covered in blankets. Lifting her head, Julie saw the curtains floating on a breeze coming in through the open window.

“Oh my God,” Julie whispered. “Dawn!”

Chapter Four

Dawn crouched in the bushes on the front lawn as the Jeep’s headlights shone on the slowly rising garage door. The Jeep rolled inside. Dawn’s mother got out of the car in a pair of old jeans and a sweatshirt, half her hair hanging loose from what looked like a haphazard pony tail. The garage door lowered slowly.

“Was that your mom?” Kayla asked in an overly loud whisper.

“Yeah.”

“Why’s she driving your Jeep?”

Dawn shrugged. “Left her car keys someplace today and had to catch a ride home with, uh…a friend, I guess.”

“Good thing we left the party early.”

“Not early enough.” Dawn rubbed her arms, the possibility of getting caught adding to the chill of the crisp October night air. Wondering where her mom had been in the wee hours of the morning gave her an even deeper chill. She’d overheard part of a phone call earlier tonight, before her mom had left for her first late-night meeting or whatever. Dawn had picked up the upstairs extension and heard her mother say, “You won’t quit until you destroy me utterly, will you, Harry?” and a man reply, “Not utterly, Jewel. I don’t want to kill the golden goose, you know.” Her mother’s reply to that had been, “Fine, eleven, then.” And then she’d hung up the phone.

Dawn knew her mother had secrets. She’d always had secrets, things that Dawn knew were best not asked about. She didn’t ask about her father, for instance. Julie would only say they’d both been teens, and that he’d been killed in a car accident before Julie had even realized she was pregnant. His family were devoutly religious, and telling them of Dawn’s existence would only have added to their pain. To push for more information only wound up with one or both of them getting angry, the same result that came of asking too many questions about Julie’s side of the family.

Dawn often thought she was probably adopted. It would explain her mom’s secrets, and it would explain how Julie could be so dark that she must have Latin blood, while Dawn herself was as pale as a daisy. She was going to ask about it someday, but privately she thought it wasn’t half as important as Julie seemed to think it was. It wouldn’t change anything.

Dawn loved her mother, secrets and all. But this was the first time she’d had this sickening feeling that one of her mom’s secrets might be dangerous, or that she might be in trouble because of them.

“Where do you suppose she went?” Kayla asked softly.

Dawn shook herself out of her thoughts, focused on the present situation and shrugged. “There was probably breaking news somewhere,” she lied. She knew better, though. Her mom didn’t go out to cover breaking news in jeans and a sweatshirt. It was a running joke how fast she could make herself ready to go on the air. Five minutes with a makeup mirror and a compact would be plenty, in a pinch.

“You’d better get back in there, Dawnie, before she realizes you’re gone.”

Dawn saw her bedroom light come on and swallowed hard. “Too late,” she said, her heart falling to somewhere in the region of her stomach. “You might as well go home. There’s no sense in both of us getting caught. Your dad would kill you.”

Kayla nodded. “My dad’s a cop, and he’s not as good a snoop as your mother is.” She sighed. “Call me in the morning,” she said, then she ran off into the darkness.

Dawn squared her shoulders and walked toward the house. She thought about going around to the back and climbing in through her bedroom window but decided against it. It would only make her mother angrier. Instead she went to the front door and used her spare key to let herself in.

Before she’d even closed and locked the door behind her, her mother’s steps came rapidly down the stairs. “Dawnie?”

“Yeah, it’s me, Mom.”

Julie appeared in the foyer, then lunged at Dawn and wrapped her in a fierce bear hug that squeezed the breath from her lungs. “My God, I was so worried,” she said, her voice quivering with relief and love.

Then, just as suddenly, she released Dawn from the mamma-bear-hug and stepped back to stare at her. The motherly relief in her eyes faded fast, and her voice took on a firmer, sharper tone. “Just where have you been, young lady?”

Dawn took a breath, lifted her chin. Her mother detested lies above all things, which was kind of ironic, considering, Dawn thought a little rebelliously. Still, she knew it would be best to just get the truth out and face the music. “Okay,” she said. “I snuck out. I’m sorry. It was wrong, and it’ll never happen again.”

“Snuck out where? And with whom?”

Heaven help the sixteen-year-old with a reporter for a mom, she thought. Julie Jones didn’t know how to accept anything less than who, what, where, when, why and how from anyone. Especially her own kid.

“Come on, Mom, it was a mistake. I’m sixteen. I’m not a little kid anymore, and I said I was sorry.”

“Dawn.” There was that warning tone in her voice, the one Dawn knew not to mess with.

“All right,” she said with a heavy sigh. “If you must know every detail, there was a party on the lakeshore, down by the landing. A bunch of kids, a little bonfire, a boom box and a pile of CDs. I left after you went to bed and walked down there with a friend. A female friend, but I’m not going to tell you which one, because if I do, you’ll call her mom and get her into trouble, too. Consider it protecting a source.”

Her mother lifted her perfectly shaped eyebrows and gave two slow blinks of her pretty brown eyes that told Dawn she was treading on thin ice. “Was there alcohol at this party?”

“Not at first. About an hour ago a carload of kids from F. M. high showed up with a couple of cases. Things started getting a little crazy, so my friend and I decided to leave.”

“It was Kayla Matthews, wasn’t it?”

Dawn didn’t answer. “I didn’t drink, Mom. Smell.” She blew toward her mother’s face.

Her mother actually took her up on the offer and sniffed her breath, then seemed only slightly relieved. “What else? Were there drugs?”

Dawn licked her lips, lowered her eyes. “I thought I caught a whiff of weed just before we took off, but I didn’t see it.”

“I see.”

“Mom, it was just harmless fun. I didn’t do anything wrong. I mean, aside from the sneaking out without asking.” She lifted her head, thinking fast. “Besides, you snuck out tonight, too. In my Jeep.”

Her mother’s eyes widened just enough to tell Dawn she wasn’t supposed to know about her little midnight run. “Dawnie, you were on foot, in the dark, without me even knowing you’d left. Suppose, on your way down to that party, you and Kayla had encountered a predator?”

“I never said Kayla was with me!” Her mom didn’t even pause.

“Suppose some fiftysomething pervert with a taste for teenage girls had happened by? Would there have been any harm then? My God, I wouldn’t even have known you were missing until morning!”

“Oh, come on, you knew I was missing the second you came home from wherever you were tonight. You don’t miss a thing. Besides, I wasn’t alone, and nothing happened.”

“Don’t you even watch the news I have to read every night, Dawnie? Don’t you realize what kind of risk you were taking?” Sighing, shaking her head, she turned and walked back into the living room, reaching for the telephone.

Dawn raced after her. “What are you doing? Who are you calling?”

“The police, of course.”

“Mom, you can’t!”

She paused in dialing, the phone in her hand. “Dawnie, how am I going to feel if I go in to work tomorrow and someone hands me some copy about a carload of Fayetteville-Manlius students who crashed on their way home from a party? You said yourself they brought beer. Did they have a designated driver?”

Dawn swallowed the lie that leaped to her throat, lowered her head, shook it slowly. “No. They were all drinking.”

“Then may be a patrol car will get there before they leave, and maybe they’ll get home alive tonight.” She finished dialing.

Dawn sighed hard enough to make her mother fully aware of her feelings about this, then stalked through to the stairs and up them.

“We’re not finished here, Dawn. You’re grounded. Two weeks. No arguments.”

“Whatever,” Dawn muttered. God, everyone was going to know who had ratted them out. She and Kayla were the only two who’d left the party early. She closed her bedroom door with a bang and flopped facefirst onto her bed. She would be the most hated junior in Cazenovia High School tomorrow.

It wasn’t fair. Her mom was keeping secrets, too. Big ones. But it was okay for her to sneak around and hide things. Just not for Dawn. It was such a double standard.

She punched her pillow, buried her face in it and wished for a solution.

A pebble hit her window. Then another. She scrambled off the bed, yanked the curtains wide and stared through the open window. Kayla stood on the back lawn, in the spill of light from her bedroom. “I thought you went home.”

Kayla rubbed her arms, glanced behind her. “Something creeped me out. You get in trouble?”

“Yeah, some.”

“Grounded?”

“Two weeks.”

“Bummer.”

The bushes that formed the boundary between the neat back lawn and the untamed field that sloped downhill to the lake shore moved, as if something were creeping through them. Dawn frowned, and Kayla turned her head quickly. There was nothing there. Just the wind, Dawn thought. “My mom’s on the phone, narc-ing out the party.”

Kayla shivered. “I should go back down to the landing and tell everyone before I head home.”

“I wouldn’t. She might just call your mom next. I didn’t say your name, but she’s not stupid.”

Again the bushes moved. This time Dawn swore she saw a shape, a dark shadow, moving with them. Someone was out there, watching.

“Jesus, Kayla, get in here!”

Kayla moved a few steps closer to the house. “I gotta get home. My parents will kill me if they go to check my room and find me gone.”

The shadow moved again, looking so much like a dark, menacing human shape this time that Dawn opened her mouth to scream.

But before the sound escaped, there was a sudden, brighter pool of light flooding the back lawn, and the shadow vanished in its glow. A second later, Dawn realized the light was coming from her own house’s open back door when she heard her mother say, “You might as well come on in, Kayla.”

Kayla grimaced but hurried inside, seeming almost as relieved as she was upset at being caught. Dawn went downstairs to do damage control, telling herself all the way that she probably hadn’t seen a damn thing, other than maybe a stray deer or a nightbird. Her mother’s paranoid tendencies were finally starting to rub off on her.

Every person in the newsroom looked up when Julie burst in the next morning, ten minutes late.

Bryan, her assistant, who’d been on her heels from the front entrance all the way to the newsroom, talking all the way, finally managed to thrust the cup of coffee he was carrying into her hands.

“Rough night?” the news director, Allan Westcott asked.

“No sleep. Did you get my fax?”

“Yeah. It came in at 5:00 a.m.” Westcott shuffled the pages in front of him. “Your report says the body was discovered around midnight?”

She nodded.

“So why the delay?”

She had to say something, and admitting that she’d been out rifling through the dead man’s apartment in the wee hours was out of the question, nor were Dawn’s antics any of the man’s business. By the time she’d phoned the police about the party, called Kayla’s parents, lectured the girls while awaiting Mr. and Mrs. Matthewses’ arrival, seen Kayla safely off, double-checked the locks and gotten Dawn back into bed, it had been four-thirty. She’d barely had time to type up the details, reread them to be sure she hadn’t included anything she wasn’t supposed to know and fax the report to the station.

There’d been no point in trying to sleep by then.

“Julie?”

She blinked and sipped her coffee. Perfect, just enough cream and sugar. Bryan was learning fast. “Yes,” she finally answered. “Rough night. Long, rough, sleepless night. Have the police released the identity of the victim yet?” She took another sip, trying to hide her nerves as she hoped the cops hadn’t mentioned her missing car keys or her behavior at the crime scene to her boss.

“No. We’ve been checking every half hour. I, uh, I understand Sean MacKenzie was on the scene with you last night.”

Julie felt her eyes widen but hid her surprise behind a bright smile. “Which makes it even more vital that we stay on this. I couldn’t bear to have that snake in the grass scoop me.”

Westcott cleared his throat and glanced at the producer, who was chewing her lower lip. Other glances were being exchanged around the table.

“What?” Julie asked, looking from one face to the next. “What’s going on?”

No one looked her in the eye, until Allan shrugged and cleared his throat. “Sit down, Julie. Drink your coffee.”

Frowning, suddenly very worried, she sat. There was a folder in front of her customary chair. She pretended to look through it, while knowing, deep in her gut, that she was about to be fired. They knew about her walking into that crime scene last night. The cops had told—or more likely that rat bastard Sean MacKenzie…

…whose face was smiling up at her from an eight-by-ten glossy. It sat inside the folder, opposite his professional bio.

Lifting her head slowly, she speared Allan Westcott with a look that should have set his hair on fire. “You didn’t—you wouldn’t…”

The door opened, and a man walked in. She felt him before she even turned to look at him, standing there, looking fresh and handsome and smug. “Hope I’m not so late I get fired on my first day,” he said. Then he met her eyes. “Morning, partner.”

She rose slowly from her chair, not smiling, not speaking, not quite able to process anything she was seeing.

Allan Westcott cleared his throat. “Julie, meet your new coanchor.”

Sean, still smiling, extended a hand. She took it automatically, without even thinking, and he pulled her close, as if to give her a friendly embrace, and whispered close to her ear, “Breathe, Jones, before your head explodes.”

Then he released her. She turned around and sank into her chair, feeling as if someone had just hit her with a stun gun.

“Welcome to WSNY, Sean.” Allan had come around the table now and was pumping MacKenzie’s hand as if they were best friends.

“When did all this happen?” Julie asked. “I haven’t even tested with him. I thought we had another two weeks before we had to decide who would replace Jim.” She blinked and shot a glance at MacKenzie. “I didn’t even know you’d sent an audition tape.”

“Julie,” Westcott said, “I know this comes as a surprise, and I wanted more time to break it to you. The truth is, Sean’s the best man we’ve interviewed for the job. We’d planned to see a few more applicants before making any decisions, but since you and he were both on the scene of the murder last night, we thought it best to move fast.”

“I didn’t give them much of a choice, Jones,” MacKenzie said quickly. “If they hadn’t hired me, I’d have taken the story elsewhere.”

Bryan vacated his seat beside Julie, pulling it out for Sean and waving him into it. MacKenzie took it.

“You blackmailed yourself into a job,” she interpreted.

Sean shrugged. “At least now I won’t scoop you.”

She blinked at him. “They call you at the last minute with a job offer based solely on their desire to stop your show from scooping ours, and you accept?”

He shrugged. “Actually, I called them. They made an offer only an idiot would have turned down.”

She was certain her eyes must have been flashing fire by then. “What about your radio show?”

“I’ve been trying to land this job for a month, Jones. It’s not like I didn’t plan ahead, just in case hell froze over, and I got it.” MacKenzie smiled at her. “The radio station’s playing a taped show today. I’m under contract for ten more shows, which translates to another two weeks, but I can make arrangements to go in and tape the new stuff when I’m not busy here. Don’t worry, Jones, I’ll have plenty of time to work with you on this.”

She looked from him to Allan, who was still standing. The look he returned told her this was a done deal. Not to argue. So she didn’t, not right then, anyway. Allan returned to his seat and started with the daily briefing. She sat there, using the stoic face she had to put on when reading news that made her want to cry, barely hearing him, glad that Bryan was there rapidly taking notes so she could catch up later.

Finally the meeting ended, and she got up, went to her office, turned to close the door behind her—and bumped it against the body that stood there, blocking the way.

“We should probably talk,” MacKenzie said. He pushed the door wider, waltzed inside as if he owned the place and then closed it behind him. As he did, she saw a crowd of co-workers looking on curiously, but they all scattered as soon as they saw her looking.

Then the door was closed, and it was just the two of them.

“You have an office.” He sounded impressed. “I figured a cubicle in the newsroom.”

She shrugged. “You figured right, up until two months ago. This was Jim’s office. He was a legend, you know. There’s a street named after him. He’d been here twenty years. He rated an office of his own.”

“So…when he retired?”

“I asked for it and got it.” She shrugged. “I was as surprised as anyone when they said yes. You wanna take notes on this or…?”

“Photographic memory,” he said, tapping his skull with a forefinger. She would have preferred a sledgehammer.

“So why are you in here?”

He pursed his lips. “Up until last night, I didn’t really think I had a chance in hell of landing this job. I’d have given you a heads-up when I first applied, if I had. Thought you ought to know that.”

She didn’t think a reply was called for, so she didn’t give one.

“Hell, I applied here ten years ago, as a photojournalist. That’s how I started, you know. Behind the camera. But then I got ambitious. You know I applied for your spot, three years ago, same time you did. I wasn’t ‘on air’ material, they said. Besides, they wanted a woman.” He pursed his lips. “Funny thing is, I haven’t changed a thing. Not my style, not my look. The only difference is that now my radio show is a hit. My name is known as well as yours is, and I’m your polar opposite. To be honest, I think we could be dynamite together.”

She blinked, not missing the double entendre. “On the air, you mean.”

“Of course. What else would I mean?” Then he smiled slowly. “Oh, that. Gee, Jones, you don’t waste any time, do you?”

She rolled her eyes.

“Don’t panic, Jones. I probably won’t last a week.”

“Why not?”

He smiled, holding his arms out to his sides. “Look at me. Your boss was right the first time. I’m not anchor material.”

She did look at him. He was wearing faded jeans that looked sinfully good on him, a khaki polo shirt with a Syracuse Orangemen logo patch on one side of the chest, a baseball cap and an olive drab jacket that looked like army surplus. He hadn’t shaved this morning, so there was a sexy whisper of prickly stubble on his face. He did look more like one of the photojournalists than an on-air reporter—and she had already known that was where he’d started, behind the camera, not in front of it.

He was right. He didn’t look like an anchor. What the hell could Allan have been thinking, hiring him for an on-air spot?

“I figured you’d blackball me if you could,” he said finally.

It made her realize that she’d been looking him over pretty thoroughly for several seconds now, and that he was fully aware of it. Maybe even enjoying it.

“I would have, if I’d had a clue they were even thinking of hiring you,” she said. Then she sighed and moved behind her desk, sinking into her chair, hugging her coffee mug between her hands, even though it was nearly empty. “Might still try it, though I think Allan’s mind is made up.”

He sat down in one of the chairs in front of her desk, pulling it closer as he did. “Assuming they don’t fire me in short order, I meant what I said before. I think we could make this work for both of us.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And look, if it’s last night that has you worried, you can relax. I’m not going to say anything about your little snafu at that crime scene. I’m not out to get you fired.”

She lifted her brows. “Why not? Wouldn’t that give you the anchor seat all to yourself?”

He probed her eyes with his. “Don’t trust me as far as you can throw me, do you, Jones?”

“Less than that, even.”

His jaw tightened. “Okay, we’ll put this on terms you might believe. I want to succeed.”

“So?”

“So every marketing study out there shows that viewers prefer news shows with male-female coanchors. Your boss was right about that when he hired you as Jim’s partner three years ago. If I get you fired, they’ll just hire someone else. I already know you’re good. And for some inexplicable reason, you’re popular. The viewers love you. The fact that your ratings have dropped since Jim retired isn’t because of you, it’s because he’s gone. The other shows have coanchors, and they’re picking up your audience because of it.”

She lifted her chin. “My ratings haven’t dropped that much.”

“You were number one in Central N. Y. Now you’re number three.”

“The difference between one and three is only a few points.”

“The difference between one and three is the difference between winning and being the second runner-up, kid. WSNY wants that number one slot. And now that I’m on board, we’re going to give it to them.”

She lowered her head, shook it. “Maybe I’ll just quit.”

He pursed his lips. “No, you won’t. That would be unprofessional, and you might be a whole lot of things, Jones, but you are not unprofessional.”

She pursed her lips.

“Why do you hate me so much, anyway?”

“I don’t hate you, MacKenzie. I couldn’t care less about you. Don’t flatter yourself by taking it personally. I’d feel the same way about anyone who was after my job.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Prove it.”

“How?”

“Name one other journalist who went up against you for that anchor chair three years ago. Just one.”

She frowned, looking around the room as she searched her memory for names and found none. MacKenzie drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair, glanced at his watch, whistled an uneven tune.

“Well?”

“That doesn’t prove anything.”

“Proves one thing,” he said, getting to his feet. “Proves it is personal. Hell, Jones, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re working so hard to hate me just to hide what you really feel.”

“Oh, please. This I’ve gotta hear. What does your warped little imagination tell you I really feel?”

He smiled at her. “You want me.”

She stared at him for a long moment—at his smoky gray eyes and full lips. And she said, “You’re right. I do want you—in so many ways.”

“Yeah?” He looked surprised, and maybe a little bit turned on. “God, tell me more.”

She began counting on her fingers. “I want you drawn, quartered, gelded without anesthetic, beheaded and spit-roasted. But for now, I just want you out of my office.”

His smile didn’t disguise the look of relief that flooded him. “Damn, I’m gonna love working here,” he said, and he turned, whistling off-key, and walked with a spring in his step out of her office.

But not, she feared, out of her life.

Chapter Five

When Sean returned to the newsroom, he noticed three things. First, the early-morning bustle of the place had slowed to a hum. Reporters were making calls from their partition-separated desks, and several had already left to cover stories. Second, his office door was marked for him by the handful of foil balloons tied to the knob. It was just past the newsroom on the right. An office hadn’t been part of the initial offer, but he’d insisted on one as part of the deal, then been surprised that WSNY had agreed readily to that and everything else he’d asked for. Jones would probably be livid when she found out.

The third thing he noticed, after walking into his new digs, was the new suit hanging from a hook in the wall. A red tie, white shirt, navy jacket. They’d even included the pants. He pursed his lips and leaned back into the hallway, glancing toward the glass-enclosed office attached to the newsroom. The news director was inside at his desk, the phone to his ear. He gave Sean a smile and a thumbs-up.

Sean took two steps in that direction before his beeper went off. “Hell.” He took it out, glanced at it and read the text message. Then he sighed and hurried across the hall to Jones’s office, reminding himself that now that they were partners, scooping her was no longer the goal. Getting dirt on her would still be fun, but it would be purely for entertainment purposes. He walked in without knocking.

She looked up from her computer as if irritated. “What now?”

“Blackwood’s name is being released. We got the go. They’re holding a press conference in…” He glanced at his watch. “Forty minutes.”

“Call them, get the details and meet me in the studio.” She was already around the desk, pushing past him into the hall and running for the newsroom, shouting Allan’s name.

Five minutes later, Sean headed into the studio with a sheet of scribbled notes.

Jones was at the anchor desk, a hand mirror propped in front of her, wielding a hairbrush with one hand and a makeup brush with the other. She dropped the brushes and dug in her bag. “Where the hell is my mascara?”

Amazing. A few minutes ago she’d looked scattered, sleep deprived and a little wild. Now she looked smooth, composed and flawless. She’d tamed her hair into a respectable bun and slapped on a coat of makeup so fast it made his head spin.

He handed her the sheet of notes and sat down in the chair next to her.

“Sean, you need to change!” called a fresh-faced kid he didn’t know, the one who’d given up his seat at that morning’s meeting and now stood nearby with the blue suit in his hand. “Just from the waist up. Hurry.”

From the control booth, a tinny voice announced, “Thirty seconds.”

Sean glanced at the kid, licked his lips. Might as well get fired now as later, he thought. “Look, you guys need to get used to this. I don’t do the suit thing. I’m not that kind of newsman.” As he spoke, he stuck a tiny microphone up underneath his shirt, out the neck and clipped it to his collar.

“Doesn’t matter,” Jones said, scowling at him. “You don’t need to be here at all.”

“Standby one.”

“I’m here, and I’m staying,” he said. “You just read the report and don’t sweat it.”

She frowned so hard he thought her face would break.

“Roll one!”

The transformation was instant and nothing less than amazing. Her frown vanished as she lifted her eyes to the camera in front of her. The monitor, which Sean could see off to the left, switched from a “News-Four Special Report” screen to her poised, elegant, no-nonsense face—a face that said “You can trust me” without a single word. She began to read almost without glancing down.

“This is a News-Channel Four Exclusive Special Report. Police have just confirmed the identity of the man found lying dead in an Armory Square hotel room last night as Harry Blackwood, brother of New York’s own Senator Martin Blackwood. The death is listed as suspicious and is under investigation. I was on the scene of this story last night,” she read, “with invaluable assistance from Team Four’s newest member, and my new partner, Sean MacKenzie. Sean?”

“Roll Two!” the control room announced.

The red light on camera one blinked out, and the one on camera two came on. Sean knew the monitor now showed both of them, and he tried to look serious as he recited the lines he’d planned on the way down the hall. “Thanks, partner,” he said. He saw sparks flying from her eyes, knew they were invisible to everyone but him and deflected them with a smug half smile. Then, facing the camera, “Team Four will have full coverage and late-breaking details of this tragedy as they unfold. Keep it here, folks. This is where you’ll get the inside stuff. Until then, this is Sean MacKenzie…” He looked her way.

“And Julie Jones for News Channel Four,” she said, not missing a beat.

The light went out.

“You’re clear.”

Jones yanked the microphone from her lapel, tugged it out from the back of her blouse—he hadn’t thought of running the wire up his back, good tip—and got to her feet. “Invaluable assistance?” she asked.

He shrugged.

“That was not necessary,” she told him.

“No, but it was perfect.”

“What the hell was that ‘inside stuff’ comment, anyway? I hope you don’t think you can bring your tabloid techniques here with you, MacKenzie, because we won’t tolerate that at this station.”

“Bullshit. Viewers are twice as intrigued now, and you can bet they’ll be tuning in later. As for my techniques, I’m pretty sure they’re what got me hired.”

She didn’t growl at him, but he thought it was close. Then she swung her gaze away, pinning the news director to the floor with her eyes.

Allan returned a slow smile while rubbing his hands. “You two are dynamite together. Now, grab a cameraman and get to that press conference, pronto.”

“Both of us?” Jones asked.

“Julie, from now on everything you do, you do together. You follow?”

She closed her eyes, clenched her fists and left the studio.

Sean had to give her credit for speed. She didn’t mess around—just dashed into her office, grabbed her jacket and a larger bag, and then joined him in the white SUV in the parking lot, sliding into the passenger seat, then turning to look at him as if he shouldn’t be there.

“You keep frowning every time you look at me and you’re gonna get wrinkles, Jones.”

“The photographers usually drive,” she said. “You’re going to piss off whoever is coming with us.”

“No chance of that.” He started the car, put it in reverse, backed out of the parking space. “No one was available. All out on assignment, and we haven’t got time to wait. Allan told me to handle it.”

She lifted her brows. “Sean MacKenzie saves the day, huh?”

He pulled into traffic. “You wanna hold the camera and let me do the report, I’ll be more than happy to let you.” He glanced her way. “Buckle up, Jones.”

She pulled on her seat belt as he drove. “Where’s the press conference? And who will be there?”

“Outside City Hall. Chief Strong, Senator Blackwood naturally, I don’t know who else.”

“Those cops from last night, I hope.”

He glanced at her. “No word on your keys yet?”

She shook her head.

“You ever get your car outta there?”

“Allan said he’d send one of the interns for it this afternoon. I left my spare set of keys with him.”

“So it doesn’t matter so much—about the other set, I mean.”

It did, he could see it did, but he didn’t know why. “No,” she told him, and he knew it was a lie. “Doesn’t matter at all.”

They arrived at City Hall. Several other news stations had reporters on the scene, setting up to cover the press conference, but none, he was pleased to see, had sent their evening anchors. To them, it had been just another murder in a year that had already broken the record for violent crime in Central New York. They hadn’t been prepared, and the press conference was being given on very short notice.

“Perfect,” he whispered, pulling the Jeep into a parking spot at an odd angle and jumping out. He opened the back door, yanked out the camera and balanced it on his shoulder. With his free hand, he snapped on the headphone.

“You just stay behind the camera where you belong,” Jones said, adjusting her earphone, picking up the microphone case and getting out, as well.

She took the lead, shouldering her way through the other reporters, most of whom were, he guessed, a little too starstruck to call her on her rudeness. There was no question who was top dog among those present. No other local celebs stood around. None. The sea of bodies parted, grudgingly, to let them pass. Jones commandeered a spot near the podium that had been set up on the front stairs, then turned to face him and almost bumped into the camera.

He backed up two paces, looked through the lens at her, wondered who the hell had ever sculpted a face that perfect or eyes that full of mystery. He saw secrets in those eyes and wondered how the hell he’d missed them up to now.

“How do I look?” she asked, and he knew she wasn’t fishing for compliments. She wanted him to tell her if there was spinach in her teeth or a hair standing up straight on top of her head. There wasn’t.

“You’ll do.”

She narrowed her eyes on him, brought the microphone to her lips, adjusted her own nearly invisible earpiece. “You ready back there?”

“Going live in thirty. Stand by.”

She cleared her throat, licked her lips.

“Ten seconds, Julie.”

She lifted her chin, faced the camera.

“Roll Live-Eye.”

“This is Julie Jones, coming to you live outside City Hall, where Senator Blackwood and Syracuse Police Chief Strong are expected to deliver a press conference any minute now. As some of you may already know, late last night, News-Channel Four had the only team on the scene when a man was found dead in an Armory Square hotel room. In a News-Four Exclusive, just under an hour ago, we were the first to report his name—Harry Blackwood, brother of Senator Martin Blackwood.”

Sean knew she was watching him, waiting for him to signal her as soon as anyone appeared at that podium up the stairs at her back, but no one had. He thought she was running out of things to say and worried about how she would fill the time if the press conference started late.

“Most Central New Yorkers know Harry Blackwood as a controversial figure, one who had numerous scrapes with the law and a less than stellar reputation. This leaves many of us to speculate on whether his lifestyle and known underworld associates could have any connection to his untimely death, a death police are calling suspicious, though I suspect we’ll be hearing more on that shortly. Officially, I can say only that having been at the crime scene before Blackwood’s body was removed, there was little doubt in my mind as to the cause of death. Without official permission, I cannot tell you much beyond that, except that the scene was a disturbing one that I’ll see in my mind’s eye for a long time to come.”

Sean lifted his eyes from the camera to look at her directly and gave her a slow nod of approval. Sell it, he thought. For someone who claimed to dislike sensationalism, she sure was a master at it.

“News-Four will continue to bring you complete coverage of this investigation as the day unfolds, and—”

The doors behind her opened, and Sean lifted a hand, finger pointed in that direction.

“And now it looks as if the press conference is about to begin.”

Sean turned the camera’s eye on the podium, as Julie said, “Senator Martin Blackwood.”

Blackwood cleared his throat. He looked as if he’d had a long night without much sleep, but he’d shaved and slicked up for the event. “Good afternoon. It grieves me to have to be here to tell you that my brother, Harold Blackwood, was killed last night. The police have told me that they do suspect foul play, but I’ll let them comment on that. I only want to say that this is a difficult time for my family. No matter what people may have thought about my brother, he remained just that—my brother. I would be very grateful to all of the members of the press if you would allow me and my family the time and privacy to grieve the loss of a man we loved very much. That’s all I have for you today.”

Immediately reporters began shouting questions. Jones, though, had the advantage of being dead center of the senator’s line of sight, and probably, Sean added silently, the advantage of being stunning enough to stop any man’s eyes from looking past her. Besides, her face was a familiar one.

“Senator, can you tell us anything about the funeral arrangements?”

The senator sighed, nodded once. “We’re having a private ceremony, Julie, and we’ve chosen not to disclose the particulars, as I’m sure you understand.”

While she had his full attention, she said, “Of course. Who do you think is responsible for this, Senator?”

He was surprised. She’d slid the real question right on the heels of the mundane, boring one and nailed him with it. He replied before he could censure himself. “I only wish I knew.”

Then, licking his lips, he let one of his aides hustle him away from the microphone, with the press still shouting questions.

Chief Strong, a burly man with a salt-and-pepper crew cut and a face like granite, stepped up to the podium, holding up his hands for silence. “The Syracuse Police Department have several strong leads in this investigation, which is being headed up by Lieutenant Cassandra Jackson. We are not releasing any details regarding cause of death at this time. To do so could impede and hamper the investigation. We will keep the press fully informed, so long as you all cooperate with us in our efforts. Thank you.”

“Do you have any suspects?” someone shouted.

He turned to give a reply that was not an answer. Sean kept taping, but as he did, he noticed one of the uniformed cops from last night sidling up to Julie, tapping her shoulder, and speaking near her ear. She nodded at him, then glanced back at Sean and crooked her finger. He put the camera back on her.

“There you have it, the official statement from Senator Blackwood, requesting privacy for his family to grieve this tragic loss. Chief Strong is playing this one very close to the vest—but if doing so will help catch a killer, then News-Four applauds him in that decision.”

Sean scowled over the camera at her and then made kissing-up lips at her.

“One thing is obvious from what Chief Strong had to say here, and that is that this case is being treated as a homicide investigation. Lieutenant Jackson, named by the chief as the detective heading up this investigation, is one of the Syracuse P.D.’s top homicide detectives. We’ll have more on this as the story develops. This is Julie Jones for News-Channel Four.”

Sean flicked off the camera and lowered it from his shoulder. “Not kissing up to the Police Department or anything, are we?”

She said, “I figured it couldn’t hurt. They want to see us both inside.”

“Now?”

She nodded, turned and led the way back through the crowd, around to a side entrance, where a uniformed cop waited to take them inside. He paused at a reception desk. “You can leave the camera here,” he told Sean.

Sean lifted his brows but complied. Then they were taken into an interrogation room, where Lieutenant Jackson waited. She sat at a table, wearing a pair of shapeless navy-blue slacks and a white button-down blouse. A blazer hung over the back of the wooden chair, and she got up when they walked in. Her hair, long and butterscotch-blond, was pulled back into a ponytail, and she wore no makeup. How the hell a woman could dress that blandly and look that good was beyond Sean, but he did enjoy her. She was a good cop, an honest one, and she didn’t hate his guts, always a quality he admired in a woman.

Jax smiled very slightly at Sean; then her eyes met Julie’s and turned chilly. She cleared her throat. “Sit. This won’t take long.”

Jones sat. So did Jax. Sean stayed standing, interested in the slight animosity he sensed between the two women. He hadn’t noticed it before and wondered about it.

“I assume you can both make a pretty fair guess at the cause of death in the Blackwood case, being that you were there when it happened,” Jax said.

“After it happened,” Jones corrected, maybe a little too quickly.

“That’s what I meant.”

Sean didn’t think that was what she’d meant at all. Especially if the way she’d been watching Jones’s face as she’d said it was any indication.

“Just what is it you want, Lieutenant Jackson?” Jones asked.

The cop frowned. “Your cooperation. I want you to keep the cause of death to yourselves. Say nothing about the crime scene. Not even little hints like the one you just dropped on the air, Ms. Jones, about how gruesome it was.”

Julie seemed to be thinking that over. “Can I ask why?”

“Because only a handful of people outside the police know the details. You two, the hotel employee who found the body—and the killer.”

Sean nodded. “I get it. You’ll be able to rule out false confessions by nutcases who don’t guess right on how Blackwood was killed. I think my partner and I would be glad to make you that promise, Jax, but we’d really like something in return.”

He saw Jones flinch and grimace a little when he called the woman by her nickname.

“Why am I not surprised? You always want something in return, Sean.”

“Oh, come on, I’m not demanding a date.”

“Not this time, anyway.” The lieutenant, smiling a little, lowered her sky-blue eyes, and shook her head. “There’s nothing I can release just yet, Sean.”

“You have any suspects?” Sean asked.

“Everyone Harry knew is a suspect.”

“But you’ve narrowed it down.”

The lieutenant nodded. “Yes.”

“To?”

Jax looked from one of them to the other. “You didn’t release the name last night, even though you knew who he was. You haven’t mentioned the cause of death. So far, you’ve kept your word. You can’t release this tidbit, either, not until I give you the okay. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Sean said. He glanced at Julie, but instead of sitting on the edge of her seat in glee, she looked pale, a little pinched around the mouth. Almost scared.

“We think it was a woman.”

Sean was still looking at Julie when Jax said that, but he could see both women, and he knew Jax was watching Jones like a hawk watching a wounded rabbit. He thought Jones flinched and hoped the hell the lieutenant hadn’t noticed.

“What makes you think so?” he asked Jackson.

“We found some makeup in the bathroom. I can’t say any more than that.”

Jones closed her eyes, but only very briefly. To Sean, her body language said “Oh, shit,” but aloud she said nothing, and he doubted Jax was picking up her subtle signals as clearly as he was—and then wondered why he was so tuned in.

“Keep your promise,” Jax warned. “Quite frankly, News-Four is the only station in town that hasn’t burned us. We’ll work with you if you keep it that way.”

“Not so much because you like us as to teach the others a lesson?”

“You’re a sharp one, MacKenzie. Just don’t let it go to your head.” Jax glanced at Jones. “You all right? You look a little pale.”

“Yeah. I just—It was quite a scene last night. I’m still not over it.”

“Understandable.” The lieutenant got to her feet. “Best get her out of here, MacKenzie. And remember what you agreed to here.”

“Will do.” Sean slid a protective arm around Julie, drawing her to her feet as if she were the poor, traumatized little female and he the big strong protective male.

That was all it took. Her head came up fast, and she snapped right the hell out of her little daze. “I’m fine,” she snapped. “And not in need of help, Lieutenant, though your concern is touching.”

With that, she headed for the door under her own steam, yanked it open and started down the hall. Sean caught up to her after retrieving the camera from the reception desk. “Hey, someone set your shoes on fire or what?”

“I just want to get out of here.” She stalked to the SUV and didn’t even try to get behind the wheel.

Sean set the camera in the back seat, then got in beside her. “What’s wrong? What did she say in there that knocked you on your ass like that?”

“Nothing. Nothing knocked me anywhere. I’m fine.”

“To hell you are. You didn’t even remember to pop in on Officer Friendly to ask if he found your car keys.”

She dug in her blazer pocket, pulled out a gold key-ring shaped like a pair of J’s and let the keys dangle from it. They were labeled. There was the magnetic strip that unlocked the doors at the station, a key marked “car,” another marked “office,” another marked “files.”

“He gave them to me when he told me about our invitation to see the token female,” she said.

“Me-ow.” She scowled, but Sean wasn’t going to let that remark go. “Jax is no token, she’s a damn good cop. And it wouldn’t hurt you any to treat her a little better. She can be a reporter’s best friend.”

“Oh, is that what she is? Your best friend?”

He gaped, totally thrown by this side of Jones and at a loss for words.

“Screw it,” she said. “At least I got my keys back. The officer said someone turned them in at the hotel’s front desk. Which doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense, but at least they’re—oh, shit!”

“What?” He glanced at her, saw her staring at the keys, her eyes wider than they had been two seconds ago. “What?”

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