Thicker Than Water (24 page)

“You should go.” She looked him in the eyes when she said it, and he caught the need in hers, saw it clearly. She didn't want him to go home tonight any more than he wanted to.

“You really want me to go?”

She lowered her gaze. “Things are already so complicated.”

“That isn't an answer.”

She lifted her eyes again, held his. “I don't want you to go,” she whispered.

“That's better.” He got to his feet. She rose with him, took his hand and led him to the stairs, and up them to her bedroom.

For the life of him, Sean could not believe what was happening, but there it was. He kissed her as she pushed the bedroom door closed. The kiss grew into something more, something that felt as desperate and frightened as he sensed Julie was deep down inside. They yanked and tugged at each other's clothes, until they landed on the bed, mouths still locked, him wearing only his jeans, and those undone and half off him, Julie down to a bra and panties. He got rid of those in a hurry.

And then he wanted to slow down. He wanted to turn on
a light, to look at her, touch her. But Jones wasn't having any of that. She wrapped her body around his and clung so tightly he could barely breathe, and when she shoved his jeans out of the way and moved over him, there wasn't a hell of a lot he could do to slow things down. She lowered herself, and he was inside her. She moved over him, and he stopped thinking about anything at all. There was only sensation, pleasure, friction and heat. And a silent desperation in her that he didn't begin to understand. He wrapped his arms around her, rolled her over so he was the one on top, and gave her all he could give her, as hard and as deep as he could give it to her. She snapped her hips up to meet him every time, no matter how powerfully he drove into her, seeming to want more. Her hands closed on his buttocks, nails digging into his flesh, and she pulled him into her.

She bit his earlobe and in a coarse whisper told him, “More, Sean. Harder.”

He gripped her bottom in both hands, held her to him for every thrust, slammed into her so hard the head of the bed banged against the wall.

She screamed his name, wrapped her legs around his waist and shook all over as he drove her to climax and beyond.

Then, and only then, did Sean slow down. He rolled again, pulling her on top, so he could run his hands slowly over her body, up and down her back, her thighs, between their bodies to touch her breasts and her belly. He kept moving inside her, slowly, gently, while the spasms that rocked her body slowly ebbed, faded. He would build them again.

He caught her face in his hands, kissed her deeply. “Julie,” he whispered.

“Shh. Don't talk.”

So he didn't talk. He made love to her again, gently this time, slowly, only increasing his pace when he felt her passion begin to build. This time, when she peaked, he was there with her, shuddering deep in his soul and whispering things he wouldn't remember later.

And then he lay in the bed, with her curled up in his arms, and he held her until she slept.

J
ulie had kissed him awake at 5:00 a.m., and told him it was time for him to go home, before Dawn showed up. He hadn't argued with her. He hadn't insisted they “talk about” things, either. He wasn't ready to do that, and he doubted she was, either. He had simply held her for a minute or two before rolling out of her bed, stumbling into his clothes and driving himself all the way back into the city with a dumb-ass grin on his face. He'd showered and changed at his apartment, and then headed in to work, stopping for a supersize Mac-breakfast on the way.

Sean was nervous as hell about what to say and how to act when he saw Jones at work that morning. He wondered if she would act differently toward him. He wondered if a night of mind-blowing passion between enemies changed everything or nothing at all. He wondered what she was feeling and
thinking about it—hell, he wondered what
he
was feeling and thinking about it.

He could count on one hand the things he did know. He knew that he didn't dislike Julie Jones as much as he'd always pretended to—or at all. And maybe he'd kind of known that all along. He was more attracted to her than he'd ever been, now that he knew what her mouth tasted like and how her body felt when he pulled it up tight against his. A lot more. He was both eager to see her again and dreading it. The bite of her sarcastic little mouth was more than he wanted to deal with this morning. The idea that she might show up making doe eyes at him made him want to throw up. Maybe it would be better if she kept on hating him.

He couldn't imagine her soft and loving toward him. He couldn't imagine being this turned on by her if she suddenly turned into a girlfriend rather than a nemesis.

He liked her the way she was. He liked their relationship the way it was. Adding sex to what they already had was his notion of perfect. He wondered if she would go for that idea. And then wondered why he had been sitting in the newsroom listening to everyone brainstorm story ideas and pass out assignments for an hour and she hadn't walked in yet.

She was probably tired this morning, probably as worn-out as he had been. It had been a long time since he'd spent such an energetic night. Maybe she was sleeping in.

He'd been at the office since eight. It was nine, and Julie wasn't there.

Where the hell was she?

Allan Westcott must have begun wondering the same thing, because it was at that precise moment that Sean real
ized the man was leaning over him, finishing a sentence with the words “…the hell is she?”

It wasn't hard to fill in the “where” or to figure out that Jones was the subject in question. “She had to drop the kid off at school. You know that.”

“School starts at eight, MacKenzie, and it's only a half hour away. It's 9:02. You telling me you haven't heard from her?”

Sean frowned, shook his head slowly.

Westcott looked around the room, speaking loudly enough to be heard over everyone, in a tone that shut them all up after the first word landed. “Has anyone heard from Julie this morning?”

People looked at each other, shook their heads, muttered.

“Someone call her,” Westcott barked.

“I've got it,” Sean said, and his voice was as firm and insistent as the boss's had been. He left the newsroom, vaguely aware that he hadn't heard anything about a single story he was supposed to be covering today, and, moreover, he didn't care.

He headed into his office, slammed the door closed behind him, grabbed the desk phone and dialed Julie's number without sitting down. He hated that he knew her number by heart. He hated that he was worried about her. He hated that he was pretty sure he had reason to be. He hated that he had left her alone, even for an hour. Goddammit.

While he listened to her phone ring, he booted up his computer. By the time Jones's machine picked up, he had his address book program opened. “Jones, it's MacKenzie. It's after nine, and you're late for work. Call me.” He hung up and tried her cell phone. He got her voice mail and left the same message. Then he double clicked on the Cazenovia High
School icon on the computer screen, waited for the computer to dial that number and then held on while it rang.

“Cazenovia High School,” a cheerful voice said. “How may I direct your call?”

He thought about just asking point-blank but realized Jones had warned the school officials about the man who'd seemed to following Dawn. They weren't likely to give him any information over the phone. “Give me a…” He struggled to recall the name of that teacher Dawn was always talking about—the one who'd promised to keep a special eye on her for Jones. “Ms. Marcum,” he said when it came to him.

The phone clicked. He glanced at his chair, shoved it away from the desk to make more room for pacing. Finally a woman's voice said, “This is Ms. Marcum. Can I help you?”

“Ms. Marcum, this is Sean MacKenzie. I'm Julie Jones's coanchor at Channel Four.”

“Yes, I know who you are. Dawn speaks very highly of you, Mr. MacKenzie.”

He blinked, surprised. “Actually, Dawn is the reason I'm calling. Her mother hasn't shown up for work, and she doesn't answer her phone.”

“Oh, no.” Her voice changed, those two words emerging as a hoarse whisper that vibrated with dread. Then she cleared her throat, seemed to make an effort to steady her voice. “Dawn hasn't shown up for school this morning, either,” she said. “I've called the house several times and was just about to call the station to speak with her mother.”

“Do me a favor and call me if you hear from either of them?”

“Only if you'll do the same for me.”

“Deal.” He quickly rattled off his cell phone number,
jotted down hers and hung up. Then he headed for the office door.

“Well?” Westcott asked in the hall.

“No answer. I'm going out there.”

“You look worried.”

“I
am
worried.”

* * *

Lieutenant Jackson sipped her third cup of hot coffee and looked again at her desk, where two sets of bank records were laid out side by side. She'd received the files an hour ago. April 20—Julie Jones withdrew twenty thousand in cash. April 21—Harry Blackwood made two ten thousand dollar deposits. June 3, Jones made another withdrawal. On the fourth, fifth and sixth, Harry made three more deposits, totaling the amount of Jones's withdrawal. The pattern repeated in August. Harry had made other large and inexplicable deposits in between those dates—deposits that didn't match up with any withdrawals in Jones's accounts. That had thrown her off at first.

Not for long, though.

The senator's brother had been a blackmailer. He'd taken in better than a million five over the past year. More than two hundred thousand of it had come from Julie Jones. Small potatoes compared to the huge sums he'd been getting from other sources.

“There's her motive,” Jax said.

Chief Strong looked over her shoulder at the statements. “It could also have been an even bigger motive for whoever else he was blackmailing,” he said, reaching past Jax to run a forefinger along the column listing Blackwood's deposits. “Jones's contributions are relatively small in comparison to some of these others.”

“Jones was at the crime scene,” Jax said. “Motive plus opportunity makes her look pretty good for this.”

Strong shrugged. “Any physical evidence?”

“We got a DNA sample from that mascara tube. I thought I might pay Jones a little visit today, ask her to voluntarily supply a DNA sample for comparison.”

“Think she'll do it?”

“Not if she's guilty.” She shrugged. “Maybe I should show up armed with a court order, though, just in case. You think we have enough to get one?”

“Barely, considering her status in this town.”

She shrugged. “I'd better call a judge.” She picked up a phone.

* * *

Sean's Porsche roared into Jones's driveway. The house was dark, the garage door closed up tight. No overt signs of trouble, he told himself as he got out of the car. Right. So why was the lump in his throat damn near choking him?

He peered through one of the garage's little windows, cupping his hands around his face to block the glare of the bright morning sun. Dawn's pretty blue Jeep sat inside, but there was no sign of the Mercedes. He continued on to the front door of the house, knowing goddamn well it would be locked and trying it anyway. He could hear the telephone ringing. It stopped, probably when the machine picked up, and within a few seconds was ringing again.

He raced around to the back of the house. God, he could have kicked himself. He'd spent the past several hours worrying about how to act, what to say, how their night of lovemaking would change their relationship, feeling like a teenager with his first bad crush—while she'd been going through God only knew what.

He hit the backyard and hurried over the lawn to the back door. It was cold this morning, crisp and kind of gloomy. Clouds covered the sun.

The glass in the back door was broken.

“Jesus.” Sean ran to it, gripped the knob and turned. It wasn't locked. He stepped into the kitchen, and his shoes crunched on the broken glass on the floor. He listened and heard nothing, then damn near jumped out of his shoes when the phone started ringing again.

“Julie?”

He called her name but didn't really expect an answer. Then he yanked up the telephone just to shut it the hell up. It was cordless, so he continued walking, moving into the living room as he said hello. Things were off-kilter. The cushions not quite right on the sofa. The plants in the wrong positions on the stands.

“SafeGuard Home Security, sir. I'm calling for Julie or Dawn Jones.”

“They're not here. And I don't have time to talk.”

“We've notified the police—”

“Good idea.” He hit the cutoff, dropped the phone onto a table and continued through the house. “Be all right,” he whispered.

He went from room to room, walking slowly, every sense on high alert for any sound, while his eyes scanned the place. Every time he entered another room, he held his breath, dreading that he might see Julie or, God forbid, Dawn, lying on the floor, injured or worse. Every time he stepped into another room and didn't see that, he felt a little more relieved.

Finding no one, and no real clues as to what had happened here, he ventured upstairs. Dawn's bedroom had that same
slightly off feeling that the rest of the house had. He'd never seen it before, so he couldn't say for sure that things had been moved around, but he felt it. That sense of invasion, of contamination. The mattress wasn't perfectly straight on the bed, and the bedspread was rumpled, as if someone had lifted it up to look underneath, then dropped it back into place again, too rushed to be careful. The book she'd been reading—the autographed copy of Nathan Z's book—lay open on the bed. The computer was on. And open to Dawn's e-mail program.

Frowning, he moved closer, reached for the mouse and clicked on the Sent Mail button. Only an empty screen came up. If Dawn had sent anyone an e-mail before vanishing from the face of the earth this morning, it had been deleted. The question was, had it been deleted before or after the intruder had seen it?

Sean backed out of Dawn's bedroom and moved down the hall to check the bathroom, before continuing on to the next bedroom. Julie's. But he only got as far as the slightly open door before memories of the night before came rushing in, trying to distract him from the matter at hand. God, he could still feel her body moving against his, could still smell her hair, hear those soft sounds she made, taste her mouth.

“Where the hell are you, Jones?” he whispered.

He pushed the door open, and the sight of the place chased the memories away like a fist to the stomach would have done. They hadn't been as neat in here, whoever they were. The blankets and sheets lay balled up on the floor; the mattress had been stripped bare. Dresser drawers hung wide-open, some completely removed from the dresser, and their former contents formed mountains of soft fabrics on the floor. The closet door was open, and the clothes inside had
been knocked from their rack, hangers still in them. “Where the hell are you?”

“Put your hands on top of your head and turn around. Do it now.”

The voice was strong and female and it meant business. Sean thought there were not too many people who would refuse to comply, and he wasn't one of those few. His back itched with the knowledge that there was a gun pointed at it. He lifted his hands to the top of his head, then turned to face the woman, as ordered. “Hello, Jax.”

She lifted her eyebrows, lowered her gun. “I figured that was you when I saw your car out front.”

“Then why did you point your gun at me?”

“Just making sure. What are you doing here, MacKenzie?”

“Not breaking and entering,” he told her. “Somebody beat me to it.”

“Yeah? Then you're the one who answered the phone and talked to the security people?”