Thicker Than Water (36 page)

In the distance, Dawn heard a sound. A siren. No, more than one. And as they grew louder, she saw Ms. Marcum and her mom exchange a look that chilled her to the bone.

“Oh, God,” Julie whispered. “God, not this, not again.” She gripped Ms. Marcum's arm hard. “We have to get Dawn out of here, Lizzie. We have to do it now!”

“Lizzie! Sunny!” Mordecai's voice rang through the hall as his feet pounded closer.

Mordecai burst into the room just as Lizzie slammed the back of her hand across Julie's face. Dawn yelped in horror as Julie tumbled backward onto the bed. “I told you to get Sunny back to her bedroom, and I meant it!” Lizzie shouted. “Don't cross me, Jewel.”

“You'll pay for this, Lizzie. I was your friend once. I raised
your child for you. God, how could you turn on me like this? Much less on her? Your own flesh and blood?” Julie's words seethed with anger. Dawn trembled with the force of it. She'd never seen her mother this angry.

“You
stole
my child,” Ms. Marcum corrected. “But that's over now.” She gripped Julie's arm, and pulled her to her feet. “Come on.”

They all turned, and Ms. Marcum saw Mordecai, in the doorway, came up short, as if in surprise, then spoke to him. “I'm sorry I didn't take them straight to the bedroom. It's not a mistake I'll make again.”

He stared at her, searching her eyes. “For a moment I thought you'd decided to run out on me. Leave me to die at the hands of the soldiers. Like last time.”

She went to him, pressed herself close to his body and slid her hands around his neck. The tears that rolled down her face were thick, and they left red streaks. “I didn't mean to leave you, Mordecai, but to die with you. Just as I will now, today, if that's what it takes to prove my love to you.”

He seemed to hesitate, then, finally, closed one arm around her waist and let her lips find his. She kissed him almost desperately. “I love you, Mordecai. I know you better than anyone else, I know the man you are inside, the man no one else can see. I've always known that man. I've always loved him.”

He ran a hand over her hair, clasped her nape, kissed her forehead. “No one ever loved me the way you do, Lizzie. God, I need you.”

“And I'm here.”

He nodded, gently pushing her aside, and that was when Dawn saw the gun in his other hand, as he waved it toward her mother. “Come on, you two. You need to go into the safe
room, downstairs. It's bulletproof, fireproof. You'll be safe there. I promise.”

Dawn clung close to her mother and walked ahead of Lizzie and the madman, as sirens screamed and brakes squealed outside the house.

* * *

Sean felt as if he were reliving the nightmare that had haunted him all his life, only instead of crouching in the bushes outside a compound with a camera, he was crouching behind a boulder with a sizable bullethole in his chest. And instead of agents from the bureau of alcohol, tobacco and firearms piling out of vehicles and taking up positions behind them, it was a selection of police. County Sheriff's Department vehicles and Virginia State Police cruisers came to cockeyed stops alongside unmarked sedans that could have belonged to federal agents. No trucks full of soldiers in full body armor. Not this time. But the results probably wouldn't be any different. The arrival of two ambulances on the fringes of the action confirmed his theory that they were expecting the worst.

He struggled out of his shirt, leaving on the ribbed tank style undershirt he wore beneath it, better to examine the bullet wound. He'd fully expected to be dead in short order when he'd felt the impact—like a sledgehammer to the chest. It hit him so hard his feet left the ground several heartbeats before his back slammed into it. Now, though, he saw that it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

He tore a strip off his shirt and used it to dab away the blood until he could locate the hole, two inches below the collarbone on the right side of his chest. Far from the heart, thank God, and he didn't think it had impacted a lung, either.
At least, he seemed to be breathing okay. The pain was intense, but nothing like he would have imagined a bullet wound would feel. It burned, as if someone had taken a cattle brand to his chest. It had bled quite a lot, but he was still conscious, so he didn't figure it was a life threatening loss. He wadded up another piece of his shirt and pressed it to the hole, wincing at the increased pain the pressure brought. Almost as an afterthought, he leaned forward, craning his neck to try to see his own back. He couldn't see any blood back there. Then he picked up his shirt, wincing when he moved his right arm to do so, but forcing it. He held the shirt up and saw no blood anywhere on the back of it. No exit wound, then.

He told himself that was a good thing. He'd covered a lot of shootings, and he knew exit wounds tended to be bigger and bloodier than the neat round holes bullets made when they entered a human body. But part of his brain argued that only meant a sizzling hot bullet was still smoldering inside his chest somewhere, waiting to cause trouble.

He didn't suppose it mattered much which part of his brain he listened to. There wasn't a hell of a lot he could do about it either way.

He pressed his back to the boulder and levered himself to his feet, still holding the patch to his chest. Off to his right, in front of the sprawling mansion, the cars were lined up now. They'd shut off their infernal sirens, and most of the officers were standing on the driver's sides of their vehicles, aiming weapons over the roofs in the general direction of the house. A man in a dark blue suit got a bullhorn out of a trunk. A blond woman gripped his arm and spoke emphatically. And then Sean recognized her. Cassie Jackson. All the way down here.

He drew a big breath and yelled, “Jax! Jax, over here!”

She frowned, turning and searching until she spotted him, and then her jaw dropped. She shot the suit a look, said something, pointed, and when the other guy nodded, she jumped into one of the cars, slammed it into Reverse and backed up, off the road and right up to the boulder. When she got out, she kept low and ran to the cover of the oversize rock.

“Jesus, what happened to you?”

“Mordecai Young happened. He has Julie inside, and probably Dawn, as well.”

“Let me see that.” She reached for the hand he held over the wound, but he backed away.

“Just get me over there where the action is, before it's too late.”

“It's already too late,” she told him. “I made the locals promise to let me verify Dawn was up here before they put out the word, but they only kept that promise as long as it took me to leave the room. They had the entire freaking cavalry on my tail, feds included, before I ever got here.” She pushed his hand aside and winced. “That's a bullet wound.”

“No shit? I thought it was a beesting.” He got to his feet and ran to her car, got in the driver's side. “You coming or not?”

She got in, and he shifted into gear and drove back to the crowd of vehicles and cops. He got out, and so did she.

“Who's in charge here?” Sean asked.

“I am,” the guy in the suit said. “Special Agent Ken Phelps, FBI.”

“Congratulations. Listen, you've got two hostages in there, and a man who'd rather die than give up. If you push him, he'll push back, and those hostages will end up dead.”

Phelps frowned at him. “And just who the hell are you?”

“MacKenzie. The only journalist who witnessed this the first time you feds botched it, at the Young Believers' compound, sixteen years ago.”

“We have protocol in these kinds of situations, MacKenzie. We know what we're doing.”

“Yeah, as you demonstrated so aptly back then.” He saw the man getting impatient, turning away, picking up his bullhorn. Sean put a hand on his arm. “Please, just listen to what I have to say. I know this guy.”

“Listen to him, Phelps. He's trying to tell you the same thing I've been trying to tell you from the second you showed up,” Jax said. “This guy doesn't respond to protocol, or to threats or to force. He'll shoot back, and he'll use those hostages in whatever way he has to.”

“It's more than that,” Sean said. “He thinks he's some kind of messiah. Probably believes dying in a hail of gunfire would fulfill his mission in life. And he would far rather let Dawn Jones die with him than let her go.”

Phelps frowned. “And just how do you know all this?”

“Because the woman who's in there with him, Julie Jones, told me. And she knows because she was one of the girls with him at that compound during the raid.”

“Bullshit. No one survived that raid.”

“That's what I thought, too. I've spent the sixteen years since believing it. Living with it. I was there, I could have done something to stop it, and instead I just kept quiet, crouched in the bushes to get a story, and let everyone in that compound die. But they didn't. Julie Jones survived. And so did her daughter. And I'm not going to stand by quietly and let them get killed—not this time.”

The cop blinked, clearly stunned. Slowly he lowered the megaphone. “Okay. Okay. So you have some kind of insight into this guy's mental state, I'll grant you that. But we have limited options here. Do you know how many ATF agents died in that raid? Just what do you suggest we do?”

Sean lowered his head, shaking it slowly. “It's too late for stealth.” Lifting his gaze, he locked it with Jax's. “We have to get them out. Make sure they're safe before a single shot is fired.”

“Someone has to go inside,” she said.

Sean nodded.

“Impossible,” Phelps argued. “We don't even know where they are. The house is huge. Probably booby-trapped. We have no idea how many guns he has inside, how many people are in there. It's too risky. Whoever we sent in would be a walking target, and we know from past experience, he won't hesitate to take our people out.”

Sean nodded slowly. “I'll go.”

“You're wounded.”

He glanced down, saw the blood flowing from his wound. He'd eased off on the pressure. Again he looked to Jax. “You got a first aid kit or anything like that around here?”

She nodded, leaned into her car and pulled out a handset microphone, spoke into it. “I need a paramedic over here. Tell them to stay low.”

A second later, a man came running from one of the ambulances, carrying a white box in one hand. “Sit down, MacKenzie,” Jax said, then she nodded at the new arrival. “See if you can patch him up a little.”

“Make it quick.” Sean peeled off the bloody undershirt. The medic made a sympathetic face and opened his kit. While
he worked to clean the wound with alcohol, which stung like hell, Sean stiffened against the pain and tried to think logically. “If you can get him talking, I might be able to slip in from the back,” he told Phelps.

“And get picked off by whatever sniper he has watching the perimeter? I don't think so.”

“Better me than Julie or her daughter.”

The guy finished his work, taping a heavy patch over the gauze he'd packed into the bullet hole. It hurt like hell, but it had stopped bleeding. “Thanks,” Sean said. “Anyone got a shirt?”

“You're not going in there, MacKenzie,” Phelps said.

“You wanna stop me, you're gonna have to shoot me.”

“And I'm going with him,” Jax said.

Phelps stared at them for a long moment. Finally the agent turned and signaled a nearby uniform. “Get me an extra vest and a spare shirt if you can find one.” Then he faced Lieutenant Jackson again. “You get yourself killed, I'm gonna deny I ever approved this.”

“Understood,” Jax said. She reached into her car, pulled out a shotgun, handed it to Sean. “You might need this.”

J
ulie had spotted something in Lizzie's eyes, or thought she had, just before Lizzie had hit her. It had seemed almost…apologetic. Now she was confused. Just whose side was Lizzie really on?

“Don't. Don't lock us in any room, Lizzie,” Julie said as Lizzie led them down the stairs and toward the rear of the house.

Lizzie looked at her sharply. “It will be safer there.”

“I don't want to be trapped in another house that's under siege. Not again. We have to get out.”

Lizzie looked behind them, fear in her eyes. “Don't be ridiculous,” she whispered. “If he saw you trying to leave…”

“What's back here? Is there a back door?” Julie hurried ahead, not waiting for an answer, and found her way to a kitchen that seemed to be at the very back of the house. There was a door, and she ran for it, reached for the knob.

“No, Jewel, the alarms!”

Julie froze with her hand inches from the door, for the first time noticing the lighted digital panel mounted on the wall beside it.

“He'll know if you open the door. Jewel, there's nothing out there but open lawn and the lake. He'll never let you leave.”

Julie searched Lizzie's face, not sure whether to believe her or not. Her hands trembling, Julie pushed the curtain aside and stared out at the rolling back lawn. It was a vast green expanse of open area between the house and the distant woods, which were the only hope of cover. Lizzie had been honest about that much, at least.

Then she saw something move in the trees and, squinting, stared harder. “Someone's out there,” she whispered.

Dawn and Lizzie crowded close to her, staring out the window as four figures emerged from the trees and came running toward the house.

“My God, is that…?” Julie prayed she was seeing what she thought she was. But it couldn't be. It couldn't be.

“It is, Mom. It's Sean!”

Julie sagged in relief. “He's all right,” she whispered. He wasn't. She could see as he ran closer that he wasn't. He held one arm oddly, bent at the elbow with the forearm clutched protectively across his chest, and his gait was uneven. Closer still, she noticed his color—stark and pale—and the lines of strain around his eyes. And then she couldn't see details anymore through the veil of her tears. God, the power of what she felt when she saw him—it was irrational.

Three gunshots, short and rapid, shattered the stillness and tension, and the men outside hit the ground, facedown, halfway across the lawn.

She tried to see if they were hit or if they'd just hit the ground in an effort to avoid being shot. They didn't seem to have fallen but to have flung themselves down, and they were now clinging to the skimpy cover of a tiny slope in the nearly flat lawn—which was barely any cover at all. She noticed long blond hair and realized they weren't all men. One of them was Lieutenant Jackson.

One of the men raised his head, and immediately another shot was fired.

“They're pinned down,” Julie whispered. Then she moved away from the door and hurried through the house, her ankle so swollen by now that it was starting to go numb. It felt as if she were walking on a stump that wasn't a part of her body. At least the pain had lessened. Dawn and Lizzie followed, both speaking at once, but Julie only ignored them and kept on going until she met Mordecai at the foot of the stairs with a rifle in his arms. He'd been about to go up, but he stopped when he saw her and shot a look at Lizzie.

“I told you—”

“I tried, Mordecai. There are two of them and only one of me. Give me a weapon, for God's sake, so I can make them obey.”

He frowned deeply at her, shook his head side to side, just once, then started up the stairs. Julie grabbed his arm when he took the first step and yanked him around to face her as forcefully as she could.

“Just what are you going to do?” she demanded.

He lifted his brows. “I'm going to go upstairs, where I can get a better angle on those men cringing in the grass out there, so that I can send them to their maker.”

“Mordecai, don't. My God, can't you see it's a lost cause? You're surrounded by police, just like before. You're out-gunned and outnumbered, and you have innocent people who are going to die—again—unless you do the right thing.”

He stared at Julie and, slowly, lifted a hand to cup her face. “You never did get it, did you, Jewel? Death is nothing to fear. How many times did I tell you that? It's paradise.” He smiled gently, shifting his gaze to Dawn. “You'll understand everything soon,” he said. “When we cross over together, the veils will be lifted from your mind, and you'll see that everything I did was for you.”

“Mordecai, you're confused,” Julie said.

He shook his head slowly, smiling. “No, my Jewel. I'm the only one in this room who isn't confused. I understand everything so clearly. I always have. It's everyone else who's mixed up, misled, on the wrong path. This life is nothing, Jewel. We're spirit beings. Our time in these bodies is just a blip on the radar screen of the Universe.” He glanced past her. “Tell her, Lizzie. Tell her how it will be.”

Lizzie smiled softly, moving closer to Mordecai, putting one hand and then her head upon his shoulder. “We're surrounded,” she said. “We're not going to survive this, are we?”

“Not in the physical world, no. But we will survive.”

Nodding slowly, she lowered her eyes. “And we'll reunite with our Source, and then we'll understand why all this was necessary.”

He nodded. “And we'll be together. All of us, together.”

“Yes.”

A bullhorn-enhanced voice came through the walls. “Mr. Young, I implore you. Talk to us. We can't give you what you
want if you don't tell us what your demands are. Tell us your demands.”

“My demands?” he said softly. Then he sighed. “I have to go upstairs now,” he said. “Our blood cannot be the only blood spilled here today. We have to make our point. We have to make sure they remember.”

Again Lizzie nodded. “We have to go down fighting,” she said. “But I have to die fighting by your side, Mordecai. Please, don't deny me that. I can't bear to survive if you don't. I don't want to live another sixteen years grieving you.”

Julie couldn't believe what she was hearing. She held Dawn to her side, edging away from the two lunatics one millimeter at a time.

Mordecai stared at Lizzie for a long moment. “All right.” Reaching to his side, he removed a handgun from the holster that hung there, pressed it into her hands.

Mordecai started up the stairs again, but stopped when a high-pitched alarm screamed through the house. “Damn! They're trying to get in the back door!”

Julie grabbed Dawn and pushed her to the floor, then lay down on top of her, certain they were about to be caught in the cross fire. Mordecai came off the staircase, leaping over them, lifting his rifle.

Lizzie flung her arms around him. “Mordecai, I'm so afraid!”

He embraced her. “I know. But I have to go before they get inside.”

“One kiss,” she whispered. “One last kiss before we face them and death.”

His face softened, and he lowered his mouth to hers, kissing her deeply, passionately. And then a deafening shot exploded between them.

Mordecai went stiff, his eyes flying wide, still clutching her. “Lizzie?” he whispered.

“I love you, Mordecai. I'm sorry.”

He fell backward. Julie scrambled to her feet as the weapon fell from the other woman's hands. Lizzie stood there, staring unseeingly at the fallen man, tears flowing silently down her face.

“I had to make him believe in me,” she said, her voice strained. “I'm sorry I hit you, Jewel.”

Julie tugged Dawn with her, wrapping her free arm around Lizzie, and running for the kitchen and the back door. As they rounded the final corner into the kitchen, the back door burst open and Sean lunged inside, wide-eyed.

Then he saw her, and the relief in his eyes was palpable. He moved toward her, pulled her and Dawn into his arms. “Thank God, thank God, when I heard that shot, I thought—”

“Where is he, where's Young?” Lieutenant Jackson, crowding past them with her gun drawn, sounded fierce.

“I shot him,” Lizzie whispered. “I killed him. I had to.”

Jackson's taut stance eased, her weapon lowered just a little. “And who are you?”

“I'm…Elizabeth Marcum. I'm Dawn's…” Her eyes rose, locked with Julie's. “I'm Dawn's English teacher.”

Julie held Lizzie's eyes, thanking her without a word.

Jackson frowned. “What the hell are
you
doing here?”

Lizzie closed her eyes. “I knew Mordecai once. A long time ago. I knew about this place, and when I heard he was alive and that he'd taken Dawn, I suspected he might have brought her here. So I came….”

“Naturally. Rather than notifying the authorities. Makes
perfect sense.” Jackson turned to the men who'd entered with her. “Where's the body?”

“At the foot of the stairs,” Lizzie whispered, pointing the way. She was starting to shake.

Jackson nodded to the other two men. “Go get him. Search the place for anyone else while you're at it.” They hurried out of the kitchen to obey. Then the lieutenant picked up her radio, spoke into it. “Phelps? The suspect is dead, the hostages safe. We're coming out.” She replaced the radio in its holder at her side and turned to the back door. “Let's get you all out of here, hmm?”

Dawn put an arm around Lizzie. “You were only pretending the whole time,” Dawn said. “You saved me,” she whispered. “You saved us all.”

“I love you,” Lizzie said. “I always have.”

Sean stumbled a little as the four of them followed Jackson out the back door. Julie pulled his arm around her shoulders, tried to help him as much as she could, limping along on her wounded ankle. “He didn't miss when he shot at you, did he?”

“No. I was kind of surprised that I wasn't dead.”

She closed her eyes. “I thought you were.” Her voice broke when she said it.

“And you cared?”

She looked up at him. “To put it mildly.”

He smiled, though she could see he was in considerable pain.

“Are you going to be okay?”

“I have to be. No way do I plan to die and let you have this story all to yourself.” He stopped their progress. They'd circled the house and were nearing the front, where all the po
lice were parked. Julie was relieved to see a pair of ambulances waiting, lights ablaze. But he caught her chin in his hand, turned her face to his. “Besides—and I hate like hell to be the first one to say it, trust me on that—but I'm pretty sure I'm in love with you, Jones.”

“I kind of figured that out when you stood there and let Mordecai shoot you to protect me. You jerk.”

“Well, you know, I figured a grand gesture is always good in these situations, and I didn't have a ring handy, so—”

“Shut up, MacKenzie.” She leaned up and pressed her mouth to his. He kissed her softly, lifted his head away, searching her eyes.

“Am I supposed to interpret that as reciprocation?”

“Dawnie says I'm slow to pick up on these things. I didn't know it until you were lying there in the grass, bleeding. But, yeah. I'm probably in love with you, too.”

“Well, hell, I should have gotten shot a long time ago.” His knees bent a little. He sagged, then forced himself upright again. “So what does Dawn think about it?”

“Let's get you to that ambulance, Sean. You can ask her yourself.”

He walked with her, but she could tell he was getting weaker. They reached the ambulance, and he sat on its rear bumper as the medics crowded around him. “Back off, guys, just let me get out of this gear.”

Julie knelt in front of him, helping him peel away the shirt and the Kevlar vest he wore. She saw the bandage on his chest and felt her heart skip a beat as her eyes shot to his.

“Stop looking at me like that. I'm fine. I think the adrenaline rush is just wearing off, that's all.”

“Sean?” Dawn asked. She'd been standing with Lizzie, talk
ing to Jackson, and from the look on the lieutenant's face, Julie thought she knew a lot more than she had before. Dawn ran to them when she saw them at the ambulance. “Oh, God, Sean, are you okay?”

“Come on, kid, no man dies before putting fifty thousand miles on his Porsche. It's just not done.”

One of the paramedics moved in to peel the bandage from the wound, and Sean winced. “Listen, Dawnie, come here.”

She came closer, and Julie rose to encircle her daughter with one arm. The medic plucked the gauze wad from the wound, then leaned over to look at Sean's back and shook his head. “You shouldn't even have been moving, much less running around like that. The bullet's still in there.” He turned his head. “Bring that stretcher over here.”