He read it one more time, willing himself to commit it to memory. Then he used the cigarette lighter to set it ablaze. He opened the car door, set it on the curb and watched it burn until there was nothing left but ashes. Then he put the car in motion again, grabbing his cell phone as he did, dialing his boss’s direct line.
Westcott picked up on the second ring. “Jones?”
“No, it’s me,” Sean said. “Has she called you yet?”
“Not yet. Have you heard from her?”
“Not a word,” Sean said. “But I’ve got something else. Something solid on the Mordecai Young story.”
“Is it true or a hoax?”
“It’s true,” Sean told him. “He’s alive.”
“Holy shit.” Sean heard the man slam a hand onto his desk. “This is fabulous. Is anyone else on to this?”
“Nope, it’ll be an exclusive. And not only can I get proof, I can identify him, if you’ll trust me enough to do what I’m about to ask and not ask me any questions.”
“You’ve got it, MacKenzie. Whatever you need, just say the word.”
Sean nodded. “You have call forwarding?”
“Come again?”
“Call forwarding. Do you have it?”
“Sure I have it.”
“Okay. Then here’s what I need. I want you to set your call forwarding so that every call you get today comes straight to my cell phone. Every single call. It should only be for an hour or two. And you have to do it fast. Understand?”
“No. I don’t.”
“Just think about what will happen when we break this story,” Sean told him. “Think of the scoop.”
“All right. But I want my phone calls back by the end of the day. And I want constant progress reports. You’re to tell no one about this, except maybe Jones once we track her down. We can’t risk it leaking out to the other stations.”
“Got you. Now don’t forget the call forwarding.”
Westcott sighed. “I’m doing it now. The second you hang up.”
“Got my cell number?”
“Of course I do.”
Sean nodded. “Thanks, Allan.”
“Just get busy. Go get the proof we need to run with this story.”
Sean dropped his cell phone on the seat beside him. And then he drove. He had no idea where to go, where to even begin looking for Julie and Dawn.
His cell phone rang within seconds, and he picked it up fast with his heart in his throat. The panel gave him the number that was calling—a local number. God, could she be that close? He jerked the car to the shoulder, yanked out a pencil and scribbled the number down. Then he answered the phone.
The woman on the other end was not Julie.
“Is this Sean MacKenzie?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Mr. MacKenzie, this is Miss Carter. I work for Nathan Z.” Sean lifted his brows but didn’t interrupt. “I understand you and he had an appointment for an interview today?”
“Did we?” He had paid so little attention at this morning’s meeting, he wouldn’t have known if he had.
“Yes, set up by a Mr. Westcott? For 1:00 p.m.?”
“Right,” he said.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to cancel that appointment.”
Just as well, Sean thought. Because he didn’t have time for it, not until he found Julie, and if he did meet up with the so-called Nathan Z, he would probably beat the man senseless.
“He’s been called out of town on an emergency. I’ll call your office as soon as I can reschedule.”
Sean held the telephone and blinked. “He’s left town?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Early this morning. Why do you ask?”
“If I were you, lady, I’d start looking for another job.” He hung up the phone, and wished to God Julie would call. Jesus, what if Nathan Z was the one who’d broken into her house? What if he somehow knew where she’d gone and was even now on her trail?
* * *
Julie stood at the pay phone outside the diner, freshly invigorated by three cups of coffee, mentally composing the words she would use to tell her boss that she was gone and probably wouldn’t be coming back. There was no other solution she could think of, though it killed her to make this choice. It was going to break Dawn’s heart to have to leave her home, her friends, her school, everything she knew, and start life again somewhere else. But it was the only solution. Short of hunting Mordecai Young down and killing him herself, it was the only way out. And Julie didn’t think she had it in her to kill a man—not even him.
The phone on the other end rang four times, and she was beginning to wonder if Allan Westcott would pick up at all, when someone answered. But the voice that said “Hello” was not the voice she’d been expecting.
It was Sean. And just hearing that one word from him evoked an empty feeling deep in her belly. A longing that made no sense to her. It was alien, foreign. She’d always disliked Sean MacKenzie—or she thought she had. But it wasn’t dislike that wrapped itself around her vocal chords, refusing to let her speak. It wasn’t even close.
“Jones? Is that you? Don’t hang up, just—just don’t hang up. Please.”
She swallowed past the tightness in her throat. “Yeah. It’s me.”
“Thank God. Jesus, it’s good to hear your voice. Where are you? Are you all right?”
She closed her eyes, because his words were full of emotion. She wasn’t used to hearing him sound this way—almost desperate, almost pleading. She was used to his sarcasm and his flirting and his politically incorrect nonsense. Not this. This was too raw, too honest.
“Julie?”
“I’m—I’m all right. Dawn is, too. We both are.”
“Good. God, I’ve been worried. Jones, this isn’t the answer. Running away isn’t going to fix this thing.”
“Nothing is going to fix this thing,” she said softly. “Nothing can.”
He seemed to hesitate before speaking again. Then he said, “If you’d just trust me, tell me what the hell it is you’re running from…”
“I can’t.”
“It’s Young, isn’t it? Or Z, or whatever the hell he’s calling himself these days. But, Julie, he can’t hurt you. I won’t let him hurt you. Just give me a chance—I’ll expose him and he’ll end up behind bars. He can’t hurt you from prison.”
“He can hurt me from anywhere.”
“How? Jesus, how the hell can he do anything to you? Jones, he’s a criminal. You were a victim. You got out alive. Even if he exposed you as having been in that compound, the public would celebrate that, not crucify you. You’d be a hero, for God’s sake.”
She swallowed hard, looking toward the car where Dawn waited. It was running, and Dawn was leaning forward, probably picking out a radio station for the rest of their drive. Her blond hair hung over her face. She was so beautiful.
“Jones, are you even listening to me?”
She closed her eyes. “I’m listening. But you’re wrong. It isn’t exposure or public crucifixion that I’m afraid of, Sean. It’s not my career or my reputation I stand to lose.”
“Then what is it? What else could he take from you?”
Dawn looked up, met her mother’s eyes, and sent her a smile and a wave. Julie’s heart twisted in her chest. “The only thing that matters,” she said. “I could lose my child, Sean. I could lose Dawnie.”
Sean didn’t answer right away. Then he said, “I was right, then. Mordecai Young is her father.”
“I can’t—”
“Goddammit, Jones, talk to me! Stop being so freaking stubborn and let me help you.”
She shook her head slowly. “I have to go.”
“Jones, don’t. Don’t, please. I have a lot more to say to you. It won’t matter that he’s her father. He couldn’t possibly try to challenge you for custody given what he’s done. It’s crazy to think any court in the world would—”
“I’d lose her, Sean. Maybe not to him, but
I’d lose her. You don’t know everything. I do.”
“Then tell me. For God’s sake, Julie, give me a chance. After what happened between us last night…”
“What happened between us last night…” She choked on tears. “Sean, it was…it meant something to me. But it doesn’t change anything.”
“You’re a lousy liar, Jones.”
“You’d be surprised. I’ve been lying for years.”
“And you’re lying now. It changed everything. It changed me. Us. I’m damned if I understand how just yet, but I’m goddamn determined to find out. I can’t do that if you’re not here.”
She drew a breath, forced down the emotions rising inside. “It’s impossible,” she said. “I’m sorry, Sean. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not.”
“Goodbye, Sean.”
“Wait, you have to know some things. There was a break-in at your house this morning. And Z’s apparently left town. Julie, I’m worried about you.”
She shivered with dread, then shook her head slowly. “There was nothing in the house that could tell him where we are. But I’d better get moving, just in case.”
“Julie—”
She hung up the telephone, resting her forehead against it for just a moment, blinking away tears that had no business being there. Finally, pulling herself together, she straightened up and wiped away her tears with the sleeve of her jacket. She plastered a fake smile on her face for Dawn’s sake and went back to the car.
Dawn had several flyers on her lap over the seat belt, which she’d dutifully fastened. “Did you look at any of these, Mom?”
“Hmm?”
“Flyers from that rack in the diner. They’re rental cabins and inns and stuff. Right along the lakes. There are tons of them. We can take our pick.”
Julie glanced sideways as she pulled the car out onto the road and started northward again. She was going to have to tell her daughter the truth. She didn’t want to, but Dawn was old enough, mature enough, to handle it. And she had a right to know. “Tell you what,” she said. “You pick.”
“Really? Any one I want?”
“Any one you want.”
Dawn smiled. “Did we bring a camera? If I come back home without pictures, Kayla will kill me!”
“We can pick up some of those disposable ones, once we find the perfect spot,” Julie said. “So where will it be?”
“Gosh, the pressure.” Dawn flipped through flyers one after the other, unfolding them and skimming their contents. Finally she picked one up with a flourish. “This one. ‘Deluxe private cabins with full kitchen and bath, each with its own hot tub and breathtaking view of Blue Mountain Lake.’”
“Sounds perfect. Hot tubs.”
Dawn read on, relaying information. “They have boat rentals and dinner cruises, hiking trails, horseback riding. It says the cabins are ‘widely spaced for maximum privacy. ’Not too shabby.”
“Not at all too shabby. How far is it?”
She glanced at the little map on the flyer, then yanked her road atlas from the dashboard. “Looks like about twenty miles ahead. We go left where Route 28 joins 30, and it’s another few miles from there.”
“Then that’s the one.” Julie licked her lips and glanced at her daughter, her Dawn. “Dawnie?”
“Hmm.”
She had to do this. She had to. “When we get there and get settled in…we need to have a long talk. About—about everything that’s been going on.”
Dawn looked serious and maybe a little bit frightened. She slid her hand over her mom’s on the wheel. “It’s about me, isn’t it?”
“About you, but not because of you. It’s important to keep that distinction straight in your mind.” Julie sighed. “It’s way past time for this discussion. I just—I just—I guess I’m scared.”
“I can handle it, Mom. I promise.”
“I know you can. I’m just afraid…it’ll change things. Between us.”
“Nothing could do that.”
Julie tried to believe that.
“It’s pretty big, this thing you have to tell me. Isn’t it?”
Julie nodded. “Pretty big.”
Dawn nodded. “You think I won’t love you anymore, once you tell me.”
Julie snapped her head around sharply. “No. I just think you’ll be very angry that I didn’t tell you a whole lot sooner.”
Dawn nodded slowly. They drove in silence for a long while. Dawn found a radio station she liked and cranked the music up a little. But she seemed pensive and worried.
After ten minutes she reached up and turned the music down again. She looked at Julie, and she said, “I’m adopted, aren’t I?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Sean couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this bad. No, he could remember one time. The day of that raid, when all those innocent kids had burned to death or been shot down at the Young Believers’ compound, while he sat safely under cover, taping it all for posterity. The guilt, the horror, the unending nightmare of that day—that was the only place in his memory where he could find this kind of gut-deep ache.
But that had been different. He hadn’t known any of those people. With Julie and Dawn, it was personal. And there was one other difference. With them, there was still hope. Because he was good at what he did. He was good, and it really didn’t matter whether anyone else in the news biz ever acknowledged that. He knew it. And because of it, he was going to find Julie Jones and her daughter, and he was going to see them safe again.
When his cell phone rang again, he’d been driving back to WSNY. He’d pulled off onto the shoulder of the road. By the second ring, he was yanking a pen from his pocket, and searching for something to write on. It rang a third time, and he gave up the search, picked up the cell phone to read the number that appeared on its tiny screen and scribbled it on his hand. He was in a state of near panic, fearing that the caller was Jones and that she would hang up before he answered. It rang a fourth time, and he hit the button, brought the phone to his ear, said “Hello” and prayed it would be her. And it was.
He’d expected the sound of her voice to get to him, but not quite the way it did. He got choked up, and dammit, he never got choked up. But he found himself wishing she was closer, wishing he could touch her, hating that he had to settle instead for a five-minute conversation.
His efforts at talking her down hadn’t worked. He didn’t think she’d taken his warning about Nathan Z being on the lam seriously at all. When she hung up, the finality of the click felt like a bullet in the chest. But he stiffened his jaw, told himself it was far from over. He couldn’t talk her down. Fine. He would just have to fall back on his skills. His ability to track things down, to find the truth in people’s garbage, to uncover the lies they told. Jones had been telling lies. She’d admitted as much. And those lies were the key to what was driving her away. He was good at exposing people’s lies. Now he was going to expose hers.
He dialed the number back, but there was no answer, so he phoned the most unscrupulous P. I. he knew, one of his many valuable connections. He’d hired Tommy Warren many times in the past, and the man had always come through. His one fault was that he would sell your information to anyone who came along and offered him more money than you’d given him to keep quiet.
In this case, that didn’t matter. Time was what mattered.
“I need you to track down a phone number for me,” he told Tommy, skipping the usual greetings and smalltalk. “A pay phone, I think. And I need it yesterday.”
“Shoot.”
Sean read the number from his hand into the phone. Then he drove back to the station and gave his boss the okay to answer his own calls again.
“You heard from Julie, didn’t you?” Westcott asked.
“Yeah, I did.”
“Where the hell is she?”
Sean pressed his lips together. He wanted Jones back, and his chances were better if he made an effort to see to it she still had a job to come back to. “She’s in tr
ouble, Allan. I don’t know what kind, exactly, and I don’t know where she is…yet. But I promise you, I’m going to find out, and then I’m going to fix it.”
Westcott’s brows went up. “Fix it?”
Sean nodded.
“You two, uh, have gotten past your animosity, I take it?”
“Right now I’m the best friend she has. I don’t know if she knows it yet. But she will.”
Westcott smiled and slapped Sean on the shoulder. “Do what you need to. I don’t want to lose her.”
As he walked away, Sean muttered, “Neither do I.” Then he went to his own office and placed a call to Nathan Z’s PR person, wheedling and bluffing until he got the make and model of the man’s car out of her. He drove a late-model black Jaguar. She flat out refused to give him the plate number.
Black Jag. So Julie had been right. It had been him following Dawn that day.
Sean wanted to throttle the son of a bitch. Hell. What to do next? He couldn’t go hunting for Jones until he had a starting place, at the very least. Okay, then. He would just wait here for his P. I. friend to call with the address. Until then…He swallowed hard, wishing to Christ he knew where to begin looking for Julie and Dawn.
He was afraid for them. Whoever had been in their house, he realized with a sick feeling in his stomach, might very well already know where they were headed. And he was afraid for himself, because he wasn’t sure he could handle it if anything happened to those two.
* * *
Dawn’s question shocked Julie to the soul, but she should have been expecting it. Dawn was sharp, savvy, too smart to be fooled for very long. She’d hinted that she had an inkling of this in the past. Hell, she would have to be blind not to have had an inkling. She was as pale and blond as Julie was dark and bronze. But she’d never come right out and asked.
Julie didn’t answer right away. She pulled the car off the road, killed the engine and fought to control her emotions.
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