Read Online Thicker Than Water by MAGGIE SHAYNE - Free Book Online Page B

Blackwood.
    â€œHe 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 formof 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.
    â€œOh my God,” Julie whispered. “Dawn!”

CHAPTER FOUR
    D awn 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.
    â€œWas that your mom?” Kayla asked in an overly loud whisper.
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œWhy’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.”
    â€œGood thing we left the party early.”
    â€œNot early enough.” Dawn rubbed her arms, the possibility of getting caught adding to the chill of the crisp Octobernight air. Wondering where her mom had been in the wee hours of the morning gave her an even deeper chill. She’d overheard