Thicker Than Water. Maggie Shayne

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