can’t leave her!”
“She’s gone, Jewel. She’s gone.”
The fire surged closer, brighter and hotter. Jewel got up and handed the baby to Sirona; then she took Lizzie by the wrists and dragged her limp body into the tunnel. She couldn’t bear the thought of her being burned, or ending her life so close to Mordecai Young. She pushed the door closed behind them, then turned to take the baby from Sirona again.
As she moved through the seemingly endless tunnel, she wondered how her life had managed to change so drastically over the course of one short summer. First her drunken, abusive father had hit her mother one too many times and wound up in prison for murder. Then the streets, where Jewel had fled to avoid ending up a ward of the state. Then this place, this supposed underground haven for runaway teens.
And now? What now?
She made her way through the tunnel, Sirona and Tessa flanking her. Eventually it grew lighter, and she spotted the duffel bags resting on the ground along the wall. She said, “Grab those and bring them. We’ll split up what’s inside once we get out of here. If we get out of here. And then we’ll go our separate ways.” She looked sternly at the two girls. “None of us can tell what happened here. Not ever, do you understand? If we do, little Sunny will end up a ward of the state—just like I almost was—or worse yet, with Lizzie’s family, whoever they are. And that couldn’t have been good, or Lizzie wouldn’t be…” She swallowed hard, lowered her head. “She never even told me her last name.”
“I was in the system,” Sirona said. “It’s no place for Sunny. It’s okay. We’ll never tell.”
“There’s enough money in those bags for all of us to start fresh, start new lives. We can never look back from here. Never. It’s a pact. Understand?”
They both nodded.
“Good. Then let’s go.”
Sirona and Tessa each grabbed a bag and followed Jewel along the last leg of the tunnel. It angled slowly upward from deep in the earth, growing lighter and lighter, until finally it opened into sunlight.
They climbed out, helping each other. “It’s morning,” Sirona whispered.
Jewel turned to look back at the flames and smoke rising in the distance from what had been the Young Believers’ compound. Every building on the place must be burning, she thought. And everyone left behind must be dead.
But that was behind her. She turned her back on all of it and faced the slowly rising sun that shone its red-orange light onto her and onto the baby.
Her baby now.
“It’s Dawn,” she whispered.
Chapter One
Sixteen Years Later
Syracuse, NY
Mascara tears were so far beneath her that she could barely believe they would dare skim down her face. She speed-yanked a half-dozen tissues from the hotel-issue dispenser and wiped the trespassers off. Then she cranked on the cold water, splashed her face and went still, staring at her reflection as the water dripped from her chin.
What would Dawn think of her if she saw her mom like this? Was this the way she was raising her daughter to be? Weak? Compliant? Afraid?
No.
“I’m not paying the scrawny little bastard anymore,” she whispered to her reflection. She stood a little straighter, lifted her chin a little higher. “No more. It’s over. One way or another, it’s finished.”
She opened her purse and yanked out a compact. She wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction of knowing he’d made her cry. No one made her cry. Hell, she was the one who was known for making other people weep. On the air, in front of the entire city. This idiot had jerked her around long enough. The fact that he’d dared to even try—the fact that she had let him get away with it, even for a little while—it was beyond the pale.
“What the hell was I thinking?” she asked her reflection, while her hands moved to automatically and expertly return her face to a state of near perfection. “I’m not some little nobody. I’m Julie Fucking Jones.”
The doorknob of the hotel’s bathroom jiggled. She sent it a burning glance. “Keep your pants on, Harry. I’ll be out by the time room service gets here with your goddamn celebratory champagne.”
Footsteps moved rapidly away from the bathroom door.
She paused, glanced down at the mascara she’d just pulled out of the handbag, and grimaced at it. “Waterproof, my ass.” She flung it at the wastebasket, then snapped the bag shut and turned on her heel to return to the other room—to end this thing, as she should have done six months ago.
She flung open the door and stepped through it. “I don’t know why it took so long,” she said, her voice as firm and strong as it was when she was on the air. “But you’ve finally pushed me too far. It’s finished, Harry. You’re not getting another nickel from me. You can drop this now, or I’m going to go to your brother and tell him everything.”
He sat in the small armchair, right where he’d been when she’d excused herself to go to the bathroom and gather her courage. As if he’d never moved. His back was to her. She could only see the top of his head. The little pink patch where his black hair was starting to thin. He said nothing, probably too surprised. She couldn’t imagine why he hadn’t been expecting this. Did he really think she would let him keep pushing?
“You can do whatever you want with the evidence, I don’t care,” she lied. She did care. “If it goes public, Harry, you’ll go to prison. I’ll see to it, even it means losing everything. Nobody wrongs me like this, much less threatens my daughter, and gets away with it. Nobody.”
She strode straight past him to the nightstand, wondering at the metallic smell in the air. He always brought copies of the damning evidence to these meetings. Always promised they were the last copies in existence as he sold them to her for large amounts of cash. Always insisted on closing the deal with a glass of champagne. And a month later, he always showed up with another set of demands. She looked down at the table. But the envelope was gone.
She turned slowly to face Harry. “All right, what did you do with the…”
Her voice tripped over a heartbeat when she faced him fully. He sat in the chair, just as he had before. Only now he was dead. The white dress shirt he wore was completely soaked in blood. So were his hands, and the chair itself, his shoes and the beige carpet underneath them.
Her gaze slid to his face again. The slightly open mouth. The wide, sightless eyes. The dark, gaping, bloody crescent in his long, skinny neck. Her body began to shake. A tremor formed somewhere down deep and worked its way outward to her hands and knees and even her head, lips, eyes. Fear gripped her heart like an icy fist as her gaze danced around the room. But no one else was there. Not now. She checked the tiny closet just to be sure, but it was empty. She was alone in the room, and Harry Blackwood was dead.
A wave of nausea rose up in her stomach as she lunged toward the door to turn the dead bolt. She barely got it done before she had to run for the bathroom again, and while she leaned over the toilet, she got so dizzy she nearly fell in.
When she could
