Thicker Than Water. Maggie Shayne

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СКАЧАТЬ in his mouth and peered down into the depths of trash.

      Most of the garbage was bagged. People were neater these days than they’d been ten years ago. He reached for a plastic trash bag, picked it up by its knotted top and let it dangle and turn in slow-mo, shining his light and peering through the transparent sides until he spotted a name on a discarded envelope or sheet of paper. He repeated this process over and over, tossing the bags aside when he found any name other than Harold R. Blackwood. Harry had lived alone, as far as Sean knew. He wouldn’t likely have anything addressed to anyone else. There! Harold Blackwood. Apartment 624.

      He tossed the bag to the ground to be examined later and kept on digging for more, stopping only when headlights spilled into the alley from the street beyond and he heard a car pulling to a stop out in front of the building. The engine shut off. The lights went out.

      He glanced at his watch. 2:00 a.m.

      Okay, it was probably nothing, but he had a little nerve at the base of his skull that tingled when there was a story nearby, and it was tingling now. Maybe he’d better check it out, just in case….

      He jumped down from the crate and picked up the bag he’d retrieved, peeled off his gloves and face mask, tossing them into the trash, and then he walked back up the alley to the street.

      A powder-blue Jeep Wrangler had stopped there, and the woman who got out of it was…He had to blink and look again. There was no mistake. She was none other than Julie Jones.

      “Well, I’ll be,” he muttered. Licking his lips, he set his trash bag down and pressed himself closer to the wall so he could peer around it and watch her without being seen. “What the hell is she up to now?”

      She walked up the broad stone steps of Harry’s building, then paused at the front door, biting her lip and squinting at the security panel. Finally she pushed a button. She was only three yards away from Sean. She kept her finger on the button until a groggy, angry voice came over the intercom in reply. “Who the hell is this?” it demanded. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

      “I’m sorry to wake you, but I forgot my key. Could you just buzz me in?”

      “Fuck off, lady,” the man said.

      She waited a couple seconds, then hit the same button again. The voice returned. “You want me to call a cop?”

      “You want me to keep my finger on this button until they get here?”

      “All right, all right. Jesus.”

      The guy buzzed her in. Sean heard the deep drone of the buzzer and the door lock disengaging, and shook his head in amazement, both at her brass and at the fact that her ploy had actually worked. Jones opened the door and walked through. Swearing under his breath, Sean lunged out of his spot, running in three long strides to the stairs. The door was already swinging closed and Jones was striding toward the elevators, her back to him. He flung himself bodily, landing chest first on the stairs, arms stretching doorward. He just managed to thrust his fingertips into the opening before the door slammed on them.

      Clenching his teeth and swearing under his breath, he pulled himself forward, grabbed the door with his free hand and pulled it open. Then he got to his feet and stepped inside. His fingers throbbed. Shit. He rubbed them and shook his hand as the door fell closed behind him. Then he heard the elevator ping and looked ahead to see its doors closing, as well.

      Crossing into the lobby, he dug through his memory for the number he’d seen on that envelope—624, that was it. Sixth floor. There was only one elevator, and he didn’t want Jones getting too goddamn far ahead of him. Nor did he relish the thought of being caught there in plain sight should the irate neighbor Jones had bothered with the buzzer decide to call the cops after all.

      He looked around, found the stair door and took that way up. Five flights. He hurried, because he didn’t want Jones out of his sight long enough to do anything he would regret not seeing. He figured it took him a minute or so before he made it to the sixth floor landing, opened the stair door and stepped quietly into the hall. Or as quietly as he could manage while panting for breath. His heart was pounding hard enough to wake the residents of the entire floor, and he told himself he was too old for this kind of cloak-and-dagger bullshit.

      Then he shook his head. Getting too old, maybe. But he wasn’t there yet—he’d managed to catch up to her. Jones was walking down the hall, peering at the numbers on the doors of the condos on this floor. He walked forward, stepping just as softly as he could manage. She was wearing jeans now. Her hair was a mess, and her sweatshirt was baggy. This was not a Julie Jones too many people would recognize.

      Then she stopped suddenly and just stood there, staring at one of the doors. And when he got a little closer, Sean realized why. It was Harry’s apartment door, and it was standing wide-open.

      Someone had been there first, and even as he wondered whether they might still be around, Julie Jones walked inside.

      Swearing under his breath, Sean rushed ahead and paused momentarily outside the door to look in at Jones as she tiptoed through the apartment like some kind of goddamn cat burglar. He knew it was freaking insane, but he had to find out what she was up to. My God, he didn’t have dreams this good. Oh, he’d fantasized lots of scenarios involving Julie Jones over the years, getting the best of her being his second favorite. But this was better than anything he could have made up. So he crept in after her.

      Harry’s living room looked like some dated idea of a playboy’s love nest. Black leather furniture, white shag carpet, wall-size stereo system, wet bar. Jones moved through it into a hallway and went through a door about halfway down. God, he hoped she wasn’t heading for the bedroom. He could only imagine what that would look like.

      She wasn’t. He moved quietly to the door she’d entered. She’d left it open, so he could look inside. It was a study or library. Desk, chair, file cabinet and a big-screen TV that would have seemed out of place if not for the wall of videos.

      He thought they were books at first, in the muted light. But no. VHS tapes. One entire wall housed a built-in cabinet that must have been full of them. Right now, its doors were flung open wide, and video cassettes lay toppled on the shelves and strewn over the floor. The file cabinet nearby was open wide, too. File folders and papers were thrown everywhere.

      Jones stood there, looking at the mess, shaking her head from side to side as if the sight rendered her unable to move or speak. She pressed her hands to either side of her head, fingers digging in her own hair. “Oh, Jesus, look at all this,” she whispered.

      “Jones.”

      She whirled when Sean said her name, one hand clenched in a fist and the other pressing to her chest as if to keep her heart from busting out.

      “Easy, easy, it’s just me.”

      “MacKenzie. What the hell are you doing here? Are you following me?”

      “Hell, no. I was getting some background for my story.”

      She tipped her head to one side and lowered the fist. “How?”

      He opened his mouth, closed it again.

      “Well, you sure as hell couldn’t be interviewing neighbors at this hour. What were you doing, digging through the trash?”

      It was supposed to be a sarcastic little barb, and he would be damned before he admitted that it was СКАЧАТЬ