Free Thicker Than Water by MAGGIE SHAYNE Page B

who had ratted them out. She and Kayla were the only two who’d left the party early. She closed her bedroom door with a bang and flopped facefirst onto her bed. She would be the most hated junior in Cazenovia High School tomorrow.
    It wasn’t fair. Her mom was keeping secrets, too. Big ones. But it was okay for her to sneak around and hide things. Just not for Dawn. It was such a double standard.
    She punched her pillow, buried her face in it and wished for a solution.
    A pebble hit her window. Then another. She scrambled off the bed, yanked the curtains wide and stared through the open window. Kayla stood on the back lawn, in the spill of light from her bedroom. “I thought you went home.”
    Kayla rubbed her arms, glanced behind her. “Something creeped me out. You get in trouble?”
    â€œYeah, some.”
    â€œGrounded?”
    â€œTwo weeks.”
    â€œBummer.”
    The bushes that formed the boundary between the neat back lawn and the untamed field that sloped downhill to the lake shore moved, as if something were creeping through them. Dawn frowned, and Kayla turned her head quickly. There was nothing there. Just the wind, Dawn thought. “My mom’s on the phone, narc-ing out the party.”
    Kayla shivered. “I should go back down to the landing and tell everyone before I head home.”
    â€œI wouldn’t. She might just call your mom next. I didn’t say your name, but she’s not stupid.”
    Again the bushes moved. This time Dawn swore she saw a shape, a dark shadow, moving with them. Someone was out there, watching.
    â€œJesus, Kayla, get in here!”
    Kayla moved a few steps closer to the house. “I gotta get home. My parents will kill me if they go to check my room and find me gone.”
    The shadow moved again, looking so much like a dark, menacing human shape this time that Dawn opened her mouth to scream.
    But before the sound escaped, there was a sudden, brighterpool of light flooding the back lawn, and the shadow vanished in its glow. A second later, Dawn realized the light was coming from her own house’s open back door when she heard her mother say, “You might as well come on in, Kayla.”
    Kayla grimaced but hurried inside, seeming almost as relieved as she was upset at being caught. Dawn went downstairs to do damage control, telling herself all the way that she probably hadn’t seen a damn thing, other than maybe a stray deer or a nightbird. Her mother’s paranoid tendencies were finally starting to rub off on her.
    * * *
    Every person in the newsroom looked up when Julie burst in the next morning, ten minutes late.
    Bryan, her assistant, who’d been on her heels from the front entrance all the way to the newsroom, talking all the way, finally managed to thrust the cup of coffee he was carrying into her hands.
    â€œRough night?” the news director, Allan Westcott asked.
    â€œNo sleep. Did you get my fax?”
    â€œYeah. It came in at 5:00 a.m.” Westcott shuffled the pages in front of him. “Your report says the body was discovered around midnight?”
    She nodded.
    â€œSo why the delay?”
    She had to say something, and admitting that she’d been out rifling through the dead man’s apartment in the wee hours was out of the question, nor were Dawn’s antics any of the man’s business. By the time she’d phoned the police about the party, called Kayla’s parents, lectured the girls while awaiting Mr. and Mrs. Matthewses’ arrival, seen Kayla safely off, double-checked the locks and gotten Dawn back intobed, it had been four-thirty. She’d barely had time to type up the details, reread them to be sure she hadn’t included anything she wasn’t supposed to know and fax the report to the station.
    There’d been no point in trying to sleep by then.
    â€œJulie?”
    She blinked and sipped her coffee. Perfect, just enough cream and sugar. Bryan was