Adam Collins: One of Mission Creek’s bravest firefighters, he risks his life for a living. But saving little Jake Anderson from the blazing country club touches him to the very core. Does Adam dare lose his heart to both the little boy and his beautiful, vivacious doctor?

Dr. Tracy Walker: The dedicated pediatric burn specialist works her magic to ease Jake’s pain. Unable to have children of her own, she yearns for a little boy like Jake. Can she find room in her life for a certain strong but silent firefighter, as well?

Jake Anderson: The five-year-old boy knows who’s responsible for the Lone Star Country Club bombing but is mute from the shock of losing his parents in the blast. Will Tracy and Adam be able to keep him safe till he’s able to reveal the truth?

Police Chief Benjamin Stone: Horrified to discover that bombers have attacked his town, he’s put the Mission Creek police on full alert. Will he uncover the identity of the attackers and bring them to justice before it’s too late?

Once a Father
Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARIE FERRARELLA

earned a master’s degree in Shakespearean comedy and, perhaps as a result, her writing is distinguished by humor and natural dialogue. This RITA Award-winning author’s goal is to entertain and to make people laugh and feel good. She has written over one hundred books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide and have been translated into Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, Japanese and Korean.

To

Maggie Price

&

Beverly Bird,

who brought new meaning to the word precision.

My hat is off to you both.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

Prologue

Mulrooney was droning on endlessly. It was obvious that the newly hired policeman had absolutely no idea what the word succinct meant. But for once, Chief Ben Stone of the Mission Creek police department didn’t mind being subjected to the endless rhetoric as the much younger man was describing a recent, utterly trivial incident that had occurred in town.

He wasn’t listening anyway.

The late morning Texas sun filled the office, highlighting the dust and cobwebs that the night janitorial staff had missed. Ben’s dark blue eyes stealthily shifted to the watch on his wrist just beneath the cuff of his navy blue uniform. A vague hint of a smile teased the corners of his ordinarily downturned mouth as he noted the hour.

Almost time.

“Can’t understand why a man who can look death in the face and spit in its eye would want to waste his time knocking around a little white ball along some stubby green grass.”

Completely mystified by the attraction of the game, Luke Callaghan shook his dark head as he watched the tall, rangy silver-haired man who he respected more than any living being on the face of the earth take careful measure before making his shot. Though it was the game of choice for the people who populated the upper-crust world he lived in, Luke only played because his best friends found the game so intriguing. As for him, he could abandon the game in a heartbeat. His score reflected as much.

Leaning on his club in what could only be termed an indolent pose, Spence Harrison, the local district attorney, teased, his tongue in his cheek. “No mystery, Luke. Comes a time when a man just has to lay down the saber and do what he can to occupy his mind.”

Commander Phil Westin grinned at the men he’d both led and saved when they had been part of his Marine platoon in the Gulf War. The expression softened a face that was all planes and angles, ordinarily arousing fear in the hearts of his enemies.

Lack of activity had never been a problem for Westin and he ignored Spence’s good-natured jibe. “I already told you, Luke, golf relaxes me.”

Keenly aware of his score and not one who enjoyed not excelling at everything he tried, Luke frowned. “Well, it frustrates the hell out of me.”

Spence glanced over his friend’s shoulder at the scorecard. “I can see why.”

“That’s because your hand-eye coordination is shot to hell,” Flynt Carson kidded Luke. The country club where they were playing had originally been co-founded by his great-grandfather Jace in 1923, on land he had carved out of his ranch and donated. The other half had come from the Wainwrights, who the Carsons no longer had any dealings with for what all felt were excellent reasons. “Thank God you did better with a rifle in your hands than you do with a golf club.”

Tyler Murdoch, the fifth man on the team, raised his club like a sword. Taking his cue, Luke raised his and crossed it over Tyler’s. The latter gave a few thrusts and parries, which Tyler countered.

“Anything can be a weapon,” Luke quipped to Tyler, “in the right person’s hands.”

“Boys, boys, play nice,” Westin laughed. The serious nature behind the impromptu gathering blended into the laughter, making it fade. It was time he told them why he’d asked for this get-together. “Besides, this is probably the last time I’m going to be seeing you for a while and I’d like to take away an image of you overgrown Boy Scouts doing something other than clowning around.”

There was a great deal of affection between them that went beyond their time together in the war. They, along with the one missing, estranged member of their former group, had all attended Virginia Military Institute, then joined the 14th Marines after graduation. The Gulf War had seen them taken prisoner and required them to demonstrate exemplary bravery under fire and extreme conditions. Though none talked about it, each man would have gone to hell and back for the others in the group.

Some of them felt they had.

“Okay, I’ve had it with this country club facade.” Unlike Luke and Flynt, an endless supply of money had never been Tyler’s problem while he was growing up. He turned to Westin. “C’mon, Commander, straight out, tell us. Why’d you call us together? What’s this big mystery you’re keeping from us?”

Phil slid his club into his bag and debated over which club to use for the shot. He appeared unruffled, but his mind wasn’t on anything so trivial as the right club to use. “No big mystery, just don’t want it advertised just yet.” Taking a club out, he turned to look at the others. He needed them to know this. In case there came a time when he had to call upon them for help. “I’m being sent to Central America to see if maybe I can get a handle on how to bring down that new drug czar. Calls himself El Jefe.” He smiled thinly. “No ego problem there.”

Though their lives had taken them in different directions since the time they served together, the men were all up on the rumors that the newest drug route bringing illegal fare into the U.S. was passing directly through their part of the country. Maybe even through Mission Creek itself, though none of them liked to think that.

“Why you?” Luke wondered if Westin, like himself, was a secret agent. Wouldn’t that have been a hoot? Two of them in one small, tight circle, each not knowing about the other.

A steely grin curved Westin’s strong mouth. “Haven’t you heard? They always pick the best man for the job.” The hell with the game, he decided. He wanted to sit and hoist a few beers with these men before he disappeared into the jungle for who knew how long. “I’ve got reservations for us at the Men’s Grill.” He glanced at his watch. The reservation was for eleven. It was five minutes past that now. “It’s already getting late. Let’s go there and I’ll tell you all about it. Might be something to pass along to your grandkids if you boys can ever find yourself four good women whose standards aren’t too high.”

Luke gladly tossed his golf club into his bag. “I’m ready to call it a game.”

Eschewing carts and caddies, each man carried his own bag, just as they had once carried their own fifty-pound backpacks through a foreign land.

But as they turned toward the sprawling four-story brick complex known as the Lone Star Country Club where the Men’s Grill was housed, an explosion suddenly resounded, shattering the calm of a perfect morning.

Flames belched out, infecting the horizon with smoke as the men were sent tumbling pell-mell to the ground, their golf clubs scattered all around them like so many sticks emptied out of one giant bag.

Chapter 1

“I’m not a baby, Mom. I’m old enough to go to the bathroom myself,” Jake Anderson insisted. Rocking on the toes of the brand-new pair of shoes his mother had made him wear today, the boy who was five, hovering anxiously on the cusp of being six, looked to his father for backup. “Right, Dad?”

Daniel Anderson smiled affectionately at his only son. With his blond hair and fair coloring, the boy was the spitting image of his mother. The thought crossed Daniel’s mind that his own mother had been right. They did grow up so fast.

“He is five, you know, Meg.”

“Almost six,” Jake piped up.

Margaret Anderson sighed, knowing she was being overly protective. But it was still difficult for her not to think of Jake as her little boy and as such, she didn’t really want him to go wandering off on his own, even though this was the Lone Star Country Club, where only the best people came to pass the time.

As if reading her mind, her husband added, “And after all, this is the Lone Star Country Club, Meg. Nothing bad ever happens here. Best place in the world to start letting Jake be his own person.”

Assaulted on both sides, Meg had no choice but to relent. “I suppose.” As he was about to run off, she caught her son’s hand. He looked at her, obviously trying to curb his impatience. “Just to the men’s room and back, Jake. Don’t go wandering off and don’t dawdle.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jake mumbled dutifully.

Daniel made a show of checking his pockets. Not finding what he was looking for, he snapped his fingers. “And me without my compass. Think you can get there and back before nightfall, son?”

Jake laughed as his father ruffled his hair.

Meg took the teasing at her expense in stride. “All right, you two.” She looked at Daniel. “He’s still my little boy.” She curbed the impulse to hug Jake, knowing that displays of affection in public embarrassed him. “I’m entitled. Go now, before they bring your dessert and it melts.” She shooed her son off and then raised her coffee cup to her lips.

Trying not to run, Jake quickly made his way through the dining hall, afraid his mother would find some reason to call him back. He felt like one of the big boys now, off on his own.

In the hall, he paused, trying to remember which direction to take to get to the men’s room. He’d been there several times with his father, but he’d never paid much attention. The long hallways all looked alike. Stubbornly, he refused to go back and ask his parents for directions, knowing that his mother would take the opportunity to come with him as she showed him the way.

Hesitating, Jake made his choice and turned to his right. He saw the green-and-white sign all the way at the end of the corridor. It said Rest Rooms. That was grown-up talk for bathrooms.

Hurrying, he passed a partially opened door. The sign across it had words he hadn’t learned how to read yet. The sound of urgent voices aroused his natural curiosity and he peered inside.

What he saw was a partially darkened room filled with what looked to be a hundred television sets, all tuned to boring programs that had nothing but rooms on them. There was a single, sharp beam of light coming in from another opened door. It was on the other end of the room, to the left and the door was opened to the outside.

He thought he saw a truck and two men, each dragging a big, fat sack from the room to the door. They looked like the sack that Santa Claus had brought his toys in just last month, except that these were green. He wondered if there were toys in these sacks and if the men he saw were Santa’s helpers.

One of the men looked sharply at him.

“Hey, you, kid!”

Jake jumped back, afraid that the man would tell his parents that he’d strayed. Or worse, that he’d tell Santa and he wouldn’t get any presents next Christmas.

Spinning on his heel, he ran back toward the Grill, forgetting all about his maiden solo voyage to the bathroom.

Halfway back to the dining area, he heard a big bang coming from that area at almost the same time he went flying off his feet.

His head hit the floor just as bursts of light registered in his brain.

Everything went black.

Bonnie Brannigan wasn’t aware of wringing her hands, even though the action moved the large engagement ring on her hand to and fro and made her overly burdened charm bracelet jingle with each movement.

Nor did she realize that her platinum blond hair, usually so carefully and artfully arranged in a hair-style that had been dear to her heart since her teens some forty years ago, had sunk several degrees south of its rightful position atop her head. She was far too upset to notice anything but the flames shooting out from what had once been the Men’s Grill. It was clear that the restaurant and the billiards room next to it were lost. She prayed that the firemen she was watching so intently could contain the fire to this section.

What if they couldn’t? The whole club was in jeopardy.

As manager of the popular Lone Star Country Club these past few years, she’d been inside her office reviewing last month’s profits when the explosion had thrown her from her chair. Momentarily disoriented, the acrid smell of smoke reached her nose just as her ears were clearing of the deafening noise.

Stumbling out into the hallway, she’d been accosted by flames. One of the busboys had grabbed her hand, all but dragging her out of the building. In retrospect, he’d probably saved her life. She wasn’t even sure which young man it had been.

It seemed too incredible for words.

Well clear of the building, she stood shivering beneath a coat someone had thrown on her shoulders, fighting off the tightening grasp of shock. Her eyes stung, whether from smoke or grief she wasn’t altogether sure, and a tear trickled down her sooty cheek as she surveyed the damage that had been done. A panicked feeling was taking over the pit of her stomach.

Dressed in the pink colors she tended to favor, Bonnie stood out like a petite, colorful focal point amid the destruction that came in the wake of the explosion.

Her mind struggled to understand.

Was this some horrible accident, or deliberate? Who could have done this?

Noise, hoses and smoke seemed to be all around her. Right in front of her, yellow-jacketed firefighters were attempting to tame the flames.

“Nothing like this has ever happened here before,” she said more to herself than to the powerfully built man standing beside her.

“Yeah, bet old Peter Wainwright and Jace Carson are spinning in their graves right now. Like as not they’d each blame the other for this.” Ben Stone took a step back from the scene. He’d been the police chief of Mission Creek, the town that had slowly grown up and around the Lone Star Country Club that the once best friends had created, cutting the acreage equally out of both their properties before a blood feud had rent them apart, for more years than he was happy about. Agitated, he ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. At 6’2” he all but dwarfed the woman beside him.

Damn it all to hell, it wasn’t supposed to have happened this way.

He shifted his keen eyes to her profile. If she lied, he’d know. Bonnie Brannigan was one of those scattered, flighty women who couldn’t be secretive even if her life depended on it. “You didn’t see or hear anything, did you Bonnie?”

“No.” Wiping away traces of the tear, she shook her head. “I was in my office when this awful thing happened.” Still dazed, she turned to look at him, fear in her clear-water blue eyes. “You don’t think this is like that terrible bombing in Oklahoma, do you?”

It astounded him how far off the mark she was. A tinge of relief wafted through the wall of frustration that surrounded him.

“That was a federal building, Bonnie, not a place where people like to come to talk over how much money they have.” He watched firefighters scrambling out of the way as an outer wall fell. “Maybe it was just an accident. Who knows?” Playing out his role of the big protector, he slipped a comforting arm around her shoulders. It wasn’t a hardship. Even though a grandmother, the curvaceous Bonnie Brannigan was still very much an attractive woman. And even better, right now she was no threat to him. “But we’ll find out, by and by. Don’t go troubling that pretty little head of yours.”

Bonnie smiled, relieved to have someone in charge taking over. She loved her job at the club, but there were times, such as now, when she definitely felt in over her head. That was why she relied so heavily on people like Yance Ingram, the head of security at the club. She recalled that Ben had been the one to bring Yance to her attention.

Funny how thoughts just popped out of nowhere at a time like this.

“I suppose it could have been worse,” she murmured, attempting to console herself. She looked at Stone, realizing that had to sound callous, given the circumstances. There were at least two known dead, perhaps more. “I mean, this could have happened during the busy part of the day.”

Stone nodded, looking toward the body bags just being zipped closed by two of his men. The burned bodies had been pulled out of the wreckage that had been, until an hour ago, the main dining area of the Men’s Grill.

“Just two fatalities.” The wrong ones. A man and a woman. Their misfortune for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. “Do you know who they were?”

Were. The word had such a terrible ring to it. She nodded.

“Daniel and Meg Anderson.” She’d stopped by their table not fifteen minutes before the blast, asking if everything was to their liking. Admiring how much Jake had grown since the last time she’d seen him. Bonnie fought back a fresh wave of sorrow. “It’s awful, just awful.” Shivering again, she ran well-manicured hands along her arms to ward off a chill that no heat could chase away.

He had no idea what goaded him on. Instinct, probably. The security guards who had scrambled out of the burning building, soot all over their smart blue blazers and crisp gray slacks, had said that there appeared to be no one left within the area where the bomb and the accompanying fire had hit. There was no need to risk his life by diving back into the flames before they became entirely overwhelming to satisfy himself that everyone was out. His chief had ordered everyone clear of the building.

But one of the witnesses had mentioned something about thinking he had heard a child scream a heartbeat after the explosion. That had been enough to make Adam go back.

That and the memory of the child he hadn’t been able to save from another inferno. His own child. And his wife.

The memory of that clung to him, riding the truck beside him with each fire he went to. No matter how many people Adam Collins had saved since that awful night two years ago when his small family had died in the flames within his house, it didn’t ease his pain. He suspected it never would.

Taking deep breaths through his mask, Adam forged farther into the burning building. The heat was all around him as broad, decorative beams above him groaned dangerously, threatening to snap in half at any moment.

He should be withdrawing.

He pushed on instead.

His captain’s voice ordering him to turn back echoed in his head as he made his way through the blinding sheets of fire.

He almost missed him.

If he hadn’t stumbled just then, trying to avoid falling debris, Adam wouldn’t have seen him. The small, curled up form of a boy lying on the floor, covered with plaster.

At first he thought he was hallucinating. The boy looked so much like Bobby. But when he drew closer, fighting the flames for possession of a floor that was quickly eroding beneath his feet, Adam saw that it wasn’t Bobby, wasn’t a hallucination, it was a child. A small, unconscious little boy.

Scooping up the limp body, Adam fought his way back out.

Timber cracked and collapsed, nearly felling him. Blocking his path. With one arm wrapped around the boy, he picked another path, praying his luck would hold out one more time. Not for himself, but for the boy. Maybe that was why he’d been able to save so many people, because he didn’t care if he lived or died. It allowed him that tiny extra edge that the other firefighters, with so much to live for, so much to lose, didn’t have. It completely did away with any natural impulse to hesitate.

Light worked its way through the tunnel of smoke and flames. An exit.

Hang on, kid, we’re almost there.

With a burst of adrenaline, Adam ran the rest of the way, making it out just in time. Behind him, the ceiling collapsed completely, making passage impossible. Had he hesitated for even a second, he and the boy would have been walled in.

“Oh my God, look!” Bonnie cried, pointing a crimson nail toward the far side of the blockaded area where the fire still raged. She covered her mouth with both hands as shock registered. In her devastation, she’d forgotten all about the boy. “He found him, he found Jake!”

Stone, talking to several of his men, his mind scrambling to put together the shard-like pieces of an explanation for what had transpired here this morning, looked up sharply at the sound of Bonnie’s shrill, eager cry.

His eyes narrowed as he saw the firefighter miraculously emerge from the flames with the limp body of a boy pressed close to his chest.

His shoved his fisted hands deep into the pockets of his jacket.

“Looks like we got ourselves a hero,” he announced to the general populace that was now milling around what was deemed the social center of Lone Star County as well as Mission Creek.

As cheers went up, Stone exchanged glances with Yance Ingram, the man who had once been his commanding officer in the Marines. A man after his own heart. He needed to talk to Ingram, to get the answers to questions he couldn’t risk asking out loud in front of the crowd.

Ed Bancroft moved closer to him, a grim, wary look on his long, square face as he looked at his superior. “That’s the boy,” he confirmed. The boy he’d told Stone had looked into the security room.

Stone set his mouth hard. Damn it, he hated loose ends.

But as he came closer to the firemen, he saw that the boy’s small chest wasn’t moving. Maybe there was no need for concern after all.

Bonnie’s stiletto heels sank into the damp ground with every step she took as she hurried over. “Is he all right?”

Adam didn’t bother answering her. Instead, he ripped off his mask and helmet, his attention riveted on the boy he had rescued.

“I need help here!” he shouted without looking up.

The demand was issued to the paramedics who’d accompanied the fire trucks to the country club at the first sound of the alarm. But even before any of them managed to materialize at his elbow, Adam was employing CPR. One hand over the other, he pressed down hard on the boy’s chest while counting to five in his mind.

The white patches of snow on the ground contrasted sharply with the dark, sooty layer of dirt along every part of the boy’s blistered, burned body. Adam tried not to think about anything except getting the boy’s chest to move, getting him to breathe on his own. The small chest felt so fragile. If he pressed too hard, he was afraid he might crush it.

He repeated the cycle twice, first pressing down on the boy’s chest, then breathing into his mouth. Finally, the boy stirred, his lids fluttering, then opening. He looked directly into Adam’s eyes.

Adam felt as if something had hit him smack in his chest with the force of an anvil.

“We can take over from here, buddy.” K.C., one of the paramedics, firmly but gently nudged Adam aside. Gently, because they all knew that after two years the firefighter was no closer to being over the loss of his wife and son than he’d been the evening the tragedy had occurred.

Adam felt something take hold of his hand. When he looked down, he saw that the boy had wrapped his small, grimy, burned fingers around it. He knew that the very effort must have hurt terribly. The boy’s grasp was not strong. It would have taken next to nothing to break the hold.

But the connection was far stronger than any steel wire could have ever managed. Adam couldn’t pull his hand away. The boy’s eyes wouldn’t release him.

Adam heard the captain coming up behind him, felt a fatherly hand on his shoulder he neither related to nor resented.

“Anyone know who this boy is?” Captain MacIntire addressed his words to anyone in the immediate vicinity.

With careful steps, Bonnie moved closer to them. There were fresh tears shimmering in her eyes.

“That’s Jake Anderson.” She pressed her lips together, her heart going out to the boy. “Those were his parents you just…you just…” She couldn’t make herself finish her statement.

She didn’t have to.

Someone at the baseline of the fire called to MacIntire and he hurried away, all under the watchful eye of Chief Stone.

Adam made up his mind. “I’m going with the boy.”

Working over Jake, K.C. slanted a look toward Adam. There was understanding in the paramedic’s eyes. But sympathy, they’d learned, was the last thing anyone offered Adam Collins.

“Suit yourself.” K.C. snapped the legs on the gurney and they popped upright. With Adam walking alongside him, holding the boy’s hand, he guided the gurney to the rear of the ambulance. “But being the good Samaritan won’t keep the captain from getting on your case for playing Superman again.”

“Yeah, but it’ll postpone it for a while.” Adam stepped back to allow the gurney to be hoisted into the ambulance. Jake’s fingers remained around his. Adam twisted around to maintain the connection, then got into the ambulance himself.

Dr. Tracy Walker felt beat and ready to call it a day. And it wasn’t even one o’clock.

She felt as if she’d been running on fast-forward all morning, with no signs of a letup anytime soon. It had started when her alarm had failed to go off at five. Five a.m. was not her idea of an ideal hour to get up, but it would have given her sufficient time to pull herself together for the surgery she had to perform this morning. Five o’clock came and went, as did six and then almost seven.

Fortunately, Tracy had what she fondly liked to refer to as an alarm pig, a gentle, quick-footed Vietnamese potbellied pig that was still very much a baby and went by the name of Petunia. Petunia, it turned out, was trainable and far more intelligent than some of the people Tracy knew.

At five to seven, Petunia had snuggled in at her feet and tickled her awake. Any one-sided dialogue Tracy had felt up to rendering was immediately curtailed the instant she’d rolled over in her bed and saw that according to her non-ringing clock, she had exactly twenty minutes to shower, eat and get herself to the hospital for the skin grafting surgery she was scheduled to perform.

Weighing her options and the somewhat seductive power hot water had over her, Tracy decided to sacrifice the shower and breakfast as she hurried into clothes, put out a bowl of fresh water for Petunia and threw herself behind the wheel of her car in less time than it took for an ordinary citizen to floss their teeth.

As she ran out the door she promised a disgruntled Petunia to return during her own lunch break to feed her choice leftovers from the refrigerator. Petunia had said nothing.

With one eye on the rearview mirror, watching for dancing blue and red lights, Tracy had bent a few speeding rules and made it to the operating room with two minutes to spare.

The three-hour surgery had been as successful as possible, given the circumstances. There were no instant cures, no huge miracles in her line of work. Only many small miracles that were eventually hooked up into one large one. She was a pediatric burn specialist, and there was nothing in the world she would rather have been, even though it meant having her heart torn out of her chest whenever she saw another victim being wheeled into the hospital. Pain went with the territory. But someone had to help these children and she had elected herself to be one of the ones on the front lines. It gave her life a purpose.

“Out of my way, Myra,” she wearily told a nurse who had somehow materialized in her path. “I’m on my way home to feed a hungry pig.”

But the dark-skinned woman shook her head. “’Fraid your boyfriend’s going to have to wait, Doctor,” the thrice-divorced woman told her. “We just got a call in on the scanner. There’s been a bombing at the Lone Star Country Club.”

“A bombing?” Here? In Mission Creek? They were a peaceful little town of some twenty thousand people. Who would want to bomb them? Had the world gone completely crazy? “Does anyone know who did it?”

“Beats me,” Myra lamented. “But dispatch says they’re bringing in a little boy who’s going to need your gentle touch.”

Tracy took the new sterile, yellow paper gown Myra held up for her and donned it to cover her regular scrubs. “Do we know how many people were hurt?”

“About fifteen or so.” The wail of approaching sirens disturbed the tranquil atmosphere, growing louder by the second. “But according to the dispatch, there were only two fatalities.” Myra’s dark eyes met hers. “The kid’s parents.”

“Oh God,” Tracy groaned just as the emergency room doors parted and the ambulances began arriving.

First on the scene were the two paramedics with the boy Tracy assumed was her patient. Hurrying alongside of the gurney, holding tightly onto the boy’s hand, was a firefighter, still wearing his heavy yellow slicker. The sight had a dramatic impact.

A relative? she wondered.

The next moment, Tracy was looking at the boy and ceased wondering about anything else.

Chapter 2

She never got used to it.

Never got used to seeing the anguish in their eyes, on their faces, could never anesthetize herself not to take note of the pitiful, fearful conditions in which so many of her patients arrived.

Tracy never bothered wasting time trying to find answers to unanswered questions or an order to the universe. She was just grateful that her training allowed her to make a difference in these children’s lives, however small. To help start these innocent victims, who had unwittingly stood in the path of a cruel and feelingless fate, back on the road to recovery.

She gave each patient a hundred and ten percent of her skills and, despite numerous warnings to the contrary by superiors and friends who cared about her, a piece of her heart.

It was no different with this newest victim that the two paramedics brought her. The instant she saw the terrified look on the boy’s face, she forgot about the firefighter hurrying at his side.

Petunia and her dilemma were placed on temporary hold in her mind as well. Tracy tried not to think of what the small pig might begin eating in lieu of her belated breakfast. That was something she would have to deal with later.

Listening to the paramedics rattle off vital signs, Tracy shot questions back at them and swiftly assessed the boy’s injuries. She did her best not to disturb the raw, blistered flesh on his arms and legs.

“Put him in trauma room three,” she instructed the orderly who’d rushed up to the first gurney with her. “I need someone to cut off his clothes. And be gentle about it,” she added. Looking down at the sooty, bruised face, she did her best to make her smile encouraging. “You’re going to be fine, honey, I promise. Can you tell me your name?”

The only response she got was a whimper.

There was something about the way he seemed to stare right through her that chilled her heart.

Shock, she thought. She felt tears forming at the corners of her eyes. Moving quickly, Tracy helped guide the gurney into the trauma room.

“That’s okay, sweetheart. I don’t need your name right now. Mine’s Dr. Walker in case you need to call me later.” Belatedly, she realized that the firefighter was still with them and about to enter the trauma room. She shook her head, automatically placing a hand against his chest. It felt as if she was pressing against a wall, not a man. “I’m sorry, you’re going to have to stay out here.”

“I won’t get in the way.” Adam had no idea why, but he wanted to be in there with the boy, to somehow assure him, as well as himself, that everything was going to be all right.

“I’m sorry, only staff members are allowed past these doors.” He looked perturbed at the restriction. She paused longer than she should have. “Are you a relative?”

He shook his head. “No. I just wanted to make sure he was all right.”

She of all people understood becoming involved with the people you were responsible for saving. She offered him an encouraging smile. “I’ll let you know as soon as I can. Why don’t you wait in the hall?” She made the suggestion just before she slipped behind the door.

Tracy quickly crossed to the examining table. Her team had transferred the boy while she’d hung back with the firefighter. The orderly, Max, pushed the gurney out of the way.

With a nod of her head, she was all business again. “Okay, people, every moment we waste is another moment he has to suffer.”

She worked as swiftly as she dared, making the little boy as comfortable as possible under the circumstances, issuing orders to the two nurses who buffered her sides. They moved like a well-oiled machine. A machine whose only purpose was to help this small child who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Tracy checked her tears until after the job was over. Unleashing them wouldn’t do the boy any good.

What the hell was taking so long?

And what was he doing here, anyway? Adam wondered, exasperated with himself. This wasn’t part of his job. His job had ended the instant he had brought the boy out of the burning building.

He paced the length of the hallway, his impatience mounting with each step he took. That was his job description, saving people from burning buildings, and he’d done that. End of story.

So why was he here, pacing up and down a pastel-colored hallway, sweaty, sooty and smelling of smoke when he should be at the fire station, taking a well-earned shower and trying to wind down from a job well done?

He had no reasonable explanation, even for himself. All he knew was that the frightened look he’d seen in the boy’s wide blue eyes when they had stared up into his had transcended any logic Adam could offer either to himself or to his superior when the time came.

It wasn’t like him to get all wound up like this about someone he’d pulled to safety.

And yet, here he was, wound up tighter than a timpani drum.

The door opened and Adam snapped to attention, his body rigid. He was at the doctor’s side, his six-three frame looming over her five-foot five-inch one before the door had a chance to swing closed.

Adam didn’t attempt to second-guess the expression on her face. “How is he?” he demanded.

His tone had taken him out of the realm in which her assumption had placed him: that of rescuer and rescuee. For the firefighter to look so concerned, when rescuing people out of burning buildings was, if not a daily, then at least an occupational occurrence, there had to be something more going on.

Maybe they actually were related somehow and for his own reasons he just didn’t want to admit it. Even given the boy’s age, there seemed to be no other explanation for why one of the county’s firefighters would have accompanied someone he’d rescued and then hung around the hallway, waiting to hear about his condition.

She was too tired to make an educated guess and almost too tired to ask.

Tracy pulled off her mask, letting it hang from its strings about her neck. “He’s still in shock. Pretty harrowing experience for a kid to go through. But his wounds aren’t quite as extensive or serious as they first appeared. I was afraid some of them were third-degree, but most of them are second-degree and some are even first.” She knew she didn’t have to explain the difference or the significance to this man. “But any number you assign to them, they hurt like hell.” Summoning her energy, she framed a question for him. “Is it true?”

With everything that happened, he couldn’t help wondering if he’d done the boy a favor, saving him. The kid was in pain, about to undergo surgical procedures that were undoubtedly excruciating and the bomb had made him an orphan on top of that. It was a huge load for someone so small.

He frowned. Adam had no idea what the doctor was talking about. “Is what true?”

She had to concentrate not to wrap her arms around herself in a bid for comfort. Although she’d never been close to her, she’d lost her mother when she was twenty-two. It had hurt then. How much worse did it feel to be so young when that happened? And to be completely orphaned on top of that?

Did the boy even know his parents were dead?

Maybe she’d misheard. A glimmer of hope flashed for a moment. “You said his parents were killed in the blast?”

The firefighter’s chiseled chin hardened even more. “Yeah.”

She’d navigated life’s rougher seas by clinging to optimism. “Then I guess he was lucky.”

While he’d waited, Adam’d had time to call back to the station house to tell them that he’d be at County General for awhile. McGuire had told him that according to the manager of the club, the boy had gone off to the men’s room minutes before the blast. The woman had volunteered that he was an only child. That left him alone.

“Depends on your definition of luck.”

What a strange, somber man, Tracy thought. She wondered if there was someone in his life, or if being alone had made him so bitter sounding.

“I’d say being alive is lucky.” She glanced back toward the trauma room. She’d given the boy a sedative to help him rest. “Being alive is always better than the alternative.”

Adam thought of his own life, a life that had been empty and bleak these past two years despite all the efforts of his siblings and extended family to bring him around. “I suppose that really depends on your point of view.”

Turning toward him, Tracy studied his face thoughtfully. He was younger than he sounded, she realized. But his eyes were old. And angry. “Rather a fatalistic attitude for a firefighter.”

He shrugged carelessly. “It’s what sees me through the day.”

Tracy prided herself on being a decent judge of people. She’d sized him up and decided that this man wasn’t quite as emotionless as he would have liked to believe himself to be. If he were, he wouldn’t be standing here now, waiting to hear how the boy was.

Playing devil’s advocate, she asked, “Then what are you doing here?”

His expression became unreadable. “Seeing about the boy.”

She wanted him to say why. “You saved him.”

He wouldn’t have put it that way. “I pulled him out of the fire.”

Tracy was far too tired to butt heads. “That you did, Mr.—?”

“Collins. Adam,” he added after a beat.

Adam was surprised when she put out her hand to him and then took his when he made no move to do the same. “Tracy Walker. You wouldn’t happen to know his name, would you?”

He’d overheard the blonde with the listing beehive hairdo, Bonnie something he recalled, say the boy’s name when she was talking to the chief.

“Jake Anderson, I think.”

Tracy nodded, taking in the information. “Well, no matter how you choose to put it, Collins, Jake owes his life to you.”

The boy didn’t owe him anything. It was he who owed the boy something for pulling him out of the jaws of death only to fling him back into a life that was filled with pain.

He nodded toward the trauma room. “What’ll happen to him?”

Tracy assumed the firefighter was asking about treatment.

“Fortunately, we’re prepared for his kind of case here at County General. A lot of hospitals aren’t. We’ll see to his wounds, help him heal.” At least physically, she thought. “I might be wrong, but I don’t think any skin grafts’ll be necessary, so that’s good.”

She didn’t look as if she should be dealing with things like burnt flesh and peeling skin. He could more readily see her indulging in a game of tennis or riding horses at the club, rather than leaning over an operating table trying to graft skin over a charred body. “And then?”

She didn’t quite understand. “Then?”

He was thinking about the orphan part. Where did Jake go after he was released? “After you do your job and he’s well, what happens to him then?”

She paused for a second to think. “Social services, I guess, until we can locate a relative.”

Adam had a bad feeling about this. “And if there’s no relative?”

“He goes into the system.” Tracy crossed her arms in front of her, trying to get a handle on what was going on in Collins’s head. “Are you usually this concerned about people you save from burning buildings?”

Adam had never cared for being questioned or analyzed. And he’d seen the woman’s tears just before she’d withdrawn into the trauma room. “Do you usually cry over your patients?”

Tracy saw no shame in empathizing with her patients. The way she saw it, it made her human.

“All the time, Mr. Collins, all the time. When I can help them, when I can’t. And when I hear about a little boy who has lost the two most precious people in his life at such a young age.” She leveled her gaze at him. “What’s your excuse?”

The woman’s very body language challenged him. Scooping up the heavy yellow jacket from the chair where he’d left it, Adam punched his arms through the sleeves and pulled it closed. “I’ve got to be going.”

Rather than let him go, Tracy hurried after him. The man had done something sensitive, it hadn’t been her intent to chase him away.

“Wait.” Adam stopped and turned around. Free of her surgical cap, her dark curly hair swirled around her face as she caught up to him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound as if I was being combative. It’s just been one of those very long mornings, that’s all. You were being a good guy, even if you weren’t being very communicative, and I was being—” Tracy paused and then smiled as she concluded, “Me, I guess. They tell me I talk before I think. Sometimes, they’re right.”

His eyes narrowed. “They?”

“My friends.” Her mouth softened as an almost pixieish smile graced her face. “You did good today, Adam Collins.” And then, because something told her that the words were more applicable to him than to the child she had just worked over, she added, “And no matter how black the situation looks, it’ll get better.”

How could she say something like that? How could she believe it? Doing what she did, day in, day out, seeing what she saw, how could she possibly pretend to believe what she’d just said?

The look he gave her made Tracy feel as if she were being X-rayed.

“You’re sure about that?”

She was a firm believer in meeting darkness with sunshine. “As sure as I am that God made little green apples.”

His expression was incredulous. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I really don’t know, but I heard it somewhere and I thought it sounded nice.” She glanced at her watch. Trained pig or not, Petunia was going to start nibbling on the furniture legs any second now, if she hadn’t already. She was a good little animal, as obedient as they came, but she was a pig and pigs ate anything when they were very, very hungry. Tracy knew she’d more than exceeded her grace period with Petunia. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a pig to feed.”

The woman was beginning to sound positively weird. “Is that some kind of an encrypted message?”

She cocked her head, as if to review her words and think. “Not that I’m aware of.”

“You have a farm?” That would be the logical explanation. The hospital was in the heart of town, but maybe she lived beyond the city limits and was going home.

“No.” Her grin widened. “I have a pig. A very sweet little Vietnamese potbellied pig who’s as smart as a whip and right now, as hungry as a bear. I didn’t have time to feed her this morning and if I don’t get back to her soon, I might not have anything left in the apartment when I get home.” About to dash off, Tracy stopped abruptly as a thought occurred to her. “Do you need a lift?”

Coming out of nowhere, her question caught him off guard. “What?”

“You came in with the boy in an ambulance,” she recalled. “I don’t figure the paramedics hung around waiting for you all this time. Do you want a lift to your fire station?”

He did, but he’d already decided to call a cab. Her offer, tendered so guilelessly, left him momentarily speechless. It just wasn’t rational. “You don’t even know me. Do you always give rides to strange men you don’t know?”

She supposed if she had a choice, she would rather be too trusting than not trusting at all. “We both saved the same boy—in our own way,” she allowed. Her eyes smiled at him. They were hazel, with sunshine in them. “I know you.”

He had no idea how to respond to that. With a shrug, Adam fell into step beside her.

“How the hell did that bomb go off before they got inside?” Stone demanded of the short, squat head of security for the Lone Star Country Club. He towered over the older man who had once sent fear into his own heart. But that was back when he was a wet-behind-the-ears marine recruit. The tables had now turned. Now Yance Ingram reported to him. And the report wasn’t good. “I thought you said you knew what you were doing.”

Yance tugged on the ends of his graying mustache, working to contain his anger. He wasn’t accustomed to being spoken to this way. “Don’t take that tone with me, boy. I wasn’t the one who screwed up.”

Huffing his displeasure like a runaway locomotive, Stone circled around the offending man, one of his handpicked, chosen inner circle.

Served him right for not seeing to it himself, Stone thought. But he’d deliberately left the details up to a select few, wanting to distance himself from the actual deed as much as possible. Blame had a way of smearing once it was voiced, and at all costs, he was trying to protect the sweet deal that had all but fallen into his lap at a time when he most needed it.

Wouldn’t have needed anything if Susanne hadn’t turned out to be a first-class bitch, he thought darkly.

It hadn’t been enough for her to up-end his life by divorcing him and taking away his daughters, she had to demand a pound of flesh from him as well. A monthly pound of flesh in the form of staggering alimony payments. It was like paying for a meal long after the dishes were cleared away. The alimony payments, on top of the child support he was doling out plus the alimony he was still paying to his first wife, had turned him into a man with his back pressed against a wall full of sharp, rusty nails. He was desperate.

That was how El Jefe had found him, desperate. The self-proclaimed new kingpin of the Central American drug trade had a nose for desperate men who could be useful to him. The partnership they had struck up proved to be a lucrative one for both of them. Drug money came into the States, to be carefully banked and deposited via money orders into a bank account he’d personally set up for El Jefe’s legitimate holding company, Emeralda. The money went back to El Jefe for business transactions, minus a healthy cut for his part in the laundering.

It enabled Stone to pay his debts, his monthly penance—alimony, he thought cynically, the wound that keeps on giving—and still have a nice piece of change to squirrel away at the end of each month until the day he could convince Joan Cooper to marry him.

That was all he wanted, a fresh start with a good, decent woman and enough money to buy and sell this godforsaken little hellhole he found himself in charge of.

But the operation required more than just his being involved. By its very nature, it required that he take men into his confidence to use as his soldiers. So he found them. Men he trusted as much as he was willing to trust anyone. They’d formed what he laughingly referred to as The Lion’s Den, taking the name from the pin the mayor had been awarding people within town for services rendered beyond the call of duty for the past ten years or so. Stone had taken to giving a pin of his own to the men he entrusted to serve him. The only difference being that the lion in his pin had three legs rather than four. The way the pin was fashioned, the difference wasn’t noticeable unless you were looking for it.

That was how they all knew one another within this secret society of theirs. But Stone wasn’t some blind optimist, willing just to let things see to themselves of their own accord. He watched the men who held not only their fate but inadvertently his in their hands. Watched them like a hawk. Ordinarily. But this one time, he’d rested a little too easy, relying on Yance’s extensive expertise with explosives. There was supposed to be none better.

All it had gotten him was two dead citizens and one possible live witness. None of whom had been his original target.

Stone lowered his voice to keep it from carrying out of the office. “Then who did screw up?” he demanded. “You were the one with the dynamite, you were the one who planted it in the display right by the table that’d been reserved—”

Ingram’s small eyes narrowed into slits. “I set it for five minutes after the hour the reservation was made for. As agreed.”

“You should have set it for ten minutes after the hour,” Stone retorted.

“Then we should have agreed to ten,” Ingram countered.

The argument was going nowhere. And even if it were resolved, it wouldn’t change anything, Stone thought darkly. He was supposed to be resting easy at this point, not find himself in the middle of a mess. Now everyone was waiting for him to head up a task force to investigate the bombing.

Rumors were already flying right and left as to its origin. Some, like that bubbleheaded Brannigan woman, thought it might be the work of terrorists, while others thought it might even be a disgruntled club member, taking out his frustration. Still others thought it was the work of the Texas mob. Nobody even came close to the real reason and he meant to make sure it remained that way.

The short fuse that comprised his temper insisted on lighting anyway. “Damn it, Ingram, it was your job to make sure this kind of thing didn’t happen.”

His nerves taut, Ingram’s face turned almost beet-red as he snapped, “I’m not God, boy.”

Stone ran a narrow, almost artistic-looking hand through his hair, cursing roundly. The opportunity had passed. His target had left the grounds shaken, but unscathed. Which meant that everything he’d worked so hard to build up might be in jeopardy.

If his connection to El Jefe ever came to light…

Shaking his head, he forced the thought aside. Right now, he had a more immediate problem to deal with right here in his own backyard.

The apology to Ingram nearly choked him, but he needed the man, now more than ever.

With effort, he forced it out, then turned his attention to damage control.

Pulling up in the driveway, right in front of the fire truck that the men had just finished cleaning after the ordeal at the country club, Tracy cheerfully announced to Adam, “This is your stop.”

She’d gone more than a little out of her way to drop the firefighter at his station, but she didn’t mind. The drive over from the hospital would have been a silent one had she not kept up a steady stream of conversation. For all intents and purposes, it was more of a monologue than a conversation, garnering little more than grunts and one-word answers from the noble firefighter sitting in the passenger seat of her ’95 Mustang convertible.

“And I can’t say I’m not relieved,” she told him. When he looked at her quizzically, Tracy added with a bright smile, “You damn near talked my ear off.”

The absurd comment coaxed what passed for a smile from Adam’s lips. After all, she had done him a favor, even if he hadn’t asked her to. “I’m not usually very talkative.”

She widened her eyes in feigned surprise. “You’re kidding.”

He snorted, getting out of the car. “Didn’t seem to bother you any, I noticed. You talk enough for three people.”

Not three, she thought, but maybe two. “I don’t much care for silence,” she admitted.

He preferred silence himself. “You should try it sometime,” he told her pointedly.

Tracy took no offense. “Deal. If you try talking sometime.” Not about to leave herself open for a smart rejoinder, she shifted gears and began backing out of the driveway. “See you around, Collins,” she called out.

Vince McGuire, a firefighter who had joined the staff at the fire station shortly after Adam had arrived, approached him, an appreciative look on his face as he watched Tracy pull away.

“We’d wondered where you’d gotten to.” He nodded at the departing vehicle and its driver. “Bring back a souvenir from the fire?”

Turning on his heel, Adam began walking into the fire station. He didn’t even bother looking at the other man. “Stick it in your ear, McGuire.”

“That wasn’t exactly where I had in mind,” McGuire said with a laugh as he hurried to catch up.

Chapter 3

Adam sighed in frustration as he let the receiver drop into the cradle. It was raining outside the window of his first-floor apartment, one of those dark and gloomy January days that made people long for spring and feel it was never going to arrive.

The mood within his apartment was just as dark and gloomy.

He couldn’t get Jake Anderson off his mind.

The boy was about the same age as his own son had been when he’d lost him. At first glance, Jake had even looked like Bobby, the same silky blond hair, the same slight, delicate build. And the eyes, there was just something about the look in Jake’s blue eyes that had worked its way under his skin, refusing to leave him alone.

Walking out of the living room, Adam crossed to the kitchen more on automatic pilot than by conscious thought. Ordinarily, he made a point to shed the events of the day along with his uniform when he left the station house. It was the only way he’d found he could survive.

But not this time.

This time, he could see Jake’s face, could see his burned and bruised little body, could even smell the smoke that had surrounded the boy like a malevolent envelope every time his mind began to stray.

In an attempt to free himself and put the whole incident behind him, Adam decided to see what he could find out about Jake having any next of kin who would take him in.

A cursory effort had yielded nothing. Getting off duty, he’d stopped by the country club and asked a still very much shaken Bonnie Brannigan if she could give him the Andersons’ address, since it had to be on file in the membership listing. Once he had the address, he’d gone to the Andersons’ neighborhood and knocked on the doors of several of their neighbors. No one knew anything. The Andersons had been gregarious people, but neither had ever mentioned any extended family. A woman who lived across the street from them had told him that Meg had once mentioned that she and her husband were both only children. And apparently nobody had ever seen any grandparents pulling up into the Andersons’ driveway to pay a visit during any of the holidays.

Facing a dead end, he’d dug a little deeper.

Adam had just gotten off the telephone with a friend of his whose sister worked in the social services department that would have jurisdiction over Mission Creek. He hated calling in favors, but for reasons he didn’t want to examine, this had become important to him.

He encountered the same dead end he’d found by going to the Andersons’ neighborhood. There was no next of kin. No doting grandparent, no busy long-lost uncle or vivacious aunt to come to Jake’s aid and take him in.

According to Rick Foster’s sister, Jenny, the preliminary investigation indicated that the Andersons seemed to have no family whatsoever except for some distant second cousin.

Adam had no reason to doubt Jenny Foster’s findings. She’d been at her job over ten years and knew the system inside and out.

The system.

That’s the way that lady doctor had referred to it. The system. He didn’t want the boy to be eaten up by the system, with no one to care for him, no one to make the night terrors go away, the way he had for Bobby when his son had woken up in the middle of the night, screaming and shaking.

Adam sat down at his small kitchen table, picking up the roast beef sandwich he’d haphazardly thrown together for lunch just before his phone had rung. He bit into it, his mind reviewing the meager facts. The only relative Jenny had come up with was a distant cousin on Meg Anderson’s side. A forty-three-year-old twice-divorced anthropologist who was currently on a dig somewhere in Africa, nobody knew exactly where.

Maybe he could be persuaded to take the boy, but Adam doubted it. It was a long shot at best and besides, Jake needed someone now. Mayonnaise leeched out of Adam’s sandwich on one side, taking a piece of lettuce with it. It fell on his paper plate with a glop, but he didn’t notice. He was too busy thinking.

He didn’t like the idea of the boy facing all this alone.

This was Adam’s downtime. Like any firefighter, he worked two days on, two days off. What he normally did during this time was unwind, put his professional life as far out of his mind as possible. But Jake’s eyes wouldn’t let him. Try though he might, Adam couldn’t seem to separate his thoughts, couldn’t shove them into the neat little cubicles where he always pushed them in. Despite his best efforts, it had happened.

His professional life had seeped into his private life.

There was no denying it. The boy he had rescued from the Lone Star Country Club fire had gotten to him.

He needed to do something to work this out of his system. With no set plan for the day, Adam decided it might be a good idea to pay a visit to the hospital to see how Jake was coming along.

Maybe if the boy was mending well, he could stop thinking about him so much.

Stone paced around his office. He was beyond angry. It had been a simple, simple plan. Nothing was supposed to have gone wrong. And yet, everything had. And it threatened to continue to go wrong, bringing down everything around him. It was like when you pull an apple out of the bottom row of neatly arranged fruit—an avalanche resulted.

He couldn’t have that. Wouldn’t have that.

Swinging around, he looked at the man who was the latest recipient of his foul mood. Ed Bancroft. The man responsible for leaving the security room door ajar while they were transferring the sacks of money. The sacks were normally retained in the back closet of the security room after the money arrived from Central America, but before the purchase of non-traceable money orders.

Simple. Yet in jeopardy now.

He’d had his doubts about bringing Bancroft on. The man was weak enough to be malleable, but he had the one thing that had made many a scheme run afoul: the remnants of a conscience.

He just had to see to it that he kept Bancroft too intimidated to even think of allowing that conscience to dictate any of his actions.

“I want to know what that kid saw, understand?”

Bancroft had been the one to look up and see the boy peeking into the security office just as the green canvas bags were being loaded onto the truck.

“The bags were closed, Chief. There’s no way anyone could have known what was in them. Besides, I saw the kid before the ambulance took him away. He was in pretty bad shape. He might not make it. And even if he does, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to see him.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Anything beyond “Yes, Chief” would have been. Stone’s eyes reduced to small, malevolent slits.

“What are you, a complete cretin? We’re talking about some six-year-old kid—”

“Five,” Bancroft corrected automatically, then instantly regretted it. The chief didn’t like being corrected.

“Five,” Stone spat out. “You’ve got a badge. That gives you access to anybody. We’re supposed to be investigating the bombing, remember? I’m heading up the task force.” Which was the ultimate joke, seeing as how he’d been the one to set the wheels in motion. But that was what made his position so sweet. Since he had control over everything that went on in and around Mission Creek, he could squash anyone who might interfere with his operation.

Like he should have been able to squash that damned aging commando, he thought darkly.

Gathering his thoughts together, he tried to remember which of the men in the Lion’s Den were currently available. He didn’t trust Bancroft going out alone.

“I want you to take Malloy with you and go question the kid.” He nailed the tall, narrow-chested man with a look. “And don’t scare him, just get him to tell you exactly what he saw. Maybe things aren’t as black as they seem.” But Stone doubted it. He’d been born a pessimist and hadn’t been disappointed yet. “And next time, make sure the goddamn inner door is closed before you start moving the bags out.”

Bancroft made a fruitless attempt to absolve himself. “It wasn’t my fault, Chief. I wasn’t anywhere near it and I wasn’t the last man in—”

“Doesn’t matter whose fault it was.” Other than the fact that he was going to make the miserable bastard pay, whoever it was, Stone thought. Taking a step, he got directly into the other policeman’s face. “Know this. If one of us goes down, we all could go down. Do I make myself clear?”

Like a newly recruited marine trying not to buckle before his drill sergeant in boot camp, Bancroft squared his thin shoulders. “Yes, sir.”

“Good, now get going.” Stone pushed the other man toward the door. “The sooner I know where we stand, the better.”

In the doorway, struck by a bolt of either duty or momentary insanity, Bancroft hesitated, then said, “Chief, Westin’s gone.”

The dark look Stone gave him told Bancroft the chief was already aware of this salient piece of information. Bancroft quickly darted out the door before the second wave of fallout began.

The boy had been on Tracy’s mind all night. She didn’t think of him as another burn victim, or even think of him by his name. She thought of Jake as the boy with the sad eyes.

She didn’t think she’d ever seen eyes that sad before.

All things considered, it was a routine enough procedure for her. She’d sedated Jake yesterday before treating his wounds. He’d been bathed in cool water and moist bandages had been applied to the burned skin. Pumped full of antibiotics to prevent any infections from setting in, there was every reason in the world to believe Jake Anderson would make a full and complete recovery, given time.

Still, she’d sat by his bed after she’d returned from feeding Petunia, waiting for Jake to wake up. She didn’t want to have him open his eyes to an empty room. When he’d finally woken up, hours later, she’d gently talked to him, but there had been no response. He’d just lain there, staring at the ceiling.

At first, she’d thought he was disoriented, or frightened, but after a while she realized that he had gone off somewhere, into his own little world. A world where no one and nothing could enter. That included emotional pain. As gently as she could, though it hadn’t been easy for her, she’d told him about his parents. There’d been no response, no reaction.

She was certain that on some level, Jake already knew his parents were dead. He hadn’t cried out for them, hadn’t made a sound at all. As long as he stayed within the confines of the silence he’d created, he didn’t have to admit that he was alone.

Concerned, she’d called down Lydia Sanchez, the head of the child psychology department at the hospital, for a consultation.

Lydia had spent a half hour with the boy, reviewing his files and talking to him. There had been no response for her, either.

“It’s self-preservation,” Lydia had told her outside the boy’s room. “His mind can’t deal with the tragedy, can’t deal with the words, so for him all words are dead. He’s mute.”

“Is he traumatically deaf, too?” Tracy knew there was no physical reason for it. She’d had several tests performed that showed there was no trauma to his brain, no injuries to his auditory nerves and none to his throat or vocal chords.

“No,” Lydia had told her, looking at Jake through the glass that separated the boy from them. “He can hear you. Whether he’s processing the words is another matter. I think he is, but—” she shrugged, uncertain whether she was right or not.

“How long will he stay this way?” Tracy had wanted to know.

“Hard to tell. He might start talking again by this evening. Then again, this might go on for some time.”

“Months?” Tracy guessed.

“Possibly. But doubtful,” Lydia had said in the next breath. “He’s young. They heal faster when they’re young.”

At least she could hope, Tracy thought.

She looked at Jake now, newly changed bandages covering parts of his arms and legs, as well as his torso. His face, because it had been buried beneath his arm, had mercifully been spared. He lay on his back on the egg-crate mattress meant to alleviate some of his discomfort by redistributing his weight. Staring at the ceiling, he seemed completely oblivious to the fact that she was there. She talked anyway, keeping her voice as bright and cheery as possible.

“We’re going to let you slide for a little while, Jake. But tomorrow, we’re going to get you up and moving. Don’t want those limbs of yours to get soft now, do we?” She looked at him, but there was no indication on his face that he even heard a single word. “You have to exercise your muscles, you know. Use them or lose them. We’ve got a neat physical therapist. Her name’s Randi. Kind of a funny name for a girl, huh?”

There was no response, only the soft sounds of the monitors that surrounded him, keeping tabs on his vital signs.

Tracy pushed on. “But she’s very nice. She’s got a little boy a bit younger than you are, so she knows all about—”

She stopped as the door abruptly opened and two uniformed policemen, grim-faced and very official looking, entered the room.

Tracy’s voice changed to one of authority. “May I help you, Officers?”

Kyle Malloy took the lead. Shorter, stockier, he had no patience with excuses or anything that got in his way. His eyes washed over her quickly, missing nothing and lingering on the soft silhouette evident within the opened lab coat that draped the woman.

“We’re Officers Malloy and Bancroft.” He gestured vaguely to indicate who was who. “We’d like to ask the boy a few questions about what happened at the Lone Star Country Club yesterday.”

She was surprised to see Jake’s eyes shift toward the men, his gaze intent. He wasn’t as unaware of things as he was trying to pretend. It was a hopeful sign, Tracy thought.

She moved protectively to the foot of Jake’s bed, blocking the policeman’s direct access to him. “I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

Bancroft began to say something, but Malloy cut him off. His smile disappeared. “And just who are you?”

“Dr. Tracy Walker.” She saw his eyes go to the ID tag she and the rest of the staff wore on a navy blue string around their necks. She didn’t care for the time delay before he raised them again to her face. “I’m his doctor—”

The smug smile returned to his lips. “We won’t be too long,” Malloy promised her. “But the chief wants us to talk to everyone who was anywhere in the area, and from preliminary indications by the crime scene investigators, this boy had a ringside table with his mama and papa. Can’t have a bomber running around, now can we?”

Tracy resented the slight condescending tone she heard in the policeman’s voice. A lot of people had trouble taking her seriously. She knew that part of it was because, even at thirty, she looked younger than her age. That had always gotten in her way.

But part of the reason for the tone, she surmised, was because of some male superiority thing that was going on inside of Officer Malloy’s head.

Either way, she wasn’t about to allow them to badger Jake.

“No,” she smiled tightly, momentarily playing along with the role she’d been assigned, “we can’t. But Jake still can’t tell you anything.”

“That’s for us to decide, little lady,” Malloy informed her. “You never know when the slightest clue might just break open a case.”

Tired of the game, Tracy dropped her tone. It was time to get these policemen to leave. Though he hadn’t given any outward indication, something told Tracy that their presence here was agitating Jake. If nothing else, she wasn’t about to have them continue talking about the bombing. He was upset enough as it was.

“Please, Officer, I’ve seen Columbo. Spare me the hype. Jake can’t tell you anything because Jake can’t talk.”

Malloy exchanged glances with Bancroft. This was news to them.

After a beat, Malloy decided he wasn’t buying it. The woman was stonewalling him. He wasn’t about to return to the chief to tell him that he’d failed. It was a hell of a lot easier taking on this woman.

“What do you mean he can’t talk? No one said anything about the boy being deaf and dumb.”

Now she knew the man was an idiot. Tracy’s anger took in his all but silent partner as she looked at both of them.

“The correct term,” she informed Malloy tersely, “is hearing-and-speech impaired, and Jake Anderson wasn’t—until the accident.” She looked back at the still, bandaged body in the bed, giving Jake a reassuring smile he didn’t seem to notice or acknowledge. She looked back at the two policemen. “He can hear you, but he doesn’t speak.”

“There’s nothing wrong with him, is there?” Bancroft asked hesitantly. He fumbled when Tracy looked at him strangely. “I mean, there’s no chance that he had any brain damage or anything, right?”

She couldn’t read the other man’s tone. Was that concern or disappointment she heard? Or something else?

“None that any of the tests have revealed. But he’s been through a great deal of trauma caused by the bombing and the fire. He’s sustained burns to over thirty percent of his body, not to mention the fact that he’s suffered personal loss.” She looked from one man to the other, assuming that the two policemen were both sensitive enough to understand the reason for the euphemism she was employing.

Malloy frowned, negating all thoughts of even cursory sensitivity being in the man’s arsenal. “Right, it’s too bad, still, we’ve got this investigation and we need to know what he saw, if anything.”

Moving past Tracy, Bancroft approached the boy. “Did you see anyone maybe running from the scene, or anything unusual at all?”

“Maybe the two of you should be checked out for hearing problems,” Tracy suggested angrily, getting in between Bancroft and the bed. “I just told you, Jake Anderson can’t talk. He hasn’t uttered a single word since they brought him in yesterday.”

Malloy smirked at her, as if he thought that she was being simpleminded. “Maybe he’s just playing a game, honey.”

Tracy instantly felt her back going up. As far as she was concerned, she had put up with as much as she intended to.

“My name is not ‘honey’ and even if it were, you don’t have a right to call me by my first name unless I tell you you do.” Her eyes darkened dangerously. Having to fight her way up to her position had taught her how to stand up to narrow-minded bigots. “Now I’d like to ask you to please leave—”

Afraid of arousing suspicion and creating waves that might draw too much attention, Bancroft tapped Malloy’s shoulder. “Maybe we’d better.” He began to leave, but Malloy dug in.

The policeman took a step around the bed toward her. “Look, honey, this is official business. So whether you like it or not—”

“You heard the lady, officers. The boy can’t help you.” Adam strode into the room, his eyes as dark as the day was outside. The package he’d brought with him dangled from his hand as he addressed the other two men. “The paramedics brought fifteen other people to this hospital yesterday. Some of them had to be admitted for overnight stays. Now, why don’t you go and question some of them to see what they might have witnessed and get back to Jake later, when he might be more able to tell you something?”

Tracy stifled a sigh of relief, glad that she didn’t have to be put in the sticky position of calling security to escort the policemen out, especially since, as with the Lone Star Country Club, some of the men who worked security here were off-duty policemen moonlighting at second jobs. There would be a decided conflict of interest.

Bancroft exchanged glances with Malloy. “He has a point.”

The older officer looked as if he needed little excuse to go off on Adam. He’d boxed while in the service and had progressed up through the ranks before he’d joined Stone’s police force.

But after a moment, common sense prevailed and he relented with a shrug of his wide shoulders.

A resigned smile replaced the frown. “Okay, right.” He looked at Adam. “I guess I got a little carried away, but the chief’s been giving everyone a hard time about this thing happening on his watch and I just thought that since the boy was there—”

Adam cut him short. “You thought wrong.” And then he allowed, “At least, for now.”

“Sorry, kid, didn’t mean to scare you.” Malloy leaned over the bed in an attempt to seem concerned and friendly.

Jake’s eyes shifted back to the ceiling.

“He’s gonna come out of this, right?” Malloy asked Tracy.

She thought of what Lydia had told her this morning. “Hopefully. Time will tell, though.”

This could be a break for all of them. If the kid remained like some stiff department-store dummy, it didn’t matter what the hell he saw. Nobody would ever know.

“You mean there’s a chance that he’s going to stay like that?” he pressed the uppity witch in the white lab coat. “Like a zombie?”

Eager to withdraw, Bancroft took the lead. “Let’s go, Kyle,” he urged. He looked at Tracy. “Sorry to trouble you, Doctor. Maybe you can give us a call if and when the boy’s up to talking.” He took out a card and handed it to her.

This one, she thought, was at least trying to be decent. Tracy took the card, slipping it into her pocket after glancing at the officer’s name. “I’ll be sure to do that,” she assured him.

Tracy turned to Adam as the two officers finally withdrew from the room. She had no idea that he was coming back, or what would have made him. But then, she wouldn’t have thought a firefighter would stand out in the hall for over an hour, waiting to find out what happened to the boy he rescued, either.

She smiled at him, grateful for the timely arrival. “Is this the part where I flutter my eyelashes at you and call you my hero?”

He hadn’t liked the way the other policeman had looked at her, as if she was just something for his amusement. And he definitely didn’t like the way he was attempting to strong-arm her out of the way. Most of all, he hadn’t wanted Jake to get upset.

It was a lot for Adam to digest about himself, seeing as he normally experienced the emotional involvement level of a piece of paper.

“You can do whatever you damn well like with your lashes, Doc,” he told her. “I brought you something, kid.” He placed a badly wrapped package on the boy’s bed well within the boy’s reach.

Jake continued staring at the ceiling.

Chapter 4

When Jake made no move to touch his gift, Adam picked up the package again.

“Maybe I’d better do this for you,” he offered.

Keeping his eyes on the gift, feeling as if he were all thumbs, Adam began peeling off the heavily creased silvery wrapper he’d sealed around it not half an hour ago. He didn’t know why he suddenly felt so self-conscious.

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