Once a Father Read online

  Afraid enough to kill.

  Maybe they’d killed before. Maybe the bombing was somehow tied in to what they were doing, some kind of an elaborate cover-up that wound up killing two people and injuring fifteen others.

  She was making herself crazy.

  Tracy tightened her arms around Jake. It felt like he was trying to crawl right into her for shelter. For safety sake. She raised her head defiantly as she looked at the two men. “Why don’t you let the boy go?”

  Bancroft’s nerves were frayed and close to breaking. “Why don’t you shut up?” he snapped at her.

  “She’ll shut up soon enough,” Malloy promised ominously, the grin on his lips making his face macabre. He stroked the hilt of the gun shoved into his waistband with his hand, his eyes slowly washing over Tracy.

  Fear ripped into her, but anger was stronger. She sought refuge within it. Focusing on the policeman, she made her appeal to him. “Whatever you think, he isn’t a threat to you. He can’t talk. He’s still traumatized from the bombing. I should know,” she pleaded. “I’m his doctor.”

  Leaving Bancroft, Malloy crossed to her. His eyes gleamed as he began to mentally strip away her clothes. “Looks like you made a house call you shouldn’t have, ‘Doc.’”

  There was an aura of evil in the room that was almost stifling. Tracy felt as if she was being stalked. She looked to Bancroft. “You don’t want a dead child on your conscience.”

  It had gone way past that. “I don’t want a prison sentence, either.”

  “He is not a threat!” Tracy insisted heatedly. “Let him go.” she forced herself to look at the other man. “Please.”

  Malloy stood over her, a powerful leg on either side of her legs. There was domination in his very countenance.

  He was looming over her, stealing the air from her lungs, making Jake cower against her. “And what’re you willing to do in exchange for that, ‘Doc’?” Hands braced on either side of the chair, he leaned into her, so close that she could smell his breath. The stale smell of onions assaulted her nose. “Just how far are you willing to go, hmm?”

  The sudden, unexpected pounding on the front door had them all stiffening.

  The air was almost brittle with tension, just waiting for any excuse to shatter. Drawing his weapon, Malloy silently motioned for Bancroft to stand by the hostages. Changing places, Malloy crept to the door, then swung it open, his gun held chest high, ready to fire at any unwelcome target. When he saw nothing, he lowered his glance.

  There was a pig standing in the doorway.

  “What the hell—?” Stunned, Malloy looked past the threshold.

  The next second, Adam exploded into the room, swinging the branch he’d picked up and connecting with Malloy’s face. The man yelled with pain. Malloy’s gun discharged as it flew out of his hand. Adam made a dive to the wooden floor and retrieved it. Malloy tried to pull him away. The two men were on the floor, fighting for final possession of the weapon.

  The instant Tracy saw Petunia in the doorway, she knew Adam had found them. She pushed Jake off her lap and to the side, pulling out the nail file from her pocket. Holding the pointed metal like a weapon, she drove it into Bancroft’s arm, twisting it as hard as she could.

  The policeman screamed in rage and pain as blood spurted out of the wound. Tracy managed to pull Bancroft’s revolver free of its holster. Grabbing Jake and pushing him behind her, she trained the weapon on the bleeding policeman.

  “You move and I’ll shoot you. I’m not much of a shot,” she allowed, her voice vibrating with fury, “but at this range, I’m bound to hit something vital. I wouldn’t risk it if I were you.”

  He wrapped his hand around his wound, pressing hard, trying to stem the bleeding. Desperate, he took a step toward her.

  “You wouldn’t—”

  She cocked the trigger, aiming straight for his chest. She wouldn’t get a second chance and she knew it. “Don’t try me, mister. It’s been a hell of a bad day so far.”

  The second gunshot had her jolting as she could feel its vibrations go straight through her as surely as if she’d been shot herself. Her eyes darted quickly to the side, praying that the shot hadn’t gotten Adam. When she looked, she saw the other policeman slumped on the floor, blood beginning to flow and pool around his upper torso.

  She felt tears stinging her eyes. That could have been Adam lying there. “You all right?” she asked hoarsely.

  The branch was long gone from Adam’s hand. In its place was the service revolver Malloy had initially dropped. The other man had been shot while grappling with Adam for it.

  “I’m supposed to be asking you that,” Adam pointed out. He was relieved beyond words that they were both all right. It had been one horrible close call. “You’re one hell of a woman, you know that?”

  The praise, so rare coming from him, warmed her. But even so, it was secondary to the relief she felt. He was alive. And they were all right. It could easily have gone the other way.

  The pig waddled toward her on tiny, skittering feet. Tracy didn’t want to risk the policeman snatching her and using the pet as a shield.

  “Petunia, stay!” she ordered. The pig stopped as if it had turned to stone. Tracy looked at Bancroft. “In the sixties, they used to call the police pigs. Ironic isn’t it?”

  In response, Bancroft spat out a curse.

  “Watch your mouth. There’s a little boy present,” Adam upbraided the man, taking him by the collar and shaking him. He looked toward the boy beside Tracy. “You all right, Jake?”

  He nodded, his lower lip trembling. “Yes.”

  Adam’s eyes widened as he looked at the boy. He’d only expected a mute nod of the head. Was he imagining things? “Jake, you can talk!”

  “This morning,” Tracy told him. “Right after you left. I was going to call you, but then this one came to the apartment.” She looked accusingly at Bancroft. “Jake said his first words after I recited the nursery rhyme, This Little Piggy to him.”

  Adam grinned at the animal on the floor. “You picked a hell of an amazing pet.”

  She smiled, looking at Petunia. Jake had dropped to his knees beside the pig and was hugging her for all he was worth. “Yes, didn’t I? Okay, now what?”

  “I handcuff our friend here.” He took Bancroft’s own handcuffs from his belt and, pulling the man’s hands behind his back, flipped the cuffs onto Bancroft’s wrists. “And call Chief Stone.” Kneeling down beside the man on the floor, Adam felt for a pulse at his neck. There was none. “I suspect he’ll want to talk to his man.” His eyes slanted toward Bancroft. “I don’t think I want to be in his shoes when the chief gets here.”

  Bancroft gave no indication that he’d heard, but he had. The pain in his arm seemed infinitely more preferable to what he knew lay ahead.

  “Where are you going?” Adam asked as Tracy started to leave the room where she’d been held captive these past few hours.

  “To find a bathroom and see if there’re any bandages around. That wound needs to be tended before it gets infected.”

  “You’d tend him after he kidnapped you and Jake?” Adam asked incredulously.

  “I’m a doctor first, an enraged woman second,” she pointed out, leaving the room.

  Adam shook his head. “Like I said, one hell of a woman.”

  Ben Stone liked to think that he gave the performance of his life. Like the good law enforcement officer he had once been, he came in with two of his most trusted men and asked for a brief summary of what had happened. He’d extended both courtesy and sympathy to Tracy and Jake for the ordeal they had gone through.

  The only point he was adamant about was taking their statements before allowing the trio to go home.

  “I need it now, while it’s still fresh in your minds,” Stone told them all. He was aware that his men were taking Malloy away in a body bag. He felt nothing. A man who couldn’t do his job was of no use to him. Then he pointedly looked at Jake. “You understand that, don’t you, son?”

/>   Adam was holding the boy. Jake curved his body into him, as if to hide from the world. But the chief’s gentle tone managed to soothe him and he nodded his head. “Uh-huh.”

  “Do you recognize either of these two men? Did you ever see them before?” he rephrased when the boy looked at him blankly. Jake nodded. The muscles in Stone’s stomach tightened. Both men had been in the security room at the time the bomb had gone off. Was that where he recognized them from? “From where?” Stone prodded, deliberately keeping his voice on a low keel.

  “The hospital. They came to ask me questions,” Jake remembered.

  Stone studied the small, thin face. The Anderson boy was too young to be deceptive. Maybe the trauma of the bombing had knocked everything else from his mind. Which was fine with him. Trouble was, he still wasn’t sure this wouldn’t come back and bite him on his butt at some later date.

  “Okay, Champ,” Stone said to Jake. “See, you just answered my question. That wasn’t so hard, now was it?”

  Jake shook his head and then buried it further into Adam’s chest.

  Stone patted Jake’s head. “You know, I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by making you give those statements tonight. Why don’t you good folks go home and stop by the station tomorrow morning? You can give your statements then. You’ve all been through a lot today.”

  Tracy nodded, relieved for the reprieve. “Thank you, Chief. That’s awfully decent of you.”

  Stone’s smile was almost beatific. “Haven’t you heard? I’m a decent kind of guy just trying to do his job the best way he knows how.”

  He glanced toward Bancroft. Not only had the man bungled the job he’d sent him out to do, but he’d gotten another member of their group killed. A man like that was the type to turn state’s evidence. He’d never trusted a man with a conscience.

  Wheels began to turn in his head. Maybe he could turn this to his advantage somehow, maybe even pin the bombing on Bancroft. But that would require a certain degree of alteration to the situation. Stone’s frown was deep. “Even if I do seem to have rogue cops working for me,” he concluded.

  “You can’t be responsible for everybody,” Adam assured him. No man or woman could spread themselves that thin.

  “But it’s my job to be,” Stone corrected. He tipped his hat to Tracy and nodded at Adam and the boy. “Sometime tomorrow morning,” he repeated. He motioned to one of the two men in the room. “I’ll have Officer Evans drive you home.”

  “No need,” Adam assured him quickly. He didn’t want anyone coming home with them. He’d done some soul searching these past few hours and he wanted a quiet arena when they returned to his apartment. “You’ve got your hands full and I’ve got my car parked on the ridge.”

  Stone nodded. There was no reason to press the issue. He was fairly confident that the boy knew nothing and if he didn’t, the people he remained with certainly didn’t.

  “Well, goodnight then.” Turning on his heel, Stone went to deal with the man who had so sorely disappointed him.

  Tracy walked into the living room to find Adam sitting there, a strange solemn expression on his face. She was exhausted beyond human measurement. She was definitely too tired to deal with anything else, she thought, dropping onto the sofa with a huge sigh.

  Adam looked her way, shifting as he raised a brow. “He asleep?”

  She nodded. “Finally. He was dog tired, but too tense to close his eyes.” She’d left Petunia with Jake, referring to the animal as a guard pig. Jake had giggled. The pig was now draped across his feet. “You know, it’s going to be a while before he feels safe again.” And then she smiled. “Although having a hero around to watch over him will help.”

  “You referring to me or the pig.”

  She fought the temptation to say both. “You.”

  He laughed. “You weren’t exactly a slouch yourself. What did you stab that policemen with, anyway?” In all the excitement, he’d forgotten to ask.

  “A nail file.” He looked at her in complete surprise. “I grabbed it when I got Jake’s jacket.”

  Adam sat down beside her, slipping an arm around her shoulders. He drew her closer to him. “You really are amazing.”

  She snuggled against him, thinking how nice that felt. To have a man in her life. To love him. “Go on. You have my attention.”

  He picked at words carefully, stringing them together. “And I was sitting here, thinking…”

  She could feel her heart speed up again. Was this going to be good, or bad? “About?”

  The emotion in his voice was restrained with tight, steely bands but it still managed to get through. “About how it felt when I came home and found that you weren’t here. How it felt when I thought you were in trouble.”

  She could feel herself taking that first tentative step on the tightrope. But she had to ask. “And how did it feel?”

  Adam rested his head on top of her head. It felt so good to have her against him like this. He never wanted to move from this spot. “Like I was never so scared in my whole life.”

  Her soft laugh lilted in the air. “Coming from a firefighter, that’s some declaration.”

  Drawing back, he looked at her. “I’m serious. It made me realize something.”

  She could feel herself bracing for the shoe to fall. “What?”

  This was hard for him. Words had never come easily. But she deserved to know what was in his heart. “That I don’t want to be without you. That my life would be empty without you.”

  She rested her hand on his chest. She could feel his heart beating beneath her fingertips. The rhythm was comforting. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “But I want you to.”

  She stiffened. He’d managed to hit her squarely between the eyes, she thought. And she had just stood there, like some stupid target. She’d been through a hell of a lot today and the normally long fuse she had had been shortened considerably.

  Her temper flared. “Is this about asking me to back away, about loving being too difficult for you, because if it is—”

  “It’s about asking you to marry me,” he blurted out the words, talking over her. He hadn’t meant to do it this way, but now that it was out, he was relieved.

  “—I can’t just cut bait and—” His words suddenly hit. Her eyes widened as she stared at him. “What did you just say?”

  He let out a deep breath. Once was hard enough, twice he might not get through it. Wasn’t she listening? “I’m proposing.”

  Her eyes narrowed. She had to be making a mistake. “To who?”

  The laugh was tinged in nervousness. Was she stalling just to turn him down? “Petunia’s not my type, so I guess it’s to you.”

  Alarms went off throughout her body as tears threatened to form. “Don’t kid about things like that—”

  “I’m not,” he insisted. Shifting, he took her hands in his and looked into her eyes. Trying to convince her. “I love you, Tracy. I didn’t want to, didn’t want to admit it when I knew, but there’s no getting around it. I love you and I want you in my life permanently.”

  She immediately thought of the reason that she had drawn back from every man who had tried to pay attention to her ever since she’d been diagnosed. “But I can’t give you children—”

  He shook his head. She was wrong. “You already gave me one—Jake. He’s crazy about you and he seems to like me. We can adopt him. And if that’s not enough for you, we can adopt more. It’s not genes that make a child your own, it’s love.” He knew she knew he was making sense. “And you and Jake have shown me that I still can love.” When she said nothing, he took it to mean that he’d misread the signs. That she didn’t feel the same way about him as he did about her. He backed up emotionally. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like I’m rushing you—”

  “Rush me. I’ve waited thirty years for this. Rush me.” She threw her arms around his neck. “I love you, Adam Collins and I would love nothing more than to be your wife.” Her eyes sparkled. “End of
story.”

  “No, I’ve got a hunch it’s just the beginning.”

  She grinned just before he kissed her. “Maybe you’re right at that.”

  Epilogue

  Bancroft cowered in the holding cell where he’d been placed. The chief hadn’t said a single word to him, not at the cabin after he’d arrived with two of his men and read him his rights. And not since they’d reached the police station. It was like standing on the edge of a volcano, waiting for it to erupt.

  Once at the station, he’d found himself being roughly escorted into the holding cell by men he’d counted among his friends.

  Men who didn’t utter a word in response to the nervous questions he fired at them. They’d merely looked past him, as if he didn’t exist.

  As if he were already a ghost in their lives.

  He’d been placed in the holding cell that was separated from the rest of the cells by a corridor and a wall. This was where they placed prisoners whose interrogation would not stand up to close scrutiny. This was where things happened that no one talked about.

  It didn’t always used to be that way, Bancroft tried to console himself. Once this had been the cell where the town drunks had slept off their inebriation, to be released in the morning. Maybe the two policemen, Evans and Neely, had just put him in here so that nobody had to see a—what was it Stone had called him? A rogue cop. That was it. Maybe they’d done it so he could retain a little of his dignity.

  The silence was unnerving him.

  His palms were sweating as he rubbed them against each other and his stomach was so knotted he was having trouble drawing in air. He’d been fingerprinted like a common criminal, his belt and shoelaces taken away from him along with the things in his pockets. The only one who had even looked at him as if he was something other than dirt when he’d been herded through the station to the cell was that female cop, Molly something.