Once a Father Read online

  “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.

  It was not the boy who made him feel awkward, but the woman standing off to the side, watching him.

  He glanced up to see a smile on her face. “I’m not much at wrapping things,” he mumbled.

  “It’s the thought that counts.” Moving closer, she looked intently at the wrapper he’d just taken off. “Is that aluminum foil?”

  “Yeah.” He crumbled it quickly beneath his large hand. “I don’t usually keep any wrapping paper around.” When it came to occasions for his nieces and nephews, he usually left that up to his siblings, giving a generous check to cover whatever gift had caught the child’s fancy. He hadn’t wrapped anything since Bobby’s fifth birthday. Doing so had brought back a flood of memories he had to bank down in order to finish sealing the gift.

  “Very creative.”

  He hadn’t a clue why the note of approval in her voice stirred him. But it did.

  Still, he couldn’t shake the growing feeling of being the proverbial bull in a china shop. Tossing out the foil, he held up the gift so that it was now in Jake’s line of vision.

  “It’s a baseball glove,” he finally told the boy when there was no reaction.

  There was no indication from Jake that he’d even heard. His eyes remained fixed on the ceiling. Adam placed the glove back on the bed, beside the boy’s hand. It didn’t move. Only three fingers peeked out from beneath the bandage, the rest were hidden, swaddled along with his thumb and palm.

  Adam looked at Tracy. Walking in, he’d only caught the last sentence of what was being said between her and the now departed policemen. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He won’t speak.” Standing beside the bed, Tracy lightly brushed the thatch of blond hair from Jake’s forehead. He was a good-looking little boy, with delicate features the fire hadn’t etched its signature into. But it had
branded more than the rest of his body. It had branded his soul. For how long? “It’s his way of dealing with the trauma.”

  Adam wasn’t into those kind of explanations. He firmly believed that his was a far less complex world that dealt with simple cause and effect. He searched for a more plausible explanation.

  “Are you sure that he can talk?” His first thought was of damage done to the larynx. “I mean, he swallowed a lot of smoke before I got to him. Maybe—”

  She knew what he was doing, what she’d done herself earlier. But she’d exhausted all other avenues looking for something to blame, something she could work with and hopefully fix.

  This “fix” had to come from Jake.

  Tracy shook her head, her hair falling into her face. She combed it back with her fingers.

  “I’ve had tests done. There’s nothing wrong with his larynx or his vocal chords, or his lungs,” she added second-guessing his next suggestion as Adam opened his mouth again. “The injury goes deeper than anything we can readily fix.” With a compassionate smile on her lips as she looked down at her small patient, she said softly, “The mind has ways of dealing with things that we can only guess at.”

  He hated coming up against things he couldn’t control, couldn’t set right. Exasperation chewed gaping holes in his chest. “So what’ll it take to help him come out of it?”

  Tracy sighed, sharing his feelings, wishing there was something more she could do. “Time, care—”

  Adam looked at her sharply. He knew double-talk when he heard it. “In other words, you don’t know.”

  She didn’t attempt to snow him. Tracy sank her hands into her pockets. It would be so nice to be able to dig down deep and pluck out answers, she thought.

  “In any words, I don’t know. Not where I can give you a pat answer at any rate. We just have to wait and see.” Her eyes shifted to the boy, smiling kindly at him. “Don’t we, Jake?”

  There was no reply. She didn’t expect there to be.

  Didn’t seem fair, Adam thought. One second, the kid has the world on a string, everything to live for, the next, it all blows up on him.

  Raising his head, Adam looked at Tracy. “I had someone check out his family.”

  He had been busy, she thought. Why did this boy mean so much to him? What was the connection? Was it just a case of a hero looking out for the person he rescued, or something more? In some cultures, she vaguely recalled, when you saved a life, it was yours forever to protect. Was there something like that going on here? She didn’t know anything about this man, so it was hard to say.

  “Oh?”

  Damn, but it sounded as if there was a world of meaning in the way she said the one word, he thought. Probably just his imagination.

  “He doesn’t have one,” he told her. “At least, none in the immediate area. Hell, none in the United States as far as I could find out. There’s a second cousin or something like that.” He saw immediate interest enter her eyes. Funny, he’d never thought of hazel eyes as being pretty before, but hers were. There were hints of bright green that shimmered at him and what looked to be flecks of sunshine. He roused himself and continued. “A Raymond Burke, but he’s somewhere in Africa, dusting off old bones.”

  What an odd way to describe something. She tried to make sense of the encrypted words. “That means that Raymond Burke is either a dance instructor at an octogenarian social club, or he’s—an anthropologist?”

  Adam nodded. “The latter, although,” he had to give her credit, “the first guess is pretty creative.” His eyes washed over her, as if he was seeing her for the first time. Or going beyond the initial layer of an exceedingly attractive woman who looked way too young and vibrant to be someone’s doctor. “A wisecracking doctor with a pig who’s not intimidated by the police. Pretty impressive.”

  She pressed her lips together, trying not to laugh, wondering if he realized that he’d made it sound as if Petunia was the one who faced officers of the law fearlessly. “I do my best.”

  The grin on her face faded into a soft smile he found too compelling. He looked away.

  “It’s nice of you to visit him,” she finally said.

  He shrugged. He’d never cared for attention directed his way. His mind scrambling, he said the first thing that occurred to him. “It’s my day off. It’s raining, so golf is out.”

  She tried to picture him on a driving range, sinking all his concentration into making a little round ball fly obediently through the air. The picture didn’t materialize.

  “You don’t strike me as someone who golfs.”

  “I’m not,” he confessed. Adam had no idea what had made him make that reference to golf. Probably because he’d seen scattered golf clubs on the green yesterday as he’d tried to resuscitate Jake. “Maybe some of your wisecracking’s rubbing off.”

  The grin was back, shining in her eyes as she looked at him. “Maybe.”

  She wondered how he’d react if she asked him to grab a cup of coffee with her somewhere. There was something she wanted to run past him.

  But just then, her beeper went off. With a sigh, she angled the small pager at her waist, trying to read the numbers on the LCD screen. She needn’t have bothered. The telephone number was embossed on her brain.

  “I’m wanted in emergency,” she told him. Maybe it was just as well she didn’t get a chance to ask, she thought. He’d probably turn her down and she didn’t want Jake to overhear. Placing her hand lightly on the little boy’s exposed fingers, she promised, “I’ll see you in a little while, Jake.” She was already backing out the door. “Nice seeing you again, Mr. Collins. Thanks for the rescue earlier.”

  She meant with the police, he realized. “Don’t mention it.” With the boy off in his own world, there was no reason to stay. Adam wasn’t even sure that Jake knew he was in the room. “I guess I’d better be going myself.”

  Tracy paused in the doorway. She’d been hoping he’d remain. It was good for Jake. Even people in a coma sometimes responded to the presence of people in the room. Collins being here could only do Jake good.

  “Oh, why don’t you stay a little while?”

  It wasn’t a question, it was a request. Adam searched his brain for some kind of an excuse to give her, the awkward feeling beginning all over again. Absently, he pulled at the boy’s blanket, straightening it.

  As he started to say something about remembering a previous appointment that he’d made and forgotten about until just now, he felt the tips of Jake’s fingers brush against his. Startled, wondering if he’d imagined it, Adam looked down at the bed.

  Though he was still staring at the ceiling, Jake had wrapped his three fingers around Adam’s hand. Just the way he had when he’d been placed on the gurney.

  From out of nowhere, a large lump suddenly materialized and lodged itself in Adam’s throat.

  “Yeah,” he muttered. Leaning, he pulled over a chair and sat down. He continued to hold the boy’s three fingers in his hand. “Maybe I will.” His voice lowered as he looked at Jake. “For a little while.”

  Smiling, relieved, Tracy quietly slipped out.

  Bancroft and Malloy returned to the chief’s office. They’d argued all the way from the hospital over the incident in the boy’s room, each criticizing the other’s approach. Bancroft had backed down. Malloy wasn’t the kind to push too far.

  Neither one of them had wanted to face the chief without an answer.

  They drew straws and Malloy won. It was up to Bancroft to tell the chief.

  Knocking on his superior’s door, Bancroft waited until the latter growled for him to come in. When he did, he could feel the small, sharp darts coming at him from the man’s steely blue eyes as Stone looked up from the preliminary task force report he was reading. There were red lines drawn through some of the sentences.

  “Where’s Malloy?” he wanted to know.

  “Um, he had something to take care of.” Bancroft summoned his flagging courage. His bad leg was bothering him again and he shi
fted his weight as subtly as possible. He knew the chief hated when he did that. “The boy’s not talking, Chief.”

  Stone rose, staring incredulously at Bancroft. “What do you mean the boy’s not talking?” he thundered. How the hell were they going to find out if the kid was a threat if they didn’t know what he thought he saw? “Make him talk.”

  Bancroft shook his head frantically, knowing Stone had misunderstood him. “He can’t. The lady doctor they’ve got watching the kid says it has something to do with his head.”

  Bancroft was two steps shy of being incoherent, Stone thought, aggravated. “Something wrong with his head?” he echoed. “Like what? Like he hit it?” the chief pressed impatiently. “Are you trying to tell me he’s got some kind of amnesia?” Which he was undoubtedly faking, Stone was sure of it. Damn it all to hell, he was afraid of this. The kid knew something.

  Again Bancroft shook his head, his thin, straggly hair whipping about his ears like matted brown string. “No, he just doesn’t talk. Stares up at the ceiling like his eyes are glued there.”

  Stone’s eyes burned into him. “And you’re buying this?”

  Hesitating, Bancroft tried to read Stone’s expression. He wasn’t sure if the chief was testing him, baiting him or if he was asking a legitimate question. He tried to figure out how to convince Stone that he thought Jake was on the level.

  “The kid never even blinked the entire time we were there.”

  A five-year-old staring off into space, that wasn’t anything new or unusual. Suddenly needing a stiff drink, Stone settled on lighting up a cigar instead. Taking one out of the humidor on his desk, he bit off the end and spat it out. His eyes pinned Bancroft to the wall as he lit his cigar.

  “What’s the doctor say is wrong with him?”

  Bancroft tried to remember if the woman had given the condition a name. She hadn’t. “She calls it some kind of hysterical reaction.”