Once a Father. Marie Ferrarella

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ