The Once And Future Father. Marie Ferrarella

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СКАЧАТЬ around outside Lucy’s hospital room.

      He had a job to do and it wasn’t here.

      Still, he hadn’t given Lucy any sort of accounting about her brother. In his defense, there’d been next to no time. But that didn’t change the fact that he owed it to her.

      Frustrated, he shoved his hands into his pockets, purposely avoiding looking in the general direction of the nursery. He didn’t need that sort of distraction right now.

      And Lucy didn’t need to listen to the grisly details about her brother’s death right now, he thought. She certainly wasn’t in any shape to answer questions. Though part of him wanted to get this all over with and put everything behind him so he could start fresh again, he knew it’d be better for both the department and Lucy if he came back later, when she was up to it.

      Or maybe not at all. Maybe if someone else handled this, it’d be for the best all around.

      “Excuse me?”

      Having made up his mind, Dylan had turned toward the elevators and his escape route. The low voice, aimed in his direction, momentarily put his plans on hold. Dylan looked over his shoulder to see a refined, tall blonde comfortably attired in a white lab coat that partially covered a blue sundress. She was looking straight at him. “Are you Detective McMorrow?”

      “Yes?”

      The verification was tendered slowly, cautiously, telling Sheila Pollack that this man was more accustomed to receiving bad news than good. And that, police detective or not, the tall, rangy man before her was a private person. Not a bit like her Slade.

      With a smile meant to put him at his ease, she offered him her hand.

      “Hi, I’m Sheila Pollack, Lucy’s doctor. She told me you delivered the baby.” She smiled and offered Dylan her hand.

      He shook her hand mechanically, surprised at the firmness of the woman’s grip. “The baby more or less delivered herself. I was just there to catch her.”

      “That’s not the way Lucy tells it.” Her smile grew sunnier. “Nice job.”

      Dylan shrugged, accepting the compliment the way he accepted any compliment that came his way, offhandedly and with little attention. It was criticism that helped a man grow, not empty words. His father had beaten that one into him until he’d been able to defend himself.

      He looked over the doctor’s head toward the room where they had taken Lucy and her baby. “How she’s doing?”

      “Mother and daughter are fine, no small thanks to you. Right now, they’re both asleep. I think the ordeal exhausted them.” She studied him for a moment. “Lucky for Lucy that you were there.”

      “Yeah, lucky,” he muttered more to himself than to the statuesque woman. She was looking at him as if she could read his mind. Annoyed with himself, he dismissed the thought as ridiculous. “Well, I’m on duty, Doctor. I’d better go.”

      Sheila nodded. She had other patients on the floor to look in on. And a roomful waiting for her back at her office. But because each of her patients was more than simply just that to her, she paused where she was for one more second.

      “Want me to tell Lucy anything when she wakes up?” When he made no reply, she asked, “Will you be back to see her?”

      Dylan thought it an odd question. For all she knew, he’d just been someone passing by at the right time, or the wrong time, depending on whose view you took. But, then, he amended, maybe Lucy had told her that they’d known each other once.

      For the sake of brevity and to prevent any possibility of further discussion, he said, “Yeah, sure,” and quickly walked away.

      Sheila spared herself a moment to watch him go, aware that she had just been brushed off. Instinct told her that there was a great deal more going on here than was evident at first.

      Turning away, she smiled to herself. He’d be back. Whether he realized it or not, he’d be back. She was willing to lay odds on it.

      Detective Dave Watley glanced up from the video camera he was adjusting. It was perched on a tripod, its powerful telephoto lens aimed at the entrance of the restaurant five stories below and across the street. “What the hell kept you?” he asked Dylan when his partner entered the apartment.

      Pulling up a folding chair to the partially curtained window with one hand, Dylan placed the paper tray with its two cups of coffee on the unsteady card table. Besides a beaten-up sofa that had been abandoned by the last tenant who lived in the apartment, the card table and two chairs represented the only furniture in the studio apartment. Watley had brought the table. He needed someplace to put the puzzles he was so fond of working on.

      “I was detained.” Dylan pried his own cup from the holder, leaving the one he’d picked up for Watley where it was.

      Watley looked at him with good-natured disgust. “No kidding, Sherlock. I kind of figured that part out for myself. Detained how?”

      As far as Watley knew, his rather closed-mouth partner had no personal life to speak of, no relatives he ever mentioned, and certainly no woman in his life. The man lived and breathed the job, which made him a good man to have watching your back, but not exactly the best to share a long stakeout with. And this one had all the signs of being a long one, even though it was just in its third day.

      Because nothing else came to him and he knew that Watley wasn’t the kind to back off once he started asking, Dylan gave him an abbreviated version of what had happened. “A woman went into labor.”

      Watley stopped fooling with the camera. “And you took her to the hospital?” he asked.

      Dylan scanned the street below. Nothing out of the ordinary was happening at the Den of Thieves. This was the restaurant’s busiest hour, but there was no one entering or leaving who aroused his suspicions. So far, none of the usual players in what was reported to be a money-laundering scheme were evident.

      “It was too late for that.” He took off the lid from his cup and dropped it on the table.

      “So you did what?” Picking up the discarded lid, Watley dropped it into the empty box he’d converted into a wastebasket. “Helped her deliver?” he prompted.

      “Yeah.”

      With his wife a brief six weeks away from delivery, Watley was facing his first time up as a new father. Thoughts of the restaurant they were staking out were forgotten. “So, what did it feel like? Holding that newborn in your hands? You did hold it, right?”

      “Yes, I held her.”

      “Well, what was it like?”

      “Messy.”

      Usually a very easygoing man, Watley threw his hands up in exasperation. “Dammit, McMorrow, you’ve got a heart made out of stone, you know that? There you were, with the miracle of life happening right in front of you and you’re thinking of cleanup detail.”

      “Somebody has to.” Dylan paused, taking a long sip of the coffee that was already getting cold. His thoughts kept returning to the event. He’d felt like a bystander and a participant all at the same time. “It was kind of СКАЧАТЬ