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Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#u544f9a08-5b66-5a19-b05d-90cf9f5b7cc2)
He hated the expression “feeling your age.” More than that, the onetime robbery detective hated the fact that getting in behind the wheel of his dark blue sedan was now a two-step, sometimes three-step, procedure that involved lowering himself into his seat, then physically picking up and lifting his left leg in order to maneuver it into position inside the vehicle.
Not that he would ever actually admit as much to anyone. After all, he was Seamus Cavanaugh, the eighty-one-year-old patriarch of the Cavanaugh clan, a family known and respected for its many members within the law-enforcement community.
Cavanaughs didn’t complain, not when it came to things they had no control over.
Like time.
That sort of thing came under the heading of resigned acceptance.
If his sons ever suspected how often various parts of his body ached and gave him trouble, there would be no end to their trying to talk him into permanently retiring from the security firm that he had founded.
A laugh rumbled deep within his chest. As if that would ever happen.
He had tried retirement once and had concluded that retirement, even retirement in comfort, was for the birds—definitely not for him. He liked being active, even if that activity came with a price, like painful knees, aching shoulders and a back that insisted on periodically acting up.
To him the alternative was to slowly wither away and then finally die.
No, thank you, Seamus thought, shifting so that he could get comfortable—if that was even possible—behind the wheel before he started up the engine. The hell with retirement. He needed to be vital. That was why he was out here in one of the industrial-complex areas within Aurora’s neighboring cities long after dark. He was doing an unexpected final check on one of the buildings his security firm protected. There’d been an attempted break-in on the building a little more than a week ago and he just wanted to be sure there were no repeat occurrences in the making despite the fact that the alarms and cameras on the premises had been silent.
Thanks to his grandchildren, grandnieces and grandnephews, he knew how easily systems could be bypassed or hacked into. The expert IT crew he employed at his firm was considered to be the best in the business, but Seamus was still old-fashioned. As far as he was concerned, nothing beat a hands-on approach.
So he had deliberately gone through all the safety protocols within the building, then driven around the building’s perimeter just to put any apprehensions to bed. Now that he had, he was ready to head home and have that well-loved nightcap he’d been promising himself. His cardiologist, Dr. Benvenuti, a specialist who had treated him for years, frowned on his habit, but his doctor only looked at his year of birth. He did not take into account the patriarch’s spirit.
His age didn’t define him, Seamus thought rebelliously. He was still young at heart, still had a spring in his step, even though, he was willing to grudgingly admit, that spring had gotten just a wee bit rusty of late.
It was going to rain, Seamus thought now, as he was ready to leave. His shoulder, the one he had gotten shot in in the line of duty almost four decades ago, ached the way it always did just before it rained. Fortunately for him, rain was not a regular occurrence where he now lived, in California.
Preoccupied with his aching shoulder, Seamus wasn’t aware of what was happening until it was too late.
One second he had just started to fasten his seat belt—his door was still open because he needed space to wrestle with the belt—the next, someone had come up to his car, aimed a gun at him and growled, “I need your car, old man. Get out!”
Seamus didn’t know which bothered him more—the fact that someone was trying to steal his car, or being referred to as an “old man.” Having a gun aimed at him notwithstanding, his response was automatic.
“The hell I will!” Seamus growled.
The would-be car thief’s expression registered surprise, then darkened. “Wrong answer, old man,” he snapped.
It was the car thief’s turn to be stunned. Seamus didn’t willingly hand over his car keys or his car. Instead, he angrily demanded, “Who the hell do you think you are?”
Still partially hidden by shadows, the tall, well-built, dark-haired man’s face went from handsome to foreboding. Despite himself, Seamus felt a chill go up his spine. Out of the corner of his eye, Seamus thought he saw another figure move, but he couldn’t be sure. He was completely focused on the car thief.
“I’m the man who’s going to be driving that car of yours. You’re two steps away from death, old man, and trust me, you won’t be needing it,” the car thief informed him.
“But I’m not dead yet,” Seamus countered as he shot out a hand to grab the other man’s wrist.
With his other hand, Seamus reached for the weapon he carried in his pocket. Although he no longer belonged to any branch of the police department, Seamus had a permit to carry a concealed weapon and he went regularly to the firing range to continue honing his already considerable skills.
“Wrong move, old man,” the other man snarled.
Using leverage, the car thief pulled hard, yanking Seamus out of his car. Seamus put up a fight, but he was at least two decades older than his opponent and it acted against him.
The tug-of-war was short-lived, and Seamus wound up smashing his forehead against the concrete, cutting his temple as he landed facedown in the parking lot.
Seamus had put up more of a fight than the car thief expected. A barrage of heated curses were heaped on Seamus head.
Gaining possession of Seamus’s gun, the car thief laughed in satisfied triumph. “How did you think this was going to turn out, old man?” he demanded, uttering another round of curses. Then, drawing in a deep breath as if to fortify himself for what he was about to do next, the car thief shot at Seamus with the weapon he was holding.
Fighting to remain conscious, Seamus thought he heard a woman’s scream, but that might have just been the buzzing noise in his head. He couldn’t tell.
“That’s what you get when you mess with your betters, old man,” the robber crowed. He began to bend down to check if he had killed the old man who had had the audacity to try to overpower him. He also wanted to grab the watch that had caught his eye. But as he reached for it, he froze.
The sound of an approaching car had him abandoning the watch. Instead, he focused on his own survival. Another string of curses erupted from his lips, as he damned Seamus’s soul to hell after his insides had been ripped out and eaten by rabid wolves.
Seamus couldn’t make out the words. His gut instinct said they were meant for him. Darkness was closing in around him, sealing him away, which was just as well. He couldn’t endure the excruciating pounding in his head any longer.
Just before he slipped into the smothering embrace of a dark world, Seamus thought he heard the sound of two doors being shut.
And then there was the sound of a car—his car?—driving away.
After that, mercifully, there was nothing.
Chapter 1 (#u544f9a08-5b66-5a19-b05d-90cf9f5b7cc2)
Former police chief Andrew Cavanaugh immediately thought the worst whenever a phone rang, the shrill noise elbowing its way into his sound sleep, especially whenever it happened after midnight. It was at that time more than any other that icy fear would grip his heart even before he was fully awake. Because of the nature of his job and the jobs held down by so much of his family, half-formed dire scenarios would flood his mind the instant the phone began to ring.
Andrew was groping around on the nightstand, searching for his phone before his eyes were even open or his brain was fully engaged.
His wife, Rose, shared the very same feelings. And fears.
“Who is it, Andrew?” she asked, turning toward him in their queen-size bed.
Andrew didn’t answer her. Fully awake now, he focused on listening to what the voice on the other end of the call was telling him.
The intense look on his face had Rose grasping his forearm, as if that would somehow help her assimilate what the caller was saying to him. Or, at the very least, allow her to share with him whatever burden those words might be creating.
What she was hearing from Andrew’s side of the conversation only fueled her dread.
“When?” Andrew asked, his usually genial face a mask of concern. “How bad? Is he—?” Rose saw her husband exhale a shaky breath, dragging his hand through his hair. For a split second, the man everyone leaned on so heavily looked almost lost. “What hospital?”
By now Rose’s adrenaline had escalated to an exceptionally high level. She quickly got out of bed and, rather than throw on a robe, automatically began to get dressed. Quickly.
The second she was finished, she was laying out her husband’s clothing. She knew Andrew inside and out. She knew that the moment he hung up, they would be on their way to whatever hospital the person that this call was about was in.
With children, brothers and sisters-in-law, as well as an entire extended collection of family members, almost all involved in some capacity of law enforcement, there were many potential candidates for whom that path might have very well ended tonight—or had come very close to ending.
There was no other reason why a call would have suddenly shattered their night this way, or why her husband looked so distressed.
Without knowing whom this call was about or what the actual damage was, all Rose could do was pray as she moved quickly to get Andrew’s clothes ready for him. It was her form of “busywork,” something to keep her occupied so that her mind wouldn’t go to that awful place that it was wont to go thanks to this middle-of-the-night call.
It just went with the territory because she was the former police chief’s wife. A peaceful night’s sleep wasn’t always part of the equation.
Rose had laid out all of Andrew’s clothing as well as his shoes and had just pulled out a pair of socks when her husband hung up the phone.
The moment that he did, she whirled around to face him.
“Who?” she asked breathlessly.
Throwing off the rest of the covers, Andrew’s bare feet hit the cold floor. The change in temperature hardly registered. His mind was racing, unearthing a dozen memories at once. But mainly Andrew was praying. Praying every bit as hard as he had when he had gone looking for his missing wife all those years ago when her car had driven off the road, into the lake.
It had taken him years to find Rose again, but he had, he reminded himself. Finding her when she’d been suffering from amnesia had been, admittedly, an incredible long shot, but he had never given up looking, despite the odds. And, in the end, he had found her.
This was going to be another kind of long shot, but just like before, he had every hope that it was going to work out.
It just had to.
Rose caught hold of her husband’s arm, pulling him and his attention back from wherever it had drifted to and toward her.
Startled, Andrew blinked, as if suddenly remembering that his wife was there.
“Who is it?” Rose asked point-blank.
The answer hurt, and it took him a second to actually form the words to tell her.
“It’s Dad,” Andrew answered, shrugging into his pullover sweater.
Of all the names that had gone rushing through Rose’s anguished, feverish brain, her father-in-law’s name hadn’t been among them.
Armed with this piece of information, Rose’s mind went in an entirely different direction.
“Heart attack?” she guessed quietly as she watched Andrew slip on his shoes.
Grabbing his wallet from the nightstand and putting his cell phone into his pocket, Andrew shook his head. “It wasn’t a heart attack.”
“Then what?” Rose asked, confused.
Andrew drew in a deep breath, as if to insulate himself from the fears that went with what he was about to say.
“As near as the patrolmen who found him can tell,” Andrew said, “Dad was the victim of a mugging. At least that’s the working theory. His car is missing, and he was found lying facedown in the North Tustin Industrial parking lot.”
Horror flashed across Rose’s face. The next moment, she managed to regain control over her emotions.
“But Seamus is all right, isn’t he, Andrew?” she asked, willing her husband to give her a positive reply.
Andrew avoided making eye contact with his wife. “He’s breathing,” he answered, heading toward the stairs. He loved having Rose with him under any circumstances, but he wanted to spare her this. His father was a strong man, but age had a way of eroding strength. Andrew had no idea what he was in for.
“Dad hasn’t regained consciousness since they found him.” Sailing down the staircase’s seventeen steps, he was at the front door in seconds. “I’m going to the hospital,” he told her.
Rose was just a beat behind him. “Not without me you’re not.”
He turned toward her. “There’s no point if he’s still unconscious. Maybe you should just stay here, hold down the fort,” Andrew gently suggested.
The stubborn look he knew and loved so well came into Rose’s eyes. “The fort can hold itself down. I’m not letting you face this alone, Andrew Cavanaugh,” she informed him in no uncertain terms.
This was one of the many reasons he loved her, but even so—or maybe because of it—he didn’t feel right about dragging her with him like this, Andrew thought. “People are going to be calling here, asking questions about what happened.”
He wasn’t telling her anything she hadn’t already considered. “I’m sure they will. Don’t worry about it, we have call forwarding. They’ll find us,” Rose assured him. “After all these years of marriage, that old man is as much my father as he is yours and I’m not about to stay here like a good little soldier, twiddling my thumbs and waiting for word that he’s all right—and he will be all right,” she told her husband in a no-nonsense voice. “Now, let’s just stop wasting time debating this and let’s go,” Rose ordered.
Andrew’s heart swelled with affection as well as gratitude. Sparing himself one moment, he caught his wife up in his arms and kissed her.
Hard.
The next second, he let her go again. “If I haven’t mentioned this to you lately, I love you, Rose McGee Cavanaugh.”
Rose briefly touched his face and smiled at Andrew, all the love she felt for this man who was her entire universe shining in her eyes.
“I know,” she replied. “Now, let’s get moving!” she urged again, pulling open the front door.
“Yes, ma’am,” Andrew answered, utterly grateful that this was the woman who was sharing his life.
Rose had always managed to give him hope.
Rose sat in the passenger seat of the vehicle she had surprised him with last Christmas as they sped off to the hospital. To ensure that they would get there as quickly as possible, Andrew had placed his police lights on the roof. Though he didn’t believe in abusing any of the privileges that were at his disposal, this situation negated his natural impulse for caution.
While the lights on his roof flashed and the siren blared, Rose was busy calling various members of their family to tell them that the man who was responsible for starting the family was very possibly fighting for his life in the hospital. Rose knew that nobody would want to be left out of the loop under the guise of being “spared” the news until morning. Everyone loved and respected the crotchety patriarch and would have been distraught if they weren’t able to be on the premises, pulling for Seamus and adding their prayers to the rest.
This was the sort of thing that transcended everything else. This was about family.
Despite the hour, Aurora Memorial Hospital’s parking lot was teeming with vehicles. Andrew gunned his SUV up and down the aisle, searching for a place to park. As he searched, he spared Rose a glance. “How does it feel being a modern-day Paul Revere?”
“I would have preferred just inviting people to one of your parties instead of telling them to come to the hospital because Seamus has been the victim of some psychopathic thief,” Rose answered grimly. She reached for her husband’s hand and squeezed it. “He’s going to be all right,” she promised, her voice thick with emotion. The words were meant to hearten her as much as they were to encourage her husband.
“Of course he is,” Andrew agreed in a voice that was as emotional as his wife’s. “Dad’s too ornery to just give up and…retreat,” he said, finally finding a word he could use without having his voice break.
“There,” Rose said suddenly, pointing over to the side. “There’s a space.”
