Once A Father

The white patches of snow on the ground contrasted sharply with the dark, sooty layer of dirt along every part of the boy’s blistered, burned body. Adam tried not to think about anything except getting the boy’s chest to move, getting him to breathe on his own. The small chest felt so fragile. If he pressed too hard, he was afraid he might crush it.

He repeated the cycle twice, first pressing down on the boy’s chest, then breathing into his mouth. Finally, the boy stirred, his lids fluttering, then opening. He looked directly into Adam’s eyes.

Adam felt as if something had hit him smack in his chest with the force of an anvil.

“We can take over from here, buddy.” K.C., one of the paramedics, firmly but gently nudged Adam aside. Gently, because they all knew that after two years the firefighter was no closer to being over the loss of his wife and son than he’d been the evening the tragedy had occurred.

Adam felt something take hold of his hand. When he looked down, he saw that the boy had wrapped his small, grimy, burned fingers around it. He knew that the very effort must have hurt terribly. The boy’s grasp was not strong. It would have taken next to nothing to break the hold.

But the connection was far stronger than any steel wire could have ever managed. Adam couldn’t pull his hand away. The boy’s eyes wouldn’t release him.

Adam heard the captain coming up behind him, felt a fatherly hand on his shoulder he neither related to nor resented.

“Anyone know who this boy is?” Captain MacIntire addressed his words to anyone in the immediate vicinity.

With careful steps, Bonnie moved closer to them. There were fresh tears shimmering in her eyes.

“That’s Jake Anderson.” She pressed her lips together, her heart going out to the boy. “Those were his parents you just…you just…” She couldn’t make herself finish her statement.

She didn’t have to.

Someone at the baseline of the fire called to MacIntire and he hurried away, all under the watchful eye of Chief Stone.

Adam made up his mind. “I’m going with the boy.”

Working over Jake, K.C. slanted a look toward Adam. There was understanding in the paramedic’s eyes. But sympathy, they’d learned, was the last thing anyone offered Adam Collins.

“Suit yourself.” K.C. snapped the legs on the gurney and they popped upright. With Adam walking alongside him, holding the boy’s hand, he guided the gurney to the rear of the ambulance. “But being the good Samaritan won’t keep the captain from getting on your case for playing Superman again.”

“Yeah, but it’ll postpone it for a while.” Adam stepped back to allow the gurney to be hoisted into the ambulance. Jake’s fingers remained around his. Adam twisted around to maintain the connection, then got into the ambulance himself.

Dr. Tracy Walker felt beat and ready to call it a day. And it wasn’t even one o’clock.

She felt as if she’d been running on fast-forward all morning, with no signs of a letup anytime soon. It had started when her alarm had failed to go off at five. Five a.m. was not her idea of an ideal hour to get up, but it would have given her sufficient time to pull herself together for the surgery she had to perform this morning. Five o’clock came and went, as did six and then almost seven.

Fortunately, Tracy had what she fondly liked to refer to as an alarm pig, a gentle, quick-footed Vietnamese potbellied pig that was still very much a baby and went by the name of Petunia. Petunia, it turned out, was trainable and far more intelligent than some of the people Tracy knew.

At five to seven, Petunia had snuggled in at her feet and tickled her awake. Any one-sided dialogue Tracy had felt up to rendering was immediately curtailed the instant she’d rolled over in her bed and saw that according to her non-ringing clock, she had exactly twenty minutes to shower, eat and get herself to the hospital for the skin grafting surgery she was scheduled to perform.

Weighing her options and the somewhat seductive power hot water had over her, Tracy decided to sacrifice the shower and breakfast as she hurried into clothes, put out a bowl of fresh water for Petunia and threw herself behind the wheel of her car in less time than it took for an ordinary citizen to floss their teeth.

As she ran out the door she promised a disgruntled Petunia to return during her own lunch break to feed her choice leftovers from the refrigerator. Petunia had said nothing.

With one eye on the rearview mirror, watching for dancing blue and red lights, Tracy had bent a few speeding rules and made it to the operating room with two minutes to spare.

The three-hour surgery had been as successful as possible, given the circumstances. There were no instant cures, no huge miracles in her line of work. Only many small miracles that were eventually hooked up into one large one. She was a pediatric burn specialist, and there was nothing in the world she would rather have been, even though it meant having her heart torn out of her chest whenever she saw another victim being wheeled into the hospital. Pain went with the territory. But someone had to help these children and she had elected herself to be one of the ones on the front lines. It gave her life a purpose.

“Out of my way, Myra,” she wearily told a nurse who had somehow materialized in her path. “I’m on my way home to feed a hungry pig.”

But the dark-skinned woman shook her head. “’Fraid your boyfriend’s going to have to wait, Doctor,” the thrice-divorced woman told her. “We just got a call in on the scanner. There’s been a bombing at the Lone Star Country Club.”

“A bombing?” Here? In Mission Creek? They were a peaceful little town of some twenty thousand people. Who would want to bomb them? Had the world gone completely crazy? “Does anyone know who did it?”

“Beats me,” Myra lamented. “But dispatch says they’re bringing in a little boy who’s going to need your gentle touch.”

Tracy took the new sterile, yellow paper gown Myra held up for her and donned it to cover her regular scrubs. “Do we know how many people were hurt?”

“About fifteen or so.” The wail of approaching sirens disturbed the tranquil atmosphere, growing louder by the second. “But according to the dispatch, there were only two fatalities.” Myra’s dark eyes met hers. “The kid’s parents.”

“Oh God,” Tracy groaned just as the emergency room doors parted and the ambulances began arriving.

First on the scene were the two paramedics with the boy Tracy assumed was her patient. Hurrying alongside of the gurney, holding tightly onto the boy’s hand, was a firefighter, still wearing his heavy yellow slicker. The sight had a dramatic impact.

A relative? she wondered.

The next moment, Tracy was looking at the boy and ceased wondering about anything else.

Chapter 2

She never got used to it.

Never got used to seeing the anguish in their eyes, on their faces, could never anesthetize herself not to take note of the pitiful, fearful conditions in which so many of her patients arrived.

Tracy never bothered wasting time trying to find answers to unanswered questions or an order to the universe. She was just grateful that her training allowed her to make a difference in these children’s lives, however small. To help start these innocent victims, who had unwittingly stood in the path of a cruel and feelingless fate, back on the road to recovery.

She gave each patient a hundred and ten percent of her skills and, despite numerous warnings to the contrary by superiors and friends who cared about her, a piece of her heart.

It was no different with this newest victim that the two paramedics brought her. The instant she saw the terrified look on the boy’s face, she forgot about the firefighter hurrying at his side.

Petunia and her dilemma were placed on temporary hold in her mind as well. Tracy tried not to think of what the small pig might begin eating in lieu of her belated breakfast. That was something she would have to deal with later.

Listening to the paramedics rattle off vital signs, Tracy shot questions back at them and swiftly assessed the boy’s injuries. She did her best not to disturb the raw, blistered flesh on his arms and legs.

“Put him in trauma room three,” she instructed the orderly who’d rushed up to the first gurney with her. “I need someone to cut off his clothes. And be gentle about it,” she added. Looking down at the sooty, bruised face, she did her best to make her smile encouraging. “You’re going to be fine, honey, I promise. Can you tell me your name?”

The only response she got was a whimper.

There was something about the way he seemed to stare right through her that chilled her heart.

Shock, she thought. She felt tears forming at the corners of her eyes. Moving quickly, Tracy helped guide the gurney into the trauma room.

“That’s okay, sweetheart. I don’t need your name right now. Mine’s Dr. Walker in case you need to call me later.” Belatedly, she realized that the firefighter was still with them and about to enter the trauma room. She shook her head, automatically placing a hand against his chest. It felt as if she was pressing against a wall, not a man. “I’m sorry, you’re going to have to stay out here.”

“I won’t get in the way.” Adam had no idea why, but he wanted to be in there with the boy, to somehow assure him, as well as himself, that everything was going to be all right.

“I’m sorry, only staff members are allowed past these doors.” He looked perturbed at the restriction. She paused longer than she should have. “Are you a relative?”

He shook his head. “No. I just wanted to make sure he was all right.”

She of all people understood becoming involved with the people you were responsible for saving. She offered him an encouraging smile. “I’ll let you know as soon as I can. Why don’t you wait in the hall?” She made the suggestion just before she slipped behind the door.

Tracy quickly crossed to the examining table. Her team had transferred the boy while she’d hung back with the firefighter. The orderly, Max, pushed the gurney out of the way.

With a nod of her head, she was all business again. “Okay, people, every moment we waste is another moment he has to suffer.”

She worked as swiftly as she dared, making the little boy as comfortable as possible under the circumstances, issuing orders to the two nurses who buffered her sides. They moved like a well-oiled machine. A machine whose only purpose was to help this small child who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Tracy checked her tears until after the job was over. Unleashing them wouldn’t do the boy any good.

What the hell was taking so long?

And what was he doing here, anyway? Adam wondered, exasperated with himself. This wasn’t part of his job. His job had ended the instant he had brought the boy out of the burning building.

He paced the length of the hallway, his impatience mounting with each step he took. That was his job description, saving people from burning buildings, and he’d done that. End of story.

So why was he here, pacing up and down a pastel-colored hallway, sweaty, sooty and smelling of smoke when he should be at the fire station, taking a well-earned shower and trying to wind down from a job well done?

He had no reasonable explanation, even for himself. All he knew was that the frightened look he’d seen in the boy’s wide blue eyes when they had stared up into his had transcended any logic Adam could offer either to himself or to his superior when the time came.

It wasn’t like him to get all wound up like this about someone he’d pulled to safety.

And yet, here he was, wound up tighter than a timpani drum.

The door opened and Adam snapped to attention, his body rigid. He was at the doctor’s side, his six-three frame looming over her five-foot five-inch one before the door had a chance to swing closed.

Adam didn’t attempt to second-guess the expression on her face. “How is he?” he demanded.

His tone had taken him out of the realm in which her assumption had placed him: that of rescuer and rescuee. For the firefighter to look so concerned, when rescuing people out of burning buildings was, if not a daily, then at least an occupational occurrence, there had to be something more going on.

Maybe they actually were related somehow and for his own reasons he just didn’t want to admit it. Even given the boy’s age, there seemed to be no other explanation for why one of the county’s firefighters would have accompanied someone he’d rescued and then hung around the hallway, waiting to hear about his condition.

She was too tired to make an educated guess and almost too tired to ask.

Tracy pulled off her mask, letting it hang from its strings about her neck. “He’s still in shock. Pretty harrowing experience for a kid to go through. But his wounds aren’t quite as extensive or serious as they first appeared. I was afraid some of them were third-degree, but most of them are second-degree and some are even first.” She knew she didn’t have to explain the difference or the significance to this man. “But any number you assign to them, they hurt like hell.” Summoning her energy, she framed a question for him. “Is it true?”

With everything that happened, he couldn’t help wondering if he’d done the boy a favor, saving him. The kid was in pain, about to undergo surgical procedures that were undoubtedly excruciating and the bomb had made him an orphan on top of that. It was a huge load for someone so small.

He frowned. Adam had no idea what the doctor was talking about. “Is what true?”

She had to concentrate not to wrap her arms around herself in a bid for comfort. Although she’d never been close to her, she’d lost her mother when she was twenty-two. It had hurt then. How much worse did it feel to be so young when that happened? And to be completely orphaned on top of that?

Did the boy even know his parents were dead?

Maybe she’d misheard. A glimmer of hope flashed for a moment. “You said his parents were killed in the blast?”

The firefighter’s chiseled chin hardened even more. “Yeah.”

She’d navigated life’s rougher seas by clinging to optimism. “Then I guess he was lucky.”

While he’d waited, Adam’d had time to call back to the station house to tell them that he’d be at County General for awhile. McGuire had told him that according to the manager of the club, the boy had gone off to the men’s room minutes before the blast. The woman had volunteered that he was an only child. That left him alone.

“Depends on your definition of luck.”

What a strange, somber man, Tracy thought. She wondered if there was someone in his life, or if being alone had made him so bitter sounding.

“I’d say being alive is lucky.” She glanced back toward the trauma room. She’d given the boy a sedative to help him rest. “Being alive is always better than the alternative.”

Adam thought of his own life, a life that had been empty and bleak these past two years despite all the efforts of his siblings and extended family to bring him around. “I suppose that really depends on your point of view.”

Turning toward him, Tracy studied his face thoughtfully. He was younger than he sounded, she realized. But his eyes were old. And angry. “Rather a fatalistic attitude for a firefighter.”

He shrugged carelessly. “It’s what sees me through the day.”

Tracy prided herself on being a decent judge of people. She’d sized him up and decided that this man wasn’t quite as emotionless as he would have liked to believe himself to be. If he were, he wouldn’t be standing here now, waiting to hear how the boy was.

Playing devil’s advocate, she asked, “Then what are you doing here?”

His expression became unreadable. “Seeing about the boy.”

She wanted him to say why. “You saved him.”

He wouldn’t have put it that way. “I pulled him out of the fire.”

Tracy was far too tired to butt heads. “That you did, Mr.—?”

“Collins. Adam,” he added after a beat.

Adam was surprised when she put out her hand to him and then took his when he made no move to do the same. “Tracy Walker. You wouldn’t happen to know his name, would you?”

He’d overheard the blonde with the listing beehive hairdo, Bonnie something he recalled, say the boy’s name when she was talking to the chief.

“Jake Anderson, I think.”

Tracy nodded, taking in the information. “Well, no matter how you choose to put it, Collins, Jake owes his life to you.”

The boy didn’t owe him anything. It was he who owed the boy something for pulling him out of the jaws of death only to fling him back into a life that was filled with pain.

He nodded toward the trauma room. “What’ll happen to him?”

Tracy assumed the firefighter was asking about treatment.

“Fortunately, we’re prepared for his kind of case here at County General. A lot of hospitals aren’t. We’ll see to his wounds, help him heal.” At least physically, she thought. “I might be wrong, but I don’t think any skin grafts’ll be necessary, so that’s good.”

She didn’t look as if she should be dealing with things like burnt flesh and peeling skin. He could more readily see her indulging in a game of tennis or riding horses at the club, rather than leaning over an operating table trying to graft skin over a charred body. “And then?”

She didn’t quite understand. “Then?”

He was thinking about the orphan part. Where did Jake go after he was released? “After you do your job and he’s well, what happens to him then?”

She paused for a second to think. “Social services, I guess, until we can locate a relative.”

Adam had a bad feeling about this. “And if there’s no relative?”

“He goes into the system.” Tracy crossed her arms in front of her, trying to get a handle on what was going on in Collins’s head. “Are you usually this concerned about people you save from burning buildings?”

Adam had never cared for being questioned or analyzed. And he’d seen the woman’s tears just before she’d withdrawn into the trauma room. “Do you usually cry over your patients?”

Tracy saw no shame in empathizing with her patients. The way she saw it, it made her human.

“All the time, Mr. Collins, all the time. When I can help them, when I can’t. And when I hear about a little boy who has lost the two most precious people in his life at such a young age.” She leveled her gaze at him. “What’s your excuse?”

The woman’s very body language challenged him. Scooping up the heavy yellow jacket from the chair where he’d left it, Adam punched his arms through the sleeves and pulled it closed. “I’ve got to be going.”

Rather than let him go, Tracy hurried after him. The man had done something sensitive, it hadn’t been her intent to chase him away.

“Wait.” Adam stopped and turned around. Free of her surgical cap, her dark curly hair swirled around her face as she caught up to him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound as if I was being combative. It’s just been one of those very long mornings, that’s all. You were being a good guy, even if you weren’t being very communicative, and I was being—” Tracy paused and then smiled as she concluded, “Me, I guess. They tell me I talk before I think. Sometimes, they’re right.”

His eyes narrowed. “They?”

“My friends.” Her mouth softened as an almost pixieish smile graced her face. “You did good today, Adam Collins.” And then, because something told her that the words were more applicable to him than to the child she had just worked over, she added, “And no matter how black the situation looks, it’ll get better.”

How could she say something like that? How could she believe it? Doing what she did, day in, day out, seeing what she saw, how could she possibly pretend to believe what she’d just said?

The look he gave her made Tracy feel as if she were being X-rayed.

“You’re sure about that?”

She was a firm believer in meeting darkness with sunshine. “As sure as I am that God made little green apples.”

His expression was incredulous. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I really don’t know, but I heard it somewhere and I thought it sounded nice.” She glanced at her watch. Trained pig or not, Petunia was going to start nibbling on the furniture legs any second now, if she hadn’t already. She was a good little animal, as obedient as they came, but she was a pig and pigs ate anything when they were very, very hungry. Tracy knew she’d more than exceeded her grace period with Petunia. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a pig to feed.”

The woman was beginning to sound positively weird. “Is that some kind of an encrypted message?”

She cocked her head, as if to review her words and think. “Not that I’m aware of.”

“You have a farm?” That would be the logical explanation. The hospital was in the heart of town, but maybe she lived beyond the city limits and was going home.

“No.” Her grin widened. “I have a pig. A very sweet little Vietnamese potbellied pig who’s as smart as a whip and right now, as hungry as a bear. I didn’t have time to feed her this morning and if I don’t get back to her soon, I might not have anything left in the apartment when I get home.” About to dash off, Tracy stopped abruptly as a thought occurred to her. “Do you need a lift?”

Coming out of nowhere, her question caught him off guard. “What?”

“You came in with the boy in an ambulance,” she recalled. “I don’t figure the paramedics hung around waiting for you all this time. Do you want a lift to your fire station?”

He did, but he’d already decided to call a cab. Her offer, tendered so guilelessly, left him momentarily speechless. It just wasn’t rational. “You don’t even know me. Do you always give rides to strange men you don’t know?”

She supposed if she had a choice, she would rather be too trusting than not trusting at all. “We both saved the same boy—in our own way,” she allowed. Her eyes smiled at him. They were hazel, with sunshine in them. “I know you.”

He had no idea how to respond to that. With a shrug, Adam fell into step beside her.

“How the hell did that bomb go off before they got inside?” Stone demanded of the short, squat head of security for the Lone Star Country Club. He towered over the older man who had once sent fear into his own heart. But that was back when he was a wet-behind-the-ears marine recruit. The tables had now turned. Now Yance Ingram reported to him. And the report wasn’t good. “I thought you said you knew what you were doing.”

Yance tugged on the ends of his graying mustache, working to contain his anger. He wasn’t accustomed to being spoken to this way. “Don’t take that tone with me, boy. I wasn’t the one who screwed up.”

Huffing his displeasure like a runaway locomotive, Stone circled around the offending man, one of his handpicked, chosen inner circle.

Served him right for not seeing to it himself, Stone thought. But he’d deliberately left the details up to a select few, wanting to distance himself from the actual deed as much as possible. Blame had a way of smearing once it was voiced, and at all costs, he was trying to protect the sweet deal that had all but fallen into his lap at a time when he most needed it.

Wouldn’t have needed anything if Susanne hadn’t turned out to be a first-class bitch, he thought darkly.

It hadn’t been enough for her to up-end his life by divorcing him and taking away his daughters, she had to demand a pound of flesh from him as well. A monthly pound of flesh in the form of staggering alimony payments. It was like paying for a meal long after the dishes were cleared away. The alimony payments, on top of the child support he was doling out plus the alimony he was still paying to his first wife, had turned him into a man with his back pressed against a wall full of sharp, rusty nails. He was desperate.

That was how El Jefe had found him, desperate. The self-proclaimed new kingpin of the Central American drug trade had a nose for desperate men who could be useful to him. The partnership they had struck up proved to be a lucrative one for both of them. Drug money came into the States, to be carefully banked and deposited via money orders into a bank account he’d personally set up for El Jefe’s legitimate holding company, Emeralda. The money went back to El Jefe for business transactions, minus a healthy cut for his part in the laundering.