Once a Father. Marie Ferrarella

bet old Peter Wainwright and Jace Carson are spinning in their graves right now. Like as not they’d each blame the other for this.” Ben Stone took a step back from the scene. He’d been the police chief of Mission Creek, the town that had slowly grown up and around the Lone Star Country Club that the once best friends had created, cutting the acreage equally out of both their properties before a blood feud had rent them apart, for more years than he was happy about. Agitated, he ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. At 6’2” he all but dwarfed the woman beside him.

      Damn it all to hell, it wasn’t supposed to have happened this way.

      He shifted his keen eyes to her profile. If she lied, he’d know. Bonnie Brannigan was one of those scattered, flighty women who couldn’t be secretive even if her life depended on it. “You didn’t see or hear anything, did you Bonnie?”

      “No.” Wiping away traces of the tear, she shook her head. “I was in my office when this awful thing happened.” Still dazed, she turned to look at him, fear in her clear-water blue eyes. “You don’t think this is like that terrible bombing in Oklahoma, do you?”

      It astounded him how far off the mark she was. A tinge of relief wafted through the wall of frustration that surrounded him.

      “That was a federal building, Bonnie, not a place where people like to come to talk over how much money they have.” He watched firefighters scrambling out of the way as an outer wall fell. “Maybe it was just an accident. Who knows?” Playing out his role of the big protector, he slipped a comforting arm around her shoulders. It wasn’t a hardship. Even though a grandmother, the curvaceous Bonnie Brannigan was still very much an attractive woman. And even better, right now she was no threat to him. “But we’ll find out, by and by. Don’t go troubling that pretty little head of yours.”

      Bonnie smiled, relieved to have someone in charge taking over. She loved her job at the club, but there were times, such as now, when she definitely felt in over her head. That was why she relied so heavily on people like Yance Ingram, the head of security at the club. She recalled that Ben had been the one to bring Yance to her attention.

      Funny how thoughts just popped out of nowhere at a time like this.

      “I suppose it could have been worse,” she murmured, attempting to console herself. She looked at Stone, realizing that had to sound callous, given the circumstances. There were at least two known dead, perhaps more. “I mean, this could have happened during the busy part of the day.”

      Stone nodded, looking toward the body bags just being zipped closed by two of his men. The burned bodies had been pulled out of the wreckage that had been, until an hour ago, the main dining area of the Men’s Grill.

      “Just two fatalities.” The wrong ones. A man and a woman. Their misfortune for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. “Do you know who they were?”

      Were. The word had such a terrible ring to it. She nodded.

      “Daniel and Meg Anderson.” She’d stopped by their table not fifteen minutes before the blast, asking if everything was to their liking. Admiring how much Jake had grown since the last time she’d seen him. Bonnie fought back a fresh wave of sorrow. “It’s awful, just awful.” Shivering again, she ran well-manicured hands along her arms to ward off a chill that no heat could chase away.

      He had no idea what goaded him on. Instinct, probably. The security guards who had scrambled out of the burning building, soot all over their smart blue blazers and crisp gray slacks, had said that there appeared to be no one left within the area where the bomb and the accompanying fire had hit. There was no need to risk his life by diving back into the flames before they became entirely overwhelming to satisfy himself that everyone was out. His chief had ordered everyone clear of the building.

      But one of the witnesses had mentioned something about thinking he had heard a child scream a heartbeat after the explosion. That had been enough to make Adam go back.

      That and the memory of the child he hadn’t been able to save from another inferno. His own child. And his wife.

      The memory of that clung to him, riding the truck beside him with each fire he went to. No matter how many people Adam Collins had saved since that awful night two years ago when his small family had died in the flames within his house, it didn’t ease his pain. He suspected it never would.

      Taking deep breaths through his mask, Adam forged farther into the burning building. The heat was all around him as broad, decorative beams above him groaned dangerously, threatening to snap in half at any moment.

      He should be withdrawing.

      He pushed on instead.

      His captain’s voice ordering him to turn back echoed in his head as he made his way through the blinding sheets of fire.

      He almost missed him.

      If he hadn’t stumbled just then, trying to avoid falling debris, Adam wouldn’t have seen him. The small, curled up form of a boy lying on the floor, covered with plaster.

      At first he thought he was hallucinating. The boy looked so much like Bobby. But when he drew closer, fighting the flames for possession of a floor that was quickly eroding beneath his feet, Adam saw that it wasn’t Bobby, wasn’t a hallucination, it was a child. A small, unconscious little boy.

      Scooping up the limp body, Adam fought his way back out.

      Timber cracked and collapsed, nearly felling him. Blocking his path. With one arm wrapped around the boy, he picked another path, praying his luck would hold out one more time. Not for himself, but for the boy. Maybe that was why he’d been able to save so many people, because he didn’t care if he lived or died. It allowed him that tiny extra edge that the other firefighters, with so much to live for, so much to lose, didn’t have. It completely did away with any natural impulse to hesitate.

      Light worked its way through the tunnel of smoke and flames. An exit.

      Hang on, kid, we’re almost there.

      With a burst of adrenaline, Adam ran the rest of the way, making it out just in time. Behind him, the ceiling collapsed completely, making passage impossible. Had he hesitated for even a second, he and the boy would have been walled in.

      “Oh my God, look!” Bonnie cried, pointing a crimson nail toward the far side of the blockaded area where the fire still raged. She covered her mouth with both hands as shock registered. In her devastation, she’d forgotten all about the boy. “He found him, he found Jake!”

      Stone, talking to several of his men, his mind scrambling to put together the shard-like pieces of an explanation for what had transpired here this morning, looked up sharply at the sound of Bonnie’s shrill, eager cry.

      His eyes narrowed as he saw the firefighter miraculously emerge from the flames with the limp body of a boy pressed close to his chest.

      His shoved his fisted hands deep into the pockets of his jacket.

      “Looks like we got ourselves a hero,” he announced to the general populace that was now milling around what was deemed the social center of Lone Star County as well as Mission Creek.

      As cheers went up, Stone exchanged glances with Yance Ingram, the man who had once been his commanding officer in the Marines. A man after his own heart. He needed to talk to Ingram, to get the answers to questions he couldn’t risk asking out loud in front of the crowd.

      Ed Bancroft moved closer to him, a grim, wary look on his long, square face as he looked at his superior. “That’s the boy,” he confirmed. The boy he’d told Stone had looked into the security room.

      Stone set his mouth hard. Damn it, he hated loose ends.

      But as he came closer to the firemen, he saw that the boy’s small chest wasn’t moving. Maybe there was no need for concern after all.

      Bonnie’s stiletto heels sank into the damp ground with every step she took as she hurried over. “Is he all right?”

      Adam