From Father to Son

Niall had never felt so steady, so cool. He was thinking, waiting with extraordinary patience, willing the instant to come when he could kill this bastard without unduly risking the woman.

There. The woman stumbled. Niall pulled the trigger and the Glock jerked in his hand exactly as it did at the gun range. Bang, bang, bang. Blood blossomed; glass on the minivan exploded; the woman fell forward, then, screaming, began to crawl away.

The bank robber was down, broken glass all around him. His handgun skittered away across the pavement from inert fingers. He lay sprawled, unmoving.

Glock held out in the firing position, Niall walked cautiously forward until he stood only feet from the man. There was one hell of a lot of blood. Dead, he thought coldly. His second dead body for the day. At least he’d only killed one of them.

This was also, however, his second shooting resulting in a fatality in the past year. The first was a crazy guy who’d intended to slit Jane’s throat. Niall had gotten there ahead of Duncan, so he’d been the one to take the shot. He’d as soon this didn’t become a habit, he reflected, in that weird way a mind worked at a moment like this.

Sirens rose to a crescendo. Police cars slammed to a halt blocking both exits from the bank parking lot. Officers leaped out and took cover. A lot of weapons were drawn on Niall.

Something made his glance slide sidelong to the broken windows of the minivan, and a monster of fear rose in him. There was a child car seat inside. A Mercedes-Benz of car seats, it occurred to him, even as he realized there was a kid in that seat, slumped forward. Blood was shockingly red against the dandelion-pale fluff of hair.

Please God, don’t let me have killed that kid.

THERE WERE ONLY A FEW mourners at Enid Cooper’s funeral. Her contemporaries were gone, or in assisted living. A couple of neighbors were there, and Rowan Staley and her father. Not Mom; she and Dad had separated and filed for divorce.

At least Rowan had persuaded her parents-in-law not to attend. She had been able to leave the kids with them. Maybe at six years old Desmond had been old enough to attend a funeral, but why should he have to? It wasn’t an open casket; Rowan wouldn’t have that. Gran had had a thing about dignity; she would have hated the idea of everyone filing past gazing at her wrinkled, dead face.

Gran’s tenant, whose name escaped Rowan, was here, too. When she’d seen him coming and going at Gran’s, he’d never stopped to introduce himself or anything like that. A couple of times he had given a distant nod before disappearing inside the tiny cottage. Despite his unfriendliness, Rowan had actually been glad to know he was there. After her divorce, she’d had the wistful thought that she could live in the cottage, but it wasn’t big enough for her and the kids. And even though Gran had room in her house, she was too old and not patient enough to live with a rambunctious kindergartener and a wistful four-year-old. Never mind the dog. Gran didn’t hold with animals being in the house. Rowan hadn’t had any choice but to take the kids and move in with her in-laws, relieved that Gran would be safer having a law enforcement officer living right there behind her house.

She’d been told he was the one who’d found Gran. And he’d cared enough to come today to pay his respects. Rowan wondered if he would bother speaking to her or her father after the service was over. She was betting not.

The minister was talking, but it was like the sound of running water to Rowan. Pleasant but holding no meaning. He hadn’t even known Gran. She hadn’t attended a church service in at least ten years, maybe more. He was young, new. This was his standard spiel. His tone was filled with warmth and regret, which she appreciated even though he couldn’t possibly feel either emotion. This was like a stage performance for him, she supposed.

I should be listening.

Dad’s gaze was fixed somewhere in the vicinity of the pastor, but his expression was abstracted. He and his mother hadn’t been close; as she’d gotten older and crankier, she’d also become increasingly disapproving. Gran had been one hundred percent disgusted with her son’s recent conduct. But still. He must have good memories. Regrets that were way more genuine than the pastor’s. As mad as Rowan often felt at her dad, what if he died and she had to sit at his funeral trying to remember the last time she’d said “I love you?” Remembering the angry words they’d exchanged?

She gave a shudder and stole a look sideways, to find that Gran’s tenant had turned his head and was watching her. Goose bumps chased over her skin. He had a craggy face, dark red hair cut short and flint-gray eyes. Eyes that were—not cold, Rowan had decided the first time she’d seen him. Remote. As if he stood a thousand paces from the rest of humanity. Didn’t know her, didn’t want to know her. Or anybody else.

It had to be her imagination. Maybe it was a typical cop look, cynicism to the nth degree. Or maybe he didn’t like her. Did he think she’d neglected Gran? The thought filled her with outrage. She glared at him, saw his eyebrows twitch, then he inclined his head the slightest amount to acknowledge her existence and turned his attention to the front.

Why had he been looking at her at all? Did he guess she was Gran’s heir and therefore his new landlady? Or would he have assumed he would be dealing with Dad?

Dad had been a little put out when the will was read and he found out his mother hadn’t left either her relatively modest savings nor her house to him, but to his credit he’d mostly been rueful.

“The two of you always were close,” he had said, shrugging. “And you’ve been trying to take care of her.”

Rowan wished now she had been able to do more.

Or maybe Gran had known. Guessed, anyway. Rowan hadn’t talked even to Gran about her marriage, or her shame at feeling relieved when Drew died. She hadn’t admitted how miserable she was living with his parents, who were entirely fixated on her children. Their Andrew, her husband, had been an only child.

“Desmond and Anna are all we have left,” one or the other of them said, too often. The hunger in their gazes when they looked at their grandchildren unnerved Rowan. There was too much need, too much desperation, too many expectations being fastened on young children who didn’t understand any of it.

The Staleys had been shocked when she informed them that she had inherited her grandmother’s house and would be moving into it with Anna and Desmond. She couldn’t cope without them, they declared, and they didn’t like it when she insisted that she could. It was true that she hadn’t been able to cope before this, not financially, anyway. She worked as a paraeducator—a teacher’s aide—at the elementary school. She didn’t make enough money to pay for daycare for Anna, as well as rent. But now she would be able to afford a preschool for Anna. She would own her very own home, and have rental income, as well, from the cottage.

Paid by the man with the russet hair and chilly gray eyes. She didn’t know how she felt about the idea of him living so close. Perhaps she’d scarcely see him. It hadn’t sounded as if he and Gran had much more than a nodding acquaintance.

Rowan hoped he liked dogs. She might be able to keep the kids away from him, but Super Sam the dog didn’t grasp the concept of boundaries. Thank heavens Gran’s backyard was fenced. The unfortunate part was, the cottage was inside the fence. The kids and tenant both would have to learn to close gates.

She stole another look at him to find that he appeared entirely expressionless. Somehow she felt quite sure he wasn’t thinking about Gran any more than Dad was.

Any more than I am. Rowan felt a quick stab of guilt. Oh, Gran. I did love you. I will be grateful for the rest of my life for this gift you’ve given me.

Freedom.

STILL SWEATING OVER the bank parking-lot shooting, Niall hadn’t gotten to sleep until nearly 3:00 a.m. This had been a hell of a few days. Only yesterday he’d had to face an Internal Affairs panel to justify his actions, as if he wasn’t second-guessing himself already, the way any good cop would. Then his sleep wasn’t restful, any more than it had been the past few nights. No surprise to wake filled with horror. The last images of the nightmare were extraordinarily vivid. In his dream he’d reached for the little kid with the pale fluff of hair, lifting the child’s chin to see dead eyes that still accused him even now.

Damn it, he thought viciously, scrubbing his hands over his face. Enough already.

Niall got up to use the john, splashed cold water on his face and stared at himself in the mirror.

Bad enough he’d shot and killed a man. He’d learned a lesson last year, when he’d killed for the first time: you paid a price for taking a life, even if taking it had been the right thing to do. Mostly, he thought it right and just he should suffer some doubts, be plagued by nightmares. Killing wasn’t something anyone should take lightly.

The little girl, though, that was something else. She’d come within a hair’s breadth of having her head blown off. God. What if it had been my bullet? As much as her face, that was the question driving him crazy.

Knowing sleep would be elusive, he went back to bed, where he lay staring up at the dark ceiling, hitting the replay button over and over and over until the tape should be wearing out. The gray of dawn was seeping between the slats of the window blinds before he fell asleep again.

The sound of slamming doors, shrill, excited voices and a barking dog jerked him from sleep. What the…? With a groan, he rolled his head on the pillow to peer blearily at the bedside clock. Eight-thirty. He was going to kill someone.

Even half-asleep with his head pounding, he winced at that. Now that he actually had killed two men, those words didn’t come as lightly to him as they once had.

He sat up and put his feet to the floor. A woman was laughing, a low, delighted trill. A kid yelled something and the dog went into another frenzy of barking. There were other voices—several adults. The racket had to be at the next-door neighbor’s. Enid was barely in the ground. Her estate couldn’t possibly be settled.

He staggered from his bedroom into the combination living room/kitchen/dining room and separated the slats of the blinds on the front window enough to give him a view of Enid’s house. Then he stared in disbelief.

Oh, crap. Oh, hell. Oh…

A U-Haul truck had been backed into the driveway. The cargo door was already rolled up. A couple of people were currently hauling a mattress out of the truck and down the metal ramp. A dog was running in crazed circles on the lawn, chased by a boy and, trailing well behind, a tiny girl in pink overalls and purple shoes that, to Niall’s dazed eyes, seemed to be flashing sparkling lights. The back door of Enid’s house stood open. A woman was carrying a lamp in. She’d no sooner disappeared inside than a different woman came out empty-handed. She called something to the kids, who were too busy running in frenetic circles to acknowledge her.

It was the granddaughter. The curvy package with the fabulous legs, exposed almost as effectively in snug jeans as when she wore short shorts. Those were her two kids. The dog… Was it theirs? The husband was probably one of those men.

An expletive escaped Niall’s lips. They were moving in. An entire family was moving into Enid’s house, separated from his cottage by the width of a lawn and one old apple tree.

He kept staring, shock almost—but not quite—numbing him. There would be a swing hanging from the branch of that apple tree before he knew it. The dog would crap all over the lawn and set up an uproar every time Niall came and went. The kids would have friends over. Soon, there wouldn’t be two of them, there would be half a dozen.

This was his worst nightmare.

He’d have to break the lease.

And pay massive penalties, unless Enid’s granddaughter was as eager to see him gone as he was to go.

Uh-huh. And where would he be going to?

Maybe it was time he bought a house, he reflected. He could certainly afford to. But the idea had always filled him with uneasiness. It still did. A one-year lease was all the commitment he’d ever wanted to make. Actually owning his own house, his own piece of land, putting down roots… Making some kind of unspoken promise, if only to himself, to stay here, in his hometown....

He let the blinds spring back into place but stayed where he was, staring at them. Outside the pandemonium continued.

There had to be another rental somewhere that would be suitable. This was Sunday. Once everything settled down out there, he’d slip out and grab his newspaper. Maybe he’d spot an ad that said something like, Nice house, Privacy! No near neighbors!

Rural. That’s what he needed, Niall decided grimly. So what if it took him longer to drive to work, if come spring he had to fight the traffic congestion caused by tourists out to view the tulip and daffodil fields?

God help me, he thought, and stumbled into the tiny kitchenette to put on a pot of coffee. Clearly, going back to bed wasn’t happening.

AT FOUR-THIRTY IN THE afternoon, a firm rat-a-tat-tat on his door made Niall go on sharp alert. He’d been lying on his sofa brooding, feeling trapped. Would he never be able to come and go without risking the possibility of having to exchange neighborly greetings?

He swore under his breath and stood. It would be her, of course. No, maybe not. Maybe he’d get lucky and be able to deal with the husband. If there was one.

No such luck. Not only the woman stood on his doorstep, but her two children, the little girl latched on to her leg and gazing suspiciously at him, the boy’s eyes filled with curiosity. The dog was trying to shove between them and get in the door. Niall automatically stuck out a foot to foil the break-in.

His gaze traveled up—although it didn’t have to go very far—to meet the young woman’s. She was sort of a blonde, with big brown eyes. Bangs were pushed to one side, and the rest of her baby-fine hair was in a ponytail. Maybe her hair was really brown and she’d had it highlighted.... But Niall shook off that conjecture immediately. She wore no makeup, the bangs looked like she trimmed them herself, and she had a big splotch of what could have been mustard on her faded T-shirt. Which, he couldn’t help noticing, fit snugly over generous breasts. C cup for sure.

He became aware that, as he studied her, she was likewise inspecting him from his bare feet to his equally faded T-shirt. He thought she looked both wary and apprehensive. His mouth quirked slightly when he noticed that the little girl, who had moonlight-pale hair but Mommy’s soft brown eyes, had an identical expression on her face. Her clutch on her mother’s thigh tightened.

“I’m afraid I don’t know your name,” the woman said.

He actually did know hers, he’d realized yesterday even before being handed the program for the service. Enid had mentioned it a couple of times. It had caught in his memory only because Rowan was an unusual name.

“Niall MacLachlan,” he said. “I assume you’re Enid’s granddaughter.”

“Yes. Rowan Staley.” She had a beautiful voice. The trill of laughter he’d heard earlier had to have been hers. “These are my children, Desmond and Anna.”

The boy piped up, “Hi.” The girl only stared, her eyes narrowing.

Niall had the thought that he could develop a soft spot for her.

“Hello,” he said and then waited, meantime keeping a cautious eye on the dog who had made an enthusiastic, tail-wagging circuit of the yard and was now closing in again. The damn thing looked as if he’d been put together with spare parts. Niall had seen garden art in which rusting springs, trowels and what-not were welded together to form fantastical animals. The dog was even rust-colored.

“We’ve moved into the house,” Rowan said.

No shit. He nodded then couldn’t resist saying, “Pretty quick.”

Her eyes narrowed, increasing the resemblance to her tiny daughter. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. I was surprised, that’s all.”

“I’m Gran’s sole heir. There’s no one to object and no point in the house sitting empty while the will goes through probate.”

His answering stare was deliberately bored. She flushed, giving her a rosy-cheeked look. No elegant cheekbones here. She wasn’t plump, but she had a lot of curves packed onto a frame that couldn’t possibly top five-foot-two or -three.

“I’m now your landlady,” she said sharply.

The dog sprang forward, forcing woman and children to stagger aside, and flung himself happily at Niall.

“Sit!” he snapped. Apparently surprised, the animal dropped to its haunches. Equally surprised, his family stared at him. Niall said, “Have you looked into that ugly dog contest? There might be prize money.”

“That’s not nice!” the boy exclaimed. “Super Sam is…is…”

Something like a chuckle was welling up in Niall’s chest. He suppressed it.

Rowan looked as indignant as her son. “How can you say that? Sam’s…cute.”

The cute came out kind of weak. Niall let his silence speak for itself.

The little girl said in a sweet, high voice, “We love Sam.”

The dog leaped up, ran a wet pink tongue over her face and bounded off. After a small sigh, Rowan said, “Speaking of Sam. One of the things I came by for was to ask that you keep the gate closed. He doesn’t have an awful lot of common sense, and he, er, likes to dig holes, which some of the neighbors might not appreciate, so we really need to keep him confined.”

That was a nuisance, but not unreasonable. Niall nodded. “I can do that.”

“Thank you.” She was trying for crisp sarcasm, but couldn’t quite pull it off. Not her style, Niall thought.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“I haven’t yet had a chance to study the rental agreement,” Rowan said. “Once I have, perhaps we can talk about it.”

“What’s to talk about? Unless one of us doesn’t intend to honor it?”

She didn’t look away. “And which one of us would that be?”

“Depends on how things go, doesn’t it?”

Her lips compressed. “Yes. It does.” She backed up a step, taking her children with her. “Mr. MacLachlan…”

“Detective. I’m with Stimson P.D.”

He saw the moment she made the connection. “I read about you in the paper.” And, clearly, hadn’t liked what she’d read. She opened her mouth to say more, glanced down at Desmond and changed her mind. “What a pleasure it’s been to meet you,” she said, and this time the sarcasm worked better. So well, in fact, that he couldn’t help smiling.

His new landlady looked momentarily startled, then mad. She gave a nod that made her ponytail bob and her bangs swing, then steered her kids off the porch. Both their heads were turning to look back as she marched them across the lawn.

Still smiling, Niall closed the door. With luck, his all-too-close neighbors wouldn’t come calling again in the near future. The kid—Desmond—was right. Niall wasn’t very nice. He reflected that he’d been inspired by the hot pepper stuff orthodontists gave parents to apply to their kids’ thumbs when they wouldn’t quit sucking on them. A preventative measure.

His smile died, though, at the memory of overhearing his sergeant grumble about how his five-year-old had developed a taste for the damn pepper, and was sucking her thumb even more now.

Okay, not foolproof, but worth a try.

CHAPTER TWO

THE GUILT WAS GETTING him down.

He’d expected to struggle with some complex emotions regarding the shooting. Niall didn’t question his decision to take down the bank robber, who’d been doing his damnedest to kill Niall and very possibly would have shot the poor teller once he didn’t need her. The adrenaline kept surging, though, at unexpected moments. That was okay; he knew from experience that this was a problem time would cure.

It was the sight of the toddler in the car seat that was haunting him, waking and sleeping. Two days ago, Duncan had called to let him know that the bloody bullet embedded in the car door beside the little girl wasn’t Niall’s. Relief had dropped him into a chair with a thud. Thank God, was all he could think. He already knew she’d gone home after only a two-night stay in the hospital. The bullet had barely creased her skull.

Not my bullet.

But, damn, it had been a close call. He’d known how high risk a shoot-out was in the middle of town with civilians all around. People often sat waiting in a parked car—although he was still infuriated at the father who had left a child that age alone while he went into the bank. Niall couldn’t seem to stop asking himself whether he’d done the right thing. If he’d backed off somehow, given the guy space to make a getaway… But he couldn’t figure how he could have done that. And then there was the hostage.

In the week since the incident, he’d gone around and around a million times, never arriving at any satisfactory conclusion. Unfortunately, Niall had had an abundance of time to brood, since he was on routine leave following the shooting. Instead of doing desk work, he had chosen to use vacation days. He had a hell of a lot of them saved to use.

And now he felt like crud over being so rude to a woman who was probably perfectly nice and had been well-intentioned. Two little kids, too, who’d stared at him with shocked eyes by the time Mom hastily bore them away. No, he wasn’t the friendliest guy on earth, but he knew he’d have been more civil if he hadn’t been sleep-deprived and on edge.

He finally ventured out two days after that initial meet-and-greet to ease his conscience. Rowan and the children were in the backyard. She seemed to be happily setting pink flowering geraniums into pots on the porch. A green plastic sandbox shaped like a turtle had appeared yesterday, and the girl sat in it with a shovel and bucket. The boy and dog both had crawled beneath the giant rhododendrons that had grown dark limbs together along the fence line.

The girl—Anna—and Rowan both turned their heads at the sound of his door and watched him as he walked across the grass toward them. He half expected tiny Anna to bolt for her mom, but she didn’t move.

Rowan eyed him without welcome. Damn, she was pretty, he thought, dismayed at his seemingly unstoppable physical reaction to her. She was more wholesome than his usual type, but that might be because he avoided the home-and-hearth kind of woman like the plague. This one had such a lush body, what man wouldn’t notice?

“Hi,” he said. “I, uh, thought maybe I could be a little more civil than I was the other day.”

“That wouldn’t be hard.”

He grinned. “No. I guess it wouldn’t.”

“Did you get out of bed on the wrong side?”

“Something like that,” he admitted. He glanced to be sure neither kid had gotten too close. “You read about the shooting, I gather.”

Rowan nodded, expression cool.

“The aftermath of something like that is always…unsettling. I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“I read it wasn’t you who shot the child.”

“No. I was trying to be very conscious of how many people were in potential danger. Even so…” He sighed. “It was a relief to know it wasn’t my gun.”

“But it could have been.”

“I actually only pulled the trigger a couple of times, when I was pretty certain I had a clean shot to take him down. He was the one spraying bullets all over the parking lot.”

She looked down at the trowel in her gloved hands. “At least she’s okay.”

Niall made a sound of agreement even though he felt defensive. Maybe he still hadn’t resolved in his own mind how much responsibility he bore for that little girl’s near miss, but that was different than seeing judgment in some civilian’s eyes.

“You did some nice things for Gran,” Rowan said.

He shifted uncomfortably. Sure, he’d done a few repairs, rebuilt those back steps Rowan’s feet rested on, picked up groceries and prescriptions a few times, but that was common decency, nothing above and beyond.