Page 41 of Point of Mercy

Thomas slammed his empty glass onto the desk. “Get the best P.I. that money can buy! Once we find out what skeletons Brooks has tucked away in his closet, then we can deal with him!”

Brian didn’t need to be told twice. He finished his drink and was out the double doors of Thomas’s office. But the old man wasn’t satisfied. He walked to the window, where he could spy down on the parking lot. His white Mercedes hadn’t moved and Brian’s sleek green Jaguar was parked in the next spot. Within seconds Brian emerged from the back of the building. But he wasn’t alone. Melanie Patton, Thomas’s secretary, was with him. They shared a stolen kiss and Thomas’s stomach turned to ice. No wonder the boy couldn’t keep his mind on anything important.

Brian climbed into his Jaguar and roared off, but Thomas knew that he’d have to handle Turner Brooks himself.

* * *

Heather drove homefrom her gallery by rote, stopping automatically at the stop signs, slowing for corners, accelerating up the steep streets of San Francisco without even thinking. Pictures of Adam flashed through her mind. She remembered bringing him home from the hospital, giving him his first bath, watching anxiously as he tried to skateboard at four…. Oh, God, her life had been empty until he’d arrived. A lump settled in her throat. By the time she’d parked in the garage, on the lowest level of her home in Pacific Heights, the reality that Adam’s life was in jeopardy nearly incapacitated her. What if she lost Adam? What if the boy died? Her own life would be over.

Her heart froze and she could barely breathe. A cold, damp sweat clung to her skin as she sat behind the wheel, unable to move. “You can’t let it happen,” she muttered, not knowing if she was talking to herself or to God.

She was in her mid-twenties and she suddenly felt ancient. Her legs barely carried her up the first flight,from the garage to the kitchen level, above which two more stories loomed in this prestigious part of the city.

“Mommy!” She heard Adam’s squeal as she opened the door. Fifty-three pounds of energetic five-year-old came barrelling toward her, nearly throwing her off balance as Adam flung himself into her waiting arms.

Oh, precious, precious baby,she thought, squeezing her eyes against tears. Her throat worked over a huge lump. “How’re ya, sport?” she said, managing a smile.

“Good!” he replied, though his skin was pale, and dark smudges beneath his eyes belied his insistence that he felt fine.

“And you were good for Aunt Rachelle?”

“Of course,” he said, his impish eyes gleaming. He wrinkled a freckled nose. “She’s crazy about me.”

“Is she?” Heather couldn’t help laughing, despite her fears about Adam’s future. Adam was precocious and she overindulged him terribly, but she couldn’t help herself.

“You bring me a treat?” Adam demanded.

“Did I ever,” she replied, opening her purse and finding a minuscule little car, part of a set. She had the entire collection hidden in a closet upstairs, and when she left Adam, she always slipped a tiny car into her purse to surprise him when she returned. Today’s gift, a candy-apple-red racing car, was unlike the taxi, ambulance and garbage truck he’d already placed in his toy box.

“Oh, wow!” Adam’s eyes, gray and round, lit up. He scrambled out of her arms and began moving the tiny vehicle over the floor, the tables, the plants and everything else in his path as he made rumbling race-car noises deep in his throat.

The stairs squeaked. Heather glanced up as Rachelle descended from the upper living room level. Sunlight refracting from the leaded windows over the landing turned her hair a reddish mahogany color for an instant. Tall and willowy, with intense hazel eyes, the “levelheaded one” of the two Tremont sisters, Rachelle was four years older than Heather and soon to be married to Jackson Moore, a New York lawyer who had once been the bad boy of Gold Creek. “I thought I heard you,” Rachelle said, questions in her eyes. Though Heather had confided to her older sister about Adam’s paternity, Rachelle was still a little hurt that her younger sister hadn’t told her the truth long ago.

“Turner will be here a little later.” Heather’s nerves were strung tight. “He’s already at the hospital, being typed.” She thought about her conversations with Turner—short and to the point. All business. As if they’d never kissed, never touched, never made love in the hay…

“What happens then?”

Heather snapped herself back to the present and caught Rachelle observing her. Damn her sister’s reporter instincts. Heather sometimes felt she couldn’t do anything without Rachelle guessing her motives. “If the marrow’s a match, we go through the procedure—when the doctor says it’s the right time. Once Adam’s given a clean bill of health, so to speak, we all go back to his ranch.”

“And if the tissue doesn’t match?”

“Don’t even think that way,” Heather said softly.“This has got to work.” Her fists closed in silent determination. “It’s got to!” There were no other alternatives.

Rachelle skated a glance down Heather’s sleek dress and coordinated jewelry. “And then you’re off to the ranch? Why is it I can’t see you branding calves or hauling hay or whatever else it is they do at a place named Badlands?”

“You’d be surprised,” Heather replied.

“I’d be flabbergasted.”

Adam ran his racing car around a potted fern, and Rachelle hugged her sister. “We’ll get through this. All of us,” she insisted. She was always so positive and levelheaded, though now her hazel eyes were shadowed with worry.

“I will—”

“Hey, lookie, Auntie Rachelle!” Adam held up his new prize, the little red Porsche. He was beaming ear to ear.

“Boy, isn’t that something?” Rachelle bent on one knee to examine the tiny car. “I bet you could win the Daytona 500 with that rig.”

“I could even win the ’tona five million!” Adam assured her confidently and snatched his small prize from her hand.

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