He remained off the road and approached from an angle where he couldn’t be seen, soon spotting Gillis’s lone vehicle. Dean knew immediately where Gillis lay in wait—on top of the pink building that housed restrooms and a closed gift shop. Moving to the side opposite the parking area, near the swampy habitat where gators waited for their prey, Dean scanned the roof for any sign of the agent, knowing Gillis wouldn’t be watching this direction. The roof featured a parapet, so he’d have to position his weapon over the edge in order to take his shot, which would make it easier to spot him.
Dean’s phone vibrated. “Yeah?” he whispered.
“A limo is approaching,” Sanchez reported.
June. But he wasn’t in position. Praying the Protection Alliance was as good as their reputation and she wouldn’t step out of the vehicle until he was ready, Dean moved to the side of the structure and prepared to make his own shot.
* * *
“I DON’T LIKE THIS,” Tony announced.
“What?” June asked. They were on the access road to Royal Palm and should arrive any minute.
“The isolation,” Tony replied. “Who is this guy you’re meeting?”
“He was my parents’ best friend. He’s law enforcement.”
“Doesn’t feel right,” Tony said, exchanging a glance with Brad.
“Look,” June said. “We’re not alone.”
The limo rumbled by a blue car parked on the side of the road. She couldn’t see inside the tinted glass.
Tony drove into a parking lot and didn’t stop. Gillis’s Lexus was the only vehicle, parked close to a pink one-story building with restrooms and vending machines.
“I’d like to use the ladies’ room,” June said.
“Don’t get out of the car, June,” Brad ordered.
“What is wrong with you guys?” June asked. “You’re—”
“Stay low,” Tony said in a hard voice.
Obeying, June felt her heart hammering inside her chest, the guards’ sudden caution making her nervous. But this was crazy.
Tony circled the parking lot and braked to a stop close to where they had entered. “Where’s your friend?”
June raised her head and scanned the area. Where was Gillis? He should have heard their approach. But of course he didn’t know she was in this long, black vehicle.
“He wouldn’t recognize the limo. Maybe he’s waiting in the car,” she suggested.
“I didn’t see him when we drove by,” Tony said.
“Maybe he stretched out on the seat and fell asleep,” Brad said. “It’s damn early.”
“Or he’s out on Anhinga Trail,” June said.
Tony removed June’s phone from the box, checked for a signal and handed it to her. “Call him.”
* * *
WORKING WITH QUICK, sure movements, Dean had nearly completed assembling his weapon when a phone rang. The sound came from the roof.
The limo was idling on the other side of the parking lot. No way could anyone inside hear that ring. No one had emerged from the vehicle. Probably because June’s guards wondered why the hell Gillis hadn’t shown himself.
Good men.
“Yeah, June?” Gillis answered.
Dean watched the roof. Couldn’t see anything, but could easily hear the bastard in the early-morning quiet.
“I’m out on the trail,” Gillis said. “Wood storks are nesting out here. Really. You have to see it. Yeah, okay. I’ll be right back. Oh, I’ve unlocked the facilities if you need to make a pit stop.” Gillis laughed at some comment from June. “Yeah, coffee does that every time. See you in a few.”
Assembly completed, Dean came to his feet. He brought the scope to his eye. If a guard emerged first, Gillis wouldn’t take him out, because June could drive away. Gillis would wait until June became visible. He’d kill her, eliminate the guards and disappear forever.
Focused on his target, Dean began to breathe in a controlled rhythm, timing each breath to slow his heart rate. He needed a steady hand to keep his aim true.
He’d only have one shot.
* * *
“HE’LL BE HERE in five minutes,” June said to her guards. “Can I please use the bathroom? He unlocked it for us.”
“You’re sure about this guy?” Brad asked.
“Yes,” June replied, sick of the tension. She just wanted to get the injured bird and go home. “I’ve known him for years.”
“Let me go first,” Brad said.
Brad exited the limo and moved toward the structure, a gun in his hand. She shook her head. Crazy paranoia over Agent Gillis.
After a few minutes, Brad looked back and nodded. June opened her door and stepped into the quiet morning, smelling the tangy brine of the nearby mangroves. She heard the sweet call of a cardinal and felt herself relax.
* * *
IN THE COVER of a tree, Dean heard a car door open, but he didn’t dare look away from his focus through the scope. No movement on the roof. Another door opened. Dean waited for Gillis to show himself.
The barrel of a rifle slid onto the edge of the roof. The top of Gillis’s skull became visible. Dean knew he could take the kill shot. He wanted to. He could blow the bastard’s brains out, rid the world of the scum forever.
But June would never get the answers she needed.
A hand gripped the weapon. A long finger approached the trigger. At the bottom of his breath, Dean took the shot.
The rifle broke into pieces in a blur of blood. The barrel kicked up into the air and dropped to the ground.
A woman screamed. June.
So did a man. In pain. Gillis.
Dean turned toward the limo. One of the guards lay on top of June. The other one was in a shooting stance with his weapon focused on him.
“Police,” Dean shouted, raising his arms into the air.
Sanchez roared their unmarked car into the parking lot, yelling, “Police. Drop your weapon,” over the PA system. The guard relaxed his stance.
“June?” Dean shouted, moving in that direction.
“Dean?”
When he heard her voice, he broke into a run. She shoved her bodyguard aside and ran to meet him. Gathering her close, Dean breathed in the essence of her and swore he’d never let her go again.
“I love you,” she said fiercely, her words hot against his cheek.
He closed his eyes. “God, I love you.”
A week later
WITH THE SUN sinking low behind her, June stared at the granite headstones carved with her parents’ names. This was the first time she’d visited their resting place since the funeral. Dean stood beside her, an arm around her shoulders. She liked this spot. It seemed peaceful.
She’d just explained to her mom and dad what had really happened ten years ago and apologized for not believing in them. Maybe this conversation would seem silly to most people, but she knew Dean understood.
“So, Gillis is rotting in jail,” she told them. “Dean says he’ll never get out, but probably won’t get the death penalty.”
“I said I didn’t know,” Dean corrected. “But he’s confessed to everything, including the murder of his wife, so the death penalty might be off the table.”
“Aunt Janice apparently discovered he’d framed you,” June added. “So he had to kill her, too, making it look like natural causes.”
Dean squeezed her shoulder.
“It’s still so hard to believe,” she said. “I trusted Gillis. He was always concerned for my well-being. He even asked me to forgive my parents.”
“What he was doing was keeping tabs on you in case you wanted to reopen the arson case.”
“And that never once occurred to me,” she said.
“Good thing. As long as the truth stayed buried, he let th
ings ride. When Kublin escaped, Gillis decided he had to get rid of all the old players so he could quit worrying.”
“I wasn’t a player,” June said. “Just a lonely little girl. Remember the bunting rescue?”
“Oh, I think I recall that little adventure,” Dean said.
“Gillis had a rifle with him that day. I think he planned to shoot me then if he’d gotten the chance.”
Dean pulled her into an embrace, and June leaned into his protective warmth, wrapping her arms around his waist. She felt safe, whole, as if the fragments of her life that disintegrated after the fire had finally merged back together.
She fingered the engagement ring on her left hand. She’d finally flown free of the past.
“Are we done here?” Dean asked softly.
“Almost.” June stepped away and turned to the graves again. “I’m in the process of moving out of Uncle Mike’s penthouse and in with Dean. I know what you’re thinking, but we’re getting married.” She held up her left hand and displayed the new diamond, the most beautiful piece of jewelry she’d ever owned. “See?”
“Is there where I should ask for your father’s permission?” Dean asked in a mock-serious tone.
She gently elbowed him in the ribs. “He’s a good man,” June said to the graves, “even if he’s too cocky and shoots birds.”
“I also shoot bad guys,” Dean added helpfully.
“Yes, he does,” June agreed, reaching for his hand. “He’s saved my life in so many ways, and I know you’d love him as much as I do.”
Dean kissed the top of her head.
“I’m sorry you’ll never meet him,” she whispered. “Or our children.”
“Three children,” Dean stated.
“Maybe four,” June corrected.
“Whatever you say.” Dean shrugged. “Thanks to some sensitivity training, I’m a changed man.”
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from THE GOOD FATHER by Tara Taylor Quinn.
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CHAPTER ONE
HE STOOD NAKED and felt the water splash over him. Eyes closed, arms raised with his hands splayed above him on the porcelain tile, Brett Ackerman dropped his chin to his chest. Water pressure that was fine for cleansing wasn’t strong enough to wash away the tension knotting the muscles along the back of his neck.
He stood there, anyway. Planned to let the hot water run out and then to remain in the cold for as long as he could take it. His pain was his own fault. He’d been out too late after several grueling days of work, flying back and forth across the country twice.
He’d been celebrating. Ten years since he’d sold the dot-com he’d started his junior year in college. A decade of his life had passed, and here he was. Standing alone in the walk-in shower in his elegant, historical, two-story walk-up across a quiet street from a flowered lot that led to the ocean beyond.
He owned the house. The lovely two acres across the street. And another house down the street, too, that was split up into bed-and-breakfast-type rooms that were all rented on an extended-stay basis.
He owned them both, and lived in this one, alone.
Just as he’d walked home alone from the quaint neighborhood pub on the corner in the wee hours of that Tuesday morning in September. Where he’d celebrated by nursing two cocktails over a period of several hours and playing video trivia games with anonymous opponents.
His life was on track. Exactly as he’d planned.
And that fact was worth celebrating.
His cell phone peeled, an urgent sound partially muted by the shower. It was only seven. He wasn’t due at the Americans Against Prejudice board meeting in LA until nine. His unscheduled tour of the home office facilities would follow immediately after. While the other board members were at lunch.
His phone continued to ring. Brett continued to stand under the shower—remaining strong against the temptation to pick up—stubbornly determined to relax.
As a nonprofit regulator—a self-made position that in ten years had grown into something approximating a national Better Business Seal of Approval designed to assure nonprofit donors that their monies were not being misappropriated—he was currently sitting on more than fifty boards around the country.
The phone fell blessedly silent, and Brett lifted his face to the soothing heat sluicing over him. Enjoying the moment.
Then his phone started to ring again. Shit. He’d made it through the first summons, but there was no way he could ignore a second, right on the heels of the first. At seven in the morning.
So much for a little naked relaxation.
* * *
ELLA WALES ACKERMAN, RN, the brand-new charge nurse in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Santa Raquel Children’s Hospital—a newly completed facility just outside Santa Raquel—was in the unit’s nursing office early on that Tuesday morning, going over charts and checking her email before her shift began. The thousand-bed facility had only been open a few weeks, and already they had thirty patients in their fifty-bed unit.
Thirty babies fighting for their lives.
She read chart notes from the night before. Saw that the little “ostomy” guy had coded again, but was stabilized. His liver was shutting down due to the nutrition they were forced to give him intravenously until they could do the surgery that would put his stomach back together. If they couldn’t keep him stable, get him well enough to tolerate the surgery...
He was stable. They’d do all they could for him.
“Ella?” She glanced up as Brianna Wood, one of her nurses, a twenty-eight-year-old transfer from San Francisco, stopped in the office doorway. “I know you aren’t on the floor yet, but I just wanted to let you know, we got word an hour ago that a new patient’s coming up from Burbank sometime this morning. A two-pound, six-week-old girl. I don’t know the particulars yet, just that she’s in a warming bed and breathing on her own.”
“Let’s put her in D-4,” Ella said. The pod was their least crowded and also one that, so far, had no patients with ventilators. They talked about the attending physician and waiting for orders, and then Ella asked, “So, did you talk to him?”
Brianna had been planning to ask her boyfriend to move in with her. Which meant leaving his job as a nuclear medicine technician in San Francisco to relocate to Santa Raquel. The long-distance relationship wasn’t working out well.
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“He said he’d see...”
The woman wasn’t crying, but Ella could almost feel the effort it took Brianna to keep her emotions in check.
“You thinking about going home, then?” She’d hate to lose her. Not only were they still staffing, Brianna was a damn good nurse, too. But if she would be happier...
“Absolutely not. I love this job. And if he’s not sure now, my moving back isn’t going to make him any more so.”
There was a lot Ella could say about the importance of having a life beyond the man you loved, but she was the woman’s boss. And admittedly jaded where men were concerned. “He could change his mind.”
Brianna shrugged. “Maybe.” She looked hopeful f
or a moment. “Do you think I should? Go back?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“Would you?”
She shouldn’t answer that, either. “No.”
Brianna’s nod gave her pause. “But...if you want to go home, I’ll give you a glowing reference,” Ella added with a small smile. She’d never been a boss before. Was used to being just one of the nurses—someone who could offer personal advice and opinions without undue professional consequence.
“You don’t wear a ring...”
The question on Brianna’s pretty face called out to Ella. She was new in town, too. And other than her sister-in-law, Chloe, who was living with her temporarily, had no one to confide in. Or even catch a movie with.
“I’m not married.”
“Have you ever been?”
Closing the charting program on her computer, Ella stood up. “Yes, I have been. Now, let’s go get D-4 ready before shift change. If you want to grab a cup of coffee after you get off, I’ll see what I can arrange...”
So she shouldn’t fraternize. A cup of coffee with a valuable employee who was hurting was just good business.
As it turned out, Ella didn’t make it to D-4 or coffee with Brianna. Before she’d even clocked in, the three-month-old in C-2 coded, and it took a couple hours to get him stabilized. By the time Ella finally made it to the break room for a cup of coffee, Brianna was long gone. And she sat by herself, sipping her dark roast, and thinking about things that weren’t productive.
Like Brett. And the baby they’d spent three years and ungodly amounts of money trying to conceive. The baby he’d never wanted. The baby who’d been born too soon to save, leaving his mama with little hope of ever having another child of her own. And here she was, four years later, saving other people’s preemies.
When she’d graduated from college, Ella hadn’t planned to work with seriously ill babies. She’d focused on pediatric nursing. And a job on a PIC unit at a large hospital in LA had been available. Whenever babies had been in for procedures, she’d been the one doctors had requested to assist them. They said she was good with the babies. That she seemed to have a natural ability to calm sick infants.
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