“Where’s his father?” Mac asked.
Jules didn’t look at him. “They… They didn’t say, exactly.”
Tanner looked at his watch. “You’re going to Oklahoma City?”
Jules nodded.
“It’s late, so the traffic won’t be bad. We should make good time.”
“I’m going, too,” Mac announced. Nikki had asked him to look after the boy, and even though he was still reeling from her deception, he wouldn’t let Kirby down. “I’ll drive.”
“All right,” Tanner said, and turned to Bridey. “Can you stay here with the boys?”
“Linda Davidson will be here in the morning,” Jules reminded them. “If we’re not back, I’m sure she can help. You can explain what’s happened.”
Bridey nodded. “I’m happy to watch the boys. It’s what I do best.”
While Jules explained what might need to be done during their absence, Tanner grabbed his keys and tossed them to Mac. “You get the truck,” he told him. “I’m going to call Morgan and see if he can give us some assistance. Meet me out front.”
“HE’S IN HERE,” the nurse said, leading them to one of the examining rooms.
“Thank you,” Jules said.
Behind her, Mac’s body still hummed from the adrenaline of the drive. It hadn’t taken them as much time as he’d thought it would, but then he’d broken most of the speed limits. He hadn’t been stopped, though. Morgan had led the way, lights flashing.
“Kirby, are you okay?” he heard Jules ask as Mac stepped into the room.
Kirby, looking even smaller than usual, sat on the padded examining table, his left arm in a sling. “I have a broken arm,” he announced with a small smile. But the smile widened when he met Mac’s gaze. “Hi, Mac.”
“How’re you doing?” Mac asked, stepping closer.
“Okay. Where’s Nikki?”
Mac looked at Jules, who said nothing, but the look on her face said it was his fault, and he’d have to live with the consequences. “She—she couldn’t come with us.”
“Is she sick?” Kirby asked.
It was more than he’d heard from Kirby since he’d started work at the ranch. Unfortunately it wasn’t the best time to be asking questions. The only answers Mac had would just upset the small boy.
The door opened and a man Mac suspected was the doctor stepped in. “Mrs. O’Brien, can I speak with you?”
Jules nodded, but turned to Kirby. “You stay here and talk to Mac. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
When she was gone, Mac moved closer to Kirby. “Does it hurt?”
Kirby shrugged. “It did, but they gave me some medicine and said I’d feel better.”
“How did you break it?”
Kirby didn’t answer immediately, and didn’t look Mac in the eye when he finally did. “I fell.”
Mac didn’t believe him. It was the same answer he’d given when Nikki had asked about the scar on his cheek. “Just fell out of bed?”
Nodding, Kirby peeked up at him, and the nod changed to a shake of his head. “I was…jumping on the bed and fell off. I guess I fell on something.”
Same story. But this time he’d added the bed jumping. Mac still didn’t believe it.
“Mac?”
He turned around to see Jules in the doorway.
“Can you come out here for a second?”
Tanner appeared behind her. “I’ll sit with Kirby,” he said.
Mac nodded, then turned to pat Kirby’s leg. “Stay right where you are, big guy. I won’t be long. I promise.”
“Over here,” Jules called to him when he stepped into the hallway.
“I’m Dr. Stewart,” the man with her said. “Mrs. O’Brien wanted you to see the X-rays of Kirby’s arm.”
Mac followed them down the hall to an X-ray panel. He wasn’t sure how much he could tell from a picture of some bones, but he wasn’t going to argue.
The doctor flipped a switch, and a soft, fluorescent light came on. Mac looked at the X-rays clipped to the front of the light box.
“See that?” the doctor said, pointing to a place in what looked like the middle of an upper arm.
“It isn’t straight,” Mac said, puzzled by the look of the bone.
“It’s called a spiral fracture,” Dr. Stewart explained. “We see them too often, especially with smaller children. Did Kirby mention how his arm was broken?”
Mac shrugged. “He said he was jumping on the bed and fell, but I don’t believe that.”
“Good. I’m glad you’re questioning it.” He looked at Jules, then turned back to Mac. “This kind of fracture is usually a good sign that there’s been abuse.”
Mac suddenly felt sick to his stomach. Both he and Nikki had suspected there’d been things that had happened to Kirby that he wasn’t willing to talk about. This was the proof.
“I’ll show you how the fracture occurs.” The doctor took Mac’s upper arm and wrapped his fingers around as much as possible. “Obviously I can’t show you exactly,” he said with a grim smile. “You’re much bigger than a child. But a spiral fracture is caused when the arm is twisted…like this.”
He attempted to do the same to Mac’s arm to show how it was done, and Mac winced. “I see,” he said rubbing where the doctor had twisted his arm. He turned to Jules. “Somebody is looking into this, aren’t they?”
“His father has been picked up and is claiming he didn’t do it.”
“What about the caseworker? Where the hell was she?” Mac demanded furiously.
Sighing, Jules led him away from the X-ray. “She told the dispatcher that she’d stepped out to use her cell phone. There wasn’t reception in the apartment building.”
Mac gritted his teeth. This was unbelievable. “Who was she talking to on her phone? Her boyfriend?”
Jules shook her head. “She has a baby at home, and she was trying to reach the babysitter to make sure everything was okay.”
Mac felt like a heel. “Oh. So where is she now?”
“She rode here in the ambulance with Kirby. She was so upset about what happened that as soon as she gave her statement to the police, she was given a sedative. She’s in a room here, overnight.”
Nodding, Mac glanced at the door of the room where Kirby waited. If Nikki had been here, she’d— But she wasn’t, and that was his fault. “So what are we going to do?”
“I’m going to be making some phone calls. I want assurances that Kirby will be going home with us.”
“He won’t be going back to his father?”
“It’s highly unlikely,” she answered. “And maybe you can help. If you can get Kirby to tell you the truth about how his arm was broken—and like you, I believe it was his father who did it, just the way the doctor showed you—then he’ll never be allowed to see Kirby again.”
Mac thought long and hard about how he might be able to get Kirby to tell him. He wasn’t nearly as good at these things as Nikki was, but he was more than willing to give it a try, especially if it meant Kirby would be taken from the brute who’d hurt him.
“All right,” he told her. “I’ll do what I can.”
“And I’ll do what I can on the legal end of it.”
When he stepped into the examining room, Mac found Tanner telling Kirby about how he’d won his gold belt buckle at National Finals Rodeo a few years before. Kirby was enthralled, but when he looked up at Mac, he beamed.
“Did you talk to Nikki?” he asked as Tanner left the room.
The weight in the pit of Mac’s stomach only got heavier. “Not yet, champ.” He still wasn’t ready to forgive Nikki and wasn’t sure he ever would, but he wished she was the one handling this, not him.
Kirby’s smile had dimmed. “Can we go home now?”
Mac walked to where the boy sat and put his arm around him. “Not quite yet. We’re waiting to find out what we have to do next.”
And Mac didn’t have a clue how to get him to tell the truth about how his arm had been broken. And then he reme
mbered that he’d built a little trust with Kirby over Nikki’s missing ring. He could do this if he tried. He’d find out what happened, and Kirby would be able to go home with him. He just didn’t want to think about what Kirby would do when he discovered Nikki wasn’t there.
Grabbing a chair, he turned it around and placed it in front of Kirby, then straddled it so he could look up at the boy, not tower over him. “Kirby,” he said. “I need you to do something for me.”
“What?”
“I need you to be honest with me.” Instead of answering, Kirby blinked. Mac tried to think of how Nikki would handle it. “You trust me, don’t you, Kirby?” he asked.
Kirby nodded. “I trust you and Nikki and Jules and Tanner and Shawn and Shamar and Leon and—”
“Good, good,” Mac said before Kirby could list the rest of the boys. “And you know that we all care about you very much. We love you.”
“Even Shamar and Leon and—”
“Even them. Not that they’ll tell you in so many words, but remember how Shamar helped you with your saddle?”
Kirby nodded. “I didn’t even have to ask him—he just did it.”
“Right.” Mac tried to choose his words carefully. “And now you can help us. Will you do that?”
“I guess.”
Mac hoped it would be more than a halfhearted attempt by Kirby. They needed to know the truth. “I want you to be honest with me, okay?” Kirby nodded, but it definitely wasn’t with vigor. “When you told the hospital people that you hurt your arm when you fell off the bed, was that the truth?”
Kirby lowered his head and said nothing for several seconds.
“We need to know if something else happened,” Mac told him. “Do you understand?”
Nodding, Kirby lifted his head. His dark eyes were filled with fear and sadness, but he nodded. “It was him.”
“Him?” Mac didn’t want to put words in the boy’s mouth. Kirby needed to say it. “My dad.”
Relief washed through Mac, but it wasn’t over. “How did he do it, Kirby?”
“He— He was mad ’cause I said I was hungry.”
Mac cringed, but said nothing. Hadn’t Nikki already gone over this? Was there never food available for him in his own home?
“He always gets mad when I say that,” Kirby continued, “and he grabbed my arm and jerked me up in the air. It hurt. Bad. I guess that’s when my arm broke.”
Mac couldn’t speak, but he knew he had to assure Kirby that telling him was the right thing to do. “I’m sorry that happened, buddy,” he said, reaching up to cup his face in his hand. But Kirby jerked away, as if Mac was going to hit him. “Whoa! It’s okay, Kirby. I’ll never hit you.”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“I know,” Mac answered. “But I need to ask you two more questions, okay?” When Kirby nodded, Mac went on. “Can you tell the people who need to know so they can help you? Can you tell them what really happened, how you broke your arm?”
The boy seemed to consider it. “As long as he won’t hurt me for telling.”
“He won’t hurt you again, Kirby, I promise.” Not when Kirby was willing to tell the people who could help. But he still wasn’t finished. “That scar on your face. Did your dad do that, too?”
Without hesitation, Kirby nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell Nikki and me that when she asked?”
Kirby shrugged. “Because I didn’t know how, and he said if I told anybody, he’d hurt me again.”
That was all Mac needed to hear. He stood. “I need to let Jules know what you’ve told me. Is that okay?”
Nodding, Kirby still looked a little wary. “Can we go home now?”
“Let me check with Jules and the doctor. Will you be okay in here by yourself?”
“As long as you come back soon.”
Mac smiled, but his heart ached for the boy. “I will.”
He stepped out of the room and searched for Jules. Finding her as she was finishing a call, he approached her. “Kirby is ready to tell what happened. And he wants to know when he can go home with us.”
Jules still maintained the cool assuredness of an attorney. “He can come with us. It’s temporary, but I’m working on that. The doctor said the swelling in Kirby’s arm needs to go down before they cast it. Thank goodness he doesn’t think it needs surgery! He said we could take Kirby home if we’re very careful. They’ll put on a half-cast splint and wrap it. He won’t need to come back here to the hospital. In a couple of days Paige can put a real cast on the arm.”
“That’s good,” Mac said. “I need to let him know.”
Back in the room, he gave Kirby the good news. Although the boy seemed to be happy, his smile wasn’t as bright as Mac thought it might be.
“What is it, Kirby?” he asked, pulling him close, but being careful of the arm.
One fat tear rolled over the scar on Kirby’s cheek. “I want Nikki.”
Mac thought his heart was breaking. “I know you do.”
Kirby looked up at him. “If my dad isn’t going to be my dad anymore, can you and Nikki be my mom and dad?”
Mac didn’t have an answer. So much had happened in the past twenty-four hours, he didn’t know how he felt anymore. And he didn’t know when he would. For now he was numb.
Chapter Thirteen
“Where are you going, Nioka?”
Nikki let go of the door and turned to look at her grandmother. “To the school to talk to Charlie Brightwater. I’m hoping he’ll give me back my old job.”
Ayita Rains nodded. “But why there? Why not with Youth Services? You enjoyed helping the children there.”
Nikki had considered it over the past week since she’d left the ranch. She missed the boys. She missed everyone. But it was time to put it all behind her. Working at Youth Services would only be a reminder of the boys. “Because I’d rather return to Sequoyah Schools.”
Her grandmother sighed. “Come. Sit by me.”
After having avoided anything more than a quick chat with her grandmother since arriving, Nikki knew there were questions to be answered. She’d told her grandmother very little, thinking it would be better. “Can we do this later?” she asked. “I don’t want to be late.”
“Charlie will wait. He’s younger than I am.”
Nikki couldn’t stop her smile. While it was true her grandmother was nearing ninety, she was still as sharp as she’d been when Nikki was a child. That might not be such a good thing, Nikki thought as she moved to sit on the floor near her grandmother’s chair, the spot she’d always taken when she was a young girl.
Ayita smoothed Nikki’s hair with a gentle hand. “You haven’t told me why you returned. Now would be a good time, I think.”
Shrugging, Nikki took a deep breath. “It didn’t work. I never should have gone there.”
“Then you never would have met your brother.”
“But it was just like Mom told me.” She looked up to see her grandmother watching her closely, her eyes bright and knowing, and she had to look away, aware that tears would come when she spoke about what had happened. “They don’t want me there. I deceived them. I should have told them from the beginning who I was.”
“You would have been given the job if you’d done that?”
Nikki shook her head. “No.”
“And you loved the job. You loved the boys you looked after.”
Her throat thick with emotion, Nikki could only nod.
“People’s hearts can change.”
Not this time. “It doesn’t matter,” Nikki said, hoping saying it would make it true. She tipped her head up to look at her grandmother. “I don’t want to be far from you.”
“And my wish is for you to be happy.”
“I will be, I promise.” Nikki started to stand, but her grandmother’s hand on her shoulder stilled her.
“Tell me what he’s like.”
“He looks like I expected,” Nikki answered. “Tall, dark and handsome. And oddly, he has blue eyes.
I guess the O’Brien recessive gene came through.”
“One blue, two brown,” her grandmother replied.
Nikki looked up at her. “How do you know?”
“I saw the boys when they were small. I remember Tucker’s eyes. Tanner’s, too. But I want to know what Tanner is like, not how he looks.”
“He’s very kind. The boys’ ranch belongs to his wife, and he supports her in every way. Her name is Jules. And apparently Tanner raised Tucker’s son, but I never learned the whole story.”
“I have a great-grandson?” Ayita asked, her eyes glowing with joy.
“Two,” Nikki replied. “Tanner and Jules have a two-year-old boy named Wyoming. Tucker’s boy’s name is Shawn. He’s almost eighteen and very nice. You’d be proud of him, Grandmother. He has a good heart.”
Ayita nodded. “Maybe someday I will know them all. What about the other?”
“Tucker? I never heard them speak of him.”
“No. The one who holds your heart.”
Nikki froze. She hadn’t mentioned Mac or anyone else. How could Grandmother know? “There is no other,” she managed to say.
Ayita nodded. “That’s what you say, but it’s what you don’t speak that I hear.”
Nikki couldn’t answer. Would her grandmother not allow her to let the past go? It was the only way to ease the pain she felt. She had been wrong not to tell them from the beginning. But there was little she could do about it now, except try to forget and move on with her life. Someday it wouldn’t hurt so much.
“Nioka?”
Swallowing the tears she knew would soon spill, Nikki answered. “He’ll never forgive me for deceiving Tanner and Jules. Or him.”
MAC LEANED ACROSS Shawn for a better view of Jules, who stood at the door of the white clapboard house that looked as old as the city of Tahlequah itself. Tanner sat quietly ahead of them in the driver’s seat of the crew cab pickup.
“I remember this house,” he said. “The yard is as neat and pretty as it was when I was a boy. I must have been five or six at the time.”
“Sometimes the really good things never change,” Mac replied, wishing he could turn back time. Not far, though. Two weeks would do it. Even one.
The Reluctant Wrangler Page 17
