by Judy Duarte
Buttoning his shirt, he tucked it in. He wondered if she would ever find it in her heart to forgive him. No, he suspected not. In her place, he didn’t know if he would have been able to handle a deception of this magnitude. He would have felt used. Just as she undoubtedly would, once she knew.
If Brooke let him, he knew he would be willing to spend the rest of his life trying to make it up to her. But in his heart, he had a feeling that really wasn’t a possibility.
The rain that was lashing against his windows added to the pall that he felt closing around him.
If he could, he would gladly have held all this at bay just a little longer, resisting the inevitable. But it wasn’t up to him. He’d called Tyler Carlton late last night, after he’d taken Brooke home. He’d told him about the matching photograph. The man had been eager for details and happy that his long-lost uncle had finally been found.
Tyler wanted to approach Derek himself, but Mark felt that there was protocol to follow. These things had to be done a certain way. He needed to prepare Derek for the fact that his cover had been blown. By a man he’d taken into his home. A man who had made love to his daughter.
Mark blew out a breath as he finished getting ready. Right now it felt as if his conscience weighed about a thousand pounds. And it was getting heavier with every passing minute.
She’d woken up smiling. Smiling despite the less than spectacular weather outside. The rain had begun just before Mark had brought her home. She’d felt like dancing between the raindrops. And had. He’d laughed at her.
God, but she loved the sound of his laugh. Loved everything about him, even the way his mouth turned down when he was deep in thought.
She’d hurried through her shower and gotten dressed in record time, sailing down the stairs and beating her father to the kitchen by a good twenty minutes.
Breakfast was waiting for him by the time he came down.
Brooke had watched her father eat, too keyed up, too happy to eat. She toyed with the cup of coffee she’d poured for herself. When her father sneezed and then coughed, she expressed the proper amount of sympathy, offering to go and open up the store in his place. After all, until just recently, she’d been doing it for him for the past couple of months.
“You stay home, Dad,” she urged when he demurred. “Take it easy for a while.”
But he shook his head. “Don’t baby me, Brooke. As it is, I’ve been taking it easy for too long, letting you carry more than your load.” She began to protest, but he cut her off. “I’m not a sack of sugar, I won’t disappear if a little rain hits me.”
He ended his statement with a sneeze. She pushed the box of tissues closer to him.
“It’s more than a little rain. If it was raining any harder, there’d be a man with a long beard out there, collecting two of everything and loading them onto an ark.”
She was given to exaggeration, and it amused him. “Then you shouldn’t go out, either.”
Brooke tossed her head, sending a curtain of black hair flying over her shoulder. “But I’m young, invincible—”
He homed in on the real reason she wanted to get to the bookstore. “And in love.”
There was no point in denying it, even if she was given to being secretive, which she wasn’t.
“Yeah, that, too.” She leaned her chin on her upturned hand and looked at her father, grinning. “Does it show?”
He laughed. “Only in a lighthouse-beacon kind of way. Does he know?”
She spread a healthy dose of marmalade over the English muffin she’d toasted for him, then pushed the serving in front of him.
“Probably. Oh, Dad, I’ve never felt this way before. There’s this glow, this happiness just shining all over the place inside of me.” She looked at him hopefully. “Does it last?”
Does it last? Derek thought of Anna rather than his wife. Anna Parks, the first woman he’d given his heart to on what was to be the most fateful day of his life, the one that changed it forever. He’d heard that Parks had sent her off somewhere, but he’d never managed to discover just where.
He felt that old familiar ache in his heart.
After all these years, he still thought of Anna, even before he thought of the woman who had given him his precious daughter. He knew he always would. What was it that his mother had once said? You never forget your first one. And he never had.
He felt Brooke watching him. “If it’s the right one, yes, it lasts.”
“Like you and Mom?”
In all the years that followed her mother’s death, her father had never once had anything that even remotely came close to a female companion. He’d centered his world on her and the store, nothing else. She supposed that she was looking for that kind of love, the kind that hit you squarely between the eyes and burrowed its way into your heart forever. And she thought she’d found it with Mark.
“Is that why you never dated after she died?” she pressed.
A sliver of guilt went through him. Brooke’s mother had been a fine, good woman, but she’d never made him forget about Anna, even when he tried. But that was something he wasn’t about to get into right now.
“Something like that.” When Brooke looked at him, a puzzled expression slipping over her features, he added, “It’s complicated, honey. Someday I’ll explain it all to you, but not right now.” Finished with his breakfast, he began to rise. “I’ve got a store to open.”
Having poured another cup of coffee, Brooke moved that in front of him, then pressed her hand on his shoulder, making him take his seat again.
“I’ve got a store to open,” she corrected. “You come in later. I don’t want you getting sick on me. It’s supposed to stop raining by eleven.” Brooke took her empty cup to the sink and quickly rinsed it out. She wanted to get going. “I’ll open up.”
He didn’t bother hiding the knowing smile that came to his lips. “Mark coming in early?”
“Maybe,” she said with a mysterious smile on her lips as she wiped her hands on a kitchen towel.
Brooke started for the front door, pausing to pick up her purse and the black, slouch hat she favored whenever it rained. She hated wrestling with an umbrella.
He had a clear view of her as she crossed to the door. “Don’t forget your raincoat.”
Brooke paused by the coat rack. “It’s at the cleaners.”
“Then take mine.”
She looked at what amounted to a black rain slicker. It looked like a minor pup tent. “It’s too big.”
“Not that much,” he protested. For a man, he was built thin and wiry. “Besides, you’re trying to stay dry, not make a fashion statement.”
She caught her lower lip between her teeth, thinking. If she took the raincoat, then he wouldn’t have one. He’d be forced to wait out the storm.
“Okay, if it keeps you home.” Slipping the slicker on, she laughed as she pushed the sleeves back enough to have her hands emerge. Doubling back, she pressed a kiss to his cheek, too happy for words. “I’ll see you later.”
Brooke left the house singing, her mood in direct contrast to the weather outside.
The man pulled up the collar of his jacket.
Miserable weather.
He’d been standing in this alley for forty minutes, waiting, getting wet. More opportune times might present themselves later, but Parks had been firm. And you didn’t get anywhere in life getting on the wrong side of Walter Parks.
Parks had said he wanted the man eliminated now. Now meant now. It didn’t get any clearer than that.
He sneezed. His mood, already foul, darkened. He was going to come down with goddamn pneumonia if his target didn’t show up soon.
And then he saw his target approaching. Every nerve ending on heightened alert, he slipped his hand over the hilt of his gun.
His index finger tightened on the trigger.
Brooke felt water splashing on the back of her ankles. The puddle had been deeper than she’d anticipated.
Wouldn’t you just know
that on a day like today, the street in front of her store would be lined with cars? She’d had to park in the lot across the street.
The rain seemed to get worse with every step she took. Every step of the short distance between the lot and the store had been marked with a struggle with the oversize umbrella her father, at the last minute, had insisted she take with her. Fighting the wind for possession got her wetter than if she’d just made a dash for it.
But she didn’t care if she got wet. She felt too happy.
She was going to see Mark today and all was right with the world.
Mark brought his car to a screeching halt in the tight spot, leaving it between a BMW SUV and a sports car, vintage unknown. He made his way out of the parking structure, his eyes on the front of Derek’s store.
Brooke’s store.
He’d planned to be earlier. But traffic had been really bad. It always was whenever it rained. Maniacs wove in and out of lanes like deranged hummingbirds while the cautious types slowed down to a crawl, completely impeding his progress, making him stop at every light between his apartment and the bookstore.
As he waited for the light to change, allowing him to cross, Mark saw a figure in a black raincoat standing before the door of the bookstore, fumbling with a set of keys.
He recognized the coat. He’d seen it hanging on the rack the last time he’d been over for dinner. Was Derek alone this morning? Where was Brooke?
Disappointed, he decided that maybe this was for the better after all. Maybe if he told Derek first who he was, the rest of it would somehow work itself out. Maybe Derek would even be willing to act as a buffer between him and Brooke.
Right, and maybe Santa would come down his chimney this Christmas.
Mark squared his shoulders resolutely. One way or another, this had to be done. He might as well get it over with. The light turned green. He began to cross the street.
Everything happened so fast that at first, Mark thought he was imagining it. And then, when the events began to penetrate his brain, they seemed like something he might have seen on a newsreel or in a movie. In less than a heartbeat, he was kicked back to his days on the force in New York.
A man jumped out of the shadows behind Derek. Despite the rain, Mark saw the gun.
Instantly he pulled his own weapon out. The irony of the fact that this was the first time he’d worn it since he began perpetrating the charade didn’t occur to him until later. He’d taken it because he meant to use it as a backup for his story.
Instead, he found himself employing it in defense of the man he’d been sent to find.
“Derek, duck!” he cried out.
And then it happened. He saw the person he’d taken to be Derek turn and look straight at him. Brooke! It was Brooke in the raincoat, not her father. The same moment the realization hit him, he heard the shot.
And then he saw Brooke go down.
He felt as if the bullet had penetrated his gut. Air stopped flowing in his lungs even as he raced across the street. A car making a turn careened sharply to avoid hitting him. The driver leaned on his horn, the sound adding to the cacophony of noise throbbing in his head.
Mark never hesitated. His weapon was in his hand and he used it. Shooting at the man who’d shot at Brooke. The other man crumpled, screaming.
And then there was silence, deafening silence, except for the sound of sobs that wouldn’t come.
Mark wasn’t sure just how he got through it. How everything fell into place. The events moved through his head like broken shards of colored glass forming macabre pictures. He felt like a man trapped in a nightmare as he rushed to Brooke’s side.
She looked up at him with wide, dazed eyes.
“Oh, thank God,” he cried. “You’re alive. Hang on, baby, hang on,” he pleaded.
He wanted to cradle her, to shield her from the rain and hold her against him, but he was afraid to move her, afraid that if he did, life would seep away from her just as the blood was doing now.
There was blood, so much blood.
He’d never, ever been so afraid in his life.
White with rage, with fear, he wanted to empty his magazine into the slime who had done this. Instead he kept his weapon trained on the unconscious man on the sidewalk.
Struggling to keep from falling apart, Mark pulled out his cell phone with his other hand and called 911, demanding police backup and paramedics. For a split second he blanked out on the address. And then it came to him.
His heart tightened in his chest as he looked at Brooke. The color had left her face.
He saw her lips move, forming a word. Forming no sound. He leaned closer, his ear to her lips. “What, baby, what?”
“Mark?” Brooke felt as though everything was spinning, and she had a horrible, fiery pain in her shoulder. The pain was spreading, burning into her. Breathing hurt, made it worse. “What…what’s happening?” she finally managed to gasp.
“Shhh, don’t try to talk, baby.” He smoothed away the hair from her face. “Some lowlife tried to mug you, but he can’t hurt you anymore.” He wasn’t sure if the vermin was dead or alive and he didn’t care. All he cared about was her. “Hang on, the paramedics are on their way. Just hang on, all right?”
She tried to say “All right,” but there was no strength with which to move her lips.
His voice was getting further and further away, melting into the rain and the darkness. Her eyelids felt as if they each weighed fifty pounds, and she gave up trying to hold them up.
She slipped into the darkness.
When the police first arrived, they thought he was the perpetrator. In their defense, Mark supposed he was acting like a deranged man. But he was completely overcome with grief and guilt and terrified that Brooke was going to die. After identifying himself, he managed to regain a little of his control. As quickly, as succinctly as possible, he gave the two patrolmen the details, also giving them Nick’s name.
Once they knew he was Nick Banning’s brother, the tone of the inquiry changed. His brother was called, arriving almost immediately. Nick dashed out of the car, concern etched on his handsome face.
“You all right?”
“He shot her.” Mark looked at his brother, his eyes hollow, reflecting the condition of his soul. “The son of a bitch shot her.”
Nick looked at the paramedic. “How is she?”
“The bullet’s still inside. One inch closer…” The man didn’t have to finish the sentence. Moving swiftly, the paramedics had temporarily stopped the bleeding, but Brooke hadn’t regained consciousness. “We need to take her to the hospital,” he told Mark.
“Not without me.” He started to climb into the ambulance behind the gurney.
When the two patrolmen moved forward to detain Mark, Nick waved them back. “You need to come down to the station to give a statement.”
The younger of the two paramedics was closing the rear doors. “Count on it,” Mark told his brother.
No one would tell him how she was doing.
He’d accompanied her into the hospital, running alongside the gurney until one of the nurses gently but firmly held him back. He was cut off from her as Brooke was whisked away into a trauma room and then into emergency surgery.
Mark felt as if his legs had been cut off at the knees. In an attempt to keep his mind occupied, he called Derek, telling the man in as precise details as possible that there had been a mugging.
“Oh my God, is Brooke all right?”
Mark dragged his hand through his hair. He wished to God he knew. It took supreme effort to keep his voice calm as he said, “They have her in surgery right now.” And then, for the man’s benefit, he added, “The doctor says there’s every chance she’ll be fine.”
It was a lie. No doctor had said anything to him. They hadn’t taken the time because every second had been precious. But Mark felt he owed the man at least a tiny bit of hope.
“I’ll be right there.” The line went dead, leaving Mark to pace and to pray to a deity
he hadn’t spoken a word to or acknowledged in five years.
Derek arrived less than twenty minutes later, looking like a man who had come face-to-face with mortality. He seemed to have aged ten years from the day before.
Mark did what he could to comfort him, but the effort was futile. At the core of Derek’s pain was guilt. He blamed himself for what had happened to his daughter.
“I shouldn’t have let her go. I shouldn’t have let her go,” he repeated numbly. His eyes were wild as he looked at Mark. “That should be me lying on that operating room table, not her.”
Mark knew all the right words to say, even if he couldn’t convince himself of them. Because at bottom he felt that this was all because of the search he’d initiated. Somehow, without knowing how, he’d led this vermin to Brooke’s door.
“You can’t blame yourself. These things happen. San Francisco is a big city. People get mugged. It’s not your fault.”
“Actually, technically, it is.”
Both men turned to see Nick coming toward them. He’d ridden to the hospital in the second ambulance, the one that had brought the supposed mugger to the hospital. It had been an informative trip.
It was time for the charade to be over, Mark thought. He took the first step to ending it. “Derek, this is my brother. Detective Nick Banning.”
Derek looked a little uncertain as he nodded at the other man. “What do you mean, ‘technically’?”
Nick told him what he knew. “The guy who shot your daughter was out of his head in the ambulance. He kept saying he didn’t know it was a girl, that he thought he was getting Ross, not a girl. Derek Ross,” Nick repeated as he looked at Derek. “Is that you?”
The question was a formality. Derek could tell by the way the police detective looked at him as he asked it. Maybe, just maybe, it was time to come out of hiding. There was no point in hiding anymore, not if they could find him. Not if they could threaten the only thing in his life that meant anything to him.
Derek took a deep breath. A measure of relief came with his decision. He looked at Mark’s brother. “Yes, it’s me.”
