steel bars are unbreakable. The only way to open these doors is with a code and two simultaneous fingerprints from Spencer heirs. That includes me, my brother, Uncle Samuel and a cousin who’s currently on an expedition to the North Pole.”
“What about your mother?”
“Mom passed away when I was just a kid.”
“I’m sorry…. Do I see a safe in the corner behind the gold?”
He nodded. “There’s family jewelry in there. Ironically, the diamonds are probably worth as much as the gold. It’s too bad those necklaces and rings are almost never worn.”
“A real shame.” She pivoted and looked up at him. “Diamonds are meant to be seen.”
He would have liked nothing more than to retrieve one of the ornate necklaces from the safe, drape it around her throat and make love to her on the Valiant gold. “I wish I could show you.”
“There’s something magical about precious gems. I got to wear a very valuable rented bracelet once.” She gestured gracefully. “Rubies and diamonds.”
“You must have been attending an important event.”
“The Governor’s Inaugural Ball. He’s a friend of my ex.”
Nick was getting curious about the ex’s identity. “I’m surprised I didn’t see you there.”
“I’ve always been good at fading into the wallpaper, even when I’m wearing diamonds.”
“You look plenty sparkling to me.”
He heard a loud pop. A gunshot?
Grabbing Kelly’s wrist, he pulled her out of the vault and shut the door. As he ran toward the exit from the conference room, he shouted to her, “Stay back.”
In the hallway, Marian poked her head out of her office and called to him. “The noise sounded like it came from your uncle’s office.”
“Was it a gun?”
“I think so.”
A moment ago, he’d thought the worst fate that could befall the Spencers was to lose the gold. He hadn’t considered physical harm to his family. At the door to his uncle’s office, Nick grasped the handle. It was locked. “Samuel, open up. Samuel? Are you all right?”
There was no reply. If there was a gunman in the office, Nick should proceed carefully. But if Samuel had been shot, they had to get in there and help him.
Marian grasped his sleeve. “Don’t you have a key in your office?”
“That’s all the way upstairs. It’ll take too long.”
In a few strides, he was at the glass display case beside the prospector painting. Fortunately, the case wasn’t locked. Nick reached inside and wrapped his fingers around a pickax from the 1800s.
At the door to his uncle’s office, he used the tool to break the latch before he kicked the door open. The smell of gunpowder hung in the air. There was no one in the room except for his white-haired Uncle Samuel who sprawled on the floor beside his desk. Blood spread in a dark stain on the beige carpet. A .45 caliber gun was in his right hand.
Nick knelt beside the old man and felt for a pulse. “He’s still breathing. Call 911.”
Kelly joined him on the floor. “Let me take care of him. I’m a nurse.”
“You deliver babies.”
“I’m also an RN. Step back, Nick.”
He gently removed the gun from his uncle’s limp hand and stood, looking down as Kelly tried to stop the bleeding from a chest wound.
The door had been locked. The windows were closed.
A set of blueprints lay on the desk. Across them, his uncle had written two words: I’m Sorry.
Chapter Three
Monday, 10:25 a.m.
“It’s not your fault that he died.”
“I know,” Kelly said.
Her friend Serena Bellows motioned for her to come out from behind the kitchen counter and join her in the living room. Picking her way through a minefield of toys and stuffed animals, Kelly made her way across the large room with the cathedral-style ceiling. Over the years, Serena and Nigel’s farmhouse on a twenty-acre spread had grown from a small cabin to a sprawling four-bedroom house.
Serena liked to say that the house had grown organically. The original cabin was long, flat and ranch-style. The living room and attached kitchen fit into an A-frame with solar panels on the roof. A Victorian tower housed Nigel’s home office. There were no predominant colors. Instead, the walls varied from room to room in a veritable rainbow.
“Sit,” Serena said. “Talk to me.”
Coffee mug in hand, Kelly sank onto the sofa. “I already told you what happened last night.”
“But you haven’t told me the whole story, and you need to let it out.” Holding her six-day-old daughter, Serena occupied a large oak rocking chair by the fireplace. She unbuttoned her turquoise muslin blouse and prepared to start breast-feeding. “I can feel your grief.”
Kelly couldn’t deny her sadness. Though she’d never met Nick’s uncle while he was alive, she would forever be connected to Samuel Spencer. For a few moments, she’d held his life in her hands. “I wish I could have done more for him.”
She’d worked hard to keep his heart beating and to stanch the bleeding from the gunshot wound. The paramedics had arrived eighteen minutes after Nick called 911. At that time, Samuel still had a pulse. Nick had gone with the ambulance while she and Marian had stayed behind to talk with the police. Less than an hour later, she’d learned that Samuel never regained consciousness and had died on the operating table. Logically, she knew that Serena was right and Samuel’s death wasn’t her fault, but it always hurt to lose a patient.
“Have you ever wondered,” Serena asked, “why people like you and me choose to be midwives and not surgeons?”
“Because medical school is really expensive?”
“As midwives, we get to help people. Most important, there’s almost always a happy ending.”
Kelly knew exactly what she was talking about. Unlike the nurses who worked in emergency rooms and faced life-and-death situations every day, midwives brought new life into the world. It was a great job. She loved hearing the first cries of a newborn, feeling the grip of a tiny hand around her finger and seeing a perfect cherub face.
Smiling, she watched her friend breast-feed her infant. For the first time this morning, she felt something resembling calm. Serena’s husband had taken the other three kids and Serena’s sister to the grocery store. Though Kelly enjoyed staying with the raucous family with the totally appropriate last name of Bellows, she needed her moments of silence. Leaning back against the yellow-and-green-patterned
