closing in around him, sealing him away, which was just as well. He couldn’t endure the excruciating pounding in his head any longer.
Just before he slipped into the smothering embrace of a dark world, Seamus thought he heard the sound of two doors being shut.
And then there was the sound of a car—his car?—driving away.
After that, mercifully, there was nothing.
Former police chief Andrew Cavanaugh immediately thought the worst whenever a phone rang, the shrill noise elbowing its way into his sound sleep, especially whenever it happened after midnight. It was at that time more than any other that icy fear would grip his heart even before he was fully awake. Because of the nature of his job and the jobs held down by so much of his family, half-formed dire scenarios would flood his mind the instant the phone began to ring.
Andrew was groping around on the nightstand, searching for his phone before his eyes were even open or his brain was fully engaged.
His wife, Rose, shared the very same feelings. And fears.
“Who is it, Andrew?” she asked, turning toward him in their queen-size bed.
Andrew didn’t answer her. Fully awake now, he focused on listening to what the voice on the other end of the call was telling him.
The intense look on his face had Rose grasping his forearm, as if that would somehow help her assimilate what the caller was saying to him. Or, at the very least, allow her to share with him whatever burden those words might be creating.
What she was hearing from Andrew’s side of the conversation only fueled her dread.
“When?” Andrew asked, his usually genial face a mask of concern. “How bad? Is he—?” Rose saw her husband exhale a shaky breath, dragging his hand through his hair. For a split second, the man everyone leaned on so heavily looked almost lost. “What hospital?”
By now Rose’s adrenaline had escalated to an exceptionally high level. She quickly got out of bed and, rather than throw on a robe, automatically began to get dressed. Quickly.
The second she was finished, she was laying out her husband’s clothing. She knew Andrew inside and out. She knew that the moment he hung up, they would be on their way to whatever hospital the person that this call was about was in.
With children, brothers and sisters-in-law, as well as an entire extended collection of family members, almost all involved in some capacity of law enforcement, there were many potential candidates for whom that path might have very well ended tonight—or had come very close to ending.
There was no other reason why a call would have suddenly shattered their night this way, or why her husband looked so distressed.
Without knowing whom this call was about or what the actual damage was, all Rose could do was pray as she moved quickly to get Andrew’s clothes ready for him. It was her form of “busywork,” something to keep her occupied so that her mind wouldn’t go to that awful place that it was wont to go thanks to this middle-of-the-night call.
It just went with the territory because she was the former police chief’s wife. A peaceful night’s sleep wasn’t always part of the equation.
Rose had laid out all of Andrew’s clothing as well as his shoes and had just pulled out a pair of socks when her husband hung up the phone.
The moment that he did, she whirled around to face him.
“Who?” she asked breathlessly.
Throwing off the rest of the covers, Andrew’s bare feet hit the cold floor. The change in temperature hardly registered. His mind was racing, unearthing a dozen memories at once. But mainly Andrew was praying. Praying every bit as hard as he had when he had gone looking for his missing wife all those years ago when her car had driven off the road, into the lake.
It had taken him years to find Rose again, but he had, he reminded himself. Finding her when she’d been suffering from amnesia had been, admittedly, an incredible long shot, but he had never given up looking, despite the odds. And, in the end, he had found her.
This was going to be another kind of long shot, but just like before, he had every hope that it was going to work out.
It just had to.
Rose caught hold of her husband’s arm, pulling him and his attention back from wherever it had drifted to and toward her.
Startled, Andrew blinked, as if suddenly remembering that his wife was there.
“Who is it?” Rose asked point-blank.
The answer hurt, and it took him a second to actually form the words to tell her.
“It’s Dad,” Andrew answered, shrugging into his pullover sweater.
Of all the names that had gone rushing through Rose’s anguished, feverish brain, her father-in-law’s name hadn’t been among them.
Armed with this piece of information, Rose’s mind went in an entirely different direction.
“Heart attack?” she guessed quietly as she watched Andrew slip on his shoes.
Grabbing his wallet from the nightstand and putting his cell phone into his pocket, Andrew shook his head. “It wasn’t a heart attack.”
“Then what?” Rose asked, confused.
Andrew drew in a deep breath, as if to insulate himself from the fears that went with what he was about to say.
“As near as the patrolmen who found him can tell,” Andrew said, “Dad was the victim of a mugging. At least that’s the working theory. His car is missing, and he was found lying facedown in the North Tustin Industrial parking lot.”
Horror flashed across Rose’s face. The next moment, she managed to regain control over her emotions.
“But Seamus is all right, isn’t he, Andrew?” she asked, willing her husband to give her a positive reply.
Andrew avoided making eye contact with his wife. “He’s breathing,” he answered, heading toward the stairs. He loved having Rose with him under any circumstances, but he wanted to spare her this. His father was a strong man, but age had a way of eroding strength. Andrew had no idea what he was in for.
“Dad hasn’t regained consciousness since they found him.” Sailing down the staircase’s seventeen steps, he was at the front door in seconds. “I’m going to the hospital,” he told her.
Rose was just a beat behind him. “Not without me you’re not.”
He turned toward her. “There’s no point if he’s still unconscious. Maybe you should just stay here, hold down the fort,” Andrew gently suggested.
The stubborn look he knew and loved so well came into Rose’s eyes. “The fort can hold itself down. I’m not letting you face this alone, Andrew Cavanaugh,” she informed him
