Holiday in Stone Creek Read online

  “He’s gone,” she said, meaning Jack, meeting her taciturn-looking brother at the back door. “Are you happy now?”

  “You know I’m not,” Brad said, moving past her to enter the house when she would have blocked his way. He helped himself to coffee and, out of spite, Ashley didn’t tell him it was decaf. If he expected a buzz from the stuff, something to jump-start the remainder of his day, he was in for a disappointment.

  “Are Ardith and Rachel safe?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Brad answered, leaning back against the counter to sip his no-octane coffee and study her. “You all right?”

  “Oh, I’m just fabulous, thank you.”

  “Ashley, give it up, will you? You know Jack couldn’t stay.”

  “I also know the decision was mine to make, Brad—not yours.”

  Her brother gave a heavy sigh. She could see how drained he was, but she wouldn’t allow herself to feel sorry for him. Much. “You’ll get over this,” he told her, after a long time.

  “Gee, thanks,” she said, wiping furiously at her already-clean counters, keeping as far from Brad as she could. “That makes it all better.”

  “Meg’s going to have a baby,” Brad said, out of the blue, a few uncomfortable moments later. “In the spring.”

  Ashley froze.

  Olivia had twins.

  Now Meg and Brad were adding to their family, something she should have been glad about, considering that Meg had suffered a devastating miscarriage a year after Mac was born and there had been some question as to whether or not she could have more children.

  “Congratulations,” Ashley said stiffly, unable to look at him.

  “You’ll get your chance, Ash. The right man will come along and—”

  “The right man came along, Brad,” Ashley snapped, “and now he’s gone.”

  But at least, this time, Jack had said goodbye.

  This time, he hadn’t wanted to go.

  Small consolations, but something.

  Brad set his mug aside, crossed to Ashley, took her shoulders in his hands. “I’d have done anything,” he said hoarsely, “to make this situation turn out differently.”

  Ashley believed him, but it didn’t ease her pain.

  She let herself cry, and Brad pulled her close and held her, big brother-style, his chin propped on top of her head.

  “O’Ballivan tough,” he reminded her. It was their version of something Meg’s family, the McKettricks, said to each other when things got rocky.

  “O’Ballivan tough,” she agreed.

  But her voice quavered when she said it.

  She felt anything but tough.

  She’d go on, just the same, because she had no other choice.

  JACK ARRIVED IN Earp-country at eleven forty-five that morning and, after paying the pilot of the two-seat Cessna he’d chartered in Phoenix, climbed into a waiting taxi. Fortunately, Tombstone wasn’t a big town, so he wouldn’t be late for his meeting with Chad Lombard.

  Anyway, he was used to cutting it close.

  There were a lot of tourists around, as Jack had feared. He’d hoped the local police would be notified, find some low-key way to clear the streets before the shootout took place.

  Some of them might be Lombard’s men.

  And some of them might be Feds.

  Because of the innocent bystanders and because both the DEA and the FBI had valid business of their own with Lombard, Jack had taken a chance and tipped them off while waiting for the commuter jet to take off from Flagstaff.

  He stashed his gear bag behind a toilet in a gas station restroom, tucked his Glock into his pants, covered it with his shirt and stepped out onto the windy street.

  If he hadn’t been in imminent danger of being picked off by Lombard or one of the creeps who worked for the bastard, he might have found the whole thing pretty funny.

  He even amused himself by wishing he’d bought a round black hat and a gunslinger’s coat, so he’d look the part.

  Wyatt Earp, on the way to the OK Corral.

  He was strolling down a wooden sidewalk, pretending to take in the famous sights, when the cell phone rang in the pocket of his jean jacket.

  “Yo,” he answered.

  “You called in the Feds!” Lombard snarled.

  “Yeah,” Jack answered. “You’re outnumbered, bucko.”

  “I’m going to take you out last,” Lombard said. “Just so you can watch all these mommies and daddies and little kiddies in cowboy hats bite the freaking dust!”

  Jack’s blood ran cold. He’d known this was a very real possibility, of course—that was the main reason he’d called in reinforcements—but he’d hoped, against all reason, that even Lombard wouldn’t sink that low.

  After all, the man had a daughter of his own.

  “Where are you?” Jack asked, with a calmness he sure as hell didn’t feel. Worse yet, the weakness was rising inside him again, threatening to drop him to the ground.

  Lombard laughed then, an eerie, brittle sound. “Look up,” he said.

  Jack lifted his eyes.

  Lombard stood on a balcony overlooking the main street, opposite Jack. And he was wearing an Earp hat and a long coat, holding a rifle in one hand.

  “Gun!” Jack yelled. “Everybody out of the street!”

  The crowd panicked and scattered every which way, bumping into each other, screaming. Scrambling to shield children and old ladies and little dogs wearing neckerchiefs.

  Lombard raised the rifle as Jack drew the Glock.

  But neither of them got a chance to fire.

  Another shot ripped through the shining January day, struck Lombard, and sent him toppling, in what seemed like slow motion, over the balcony railing, which gave way picturesquely behind him, like a bit from an old movie.

  People shrieked in rising terror, as vulnerable to any gunmen Lombard might have brought along as backup as a bunch of ducks in a pond.

  Feds rushed into the street, hustling the tourists into restaurants and hotel lobbies and souvenir shops, crowd control at its finest, if a little late.

  Government firepower seemed to come out of the woodwork.

  Somebody was taking pictures—Jack was aware of a series of flashes at the periphery of his vision.

  He walked slowly toward the spot where Chad Lombard lay, either dead or dying, oblivious to the pandemonium he would have enjoyed so much.

  Lombard stared blindly up at the blue, blue sky, a crimson patch spreading over the front of his collarless white shirt. Damned if he hadn’t pinned a star-shaped badge to his coat, just to complete the outfit.

  The Feds closed in, the sniper who had taken Lombard out surely among them. A hand came to rest on Jack’s shoulder.

  More pictures were snapped.

  “Thanks, McCall,” a voice said, through a buzzing haze.

  He didn’t look up at the agent, the longtime acquaintance he’d called from the plane in Flagstaff. Taking the cell phone out of his pocket, he turned it slowly in one hand, still studying Lombard.

  Lombard didn’t look like a killer, a drug runner. Jack could see traces of Rachel in the man’s altar-boy features.

  “We had trouble spotting him until he climbed out onto that balcony,” Special Agent Fletcher said. “By our best guess, he stole the gunslinger getup from one of those old-time picture places—”

  “Why didn’t you clear the streets earlier?” Jack demanded.

  “Because we got here about five seconds before you did,” Fletcher answered. “Are you all right, McCall?”

  Jack nodded, then shook his head.

  Fletcher helped Jack to his feet. “Which is it?” he rasped. “Yes or no?”

  Jack swayed.

  His vision shrank to a pinpoint, then disappeared entirely.

  “I guess it’s no,” he answered, just before he lost consciousness.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE FIRST SOUND Jack recognized was a steady beep-beep-beep. He was in a hospital bed, then, God knew where. Probably
going about the business of dying. “Jack?”

  He struggled to open his eyes. Saw his father looming over him, a pretty woman standing wearily at the old man’s side. If it hadn’t been for her, Jack would have thought he was hallucinating.

  Dr. William “Bill” McKenzie smiled, switched on the requisite lamp on the wall above Jack’s head.

  The spill of light made him wince.

  “I see you’ve still got all your hair,” Jack said, very slowly and in a dry-throated rasp. “Either that, or that’s one fine rug perched on top of your head.”

  Bill laughed, though his eyes glistened with tears. Maybe they were goodbye tears. “You always were a smart-ass,” he said. “This is my real hair. And speaking of hair, yours is too long. You look like a hippie.”

  People still used the word hippie?

  Obviously, his dad’s generation did. For all he knew, Bill McKenzie had been a hippie, once upon a time. There was so much they didn’t know about each other.

  “How did you find me?” Jack asked. The things he felt were too deep to leap right into—there had to be a transition here, a gradual shift.

  “It wasn’t too hard to track you down. You were all over the internet, the TV and the newspapers after that incident in Tombstone. You were treated in Phoenix, and then some congressman’s aide got in touch with me—soon as you were strong enough, I had you brought home, where you belong.”

  Home, Jack thought. To die?

  Jack’s gaze slid to the woman, who looked uncomfortable. My stepmother, he thought, and felt a fresh pang of loss because his mom should have been standing there beside his dad, not this stranger.

  “Abigail,” Bill explained hoarsely. “My wife.”

  “If you’ll excuse me,” Abigail said, after a nod of greeting, and headed for the nearest exit.

  Bill sighed, trailed her with his eyes.

  Jack glimpsed tenderness in those eyes, and peace. “How long have I been here?” he asked, after a long time.

  “Just a few days,” Bill answered. He cleared his throat, looking for a moment as though he might make a run for the corridor, just as Abigail had done. “You’re in serious condition, Jack. Not out of the woods by any means.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said, trying to accept what was probably inevitable. “I know. And you’re here to say goodbye?”

  The old man’s jaw clamped down hard, the way it used to when he was about to give one of his sons hell for some infraction and then ground him for a decade. “I’m here,” he said, almost in a growl, “because you’re my son, and I thought you were dead.”

  “Like Mom.”

  Bill’s eyes, hazel like Jack’s own, flashed. “We’ll talk about your mother another time,” he said. “Right now, boy, you’re in one hell of a fix, and that’s going to be enough to handle without going into all the other issues.”

  “It’s a bone marrow thing,” Jack recalled, but he was thinking about Ashley. She wasn’t much for media, but even she had probably seen him on the news. “Something to do with a toxin manufactured especially for me.”

  “You need a marrow donor,” Bill told him bluntly. “It’s your only chance, and, frankly, it will be touch and go. I’ve already been tested, and so have your brothers. Bryce is the only match.”

  A chance, however small, was more than Jack had expected to get. He must have been mulling a lot of things over on an unconscious level while he was submerged in oblivion, though, because there was a sense of clarity behind the fog enveloping his brain.

  “Bryce,” he said. “The baby.”

  “He wouldn’t appreciate being called that,” Bill replied, with a moist smile. His big hand rested on Jack’s, squeezed his fingers together. “Your brother will be ready when you are.”

  Jack imagined Ashley, the way she’d looked and smelled and felt, warm and naked beneath him. He saw her baking things, playing with the kitten, parking herself in front of the computer, her brow furrowed slightly with confusion and that singular determination of hers.

  If he got through this thing, he could go back to her.

  Swap his old life for a new one, straight across, and never look back.

  But suppose some buddy of Lombard’s decided to step up and take care of unfinished business?

  No, he decided, discouraged to the core of his being. There were too many unknown factors; he couldn’t start things up with Ashley again, even if he got lucky and survived the ordeal he was facing, until he was sure she’d be in no danger.

  “So when is this transplant supposed to go down?” he asked his dad.

  “Yesterday wouldn’t have been too soon,” Bill replied. “They were only waiting for you to stabilize a little.”

  “I’d like to see my brothers,” Jack said, but even as he spoke, the darkness was already sucking him back under, into the dreamless place churning like an ocean beneath the surface of his everyday mind. “If they’re speaking to me, that is.”

  Bill dashed at his wet eyes with the back of one large hand. “They’re speaking to you, all right,” he replied. “But if you pull through, you can expect all three of them to read you the riot act for disappearing the way you did.”

  If you pull through.

  Jack sighed. “Fair enough,” he said.

  REACHING DEEP INTO HER mind and heart in the days after Jack’s leaving, Ashley had found a new strength. She’d absorbed the media blitz, with Jack and Chad Lombard playing their starring roles, with a stoicism that surprised even her. After the first wave, she’d stopped watching, stopped reading.

  Enough was enough.

  Every sound bite, every news clip, every article brought an overwhelming sense of sorrow and relief, in equal measures.

  Two days after the Tombstone Showdown, as the reporters had dubbed it, a pair of FBI agents had turned up at Ashley’s door.

  They’d been long on questions and short on answers.

  All they’d really been willing to divulge was that she was in no danger from Chad Lombard’s organization; some of its members had been taken into federal custody in Arizona. The rest had scattered to the four winds.

  And Jack was alive.

  That gave her at least a measure of relief.

  It was the questions that fed her sorrow, innocuous and routine though they were. Something about the tone of them, a certain sad resignation—there were no details forthcoming, either in the media or from the visiting agents, but she sensed that Jack was still in trouble.

  Had Jack McCall told her anything about his association with any particular government agencies and if so, what? the agents wanted to know.

  Had he left anything behind when he went away?

  If Mr. McCall agreed, would she wish to visit him in a location that would be disclosed at a later time?

  No, Jack hadn’t told her anything, beyond the things the FBI already knew, and no, he hadn’t left anything behind. Yes, she wanted to see him and she’d appreciate it if they’d disclose the mysterious location.

  They refused, though politely, and left, promising to contact her later.

  After that, she’d heard nothing more.

  Since then, Ashley had been seized by a strange and fierce desperation, a need to do something, but she had no idea where Jack was, or what kind of condition he was in. She only knew that he’d collapsed in Tombstone—there had been pictures in the newspapers and on the web.

  Both Brad and Tanner had “their people” beating the bushes for any scrap of information, but either they’d really come up with nothing, as they claimed, or they simply didn’t want Jack McCall found. Ever.

  Melissa was searching, too; even though she wasn’t any fonder of Jack than Brad and Olivia were, she and Ashley had the twin link. Melissa knew, better than any of the others, exactly what her sister was going through.

  The results of that investigation? So far, zip.

  After a week, Jack disappeared from the news, displaced by accounts of piracy at sea, the president’s latest budget proposal, and the like.r />
  By the first of February, Ashley was very good at pretending she didn’t care where Jack McCall was, what he was doing, whether or not he would—or could—come back.

  She’d decided to Get on with Her Life.

  Carly and Sophie had spent hours with her, after school, when they weren’t rehearsing their parts in the drama club’s upcoming play, fleshing out one of the websites Jack had created, showing her how to surf the Net, how to run searches, how to access and reply to email.

  In fact, they’d both managed to earn special credit at school for undertaking the task.

  Slowly, Ashley had begun to understand the mysteries of navigating cyberspace.

  She quickly became proficient at web surfing, and especially at monitoring her modest but attractive website, already bringing in more business than she knew what to do with.

  The B&B was booked solid for Valentine’s Day weekend, and the profit margin on her “Hearts, Champagne and Roses” campaign looked healthy indeed.

  With two weeks to go before the holiday arrived, she was already baking and freezing tarts, some for her guests to enjoy, and some for the annual dance at the Moose Lodge. This year, the herd was raising money to resurface the community swimming pool.

  She’d agreed to serve punch and help provide refreshments, not out of magnanimity, but because she baked for the dance every year. And, okay, partly because she knew everybody in town was talking about her latest romantic disaster—this one had gone national, with CNN coverage and an article in People, not that she’d been specifically mentioned—and she wanted to show them all that she wasn’t moping. No, sir, not her.

  She was O’Ballivan tough.

  If she still cried herself to sleep once in a while, well, nobody needed to know that. Nobody except Mrs. Wiggins, her small, furry companion, always ready to comfort her with a cuddle.

  As outlined in the piece in People, Ardith and Rachel were back home, in a suburb of Phoenix, happily reunited with the rest of the family.

  Yes, Ashley thought, sitting there at her computer long after she should have taken a bubble bath and gone to bed, day by day, moment by moment, she was getting over Jack.

  Really and truly.

  Or not.

  Glancing out the window, she saw Melissa’s car, a red glow under the streetlight, swinging into her driveway.