She lifted her gaze once more to Sam’s. “You wanted to know why I killed him. I killed him with the same disdain that he once killed my mother, and I killed him so I would finally be free.”

“Jesus, baby, I don’t even have words. I don’t know how you survived as long as you did.” He pulled her into his arms and cradled her protectively against his chest. He stroked her hair with one hand and held her tightly with the other. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

She closed her eyes and inhaled his comforting scent. Hot tears continued to leak down her cheeks, absorbed by his shirt. She’d never cried for her mother. She’d been too afraid. Even in the darkness of her room at night, she’d been too afraid her father would hear. He abhorred weakness, and she’d spent years removing any hint of it from her demeanor.

A knock sounded at the door, and she quickly stepped away from Sam, wiping at her face in an effort to hide her distress. He gave her a moment, then leaned in to kiss her on the forehead.

“That’s the doctor. Have a seat and get comfortable. I want him to give you a thorough checkup before we leave here.”

She sagged onto the couch and only half-listened as Sam went to the door and spoke in low tones to the doctor. A moment later, an older man walked in, pushing a portable piece of medical equipment, with Sam close on his heels. It didn’t escape her notice that Sam’s hand was on his gun, and he watched the doctor closely when he stopped in front of Sophie.

“Sophie, I’m Dr. Richards. I’d like to check you over, listen to the baby’s heartbeat, and if you consent, I’d like to do a sonogram as well. Just to make sure everything’s as it should be.”

He smiled as he spoke, and Sophie relaxed a little.

“I get to see the baby?”

Hope and excitement welled in her chest, and ridiculously, she felt like crying all over again.

“Yes, we can even see if you’re having a little boy or a little girl if you want.”

Her gaze flew to Sam. He looked a little gobsmacked.

“I do,” she breathed. “Do you?” she asked Sam.

Sam circled around the doctor and slid onto the couch beside her. “I do. I’d love to know.”

The doctor began with a cursory exam of Sophie. He listened to her heart, took her blood pressure, asked her general questions about her health history. He asked to see her arm, poked and prodded at the stitches and seemed surprised that the sutures looked so clean and that there was no sign of infection. Then he asked her to recline on the couch, smiling as he did so.

“I’m afraid it’s not the best of exam tables, but Mr. Kelly felt strongly about me performing the exam here and not in one of our rooms.”

“No, it’s okay,” she said hastily as she looked right and left to determine the best way to lie down.

Sam answered her dilemma by simply rotating and easing her down until her head was in his lap. He smoothed a hand over her forehead as the doctor slipped the waistband of her jeans below the swell of her belly.

There was a muffled sound from the machine as the doctor placed the wand over her belly and moved back and forth. Then he settled on a spot and a rhythmic whop whop whop echoed over the room.

Sophie yanked her head to the side to see a pulsing blob on the screen.

“That’s the heart,” the doctor said. “A good, strong heartbeat. Right where we want it.”

She was mesmerized by the sight. This was her baby! She stared in awe as the image moved. Occasionally the doctor stopped and typed on the small keyboard attached to the sonogram machine.

He pointed out arms and legs, the head and even a tiny mouth. And then a hand, seemingly held out as if to wave, the little fingers splayed.

Sophie’s heart contracted. She was hit by a wave of love so fierce that it paralyzed her. Her child. A tiny life nestled in her womb. She couldn’t even wrap her head around the idea.

“Okay, here we go. Let’s see here. We have a shy one.”

Dr. Richards probed harder on her stomach and then turned the wand.

“Aha, there she is. Take a look, Sophie. You have a daughter.”

Despite her vow not to shed another tear, the screen went completely blurry. A daughter.

“I was right,” she whispered. “A girl!”

“You called it right,” Sam said softly above her.

The catch in his voice had her tearing her gaze from the screen to look up at him. He was staring at the monitor with such awe in his eyes that she felt her chest squeeze a little harder.

Then he glanced down and their eyes caught and held. He touched her cheek, and the emotion in his gaze nearly undid her.

“She’s beautiful, Soph. Just like her mama.”

She looked back at the monitor and smiled. The small burst of joy was so welcome, so wonderful that she wanted to hold on to it forever.

Dr. Richards pulled the wand away from her belly and carefully pulled her pants back up over her waist.

“I’d leave those stitches in your arm for another few days. Keep the area clean and a bandage over it. It’s healing quite nicely though. Everything else looks good. I’d say you have a healthy little girl there.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much. It was so nice to see her for the first time.”

The doctor smiled and backed away from the couch. “I’ll leave you two now. I have patients to get back to.”

He wheeled the sonogram machine away, and a second later, she heard the door close behind him. She tried to push to a sitting position, but it was awkward. Sam helped her up, and she leaned against the couch, suddenly exhausted, but euphoric at the same time.

“A daughter.”

Reverently she palmed her belly and rubbed softly over the swell. Sam put his hand over hers and squeezed.

“I just want her safe,” Sophie said.

Sam cupped her chin and pulled until she faced him. His expression was hard now, devoid of his earlier tenderness. There was determination there.

“She will be, Sophie. We’ll find a way. I need you to believe that.”

“I want to,” she said honestly.

“Help me then. I need information. I know you’re tired. But I need you to tell me and my men everything you can about your uncle, about your father’s holding in Rock Springs. Every detail you can think of. They’re gathering intel now and we need to move quickly, but you can help us a lot if you tell us what you know.”

“Of course I will.”

“Where is the key? I asked you in the truck, but you never answered.”

She covered her face in a tired gesture, knocking his hand from her chin in the process. She rubbed at her eyes and sighed.

“The night I took the boat, when I was coming to you, I hid the key in a box and buried it in the planter that was at the bait shop where I got the boat. It’s there. The Ice Box. That’s the name of the store.”

“I know of it. It’s a few miles down the lake from Paris Landing. I’ll send one of Rio’s men for it.”

She shook her head. “No, I should go.”

He frowned. “You’re not going anywhere you’re unprotected.”

There was determination in her eyes as she stared back at him. “That key is all the insurance I have, Sam. All the insurance our child has. I won’t take a chance with it.”

“I know I don’t have a right to ask, and you have every reason to be unsure and scared, but trust me, Sophie. Trust me. Trust that I won’t do anything that puts any of you at risk. I’ll send him for the key and he’ll return it to us—to you.”

She swallowed hard, and he could see the conflict so readily apparent on her face. His hand closed over hers, and he felt her tremble in his grasp. Finally she nodded.

“Okay, send him.”

He lifted her hand and kissed her fingertips. “Come on then. Let’s go find the others.”

CHAPTER 26

AFTER issuing instructions to Rio to send a man to retrieve the key, Sam went back in to see his father. This time he didn’t disturb him. He simply stood by his bedside and watched the up-and-down lines on the heart monitor and took reassurance in the rhythmic sounds of each breath.

Now more than ever he needed to take steps to ensure the safety of his family. It would take months to see to fruition the detailed plans for a veritable fortress on the land he’d purchased, but no longer would he put it off.

His family would be safe and under his watchful eye—all of them.

He reached down to touch his father’s hand. It was cold—too cold—to the touch. His mother should be here, sitting by his bedside, not scared out of her mind in some shithole in West Texas.

He hadn’t prayed in a long time, but he prayed now. He recalled every trip to church with his parents, and knew his mother found comfort in scripture and the steady words from the pulpit. He hoped she reached back for that now and that she didn’t lose hope.

“I’ll bring her home, Dad,” he whispered. “Somehow I’ll make all this right.”

He turned and walked out of the cubicle and came face-to-face with the nurse who’d shown him in earlier.

She gestured toward a man on one of the phones at the nurses’ station a few feet away. “The doctor is here if you’d like to talk to him about your father.”

“Thank you, I would.”

“Wait here and I’ll get him,” she said.

A few seconds later, the doctor hung up the phone and the nurse spoke to him and pointed in Sam’s direction. The doctor walked over and extended his hand.

“I’m Dr. Caldwell. I’m in charge of your father’s care.”

Sam shook his hand. “Sam Kelly. How is he, Doctor?”

“He’s doing well, considering. He had a major blockage that we went in and stented. There was another artery with about sixty-five percent blockage that we ballooned. He’ll have to be on medication, and he’ll need to make some drastic changes to diet and lifestyle, but he should do well with proper treatment.”

Relief nearly crushed Sam on the spot. “When do you think he’ll go home? I mean is he even near that point? How long will you keep him?”

The doctor smiled. “I’d like to keep him for a couple of days and monitor his recovery, make sure there aren’t any problems. I’ll run some tests to see how much, if any, of the heart was damaged, but he’ll be able to go home in a couple of days.”

“Thank you,” Sam said.

The doctor put his hand on Sam’s shoulder. “No problem. That’s my job. If you’ll excuse me, I have other patients to see.”

Sam nodded and the doctor walked away. Sam glanced back toward his father’s room before walking out of the unit himself.

When he rejoined the others in the family room, he briefed Donovan and Garrett on what the doctor had said and then he turned to the matter at hand.

“Sean give me the details on what you’ve worked out for security here at the hospital,” Sam said quietly. “I need every man I can get when we go to Rock Springs, but I also won’t leave Dad and Rusty unprotected.”

Sean looked haggard, like he hadn’t slept in a week, and grief was raw like a storm in his eyes. Frank and Marlene were like parents to him, and he was another son in an already large family.

He was young, but he was a damn good cop, and Sam trusted him to keep his loved ones safe from harm.

“The state police were screaming, but your pal Resnick called and they calmed down,” Sean said.

Sam’s brow furrowed in surprise, and he turned to Garrett. “Did you know anything about this?”

Garrett shrugged. “All I told him was to keep Uncle Sam off our asses and out of West Texas. Figured that’s all he needed to know.”

Resnick had come through in spades. He was a good man when the chips were down. Sam knew he’d put him in an untenable position. His ass would be on the line with his superiors. But he’d gone out on a limb for Sam. Debt paid.

“Okay, what else?” he directed at Sean.

“We have three troopers assigned to the hospital. I also have two locals and two of my guys from the county. We’ve alerted hospital security, and they’ve called in backup so they’ve doubled their field. I’ll stay with Frank and Rusty myself.”

Sam inhaled and looked over at his brothers and broached the topic that had been troubling him since their conversation with their dad.

“I know Dad doesn’t want Ethan involved, but I have to call him. I need Baker and Renshaw, and Ethan will be pissed if we don’t tell him what’s gone down. I wouldn’t blame him. I’d want to know if I was out of town and all this shit had happened, and heads would roll if I was left out of the loop.”

Garrett grimaced. “I agree, but what about Rachel? If we call Ethan, he’s going to race home, and he’s going to want to go in with us.”

“We need him,” Sam said.

“Rachel could stay with Rusty and Dad,” Donovan offered. “Ethan’s going to be in a hell of a position. He won’t want to leave Rachel, but he’s not going to stay behind while we go after Mom.”