Tick Tock (Michael Bennett 4)

“Your condition?” Seamus said.

I shook my head.

“Mary Catherine.”

“She cried for two days,” Seamus said. “But now I believe she’s fine, Mike. She’s one remarkable girl, or I should say, woman.”

“It’s true,” Emily agreed. “She saved your life. And Ricky’s. All of your lives. Feel better, Mike. Call me when you can. I have to go now. There’s about a thousand people waiting to see you.”

I squeezed Emily’s hand.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“For what?” she said.

“For leaving the hotel.”

She smiled.

“You’re where you’re supposed to be, Mike. I know that now.”

The redheaded nurse came back then, looking pissed.

“Visiting time is over,” she said as she shoved Seamus toward the door.

“Get better,” ordered Seamus.

“I will.”

“Promise,” he called back.

I smiled.

“I swear to God, Father,” I said.

I slept for another stretch. When I opened my eyes, it was dark and all my kids were there.

At first, I flinched. I didn’t want them to see me this way. Their mother had died in a hospital bed. They’d seen enough horror in their young lives, hadn’t they? But after a minute, I found myself smiling as I looked from concerned face to concerned face.

They were all trying to be brave and to make me smile, I saw. Mary Catherine most of all. A wall of concern and love and support was bearing down on me whether I liked it or not.

After a little bit, I smiled back through my tears. I couldn’t have helped it if I’d wanted to. Resistance was futile.

“Go give your Da a kiss,” Seamus instructed my kids.

And incredibly, somehow, all at the same time, that’s exactly what they did.

HAYS BAKER: FATHER. HUSBAND. PATRIOT. HERO. #1 MOST WANTED.

FOR AN EXCERPT, TURN THE PAGE.

“MY, MY. The president wants to meet us,” Lizbeth whispered in my ear as we followed Jax Moore farther into the mansion.

“Of course he does,” I said with a wink.

Actually, Lizbeth and I were considered stars at that particular moment in time. We’d just returned from Vegas where we had saved countless lives while arresting a gang of moderately clever human bank robbers who had been terrorizing the West.

Anyway, Jax Moore whisked us through eight-foot-tall carved oak doors that led to the mansion’s private living area. Well-concealed scanners examined every pore of our bodies as we walked to the entrance of the president’s oval-shaped office, which was modeled after the famous original in the now-sunken city of Washington, DC.