LITMIR.BIZ

      Prologue

      Cody Gannon’s boots clicked against the hospital’s polished tile floors as he hurried toward Mitchell Forbes’s room. The old warhorse was recovering and already raising cane with the doctors to let him go back to the Smoking Barrel. Not that anyone was surprised. A mere heart attack could never keep a man like Mitchell down.

      Still, Cody had been scared to death when Mitchell had been rushed to the hospital with chest pains. The depth of his emotion had surprised him, especially since he was convinced he wasn’t quite the man Mitchell had hoped for when he’d hired him on to work with Texas Confidential. The other three guys on the undercover team did no wrong. Cody seldom did anything right, at least in the critical eyes of Mitchell Forbes.

      But the cantankerous old rancher-lawman had recruited Cody himself, offered him a position based strictly on his one brush with fame and heroism. He’d said he had faith in Cody’s ability to handle the job in spite of his trouble-plagued past.

      So Cody was living at the Smoking Barrel, had been for two years. The rest of the Texas Confidential agents weren’t all that impressed that he’d foiled a bank robbery attempt and saved a young girl in the process. They knew it was more instinct than bravery that had spurred him into action, but they’d welcomed him all the same and taught him what they could about working for the most exciting covert operation in the whole state of Texas.

      No doubt about it, he owed Mitchell Forbes a lot for giving him the chance to be part of Texas Confidential and to finally make something of himself. He was going to make sure Mitchell knew that, and he was going to work twice as hard in the future to make the man proud of him. He picked up his pace, anxious to see for himself that Mitchell was doing as well as the others had reported.

      He heard a female voice as he approached the room and recognized it at once. Maddie Wells, a neighboring rancher. He wasn’t close enough to eavesdrop, but he could tell from her tone she was in her lecturing mode. Probably reading Mitchell the riot act about smoking his cigars. She was the only one who could jump him about his bad habits and get away with it. One day Mitchell was going to slow down a tad, and Maddie would snare him.

      The door to Mitchell’s room was open just a crack. He started to barge in but thought better of it. It was always a good idea to knock when a man was entertaining a woman, even if it was in a hospital room. He touched his knuckles to the door.

      “Cody deserves to know the truth, Mitchell.”

      He hesitated, not sure he wanted to know any truth that brought that kind of seriousness to Maddie’s tone. And if he was about to be canned, he sure didn’t want to hear that.

      “Give it up, Maddie.”

      Mitchell’s voice was scratchy and Cody could picture him in the bed, his muscles tight, his face drawn into stubborn lines. He waited silently, torn, knowing he shouldn’t be listening in on a private conversation but knowing he couldn’t turn away until he knew what Maddie was talking about. After all, this did concern him.

      “Suppose you had died when you had that heart attack,” Maddie said, her voice far softer than usual.

      “You would have gone to your grave without Cody’s ever knowing the truth.”

      “That’s the way I intend for it to be.”

      Cody’s muscles tightened. He’d had his share of ugly secrets in his life, but he’d thought they ended when he’d buried Frank Gannon.

      “Are you telling me that you have no intention of talking to Cody about this?”

      “That’s exactly what I’m saying. My biggest mistake was in ever telling you.”

      “No, your biggest mistake, Mitchell Forbes, was in walking away from your own flesh and blood in the first place. Cody Gannon is your son, and he deserves to know it.”

      Cody backed away from the door, but the words echoed in his mind, growing louder and louder until he wanted to scream at them to stop. He ducked into the stairwell and fell against the wall. He felt as if someone had slammed him in the gut with a two-by-four.

      Maddie was wrong. He wasn’t Mitchell Forbes’s son. His father was Frank Gannon. He had the scars to prove it.

      He took the steps two at a time, rounding one level and flying down the next. Scenes from his past reared up in his mind. Dark, ugly images that filled him with a dread so real he could taste it. Could taste the blood. Taste the fear.

      But as quickly as they’d come, they were replaced by new images. Mitchell Forbes and his mother. He’d gotten her pregnant and walked away. Left her to marry Frank Gannon. Left her to die in her misery.

      Cody reached the first floor and pushed out the door and into the stifling Texas heat. But it was not the sweltering heat that crawled over his skin and sucked away his breath. It was a bitterness so strong it destroyed his ability to reason.

      All he knew was that if he never saw Mitchell Forbes again, it would still be eons too soon for him.