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       Chapter One

      Special Agent Kade Ryland raced up the steps of the Silver Creek hospital. Whatever was going on, it was bad. No doubt about it. The voice message from his brother had proven that.

      Get to the hospital now, Grayson had ordered.

      Since his brother Grayson was the sheriff of Silver Creek, it couldn’t be good news. Nor was the fact that Grayson wasn’t answering his phone—probably because he was in the hospital, a dead zone for reception.

      Kade prayed that someone wasn’t hurt or dead, but the odds were that’s exactly what had happened. He had four living brothers, three sisters-in-law, two nephews and a niece. Since all his brothers were in law enforcement and one of his sisters-in-law was pregnant, there were lots of opportunities for things to go wrong.

      The automatic doors swished open, and he hurried through, only to set off the metal detector’s alarm. Kade mumbled some profanity for the delay. He’d just come from work and was still wearing his sidearm in a shoulder holster concealed beneath his jacket. He also had his backup weapon strapped to his boot. He didn’t want to take the time to remove either of them.

      The uniformed guard practically jumped from the chair where he was reading a battered copy of the Silver Creek Ledger. His name was Rowdy Dawkins, a man that Kade had known his whole life. But then Kade could say that about half the town.

      “The sheriff’s waiting for you in the emergency room,” Rowdy said, waving Kade through the metal detector. His expression was somber. His tone dripped with concern.

      Oh, man.

      Kade didn’t even take the time to ask Rowdy for details, though the man no doubt knew what was going on. He didn’t just hurry—Kade ran to the E.R. that was at the other end of the building. The hospital wasn’t big by anyone’s standards, but it seemed to take him an hour to reach the E.R. waiting room.

      No sign of his brother or any other family member.

      Kade’s heart was pounding now, and his mind was coming up with all sorts of bad scenarios. He’d been an FBI agent for seven years, not nearly as long as his brothers had been in law enforcement, but that was more than long enough to fuel the worst sort of details about what could be wrong.

      “Your brother’s in there with Dr. Mickelson,” a nurse volunteered as she pointed the way. She, too, gave him a sympathetic look, which meant he was probably the only person in the whole frickin’ town who didn’t know what the heck was going on.

      Kade mumbled a thank-you to her and hurried into the doctor’s office, the first door in the hall just off the waiting room. He tried to brace himself for what he might see, but he hadn’t expected to find everything looking so … normal.

      Well, almost.

      Grayson was indeed there, standing, and looking fit as a fiddle as his granddaddy Chet would have said. He looked as he usually did in his jeans and crisp white shirt with his badge clipped to his rodeo belt.

      Dr. Mickelson, the chief of staff, was there, as well, practically elbow to elbow with Grayson. Nothing looked out of the ordinary for him, either. The two had obviously been expecting him.

      “I was in the middle of an arrest when you phoned,” Kade started. “That’s why your call went straight to voice mail, but I tried to get in touch with you after I got your message. I tried your office, too, and the dispatch clerk said her orders were for me to speak directly to you. What’s wrong? Who’s hurt?”

      “No one’s hurt,” Grayson said, but then he wearily shook his head. “At least no one that we know about.” He stepped closer and looked directly into Kade’s eyes. Ice-gray eyes that were a genetic copy of Kade’s own.

      Oh, yeah. This was bad.

      And downright confusing.

      “What do you mean by that?” Kade asked.

      Grayson and the doctor exchanged glances. “You’d better sit down. We have something to tell you.” The doctor tipped his head to the chair next to his desk, which was cluttered with folders, computer equipment and papers.

      The one thing Kade didn’t want was to sit. “Does someone in the family have cancer or something?”

      Or God forbid, had there been a suicide? It wasn’t something the average person would consider high on their list of worries, but since his own mother had committed suicide when he was barely eleven, it was never far from Kade’s mind.

      “No one has cancer,” the doctor answered. He flexed his graying eyebrows, but he didn’t add more.

      Like the security guard, Kade knew Dr. Mickelson. The doctor had been the one to deliver him thirty-one years ago, but Kade couldn’t read the doctor as well as he could read Grayson. So, he turned to his brother.

      “Tell me what happened,” Kade pushed.

      Grayson mumbled something under his breath. “I would if I knew where to start.”

      “The beginning’s usually a good place.” Kade’s stomach was churning now, the acid blistering his throat, and he just wanted to know the truth.

      “All right.” Grayson took a deep breath and stepped to the side.

      Kade saw it then. The clear bassinet on rollers, the kind they used in the hospital nursery.

      He walked closer and

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