The rot had started with Jamie’s brother, Ian, back in the early 1900s. Ian McGregor never forgave his younger brother for running off to South Africa and making a fortune.
“Who does he think he is, disappearing halfway ’round the world, leaving us to take care of Mam and Da and the farm? Sending nae money home to those as raised him?”
Ian had conveniently forgotten that he had laughed in Jamie’s face when he announced his intention to sail for the diamond fields of Africa. That growing up he had beaten the boy mercilessly, frequently cheating him out of his scant share of food and giving him the toughest, most arduous jobs on the family’s meager, rocky, little farm north of Aberdeen. By the time Jamie founded Kruger-Brent and made his millions, both his parents were dead, condemned to early graves by the relentless poverty of lives spent tilling the land. Jamie did send money home, to Mary, the only one of his siblings who had loved and supported him. But when she, too, died, of tuberculosis, aged only thirty, the payments dried up. Jamie had not seen or spoken to either of his brothers in over a decade. He did not feel he owed them anything.
Ian McGregor saw things differently. If he’d been tough on Jamie, it was only for his own good. He had loved the boy like a father, worked hard to provide for him, and what had been his reward? Abandonment. Betrayal. Destitution.
Ian began to drink heavily. As Jamie’s fortune and reputation grew, so, too, did his brother’s bitterness and envy. The years passed, and Ian passed this loathing on to his own son, Hamish, who in turn bequeathed it to Gabe’s father, Stuart, like some sort of terrible genetic disease.
When Gabe was growing up, just to speak the name Jamie McGregor was to invoke the devil. Over the years, other names were added to the family’s roll call of hatred. Kate Blackwell. Tony Blackwell. Eve Blackwell. Robert Templeton. Gabe’s grandfather, Hamish, devoted his retirement years and every penny of his meager savings to a doomed lawsuit against the mighty Kruger-Brent corporation. Time after time the case was thrown out of courts from Glasgow to London to New York. Each time the judges were more scathing.
Frivolous.
Greedy.
Entirely without foundation.
Hamish McGregor died a bankrupt, bitter man. Twenty years later, the same fate befell his son, Gabe’s father. Gabe was sixteen when his dad died, his mind corroded with drink and hatred, his body broken from the long, backbreaking years on the docks.
Despite everything, Gabe had loved his dad. He tried to remember the good times they’d had together. Playing on the beach at Elgin when he was three or four. Watching Celtic play at Parkhead, screaming their heads off in the terraces. Dancing around the tree at Christmas, all three of them in the front room, Mam, too, before Dad had started to hit her, before the bitterness got too much.
Two weeks after his father died, Gabe left home.
His mother was worried.
“Where will you go, son? You’ve nae qualifications. You’ll nae find work in Aberdeen, nae now the shipyards are gone.”
“I’m not staying in Scotland, Mam. There’s work down south. Plenty.”
“You mean London?”
Anne McGregor couldn’t have sounded more horrified if Gabe had said he was moving to Beirut.
“I’ll phone you as soon as I’m settled. Do not worry, Mam. I can take care of myself.”
TEN
PETER TEMPLETON SAT IN THE PRIVATE WAITING ROOM AT Mount Sinai Medical Center, staring at the wall. This was where he’d lost his beloved Alex. Even the smell of the place, a mixture of disinfectant and cheap vanilla candles, was gruesomely familiar.
How much more tragedy did the gods have planned for him?
When would it end?
Mindlessly, he picked up a frayed copy of New Woman magazine.
I don’t want a new woman. I want my old woman back.
A few doors down the hall, Agent Andrew Edwards was still in surgery. The man had been a hero, according to his partner. Astonishingly brave. After the second bomb, he’d run into the blazing building, looking for Lexi. He never gave up.
It should have been me in that mill, not him. If he lives, I will reward him for his courage. He can have anything he wants.
If he lives.
Something had gone terribly wrong. The FBI believed they were taking on a small group of armed kidnappers. They’d expected a shoot-out. Instead they stumbled into a series of sophisticated booby traps, triggering bombs powerful enough to wipe out entire villages. Captain Barclay and his men never stood a chance. The first explosion killed three of them outright. By the time FBI reinforcements arrived, all five were dead, entombed in what would soon be the charred wreckage of a fire so catastrophic it could be seen from fifty miles away.
Early indications were that the kidnappers themselves had escaped. In the confusion, and desperate attempts to find Lexi, valuable time had been lost. If they had gotten out, they could be anywhere by now, scattered to the wind.
If they’d gotten out. The fire was so intense, it would be weeks before a final determination was made on all the human remains. It didn’t help that nobody knew exactly how many bodies they were looking for.
Peter overheard the fire chief talking to one of the surgeons.
“It’s a miracle anyone made it out of there alive. Agent Edwards is a lucky guy.”
Second-degree burns to eighty percent of his body, two shattered legs and severe internal bleeding? thought Peter. I’d love to meet an unlucky guy.
“Dr. Templeton?”
Peter looked up. A pretty woman doctor was talking to him.
“You can come in now. Your daughter is awake.”
Lexi blinked, taking in her surroundings.