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  “Harold Monroe is his son,” Jon reminded Marquez.

  “I know. I wired his inmate-friend to record his so-called confession.” He laughed. “This has been one incredible case. In all my years with the force, I’ve never come across anything similar. Well, except for this one case, in my days as a police officer, when a state senator’s wife was involved in a grisly murder and went to prison for it. Judd Dunn was involved in that one. So was Cash Grier.”

  “I remember. The senator was Dunn’s best friend. Tragic case. Didn’t the senator marry his secretary?” Kilraven asked.

  “Yes, they have two little boys now. He’s retired from politics and spends his time pushing legislation to help farmers.”

  “Happy endings.”

  “Very. I want to see Cammy,” Jon said.

  “Me, too,” his brother seconded.

  “We’ll all go,” Joceline said. “Can you go ask the SAC if we can have the rest of the day off?” she asked Jon.

  He grinned. “On my way.”

  “I’ll get back to work before the shock and relief wear off and they start looking for blunt instruments of violence,” Marquez mused, glancing from one brother to the other.

  “We wouldn’t hit you,” Jon protested.

  “Well, we wouldn’t hit you hard,” Kilraven amended. And he grinned.

  Cammy was waiting at the front door when the five of them arrived. She grabbed her sons and hugged and hugged them and cried and hugged them some more. They were doing much the same.

  Eventually she let them go and embraced Joceline and Winnie and bent to pick up little Markie, who was unsettled by all the emotion.

  “It’s okay,” Joceline told her son, “these are happy tears. We thought your grandmother was…well, that we wouldn’t see her again.”

  “I know. There was a funeral and I couldn’t go.” He looked at his grandmother and touched her silver-threaded black hair in its high, elegant bun. “I’m so glad you didn’t die, Granny.”

  Her eyes teared up again and she hugged him closer. “Me, too. Oh, I’m so happy!”

  “So are we,” Winnie murmured, and she hugged Cammy, as well.

  A few days later, they sat around the huge, open fireplace in the living room and talked over the shattering events of the past months.

  Sloane Callum started into the room, his cowboy hat gripped in one big hand, but he hesitated when he saw all the people.

  Jon got up and went to him, his eyes black and quiet as they met the other man’s.

  “I know, I’m fired,” Callum said heavily. “I should have told you about my own son, and my family connections, long ago. But I thought you wouldn’t want to trust me…”

  Jon hugged him, hard. “You saved Cammy’s life. And because we hired you, your son helped us find the killer of my niece, Melly, and Mac’s first wife.” He took the other man by the shoulders. “Don’t even think about quitting. We owe you.”

  “All of us,” Kilraven agreed quietly.

  “Especially me,” Cammy added, and smiled at Callum. “I knew you’d be a wonderful addition to the ranch staff. I was right.” She looked at her sons and glared. “I’m always right, so you should listen to me when I tell you things for your own good.”

  “You wanted me to marry Charlene,” Jon reminded her.

  “And you wanted me to stop seeing Winnie,” Kilraven reminded her.

  She threw up her hands. “Two little mistakes!” She sighed.

  They laughed.

  “I will try to reform,” she said in a gentle tone. “From now on, I’m going to keep out of your business and mind my own.” She sat down beside Joceline. “There are just one or two things. Small things. You should take Markie to a lung specialist and let them do tests, and I’ll pay for it. You should have a pretty wedding gown. We can go to Neiman Marcus and pick one out. And we should do something about the color scheme in Jon’s apartment—there should be bright colors…”

  Jon and Kilraven got up. “We’re going to buy Callum a beer,” they said, then spoiled their exit by bursting into laughter just outside the living room door.

  “Now what in the world are they laughing at?” Cammy wondered aloud. “Never mind, about Jon’s apartment…” she continued, unabashed.

  Joceline and Winnie exchanged amused glances, but they paid rapt attention.

  EPILOGUE

  Phyllis Hicks was charged with the murder of Kilraven’s first wife and his daughter, as well as the attempted murder of Cammy Blackhawk, and many other charges. She would be put away for a long time, and there would be no other children who would be hurt by her madness.

  The murder charges against Harold Monroe were quietly dropped. He vanished out of sight, amidst rumors that he was in some sort of federal protection program. They were only rumors, of course.

  Jon and Joceline were married in the interdenominational church in San Antonio that Joceline had attended for years, with flower girls and Markie as ring bearer, and Winnie and Cammy as dual matrons of honor. Many of the San Antonio FBI agents found a way to attend, though some had to watch the ceremony on a DVD later.

  Joceline and Markie moved in with Jon, but she kept her job at the office. Cammy argued that she should stay home with Markie, but Jon argued that he’d go nuts if he had to break in a new assistant. He won, too.

  Markie’s behavior improved to such a degree that any decisions about medication were left for future discussion, perhaps the result of a much more settled home life.

  Winnie Kilraven was rushed to the hospital with labor pains just a week before Christmas. She produced a tiny little boy with a thick head of black hair, and big tough McKuen Kilraven cried as he held his son in his arms.

  Jon and Joceline put up a Christmas tree in his apartment with ornaments that had been handed down for generations in his family, and some of the small ones she and Markie had accumulated from Christmases past in her apartment. Cammy had contributed a beautiful Swarovski crystal one for their first Christmas together as a family. She and the Kilravens were going to join Jon and Joceline and Markie at the ranch for the yearly mealfest. Joceline was looking forward to it. So was Markie. In view of the near-tragedies, it was going to be a marvelous celebration of life.

  The tree was tall and round and tapered and beautiful. Markie just stared at it in awe when Joceline brought him home from day care to find it already set up with the lights blaring in the living room.

  “Oh, it’s like magic!” he exclaimed, touching it almost reverently.

  Jon’s arm went around Joceline and pulled her close. He looked down into her soft, loving eyes with absolute wonder. “Yes. It is like magic.”

  “Daddy, do you love Mommy?” Markie asked him suddenly, looking up at him with big, wide blue eyes.

  Joceline was embarrassed. Jon had never said the words, not even when he was the most passionate. “Markie,” she began, in protest.

  Jon cupped Joceline’s face in his big, warm hands. “I love her more than anything or anyone in the world,” he said softly, and smiled at her surprise as he bent to kiss her with breathless tenderness.

  “More than you love me?” Markie asked plaintively.

  Jon chuckled. He picked the boy up in his arms and kissed his hair. “I love both of you more than anything in the world,” he amended.

  “I love you, too, Daddy.” Markie sighed, and hugged the tall man warmly. “I was just thinking,” he added thoughtfully. “Wouldn’t it be nice if I had a brother like you do?”

  Jon looked at Joceline with a wicked smile. “Wouldn’t it?” he mused.

  Joceline laughed and colored prettily. They hadn’t used precautions at all, so much in love that the addition of a child to the family would be a wonder, not a worry. In fact, she was already late on her monthly.

  Jon knew. His eyes twinkled.

  “Or a sister, I guess,” Markie told them. “I could teach her how to draw.”

  “Truly,” Joceline agreed.

  Markie looked past them at the majes
tic Christmas tree. “It’s going to be the best Christmas we ever had, Mommy!” he burst out.

  She looked at her husband and her child, and her blue eyes were overflowing with joy. “Yes, my darling,” she told him. “The best Christmas ever!”

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-0897-1

  MERCILESS

  Copyright © 2011 by Diana Palmer

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