managed to bribe cops, buy off witnesses, and slip through the justice system time and time again.”
Adam was silent for a few moments, and then he said, “You’re a danger to this man. You brought in the first proof against him, and he probably knows there is more you might have obtained.”
“I was a Marine, for God’s sake! I can protect myself—” her father began.
“No one man can protect themselves against the kind of killer that might be sent in against you,” Adam said. “Think of your wife and child.”
That was it. Her father was a capable man, but he’d also been quick to say no man was an island.
And when it came to his wife and his child, he wasn’t taking chances.
Adam made the arrangements. Agents discreetly came to the house. Then it became a tense waiting game.
Four nights after Stacey first met Adam Harrison, it happened.
She learned about it later.
Stacey and her mother had gone to stay with an Aunt; her father was at home with the agents when a man wearing a demon mask broke into her father’s home office.
The agents stopped the man before he could fire at her father. Under arrest, he confessed that he’d been hired by McCarron.
Later, Adam was in the courtroom when the work David Hanson, her father, had done for the local police proved to be invaluable, as several exceptionally malicious and devious criminals were brought to trial, and in the end, brought to justice.
Stacy watched it all on TV. She saw McCarron, and the man who had tried to kill her father, and those who went on the witness stand and cried and said McCarron was a wonderful man—several of them women who were somehow in love with the man.
Had he paid those women to swear that he was a good man? The man who had intended to kill her father—and possibly her mother and her—had sworn under oath that McCarron had hired him to do the killing.
“Money can do powerful things!” her mother had muttered. She hadn’t gone to court, either. She’d stayed with Stacey. But she hadn’t kept Stacey from watching the trial.
Stacey saw the widows of Dr. Vargas and Mr. Anderson try to be brave but break down on the witness stand and cry.
Dr. Henry Lawrence’s testimony might have been the saddest of all—he cried on the stand, saying that not only had he lost a friend and mentor, the entire world had lost out on a great man.
McCarron was remarkable on the stand. He also broke into tears, denying all charges.
Despite his Oscar-worthy performance, he was convicted, and sent away.
So, the McCarron trial was over.
But Stacey’s father didn’t think it was the end of it. She heard him telling Adam that even though McCarron went down, he was pretty sure there was someone higher up the chain—or, at the least, in place to take over.
But McCarron didn’t talk, and those they had found who he’d hired for certain of his deeds—such as the attack on Stacey’s father--thought he’d been the top dog.
“I’m telling you, there was someone there. Someone else who was really pulling the strings,” her father said.
“Maybe,” Adam said. “And this is life—‘Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.’ There will be someone out there to take McCarron’s place. But we’ll be there, too. We’ll just keep going after the bad guys.”
Adam Harrison and his agents saw it all the way through. Then it was time for them to move on.
Stacey was so grateful to them.
She hero-worshipped her parents; and now she also felt that way about Adam Harrison. When they talked next, she was no longer having the nightmare. She was grateful, telling him he had saved her parents—and her.
“No, Stacey, you saved them,” he told her.
“I want to be a PI, like my dad!” she said. Then she frowned. “What’s your job?”
“Me? Ah, I don’t do anything special. Well, maybe I do. I find people—the right people,” he told her.
“Am I a ‘right’ person?” she asked him.
He knelt by her, giving her a hug. She wasn’t sure how such a kick-ass man could also seem like the world’s sweetest grandfather.
“You sure were this time!” he told her. “But you’re only ten years old. Let’s see where life takes you. You have high school, college...a lot of living to do. But when you’re older, if you want to see me...well, I will definitely want to see you again!” He gave her a business card with his name and phone number on