The Good Father Read Online Free

of explanation.
    “You’re saying that if I was a victim, I wouldn’t be welcome on the team?”
    “Of course not.” Lila’s frown, her quick gasp, caught at Ella, putting her strangely at ease. “Oh, my word, of course not. I just...I like to know. So I can help if need be... I’ll go get that tea.”
    Lila was clasping her hands together as she left the room. Ella watched her go, curious about the woman, and wishing that the managing director was a member of the High Risk team so she’d have an opportunity to get to know her better. She wasn’t, though. The Lemonade Stand’s representative was a woman Ella had yet to meet—Sara Havens, a licensed professional clinical counselor.
    And in retrospect, Lila’s not being on the team was just as well. At the moment, Ella didn’t have time to make a new friend outside of work. She had her hands full with settling into a new town, a new job, finding a house and putting her family back together.
    She just had to make a good enough impression to secure the High Risk team position she’d already landed.
    Which was just par for her life—having to fight for what she thought she already had. Like Chloe, fighting to keep them sisters when she’d thought they were family for life. And Brett...no...she’d stop that train of thought right there.
    Lila called from the kitchen, asking Ella if she wanted milk in her tea. Ella declined.
    She wasn’t going to think about Brett.
    Not yet.
    Not until she had to.
    And only then until she could get what she needed from him.

CHAPTER THREE
    B RETT HAD TO be in Chicago for an eleven o’clock meeting Wednesday morning. He’d be spending the few hours he had in his first-class airline seat studying the agenda for Music Muscles, a nonprofit music-therapy organization that was one of his newest clients. One that, so far, gave him no cause for concern. From there he’d head to Detroit, where he was spending the night before an early Thursday-morning meeting, and then it was off to Washington, DC, that afternoon.
    Leaving his black BMW in secured parking, he pulled the carry-on out of the trunk, slung his leather garment bag over one shoulder, his matching briefcase satchel over the other and strode straight to the preferred security line in the terminal at LAX.
    After he’d checked in, with limited time before they’d be calling him to preboard, Brett reached beneath his suit coat to the holster secured to his leather belt and pulled out his cell phone.
    Her number had been on the High Risk team email he’d received the morning before. He’d typed it into contacts only so that her name would come up if she phoned, and he could avoid answering.
    He found the name. Hit call. And then waited. Airline staff had opened the Jetway door. He only had a minute or two.
    One ring. Two. And then three. He glanced at his watch. It was before seven in the morning. Her shift at the hospital didn’t start until eight, and her apartment was a twenty-minute drive away. He was, after all, the king of online investigating. He’d sold the dot-com. Not his abilities.
    He still sat on the board of the company he founded—with his percentage of the take being donated to The Lemonade Stand every month.
    On the sixth ring a flight employee announced that it was time for him to board. And he was sent to voice mail.
    Brett didn’t leave a message.
    * * *
    E LLA GOT A new patient on Wednesday. A three-pound, nine-week-old girl who came to them from the Santa Raquel hospital with a peripherally inserted central catheter and a ventilator. The tiny thing was only now at thirty-four weeks gestational age. But if all went well, she’d be running and playing with her siblings soon enough, with no memory of how rough her life had been at the start. She was a lucky one. Her heart was good. Her lungs appeared to be developing normally. And as soon as her organs were mature enough to function on their own, she could hopefully go home.
    In the meantime, she’d need