APOLOGIES. I LOST TRACK OF TIME LAST WEEK AND DIDN’T GET AN EPISODE UP. SORRY!! BACK ON TRACK NOW.

With this segment of Chapter Fourteen of Repairing the Legacy, we continue the serialization of Repairing the Legacy. This is a rough draft work in progress and may not reflect the final form. Time period: set after the ending of The Martiniere Legacy main trilogy. I’m breaking longer chapters into sections for readability. This is the fourth part of Chapter Fourteen. There will be six parts to this chapter.

New to the series? Chapter order:

Chapter One, Section One

Return of the Prodigal Son (2 parts)

Conversations and a Dinner (2 parts)

Dancing into Change (2 parts)

Sisterly Compromises (3 parts)

Conspiracies at the Rodeo (3 parts)

Passing the Baton (4 parts)

Research Complications (3 parts)

Chasing After Shadows (3 parts)

Fifth Anniversary Present (3 parts)

Mariah (5 parts)

Shadows, Redux (3 parts)

Accidents Happen (4 parts)

Maternal Memories (4 parts)

December, 2070

GABE

The wind howled and whipped ice pellets against the north-facing bedroom windows when he woke. Gabe exhaled. His throat ached. The air moving through his nostrils burned warmer than usual. He didn’t want to move, arms and legs feeling like sandbags were piled on them.

Hell of a day to get sick. First real winter storm.

Maybe he could push himself enough to help Ruby feed this morning, since most of their staff were down sick. But Gabe couldn’t help groaning as he sat up, leaning on his hands after he swung his feet to the floor, trying to summon the strength to stand.

That brought Ruby to his side, frowning as she rested the back of her hand on his forehead. “You’re running a fever.”

“Not much of one. I can help you feed.”

“No. Mike can help.” She crossed her arms, glaring at him in that bossy manner he knew all too well. “I don’t need you having a heart attack in the field.”

Gabe would have argued, but the way he wobbled slightly when he stood made Ruby’s case. He let her guide him downstairs, into the living room. She kindled a fire in the wood stove, and settled him in his favorite rocker with a side table nearby. Then brought him coffee.

Something about the way Mike moved when he refilled Gabe’s coffee made him take a second look at the boy. Mike had grown up but not out over the past summer. His face seemed thinner and paler than it should be. The one thing that looked right about him was a faint scattering of acne across his nose. He hunched over this morning like he was in pain—probably was, Mike had arthritis like him and Ruby.

Yet Mike put in a full day’s work on the ranch and in the labs. Every day. And schooled horses.

After all, Philip had been a slight man—and nowhere near as active as Mike.

Probably nothing.

Gabe leaned his head against the back of his chair and dozed off, barely rousing when Ruby left his breakfast on the side table and kissed his forehead.

#

The sudden shrill of his comm startled Gabe out of a sound sleep.

“Ruby Barkley.”

What the hell? Why was she calling him? Something had to be wrong in the field. Gabe answered, his heart pounding hard with fear.

“GABE!” she screamed. “Mike’s collapsed in the horse field and I can’t get him up! He’s out cold! MedicFlight is sending a ground ambulance but—oh God!” Ruby gulped.

“Hang on, sweetheart, I’ll be right there.”

Oh fuck.

Gabe called Brandon as he staggered to the back porch, quickly told him what was happening.

“I’ll get there as soon as possible. You don’t sound good, Dad,” Bran said as Gabe coughed, a deep wracking hack that brought up phlegm and doubled him over.

“I’m down sick. So is just about everyone else on the ranch—security, lab, ranch hands, and probably Mike now.” He wrestled with his heavy insulated coveralls. Thank God for Ruby’s habits of bringing out the heavy clothing in mid-November, even when the fall had been mild like it had been until today’s storm. He didn’t have exert the energy to search for his coveralls, jacket and boots.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Happened just this morning.” Gabe sealed the coverall, wrapped a scarf around his neck, pulled on a heavy wool cap, finishing with his jacket.

“You be careful, you and Mom both!”

“Got it.” He wrenched on his insulated boots and headed out the door.

The tractor was moving by the time he got to the horse field, hightailing toward the gate, even as Gabe heard the faint but welcome wail of the ambulance siren. He opened the gate wide as Ruby steered through, secured it, then hurried as best as he could after the tractor.

Ruby stopped it in the middle of the barnyard. Gabe clambered up the tractor’s side. She held Mike in her lap, sobbing, her arms wrapped around him. Mike’s eyes were closed, his face pale, a blue tinge around his lips and nose. His Heeler, Striker, nudged frantically at Mike’s limp hands, whining. Gabe thought about opening the door but no, Ruby had a heater running in the enclosed cab. Better he didn’t let the storm in.

“I’ll guide the ambulance over!” he called.

Ruby raised her head, nodding. God, she looked deathly pale. His worry heightened as she started coughing.

Both of them down sick, damn it.

He let himself down carefully. No need to rush and make things worse by slipping on slick surfaces. Gabe staggered toward the driveway, straining to see those red and blue flashing lights.

He guided the paramedics to the tractor, after warning them about the potential that Ruby and Mike were sick as well as him, waiting for them to mask up before they got out. Watched, worried, as they eased Mike out of Ruby’s arms and onto a stretcher. Grabbed Striker and dragged him to the kennel when he would have followed the stretcher, the dog protesting all the way. Made sure the kennel heater was working and that Striker had food and water.

Ruby shivered next to the ambulance when he returned to her, arms wrapped around herself. “I’m sick now too,” she gasped. “Gabe—oh Gabe—they think he’s had a heart attack. I’m running a fever. I can’t go to the hospital with him.”

“Bran’s on his way.” A chill unrelated to his illness ran down his spine. Heart attack. At fifteen. Too fucking young. This has to be a clone effect. And so close to Kris dying from a heart attack in September— “I’ll send Bran to the hospital—let them know.”

Gabe took care of the niceties, calling Brandon to let him know he needed to act in their stead as temporary guardian to approve treatment. Together, he and Ruby put the tractor in the hay shed. Then they leaned against each other as they staggered back to the house.

Ruby was in worse shape than he was. Gabe managed to haul himself upstairs to their bedroom and retrieve sweats for both of them as she shivered over coffee in the rocker he had abandoned. He pulled her into the first-floor shower with him so they could warm up, then helped her dress. After stoking the fire in the wood stove, he curled up with her on the living room couch.

“How can he have a heart attack so young?” Ruby moaned. “Oh God, Gabe, it was scary. Mike just staggered away from the bale, grabbing his chest, then fell in the snow and didn’t get up. Striker kept the horses away from him, Striker and Spree both.”

Spree. Mike’s prized weanling filly, soon to be a yearling. Bred so he could compete in reined cowhorse competition with a horse of his own breeding and training. Mike had been working toward this goal for years.

And both Striker and Spree had benefited from Ruby’s epigenetic manipulations.

Gabe didn’t answer Ruby. Couldn’t answer, because he knew the possibility too damned well.

Fucking Philip Martiniere. This is either a clone effect, or a weakness he made in Mike.

Instead, he held Ruby tight, worrying about his beloved and the clone who was their son.

And then there was Brandon, newly widowed, with a daughter spiraling into madness and an infant son. What sort of viruses was he exposing himself to—and his children—by coming to Thunder County where God-only-knew-what was spreading?

Am I losing my second family?

In a slower manner than the plane crash that took away his first family?

God, Gabe couldn’t stand that possibility. He had spent his life trying to keep his second family from suffering the fate of his first one.

It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair.

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