Never Let Her Go

by Gayle Wilson

  “You’re just scared, sweetheart, but it’s all over now. Just breathe deep and try to relax. Nothing’s going to happen. Nothing’s going to happen to you or this baby. I told you that. I promised you. Have I ever broken a promise to you, Abby?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “I’m not going to start now. So just relax, sweetheart. Help’s on the way. Everything is going to be all right, I swear to you.”

  Even as he said it, he was moving. Praying he could find the phone. And when he had, and had made the call, just praying.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Nick couldn’t remember what he had said to the dispatcher after his shaking fingers had finally managed to connect him with the operator. He had identified himself as FBI. He had told her to send the paramedics and a couple of ambulances. He had given her the address and then he had told her there was an officer down, the quickest way, he knew, to round up plenty of cops.

  Almost as an afterthought he had also asked her to get hold of Detective Mickey Yates. Although Yates, like Abby, had been handpicked by Rob Andrews, Nick still trusted him. Instinct, he supposed. Nick thought that he might need someone here who knew who he was and who would, without a lot of explanation, understand exactly what had been going on.

  Then he had made his way back to Abby and had held her as the sirens again shrieked toward them through the night. He couldn’t even remember the order in which they had all shown up, but thankfully the paramedics had been almost as quick as the cops, with Mickey not too far behind.

  He didn’t think the uniforms would have believed what he was telling them without Abby to back him up. Nick had no ID, of course, and Rob Andrews had been highly respected in the New Orleans police department.

  Before their initial questions were satisfied, he’d had to release Abby to the medics. Mickey hadn’t arrived yet, and the cops were still verifying his credentials with the Bureau, so they wouldn’t let him even ride to the hospital with her.

  Letting her go had been the toughest thing he’d faced tonight, but Nick knew he had done all he could. For both of them. The rest of it…the rest of it would be out of his control. And Nick Deandro had never liked things he couldn’t control. He sure as hell hadn’t liked that.

  “They say you can see her now,” Mickey said, his voice coming from the doorway of the examination room. He’d gone to check on Abby while the emergency-room doctor examined Nick.

  He knew he wasn’t hurt, at least nothing serious, but they weren’t listening to his opinion, and he had been forced to admit that he wouldn’t have been able to find Abby anyway. Not without some help. To save time, he had sent Mickey off to do that and resigned himself to their poking and prodding while he waited.

  He got up off the end of the examination table, hurrying too fast, and felt his head swim. Unexpectedly, his knees began to buckle. Luckily, someone was close enough to grab his arm and keep him from going down. “Wheelchair,” the doctor ordered.

  “Like hell,” Nick said savagely, jerking his arm away. Enough was enough. He’d already made an exhibition of himself tonight. “Mickey?” he commanded, gripping the big detective’s arm like a lifeline when Yates responded. He and Yates had had a good relationship, mutually respectful. He hoped they still did.

  “I got you, man,” Mickey said under his breath. “I got it covered, Doc,” he said aloud, already guiding Nick out of the examination room.

  Thankfully Mickey also had sense enough to disappear as soon as they got to Abby’s cubicle. “I’ll be waiting in the hall,” he’d mumbled, putting Nick’s hand into hers.

  “You okay?” Nick asked her softly, when the sound of Mickey’s size thirteens had faded.

  “I’m fine, Nick. I promise I am.”

  “What’d they say about…?” Somehow he couldn’t complete the question, his throat closing, hard and tight, so that the words got stuck.

  “They gave me something,” Abby said. Her fingers smoothed over the back of his hand, over raw scrapes and some bruises he hadn’t even been aware of until she’d touched them “Are you okay?” she asked, her voice again filled with concern for him.

  “Am I okay?” he repeated unbelievingly. “What the hell kind of question is that, Abby?”

  “If you could see your face, you’d know what kind,” she said, but she sounded almost relieved that he’d fussed at her.

  “Well, I can’t,” he reminded her. “Just the victim of a little domestic violence, if anybody asks.”

  She laughed, the sound more subdued than normal, but still he liked hearing it. Felt better hearing it. Better about her. Enough that he took a deep breath and asked the next question. “Will whatever they gave you stop the labor?”

  “They think so,” she said.

  “They think he’s all right?” And held his breath, waiting for her reassurance.

  “He?” she repeated. Her voice was soft, but he got the message because he was smart. Sometimes even smart about Abby

  “She,” he amended. “Maybe,” he hedged, feeling his tension relax at her repetition of the pronoun he’d used. Abby wouldn’t sound like that if everything wasn’t really all right.

  “The baby’s fine, Nick. As long as she—or he,” she amended graciously, “doesn’t decide to make an unscheduled appearance.”

  “So when is the scheduled appearance?”

  He couldn’t believe he hadn’t asked. Or hadn’t tried to figure it out. He should be able to The night this baby was conceived was one he had cause to remember—maybe forever. But he now knew that if nothing else about the consequences of that night ever changed, what he would gain from it might make up for what he’d lost. It would help, at least.

  “Christmas,” Abby said.

  “No kidding?” he said softly.

  “Merry Christmas, Nick.” He could hear the smile in her voice, and that was almost as good as hearing her laugh. Almost as good as being able to see her face.

  It damn well would be good enough, Nick decided. And as he bent to kiss her, he breathed a silent prayer of thanks that all the others he’d prayed tonight had been granted.

  FOR SOME REASON he’d imagined that he and Abby would just go home when she was released, just go back to her apartment, and this crap would all be over. Of course, nothing was ever that simple. Not when the government was involved With his background he should have known that. And he had, he guessed, but it didn’t keep him from being any less furious about what they’d done.

  The hospital had wanted to keep Abby overnight, and he wanted them to, of course, which meant that he’d ended up with Mickey again. In another safe house whose location he wasn’t even sure about. Answering a hell of a lot of questions he didn’t give a damn about answering. And worrying about Abby

  But at least during the next few days he began to understand what had been going on, the story filtering down as Andrews did just what Nick had predicted he would—spilled his guts in exchange for protection and a plea bargain.

  Maybe such deals weren’t right. Nick had had his own doubts about that, but they put people behind bars, closed down protection rackets, drug dealers, and loan shark operations. Little by little they were tearing away what had once been the throat-hold the mob had on some segments of American society.

  Deals like this one had worked so well in the past that few people in power even questioned the ethics of them anymore. Maybe Nick wouldn’t have, even in this case, if he hadn’t been so personally involved. If he hadn’t lost so much in the exchange. And almost lost even more, he thought bitterly.

  What Andrews gave the authorities were names. Lots of them. Some of them names Nick recognized. But after Nick had been ambushed, Andrews had claimed to his superiors that Nick hadn’t given him any of those names. That he hadn’t yet had proof of any officer’s involvement with the mob

  And Nick hadn’t then been in a position to deny what the captain said. He had reported directly to Andrews, and he couldn’t remember what he’d turned up. Of course, they knew
now that Nick would never have been allowed to remember. Andrews would have taken care of that. Once Nick started to remember, he would be a dead man.

  The shrewdest part of the plan, and still the hardest for Nick to deal with, was that Andrews had sent Abby to him. She was, of course, the one most likely to make Nick remember—if he was ever going to remember—and Andrews had realized that.

  If the D.A. had decided not to go forward with the corruption indictments, and there was every indication that was the decision they were coming to, then the Bureau would probably refuse to expose Nick by letting him testify in any of the other cases, the mob cases, which could just as well be made with only the informant’s testimony.

  Then Nick would go home, out of Andrews’s jurisdiction and out of his control. Andrews couldn’t afford to let that happen, but he also knew that it would look pretty suspicious if a government witness was killed while under the protection of the NOPD. On his watch, so to speak.

  So he didn’t really want to make another attempt on Nick’s life. Not if he didn’t have to. Not only would Nick’s death look bad for the department, an indication of more corruption, but another attempt would be dangerous. Something could go wrong

  And Andrews wouldn’t ever have to take that chance if he could be sure the amnesia was permanent, as the doctors were now telling him it was. That was the reason Abby had been assigned to protection duty—one of them, anyway.

  It was obvious that Abby’s boss must have known she and Nick had been involved Maybe he had followed Nick to her apartment the night he was shot, the night someone had ambushed him in that dark alley a few blocks away from Abby’s. Andrews hadn’t yet admitted to doing the shooting or to setting the fire Maybe he hadn’t. There were plenty of people in this town willing to do murder for a couple of hundred bucks.

  It was the other reason Rob had been so eager to send Abby out there to play bodyguard that Nick hated. And he wasn’t sure he would ever tell her what they now knew about Andrew’s motives. He never wanted to tell Abby that she had also been selected because Andrews thought she was vulnerable.

  He had talked her into taking that assignment not only because she was the final test of the permanency of Nick’s amnesia, but also because he thought he could go through her and get to Nick any time he needed to. Any time Abby gave him the news that Nick had begun remembering.

  Which must be what had happened before the fire, Nick realized. Abby had told Andrews that he was starting to remember things. She must have said something that made her boss believe he had to act soon or it would all come tumbling down.

  Everything would come out—all the dirty secrets. Not only the cops that Nick had tentatively identified as having ties with the mob, but Andrews’s own connections. Because if those cops went down, and apparently Andrews had promised them that no one would, it was likely that one of them would take just such a deal as the captain himself had made. And then it would all be over.

  It had almost worked. It was only through sheer blind luck, Nick thought, no pun intended, that they had escaped the fire. Andrews somehow found out that they had, maybe through Blanchard, maybe simply by asking that little fire department if there had been any bodies in the ruin.

  Then when Abby failed to report in, her supervisor must have believed she suspected him—maybe because of something Nick had remembered. So he had taken a chance that they had come back to the city Back to Abby’s apartment. And he’d gotten lucky

  It must have been a hell of a surprise to Andrews that Abby had been so welcoming when she opened the door. Surprising enough that he maybe hadn’t quite figured out what to do, at least until she had turned her back on him, giving him an opportunity he couldn’t afford to pass up.

  At least, Nick thought, he hadn’t shot her. Maybe Rob had not been cold-blooded enough in the face of Abby’s friendliness. Or maybe Nick’s voice, coming from the back of the apartment at that moment, had made him realize he had another problem to deal with right then.

  Maybe that was when he had decided it would be so easy to take care of both of them. Just do it himself and be done with it. After all, all he had to do was take out a blind guy and a very pregnant woman, and then he’d be safe again. No one would ever have known he was crooked.

  It might have worked, Nick admitted, if it hadn’t been for Abby If she hadn’t been cautious enough to carry her gun to the door. She’d been expecting the pizza boy and had gotten a murderer instead. And apparently in the low lighting, Andrews had never even seen the weapon. She had probably stuck it in the pocket of her slacks as soon as she’d recognized him.

  If Abby hadn’t been able to get off that shot, accurate enough to put Andrews, a moving target in the darkness, out of commission, it would have all been over. Nick was under no illusions about who had rescued whom that night. He had told anyone who would listen just how it had happened, but he was still getting credit he didn’t deserve for the fight.

  It must be the way he looked, he had decided. Like somebody had taken after him with a two-by-four, one of the agents said. They had all commented on it, maybe afraid that he didn’t really know how battered he appeared.

  His nose might never be the same, Nick knew, but then it hadn’t been all that great to begin with. At least the swelling had gone down. He could tell that by feel. Mickey had assured him, amusement coloring his voice, that the bruising around his eyes wasn’t even black-and-blue anymore. Greenish yellow, Yates had opined.

  Nick wondered why he had bothered to ask. If Abby was willing to put up with blindness, she wasn’t going to balk at a crooked nose and some discoloration. At least he hoped to hell she wasn’t.

  He took a breath, fighting his impatience. Mickey had gone way out on a limb for them in arranging this. Nick was still supposed to be in protection, especially now that more and more of what he had lost was beginning to trickle back Maybe nothing they needed, not with Andrews’s testimony, but the D.A. hadn’t quite decided that yet, of course. Lawyers, Nick thought in disgust.

  He sure as hell didn’t intend to wait until they made up their minds before he was allowed to see Abby. He had also told that to everyone who would listen. Realistically, he probably wasn’t ever going back to work for the Bureau, so he didn’t give a damn if they found out about his past relationship with Abby.

  It had broken all the rules, and he knew it. He had known it at the time. But he couldn’t regret whatever it cost him. No regrets at all. As long as—

  “Hey,” Abby said softly, interrupting his thinking.

  He hadn’t heard her come into the room, and his stomach reacted. Just to the sound of her voice. Just to that one low word.

  “Hey, yourself,” he said. Smooth, Deandro. A real show-stopper, conversationally speaking.

  “Mickey said they weren’t too happy about this About my being here.”

  “Screw ‘em,” Nick said succinctly. He hadn’t gotten off the couch, and he didn’t think she’d moved out of the doorway. The blur of paler darkness the opening represented had clouded a little, that cloud almost a shape if he squinted

  She laughed, the sound floating across the distance, so beautiful to him. He’d been hungry to hear her laugh again, and he hadn’t even realized it until just now.

  “You’re not supposed to be that irreverent, Deandro,” she said. “These guys are so impressed with themselves, you’re supposed to be impressed with them, too They’re the Feds.”

  Her voice was mocking, especially on the last word Good-natured insider rivalry maybe, but it made him wonder. “Is that what you thought about me?” he asked.

  She laughed again, her voice more relaxed this time, no tension anymore. “Hotshot,” she agreed. “Big-time FBI hotshot. Come down to tell all us bumpkins how to do our jobs.”

  “Is that really how I came across?”

  She hesitated, and he knew she was thinking about what she was willing to tell him. “Maybe just to me,” she said finally. “But I liked your butt”

  “My butt?�
� he repeated, caught totally off guard.

  “I always thought you had a cute butt,” she said.

  “You’re a shallow woman, Detective Sterling,” he said, beginning to smile.

  “Just unnaturally interested in sex and violence, I guess,” she agreed. “What can I tell you, Deandro?”

  “That you’ll marry me,” he suggested softly.

  And he waited. The silence stretched, grew, expanded, and he could hear his heart beating. Too fast. Just as it did when he was faced with something that made him afraid. And her hesitation did. Real afraid.

  “Sterling?” he said finally. Nothing else. He had thought this was what she wanted, too. Was it possible that he’d misunderstood that night and the following day? Misunderstood what it had meant? Was he not only blind, but an idiot as well?

  “I guess it is about time,” she said.

  He didn’t understand what was in her voice. He tilted his head, thinking that if she said anything else, he might get a better read on her tone. Besides, those were too few words for what he’d asked her. A very important question. Or so he had always thought.

  “Sometime before this baby gets here,” she added.

  And for the first time, that possibility hit him. She was right. He was arrogant. Because it had never dawned on him that this might be the reason she was willing to marry him. Rings, mortgages, and then babies. The way it was supposed to be done.

  “Is that the reason, Abby?” he asked.

  He almost didn’t want her to answer because he knew she would tell him the truth. However painful it might be, Abby Sterling wasn’t a woman who ever lied, to herself or to him. That’s why Nick had been so sure of her He knew she would have examined all the realities of his situation—their situation, he amended—before she’d invited him back.

  “It’s a pretty good one,” she admitted softly “Babies need a daddy. They all do. And the lucky ones get very good fathers like you’ll be, Nick. There’s never been any doubt in my mind about that. But to be honest…”