by Lisa Childs
“You’re not protecting anyone?”
She shook her head. But her hands automatically covered her belly. The baby had stopped moving. Maybe the food had satiated him. The cheesy scrambled eggs, crisp bacon and wheat toast had been delicious—so delicious that Maggie had probably eaten more than she should have.
But then, she could barely remember the last time she’d eaten. Some crackers at the hospital? Before that a breakfast she’d made herself—lumpy oatmeal with too much brown sugar. She would have to learn to be a better cook for the baby. If she lived long enough to cook for him...
“I want to protect my baby,” she said. But she feared that she was going to fail, just as she had failed Andy. “That’s the only person I’m protecting. So if I knew anything about the robbers, I would tell you.”
“You haven’t noticed anyone hanging around the bank, casing the place?” he asked.
She shook her head again. “I don’t know what casing a place looks like. So I can’t say that someone hasn’t done it.” Obviously they had or they wouldn’t have pulled off the robbery so easily—until Blaine had arrived. If only he could have saved Sarge...
Blaine hadn’t eaten nearly as much as she had. Most of his food was on his plate yet, forgotten, as he asked his questions. “Nobody came around both of the banks?”
Once again, she shook her head. “The branches are far enough away that they had different customers. I knew most of the clients from Sturgis since I’d worked at that branch since I graduated, but I’m just getting to know the people at this branch.” Should she bother? Or should she move on again to another branch, another city?
How would she work there without remembering those robbers bursting in? That was why she’d left Sturgis. Because of the memories. But there were worse ones here; there was Sarge getting shot and dying.
“What about workers?” Blaine asked. “Did Susan work at both branches, too?”
“No,” she said. “I’m the only one who worked at both branches.” Which was why he had suspected she was involved, and she couldn’t blame him for his suspicions. “But I really have nothing to do with the robberies.”
He didn’t look at her the way he had before, as if he doubted her.
Hope fluttered in her chest like her baby fluttered in her belly, waking up from his or her short nap. “Do you believe me?” she asked.
He uttered a heavy sigh of resignation. “I believe that you’re not consciously involved.”
She should have been happy that he didn’t think she was a criminal mastermind, but his comment dented her pride. He clearly thought she was an idiot instead. “I’m not unconsciously involved, either.”
“You haven’t told anyone about your job?” he asked.
“Most people know that I work at a bank,” she said, “except for Mr. Simmons.”
“Because you don’t want to worry him,” he said with a slight smile, as if amused or moved.
She sighed. “That was all for nothing after you called the cops on Susan. He probably knows now. But that’s all anyone knows about me—that I work there.”
“You haven’t told anyone any details that might make it easier for them to hold up the bank,” he persisted, “to know which days you’d have the most cash on hand?”
“No,” she replied, pride stinging at how stupid he thought her. He wasn’t the only one who’d thought that. Because she talked a lot, people sometimes thought she was flighty. But her grades in school and college had proved them all wrong. She talked a lot because she really didn’t like silence. It made her uncomfortable, so she generally tended to fill it with chatter.
“You don’t talk to your family about your job?” he asked skeptically. “You wouldn’t share any details with them?”
So now he thought her family members were criminal masterminds? She corrected that misassumption. “For his job, my dad and mom moved to Hong Kong a couple of years ago.”
And since Andy’s death, all they talked about was the weather—asking about hers, telling about theirs. Their conversations didn’t get any deeper; they were probably afraid that they might make her cry if they brought up something that would remind her of Andy. Or maybe it would make them cry because they’d loved him like a son.
“You don’t have any brothers or sisters?” he asked.
“No.” And because she was sick of being the only one answering questions, she started asking some of her own. “What about you?”
“I have three older sisters,” he replied, and his lips curved into a slight smile as his green eyes crinkled a little at the corners.
Growing up, she had wanted sisters. But her father had been busy with his career, and her mom hadn’t wanted to raise more than one child alone. Maggie would really be raising her baby alone.
She shook off the self-pity before she could wallow and asked, “Any brothers?”
“Just in arms,” he replied.
Fellow marines. Andy had called them brothers, too. She sighed.
“Do you have any friends that you’re really close to?” he asked. “Anyone that you would talk to without realizing that you might have let some information slip?”
He really thought she was an idiot. But maybe she had been—because she had told someone more than she should have.
Since he watched her closely, he must have caught her reaction as her realization dawned. “There is someone,” he concluded. “Who?”
“It doesn’t make a difference now,” she said.
“Who is it?” he asked, his voice sharp as if he thought she was protecting someone.
“Andy,” she said. “I told Andy everything...” Since they were kids, he had been her best friend, her confidant.
His blond head bobbed in a sharp nod. “Of course...”
But then she realized that she’d lied to the agent. She hadn’t told Andy everything, or she would have told him the truth—that she didn’t love him as anything more than her best friend. Maybe she’d told him so much about the bank because, as with her parents just discussing the weather, she had preferred to talk to Andy about her job than about her feelings or their future. She hadn’t seen one for them, but not because she’d thought he was going to die.
“But Andy’s gone,” she said. “So there’s no way he could have had anything to do with the bank robberies.”
“Can I ask...how did he die?”
For once she was short with her words. “He drove a supply truck. An IED took out the whole convoy.”
He flinched. “I’m sorry.”
She nodded. It was her automatic reaction to everyone’s condolences. Condolences she didn’t feel she really deserved, just the way she felt she hadn’t deserved Andy.
“Would Andy have told anyone what you told him?” Blaine asked.
“Why?” While he had listened to her, Andy really hadn’t cared about her job. He’d been proud that she’d gone to college, that she’d gotten her degree in finance, but he’d thought that she would quit working once they got married and started having kids.
Andy really hadn’t known her at all. Or he would have guessed that, while she loved him, she wasn’t in love with him. So if Andy hadn’t known her that well, maybe she hadn’t known him, either.
“I can think of hundreds of thousands of reasons why he might have told someone,” Blaine replied.
Maggie defended her friend. “Andy didn’t care about money.”
“But that was quite a ring he bought you...”
He hadn’t just paid for that ring with money; he’d paid for it with his life, too. “He used his bonus—for re-upping and for his last deployment...”
Blaine nodded as if she’d answered another question—one that he hadn’t actually asked. “Maybe he didn’t realize that he was revealing anything.”
She hadn’t realized that something she’d said could have led to those robberies, to Sarge’s death. She hoped Blaine was wrong because she already had too much guilt to live with; she didn’t need any more.
&nb
sp; Chapter Nine
Maggie insisted on going to the bank, and Blaine agreed. The bank wasn’t open for business, though. Not yet. Repairmen were working on replacing the broken windows and fixing the damaged walls and furniture. So Blaine took her around the back, through the security door that the robbers had dragged her out.
That was hard enough—watching her face drain of color as she relived those moments. She probably hadn’t thought she was going to get away from the robbers. And for a few moments Blaine hadn’t thought he was going to get her away from them—then or later at the hospital or the motel.
He relived all those moments and found his arm coming around her thin shoulders. “Maybe this was a bad idea,” he murmured.
“I need to go to my office,” she said. “And make sure I didn’t leave anything out yesterday.”
“The manager closed up the bank yesterday,” he assured her. “I’m sure he locked up whatever paperwork you might have had out.”
He did not want her going to her office. Since her walls were glass, it had also been damaged from the gunfire. And in the lobby was the outline where Sarge’s body had been. She didn’t need to see that, and neither did he.
Maggie shook her head. “No, Mr. Hardy wouldn’t have done it himself. He probably let Susan do it and that’s how she got hold of my purse.”
Blaine hadn’t been that impressed with the manager—especially when the guy had been firing questions at her while the paramedics were trying to assess her condition. It was obvious that most of the day-to-day administration had fallen on Maggie’s slim shoulders. “She got your purse, your keys and your credit cards.”
She sighed. “I should cancel my credit cards.”
“She already used a couple of them,” he said. While Maggie had been at the hospital, the greedy woman had used her cards. “Why did you ever have her as your roommate?”
Maggie shrugged hard enough to dislodge his arm and stepped away from his side. Maybe he had offended her by implying that she wasn’t the greatest judge of character. “She was really nice to me when I first started working here,” she said in defense of their relationship, “so I agreed to let her move in when her boyfriend kicked her out and she had nobody else to stay with.”
He wondered if that had been a ruse. Maybe he had underestimated Susan Iverson’s intelligence. He would take another look at her. But first he wanted Maggie to look at something; that was why he had agreed to bring her down to the bank.
He had also wanted to get out of Ash’s small house before he lost all objectivity where Maggie Jenkins was concerned. She was too damn beautiful for his peace of mind. He couldn’t lose the image of her hair tangled from sleep, her body all soft and warm and sexy. When she’d tossed back the blankets and revealed her bare legs and the shapely curve of her hips, he had been tempted to crawl into bed with her.
She sighed again. “But I learned quickly why her boyfriend had kicked her out.”
“The woman can’t be trusted.” Blaine wondered if this one could. He wanted to trust Maggie Jenkins; he wanted to believe she was every bit as sweet and innocent as she seemed.
But he couldn’t rule out any possible suspects yet. And she was a possible one—even after the attempts on her life. Or maybe because of them. Her coconspirators could be trying to prevent her from giving them up.
He led Maggie to a back office, near the rear exit, where he had had the bank security footage set up across six small monitors. He pressed a remote and started it rolling.
“What is all this?” she asked.
“Security footage.” Sarge’s security footage. “I want you to watch it.”
“All of it?” She sounded overwhelmed. The six monitors probably were a bit daunting.
Blaine was used to it, as he often watched days, sometimes weeks or even months, of security footage when he was investigating bank robberies. But this time while they watched the monitors, he saw only Maggie—her full breasts and belly pushing against his old T-shirt. Those long, bare legs...
How would they feel wrapped around him? How would she feel when he buried himself inside her?
He shook his head, shaking off the thoughts. They would never happen. She wasn’t just pregnant with another man’s child; she was still in love with that man. It didn’t matter that Andy was dead. A love like theirs—where she had told him everything—was deep and enduring.
Blaine had never had anyone in his life to whom he’d told everything. He had learned at a young age that if he told his sisters anything they would tell everyone. So he’d been keeping his own counsel for a long time—which was good because he had no intention of sharing his thoughts about Maggie with anyone else. In fact, he wanted to forget all about them.
So he focused on the video screens playing out on the monitors in Sarge’s office. It might have been hard to be there, if Sarge hadn’t been like Blaine and Ash—too nomadic to personalize any space. It wasn’t as if they would be there long enough to put down roots anyway. If Ash hadn’t inherited that house in the Chicago burbs, he would have just had an apartment like Blaine had in Detroit—something devoid of decoration and sparsely furnished.
Days of security footage passed before his eyes in a blur—slow enough to pick out faces but fast enough that hours passed in minutes. His head began to pound—maybe more from his mostly sleepless night than from watching the footage.
If staring at those monitors had affected him, he worried how it was affecting Maggie. “Are you okay?” he asked her.
Maggie nodded. “I’m fine.” But her fingers touched her temple and she closed her eyes.
“We can take a break,” he offered.
“I don’t understand why we’re watching these videos,” she said as she gestured at the screens. “All of this happened a week or more ago.”
Had she expected him to show her the footage of the robbery? That would have been too much for her—to relive those terrifying moments, to relive Sarge getting killed...
He may have already told her. So much had happened that he couldn’t remember exactly, so he asked, “Do you know why I showed up when I did yesterday?”
“Because you’re working those bank robberies.”
That was what he’d told the state troopers in the alley. “Sarge called me,” Blaine said. “He told me that he thought the bank was going to be hit.”
She gasped in surprise. “He knew?”
“Yeah, he must have realized that someone was casing the place.” And hopefully that someone had been picked up on the security footage.
She shrugged. “But I don’t know how to tell who’s casing the place.”
“I do,” he said. While he’d worked his way up in the Bureau through other divisions, he specialized in bank robberies now. To date, his record was perfect; he always caught the thieves.
Always...
And this time he had even more incentive than his record and his career. He had Sarge. And Maggie...
“So what am I looking for?” she asked.
“Someone you know.”
She laughed as if he’d said something ridiculous. “I know a lot of these people.”
He could tell. Even though she hadn’t been at this branch that long, she often stepped out of her office to talk to bank clients, her face breathtakingly beautiful as she smiled welcomingly at them. They all smiled back, charmed by her friendly personality.
But he stopped the footage on one monitor as he noticed that one man smiled bigger than the others. And he hadn’t left his greeting at a smile. He had gone in for a hug—a big one that had physically lifted Maggie off her feet. She hadn’t looked happy, though; she had looked uncomfortable.
“Who’s that?” he asked.
She stared at the screen, her eyes wide and face pale as if she’d seen a ghost. “I always forget how much he looks like Andy...”
“Who is he?”
She released a shaky breath. “Mark—that’s Andy’s older brother, Mark.”
“Does he have account
s at the bank?”
She shook her head. “No, he just came by to see me. To check on me.”
Blaine’s senses tingled as he recognized a viable lead. “Did he use to come by the other branch you worked at?”
“Sometimes.”
He nodded.
“It’s not what you think,” she assured him.
She had no idea what he was thinking. People rarely did. He wasn’t even thinking of the case. He was thinking that the man wasn’t just looking at her with concern or familial affection. He was looking at her with attraction. The way Blaine looked at her...
But in the footage she wasn’t looking at the man at all. Like the ring, it was as if she couldn’t bear to look at him. Because he looked so much like her dead fiancé?
He was a good-looking man. With their frequently inappropriate comments, his sisters would’ve gone on and on about his dark hair and light-colored eyes. And Andy had looked like that?
A weird emotion surged through Blaine—anger or resentment? Jealousy?
He was jealous of a dead man...
* * *
“WHAT AM I THINKING?” Blaine was asking her, his voice gruff with a challenge as if he doubted she could read him.
Few people probably could. The man was incredibly guarded. But he’d let that guard down, briefly, to mourn the loss of his friend and former drill instructor. So Maggie felt as if she had found a tiny hole in his armor.
“You’re thinking that Mark is involved in the robberies,” she replied. “And that’s ridiculous.”
Blaine turned back to the monitor and studied the frozen frame of Mark lifting her off her feet. That muscle twitched in his cheek—almost as if it bothered him that another man was holding her.
But her thought was even more ridiculous than his thinking that Mark Doremire was a robber. Blaine Campbell was not jealous of another man touching her. Blaine had no interest in her beyond helping him figure out who the robbers were.
“Why is it ridiculous?” Blaine asked.
“Because he’s Andy’s brother.”
A blond brow arched, as if that made Mark guiltier. Because of what she’d told Andy? If only she’d kept her mouth shut...
