by Lisa Childs
* * *
BLAINE HAD EXPECTED the gun because he’d met Mr. Simmons at the door. The older gentleman had wanted to make certain that Maggie got the baby gift that he’d put in her apartment for the red-haired woman. He’d thought the box was heavy for a baby-shower gift.
Of course it held no gift for Maggie or her baby. It had held the gun.
Tammy was clever—so clever that she had probably been the one who had actually plotted the bank robberies. She had probably been the one who’d read Maggie’s letters.
“This is perfect,” the widow said with a smile of delight as she stood up with the gun clutched in her hands. At least the barrel was pointed at him instead of Maggie, who stood trembling on the other side of the coffee table from the deranged woman.
“This is stupid,” Blaine corrected her. “There’s nothing specifically linking you to the robberies. No evidence that you were aware of the crimes your husband and your brother were committing. You could have gotten away with it all.”
Her smile vanished off her thin lips. “My brother?”
The woman obviously didn’t care about herself right now—not when she planned to shoot two people with another federal agent posted right outside the door. But maybe she cared about her sibling.
“He was the one who tried abducting Maggie from Emergency,” Blaine said. “He’s a security guard at the hospital.”
Tammy shook her head in denial. “The fact that he works there doesn’t prove anything.”
“His security badge will prove he was the one who opened the back door of the employees’ locker room when he tried to kidnap Maggie.” At least Blaine hoped it would. He needed evidence—not just suspicion—linking the man to the crimes.
“No...” But the conviction was gone from Tammy Doremire’s voice as it began to quaver. “You can’t tie him to the robberies...”
Maybe he wouldn’t be able to, but he wasn’t going to let her think that. “I have a team working on it right now. They’re getting search warrants. They’re digging into all of his financials. They’re checking all his properties for any evidence linking him to the robberies. I’m pretty sure they’ll find something. Aren’t you?”
Her thin face tightened with dread and hatred. She knew that her brother wouldn’t have gotten rid of all the evidence—or at least not the money. He could see she was torn, tempted to call and warn her brother about the warrants.
So he stepped closer, prepared to grab her weapon from her hands. Her eyes widened with alarm as she noticed that he’d closed some distance between them.
“Get back!” she yelled. “I’m going to kill her. You’re not going to stop me this time.”
“Why do you want her dead?” he asked. “If you hadn’t sent your brother to the hospital after her, I wouldn’t have linked him to the crimes.” He was sure that her brother had acted on her orders; all the men probably had.
“It’s all her fault!” Tammy yelled, as if she thought that saying it loud enough would make it true. “If she hadn’t written those damn letters to Andy...”
A noise emanated from Maggie, but she’d muffled it with a hand over her mouth. She had already held herself responsible for the robberies; she didn’t need this crazed woman compounding her guilt.
But making her feel guilty wasn’t enough torment for Tammy Doremire. She intended to kill her, too.
“Who read them?” Blaine asked, stalling for time—hoping to distract the woman enough for Maggie to escape. He had left the apartment door open. Maybe Truman could get off a shot.
“I—I did,” Tammy admitted.
As he’d suspected, she was the mastermind behind the robberies. He acted shocked, though, as he edged closer to her and that damn gun she gripped so tightly. “You read her personal correspondence to her fiancé?”
She snorted. “Personal? There hadn’t been anything very personal about them. They were not love letters—not like I would have written to Mark—” her voice cracked with emotion, with loss “—if he’d been in a war zone.”
She had loved her husband. The grief and pain contorted her face.
“Why didn’t you take Mark to a hospital when he was hurt?” he asked. “Why did you drive him instead to that cabin in Michigan?”
“He—he wanted to go there,” she said. “He knew he was dying—because of you. Because you shot him!” She pointed the gun at Blaine’s chest.
And he was glad; it wasn’t anywhere near Maggie now. Maybe she could escape. Instead, she gasped in fear for him.
And her gasp drew Tammy’s rage back to her. She whirled the gun in Maggie’s direction. “But we wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for her. Mark just couldn’t stay away from poor, sweet Maggie. She caused his death—just like she caused Andy’s.”
“That’s bull.” Blaine called her on her craziness. “I killed Mark—not Maggie. I pulled the trigger. Not Maggie.”
She swung the gun back to him, and her eyes were wild with rage and grief. “It was your fault!”
“I shot him, but the vest should have protected him,” Blaine said. “But he wasn’t wearing his vest. He was wearing yours.”
Tears began to streak down the woman’s face as her own guilt overwhelmed her. She knew why her husband had died. But she couldn’t accept her own part in his death. It was easier for her to blame him and Maggie.
She sniffled back her tears. And as she tried to clear her vision, he edged closer yet. “No...” she cried in protest of her guilt more than his nearness. “He shouldn’t have died...”
He was counting on her not noticing how close he was to her. But she wasn’t looking at him anymore; she had swung the gun back toward Maggie.
“Mark killed an innocent man,” Maggie said in defense of Blaine shooting him. Of course she would defend him as she did everyone. “Why? Why would you two resort to stealing and killing?”
“Mark and I needed that money,” Tammy said, desperately trying to justify their crimes. “We needed it to start our family.”
“Hundreds of thousands of dollars?” Blaine scoffed. He wanted to irritate her, wanted her to shoot at him instead of Maggie. He wore a vest. Maggie was completely unprotected.
“I—I couldn’t get pregnant. I need—needed—fertility treatments. Or in vitro. All that’s so expensive, and Mark lost his job.” Now she wasn’t just pointing the gun at Maggie but at her belly, and jealousy twisted the woman’s face into a mask nearly as grotesque as the zombie one. “But this one—she easily gets pregnant.”
Maggie held her hands over her belly, trying to protect her unborn baby. But her hands would prove no protection from a bullet.
“You don’t want to hurt the baby,” Blaine said, as horror gripped him. Maggie’s baby was a part of her, and because he loved Maggie, he loved her baby, too. He couldn’t lose either of them.
“She doesn’t deserve that baby,” Tammy said. “She never wanted it. She never wanted Andy. She didn’t love him like I loved Mark. It’s not fair.”
“Life’s not fair,” Blaine commiserated.
But the woman didn’t hear or see him anymore. It didn’t matter that he was the one who’d fired the shot that had killed Mark. She hated Maggie more—she hated that the woman had what Tammy had wanted most. A baby...
And she intended to take that baby from Maggie before she took her life. He had to protect them. So Blaine did two things—he kicked the coffee table into the woman’s legs and he grabbed for the gun.
But it went off. And a scream rang out. Maggie’s scream.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Pain ripped through Maggie; she felt as if she were being torn in two. She patted her belly, but she felt no stickiness from blood, just an incredible tightness. She hadn’t been shot. She’d gone into labor.
Blaine dropped to the ground beside her. “Where are you hit?”
She shook her head. “No...”
His hands replaced hers on her belly, and his green eyes widened. “You’re in labor?”
“It’s too soon,” she said, as tears of pain and fear streamed down her face. “It’s too soon. You have to stop it. I can’t have the baby now.”
Or Tammy Doremire would get her wish. Maggie wouldn’t have the baby the woman didn’t think she deserved. Maybe she was right.
Maggie probably didn’t deserve her baby. But she wanted him. With all her heart she wanted him.
“We’re going to get you to the hospital,” Blaine said. “We’re going to get you help.” But his hand shook as he dialed 911, and his voice shook as he demanded an ambulance.
He was worried, too. Somehow Maggie found that reassuring, as if it proved he cared. If not about her, at least he cared about her baby. He showed he cared when he climbed into the ambulance with her and let Truman take Tammy Doremire into custody.
He took Maggie’s hand, clasping it in both of his. “Everything’s going to be okay,” he promised. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
“Thank you,” she managed between pants for breath. “Thank you.”
His forehead furrowed and he asked, “For what?”
“You saved my life again,” she said. And she hoped that he had saved the baby’s, too.
But when they got to the hospital, it was too late. The doctors couldn’t stop the labor. Her little boy was coming. “It’s too early...”
“He’ll be fine,” Blaine assured her. “He’s tough—like his mama.”
Was she tough? Maggie had never felt as helpless and weak as she did at that moment. She couldn’t stop her labor; she couldn’t stop him from coming.
“Push,” a nurse told her.
“I can’t...” She shouldn’t. But the urge was there—the urge to push him out. A contraction gripped her, tearing her apart again. There had been no time for them to administer an epidural. No time for them to ease her pain. She didn’t care, though. She cared only about her baby. “It’s too soon...”
“We’ll take care of him,” the doctor promised. “Push...”
Blaine touched her chin, tipping up her face so that she met his gaze. “You need to do this, Maggie. You’ve taken care of him as long as you could. Let the doctors take care of him now.”
So she pushed, and her baby boy entered the world with a weak cry of protest.
“He’s crying—that’s good,” Blaine assured her. “He’s going to be okay.”
But the doctors whisked him away, working on him. Were his lungs okay? Were they developed enough? Maggie had so many questions. But she didn’t want to distract the doctors from her son, so she didn’t ask any of them.
Blaine stroked his fingers along her cheek. “He’ll be okay. He’ll be okay. He’s tough—just like you are.”
Even though he’d repeated his assurance, Maggie couldn’t accept it. She didn’t feel tough. She felt shattered. Devastated. And Blaine must have seen that she was about to fall apart because he pulled her into his arms. And he held her. He held her together.
And not just then but over the next few days. He stayed with her at the hospital, making sure that she and the baby were all right. Maggie fell so far in love with him that she knew she would never get over him.
She didn’t want to get over him. She wanted to be with him always. She wanted to be his wife—wanted her son to be his son, too.
The doctors already thought he was the little boy’s father. They called him Dad, and Blaine never corrected them. But it wasn’t his name on little Drew’s birth certificate—it was Andy’s as the father. He deserved that honor. He deserved to be with his son.
Andy was gone. Maggie had accepted that, but she wanted to honor him by giving his son his name. Blaine was with Maggie when the nurse brought in the baby from the neonatal unit. “He’s breathing on his own, Mom,” she said. “No more machines. He can stay in here with you.”
“He’s so tiny,” Blaine said with wonder as he stared down at the sleeping infant.
“Drew’s going to be a big boy,” the nurse assured them. “He’s doing very well for a preemie.” She handed the baby to Maggie before leaving the room.
Her heart swelled with love as he automatically snuggled against her, as if he recognized her even though she hadn’t carried him as long as she was supposed to.
“He’s so tiny,” Blaine repeated, still in awe.
“He’s doing well, though,” Maggie assured him.
“Drew?” Blaine asked.
Maybe she should have run the name past him first. But he had never indicated that he wanted a future with her and her son. So she hadn’t wanted to presume.
She nodded.
“That’s good. It’s a good name,” he said, his green gaze on the baby in her arms.
“I’m glad you think so,” she said. She wanted him to be part of their lives. But even as she contemplated asking, he started pulling away.
He stood up. “Now that you’re both okay, I need to get back to work on the case,” he said. “I need to find the other robbers and make sure they don’t try to go after you or Drew.”
She shivered, and the baby awakened. But not with a cry. He opened his eyes just a little and stared calmly up at her. She had been in danger for too much of her pregnancy. She appreciated that Blaine wanted to make sure that they would finally be safe. But she wasn’t sure that was really the reason he was leaving.
Or if he just wanted to get away from her. Maybe he didn’t like that everyone had assumed he was the baby’s father. Maybe he didn’t want to be an instant daddy.
Before he left, he leaned over the bed, and he pressed a kiss to her lips and another to the baby’s forehead. “I have a guard posted at the door. Truman will protect you. You’ll be safe,” he assured her.
“What about you?” she asked.
He grinned. “I’ll be fine.”
She couldn’t help but remember that Andy had promised the same thing when he’d left for his last deployment. Would Blaine not return, as well?
* * *
BLAINE WOULDN’T PUT it past Tammy Doremire to set a trap for him. He interviewed her at the jail. In exchange for a lesser sentence, she gave him an address—not just for her brother but for the two coworkers who’d helped them pull off the robberies. He doubted she actually cared how much time she spent behind bars; she just wanted to make sure that Blaine was dead—like her husband.
“What did Maggie have?” she asked, as if she actually cared.
His blood chilled with a sense of foreboding. But he had guards posted at the hospital. They weren’t hospital guards, either. Once he’d realized a hospital security guard had been involved in the robberies, he hadn’t trusted any of them. Truman was inside Maggie’s room, personally protecting her and Drew. He felt so bad about Tammy getting her alone that he would give up his life before he would let anyone hurt her or her baby again.
“A boy,” he said.
“Of course,” she said, as if she should have known. “Boys run in the Doremire family.”
“She named him Drew,” he said.
She shrugged, and her red hair brushed the shoulders of her orange jumpsuit. She looked nearly as bad as she had in the zombie mask. “Maybe she loved Andy more than I thought.”
Maggie had loved her fiancé. He saw it in her face whenever she talked about him. She missed him.
Could Blaine fill the void Andy had left in her? He loved her so much that he wanted to try. But did he love her enough for both of them?
He had no idea how she actually felt about him. She had turned to him for protection—for comfort. But who else had she had now that Andy was gone?
Who else could she trust now that the family that had almost been hers had turned on her?
“That’s too bad for you, huh?” Tammy remarked. “Since you love her...”
Blaine hadn’t told Maggie his feelings; he wasn’t about to tell this woman. He stood up and gestured toward a deputy to take Tammy back to holding. As they led her away, she turned back and smiled a sly smile.
She had definitely set a trap for him. So he
was ready. He took Ash Stryker and Dalton Reyes with him as backup, along with some Michigan troopers. According to Tammy, her brother and his friends had gone back to the cabin. Supposedly she and Mark had stashed the money there. After finding the body, the dog tags and Maggie’s letters, Blaine hadn’t taken the time to search the entire area. Maybe the money was hidden there.
But Blaine suspected he wouldn’t find just the money. Or the robbers.
“We could have called in more troopers,” Ash remarked as he pulled his weapon from his holster.
But if Blaine had requested more, he might have had to use his sister, and he didn’t want to put her in danger, too. He wanted her to be there to help Maggie and the baby in case he couldn’t. He wanted Maggie to have a friend she could trust—unlike Susan Iverson or Tammy.
“You face down terrorists every day,” Dalton Reyes teased him. “You’re afraid of a few zombie bank robbers?”
“Some of the worst terrorists I’ve dealt with have been the homegrown kind, holed up in remote spots just like this one,” Ash warned them. “They could have an arsenal in there.”
Blaine sighed. “Oh, I’m sure that they do...”
He had no more than voiced the thought when gunfire erupted. It echoed throughout the woods, shattering the windows of the cabin and the windows of the vehicles he and the other agents had driven up.
He gestured at the others, indicating for them to go around the back as he headed straight toward the cabin. He was the one that they wanted—the one that Tammy Doremire wanted—dead.
Maggie had already lost one man who loved her. She shouldn’t lose another—especially when Blaine had yet to tell her that he loved her. He should have told her...
He was afraid now that he might never have the chance. The gunfire continued. They had to have automatic weapons—maybe even armor-piercing bullets. The vest probably wouldn’t help him—neither would the SWAT helmet he and the other agents wore.
Ignoring the risk, he returned fire. He had to take out these threats to Maggie and the baby. He had to make sure that they couldn’t hurt her or Drew ever again. One man, wearing the zombie mask and trench-coat disguise, stepped out of the cabin. Blaine hit him, taking him down, but as the man fell, his automatic weapon continued to fire.
