Ashley glanced at John poised in the doorway with one foot out as though he intended to bolt again. His buckle was of normal size, an average-size rectangle.
More questions raged in Ashley’s head, but she still had work to do with the patient and the baby, half of them tasks the birthing assistant usually performed.
“Take her.” Ashley rose and laid the mewling infant in John’s huge hands. The baby’s mouth worked. John’s mouth worked.
A grim smile twisted Ashley’s lips. “Hang on tight. She needs her neck supported, and she may squirm a little.”
“I can’t hold a baby.”
“And I can’t attend to your—Jane and hold her.” Having no choice but to trust the man to keep the baby safe, Ashley grabbed a plastic pan from her supply cabinet and returned to her patient, to kneeling beside the girl—and the blood. “Jane, we have to get the placenta out. That means a little pushing this time.”
Jane turned her face toward the wall, eyes squeezed shut. Tear tracks ravaged her face, but no fresh moisture dripped from beneath her golden lashes.
“Jane.” Ashley spoke with all the authority six years of experience had given her. “Pay attention to me. I need you to push. We need to get that placenta.”
Perhaps the bleeding would stop with that.
Jane didn’t move. Her belly contracted on its own, but too weakly. Ashley could administer a dose of Pitocin, but she dared not with the bleeding.
“Come on, sweetheart.” She stroked Jane’s belly, feeling the mass still inside. “Work with me or I’ll have to get you to a hospital.”
“No.” The breathless, husky whisper was the first word the girl had spoken.
Ashley startled, her hands kneading the girl’s abdomen a little too hard. Jane gasped, and the afterbirth expelled with far too much blood, too much for the pan. It splattered the plastic sheeting on the bed, the floor, Ashley’s pants.
“John?” As she packed gauze to stanch the blood, Ashley kept her tone calm, but loud enough to be heard over the baby’s apparently healthy lung exercises. “What kind of car do you have?”
“I gotta pickup, why?”
“Two seats or one?”
“Front only.” He stepped to the doorway. “What—” He broke off on a curse. “What’s wrong with her?”
“I don’t know. I have no medical history to do anything but guess right now. But I do know that we need help and fast. We can use my Tahoe. It’s faster than waiting for an ambulance.” She stood. “I’ll get my keys and call the hospital to be ready for us.”
She caught up the cordless phone and began to dial even as she charged through the kitchen and up the steps to her room and her purse.
She’d been holding the phone to her ear for a full thirty seconds before she realized it was dead.
It couldn’t be dead. She had taken it from its charging cradle. She slid to a halt outside her bedroom and stared at the receiver. Not the battery. The keypad glowed with life, but no dial tone sounded when she pushed the green On button.
Her skin prickled all over. Short hairs beneath her heavy braid stood on end. She willed them down. The couple and the birth were all wrong, but they had nothing to do with no dial tone. This was the country. Phone lines went dead. No problem. Her cell phone rested on the nightstand beside her car keys and wallet and another phone. She tested that one, too, conscious of wasting time. No dial tone.
She caught up cell, keys, and wallet and sped back to the door. “I’m going to go open my car.” She called out her intent as she took the steps down two at a time.
Silence greeted her. The baby had stopped crying.
Ashley slammed open the front door. “I’ll be back to help in a minute.”
Once outside where she could get a signal, she told her phone to call the hospital. By the time she reached her SUV, the phone was ringing. By the time she clicked the electronic locks on the doors, someone answered, “Memorial Hospital. Jenny speaking.”
“Ashley Tolliver.”
Jenny knew her, and Ashley let out a breath knowing an excellent nurse was on duty tonight.
“I’m bringing in a woman—”
The roar of an engine speeding up the drive drowned her voice from her own hearing. Headlights, high and too bright, cut an arc across the trees lining the drive and her Tahoe before heading straight for her.
She flung herself back against the house. The black hulk of a jacked-up truck barreled past her with a bare yard to spare and swept around the circular drive. Seconds before it reached the rear of the house, another smaller pickup blasted from near the tree line edging the backyard and shot down the drive. The black truck accelerated in pursuit. Both vehicles accelerated on their way downhill, tires sending gravel spraying behind. Ashley flung up her arms to protect her face. Her phone sailed from her hand and landed in a rosemary bush.
The rumble of the trucks’ engines dwindled around a curve in the road. In the ensuing quiet, she caught a tinny voice calling, “Ashley, are you there?”
“Keep talking. I dropped my phone in the bushes.”
And her patient had just been abandoned.
What about the newborn she had so far rejected?
Ashley plucked her phone from the bush and raced toward the exam room. “Emergency delivery. Potential hemorrhage.” She reached the kitchen. “I know nothing about her. She—” She slid to a halt halfway across the kitchen.
A trail of blood led through the exam room to the open back door.
“Ashley, are you still there?” Jenny called through the phone. “Ashley?”
“I’m here.” Ashley could barely push the words out of her throat. “But I think—” She swallowed and tried again. “I think you’d better call the sheriff. My patient and her baby have disappeared.”
CHAPTER 2
AFTER SIXTEEN HOURS of travel, with one flight delay resulting in a missed connection and hours spent pacing the aisleways of Gatwick Airport, Hunter McDermott wheeled his luggage through the rear security gate of his complex and approached his condo. So far so good. No one had accosted him—yet. Once inside, he should be fairly safe from reporters and curiosity-seekers.
He dragged his suitcase and briefcase up the steps, unlocked the door, disarmed the security system. The suitcase he left in the utility room to empty of laundry later. The briefcase he carried across the kitchen to the hallway leading to the steps. His footfalls echoed on the wooden floorboards. The mustiness of a house too long closed from outside air stirred around him. Beyond the front windows, shielded from the street with the drapes his mother insisted he needed, bright lights and slamming doors suggested that the press had found his home—or maybe a neighbor was having a party—he could hope. He didn’t care. As weary as he was, he doubted a rock band in the middle of the street would keep him awake. The time might only be midnight eastern daylight time, but his body remained on Greenwich meantime, which meant he had been awake for over thirty-six hours.
Those thirty-six hours felt more like thirty-six days since a simple act of kindness had granted him half a day cooling his heels in a Portuguese police station, then hours more of questioning by one official after another, before they released him to face a bombardment of cameras and reporters. In order to escape the flashing lights and cacophony of questions from the media, Hunter had raced for the Lisbon airport and relative anonymity behind the security checkpoint. He waited there for a flight that had been delayed and then delayed again for security reasons. During the wait, he paced, ate bad food, and avoided televisions. He avoided looking anyone in the eye. He tucked in his earbuds and turned up the music a little too loudly to avoid conversation. But a flight attendant recognized him when he boarded his flight, and then everyone on the plane wanted to greet him, congratulate him, or even in one case, tell him he was crazy. Not that he would have slept on the flight. He never slept in moving vehicles of any kind.
He scrubbed his hands over his face. “And if you don’t sleep now, you won’t get any at all.”
Feeling twice his thirty-two years, he dragged himself to his feet, grabbed his briefcase, and trudged up the steps to his bedroom.
He should take a shower to relax tense muscles. All he wanted to do was drop onto his bed and sleep until he woke up without the aid of an alarm. Probably a good idea. No one expected him in the office for another day. After he texted his family and business partner that he had ended up flying through London instead of taking the regularly scheduled direct flight to Newark and then another to Reagan National, he turned off his iPhone until landing in northern Virginia.
LANDED SAFELY. He had texted a brief message to siblings and parents and his coworkers. HOME TO SLEEP.
A number of buzzes from the phone set on Mute told him at least a few of them had responded, but he hadn’t looked. He didn’t possess either the physical or the mental strength to respond with anything other than LEAVE ME ALONE. Silence from him was better. More than likely, they were all in bed at this hour of a weeknight anyway.
Mocking this presumption, the landline began to ring. He glanced at the caller ID. Justin Langford, his business partner. He could go to voice mail.
Hunter lifted his briefcase onto the bed and removed his MacBook. At the least, he needed to charge the computer’s battery. And he knew he would rest better if he unpacked that suitcase.
He would rest better if the phone didn’t keep ringing all night. Yet it rang again. Stopped. Rang again. At the same time, his iPhone began to buzz with incoming messages.
He pulled it from his pocket and glanced at the screen.
CALL ME. VOICE-MAIL BOXES ARE FULL.
He blinked, shoved his glasses up so he could rub his scratchy eyes, and read the messages again, and again, as Justin kept sending the same one.
Never in his life had his voice-mail box been full. He wasn’t that social a guy.
Seeing the battery on his iPhone was nearly dead, he picked up the landline and called Justin back. “What’s up?”
“It’s about time, bro.” Justin still sounded like a frat boy despite a decade out of college, masking a brilliant mind. “Are you too good to answer your phone yourself now that you’re the local hero of the hour?”
“I’m hardly that.” Hunter fumbled the doll he’d bought for his niece onto the bed.
Justin laughed. “I just got done being interviewed by half of the news organizations in the country, I think. Excellent publicity. I’m surprised they’re not beating down your door.”
“I’m hoping they won’t realize I’m home.” Hunter crossed the room to the window overlooking the front of his condo. Half a dozen news vans parked along the curb, reporters standing beside them in hopeful poses.
He tugged down the blinds. “Not a way to endear oneself to one’s neighbors.”
“They didn’t catch you when you came in?”
“I didn’t drive myself this time. I took a taxi from the airport and had him drop me off around the block so I could come in the back way.”
“So you knew this might happen.”
“I was hoping it wouldn’t, but suspected . . .” Hunter sighed and leaned against the wall. “I thought I had until tomorrow.”
“What century do you live in? Everyone knew about it an hour after it happened. But you were in transit and no one could find you. Didn’t you see the news in the airport?”
“I avoided TVs. I prefer not to look at myself in pictures.”
“You looked adorable holding that little girl.” Justin barely got the words out without laughing.
Hunter groaned.
Justin laughed harder. “You won’t have trouble getting dates after this one. You’ll have to beat the ladies off with a stick.”
“I’d rather beat the reporters off with a stick.” He peered around the blinds. “Will they go away if I give them a statement?”
“Most of them will, but you might want to consider leaving town if you don’t want the fifteen minutes of fame.”
“I don’t want fifteen seconds of fame. I didn’t do anything that anyone else wouldn’t have done. If not for the explosion—” A shiver ran up his spine. “None of this would be news if that car bomb hadn’t gone off.”
“But it did, and you saved the family.”
“By accident.”
“And everyone wants to hear about happy endings in this messed-up world.” Justin’s voice lost the humor. “Just go out and talk to them and ask them to have respect for your neighbors or something. A sound bite should satisfy them for the moment.”
“If you say so, I’ll go out to face the vultures.”
“Call me back if you need a getaway car.” Justin hung up.
Hunter tossed the cordless phone onto the bed and took the steps down two at a time. The instant he opened the front door, lights blazed into the night, turning it as bright as day. Neighbors’ windows popped up and other doors opened. A siren wailed, coming nearer, suggesting someone might have called the cops.
“Mr. McDermott. Hunter? Did you know that . . .” A dozen questions rained upon him like the shrapnel from the exploding car.
He held up a hand for silence and pitched his voice to be heard above the tumult without the harshness of yelling that often distorted words or gave the impression of anger, a trick he had learned on jobs around noisy digging equipment. “What happened in Lisbon was a simple act of the better part of my human nature. The rest was pure coincidence with a happy outcome. Other than that, you probably know more than I do.”
“But did you know—”
“Weren’t you—”
“That is all. Now please go away so my neighbors and I can sleep.” He started to step back into the condo.
The reporters surged forward, microphones and cameras thrust out.
And the police cruiser sailed onto the quiet side street, lights flashing.
Reporters piled themselves and equipment back into their vans and squealed off for their respective stations. Hunter shot a grateful glance toward the cops, then closed and bolted his door.
No wonder his voice mail was full. He could guess what most of the messages were—other newspeople wanting to talk to him. He was going to have to listen to all of them in the event important messages were mixed in, messages from people like his family. He didn’t want to call them at this hour unless one of those messages said he should.
He returned upstairs and retrieved his landline to call into the voice-mail box. He had fifty-seven messages. His head spun at the notion. He doubted he received fifty-seven voice-mail messages in a year, let alone overnight.
The first dozen were from media personnel. He deleted every one of them. Next came a mix of reporters, friends, and work colleagues. The twenty-eighth one was from his sister, telling him to call her regardless of when he got into town. Ten more messages from reporters kept his finger busy on the Delete key. Three from his parents and two from his brother sounded anxious. His heart warmed at their loving care of him. Justin had left two messages, and another eight came from college classmates he hadn’t heard from in years. His mouth quirked up in a grim smile at those, at how people who had called him a nerd in school now wanted to lay claim to friendship, but he didn’t delete them. He would give them the courtesy of responding.
Then, after three more messages from reporters, he received the oddest message of them all.
The area code of the number the computer voice recited was 540. Who did he know in the 540 area code region? He scrolled through the missed calls on the cordless phone to see what it revealed, while the accent of the caller, a combination of southern drawl and country twang, told him the woman’s origins lay somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains. He didn’t recognize the voice. No doubt she had seen the video of his accidental rescue of a family and wanted . . . something.
He started to delete the message.
And then her words began to sink in. Instead of punching the 3 to delete, he pushed the 1 to replay the message.
“Zachariah, I wondered how you’d sound as a grown man . . .”
Fatigue, shock, and disbelief that anyone could be so crazy sent a tremor running through him. He needed sleep. He needed food. He needed to delete the message and put it down as someone not in her right mind. Only the travel, the jet lag, and the events preceding his departure from Europe held him captive enough to think the woman was serious even for a moment.
But she called you Zachariah.
He doubted even someone in the news world could have dug up his birth certificate or school records in the time since the video emerged and now. He had legally changed the name Zachariah to a mere Z nearly fourteen years earlier. And the rest of the message, off in the middle, added with the abandoned name, belonged to either someone lost in a weird fantasy or else frighteningly sane.
For all her smoker’s gravelly voice, she sounded too sane to ignore.
His hand less than steady, he punched the 2 to save the message, then called his parents.
“Hunter.” Mom answered the phone on the first ring. “We’ve been waiting up for you to call. Are you all right? You weren’t hurt? They didn’t try to arrest you or anything? The media aren’t hounding you? You know you can go to the cabin if—”
“Let the boy talk.” Dad’s calm voice on another line interrupted Mom’s spate of questions. “Of course they didn’t arrest him. He wouldn’t be home if they had.”
“I was detained for questioning and then let go.” Hunter spent the requisite fifteen minutes calming Mom’s concerns and answering their questions, giving a quick version of the minor rescue that had turned into the saving of half a dozen lives.
“It wasn’t terrorists, Mom.” He tried to stop his mom’s rant about how dangerous the world was and how he should stop traveling.
The Mountain Midwife Page 2
