The Runaway Daughter. Anna DeStefano
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slammed the phone onto its receiver. Fought not to run screaming out of the apartment. She had to stay and make sure Claire was okay. She should wait for her dad’s deputies to get there.
But if she did, they’d take Max away for sure.
Protect him for me, Maggie….
She stumbled to the bedroom and found Claire still unconscious, though she was breathing. Baby Max was beside himself, demanding to be picked up. She grabbed him and knelt beside her friend.
“Claire, the ambulance is on its way.” Maggie jiggled the baby, scared out of her mind, but trying not to sound it. “Claire, can you hear me?”
No response came, only Max’s whimpers.
God, please don’t let my friend die.
This was all her fault. None of this would have happened if she’d talked to Angie, or her parents or somebody yesterday.
Get Max out of here….
She didn’t dare. Running with the baby was stupid. But she’d promised…. Once the paramedics and her dad’s deputies got there, would they really turn Max over to his local family?
Sam’s family.
Tears streaming down her face, she pulled herself together and up off the floor. Forget how sick she felt. Forget how much she wanted to hold her friend close and start sobbing right along with the baby.
Don’t be a coward, Maggie.
Don’t just stand there. Move!
Shaking, she kissed Claire’s forehead and said another quick prayer she was terrified was too little, too late. Then she did the scariest thing she’d ever done in her life.
She ran.
CHAPTER FOUR
SPENDING HIS SATURDAY OFF doing what he thought any self-respecting, stand-in parent should be doing, Tony pulled a fresh batch of laundry from the dryer. With classic rock blaring from the radio on the shelf behind the washer, he breathed in the scent of detergent and home, and shoved aside thoughts of his family’s imminent move to New York.
Last night’s dinner had been great.
It was all great.
So put Eric’s move out of your mind, man. It’s a done deal.
Except his mind didn’t clear as Billy Joel sang about a sweet girl named Virginia, as much as it shifted to thoughts of a certain chief deputy.
The softness of her lips. The fact that he felt like he belonged wherever they were, every time they were alone. The curves he’d discovered beneath her unisex clothes, filling his hands—
The side door off the kitchen crashed open.
His niece was home from wherever she’d disappeared to an hour ago. When she sped upstairs without saying hello, he dropped the towels back into the dryer and headed after her. Billy crooned that only the good died young.
Maybe he and Maggie could grab burgers and shakes for lunch. Maybe they could hang out for the rest of the day. The world would be fine again, as soon as he got his head out of his butt and stopped obsessing about things he couldn’t change. Not to mention a woman he was nuts to want in the first place.
“Mags?” He took the steps two at time. “What’s up?”
The only response was muffled shuffling from the direction of his niece’s room. Then her door slammed shut in a very un-Maggie way.
In three long strides, he was knocking.
“Maggie, you okay?” His hand hovered over the doorknob.
A mewling sound that resembled a kitten’s cry came from the other side of the door. When it turned into a full-fledged wail that most definitely wasn’t feline, he tried the knob.
It was locked.
No one locked doors around here.
“Maggie, what’s going on?”
“I… Everything’s fine.” Her voice shook with each word, what he could hear of it over the racket of an increasingly upset baby. “Um—”
“Maggie, open the door.” Tony gave up knocking and started pounding, fun afternoon plans evaporating.
He’d heard his totally together niece sound this scared only one other time. Last year, when he’d learned of her mother’s life-threatening liver condition. Maggie and Eric hadn’t been able to talk Carrinne into letting Maggie donate a portion of her liver to replace her mom’s, and it had looked for a short time like they might lose his sister-in-law. Maggie had been out-of-control angry, terrified as she’d pleaded with Carrinne to change her mind.
The same emotion owned her voice now. Something was seriously wrong.
As if the hysterical baby wasn’t clue enough.
“Open this door now, Maggie, or I swear, I’ll break it down!”
Like his niece needed a cop barreling through her door.
Sheesh, tone it down, man.
He’d had the next few weeks planned so perfectly. He was a kick-ass uncle. Maggie loved hanging out with him. Suddenly, the only ass he wanted to kick was his brother’s, for not being there to head this off.
“Come on, Mags,” Tony cajoled. “Whatever it is, I can help. And if I can’t, we’ll call your folks, and they’ll—”
“No!” The lock turned and the door was yanked open, revealing the shocking sight of his niece, her face drained of color, holding a squalling infant. Her friend’s baby, if Tony didn’t miss his guess.
“Why do you have Max?” he asked. “Is Claire—”
He’d been about to say okay, when the splashes of color marring the front of Maggie’s white T-shirt hit home.
“Oh my God, you’re bleeding,” he managed to say as the floor sank beneath him.
He backed her unresisting body toward the bed and gently pushed her and the baby down. Without taking his hand off Maggie’s shoulder, he grabbed the portable phone from a nearby table. He misdialed three times.
“Lie down. Don’t move. I’ll have an ambulance here in a few min—”
“No!” Maggie whipped the phone out of his hand and jumped to her feet. Terminating the call, she threw the receiver across the room. Life sparked back into her eyes. A touch of color warmed her cheeks. “I’m fine. It’s not my blood. It’s… It’s… I’m fine.”
“Whose blood is it, Maggie?” She couldn’t have moved so quickly if she were seriously injured. What he’d thought was fresh blood was actually dried. His panic yielded to a flurry of questions. “What the hell’s going on? Where’s Claire? Why do you have Max?”
“I…I was…” Tears filled her eyes. That strong chin that was so much like his and his brother’s began to wobble. “Please, Tony. You have to help me. Claire’s hurt…. And she made me promise to get Max to her parents in Virginia…. I can’t let Sam’s family have him…. And the…there was this guy on the floor, and…and I think he’s dead…. He…Sam shot him, and he could have come back at any minute, so I called the ambulance and…and then I ran….”
She was pacing with the crying baby now—his nineteen-year-old niece, saying things straight out of his nightmares. Tony could only stare in silence as he processed the jumbled images her words painted. Then she stopped and brought the hand not holding Max to her mouth.
“Tony, she’s hurt so bad. Claire… They shot her….”
Rousing himself into motion, he made Maggie sit on the edge of the bed again. Max’s wails were winding down, thank the heavens above. His tiny head was nestled in the crook of her neck