Watching Over Her. Lisa Childs
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of French doors off the family room. He pulled the doors closed behind him, shutting them alone in a solarium of windows. But the sun had already dropped, so the room was growing dark and cold.
Maggie shivered.
“If you’re cold—”
“No, I’m fine,” she said. “Why do you want to talk to me privately?” Did he want to yell at her for endangering his family? “I told Buster it was a bad idea to bring me back here.”
“Buster rarely listens to anyone but herself,” he replied. “Poor Carl...”
She suspected that Carl was a very lucky man, and that he was smart enough to know it. No matter how much she joked about her husband, it was obvious that Buster loved him very much.
The way Maggie loved Blaine...
“Why did you want me alone?” she asked again. She tamped down the hope that threatened to burgeon—the hope that he wanted to tell her his feelings.
But that hope deflated when he finally replied, “I have to show you something.”
Instinctively she knew it wasn’t something she would want to see. He didn’t even want to show it to her. He had to...and even without his choice of words, she would have picked up on his reluctance from the gruffness of his voice.
“Did you find the letters?” she asked. If they’d been at the cabin and if it had been used as a hideout, then the robberies were her fault. She shouldn’t have talked so much about the bank. Her mother was right; she had always talked too much. Even though she hadn’t given out security passwords or anything, she’d talked too much about her duties as the assistant manager. And it wasn’t as if Andy had actually been interested; she’d just rambled.
“Yes, I found your letters,” he replied. But he didn’t hold them out for her to look at; he held out a photograph instead.
She didn’t look at it. First she had to know, “What’s this?”
“You tell me,” he said as he lifted it toward her face. “Is it Andy?”
Her heart leaped again. Was it possible that Andy was alive? But then she looked at the picture. The man in it wasn’t alive. And he wasn’t Andy, either.
“Why would you think that was Andy?” She’d thought he had realized that Mr. Doremire had been drunk and delusional when he’d made those wild claims about Andy faking his death and the Marines covering it up.
“He had on Andy’s dog tags.”
The dog tags that his father claimed had never been found. No wonder Blaine had thought it was Andy. She shook her head.
“He must have been mistaken,” she said. And with as much as he drank, it would be understandable.
“The dog tags must have been in his personal effects along with the letters,” she explained. “His brother must have taken them when he took the letters.”
“Now you think Mark took the dog tags?” he asked.
She pointed at the photo. “That’s Mark, so he must have, since he was wearing them when he died.”
“You’re sure that’s Mark?”
“I’m sure,” she said. “I’m surprised you didn’t recognize him from the security footage.” But he did look different dead. He didn’t look like the smiling man on the television monitor.
Blaine released a ragged breath as if he had been holding it for a while, maybe since he’d found the body and had thought it was Andy. “I think he’s the robber I shot at the bank.”
Shock and regret had her gasping. She remembered that horrific moment—remembered Blaine firing back at the man who’d shot the security guard. “You think he’s the one who killed Sarge?”
Mark had been like her big brother, too. He had always seemed as sweet and easygoing as Andy had been, and he had adored his younger brother. How could he have killed a man that Andy had loved? A man she had loved, as well?
Sarge had been so kind and supportive after Andy’s death. He had kept checking on her. Maybe he had made a promise to Andy. Mark must not have. Or, if he had, it was a promise he’d broken.
Blaine nodded. “He was wearing a vest that was too small for him. I got a shot into his side. He bled out from the wound.”
“Nobody got him help?” she asked, horrified that his coconspirators would have just let him bleed to death.
Blaine shook his head. “No. They got him to the cabin, but they couldn’t stop the bleeding.”
“He wasn’t the one who tried grabbing me at the hospital, then,” she said. “That man was healthy and strong.” It gave her some relief that Mark hadn’t been trying to hurt her. “He couldn’t have been behind any of those other attempts on our lives.”
“No,” Blaine agreed. “It must’ve been whoever he was working with.”
There had been five of them. So four other men were still out there, apparently still determined to kill her and Special Agent Blaine Campbell.
* * *
BLAINE HUSTLED HER quickly out of his sister’s house. It was less for his family’s safety and more for hers. He wanted to protect her. He also wanted to comfort her because he had seen the fear on her face when she’d realized that she was still in danger.
“We’ll be safe here,” he said, as he locked the motel room door behind them. He could have driven her back to Chicago. But night had already fallen, and she was obviously exhausted. She trembled with it and maybe with cold. He turned up the thermostat as she shivered.
“I thought you weren’t going to protect me anymore,” she said. “Didn’t your boss tell you that you shouldn’t?”
He nodded. “And he’s right.”
“You said that last night...”
Before he had made love to her. What the hell had he been thinking to take advantage of her that way?
“I’m sorry,” he said. “About last night...”
“You didn’t start the fire,” she said.
“But I should have been awake. I should have been alert,” he said. “My boss was right. You will be safer with someone else protecting you.”
“I feel safe with you,” she said, and she turned back to him and stared up at him with those chocolaty brown eyes.
There was such an overall glow about her. Maybe it was the pregnancy. But he suspected it was just her—just Maggie’s warm personality. She had even won over Buster and that was never easy to do.
“Maggie, I have to focus on the case,” he said. He hoped she would understand that he couldn’t let her distract him any longer. “I have to dig deeper into Mark’s life and find all of his associates.”
“I can help you,” she said.
“You know his friends?”
She shook her head. “He was older than me and Andy, so I don’t know who he hung out with.” She nibbled her lower lip. “I guess I can’t help you.”
“You need to focus on yourself and your baby,” he said. “Stay healthy. Stay well.”
She touched her belly with trembling hands. “Yes...”
“I will find them all,” Blaine promised. “I’ll stop them.” He just hoped he could stop them before they tried to kill her again. They obviously cared little for human life since they had let one of their own die instead of getting him help. To save themselves...
So, even dead, Mark could lead him to the others. That must have been the reason they hadn’t sought out medical attention or wanted his