The Pregnant Witness. Lisa Childs
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Blaine cursed and rushed out of the security room. He had wasted too much time on footage that had revealed no clues when he should have been interrogating his only concrete lead. But when he returned to the emergency department, he found the young officer flirting with the nurse once again.
And he found the bed where he’d left Maggie Jenkins empty. She was gone. Either she’d been grabbed again, or she’d escaped...
Even though they had left the hospital a while ago, Special Agent Campbell had yet to speak to her. He only spared her a glare as he drove. The man was furious with her. A muscle twitched along his jaw, and his gaze was hot and hard. Maggie found his anger nearly as intimidating as his devastating good looks. But she couldn’t understand why he was mad at her. Unless...
His stare moved off her to focus on the road again. He hadn’t said where he was taking her. She had foolishly just assumed it would be to her apartment. Now she wasn’t so certain...
Her wrists were bare; he hadn’t cuffed her. She sat in the passenger’s seat next to him—not in the back. But was he arresting her?
“Do you think I’m involved in the robberies?” she asked. “Is that why you were so upset when you couldn’t find me at the hospital?”
That muscle twitched in his cheek again. “When you were gone, I assumed the worst.”
The worst to her would have been one of the robbers in the creepy zombie mask returning. But she wasn’t convinced that Agent Campbell thought the same.
“Is that really what you thought?” she asked. “That one of them had come back for me? Or had you thought that I’d taken off on my own?”
“I thought you were gone,” he said, which didn’t really answer her question. “And I had left that young officer to protect you...”
“I was only using the restroom,” she reminded him. “And he couldn’t go into the ladies’ with me.” She had stepped out of the room to raised voices in the ER. For a moment she’d feared that one of the robbers had returned...until she’d recognized the voices.
At first she had been touched that Agent Campbell had been concerned about her. But he hadn’t been relieved that she was okay; he had stayed angry. Even after checking her out of the hospital and seeing her safely to his vehicle, he was still angry.
“You do suspect that I’m involved in the robberies,” she said, answering her own question.
“Robberies?” he queried, his tone guarded. But then, everything about Special Agent Blaine Campbell was guarded and hard to read—except for the grief he’d felt over Sarge’s death. It had been easy to see his pain.
“They’ve robbed more than one bank,” she said. “But you know that...” Or the FBI wouldn’t have taken over the case. She suspected he was also aware of something else, too. “You probably know that they robbed the other branch of this bank where I previously worked.”
“And then they followed you to the bank where you’re working now...” His tone was less guarded now and more suspicious.
Of her?
Her stomach pitched. She hadn’t had morning sickness even in her first trimester, so that wasn’t the problem. It was nerves. He obviously did suspect that she was involved in the robberies.
“They have robbed a lot of other banks that I haven’t worked at,” she pointed out.
“How do you know that?” he asked, as if she had somehow slipped up and implicated herself. “How do you know how many other banks have been robbed?”
“From the news,” she said. “They’ve even made national broadcasts. And our corporate headquarters sends out email warnings about robberies at other branches or other banks in the area. So it was just a coincidence that they hit both banks where I’ve worked.”
A horrible coincidence—that was what she’d been trying to tell herself since the robbers, in those grotesque disguises, had burst through the doors of the bank earlier that afternoon.
“They have robbed other banks,” he agreed. “But you’re the only hostage they’ve tried taking. They didn’t abduct anyone from any other bank.”
She shuddered. “That was just today...” They hadn’t tried to take her last time; they’d only had her open the security door to the alley. Then they’d left.
“So what was different about today?” he asked.
“You.” He was the first thing that came to mind. Actually, since he’d saved her from being kidnapped the first time, Special Agent Blaine Campbell—with his golden-blond hair and intense green eyes—hadn’t left her mind. Then he’d saved her a second time...
That muscle twitched again in his cheek, which was beginning to grow dark with stubble a few shades darker than his blond hair. “I wasn’t the only thing different about today.”
She uttered a ragged sigh and blinked back the tears that threatened as she remembered what else had been different. “They killed Sarge.”
“Until today they hadn’t killed anyone,” he said. “Do you know what that means?”
She shook her head. She didn’t know how a person could take another life for any reason. That was why she hadn’t been able to understand Andy’s insistence on joining the military. He had always been so sensitive. He had never even hunted and had been inconsolable when he’d accidentally struck and killed a deer with his truck.
Agent Campbell answered his own question, his voice threatening. “It means that whoever has been helping them will face murder charges, as well.”
So he didn’t think she was only a thief; he thought she was a killer, too. Anger coursed through her. She was the one who was mad now.
“Sarge was my friend,” she said. “And what today means to me is that I lost a friend. I thought it meant the same to you. I thought you knew him and cared about him.”
His teeth sank into his lower lip and he nodded. “That’s why I want to find out who killed him and bring them to justice. All of them.”
Her anger cooled as she realized she had no right to it. Agent Campbell was only doing his job, and not just because it was his job but because he’d cared about Sarge. And if she were him, she might have suspected her, too. She had been at the scene of two robberies.
She reached across the console and touched his hand. But it tensed beneath hers, tightening around the steering wheel. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I understand that you have to question me. I just wish I could be more help for your investigation. I really don’t have any idea who the robbers are.”
He tugged his hand from beneath hers and reached for the shifter, putting the car in Park after pulling into a space in the parking lot of her apartment complex.
She breathed a soft sigh of relief. He hadn’t arrested her after all. He had actually brought her home. But she wasn’t foolish enough to think that he no longer suspected her of being involved.
* * *
WAS HE BEING a fool? Blaine silently asked himself. Probably.
He should have taken her down to the Bureau or a local police department for questioning. But she was already trembling with exhaustion and dark circles rimmed her dark eyes. He wasn’t heartless, but he hoped she wasn’t playing him.
Maggie Jenkins had a sincerity and vulnerability that made him want to believe her and to believe that she was just an innocent victim.
Like Sarge...
He flinched over the loss of his friend. Instead of dealing with that death, he’d been busy trying to prevent another—to make sure