by Gina LaManna
A muffled moan sounded across the phone line.
“What have you done to Stan—” I hesitated, biting back my own moans. “Stanley?”
“He’s fine—I’ve taped over his mouth and hands. We’re going to begin our march downstairs now, okay? Nobody do anything stupid.”
“Oka-ohhh.” My agreement turned into a horrible gritting sound. My fingers clenched and unclenched of their own accord. I gripped the phone so tightly my knuckles went white before Betty reached forward and loosened it from my grip.
“It’s me,” Betty said, raising the phone to her mouth. “Yeah, that Betty. Let a doctor in here, you idiot. You’re not a murderer. You won’t kill Stanley, I know that much. But Lacey’s about to have her baby, and if either of them don’t survive, it’s your fault. That’s on your slimy hands.”
“What?” I yelped. “Who said anything about not surviving?” I thought you said it’d all be okay?!”
“It will be,” Betty reassured me, clamping her hand over the mouthpiece. “I’m just trying to get him to see sense.”
“Make him see faster!”
“Can you hear what she’s going through?” Betty spoke firmly, like she was in complete control of the situation. “Let a doctor inside, Fidge, and you can have your way getting out of here.”
“I told you,” Fidge roared. “I didn’t lock the building down. That makes no sense! If you didn’t do it, then who did?”
“Oh, no. Meg?” I instructed. “Get Clay on the phone.”
While she did as I asked, I closed my eyes. If I pretended hard enough, I could almost imagine Betty was my nurse, and I was laying here and a rock-hard hospital bed. I let my eyes close and pretended I was surrounded by clean white tile instead of drab carpet and poor overhead lighting. I pretended Anthony was at my side, and the person on the other end of the phone was Nora, shrieking with excitement, instead of the crazy CFO holding a hostage in his penthouse suite.
“Lacey, what’s going on in there?” Clay’s voice broke over the line. “I had a minor mishap out here and I lost sound for a minute.”
“What sort of mishap?” I snarled. “You wouldn’t have wriggled your way into the security system and put the building on lockdown, would you have?”
“Erhm.”
“Get the doors open and get some paramedics in here. Right now!”
“About the door...”
“Clay, I swear, if you tell me you can’t get them open...” A muted voice sounded in the background. “Hold on, is that Anthony? Is he talking?”
“Lacey?!” It was Anthony’s voice on the phone. Real, live, adult, conscious Anthony.
I sighed with relief. “Please, get in here! As soon as you can. Clay locked the building down, but Sprout is coming out. Hurry!”
“I’ll be there,” he said. “Hold on, sugar—I’m coming.”
“No, no—” Betty shook her head. “You can’t wait, honey. This baby is coming.”
I couldn’t argue. The worst of the contractions hit. My microphone may have been turned off, but there was no way to mask the sound from carrying over the phone lines. I sounded like a wounded animal, and I was slipping, losing control faster than I could scramble back up the rope. Things were happening to my body: things that hurt, things that scared me, things I wasn’t prepared to face alone.
“What’s happening to me?” I reacted on impulse, curling over my stomach as another contraction racked through me. “Where’s my suitcase?”
“Why does she keep moaning about a suitcase?” Betty asked over me. “What the hell is in that suitcase?”
“Sugar,” Meg said simply. “Candy. She’s sort of an addict, and she’s probably going through withdrawal.”
“I have a roll of Smarties in my desk,” Betty said, worry scrawled over her face. “Will that help?”
“Smarties!” I said it as if it were a curse word.
“They’re not her favorite,” Meg said. “But it’s something. Let me find them.”
“Lacey, there you are...” Anthony came to a dead stop at the end of the hallway. His face went through a rainbow of emotions—anger, fear, nerves, and settled on some mess of them all as he hurtled toward me. “I am going to kill Clay. I will rip apart—”
“Anthony,” I gasped, my hands grasping for his face as he knelt next to me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Sorry, I’m so sorry—we can discuss ways to hide your idiot cousin’s body after Sprout is safe and sound. I’m calling Dr. Gambino. I’m getting us out of here—this is insane. Why did we come here in the first place? Did I agree to it?”
“You weren’t in any state of mind to actually agree to much. We were just so close...” I stopped, waited, moaned. “So close to cracking the case.”
“And so close to labor!” Anthony said. “What were you thinking? No matter, no matter,” he said, almost in reassurance to himself. “I’m here. Everything’s going to be okay.”
“I know,” I said with a smile. “It’s always okay when you’re here.”
“Oh, now we got another delirious one,” Meg said with an eyeroll. “These two are so mushy it’s unbearable.”
“Uh oh,” Betty said, looking below my waist where she’d draped a towel for privacy. She’d gotten everything arranged down there for delivery, and I preferred not to know how or what exactly she’d done. “I am just going to say that judging by the looks of things, we aren’t moving anywhere. I’m not a doctor, but I think that’s the baby.”
Meg poked her head below. “Never thought I’d see this side of you, Lacey, but—”
“Shut up!” I shouted. “Medical commentary only.”
“Jeepers,” Meg said. “Yep, that looks like a head.”
I nearly broke my own eardrums on the next wail. I’d had no painkillers, no sugar, not a whole lot of anything except Lamaze class, and my who-who-hee’s only helped when I could manage a breath instead of a scream.
“Lacey!” Anthony gripped my hand, his face so pale, so white. “What do I...what can I—I don’t know how...”
“Hey, I heard we have a baby ready to come out.” A new voice joined ours, this one attached to a medium-sized red headed woman, who I realized was Betty’s partner in crime. “My name is Sandra. I used to be a first responder. Your name is Lacey, right? We’ve met before.”
“You stole...” I gasped. “My mother’s ring. You’re...Ginger.”
“Sorry about that,” she said. “But I’ll return it. Oh, yikes—this baby is coming. Betty, move to the side. Go get warm water, more towels—whatever you can find. They gave out those crappy gym towels with the company logo on them last year—bring them all to me. All the extras are in the storeroom closet.”
Betty promptly loped off in search of supplies. Ginger’s—Sandra’s—control was soothing, and it helped batter back the desperate levels of pain threatening to swallow me whole.
“What?!” Anthony pinned the newcomer with a dangerous stare. “Why is our baby being delivered by bank robbers?”
“It’s better than prison,” I groaned. “Probably.”
“You guys are...” Ginger hesitated. “An interesting couple. Okay, okay, baby’s all set to come out. Are you ready to push? I’m sorry, we can’t wait much longer.”
“Ready?!” I couldn’t even comprehend the word. I didn’t know if I’d ever be ready, but my body was telling me there was no time like the present.
“What do I do?!” Anthony asked. “What does she need?”
“Hold her hand,” Sandra said. “Let her squeeze as tightly as she wants. Talk to your wife. Encourage her. It’s not easy, isn’t that right, Lacey? Okay, honey, on this next contraction, give it all you’ve got.”
My first push was like something out of a bad slasher flick, judging by the look on Anthony’s face. He appeared stuck between horror and awe, though he hung in there, watching me without breaking eye contact.
I hadn’t realized how hard I was grasping Anthony’s hand until he winced, and I heard the slightest crack.
“I think she broke my hand,” Anthony said, stunned. He shook his fingers as he traded out one hand for the other in my grasp. “It’s at least a hairline fracture, and—”
“Can it, buddy!” Ginger snapped. “I’m watching your wife push a child out of her body. Your measly little finger bones can wait.”
A wave of sheepishness hit Anthony, and he wrapped both of his hands around mine and let me squeeze all I wanted. I tried to hold back, to contain it, to keep my yelling to a minimum, but it was everything I could do not to split in half and take him with me.
Anthony’s soothing voice slipped in one ear and out the other while I focused on listening to Ginger’s firm, encouraging demands. I had no clue where Betty or Meg had gone, or if the secretary was still around. I was hardly aware of the door bursting open or the man responsible for all of us being here appearing there.
“What’s all the racket for crying out loud?” Fidge demanded. “Shut up already!”
He’d come in the opposite side of the hallway as Anthony and had a perfect Discovery Channel view into the miracle of life. He had a gun pressed to the temple of his secretary.
I groaned, holding on, focusing on Anthony’s brown eyes and Ginger’s strong words. I could hardly process the fact that Fidge had inched his weapon to the forehead of a small, wiry kid barely old enough for college.
“I’m going to shoot him if you don’t pipe down,” Fidge said. “I don’t care what’s going on—I want a way out of here now.”
“Shut up, Fidge,” Ginger said. “Drop your weapon. Let Stanley go.”
He laughed and shook his head. He still hadn’t looked down, still hadn’t quite realized what was happening. His concentration flipped between his gun and Stanley, with a few quick glances down the hallway at Anthony. The poor kid had a duct taped mouth and hands tied behind his back. His eyes were wide with fear.
Anthony finally looked up at Fidge and reached for a weapon, but he didn’t get far. I wouldn’t let go of his hands as I yelped with pain, wrenching him back to my side. “Stay here!”
“Hold on for a second, Fidge,” Ginger said, excitement in her voice. “We’re just about there, and then we’ll talk. You can take me after—I’m the one who...okay, Lacey, give a huge push! You’re so close, honey!”
A guttural cry ripped through me, and the world shattered into blackness. Anthony’s hands were all that held me onto this planet, I was certain of it. He anchored me there, held me close, cradled my head in his lap as I curled against him, worn. I was done, there was nothing more I could do, and I had nothing left to give. It was over. Fidge had won, and the baby was too much. I couldn’t do it. Not here, not without doctors and medicine, not without...
The cry pierced the silence.
A huge, resounding thump followed.
Ginger moved around, doing something, though I couldn’t comprehend what. I stayed there, my eyes squeezed shut, until the cry sounded again. This time, it didn’t come from me.
My eyes flashed open. I met my husband’s gaze, startled by the smile there. The smile backed by pure joy, fueled by a love so intense it was frightening. “Anthony...”
“Lacey and Anthony,” Ginger said, after a moment of fumbling with towels and tubs of water Betty had unearthed. “Meet your daughter.”
As Ginger handed me the little human parcel tucked into a soft, Bank of the Lakes blanket, I held her to my chest. A little human, perfectly sized, gorgeously beautiful, blisteringly loud with her cries.
“She’ll need to go to the hospital, of course, but she seems perfectly healthy,” Ginger said with a sigh of happiness. She stood and backed away. “I’m getting the paramedics in here to finish up, now that Fidge is out. I think I hear sirens pulling up.”
Anthony peppered my face with kisses and peered eagerly into our daughter’s face. When I reached for him and grasped his hand, he gave the slightest flinch at my squeeze.
“It’s nothing,” he said, seeing my concerned glance. “Nothing at all. Lacey, I’m so proud of you. You’re incredible, amazing, and...and we’re parents.”
A stillness fell over the room. I hadn’t noticed at first that Fidge was nothing more than a lump on the ground, apparently knocked out cold at the sight of a little baby making her entrance into the world.
I let out an almost hysterical laugh as I realized what had happened while I’d shut my eyes and disappeared for a moment. Our daughter’s first act on planet earth was to take down a gun-wielding psycho with nothing more than her arrival.
She was destined for greatness.
I looked at our daughter’s face and saw those pink cheeks and thick, gorgeous eyelashes that surely came from Anthony. They fluttered ever so slightly on her cheeks, and I wanted nothing more than to smooch her everywhere, to hold her to my breast and freeze this moment forever.
“What are we calling her?” Anthony asked. “You said you’d know when she arrived.”
“I think we’ll call her Bella,” I said. “Bella Rose Luzzi.”
“Bella...”
“My mother’s middle name,” I said softly. “She told me she’d always loved her middle name more than anything. It’s been passed down the family for generations.”
“Bella,” Anthony said simply. “It’s perfect; she’s perfect. You’re perfect. I love you, Lacey.”
Chapter 26
THE ARRIVAL OF THE cops and paramedics was both a blessing...and a curse.
After Clay figured out how to unlock the doors, a flood of people arrived on the scene at once—most of them from my family. Clay stumbled down the hallway first in a wild funk, arms flailing, eyes rabid with concern. His legs seemed to be moving without his body following the same instructions, which resulted in a sort of drunken gallop.
“I’m so sorry, Lacey,” he said, gasping for breath. “I’m scarred for life. I can’t believe everything I just heard. You...you just pushed...”
“You’re scarred?!” I gave him a confused half smile. “You’re scarred?!”
“Well, I mean, you know.” His face turned pink. “A little scarred.”
“I’m not happy about getting locked in here,” I admitted, “but everything worked out okay. You can relax, Clay. The girls took care of me, and Anthony was here, and the baby seems to be healthy.”
“The baby...” Clay stepped closer and glanced down at the little bundle in my arms. “You pushed that out of there?” He did a series of head bobs between Bella and my body, his expression downright mystified. “How?”
“Let’s call it a miracle and spare you the details.”
He inched a tiny bit closer. “Does it...er, Sprout have a human name yet?”
I smiled fondly down at Sprout. “We are calling her Bella.”
“She is...she is beautiful,” Clay said, stepping closer as if drawn to her like a magnet. He almost didn’t seem aware of the tender wash in his eyes or the gentle way he watched her sleep. “Do you—can I...never mind.”
“Do you want to hold her?”
“Erhm, not really. Sort of, but not really,” Clay said. “I think I’ll wait for now.”
“Good because you have germs, and I wouldn’t let you touch her,” I said. “But after we get home from the hospital, then maybe. So long as you leave all exploding devices at home.”
“Lacey, about this whole incident, I am so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to lock the building down, or—you know, shoot your husband into unconsciousness. Those sorts of things just happen sometimes. How can I ever repay you?”
“Clay, how about your favor to me is not doing me any favors from here on out?” I suggested. “I mean, come and visit us, but leave the presents behind. Maybe hose yourself down with a metal detector before you come into the house. That’s all I’m asking.”
“Got it,�
� Clay said. “No good deeds for Lacey Luzzi.”
Anthony, who hadn’t left my side since he’d arrived, gave a noncommittal groan. “Right. Just wait until Bella’s first birthday. Her present will probably be a flying spaceship car.”
Clay tilted his head upward in thought. “You know, those little Barbie jeeps could probably sustain flight for a short period of time if I...”
He turned around and wandered off, still muttering random calculations and scientific jargon under his breath. He walked right past a mixture of SWAT and police officers, stepped over a just-released hostage—poor Stupid Stanley—and bumped into several of the people in handcuffs. I wasn’t sure he noticed any of it.
Not that I watched him for long because at that moment, a firecracker shot straight toward me in a bundle of flaming excitement. Nora pulled up just in front of the stretcher and stopped short, her hands coming to rest over her mouth while tears streaked down her face.
“Is...is the baby here?!” she gasped. “Is everyone okay? I got a phone call and...”
“Nora, meet Sprout,” I said, my heart weakening as I watched Nora fold up like an origami creation in front of my eyes. “Your great-granddaughter.”
Anthony had seen Nora’s imminent collapse and leapt to attention, catching her in his arms before she could hit the floor. He tried to set her down a time or two after, but her legs mostly just wobbled and she tottered over again. It looked a bit like he was trying to make a dreidel stand on its end. Finally, he tired of steadying her and instead swooped my grandmother into his arms and held her against his body.
She looked like a small child there, hugged against Anthony’s massive chest. Her arms linked loosely behind his neck. “Lacey, I just don’t understand—” She gave a sniff—“why didn’t you have your baby in the hospital where I could help?”
Carlos strolled over then, looking first to me, and then to the baby. Once he’d decided that we were both still alive and healthy enough, he cast a curious glance over to where Anthony stood still as a coatrack with Nora slung over him like a forgotten purse.
“What happened to my wife?” he asked. “Anthony, you need a hand with her?”