The Pregnant Witness

by Lisa Childs

  “And the guy inside the cabin?” Blaine asked, as he walked back into the run-down log structure. He’d already been inside but Agent Reyes hadn’t. He hoped Dalton recognized the corpse because Blaine was afraid that he did.

  Dalton checked out the scene and cursed. The guy was slumped over in a wooden chair, a pool of blood dried beneath him. His clothes—a camo shirt and pants—were also saturated and hard with dried blood. Bloody bandages were strewn across the table in front of him.

  But those weren’t the only things on the table. A pile of envelopes, bound with a big rubber band, sat atop the scarred wooden surface, too.

  Maggie’s letters...written to her fiancé. Blaine hadn’t looked at them; he probably wouldn’t be able to look at them. But he knew they were hers.

  “What the hell happened to him?” Dalton asked.

  “I think I killed him.”

  Dalton snorted. “This guy has been dead for days. You didn’t do this.”

  “I think I did. During the bank robbery,” he said. “That first van that was recovered had blood inside, and I did get off some shots during the robbery.”

  Ash stepped into the cabin behind Dalton. “Is he the one?”

  Blaine nodded. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure this is the guy who shot Sarge.”

  Ash patted his shoulder. “You got him!”

  “I wasn’t sure I hit him. They were wearing vests...”

  This guy’s vest was lying on the floor near his chair along with the zombie mask and the trench coat. He had definitely been one of the robbers. Was he the one who’d killed Sarge?

  When Blaine had fired back, he’d thought that he shot the one who’d hit Sarge.

  “He must not have had his vest tight on the sides,” Dalton said as he leaned over to inspect it. “Looks like it was too small for him—probably left a gap.”

  So Blaine had gotten a lucky shot into the guy’s side. “There was a smaller robber—maybe their vests got mixed up...”

  “I don’t care what happened,” Ash said. “I just care that you got him—for Sarge.”

  But who was he? Blaine stepped closer to the body, intent on tipping back the guy’s head to get a better look. But then a glint of metal caught his eye, and he saw the dog tags dangling from the chain around the corpse’s neck.

  He picked up the tags and read, “‘Sergeant Andrew Doremire...’”

  “Who the hell is that?” Ash asked.

  “A dead man,” Blaine replied. He tipped up the face—he looked like the man on the security footage from the bank. Maggie had said that Andy and Mark looked eerily similar.

  Dalton snorted. “Obviously...”

  “No, he’s Maggie’s dead fiancé.”

  Dalton Reyes cursed. “Do you think she knows he didn’t really die in Afghanistan?” Of course he would ask that; he’d already said he didn’t trust anyone.

  “No way,” Blaine said with absolute certainty. Maggie carried too much guilt over his death, probably because she hadn’t been able to talk him out of joining the Marines. But she hadn’t been to blame for Andy’s death.

  Blaine was.

  Apparently Dustin Doremire hadn’t just been a delusional drunk. He’d been right. Andy wasn’t dead—or, at least, he hadn’t been until Blaine had shot him.

  “He was one of Sarge’s drills,” Ash said. “He must have been worried that Sarge had recognized him. That’s why he killed him.”

  Or because Sarge had been trying to kill him...

  Blaine pushed a hand through his hair. “That must have been why they were trying to take Maggie along with them—they probably thought she recognized him, too.”

  But she hadn’t. She had refused to accept that even the brother of her childhood sweetheart could have had anything to do with criminal activities. She would never believe that Andy had.

  So who were the other robbers? Definitely Andy’s brother—unless the informant had mistaken Mark’s picture for his younger brother. But if his brother hadn’t been involved, where the hell was he?

  Maybe even Andy’s father was involved. That could have been why he’d been drinking so heavily when they’d gone to see him—because he’d known that Andy wasn’t going to survive this time.

  Blaine had killed him. Would Maggie be able to forgive him? Would she be able to forgive herself?

  Chapter Nineteen

  He was alive!

  Blaine was alive.

  Her heart leaped for joy the moment she saw him walk through the door of his sister’s sprawling ranch house. When he’d asked Buster to protect her, he hadn’t wanted her to take Maggie to her home—he hadn’t wanted her to put her family at risk. Neither had Maggie.

  But when they had been waiting to hear about Blaine, Buster had insisted on bringing Maggie home with her. In case the news was bad, Buster had probably wanted to be close to her family.

  Her kids had gathered around them. She had three boys and one little girl—the opposite of Buster and her siblings. The boys had lost interest in Maggie quickly and gone back to playing with trucks in the living room while Maggie and Buster waited in the big country kitchen. Although shy, the little blonde girl had crept close to Maggie and pressed pudgy little fingers against her belly.

  “Baby?” she had asked, though she was little more than a baby herself.

  “Yes,” Maggie had replied. And she had even managed a laugh when the baby kicked and the little girl had jumped away in surprise.

  But fear for Blaine’s safety had pressed heavily on Maggie until he walked through the door. His bruises and scrapes were from the night before—from the fire. Otherwise he was unscathed from the shooting. Maggie had never been happier to see anyone in her life.

  But she didn’t dare launch herself into his arms the way she wanted to. He had that wall around him—that wall he’d put up back at the hospital. Something was wrong. Maybe it was just that he’d realized he had lost perspective with her, and he was trying to be more professional.

  Buster pulled Blaine into a tight hug. “Thank God, you’re all right. We were going crazy worrying about you.”

  “Why?”

  “We heard the call on the radio,” Buster said, “about the shooting and a possible casualty.”

  The little girl tugged on her mama’s leg. “What’s a castle tea?”

  Buster pulled back from her brother and picked up her daughter. “It’s nothing...”

  But it wasn’t. Maggie saw the look of regret on Blaine’s face. Then he leaned forward and kissed his niece’s cheek. “Hey, beautiful girl...”

  “Hey, Unca Bane...”

  Buster chuckled.

  The boys abandoned their trucks and rushed into the kitchen, launching themselves at Blaine the way Maggie wished she had. She wanted his arms around her like they were around his nephews and niece.

  “They’re so many of you,” he murmured. “You have your own Brady Bunch, Buster.”

  “There are only four—five counting Carl,” she said. “But he had to go to work.”

  “Is that why you came home?”

  She bit her lip and shook her head.

  “It’s because of what you heard on the radio?” He glanced at his niece. “About the castle tea?”

  Buster nodded.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “I had no idea you would have heard...” He stopped himself. “That’s right—there was a trooper along for backup.”

  “Since you’re fine, us troopers must be good for something, huh, Mr. Special Agent?” Her green eyes twinkled as she teased him.

  He shrugged. “I had a couple other special agents along,” he said. “That’s why I’m fine.”

  She gently punched his shoulder. Then she turned to where Maggie sat on the kitchen chair, watching them and wishing she was part of their loving family. Buster must have seen that longing because she reached out for Maggie’s hand and tugged her up from the chair. Buster sighed and remarked, “You are so beautiful pregnant. If I’d looked like you, instead of a beached whale, I
might have had a couple more.”

  “God help us,” Blaine muttered.

  He already had as far as Maggie was concerned, since he’d brought Blaine safely back to his family. And her...

  But he wasn’t hers. He had yet to even look at her. Maybe he was mad that she was at his sister’s home—endangering his sister’s beautiful family.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you didn’t want me here. We can leave now.”

  Buster stared at her with wide eyes, urging her to tell Blaine her feelings. But Maggie shook her head. It was obvious to her that he didn’t want her love. Why couldn’t his sister see the emotional distance he’d put between himself and Maggie?

  “We’ll leave in a little while,” he said, finally speaking directly to her. But still, he wouldn’t look at her. Instead he turned back to Buster. “Can we have a few minutes alone? Maybe in the sunroom?”

  Buster nodded. “Of course.”

  He took Maggie’s arm and drew her from the kitchen through a set 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 a
gain. 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 body found.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “I haven’t done anything yet,” he said.

  “You’ve saved my life,” she reminded him. “Many times. Thank you for that.”

  He shrugged off her gratitude. “I was just doing my job.” But it was so much more than that, and they both knew it.

  “And thank you for last night,” she said, “for making me feel desirable. Wanted...”

  He wanted her again. But he kept his hands at his sides. He wouldn’t reach for her again.

  But she reached for him. Sliding her arms around him, she pressed her voluptuous body close to his. And the tenuous hold he’d had on his control snapped. He couldn’t resist her sweetness, her passion.

  She rose up on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his, sliding them across his mouth—arousing his desire. He kissed her back.

  She eased away from him but only to ease her hands between them and undo the buttons of his shirt. He helped her take off his holster. And his jeans...

  She gasped, as she so often did, as she stared at his nakedness. “You are the most beautiful man.”

  Maggie’s words filled him with heat and pride.

  She touched him, her fingers caressing his skin. “You were hurt last night.”

  He had some scrapes, a couple of first-degree burns. “It’s nothing.”

  She shuddered. “When that roof caved in, I thought you were gone. And then when we heard that radio call...”

  “About the castle tea?” he teased.

  But she didn’t laugh. In fact, her eyes glistened with tears. “I was so scared.”

  He drew her against him and held her close. “I hate that you were scared.”

  But he was scared, too. He was scared that he’d irrevocably fallen for her.

  “Make me forget my fears,” she challenged him. “Make me forget about everything but you. Make love to me...”

  He couldn’t refuse her wishes. He helped her off with her clothes and then helped her into bed. Joining her, he kissed and stroked every inch of her silky skin. And with every kiss and every caress, she gasped or moaned and squirmed beneath him. Then she caressed him back, running her soft hands over his back and his hips and lower. She encircled him with those hands. He nearly lost his mind, but he fought for control. He wanted to give her pleasure.