The Return of Connor Mansfield

by Beth Cornelison

  A small grin of acknowledgment flickered over her mouth. “Kids?”

  His face brightened. “Two. Boy, four, and a girl, almost two.”

  She gave him a bigger smile, then fell silent, imagining the handsome man in pressed khakis playing with two small children, going home at the end of an assignment to a pretty wife. Maybe a dog. A golden retriever. He looked like the retriever type.

  “Isn’t it hard, being away from your family for assignments like this?”

  “Sure. Harder on my wife, I think. She’s the one managing two willful little kids by herself while I’m gone.”

  Darby smiled politely again. “I bet.” She paused, while fidgeting with the hem of her blouse. “What do you do when—”

  “You don’t really want to talk about me, do you?” He pivoted on the vinyl hospital couch to face her.

  “I...was just making small talk.”

  “I may be a man, Ms. Kent, but I’m not completely clueless about women. Something upset you earlier, and since, by all indications, the transplant went smoothly, I have to assume that something has to do with Connor Mansfield.”

  She chuckled wryly. “Wow. Give you a gold star.”

  “I can’t promise I’ll have any answers for you, but my wife has trained me to listen, if you want to talk about whatever Mansfield did to upset you.”

  “Your wife trained you? That’s quite the admission coming from a U.S. Marshal.”

  His grin was cocky. “A smart U.S. Marshal. Smart enough to figure out how to keep my wife happy and avoid fights. If letting her think she’s trained me will keep the peace, then I’m happy to let her believe it.”

  Darby snorted and folded her arms over her chest.

  “But I meant what I said about listening, if there’s something you want to get off your chest.”

  Darby eyed him skeptically and shook her head. “Thanks, but...”

  He flipped a hand up. “Whatever.”

  They sat in silence for another minute before she blurted, “He asked me to marry him.”

  Morris’s eyebrows lifted, and he shifted on the seat to face her again.

  “Well. Not so much asked as...demanded. Not ‘Will you marry me?’ but ‘Marry me. I want Savannah to have my name.’”

  Morris hummed and nodded. “What’d you tell him?”

  “I said no.”

  Morris looked genuinely surprised. “No? Because women hate commitment from the father of their children?”

  She glared at him. “Really?”

  Raising a hand toward her, he looked contrite. “Sorry. I’ll drop the sarcasm.”

  “Thank you.” She pushed to her feet, restless and needing to expend energy. “How can I marry him knowing he’s leaving for WitSec again in a few days?”

  “You know we can put wives and children in the program. We’re not in the business of busting families unnecessarily.”

  She chewed a fingernail. “Yeah, I know that.”

  “So...do you love him?”

  She started to answer, then hesitated. “Is this confidential?”

  Morris arched an eyebrow. “Uh, sure. If you want it to be.”

  “I do,” she said, then for clarification added, “want it to be confidential.” She paused. “And...love him.” She took a deep breath and hurried on. “But that doesn’t make a difference in our situation. It doesn’t decide anything, it only complicates things. It muddies what has to be clear and decisive. I can’t marry a man who’s just going to leave us again in a matter of days.”

  “Then you wouldn’t consider going into WitSec with him?”

  She frowned at him in disbelief, then swung an arm toward the door to Savannah’s isolation room, sending him a look that said, “Helllooo?”

  “Oh, right.” He dragged a hand over his mouth, clearly embarrassed for his forgetfulness. “That does make things messy.”

  “Messy?” She stopped pacing to give Morris a scowl of frustration. “Jones says a sick child makes it nearly impossible to ensure security. In other words, Savannah and I can’t go with Connor without jeopardizing his safety. All of our safety, if the Gales really are willing to hurt anyone in their path to killing Conner.”

  “Hmm,” Morris grunted and settled back on the couch with a frown and a dent in his brow.

  Darby stared at him, waiting, she supposed, for him to deny Jones’s assertions about Savannah’s medical needs complicating their chances for protection. Or offer a workaround option. “Well?”

  He glanced at her, a puzzled furrow in his brow. “Well what?”

  She gave him an exasperated sigh. “You don’t have some advice or an opinion on all of this?”

  “My opinion is your situation sucks. No advice.” When she rolled her eyes and growled her frustration, he added, “If you’ll recall, I said I was a good listener, but generally had no answers.”

  Darby twisted her mouth in a wry smile. “You did say that. My bad.” Raking the hair off her forehead, she returned to the couch and sank down beside him.

  “Look, I can’t imagine how hard it must be having your kid in the hospital, being separated from the guy you love, knowing there are people out there—” he waved a hand in the general direction of the hospital exit “—who want to kill Connor and don’t mind hurting you in the process, but...” He sighed heavily and scrubbed a hand on his cheek. “If it were me, if I really loved someone and had a child with that someone...I wouldn’t quit looking for ways to be with him, to make it work.”

  “Don’t you think I’m trying? Our circumstances don’t leave many choices. If—”

  “Morris!” A breathless voice crackled over the marshal’s two-way radio.

  The tension in the voice sent a jolt of alarm streaking through Darby.

  Marshal Morris raised his radio to his lips. “Morris here. Go ahead.”

  “I need backup!” the voice on the other end of the transmission shouted. “Third floor. Shots fired!”

  Shots fired? The breath whooshed from her lungs. Connor! She scrambled to follow the marshal as he darted toward the stairs.

  He glanced over his shoulder as he took the steps two at a time. “Stay here! Alert security!”

  His warning stopped her cold. Alert the hospital security guard who patrolled that floor...to protect Savannah. She gasped and glanced back toward Savannah’s room, torn between guarding her daughter and her worry over Connor. Shots fired. Oh, God, please let Connor be all right!

  She stumbled back down the stairs and located Savannah’s nurse. “Something’s happened downstairs. An attack of some sort. Shots were fired. The marshal stationed at Savannah’s door had to leave to assist.” When the nurse’s face paled, Darby seized her arm. “You need to find the security guard. Send him to my daughter’s room to stand watch.”

  The nurse scurried off to do as Darby asked, and Darby rushed back to Savannah’s door. Hunter and Lilly had left the hospital together close to an hour earlier. She called Hunter now, wanting her own version of backup in place so she could leave Savannah long enough to check on Connor. Who may have been shot.

  Her knees buckled, and dropping her phone, she braced a hand on the wall to keep from crumpling. Even if Connor wasn’t hurt, she’d be heartsick if one of the marshals had been injured—or killed—protecting Connor.

  Her mind flashed to the fireball that had consumed her car just days ago. Tracy’s charred body.

  She pressed a hand to her mouth and swallowed hard when she felt her gorge rise. There’d already been too much tragedy and suffering. Damn the Gales and their petty vengeance!

  “Hello? Darby, you there?” Hunter’s voice called her attention to the phone that had slipped from her hand and lay on the floor at her feet.

  Shaking all over, she bent carefully to pick up the cell phone. “
Hunter, I...come back. Something’s happened. I need you to...” She paused, gulping oxygen and trying to hold herself together.

  “Darby? What? What’s happened?”

  “Gunshots... I don’t... Can you come?” she rasped.

  “I’m on my way.” Hunter disconnected, and Darby staggered back to the waiting area outside Savannah’s room. Drawing slow, lung-expanding breaths, she gathered her composure as best she could. She needed her wits about her, needed to be alert. If one of the Gales showed up, she needed to be prepared to defend her daughter.

  * * *

  A light pierced the darkness. A jarring, unsettling brightness. He groaned, and the light flashed away quickly.

  “Pupils are responsive,” a male voice said.

  A male voice...a male nurse...intruder! Connor fought the weight of whatever drug made him so sleepy, so sluggish.

  Savannah! Darby! If the Gales’ man had gotten to him, his family was at risk. He had to warn them!

  He clawed with every fiber of his physical and mental strength to climb out of the drug-induced morass that held him. He tried to speak, but his tongue felt thick, dry, useless. He managed to make another guttural noise in his throat. A moan.

  Someone near him gasped, and he felt a cool hand on his face. “Connor? Can you hear me?”

  Darby! Darby was there. With him. Safe. Relief washed through him, leaving his heavy limbs tingling.

  But if Darby was here...Adrenaline kick-started a scampering heart rate. Who was guarding—?

  “Sssa-nna?” he mumbled, struggling to open his eyes. Fuzzy images swam before him.

  “Doctor, he’s waking up!” Darby cried, her voice thick with emotion.

  Connor tried to focus the surge of adrenaline, use it to sharpen his mind, form the words he had to. He heard the doctor move back to the other side of the bed opposite Darby.

  “Connor? It’s Dr. Moore. Can you hear us? Can you wiggle your fingers or toes?”

  “Sa-van-nah...” he rasped. With effort he turned his head, peered through his lashes at Darby. He groped with his hand until he found her arm, and he gripped her wrist with all his strength. “S’-van-nah.”

  Darby covered his hand with hers and clutched his arm to her chest. Leaning close, she kissed his cheek. “Savannah’s with Hunter and Marshal Morris. She’s safe.”

  Mollified, Connor allowed his muscles to relax, his eyes to close, but his brain kept ticking, analyzing. Remembering. “Intruder...”

  Darby drew a deep breath and released it. “Marshal Ramsey stopped him.”

  A loud bang rang in his memory. “Gun...shot.”

  Darby squeezed his hand. “Yeah. He shot him. The guy’s dead.”

  He forced his eyes open and met Darby’s worried gaze. “Good.”

  “Connor, I want to check your blood pressure again.” Connor felt the hospitalist jostle his right arm as he wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his biceps. “Your attacker managed to get a small amount of toxin into you. We’ve given you an antidote, but we need to monitor your heart for damage.”

  He let his eyes close again. Weak with relief, he sank back in the pillow behind him. He clung to Darby’s hand, savoring the connection.

  Savannah and Darby were safe. For now.

  But the transplant was complete. He’d done what he’d intended when he came back to Lagniappe and defied the U.S Marshals’ WitSec rules. He done all he could to save Savannah. His presence now was nothing but a liability to Darby and his family. Tracy’s death and this attack proved the extent of the danger.

  He needed to disappear again, taking the threat with him. As soon as he was strong enough to travel.

  “Connor?” Darby whispered, leaning close enough to his ear that her warm breath fanned his cheek.

  He squeezed her fingers. “Hi, beautiful.”

  “When they said there’d been shots fired...and then that you were unresponsive...” She laid her cheek on his shoulder. “I was so scared...so afraid I’d lost you.”

  “No,” he managed to murmur, “You’ll always have me. You’re the...only one for me.”

  He heard her sniffle, and she curled the fingers of her free hand in his hair. “Oh, Connor...”

  After a moment, he roused again, finding the strength to ask, “You’re sure S’vannah’s okay?”

  Darby lifted her head and stroked his cheek. “I’m sure. Dr. Reed came back in to check her, just in case. And the nurses and marshals have redoubled their efforts to check everything that enters her room and verify the credentials of any hospital staff who tends to her.”

  He nodded weakly. “That’s all...that matters.”

  She jostled his shoulder slightly. “Don’t talk that way. You matter, too. Not just to me and your family. To Savannah. Maybe she can’t have you in her life now, but down the road, years from now, there may come a time when she can have you in her life.”

  He forced his eyes to focus on the soft lines of Darby’s face. The warmth and affection in her green eyes arrowed straight to his core. Even if she was reluctant to say the words, he knew she cared for him. Maybe even forgave him...or loved him. It wasn’t the declaration of feelings he wanted, the promise of a future together, but he treasured the glimpse of her heart that shone from her eyes.

  “I have to leave.” He heard the dejection in his own voice. “You see that now, don’t you? I’m a liability.” He swallowed hard. “I have to go, as soon as possible. To keep you and our daughter safe. My family...everyone...” He stopped, needing to fight for a breath. Emotion sat on his chest, compressing his lungs. Whatever substance had been injected still pulled at him, weakening him.

  Darby bit her bottom lip as tears puddled in her eyes, and she nodded slowly. “I know.”

  * * *

  Over the following three days, Connor recovered fully from the small amount of toxin injected by the intruder. By that time, he’d already stayed two days longer than he’d originally been scheduled to stay from the donation procedure. Darby spent those three days dividing her time between her daughter’s room and Connor’s. As worried as she was for Savannah, she knew the clock was running on the time she had left with Savannah’s father.

  She fervently wished Connor had the luxury of staying around until Savannah was more alert, more able to communicate and make memories of her father before Connor disappeared from their lives. But the repeated attacks by the Gales’ henchmen proved that wasn’t wise.

  On the day of Connor’s release from the hospital, Marshals Jones and Ramsey developed an elaborate plan to get Connor away from the hospital undetected. He would make a brief stop at his parents’ house, giving him the opportunity to say a private goodbye to his family. The detour to the Mansfields’ home was a major concession on Connor’s behalf, but one Darby was grateful for.

  She’d never had the opportunity to tell her father goodbye when he took off for greener pastures, and she’d always felt that lack of closure like a seeping wound, in addition to the bitterness of betrayal and heartache of abandonment.

  She was with Savannah the morning Connor was released, instructed firmly to stay away from Connor’s room during his release. Instead, she spent the fifteen minutes she was allowed at her daughter’s bedside holding Savannah’s hand and singing all of her daughter’s favorite songs, as much to distract herself from the heavy pall of the day as to cheer Savannah. Hooked to tubes and wires like the object of a mad scientist’s experiment, Savannah managed a weak smile of recognition but was still frighteningly weak and lethargic.

  Darby remained frustrated by Savannah’s slow progress following the transplant, even though Dr. Reed assured her all of her test results and vital signs were on target.

  When her allotted visitation was over, Darby stripped off the sterile garb and mask required while in with Savannah and exited the isolation ro
om’s antechamber to the waiting room.

  “All done here?” Marshal Morris rose to his feet, his hands in his pockets, jingling his keys.

  Darby bit her lip and glanced back through the large observation window. “For now, I suppose.”

  He hitched his head toward the elevator. “Let me take you back to the house then. He’s waiting for you to tell you goodbye.”

  Darby’s throat tightened. How in the world was she supposed to say goodbye to Connor? A profound ache surged through her, followed by cold anger that the Gales had forced this circumstance on them. “This isn’t right,” she gritted under her breath, then louder. “It not fair! The Gales have no right to destroy Connor’s life, my life and Savannah’s this way!”

  Morris gave her a commiserative look. “I don’t think the Gales particularly care about what’s fair, or even what’s legal.”

  She stepped closer to Morris, her shoulders taut and her mouth pressed in a firm line. “Catch them. Find the link between these attacks and the Gales and take them down! Put them behind bars, away from their families. You can’t let them get away with what they’ve done! Tracy deserves justice!”

  “You’re right. She does.” His eyes held a glint of determination and passion. “I didn’t get into this business to see the guilty walk. I’ll do everything I can to see the Gales brought to justice.”

  Her shoulders dropped a little, and she rubbed her temples. “I know you will. I just hate...” Her voice trailed off as she gathered her purse, slinging the strap over her shoulder.

  Hunter, who’d said his goodbyes to Connor earlier, was draped over one of the lounge chairs, asleep. He’d come straight to the hospital after work and hadn’t even had a chance to shower and change clothes. Hunter’s dedication to Savannah touched Darby. He’d spent the past week working his job as construction foreman for the family business and keeping watch outside Savannah’s room with only brief visits to his apartment for sleep and showers. Darby stepped over to tap Hunter lightly on the arm.

  He roused from his nap, and when he saw Darby, worry flashed over his face. “What? Did something happen?”