Delores Fossen - The Baby's Guardian

Their arrangement was complicated since, after all, he’d ultimately given her approval to get pregnant. Hell, he’d provided the semen for the procedure, but he and Sabrina both knew he wasn’t really on board. Not emotionally.

And it was those emotions Shaw wanted to keep to himself.

Best not to let his men know the mental turmoil he was going through right now. Something like that could perhaps water down his authority, and as their leader, the last thing he wanted in a dangerous situation was to have his authority questioned or undermined.

That’s why Shaw had offered to pay for Sabrina to attend another support group. But she’d refused.

What else was new?

They didn’t see eye to eye on, well, anything.

“Is that why Nadine Duggan was there at the hospital, too?” Shaw asked, still keeping watch. Another wave of officers went into the building.

“No. She was actually in labor. I saw her when I first arrived, but then she disappeared when the gunmen starting shouting. A lot of people did. It was chaos, and some of the women ran and hid.”

Shaw had to take a deep breath. He hoped that didn’t mean anything bad had happened to the lieutenant’s wife or any of the patients, staff or babies.

“What about this Michael Frost who called you?” he asked. “Did you see him after you arrived at the hospital?”

“No.” She paused. “Why?”

“No reason.” Not yet anyway. He’d make a call in a minute or two to have a background check run on the male nurse. Everything and everyone would be checked.

“The gunmen killed someone,” Sabrina added.

That caused Shaw to glance at her again, and this time those green eyes were filled with tears. “Who?”

“A lab tech. I don’t know his name. They shot him. Right in front of me.”

This time Shaw added a groan to the profanity. Sabrina had witnessed a murder, and in addition to the emotional trauma that created, it could mean that she was now a target. If those gunmen thought for one minute that she could identify them, they wouldn’t want her around, so that’s why it was critical for this to end now.

“Did the men shoot at you, too?” Shaw asked.

She didn’t answer right away. “Yes. But not when they killed the tech. It was later. I could tell they were getting ready to leave, and I had a gut feeling they’d take me with them. So, I tried to sneak away.”

Unfortunately, he could picture that scene all too well.

“The gunman didn’t shoot at me, not really,” she added. “The bullet went in the ceiling.”

Which confirmed the gunmen wanted her alive. After all, the gunmen had already killed others, so that meant they had a reason for allowing Sabrina to live.

Was he that reason?

“I’m sorry, Shaw. I’m so sorry,” Sabrina said. But he knew she wasn’t talking about this situation alone. She was dredging up the past.

Something he wouldn’t discuss with her.

“Don’t,” he warned.

He didn’t add more because his phone buzzed. He glanced at the caller ID and saw it was from the SWAT team commander, Lieutenant José Rivera. “Tolbert,” Shaw answered.

“Captain, we need you to stay put for a couple more minutes. We’re trying to secure the building now, but we don’t want Ms. Carr or you out in the open just yet.”

“Yeah. Make it as fast as you can,” Shaw insisted. Because he didn’t want to stay there with Sabrina any longer than necessary, and he was anxious to get back to the primary crime scene.

Shaw ended the call and waited with the sounds of the search going on in the building behind them. He didn’t stop watching the place. Definitely didn’t lower his gun. Because he didn’t want those men, those killers, coming back outside to grab Sabrina.

“Think hard,” Shaw said. If he had to wait there with her, he might as well start the interrogation that had to happen for the reports and the cleanup. “What did these men want? “

“I don’t know.”

Sabrina was crying. He could hear the tears in her voice. Part of him wanted to comfort her, but Shaw resisted. He couldn’t open up his heart to that kind of intimacy with her. The only way he had survived Fay’s death was to shut himself off, and he would continue to do just that.

Shaw tried again with the questions. He wanted to keep this conversation on the business at hand. “Other than you and the lab tech they killed, did it seem as if the gunmen were after anyone specific?”

“They kept calling out for someone named Bailey. I don’t think they found her though because they kept shouting her name. And then they had a group of us sit in the hall. One of them held us at gunpoint while the other gunman took this one pregnant woman. I don’t know where they took her, but she was gone for several hours. Then, she tried to escape, but she fell and hit her head. She was bleeding.”

Each new thing he learned disgusted him even more, and it was just starting. All kinds of details would no doubt be brought out when the other hostages were questioned. He’d definitely need to speak to this woman whom the gunmen had yelled at.

If she was still alive, that is.

“What else did the gunmen do?” he asked. “Did they appear to be searching for anything specific?”

“Other than the person named Bailey, I don’t think so.” She paused, shook her head. “Wait. One of them went into the lab and the records room. The lab door wouldn’t open so he shot the lock, and he stayed in there a long time. He also had one of the hostages with him a lot of time.”

Okay. That was a start. He’d have every inch of those rooms processed and review the surveillance camera footage to see what the men had been after.

“How about a drug cabinet or something like that?” Shaw didn’t enjoy forcing her to go over all the details, but with her memory still fresh, this was the time to do it. Later, the shock and the adrenaline crash might rob her of critical details.

“No drugs. At least, I didn’t see them take or use any.” Behind him, Sabrina shifted her position, probably because she was trying to get comfortable. But with the shift, her belly pressed against his back.

Shaw felt it then.

The soft bumps.

He glanced back at the contact and realized what he was feeling was the baby.

“The baby’s kicking,” Sabrina explained, moving away again so that she wasn’t touching him.

Shaw immediately felt the loss. It was the first time he’d felt his child move. The timing was lousy, but he couldn’t totally stop himself from reacting.

In a month, maybe less, he’d be a father.

His phone buzzed again. Thank God. He needed something to slap him back to the moment. It was Rivera, the SWAT team commander.

“Captain, we have a patrol car ready to get you and Ms. Carr out of here. It’s pulling up to the curb right now.”

Well, that was good news. “And the situation with the search?”

“We have all points of the building secure. But no sign of the gunmen yet. We’re still looking.”

“Find them!” Shaw ordered after he got his teeth unclenched.

He pulled Sabrina to her feet so he could get her moving. The sooner he had her away from the building, the better.

Even though she was obviously slowed because of the pregnancy, she hurried, keeping up right along with him, but she was breathing hard again by the time he got her into the backseat of the cruiser. The driver, a uniformed officer, drove away.

“Ms. Carr will need to go to a hospital,” Shaw instructed the driver.

She didn’t protest. Which wasn’t a good sign. Since Sabrina often protested any-and everything he suggested.

Did that mean she was hurt?

While the driver meandered his way through the deserted downtown streets, Shaw called Harris, the hostage negotiator, for a situation report from the maternity hospital. It took a while—four rings—before Harris answered, and the moment Shaw heard the strain in the man’s voice, he knew this conversation wasn’t going to be good.