Laura Marie - His Baby Bonus

He ducked under it.

In the now dark hall, he wasn’t sure what to expect—sure as hell not a convenient bread crumb trail—but what he got was exactly squat. He made a quick sweep of the area but found not so much as a long, blond hair for a clue.

For all practical purposes, Gracie Sherwood had vanished.

Not only did that tick Beau off because he took his job of protecting witnesses very seriously, but also he’d taken an instant liking to Ms. Sherwood. She was sweet, brave, defenseless. Reminded him of his good friend and fellow marshal Chance Mulgrave’s wife who’d had it rough when her first husband had been killed right about the time she’d discovered she was pregnant.

With slumped shoulders, Beau made the long walk out to join the rest of his crew, radioing for the two guys patrolling the building’s side and rear to come up front.

“Don’t suppose any of you have seen Ms. Sherwood?” he asked once all were assembled.

Villetti chuckled. “You’re kidding, right?”

Jaw clenched, Beau sighed. “It look like I’m kidding? Mason, Wolcheck, do me a favor and check the garage down the street for her car.”

Five minutes later, the two guys were back.

Gracie Sherwood’s car wasn’t there.

What did it mean? Someone took her in her own vehicle?

Beau’s stomach clenched.

Sure, it was possible, but more likely, for whatever oddball reason, he’d been duped. She’d used her Southern charm and curls to lure him into the storage closet. She’d locked him in, then taken off. But why? What did she know that he didn’t that had her running? Was she joining her husband? Or running scared from him and thinking she’d be safer on her own?

“So what happened?” his younger brother Adam asked. “Hear signs of a struggle?”

“Not a peep.”

“What’re you gonna do?” Bug, Adam’s best bud and the only woman on the team, asked. “This was a mighty high profile case for the boss. He finds out you’re the one who misplaced her, well—” She finished her sentence with a low whistle that pretty much said it all.

No matter the cost, no matter where the hunt took him, Beau had to get Gracie Sherwood back—now. Not just for her, but himself. He’d already lost one pregnant woman. No way would he lose another.

FIFTEEN MINUTES after making her big escape, Gracie Sherwood—she’d long ago ditched her married name of Delgado in favor of her maiden surname—pulled her whale of a vintage pink Caddie convertible up to a convenience store gas pump. While her car guzzled gas, she counted money—or rather, her lack thereof: $184.32.

Not good, especially considering the cost of this one fill-up. Still, the $150 in the restaurant safe had been all she could get her hands on. The $34.32 all that was left of Vicente’s now frozen assets. Not that she’d even want to spend a dime more of his money, but in this case, it would’ve at least been nice to have the option.

Inside, she made a quick trek to the ladies’ room, paid for the fuel, a pack of mini powdered-sugar doughnuts, a banana and jug of OJ, then climbed back behind the wheel.

She tried finding a decent radio station, but this far out of Portland, got nothing but static. A week earlier, some punk had broken her car’s antennae. The final nail in the coffin of a particularly rotten year.

Finding out the sophisticated, articulate, Harvard-educated Bolivian she’d fallen wildly in love with had in fact been up to his neck in the kinds of dirty dealing she couldn’t even begin to comprehend had been hard to take. What’d happened after that nearly destroyed her.

Muggy, hot summer wind in her hair, she focused on the winding mountain road. Gracie ignored the latest lump in her throat and tightened her grip on the wheel.

With Vicente behind bars, she’d thought she’d been safe—at least until a month from now when her testimony would’ve forced her to face him at the trial. Lucky for her, she’d been the one to find his business log, onto the pages of which he’d meticulously recorded each illegitimate business dealing he’d been involved in. Everything from drug dealing to illegal importing to murder. All carefully documented in the event he’d ever needed to blackmail one of his associates. His ego was the size of Vermont, so knowing Vicente, he’d never even imagined it being found—let alone, used against him.

Although she was a week shy of eight months pregnant, she was now on her way to the Culinary Arts Invitational, held in just under two weeks in San Francisco. After she won the competition, Gracie planned on heading to her parents’ home in Deerwood, Georgia.

As a master chef, she’d worked her whole life for this. Before finding out about Vicente, the hundred grand in prize money would’ve merely been icing on the cake of what she’d mistakenly believed had been her already fantastic life. Now that the restaurant she’d nurtured into a lucrative business had been closed due to nonexistent profits, since news about Vicente’s dirty dealings had become public, the prize represented a second chance for her and her baby.

When she’d gotten the news Vicente had escaped, and that word on the street—according to Portland police—was that he was coming for her, at first she hadn’t believed it.

But then, why not? she thought with a bitter laugh. The man had already committed an unspeakable crime against her. Why not finish her off?

After narrowly avoiding being abducted at gunpoint one afternoon while walking her neighborhood park, Gracie had gone back to the police, who’d turned her over to the U.S. Marshals’ Witness Security Program.

She’d tried explaining to police about the competition soon to be held in San Francisco, how she had to be there, that it was the only way she’d ever get enough cash to start a new restaurant and life. But they’d said simply, no. She was too valuable a witness to let go.

A witness.

That’s all she was to these guys.

They didn’t see the pain she’d been through. The pain she was still working through. They didn’t see the innocent baby girl she’d have to diaper with newspapers if she didn’t win the top CAI prize. Yes, her parents would help best they could, but seeing how they were retired, it wasn’t like they had a money tree shading their backyard.

Lucky for Gracie, the marshals who’d been sent to protect her had been even more chauvinistic, and thus easier to escape, than her husband’s thugs.

She was sorry for having locked the nice one in the storage closet, but really, what else could she have done? From here on out, the nice marshal—along with the rest of his crew—were the enemy in the most important battle she’d ever fight.

The battle to regain her life. Her normalcy.

For many women, she supposed discovering their husband was a murdering psycho would probably ruin them. What happened after that…

No. It was in the past. Never to be spoken or thought of again. What was done was done, and she wasn’t willing to become a slave to one horrific night.

Gracie had wanted to be a mother since she was three years old, playing with her Burp and Boo Betty doll. She’d dreamed of winning CAI’s competition ever since her graduation from the prestigious Western Culinary Institute. With two such cherished goals on the line, no one—especially not some clueless marshal—was going to bring her down.

From here on out, she would take nice, deep breaths. Dream of holding her baby girl in her arms in the kitchen of the new restaurant the prize money would help start. In short, life would finally get back to normal.

Normal. The word had such a melodic sound. In a life led in Normalville, husbands didn’t do what hers had. They didn’t go to prison and then escape. They didn’t want to kill pregnant wives.