Lisa Childs - Watching Over Her

“We’ll come back tomorrow, then,” he lied.

“Why?” Maggie asked after he’d closed his door. “You can tell Mark has nothing to do with the robberies. He’s too busy taking care of everyone.”

“Where does Andy’s dad live?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“You don’t know?”

“I didn’t even know they had gotten divorced,” she pointed out, and that guilt was in her voice again, as if she considered herself responsible, “so how would I know where either of them is living now?”

“One of them might have kept the house where they lived before Andy died,” he said. “You know where that is.”

He felt a flash of guilt that it might have been the house where Andy had grown up—a house where she and Andy had shared memories. It would be hard for her to go back to that.

“I know,” she admitted and then confirmed his thoughts when she added, “but I don’t want to go there.”

He wished he didn’t have to take her there. But he had to find Mark before his wife had a chance to warn him that a man, a friend of Maggie’s, was looking for him. Because then the man would run for sure...

* * *

BLAINE CAMPBELL CARED only about his job. He didn’t care about her or he wouldn’t have made her give him directions to Andy’s childhood home in southwestern Michigan. He wouldn’t have kept her in the car to go with him. He wouldn’t have made her keep revisiting her past and her guilt.

Everything had fallen apart since Andy’s death. And that was all her fault. If she had told him the truth earlier, he wouldn’t have reenlisted. He wouldn’t have needed the money for the damn ring she had never wanted.

Blaine Campbell had taken it as evidence against Susan Iverson. She hoped he never returned it.

Maggie stared out the windshield at the highway that wound around the Lake Michigan shoreline. She had always liked this drive—until she had traveled it up for Andy’s funeral. Then she had vowed to never use it again.

She hadn’t wanted to go back. It wasn’t home without her best friend. She had to make a new home for herself and for her baby. But she was afraid that she hadn’t found one yet—at least, not one where they would be safe.

“Andy’s been gone awhile,” Blaine remarked.

“Nearly six months,” she said. But sometimes it hadn’t sunk in yet. Sometimes she still looked for his letters in her mailbox or an email in her in-box or a call...

“Did you even know that you were pregnant when you learned that he’d died?”

She nodded. Since her cycle had always been so regular, she’d taken a test on her first missed day. She hadn’t been happy with those test results because she’d known that Andy would insist on marrying her. He had always been so old-fashioned and so honorable. But now he was dead...

Blaine’s gaze was on the road, so he must have missed her nod. She cleared her throat and replied, “Yes, I had just found out.”

“You’re strong,” he said.

She nearly laughed. Had he already forgotten how she’d screamed her head off that first day they’d met? She wasn’t nearly as strong as she’d like to be. If she was, she might have saved Sarge. “Why do you say that?”

“Some women might have lost the baby,” he explained, “because of the stress.”

“I was fine.” She hadn’t had any problems then; she hadn’t even had morning sickness. She was more afraid of losing the child now.

As if he’d heard her unspoken thoughts, he reached across the console and squeezed her hand. “I’ll keep you safe,” he promised. “I’ll keep you both safe.”

Andy had made promises, too. He’d promised that he would return from his last deployment. So Maggie knew that some promises couldn’t be kept. She suspected that the promise Blaine had just made was one of them.

He didn’t believe that, though. He thought it was a promise he could keep and his green eyes were full of sincerity as he shared a glance with her. Then he turned his attention back to the road and to the rearview mirror. His hand tensed on hers before he released it and gripped the wheel.

“Hold on!” he warned her as he pressed harder on the accelerator.

Maggie instinctively reached out for the dashboard, bracing her hands against it, just as the SUV shot forward. “What’s going on? Why are you driving so fast?”

She had felt safe with him earlier. But not now.

“Just hold on,” Blaine said again, as he sped up some more.

Tires squealed as he careened around a curve.

“What are you doing?” she asked again—with alarm.

But then more tires squealed and metal crunched as another vehicle slammed hard into the rear bumper of the SUV. The SUV fishtailed, spinning out of control toward where the shoulder of the road dropped off to the rocky lakeshore below. Nobody had ever broken a promise to her as fast as Blaine just had.

Maggie screamed in fear as the SUV teetered on two tires, about to roll over and plummet to that rocky shore.

Chapter Eleven

Blaine cursed and jerked the wheel, steering the SUV away from the shoulder. Gravel spewed from the tires as the SUV fishtailed, the back end sliding toward that steep drop-off to the rocky shore below. He needed all four tires on the pavement before he could accelerate. But before he could regain complete control, the van struck again. Metal crunched on the rear door of the passenger’s side.

Too close to Maggie and her baby.

He had just promised that he would protect them. It was a promise that he’d had no business making. As a marine, he knew that there were promises that couldn’t be kept—the way all his fallen friends had promised their families they would come home again. It was a promise that Maggie’s fiancé had probably made to her when he’d given her that ring.

Blaine was not about to break his promise. At least not yet.

He pressed on the accelerator, taking the curve at such a high speed that a couple of the tires might have left the asphalt again. The black cargo van skidded around the corner behind him, its tires slipping off the pavement onto the gravel shoulder. So close to that dangerous edge, the van slowed down, and Blaine increased the distance between them.

He had grown up driving on roads like this—roads that curved sharply around lakes. But there had been mountains to maneuver, too, in New Hampshire. So he wasn’t fazed. But neither was the driver of the van as he regained control and closed the distance between them again.

Blaine wanted to reach for his gun; he wanted to shoot out the van’s tires and windshield. He wanted to do anything he could to stop the van from slamming into them again. But he needed both hands on the wheel to keep the SUV from plummeting over the rocky shoulder, and he didn’t want Maggie trying to use his weapon.

He didn’t want Maggie doing anything but hanging on—especially as the van made contact with them again. But the SUV absorbed the impact better than the van did.

In the rearview mirror, Blaine caught sight of a dark cloud as smoke began to billow from beneath the hood of the vehicle behind them. The rear bumper of the SUV was probably mangled, but so were the front bumper and the grille of the van.

If the radiator was ruined, it wasn’t going to get far. He could just wait for it to stop running and try to apprehend the driver and whoever else was riding with him. But Blaine had no idea how many people were inside the van or how much firepower they had.

Even if he hadn’t just made that promise to protect them, he couldn’t risk the safety of Maggie and the baby. So he accelerated again and took the curves at breakneck speed. Maggie’s hands were still pressed against the dashboard as she braced herself and her baby for another hit.