Lisa Childs - Watching Over Her

She shook her head. “No. I don’t know what would have happened to them after he...after he...” She trailed off, unable to talk of his death. Of her loss...

“His personal effects would have been returned to his family,” Blaine said. He was definitely right about Andy’s family; they had to be involved in the robberies.

Maggie sucked in a breath, as if she had just realized it, too. “But they wouldn’t have read his personal letters...”

“If they miss him as much as you do,” he pointed out, “they might have.”

“But those are letters that I wrote to him,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. “They’re not the letters he wrote to me. They’re not about Andy and his life.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. She had every right to be angry. “Those letters should have been returned to you. They’re your personal thoughts and feelings. Hell, you were his fiancée. You should have gotten everything.”

She shook her head in denial. “We weren’t married. So his personal effects should have gone to his family.”

“You’re family—you and his baby,” Blaine said. “His parents and brother should have at least given you those letters.”

“Maybe they just didn’t have time...” She kept defending them.

Maybe she was naive. Maybe she just tried to see the best in everyone. But that was how she had wound up with Susan Iverson as a roommate. She didn’t need protection just now; she needed it every day. She needed protection from her own sweetness and generosity.

“His brother’s been checking on you,” he said. The image from the security footage of him hugging her hadn’t left his mind. “He could have brought the letters to you then. He’s had six months to get them to you.” Unless he had been using them for something else—to help him plan the bank robberies.

“We’re here,” she said with a sigh of relief as he pulled the battered SUV to the curb across the street from the brick Cape Cod.

He could have sworn earlier today that she hadn’t wanted to come back here. Of course, she thought she was going to prove to him that Andy’s family wasn’t involved. But with every new thing he learned, his suspicions about them grew. He didn’t even need confirmation from Dalton Reyes that Mark Doremire was the one ordering those stolen vans.

He was so convinced that Doremire was involved that he’d had a local officer watching the house before they arrived. The car was parked a little way down the street. Too far down the street if Doremire and his father were armed. The other men from the bank could be there, too.

Maggie reached for her door handle, but Blaine caught her arm and held her back from opening the door. With his other hand, he grabbed his cell and checked in with the officer.

“Nobody’s come or gone, Agent Campbell,” the officer assured him.

So what did that mean? That they had holed up in the house with weapons? At least the driver of the van, and whoever else might have been riding inside, couldn’t have joined them. They wouldn’t have had time to ditch the van for another vehicle and drive up without the officer seeing them.

Blaine clicked off the cell and turned back to Maggie. “I want you to stay here until I check out the inside of the house.”

“Mr. Doremire may not let you in unless he sees me,” she warned him. “Andy’s parents kind of kept to themselves when we were growing up. They didn’t socialize much. So he’s not going to open his door to a stranger.”

Blaine tugged his badge out of his shirt. He wasn’t hiding it this time. “This will get him to open the door,” he said. Or he would knock down the damn thing. “You need to stay here until I determine if it’s safe or not.”

He waited until she reluctantly nodded in agreement before he stepped out the driver’s side. But moments later Mr. Doremire proved her right. When Blaine knocked on the door, a raspy voice angrily called out, “Go away!”

“I am Special Agent Campbell with the FBI,” Blaine identified himself. “I need you to open up this door, sir. I need to talk to you about your son.”

“It’s too late for that!”

That was what Blaine was afraid of. That Mark was already gone—that he’d taken off to some country from which he couldn’t be extradited. But then, who had tried running them off the road on the way here? Only Mark would have known they had stopped at his house looking for him. Only Mark would have known where they’d been heading.

“Go away!” the older man yelled again.

“Let me try,” a soft voice suggested as Maggie joined him at the solid wood door to the Cape Cod. It was painted black—like the shingles on the roof. And there was no welcome mat.

“I told you to stay in the vehicle,” he reminded her. Even with the squad car not far away, she wasn’t safe; someone could have taken a shot at her as she had crossed the street.

Ignoring him, she knocked on the door. “Mr. Doremire, it’s me—it’s Maggie. Please let us in...”

Inside the house, something crashed and then heavy footfalls approached the door. It was wrenched open, and a gray-haired man stared at them from bloodshot eyes.

Blaine could smell the alcohol even before the man spoke. “Have you heard from him?” he demanded to know.

“Mark has been by to see me,” she said. “At the bank. Is he here?”

“Mark?” the older man repeated, as if he didn’t even recognize the name of his eldest son. “I’m not talking about Mark.”

Did the man have other boys? Maybe there were more Doremires involved than Blaine had realized. Maybe they made up the entire gang.

But Maggie’s brow furrowed with confusion, and she asked, “Who are you talking about?”

“Andy,” Mr. Doremire replied, as if she was stupid. “Have you heard from Andy yet?”

She reached out and clasped the older man’s arm and led him back inside the house. “I’m sorry, Mr. Doremire,” she said as she guided him back into his easy chair. A bottle of whiskey lay broken next to the chair. But no liquor had spilled onto the hardwood floor. He’d already emptied it.

She crouched down next to the old man’s chair and very gently told him, “Andy’s dead. He died in Afghanistan.”

“No!” the gray-haired man shouted hotly in denial. “He didn’t die. That’s just what he made it look like. He’s alive.”

She shook her head, and her brown eyes filled with sympathy and sadness. “No...”

“I’ve seen him,” the man insisted. “He’s alive!”

“No,” she said again. “That’s not possible. His whole convoy died that day. There’s no way he survived.” And her voice cracked with emotion and regret.

Mr. Doremire shook his head in denial and disgust. “That boy wasn’t strong enough for the Marines,” he said. “He had no business joining up. He got scared. He took off. He wasn’t part of that convoy.”

Why was Andy’s father making up such a story? Just because he couldn’t handle his son being dead?

“They wouldn’t have reported that he was dead if they hadn’t been certain,” Maggie continued, patiently. “They wouldn’t have put us through that and neither would Andy.”

“None of the remains recovered have actually been identified, so there is no way of proving that he was part of the convoy,” the older man insisted. “They never even recovered his dog tags.”

“They are still working on DNA,” Maggie said with a slight shudder. “But they know that Andy’s gone...” And from the dismal sound of her voice, she knew it, too.

Blaine hated that she was reliving Andy’s last moments. Or had those actually been his last moments? Was Andy’s father right? Was Maggie’s fiancé still alive? Mr. Doremire had claimed that he’d seen him.