Lisa Childs - Watching Over Her

“He’s so tiny,” Blaine repeated, still in awe.

“He’s doing well, though,” Maggie assured him.

“Drew?” Blaine asked.

Maybe she should have run the name past him first. But he had never indicated that he wanted a future with her and her son. So she hadn’t wanted to presume.

She nodded.

“That’s good. It’s a good name,” he said, his green gaze on the baby in her arms.

“I’m glad you think so,” she said. She wanted him to be part of their lives. But even as she contemplated asking, he started pulling away.

He stood up. “Now that you’re both okay, I need to get back to work on the case,” he said. “I need to find the other robbers and make sure they don’t try to go after you or Drew.”

She shivered, and the baby awakened. But not with a cry. He opened his eyes just a little and stared calmly up at her. She had been in danger for too much of her pregnancy. She appreciated that Blaine wanted to make sure that they would finally be safe. But she wasn’t sure that was really the reason he was leaving.

Or if he just wanted to get away from her. Maybe he didn’t like that everyone had assumed he was the baby’s father. Maybe he didn’t want to be an instant daddy.

Before he left, he leaned over the bed, and he pressed a kiss to her lips and another to the baby’s forehead. “I have a guard posted at the door. Truman will protect you. You’ll be safe,” he assured her.

“What about you?” she asked.

He grinned. “I’ll be fine.”

She couldn’t help but remember that Andy had promised the same thing when he’d left for his last deployment. Would Blaine not return, as well?

* * *

BLAINE WOULDN’T PUT it past Tammy Doremire to set a trap for him. He interviewed her at the jail. In exchange for a lesser sentence, she gave him an address—not just for her brother but for the two coworkers who’d helped them pull off the robberies. He doubted she actually cared how much time she spent behind bars; she just wanted to make sure that Blaine was dead—like her husband.

“What did Maggie have?” she asked, as if she actually cared.

His blood chilled with a sense of foreboding. But he had guards posted at the hospital. They weren’t hospital guards, either. Once he’d realized a hospital security guard had been involved in the robberies, he hadn’t trusted any of them. Truman was inside Maggie’s room, personally protecting her and Drew. He felt so bad about Tammy getting her alone that he would give up his life before he would let anyone hurt her or her baby again.

“A boy,” he said.

“Of course,” she said, as if she should have known. “Boys run in the Doremire family.”

“She named him Drew,” he said.

She shrugged, and her red hair brushed the shoulders of her orange jumpsuit. She looked nearly as bad as she had in the zombie mask. “Maybe she loved Andy more than I thought.”

Maggie had loved her fiancé. He saw it in her face whenever she talked about him. She missed him.

Could Blaine fill the void Andy had left in her? He loved her so much that he wanted to try. But did he love her enough for both of them?

He had no idea how she actually felt about him. She had turned to him for protection—for comfort. But who else had she had now that Andy was gone?

Who else could she trust now that the family that had almost been hers had turned on her?

“That’s too bad for you, huh?” Tammy remarked. “Since you love her...”

Blaine hadn’t told Maggie his feelings; he wasn’t about to tell this woman. He stood up and gestured toward a deputy to take Tammy back to holding. As they led her away, she turned back and smiled a sly smile.

She had definitely set a trap for him. So he was ready. He took Ash Stryker and Dalton Reyes with him as backup, along with some Michigan troopers. According to Tammy, her brother and his friends had gone back to the cabin. Supposedly she and Mark had stashed the money there. After finding the body, the dog tags and Maggie’s letters, Blaine hadn’t taken the time to search the entire area. Maybe the money was hidden there.

But Blaine suspected he wouldn’t find just the money. Or the robbers.

“We could have called in more troopers,” Ash remarked as he pulled his weapon from his holster.

But if Blaine had requested more, he might have had to use his sister, and he didn’t want to put her in danger, too. He wanted her to be there to help Maggie and the baby in case he couldn’t. He wanted Maggie to have a friend she could trust—unlike Susan Iverson or Tammy.

“You face down terrorists every day,” Dalton Reyes teased him. “You’re afraid of a few zombie bank robbers?”

“Some of the worst terrorists I’ve dealt with have been the homegrown kind, holed up in remote spots just like this one,” Ash warned them. “They could have an arsenal in there.”

Blaine sighed. “Oh, I’m sure that they do...”

He had no more than voiced the thought when gunfire erupted. It echoed throughout the woods, shattering the windows of the cabin and the windows of the vehicles he and the other agents had driven up.

He gestured at the others, indicating for them to go around the back as he headed straight toward the cabin. He was the one that they wanted—the one that Tammy Doremire wanted—dead.

Maggie had already lost one man who loved her. She shouldn’t lose another—especially when Blaine had yet to tell her that he loved her. He should have told her...

He was afraid now that he might never have the chance. The gunfire continued. They had to have automatic weapons—maybe even armor-piercing bullets. The vest probably wouldn’t help him—neither would the SWAT helmet he and the other agents wore.

Ignoring the risk, he returned fire. He had to take out these threats to Maggie and the baby. He had to make sure that they couldn’t hurt her or Drew ever again. One man, wearing the zombie mask and trench-coat disguise, stepped out of the cabin. Blaine hit him, taking him down, but as the man fell, his automatic weapon continued to fire.

And Blaine felt the fiery sting as a bullet hit him. He ignored the pain as another robber exited the cabin, aiming straight for him. Even as his arm began to go numb, he kept squeezing the trigger. The zombie fell, but so did Blaine. He struck the ground hard.

His ears ringing from the gunshots, he could barely hear the others calling out for him. “Blaine! Blaine!”

“Are you hit?” Reyes asked.

“Where are you hit?” Ash asked.

He didn’t even know—because what hurt the most was his heart—at the thought that he might never see Maggie again. “Tell her...”

But he didn’t have the strength to finish his request. Like Mark Doremire, he was afraid that he was about to bleed out in the woods.

All he managed to utter was her name. “Maggie...”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Maggie had suspected the worst even before Ash Stryker and another man walked into her hospital room. Their faces were pale with stress, and their clothes were smeared with blood that wasn’t theirs. They looked unharmed but yet devastated.

“No...”

He couldn’t be dead. Blaine couldn’t have died without learning how much she loved him. How much she needed him...

He had always been there when she had needed him. Why hadn’t she been there when he had needed her?

She was already out of bed, standing over Drew’s clear bassinet. She stepped away from it, so that she wouldn’t startle the sleeping baby. But her legs trembled, nearly giving way beneath her. Truman grabbed her, steadying her with a hand on her arm.

Ash shook his head. “He’s not dead, Maggie,” he said. “He’s not dead.”

“But he’s hurt.” They wouldn’t look the way they did if he wasn’t. “How badly?”