Ingrid Weaver - Cinderella's Secret Agent

“That’s it, Maggie,” Del murmured. “A little more, just a little more.”

She didn’t know how long it lasted. She lost track of everything outside the intimate connection between her and the man she was trusting to deliver her baby. Gradually, her body no longer seemed to be fighting her. Every muscle was working, straining, tightening, pushing…until suddenly, just when she thought she would tear in half, the pressure eased.

And the room was filled with the most glorious sound Maggie had heard in her life. It was the tiny, tremulous wail of her newborn child.

Exhausted, drenched in sweat, Maggie somehow found the strength to lift her head.

Del was kneeling between her legs, his large hands carefully cradling a beautiful, wrinkled, red-faced, squirming miracle. “It’s a girl,” he said, his voice hushed. His gaze met hers, his amber eyes unabashedly moist. “Congratulations, Maggie. You have a daughter.”

“‘They also serve who only stand and wait,’” Bill Grimes intoned. With his bald head and habitually benign expression, he could have passed for an absentminded English professor, an image Bill deliberately played on with the pipe he held between his teeth and his penchant for issuing quotations.

Del shut off the tape player and ejected the cassette. It was barely past midnight and Bill was already into Milton. This was going to be a long night. “I hate to admit it, but that about sums things up.”

Bill grunted and adjusted the focus on the telescope he was using. The adjustment wasn’t really necessary—the instrument was already carefully positioned on a tripod and calibrated for the optimum range—but it gave him the impression that he was doing something.

Del understood his partner’s state of mind all too well. Still, good hunters had patience, and they were going to need a lot of it. The briefing tape he and Bill had just listened to had come directly from Jonah, the head of SPEAR, so they knew it was the best information possible. The situation was essentially the way Del had figured it: Simon had gone underground, but he was running out of places to hide. That’s why Del, Bill and the rest of the surveillance team would have to stay where they were. Stand and wait.

Del looked around at the forest of equipment that crammed the small apartment. Bill’s telescope was about the lowest-tech piece here. The steel shelf by the back wall held night vision binoculars, infrared detectors, cameras, weapons and body armor. Two video cameras and a parabolic microphone were hooked up to a bank of recording equipment, all of it focused on the window of the apartment across the courtyard.

A studio apartment identical in design to this one, the place hadn’t undergone any major renovations in years. Apart from a countertop fridge and a range in the tiny kitchen, and half a dozen folding chairs, it was unfurnished. There was little to recommend it to a potential tenant…other than the location. Situated in midtown Manhattan near the East River, it happened to have an excellent view of one of New York’s most famous landmarks: the shimmering glass cereal-box-shaped structure that housed the headquarters of the United Nations.

Weeks ago SPEAR intelligence had learned that particular apartment across the courtyard had been rented for Simon’s use. What they didn’t yet know was why.

It had to have something to do with the proximity to the UN, that much was obvious. But why? Was Simon’s next target some diplomat or politician? Was he going to use the apartment’s vantage point to coordinate an assault or hide a sniper? Until now, all Simon’s schemes had been aimed at destroying SPEAR itself. Had he changed his tactics?

Del rubbed his face wearily. There were too many questions. With luck, this surveillance would bring them some of the answers.

“By the way, what happened to your hands?” Bill asked without lifting his head. “I hadn’t thought those burns were so deep.”

Del focused on his hands. To his surprise, he noticed the healing pink skin behind his knuckles was marred by crescent-shaped gouges in several places, deep enough to be noticeable even in the dim light that filtered through the window.

He felt a moment’s confusion before understanding dawned. The marks were from Maggie’s fingernails. She must have done it when she’d been holding on to him during those contractions.

Immediately, the simmering frustration of his hunt for Simon faded. Despite the state-of-the-art equipment that surrounded him and the grim reality of his job here, Del felt an echo of Maggie’s presence. Her warmth, her twinkling good nature seemed to brighten the stark apartment.

It was such an unlikely juxtaposition. Only a few hours ago he had shared in the most basic event in life, the birth of a child. Now here he was immersed in the complex business of international terrorism. His world and Maggie’s world couldn’t get much further apart than that.

“Those cuts aren’t from the explosion,” he said. One corner of his mouth quirked upward in a half smile. “They have nothing to do with Simon. They’re from something else entirely.”

“Something else? Like what?”

“Do you remember that short blond waitress who works in the diner on the next block?”

“The diner that Polish guy runs?”

“Hungarian. Laszlo’s place.”

“Blond waitress,” Bill said, frowning into the eyepiece. “You don’t mean the one that’s pregnant, do you?”

“Yeah. Maggie.”

“I didn’t know you went in for pregnant women.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Isn’t it? You’ve been eating there practically every day since we started this gig. What happened? Didn’t she like the tip you left her?”

“She had her baby tonight.”

Now Bill did lift his head, peering at Del over the telescope. “You’re kidding.”

“She went into labor right there at the coffee shop. She held my hand during the contractions. I doubt if she realized how hard she was gripping.”

“So you were there?”

“That’s right.”

“Geez, what a place to have that happen. The ambulance would have needed to use the sidewalk to get through the traffic.”

“The ambulance got there too late. I delivered the baby.”

“Holy—” Bill removed his pipe and pointed the stem toward Del. “You delivered a baby?”

“Yes. It was a girl.” He paused. “She has blond hair and blue eyes just like her mother.”

“Are they all right?”

“They’re both doing fine.”

“Good God, what do you know about delivering babies?”

“There wasn’t that much I needed to know. It was Maggie who did the work. All I really did was catch.” He thought about the look of sheer wonder that had lit up Maggie’s face when she’d gazed at her daughter for the first time. He cleared his throat, surprised at the sudden thickness he felt there. “Bill, it was incredible.”

“If you say so.”

“I was the first person to touch that child. She took her first breath while I held her in my hands.” He turned his palms upward. “I actually saw the exact moment when she filled her lungs with air.”

“And you said she’s all right? She’s healthy?”

“That’s what the paramedics said. She has all her fingers and toes. And she’s not too small, either. She felt like she weighs about the same as a nine-millimeter Colt submachine gun with a thirty-two round clip.” He smiled with satisfaction. “That would put her at over six pounds. Not bad for a few weeks early.”

Bill shook his head. “I just can’t believe this.”

“Did I mention her eyes were blue? She looked right at me, and her eyes hardly crossed at all.”

“Maggie?”