Watching Over Her

For Sarge...

“You think those robberies are related to this one?” the trooper asked.

“I can’t make a determination yet.” Because he hadn’t had a chance to go to the office; his flight had landed only hours ago. But ever since Sarge’s call, the urgency in the man’s voice had haunted Blaine and made him come here first—with his suitcase in the trunk of a rental car. “I need more information.”

And he didn’t want to give up too much information to the troopers before he’d verified his facts. He needed to check in with the Bureau, but he couldn’t leave the scene yet.

He couldn’t leave Maggie Jenkins.

He turned back to where the paramedic had helped her into the back of the first-responder rig. A man in a suit was standing outside the doors, talking to her. He’d come through the back door of the bank, so the troopers must have cleared him.

Blaine recognized him as one of the people who’d been lying on the floor, cowering from the robbers. Instead of checking on her, the man appeared to be questioning her—the way Blaine wanted to. But he wasn’t certain she had any more information than he did.

He just wanted to make sure she was all right—that his rescue hadn’t done her more harm than being taken hostage had.

* * *

MAGGIE WAS FINALLY ALONE. Mr. Hardy, the bank manager, had gone back inside the damaged building to call the corporate headquarters, as she had told him to do. At thirty, he was young and inexperienced for his position, so he had no idea what to do or how to manage after a robbery.

Unfortunately, Maggie did.

She trembled—not with cold or even with fear. She hadn’t felt that until the bullet had struck Sarge, and he had dropped to the floor. Before that, when the gunmen had burst into the lobby wearing those masks and trench coats, she had been too stunned to feel anything at all.

Usually just the sight of those gruesome masks would have filled her with terror, as they had ever since Andy and Mark had sneaked her into that violent horror movie. She’d had nightmares for years over it. But for the past few months she’d been having new nightmares. And while they’d still been about zombies, they hadn’t been movie actors—they’d been about these zombies.

“I can’t believe it,” she murmured to herself. “I can’t believe it happened. Again...”

And it was that disbelief that had overwhelmed her fear—until Sarge had been shot.

“Are you all right?” a deep voice asked.

Startled, she tensed. It wasn’t one of the paramedics. Their voices were higher and less...commanding. Agent Campbell commanded attention and respect and control.

He had taken over the moment he’d burst into the bank with his weapon drawn. He had taken over and saved her from whatever the bank robbers had planned for her. And he’d taken over the investigation from the state troopers more easily.

She nodded. “I’m okay,” she assured him, worried that he might think she was losing it. “I always talk to myself. My parents claim I came out talking and never shut up...” But as she chattered, her teeth began to chatter, too, snapping together as her jaw trembled.

The FBI agent lifted the blanket a paramedic had put around her and he wrapped it more tightly—as if he were swaddling a baby. She had taken a class and swaddled a doll, but she hadn’t done it nearly as well as he had. Maybe he had children of his own. She glanced down at his hands—his big, strong hands—but they were bare of any rings. Not every married man wore one, though. Her face heated with embarrassment that she’d even looked. His marital status should have been the last thing on her mind.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’m fine, really...” But it wasn’t cold out. Why was she so deeply chilled that even her bones felt cold? “I can go back inside the bank and help Mr. Hardy—”

“The bank manager,” he said.

She’d noticed that he had stopped Mr. Hardy before letting him back inside the bank. And he’d questioned him. She doubted the young manager had been able to provide many answers.

“Yes,” she said. “I need to go back inside and help him close up the bank and take inventory for corporate. There’s so much to do...” There always was, after a robbery.

“You need to go to the hospital and get checked out,” Agent Campbell said as he waved over the paramedic. “You should have already taken her.”

“She wanted to talk to you first,” the female paramedic replied. She’d told Maggie that she wouldn’t mind talking to the agent herself, and her male partner had scoffed at her lack of professionalism.

Maggie hadn’t intended to go to the hospital at all—not when there was so much to do inside the bank. And Sarge...

Was he still inside?

She shuddered, then shivered harder. And the baby shifted inside her, kicking her ribs. She flinched and nodded. “Maybe I should get checked out...”

For the baby. She had to protect her baby. She had nearly three months left of her pregnancy—three months to keep her unborn child safe. She hadn’t realized how hard that might be.

“My questions can wait,” the FBI agent told her, “until you’ve been thoroughly checked out.” He turned toward the paramedics. “Which hospital will you take her to?”

“Med West,” the woman paramedic replied. “You can ride along and question her in the back of the rig.”

Maggie stilled her trembling as she waited for his reply. She wanted him to agree; she felt safer with him close. She felt safe in his arms...

And after what had happened—again—she would have doubted she would ever feel safe. Anywhere.

“Agent Campbell,” one of the officers called out to him. He didn’t pull his gaze from her, his green eyes intense on her face. The officer continued anyway. “We located the van.”

That got the agent’s attention; he turned away from her. “And the robbers?”

The officer shrugged. “We don’t know if there’s anyone inside. Nobody’s approached it yet.”

Maggie struggled free of the blanket and grabbed the agent’s arm—even though she knew she couldn’t stop him. He was going.

“Be careful,” she advised him.

She had told Andy the same thing when he had left her last, but he hadn’t listened to her. She hoped Agent Campbell did. Or the next time the robbers’ bullets might miss his vest and hit somewhere else instead.

Agent Campbell barely spared her a nod before heading off with the state troopers. He had been lucky during his first confrontation with the thieves, but Andy had been lucky, too, during his first two deployments.

Eventually, though, luck ran out...

* * *

HIS GUN STEADY in one hand, Blaine slid open the side door with the other. But the van was empty. The robbers had ditched it between Dumpsters at the end of an alley.

“This vehicle was reported stolen three days ago,” one of the troopers informed him.

Either they’d stolen it themselves or picked it up from someone who dealt in stolen vehicles. It was a lead that Blaine could follow. Maybe someone had witnessed the theft.

They must have exchanged the van for another vehicle they had stashed close to the bank. They’d had to move quickly, though, so they hadn’t taken time to wipe down the van.

They had left behind forensic evidence. Blaine could see some of it now. Fibers from their clothes. Hair— either from their masks or their own. And blood. It could have been fake; they’d had some on their gruesome disguises. But that hadn’t looked like this.

This blood was smeared and drying already into dark pools.

“You hit one of them?” a trooper asked.

He hoped he’d hit the one who’d killed Sarge. “I fired at them, but I thought they were wearing vests.”

“You must be a good shot,” the trooper replied.

More likely he had gotten off a lucky shot. He was fortunate one of them hadn’t done the same. If they hadn’t been worried that he had backup coming, they probably would have killed him the way they had Sarge.

Blaine sighed. “But the suspect wasn’t hurt so badly that he couldn’t get away.” As they had all gotten away. But at least one of them had not been unscathed.

“Put out an APB that one of the suspects might be seeking medical treatment for a gunshot wound,” Blaine said, “at a hospital or doctor’s office or med center. Hell, don’t rule out a vet clinic. These guys will not want the wound getting reported.” And doctors were legally obligated to report gunshot wounds.

So he wouldn’t worry that he had sent Maggie Jenkins off to the hospital in the back of that ambulance. He wouldn’t worry that one of the men who had tried to abduct her earlier might get a chance to try again.

Again...

What had she been muttering when he’d walked up to the ambulance? Her already soft voice had been strained from screaming, so he’d struggled to hear, let alone understand, her words. But she’d murmured something about not believing that it had happened. Again...

Had Maggie Jenkins been the victim of a bank robbery before?

The same bank robbers?

Hell, Blaine was worried now. Not just that she might be in danger but that he might have let the best lead to the robbers ride away. Had he let her big, dark eyes and her fear and vulnerability influence his opinion of her?

What if Maggie Jenkins hadn’t been a hostage but a coconspirator?

Maybe Sarge hadn’t been trying to tell him to rescue the assistant bank manager. Maybe he had been trying to tell Blaine to catch her.

Chapter Three

Maggie pressed her palms over the hospital gown covering her belly and tried to soothe the child moving inside her. He kept kicking, as though he was still fighting. “I’m sorry, baby,” she said. “I know Mama’s not doing a very good job of keeping you safe.”

But she’d tried.

Why was it that danger kept finding her? She had already changed jobs, or at least locations, but she couldn’t afford to quit. Maybe she should have married Andy one of the times he had suggested it. They had been together since middle school, and she’d loved him. But she hadn’t been in love with him.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. But this time she was talking to Andy.

She should have told him the truth, but he’d enlisted right out of high school and she hadn’t wanted to be the heartless girlfriend who wrote the Dear John letter. And when he’d come home on leave, she had been so happy to see him—so happy to have her best friend back—that she hadn’t wanted to risk losing that friendship.

But eventually she had lost him—to a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. Tears stung her eyes and tickled her nose, but she drew in a shaky breath and steadied herself. She had to be strong—for her baby. Since he had already lost his father, he needed her twice as much.

A hand drew back the curtain of Maggie’s corner of the emergency department. The young physician’s assistant who’d talked to her earlier smiled reassuringly. “I had a doctor and a radiologist review the ultrasound,” the PA said, “and we all agree that your baby is fine.”

Maggie released her breath as a sigh of relief. “That’s great.”

“You, on the other hand, have some bumps and bruises, and your blood pressure is a little high,” the PA continued. “So you need to be careful and take better care of yourself.”

She nodded in agreement. Not that she hadn’t been trying. That had been the whole point of her new job—less stress. But Mr. Hardy wasn’t as competent as the manager at the previous branch where she’d worked. And the zombie bank robbers had hit the new bank anyway.

Maybe she would have been safer had she stayed where she’d been. “I will take better care of myself and the baby,” Maggie vowed. “Do you know what I’m having?” She had had an ultrasound earlier in her pregnancy, but it had been too soon to tell the gender.

The young woman shook her head. “I wasn’t able to tell.”

Or she probably would have pointed it out then.

“But maybe the radiologist had an idea.” The young woman’s face flushed as she glanced down at the notes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I hadn’t realized that you’d been at the bank that was robbed and that paramedics had brought you from the scene.”

“That’s fine,” Maggie said. “I should have told you myself.” But she hadn’t wanted to talk about it—to remember what it had been like to see those gruesome masks again and to watch as one of them killed Sarge. She shuddered.

“Of course your blood pressure would be elevated,” the PA continued. “You must have been terrified.”

She had been until the FBI agent had saved her. Where was he? He was supposed to come to the hospital to interview her. Hadn’t Agent Campbell survived his second run-in with the bank robbers?

“I’ll be okay,” she assured the physician’s assistant. She had survived. Again. Daryl Williams hadn’t been as fortunate—because of her. Maybe Agent Campbell hadn’t survived, either.

The young woman nodded. “Considering what you’ve been through, you’re doing very well. But I would follow up with your obstetrician tomorrow and make sure your blood pressure goes down.”

“I will do that,” Maggie promised. She was taking no chances with her pregnancy. She had already lost the baby’s father; she wouldn’t lose his baby, too.

“You can get dressed now.” The young woman passed over some papers. “Here is your release and an ultrasound picture. There isn’t any way of telling his or her gender yet.”

Maggie stared down at the photo. She had seen her baby on the ultrasound screen this time and the previous time she’d had one. But this was the first photo she’d been given to keep—probably because he looked like a baby now and not a peanut. He or she was curled up on his or her side, and the little mouth was open. She smiled as she remembered her mother claiming that Maggie’s mouth had been open during every ultrasound. She’d been talking even before she’d been born.

“Thank you,” she told the PA. But she didn’t look up. She couldn’t take her gaze from the amazing photo of her baby. The child had already survived so much: the loss of a parent and two bank robberies.

“Good luck, Ms. Jenkins,” the young woman replied as she pulled the curtain closed again.

Maggie’s smile slid off her lips. She was going to need luck to make it safely through her pregnancy and deliver a healthy baby. He was fine now. And she would do everything within her power to keep him that way.

She dressed quickly so that she could pick up and study the picture again. Maybe she should wait for the FBI agent—to make certain that he was all right. It wasn’t as if she could leave anyway. Her purse was back at the bank, so she didn’t have any money to pay for a cab. And with Mr. Hardy busy with corporate, the only other person she could have called at the bank to bring it to her was dead.

Sarge...

If only he hadn’t stepped out from behind that pillar...

If only he hadn’t tried to save her...

Tears blurred her vision, but she blinked them back to focus on the baby picture again. She needed to focus on him or her, needed to keep him or her healthy and safe. The baby was her priority.

She would have to find a phone she could use and call a friend to pick her up. But she didn’t really know anyone here in this suburb of Chicago. She hadn’t known anyone but Sarge. After the bank where she’d previously worked had been robbed, she had transferred to the branch where Sarge worked—thinking she would feel safer with him there. But the danger had followed her and claimed his life—cruelly cutting his retirement short. The tears threatened again, but she fought them. Sobbing would not help her blood pressure.

The curtain moved as a gloved hand pulled it back.

“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling guilty for taking up the area. “I realize you probably need the bed for someone else...” For someone who actually needed medical attention. “I’m all ready to leave.” She just needed someone to pick her up. “I can wait in the lobby.”

Nobody said anything, though. But she could feel them standing there, watching her. So then she looked up, and her heart began to pound frantically as she stared into the creepy face of one of those horrible zombie masks. It was her nightmare come to life again.

She would have screamed but for the gun barrel pointing directly at her. She already knew that these people had no compunction about killing. They had already killed once and that had been because Sarge had been trying to save her. She couldn’t scream and risk someone else getting hurt again. The only reason they would have tracked her down at the hospital was to kill again.

To kill her...

* * *

BLAINE CURSED HIMSELF as he flipped screens on his tablet. The Bureau had forwarded him the case file for the bank robberies.

Now he knew exactly what Maggie had been muttering in the back of the ambulance—because it had happened again. A different bank. A different city. But the same witness.

Maggie Jenkins had been robbed before—a couple of months ago—at another bank where she’d been working as an assistant manager. What were the odds that the same robbers, wearing zombie masks and black trench coats, would track her down at another bank in another city? Maybe it was a coincidence, but in his years with the Bureau, Blaine had found few true coincidences.

It was more likely that they knew her. And if they knew her, she knew them. He’d had a lot of questions for Maggie Jenkins before; now he had even more. And he wouldn’t let her tear-damp dark eyes or her sweet vulnerability distract him again.

He dropped the tablet onto the passenger seat and threw open the driver’s door. After clicking the locks, he hurried across the parking lot to the hospital. He sidestepped through the automatic doors before they were fully open and flashed his badge at the security guard standing inside the doors. “I’m looking for a witness who was brought here from a bank-robbery scene. Maggie Jenkins.”

After waving him through the blinking, beeping metal detector, the guard pointed toward the emergency-department desk. Blaine showed his badge to the receptionist. “I need to talk to Maggie Jenkins—from the bank robbery.”

The older woman stared at his badge before nodding. “Nyla can show you where she is.”

A young nurse stepped from behind the desk and pushed open swinging doors. “Ms. Jenkins is behind the last curtain on the left.”

He followed the woman’s directions, past a long row of pulled curtains, and he pulled aside the very last curtain on the left. The bed was empty but for a black-and-white photo. Maggie was gone. He picked up the photo and recognized it as an ultrasound picture. His older sisters had shown him a few over the past ten years. He’d thought they looked like Rorschach tests. They had all prized them.

No matter what her involvement was in the robberies, Maggie Jenkins wouldn’t have willingly left that photo behind. He reached for his holster and whirled around to the nurse who’d followed him. “She’s gone.”

Unconcerned, the young woman shrugged. “She was cleared to get dressed and leave.”

“She came by ambulance and didn’t have her purse,” he said. “She couldn’t have left on her own.” Not with no car and no money for a cab. At the very least, she would have had to call someone to pick her up. But then, why wouldn’t she have taken the ultrasound photo with her? “Did you see anyone come back here?”

Metal scraped against metal as another curtain was tugged back, its rings scraping along the rod. A little girl, propped against pillows in a bed, peered out at Blaine. “The monster came for her.”

His skin chilled as dread chased over him. “What monster?”

An older woman, probably the little girl’s mother, was sitting in a chair next to the bed. With a slight smile, she shook her head. “It wasn’t a monster. Just someone wearing a silly Halloween mask.”

“But it’s not Halloween,” the little girl said, as if she suspected her mother was lying and that the monster was very real.

Blaine was worried that the monster was real, too. “Was it a zombie mask that the person was wearing?”

The woman shrugged. “I don’t know.”

But the little girl’s already pale face grew even paler with fear as she slowly nodded. “It was a really creepy zombie. He was wearing a long black coat.”

Blaine’s dread spread the chill throughout him. He bit back a curse. One of the robbers had tracked her down at the hospital?

The woman shrugged again. “He put his fingers to his lips, so that we wouldn’t say anything. He was just playing a joke.”

Apparently the woman hadn’t seen any of the news coverage about the zombie robbers.

The nurse shook her head in vigorous denial of the little girl’s claim. “I didn’t see anyone dressed like that in this area, and the security guard wouldn’t have let him through the front doors.”

“What about the back doors?” he asked. “Could someone have come in another way?”

“Only employees can,” the nurse replied.

He doubted that employees had to go through a metal detector the way visitors had to. “Show me.”

The nurse stepped around the curtain to show Blaine another set of double doors on that end of the emergency department—just a few feet from where Maggie had been. If the robber had come through those doors, no one would have seen him but Maggie and apparently the little girl next to her. He wouldn’t have gone through security if he’d come in the employee entrance. The nurse had to swipe her ID card to open those doors. They swung into an empty corridor.

“How would someone get to the parking lot from here?” he asked.

With a sigh of exasperation, as if he was wasting her time, she turned left and continued down the corridor to a couple of single doors. “The locker rooms have doors to a back hallway that leads to the employee parking lot,” she said in anticipation of his next questions. “But it’s too soon for a shift change, so nobody’s back here now.”

But a noise emanated from behind one of the doors. A thump. And then a scream pierced the air. Blaine grabbed the nurse’s ID badge and swiped it through the lock. As he pushed open the door, shots rang out. A bullet struck him—in the vest over his heart. The force of it knocked him against the door and forced the breath from his lungs.

The nurse cried and ran back down the corridor. Then another scream rang out—from Maggie Jenkins. She had fallen to her knees. But the bank robber had a gloved hand in her hair, trying to pull her up—trying to drag her to that door at the back of the locker room—the door that would lead to the employee parking lot.

How did he know where to take her? How did he have the access badge to do it? He must either be an employee of the hospital or he knew an employee very well.

Ignoring the pain she must have been in from that hand in her hair, Maggie wriggled and reached as she continued to scream for help. But she didn’t wait for Blaine’s help. She tried to help herself. She grabbed at the benches between the rows of lockers and at the lockers, too, as she tried to prevent the robber from dragging her off. She flailed her arms and kicked, too, desperately trying to fight off her attacker. But then the gun barrel swung toward her face and she froze.

Was the robber just trying to scare her into cooperating? Or did he intend to kill her right here, in front of Blaine?

Chapter Four

Maggie couldn’t breathe; she couldn’t move. She couldn’t do anything but stare down the barrel of the gun that had been shoved in her face.

Agent Campbell had stepped inside the room, but then a shot had slammed him back against the door. Wasn’t he wearing his vest anymore? Was he hurt?

Or worse?

She wanted to look, but she was frozen with fear. Because she was about to be worse, too. With the barrel so close to her face, there was no way the bullet could miss her head. She was about to die.

In her peripheral vision, she was aware of the gloved finger pressing on the trigger. And she heard the shot. It exploded in the room, shattering the silence and deafening her. But she felt no pain. Neither did she fall. She still couldn’t move. Apparently she couldn’t feel, either.