Watching Over Her

“You don’t live with the baby’s father anymore?” He told himself he was asking only because of the case, but he really wanted to know for himself.

She shook her head. “I never did...” And there was something in her voice and her expressive eyes...an odd combination of guilt and grief.

Blaine wanted to ask more questions but Maggie was walking away from him. His skin chilled. It could have been because of the cool wind that was kicking up as night began to fall. It could have been because he had an odd sense of foreboding—the same sense he’d had as he’d driven up to the bank during a robbery in progress.

He glanced around the parking lot. The complex was big—an L-shaped, four-story redbrick building, so there were a lot of vehicles parked in the lot. Quite a few of them were vans. Could one of them have been from the hospital? Could the robbers have followed them here?

He hurried and closed the distance between them, keeping his body between hers and the exposure to the parking lot. His hand was also on his holster, ready to pull his weapon should he need it.

Maggie rapped her knuckles hard against the door of a first-floor apartment. “My super’s a little hard of hearing,” she explained.

It took a couple more knocks before the door opened. A gray-haired man grinned at her. “Hey, Miss Maggie, what can I help you with?”

“Hi, Mr. Simmons. I left my purse at work,” she said but spared him the details of why. “I’m so forgetful these days.” She’d actually had other matters on her mind, but again she didn’t share those with the older man. “So I need the extra key to my apartment, please.”

His gray-haired head bobbed in a quick nod. “Of course I’ll get that for you. Who’s your friend?” His cloudy blue eyes narrowed as he studied Blaine. Apparently Blaine wasn’t the only one in whom Maggie brought out protectiveness.

“Blaine Campbell. He’s an old friend,” she said, easily uttering the lie.

What else had she lied about?

The older man nodded again, accepting her explanation. “I’ll be right back with the key.”

After he disappeared, she turned toward Blaine and explained. “I didn’t want to worry him. He knows the bank I worked at in Sturgis was robbed, so I told him I left the banking business.”

“What does he think you do now?” he wondered.

“He thinks I work in an insurance office,” she said, “which isn’t really a lie since the bank does offer insurance policies.”

Keys jangled as the old man returned to the doorway. “Have you checked on that renter’s policy for me yet, Maggie?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “I’ll bring that quote home tomorrow.” She held out her hand for the key, but the gray-haired janitor glanced at Blaine again.

“You’re an old friend of hers?” he asked with curiosity instead of doubt.

Blaine just nodded.

“Then you must’ve known her Andy?”

Andy? Was that the father of her baby? Blaine just nodded again.

“Thought you looked like you might’ve been a marine, too,” the old guy said with another bob of his head.

“I was, sir,” Blaine replied, and the admission reminded him of the man who had made him a marine. Sarge... “I served two tours.”

“That’s how you knew Sarge,” Maggie said, softly enough that the older man probably didn’t even hear her. “He was your drill sergeant?”

Blaine nodded. As a drill instructor, Sarge had been tough but fair. And he’d been a good and loyal friend.

“Glad you made it home, boy,” Mr. Simmons said and reached out to pat Blaine’s shoulder. “Too bad her fiancé didn’t...”

“Andy,” Blaine murmured, and the older man nodded again. Shocked and full of sympathy for her, Blaine turned toward Maggie. Earlier she’d told him that she was single, but she hadn’t told him why. She hadn’t said that her fiancé died before they could marry.

Her lashes fluttered furiously as she fought back tears over the loss of her baby’s father. The hand she held out for the key began to tremble slightly. “Thank you for letting me use your spare, Mr. Simmons.”

Finally the old man handed over the key she’d been waiting for. The second she closed her fingers around it, she rushed off toward the other end of the complex.

With a nod at the older man, Blaine hurried after her, careful to keep looking around to make sure nobody had followed them—the way someone must have followed the ambulance to the hospital.

But why?

If Maggie really had no idea who the robbers were, why had they wanted to kidnap her so desperately that they hadn’t tried just once but twice?

Blaine stopped at the door where Maggie had stopped, her hand with the key outstretched toward the lock. She gasped. Hearing the fear in her voice, Blaine reached for his gun and pulled it from the holster.

Then he closed his free hand around Maggie’s shoulder. She tensed and gasped again. Peering around her, he saw what she had—that the door to her apartment stood ajar. Since Maggie had said she lived alone now, someone must have broken in.

A thud emanated from the crack in the door. Whoever had broken in was still there. Waiting for Maggie...

Chapter Six

Like a rowboat riding on high waves, Maggie’s stomach pitched as fear and nerves overwhelmed her. It was bad enough that the zombie robbers had tracked her down at the new bank branch where she worked and at the hospital where she’d been treated after the robbery. But had they now found out where she lived?

“Someone’s inside,” she whispered in horror.

But Blaine Campbell had already figured that out since he held his gun, the barrel pointing toward that crack in the door. He stood between her and her apartment. Between her and danger. “Go back to Mr. Simmons’s apartment,” he told her. “And stay there until I come for you.”

She would have asked where he was going. But she knew. He had already walked into one robbery in progress today. So why wouldn’t he walk into another?

Because he could get killed. Her hand automatically reached out with the impulse to hold him back—to protect him. But he was already pushing open the door a little farther and turning sideways as if to squeeze through. He turned back to her, his green gaze intense. “Go back to Mr. Simmons and call the police.”

“Call them now,” she urged him. “Don’t go in there alone.” As he had earlier...

He’d been lucky that the robbers hadn’t killed him. If they hadn’t been intent on getting away, they may have killed him just the way they had killed poor Sarge. If they’d kept shooting at him, they would have hit him where the vest wouldn’t have protected him.

Dismissing her concern, he replied, “I’ll be fine.”

That was probably what Sarge had thought, too, when he showed up for work that morning. That he would be fine. But he hadn’t. And she worried that neither would Agent Campbell.

“I’ll be fine as long as you get out of here,” he continued. “Now.”

She had noticed and admired his commanding presence earlier. Now that it was directed at her, she resented it a bit. And she resented even more that she hurried to obey his command, turning away to head back to Mr. Simmons’s apartment.

The minute the nearly deaf super let her inside, she would call the police. But they wouldn’t arrive in time to help Agent Campbell. He was already stepping inside her apartment, already facing down danger.

Alone.

As Maggie lifted her hand to knock on the super’s door, she heard the scream. It was high-pitched and full of fear.

* * *

THE WOMAN’S SCREAM caught Blaine off guard. He’d expected a masked robber. Or at least an armed threat. Instead he walked inside to find a woman—dressed like Maggie in a dark suit—rifling through the drawers of the dresser in what must have been Maggie’s bedroom. Instead of being a peaceful oasis, it was full of color—oranges and greens and yellows. It was lively and vibrant, like her personality, except for those times when she’d been too scared to speak. It was also messy, but that might have been because of this woman rifling through Maggie’s things.

“Who are you?” he asked, even though the blond-haired woman looked vaguely familiar. Where had he seen her before? The security footage from the hospital?

Could it have been a woman who had tried to abduct Maggie earlier? He doubted that a woman could have hurled the locker room bench with enough force to knock him down, but maybe that was just his ego talking. At the bank there had been one robber smaller than the others. He hadn’t given it any thought then, because it could have been a short man. But it could have been a woman.

She just stared at him—her eyes wide with fear and guilt. She didn’t hold a gun this time, though. Instead she held a velvet jewelry case in her hand.

“Who are you?” he repeated.

“It’s Susan Iverson,” another woman answered for her.

Wearing those damn slippers had made Maggie’s footsteps silent—so silent that she would have been able to get the jump on him had she been one of the robbers. Hell, he had only her word that she wasn’t one of them.

“Susan works at the bank, too. She’s a teller,” Maggie said, explaining how she knew the woman. “What are you doing here?”

“You left your purse at the bank,” Susan replied. “I was bringing it back for you.”

“And going through my stuff?”

Maggie was asking the questions he should have been asking. But her sudden nearness had distracted him—not so much that he had lowered the gun, though. He kept it trained on the obvious intruder.

“You used Ms. Jenkins’s key to let yourself inside her apartment?” he asked now. “That’s still breaking and entering, you know.”

“I used to live with her,” Susan replied. She stared up at Blaine through her lashes, as if trying to flirt with him. “You’re the FBI agent who rescued us this afternoon from those awful robbers.”

“Yes, and you haven’t answered the question.” She hadn’t answered any of the questions—neither had she dropped that little jewelry box.

He’d thought the robbers must have had an inside man. And maybe that thought had been right. Thinking Maggie was their accomplice was what had been wrong.

“You don’t live with me anymore,” Maggie said. “So you had no right to let yourself into my place.” Her voice, usually so soft and sweet, was now sharp with anger and dislike.

“I brought your purse to you,” Susan said again, as if she’d been doing Maggie a favor.

“You could have left it with the super,” Blaine pointed out, “instead of letting yourself inside. What are you doing here, Ms. Iverson?”

At the moment she was trying to flirt with him—as if that could distract him from what she’d done now and what she might have done earlier. He’d never let a pretty face distract him...before Maggie.

The blonde smiled. “I was searching for clues,” she said. “This is the second bank Maggie’s worked at that’s been robbed. Don’t you think that’s suspicious, Agent Campbell?”

A hiss accompanied the quick release of Maggie’s breath—as if she’d been punched in the stomach. Maybe the baby had kicked her. Or maybe this woman casting suspicions her way had shocked her.

He had come up with suspicions about Maggie on his own, but he wasn’t about to admit it to this woman. At the moment she had become the better suspect. “I think your behavior is questionable right now, Ms. Iverson.”

“You caught me—” she fluttered her lashes again “—playing amateur sleuth. I was only trying to help the bank recover the money that was stolen.”

He wasn’t charmed in the least by her coy attitude. “And you think hundreds of thousands of dollars are in that small jewelry case?”

She glanced down at it, as if just realizing it was in her hand. And she shook her head. Blond hair skimmed along her jaw with the movement. “I—I just found it as I was looking for the money.”

Or was that what she’d been looking for? With the hand not holding his gun, he reached for the jewelry case. She held it tightly, but he tugged it from her grasping fingers. He popped open the case and a big square diamond glistened in the dim light of the nearly dark apartment.

Maggie reached out and snapped the case shut, as if she couldn’t bear to look at the ring.

“Your engagement ring?” he asked her.

Her beautiful face tense, she nodded.

“I’m sorry,” he said. It must have been hard for her to see the ring her dead fiancé had given her—especially after all she’d been through that day.

“Sorry?” the other woman asked with a disparaging snort. “She never even wore that ring. She probably wouldn’t have noticed it missing...”

“So you did intend to steal it?” Blaine asked. He needed to grab his phone and call in this attempted robbery, but when he tried to hand the ring case over to Maggie, she drew back as if she couldn’t touch it, either. So he shoved it into his pants pocket to reach for his cell. “I’m going to call the local authorities to book you, Ms. Iverson.”

“No,” Maggie said, reaching out now to grab his arm and stop him from calling. “I don’t want to press charges.”

“Why not?” he asked. He was furious with this woman, and he wasn’t the one she’d been trying to rob.

Maggie just shook her head, and the blonde breathed a sigh of relief.

But Blaine ignored them both. “This needs to be reported and Ms. Iverson needs to be questioned about her involvement in the robberies.”

“What involvement?” the woman asked, her already high voice squeaking with outrage. “I have no involvement.”

“I’m not so sure about that...” She could have taken advantage of Maggie leaving her purse behind to try to steal the ring. Or she could have been here waiting for Maggie—to abduct her for the others.

“You think I was stealing the ring,” the woman said. “Why would I need to pawn that for money if I was helping rob banks for millions of dollars?”

It wasn’t quite millions. Not yet. But he worried that it would be if the robbers weren’t stopped. And he worried that more people would die. The robbers had killed once, so it would be easier for them to kill again.

Was that what they’d intended to do with Maggie? Kill her? Why? To keep her quiet? And if they needed to keep her quiet, she had something to say—something she hadn’t shared with him yet.

But then, there was a lot she hadn’t shared with him. Maybe Susan Iverson wasn’t the only one who needed to be brought in for questioning...

* * *

MAGGIE WAS SO exhausted that all she wanted to do was put on her comfy pajamas, crawl into her bed and sleep for days. But she was still wearing the skirt and blouse from her suit. And this wasn’t her bed. It wasn’t soft and comfortable. It was hard and cold—kind of like she was beginning to believe Agent Blaine Campbell might be.

Despite her protest, he’d had Susan arrested for breaking and entering, and attempted theft. He should have just let her take the ring.

Susan was right that Maggie had never worn it. She couldn’t even look at it without remembering what Andy had sacrificed to buy her that ring. He’d bought it with the bonus for re-upping and volunteering for that last deployment—the one that had taken his life.

And she had never wanted the ring. She should have told him—should have made it clear that she didn’t love him the way he had deserved to be loved. Andy had been a wonderful man, and he’d been taken too soon.

Like Sarge.

Could Susan have been involved in the robbery that had claimed his life? If she was, Maggie was certain that Agent Campbell would find out. With just a look he made Maggie want to confess all. But she had nothing to confess.

He didn’t look as though he believed her, though. Was he cynical because of his FBI job and all he’d seen on it? Or was being a marine the reason he didn’t trust easily?

Of course he had no reason to trust Maggie. He didn’t know her.

If he knew her, he would have just let her stay in her apartment. But he’d insisted that she would be in danger in her own home. Susan knew she lived there, and if she were involved with the robberies, some of the others might try to kidnap her again—as they had at the hospital. So he’d had her brought here—to some sort of “safe” house.

But even with an officer standing outside the motel room door, Maggie didn’t feel safe.

She had felt safe only with Agent Campbell. But he’d had Maggie brought here, and he’d gone down to the local police station with Susan.

Maggie was surprised that he hadn’t taken her to the station, too. She knew he considered her every bit as much a suspect in the robberies as he did Susan. So maybe that officer wasn’t posted outside the door for her protection. Maybe he was posted outside the door to keep her inside—to keep her from escaping.

But where would Maggie go?

She had already tried to escape once—when she’d moved from Sturgis to the Chicago suburb where she lived now. But the robbers had followed her.

Was it only the coincidence she wanted to believe it was? After all, the bank she’d worked at before and the one she worked at now weren’t the only ones that had been robbed.

But that danger wasn’t the only thing Maggie hadn’t been able to leave in her past. When she’d let Susan stay with her, the woman had pried into her life. She’d learned about Andy. That was how Mr. Simmons had heard Maggie’s sad story. Susan had used it when she’d been late with her part of the rent.

So Maggie hadn’t been able to escape her guilt and loss, either. It had followed her, or maybe she was carrying it with her. She clasped her hands over the baby. She didn’t want to escape him or her, though. She wanted to protect her baby—the way she hadn’t been able to protect Andy. She’d thought that she was saving him from pain by keeping the truth of her feelings from him.

Maybe there was no escape from her past. But what about the danger? Was she really safe here?

Moments later she had her answer as gunfire erupted outside the motel room. She wasn’t safe. The robbers had come for her again.

And this time Agent Campbell wouldn’t arrive in time to save her...

Chapter Seven

In the dark Blaine fumbled around the top of the doorjamb for the key his friend had left for him. “I found it,” he told Ash through the cell phone pressed to his ear. “I can’t believe it’s still here.”

If he’d left a key outside his apartment in Detroit, it wouldn’t have been there long; neither would any of the stuff in his apartment. He wouldn’t have thought a Chicago suburb would be much safer—especially after he’d found an intruder in Maggie Jenkins’s apartment.

Of course, that intruder had been someone she knew. Apparently she hadn’t known her that well, though, if she’d ever trusted the treacherous woman. Not only had Susan tried to steal Maggie’s engagement ring, but when Blaine searched her purse, he found that she’d helped herself to Maggie’s credit and debit cards, as well.

Blaine blindly slid the key into the lock and quietly opened the door. Ignoring Ash’s voice in his ear, he listened carefully for any sounds within the small bungalow. It was the only dark house on the street; that was how Ash had told him to find it.

At this hour everyone else was home—probably watching TV after dinner. What was Maggie Jenkins doing right now?

Eating?

Sleeping?

She’d looked exhausted. Maybe he should have insisted that she stay at the hospital for observation. But then, she hadn’t been safe there, either.

“I told the neighbors to expect a tall blond guy to show up at my door within the next couple of days,” Ash said.

This was the kind of neighborhood where people watched out their windows, aware of their surroundings and strangers. Because of Ash’s warning, they gave Blaine only a cursory glance before their curtains and blinds snapped back into place and they returned to their television shows.

Blaine pushed open the door to a dark and empty house. “Thanks for giving them the heads-up,” he said. “And thanks for letting me crash here.”

Ash Stryker was also an FBI special agent but with the antiterrorism division, so he traveled more than Blaine did. Right now he was in DC or New York; Blaine couldn’t remember which city. Hell, maybe it was neither. Since he specialized in homegrown terrorism, he could have been off in the woods somewhere. Blaine knew better than to ask. Ash was rarely at liberty to say.

“Thanks for calling me about Sarge,” his friend replied, his voice gruff with emotion.

Blaine stopped in midreach for the light switch. While he dealt with his emotions over losing Sarge, he would rather stay in the dark, but he hadn’t wanted to leave Ash there. He’d had to tell him about their loss. He and Ash went back before the Bureau. They had been marines together, too.

“I’m sorry,” Blaine said. “So damn sorry...”

If only he could have done something.

If only he could have stopped Sarge from stepping out from behind that damn pillar.

But Sarge had reacted instinctively to Maggie’s scream and had come to her rescue. If the former military man had actually thought she’d been involved in the robberies, he probably wouldn’t have tried so hard to save her. But maybe he still would have done it—out of loyalty to her dead fiancé. He suspected Sarge had been Andy’s drill instructor, as well.

“I’m going to try to make it home for his funeral,” Ash promised. “Let me know when it is.”

“Sure thing,” Blaine replied. He knew his friend hated going to funerals as much as he did because they had attended way too many. They’d had so many friends who hadn’t made it home—like Maggie’s fiancé. “I’ll tell you as soon as I find out when the arrangements are.”

“Thanks,” Ash said. “And feel free to make yourself at home.”

“I won’t be here long enough,” Blaine said. He was more determined than ever to catch these bank robbers. He flipped on the switch and an overhead light flickered on, illuminating the sparsely furnished living room.

“I’m not there much, either.” Ash stated the obvious. “If my uncle hadn’t left me the place, I would probably just rent an apartment or a hotel room for when I’m in the city.”

Blaine had wondered why his friend owned a house. Ash was a confirmed bachelor. The only commitment he’d ever made was to their country and the Bureau. “Like me,” Blaine murmured.

Ash chuckled. “Well, you have sisters you can crash with when you have the urge to feel domestic.”

Blaine groaned as he thought of the noise and chaos of his sisters’ households. Kids crying. Throwing toys. His sisters yelling at their husbands. “Staying with them and their families reminds me why I’m single.”

But then he thought of Maggie Jenkins and the baby that had moved beneath his touch. Maggie, with her friendly chatter, would fit in well with his family. Hell, she would fit in better than he ever had.

“So I’m warning you,” Ash said, “that the fridge and cupboards are probably bare. There are take-out menus in the cupboard drawer by the fridge, though.”

Blaine didn’t feel like eating. Ever since that bullet had struck Sarge’s chest, he had felt sick. Maggie Jenkins hadn’t made him feel any better. He’d had local authorities take her into protective custody at a nearby motel. She would be safe.

He didn’t need to worry about her. But he was worried. Did the single mom-to-be have anyone she could trust? Even her former roommate had been trying to steal from her. After interrogating Susan Iverson, Blaine believed that was probably the woman’s only crime. He didn’t think she was smart enough to be able to hide it if she were involved in the bank robberies.

“It’s not your fault,” Ash assured him. “You know Sarge. He would have never backed down from a fight—not even when he was outgunned.”

Blaine sighed. “I know, especially since he was determined to protect the bank’s assistant manager.” He’d given up his life for hers and the baby’s.

A large part of Ash’s job was picking up subtext in recorded conversations. That was how he found threats to security. He easily picked up on Blaine’s subtext, too. “Sounds like Sarge might not have been the only one wanting to protect this...woman?”