The Runaway Daughter

“Mags?” He took the steps two at time. “What’s up?”

The only response was muffled shuffling from the direction of his niece’s room. Then her door slammed shut in a very un-Maggie way.

In three long strides, he was knocking.

“Maggie, you okay?” His hand hovered over the doorknob.

A mewling sound that resembled a kitten’s cry came from the other side of the door. When it turned into a full-fledged wail that most definitely wasn’t feline, he tried the knob.

It was locked.

No one locked doors around here.

“Maggie, what’s going on?”

“I… Everything’s fine.” Her voice shook with each word, what he could hear of it over the racket of an increasingly upset baby. “Um—”

“Maggie, open the door.” Tony gave up knocking and started pounding, fun afternoon plans evaporating.

He’d heard his totally together niece sound this scared only one other time. Last year, when he’d learned of her mother’s life-threatening liver condition. Maggie and Eric hadn’t been able to talk Carrinne into letting Maggie donate a portion of her liver to replace her mom’s, and it had looked for a short time like they might lose his sister-in-law. Maggie had been out-of-control angry, terrified as she’d pleaded with Carrinne to change her mind.

The same emotion owned her voice now. Something was seriously wrong.

As if the hysterical baby wasn’t clue enough.

“Open this door now, Maggie, or I swear, I’ll break it down!”

Like his niece needed a cop barreling through her door.

Sheesh, tone it down, man.

He’d had the next few weeks planned so perfectly. He was a kick-ass uncle. Maggie loved hanging out with him. Suddenly, the only ass he wanted to kick was his brother’s, for not being there to head this off.

“Come on, Mags,” Tony cajoled. “Whatever it is, I can help. And if I can’t, we’ll call your folks, and they’ll—”

“No!” The lock turned and the door was yanked open, revealing the shocking sight of his niece, her face drained of color, holding a squalling infant. Her friend’s baby, if Tony didn’t miss his guess.

“Why do you have Max?” he asked. “Is Claire—”

He’d been about to say okay, when the splashes of color marring the front of Maggie’s white T-shirt hit home.

“Oh my God, you’re bleeding,” he managed to say as the floor sank beneath him.

He backed her unresisting body toward the bed and gently pushed her and the baby down. Without taking his hand off Maggie’s shoulder, he grabbed the portable phone from a nearby table. He misdialed three times.

“Lie down. Don’t move. I’ll have an ambulance here in a few min—”

“No!” Maggie whipped the phone out of his hand and jumped to her feet. Terminating the call, she threw the receiver across the room. Life sparked back into her eyes. A touch of color warmed her cheeks. “I’m fine. It’s not my blood. It’s… It’s… I’m fine.”

“Whose blood is it, Maggie?” She couldn’t have moved so quickly if she were seriously injured. What he’d thought was fresh blood was actually dried. His panic yielded to a flurry of questions. “What the hell’s going on? Where’s Claire? Why do you have Max?”

“I…I was…” Tears filled her eyes. That strong chin that was so much like his and his brother’s began to wobble. “Please, Tony. You have to help me. Claire’s hurt…. And she made me promise to get Max to her parents in Virginia…. I can’t let Sam’s family have him…. And the…there was this guy on the floor, and…and I think he’s dead…. He…Sam shot him, and he could have come back at any minute, so I called the ambulance and…and then I ran….”

She was pacing with the crying baby now—his nineteen-year-old niece, saying things straight out of his nightmares. Tony could only stare in silence as he processed the jumbled images her words painted. Then she stopped and brought the hand not holding Max to her mouth.

“Tony, she’s hurt so bad. Claire… They shot her….”

Rousing himself into motion, he made Maggie sit on the edge of the bed again. Max’s wails were winding down, thank the heavens above. His tiny head was nestled in the crook of her neck as he whimpered. Tony left the baby there, even though his training told him Maggie should be lying down until some of her shock wore off.

Her shock?

Holy hell. He pulled her and the baby into a fierce hug, tamping down the urge to fire another string of questions his niece was in no shape to answer.

She was safe. She was okay. And by God, he was going to keep her that way.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to let anything happen to you or Max,” he promised.

As a matter of fact, he wasn’t letting her out of his sight, at least not until he got his brother back here to sort this out. He left the bed long enough to retrieve the phone from the corner.

“I’m calling Angie. She’s on duty this morning, and she’ll—”

“No!” Maggie was up again, shaking until her teeth chattered. She pointed a determined finger at him. “Call anyone, and I swear I’m out of here. No one can know I have Max. No one can know we were there. If you call Angie, she’ll have to turn the baby over to someone, most likely Sam’s family, and I promised Claire…” Maggie’s face crumpled at the mention of her friend. “I promised her I wouldn’t let that happen. Please, Tony. Please don’t call Angie. You said you’d help me. Please…”

Tony looked from the receiver to Maggie. She was gumption and brains at their brightest. And like her mother, she didn’t know how to fall apart. But at the moment, the niece who’d laid claim to his supposedly shallow heart looked every bit the vulnerable teenager she still was.

She was terrified. And though he couldn’t follow half of what she’d said, he understood enough to be scared for both her and her friend. Maggie had witnessed a shooting at the very least. It sounded like two people were injured, if not dead. At Sam Walker’s hand?

“I have to call this in, Maggie. You’re in danger, and Claire might be seriously hurt—”

“No!” She made a ridiculous attempt to take the phone away from him again. “I called 911 before I left. Angie or someone else is already there by now. Please, help me get Max away from Oakwood.”

“Away to where? Tell me what’s going—”

The doorbell’s chime cut him off.

Maggie flinched, glancing nervously over her shoulder then back at Tony.

“Ignore it,” he groused. But the bell rang again for a longer stretch. “Damn it, who—”

She grabbed his arm. “No one can know Max is here.”

“It’s not that simple, Maggie!”

More ringing sounded, over and over this time. The baby started fussing, another tantrum threatening.

“Ah, hell.” Tony ran a hand through his hair, shoved the phone at his niece and pointed to the bed. “Park your butt there, and don’t even think about moving it until I get back.”

He trudged toward the stairs.

“Tony, you won’t—”

“Sit!” he said, louder than he’d intended.

But it got the desired effect. His niece swallowed, then she sank to the edge of the bed. Her silence, the sadness and fear clinging to her as clearly as the baby in her arms, made it almost impossible for him to walk away. But whoever was at the door showed no sign of letting up.

The trek down the stairs didn’t leave him nearly enough time to piece together Maggie’s scraps of information. Insistent knocking had replaced the bell by the time he yanked the weathered front door open.

“Angie.” He blinked as the very person he’d been determined to call materialized on his welcome mat.

Relief flooded him at the sight of her sweet face. Then her harried expression, the way she gazed over his shoulder, hit him upside the head with the reality of what must have brought her there.

“Is Maggie home?” she asked at the same moment that the baby squealed upstairs. “There’s been an incident with her friend Claire.”

CHAPTER FIVE

PLEASE LET MAGGIE BE TUCKED safely in bed.

Angie hadn’t stopped repeating the simple plea the entire drive over. Dressed for the job, she’d been on her way in for duty when the traffic from the 911 call had come over her receiver. Then her cell phone had begun ringing nonstop.

She’d had two options. Head to the scene through the early morning fog, when there were already deputies en route. Or do what she should have done last night—follow her hunch that Maggie Rivers and Claire Morton were flirting with trouble, and pay a visit to the Rivers house.

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