The Firefighter's Secret Baby

CHAPTER FIVE

SAM COULD HEAR, but she couldn’t feel. She could remember, but only what was far away. What was closer, what was happening around her, made no sense.

All that made sense was that she had to be sure. She had to make him understand. He had to keep their baby safe.

“You have to believe me!” she whimpered.

Whimpered?

The woman who’d ditched Luca Gianfranco and stayed ditched for nearly two years didn’t whimper. About anything.

“Try to relax,” a soothing feminine voice said.

Then the voice belonged to a nurse wearing pink clothes that were covered in ducks.

Not the him Sam had been begging.

Not Randy.

Had he only been part of a dream? Everything was so muddled. Sam could remember feeling safe, because Randy had been there. Even though Luca would keep coming for her…

“Your baby will be here soon,” the nurse said. “The doctors want to deliver her without a C-section. They’re bringing you around enough to push, but there will be no pain.”

“My baby…”

The room swam into sharper focus. She was in an O.R. Her nurse was wearing a surgical mask. Other people moved around her.

Terrifying flashes of the accident sliced through her pounding head. She clenched her fingers against her cramping stomach.

“My baby!” It had all been real. The accident. Randy. Going into labor. Was it too late? “Is she—”

“Your little girl’s fine.” The pretty nurse smiled. “We did an ultrasound. She’s in distress, but as long as we deliver her soon, she’ll be fine. Your condition is stabilized. You’ll need a sling to protect your shoulder for a while, but somehow nothing was broken. Your head injury is minor. There are stitches, and we’ll have to monitor your concussion for a few days. But the seat belt seems to have saved you from the worst of it.”

But not her baby.

Sam wasn’t due for another two weeks.

Everything that had happened swirled through Sam like bolts of sizzling lightning that couldn’t hurt her, because they weren’t quite real. All that felt real was the man she’d been dreaming about for close to a year. A stranger who’d left her with a piece of himself. A miracle. A promise that there would be a tomorrow.

“Randy’s baby…” Sam whispered.

A moment of shock crossed the other woman’s face.

“Do you know him?” Sam asked, grappling to remember what his response had been to her revelation that he had a child on the way. A daughter who was in danger. But there was nothing there—no memory to reassure her. “You have to make him believe me. You have to tell him. Luca…Don’t let Luca hurt our baby….”

“…she’s hemorrhaging…”

“The baby’s heart rate…”

“Save her,” Sam begged. “Tell Randy he has to…”

“…can tell him yourself,” the nurse was saying. “We’ll take good care…your baby and you…”

“…fully effaced…This baby’s delivering now!”

The nurse was lifting Sam’s shoulders. She’d been right, there was no pain. Only the need to push so her daughter—Randy’s daughter—could be born. The nurse supported Sam’s back. Everything faded but the realization that the baby was coming. It still wasn’t safe. Luca couldn’t know there was a child. But—

Voices told her to push.

To push again.

Pressure.

More pressure.

Then, finally, relief, followed by a wave of loneliness no drug could numb.

“She’s beautiful.” The nurse eased Sam back.

“Is she…” Sam was so tired, but she had to know. “Is she okay? She…she isn’t crying…”

“Let the doctors take care of her,” the nurse said.

“You’re going to sleep again,” a male voice added.

“No! I want to see her. Just once…” Sam fought the touch restraining her.

“You’ll see her when you wake up,” the nurse reassured her. “You and your daughter are safe. Rest…”

“You don’t understand…” What if she didn’t wake up quickly enough? What if she didn’t wake up at all? Someone had to make Randy understand.

They’d be back.

Luca’s men.

They’d come for her. Luca would come for her baby, and Sam didn’t trust the feds to protect her daughter. A child wouldn’t be their priority. Sam’s testimony was all they cared about.

Where was Randy?

Randy had to know. He had to keep their daughter out of Luca’s clutches. And he would. Sam had sensed it the morning she’d woken in his hotel room in Savannah. Randy was the kind of man who’d stop at nothing to protect someone he cared about. She’d run from the temptation of wanting to be cared for that completely.

Now she was reaching for the dream, needing it to be real while the world faded.

“Tell Randy he has to protect our baby.” She fought the pull of the drugs. “Tell him…I’m so sorry I’ve done this to him.”

“HER RECORDS ARE SEALED, man.” Rick winced at the murderous expression that crept across Randy’s face.

“And that means, what?” Randy glanced at Emma, who was standing beside her husband. “That whatever’s going on is at a level even you can’t access?”

“It most likely means that me snooping into Robyn Nobles’s life is putting people at risk,” Rick explained. “This woman and her baby, if no one else. Someone’s got to have a pretty good reason for there being no record of her anywhere, except a note not to pursue information.”

It wasn’t the answer Randy had been hoping for. A jealous ex. An abusive husband. Someone Sam had been running from last night, and months ago, that could be stopped from causing her more trouble. This was about something far worse.

Emma took his hand and squeezed.

“What kind of danger is she in?” Chris asked. He and Charlie had joined them.

“There was a federal marshal on scene,” Rick explained. “That much I confirmed from the APD officer’s report. Which means Randy’s instincts are right—there’s reason to question the cause of the accident. Beyond that, all I know for sure is that APD brass has agreed to secure the victim’s safety until further notice.”

“A federal marshal?” Charlie asked.

“As in federal protection?” Chris added.

Randy hadn’t mentioned Dean to anyone but his sister. Now all of his siblings were staring at him, while Rick stared at the floor.

“Did she give you her full name in Savannah?” Rick asked.

“No.”

“Give you any idea where she was from? If she was married? Why she would be passing through Atlanta with South Georgia plates that trace back to a dead end?”

“I don’t know!” Randy shook off Emma’s hold. “We just…It never got that far. All I remember is that there was a northern accent. Not much of one, but it stuck out in a place like Savannah.”

And it had been sexy as hell.

“What kind of northern accent?” Rick asked. “Like New York?”

“Maybe.” Randy waited for his brother-in-law to say something else, but Rick hesitated. “Just say it. What do you think all this means?”

“With federal marshals involved? I’d guess she’s hiding from something or someone that’s coming at her from wherever she’s originally from. And the feds are interested enough in whatever she knows to keep her hidden.”

“You’re saying this woman’s been on the run since March?” Chris sputtered.

“Maybe longer.” Rick rolled his shoulders beneath his Atlanta Braves T-shirt. “Not that we’re ever going to know.”

“Why?” Charlie asked.

“Depending on what she’s offering in return for protection,” Rick said. “She might be—”

“Running for the rest of her life,” Randy finished.

The possibility of federal relocation made Sam’s disappearance from his arms that morning go down a little easier. But it also made everything he didn’t know about her situation harder to stomach. Not to mention that he might be responsible for the innocent, newborn life she’d have with her from now on.

“Excuse me, folks.” Seth Washington stepped into the lounge.

Atlanta Memorial’s chief of staff was another family friend—by way of having bonded with Emma’s husband when they’d both gotten sucked into helping an FBI deep cover agent who’d landed in Emergency. Rick crossed the room to shake the man’s hand.

“I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this.” Seth shifted his attention to Randy. “But I knew you were waiting for news about the patient you rode in with, and I didn’t want Kate to have to deliver it. We had her stabilized, but there were complications with the delivery, and—”

“The baby?” The strain in Randy’s voice made it unrecognizable to his own ears.

“A girl. She’s a week or two premature, and there were some breathing issues at first. But she’s responding well now and shouldn’t even need to stay the night in neonatal ICU. I imagine she’ll be moved to the general nursery in a matter of hours. Unfortunately, the mother’s hemorrhaging was beyond our ability to—”

“Sam…” Randy’s relief at the news about the baby choked in his throat. “She’s…”

“I’m sorry, Randy,” Seth said while Emma, Chris and Charlie stepped closer. “I’m afraid she’s gone.”

RANDY STOOD at the nursery window of Atlanta General’s pediatric wing, staring blindly at the tiny lives being nurtured inside. He didn’t even know if Sam’s baby was in there. And he had absolutely no right to ask. But the invisible pull that had lured him here had been stronger than logic.

What the hell was he doing?

“I haven’t seen you this shut down,” Emma said beside him, “since…”

“Since we lost Mom,” he finished for her. The last thing he’d felt this strongly had been grief over their mother’s death, which had come less than a year after she’d killed their father—to keep the bastard from ever threatening her kids again. “Mom gave up her freedom and then her life to protect us.”

“It sounds like your Sam was fighting just as hard to protect her baby.”

His Sam.

“You can’t save everyone,” Emma insisted gently.

No one had tried to persuade him to leave the hospital. His brothers had let him be, walking away with parting slaps of support on Randy’s shoulder. Emma had wanted to talk with Seth a little more. And Randy had somehow ended up at the nursery.

Of course Emma had found him there. When she’d been barely more than a teenager herself, she’d fought to get Randy and his brothers back from the different foster homes they’d been scattered to. No way was his big sister leaving Randy alone to face this, even if no one could tell them exactly what this was.

“She wasn’t just another victim,” he said, finally verbalizing the ache that had been gnawing at him since Seth’s news. “She…”

“Was someone you knew for less than a day! Stop torturing yourself over something that isn’t your responsibility.”

If only it were that simple.

He wished to God it was that simple.

“She begged me to protect her daughter.” Kate had relayed the message that Sam had still been terrified in the delivery room. Asking for Randy by name and insisting he had to save their baby from some unseen evil that was closing in. “She said they were in danger.”

“She was in shock. Look around you.” Emma gestured at the early-morning calm of the hallway. “Does it look like anyone thinks a baby’s in danger? Where is that marshal you said was on scene? Why hasn’t Seth heard anything about any of this? He runs this place. If there was really a problem—”

“Sam said her little girl is mine.” It was the only reality that mattered right now. “I don’t know which I want to be less true—that a baby might be alone and in danger because I couldn’t save her mother, or that I might be the father of an infant who has no one else in the world to look after her but me.”

“You don’t know that her baby is alone now.”

“No. But I know that Sam didn’t want someone named Luca to get anywhere near the child.”

“Then what are you doing just standing here, staring off into space?” Emma’s smack on his shoulder wasn’t nearly as encouraging as their brothers’ had been. “You’ve harassed Kate and me to get people to pull strings for you and find out who this woman is. That didn’t pan out, but you’re clearly not ready to move on. If you think you should have a say in what happens to her baby, if you feel obligated to step in, then do what you have to do to make that happen.”

Randy closed his eyes, hating the growing impulse to walk away before he grew even more attached.

“And if a paternity test turns out to be positive?” he asked.

Protect her, Randy.

Don’t let him destroy our child, too…

“Then you and I will be taking your beautiful daughter home as soon as her doctors will let us.” Emma’s features turned somber, as if she could sense how much he was mourning Sam, on top of his confusion about his responsibility to her child.

Emma more than anyone else understood Randy’s inability to process that kind of connection to another person. She’d almost lost Rick over her own battle with the same fear. Then her expression grew determined.

“Man up, Montgomery,” she said. “It’s time to crack that hero’s heart of yours open and join the rest of us in the emotional uncertainty we like to call reality.”

“LUCA’S GOING TO FIND ME!” Sam struggled to sit up in her hospital bed, shrugging off the confusion that had clouded her mind since she woke.

Every move she made hurt. The pain meds weren’t making a dent. Not that it mattered. If she didn’t fight, she’d die. She hadn’t remembered much yet, but one thing was certain—she’d never felt in more danger. And that was saying something.

She looked wildly around the tiny room where they’d hidden her on Atlanta Memorial’s psychiatric lockdown ward. Her IV line pulled as she crossed her arms. The needle feeding the vein in the back of her hand pinched.

What was she doing in Atlanta? She was supposed to be hiding in a tiny house on the rural outskirts of Macon. She’d been in a car accident, that much she knew. But she could only remember the sounds of crashing vehicles, an oppressing sense of panic, then nothing until she’d woken in this bare room.

How long had she been unconscious?

How long had it taken her protection detail to find her?

“What’s going on?” she asked for the third time.

“You’re clear,” Max Dean reassured her, still giving no real answers. “Take it easy so your mind can sort the rest out. The doctors don’t want you to push it right away.”

Push it?

There was something she should be remembering. Something terrible. Life or death.

“I’m clear? Of Luca?” Luca she could remember. No one was ever clear of him. Sam laughed, and her head nearly exploded. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

The doctor who’d been there when Sam regained consciousness a few minutes ago had said she’d be sore for several days, but none of her injuries were life-threatening. It was a miracle, he’d added, after her blood pressure had bottomed out. They almost hadn’t gotten her back. But there was no reason to worry about the short-term memory loss. If she took it easy, the concussion would ease and she’d recover everything before long.

Sam rubbed her temple, careful to avoid the gash that had been stitched back together. The few sketchy details her marshal had given her weren’t enough. Not nearly enough.

“Your death ends this,” Max explained. “Whoever looks will find evidence that your injuries were fatal. It’s a fact. All you have to do now is relax until you’re ready to remember the rest.”

“The rest?”

Max was always there to clean up whatever mess she made of her protection. He even looked a little relieved to see her alive—and maybe not just because losing her would have damaged his spotless record at the U.S. Marshals Service. But he was also watching her as if he expected her to fall apart at any second.

If she was “clear” and his team had taken care of everything, why was he so worried still?

“It’s only been an hour since they treated you,” he hedged. “Give it time.”

“But I’m…You’re telling everyone I’m dead. How…”

“The O.R. staff was interviewed. The hospital powers that be are on board. Robyn Nobles is dead. Catastrophic injuries incurred during a fatal hit-and-run. Any record to the contrary, here or with the fire and rescue team, will be dealt with. My team’s already on it. Stop worrying. Stop running. Let me and my team do our jobs, Sam.”

Running…

Sam had been driving. Someone had been chasing her. And…she’d been in pain, even before she crashed into the guardrail, then into another car. And in the O.R…. She’d been screaming in pain that hadn’t been from her injuries. There’d been…

A delivery nurse?

Sam’s hands flew to her now-soft belly.

“My baby!” A nurse had told Sam everything would be okay. And Sam had said…What? “I had my baby? But…Where is she? Why can’t I remember?”

“You will,” Max assured her. “All that’s important now is that you’re okay, and so is the baby. I asked the doctor not to tell you anything—”

“You what!”

“Worrying you until you were ready wasn’t going to accomplish anything. You need to rest and recover, Sam, so we can get you moving. My people are taking care of your daughter’s cover story. The records will show that she died, too. There will be another report that an unnamed child was left outside the E.R. tonight. She’ll be admitted to the pediatric unit, once she’s released from ICU.”

“ICU!” Sam’s thoughts wouldn’t stay focused. They kept tangling all over themselves and Max’s half truths and the huge hole still in her memory.

How could she have forgotten she’d delivered her daughter? She couldn’t remember having her. Holding her. Making sure she was okay.

“You said she’s fine,” Sam said. “Then why is she in ICU? What’s wrong?”

“She’s a little premature, and they’re taking precautions because of the accident, nothing more. For all I know, they’ve already moved her. One of my deputies is keeping an eye on the situation, but there’s no reason to think anyone will be looking for your child. There’s nothing to trace her to you. She’ll be safe in foster care until—”

“Until someone who saw me deliver her says the wrong thing to the wrong people and…”

And what?

There was more, but her mind wouldn’t grab hold of it.

Sam closed her eyes. Tried to think. Warning bells clamored over everything. What wasn’t Max telling her? What hadn’t she told him?