Protecting Her Child

THREE

After everything that had happened, Meredith’s internal radar was set on high. She glanced over her shoulder to ensure that no one new had entered the bank before she counted the money and stepped away from the teller. A month’s wages for teaching classes at the quilt shop wouldn’t take her far, but at least she had some cash.

Had they found her because she’d used her credit card? She’d tried to be careful, but the prenatal vitamins and the fresh fruits and vegetables she ate to protect her baby’s health cost more than red beans and rice. Last week, she’d been forced to charge her groceries. The steel-gray pickup had appeared on her street a few days later.

Coincidence? Maybe, but she wouldn’t risk charging anything again. At least until she ran out of money.

What about the guy who had chased after her today? Too many unfamiliar people were appearing in her life. Life-threatening complications that sent her nerve endings into alert mode.

Her immediate need was to get as far from Refuge Bay as possible. Find a safe place to hole up, then a job and an obstetrician.

Thankfully, she’d escaped from the bungalow in time. The last two days spent living out of her car made her overdue for a hot shower and a good meal.

She shoved the bills into her purse, her thoughts once again on the guy she’d seen earlier.

An all-American type with his dark polo shirt, khaki slacks and short hair. Maybe a reporter? She hadn’t spilled anything to the police, and she certainly wouldn’t divulge information to a stringer looking for a story. Not that she had much to tell.

Peering through the bank’s thick glass doors, she glanced up and down the street, searching for a pickup with an extended cab and tinted windows.

Two minivans drove by. Soccer moms with their brood of kids. Nothing to fear.

Meredith swallowed the wad of anxiety that seemed perpetually lodged in her throat, pushed open the door and stepped into the humid outdoors. The briny smell of the sea hung in the early spring air.

Regret filtered past her with the breeze. She’d miss the ocean when she left Refuge Bay, but she wouldn’t miss the nervous apprehension that continually bubbled up, causing her chest to burn and her head to pound.

Just as long as the stress didn’t affect the baby. Bless this child, dear Lord. Let nothing harm the precious gift You’ve given me.

Purse draped over her shoulder, she rubbed her hand protectively over her belly as she rounded the corner and nearly collided headlong into the guy who had chased her earlier.

She did a hasty about-face, ready to run back to the bank.

He grabbed her arm. Twisting, she tried to break free.

“Ma’am, please. I won’t hurt you. I work in an Atlanta medical lab. My name’s Pete Worth.”

She glanced down at the fingers wrapped around her arm.

He relaxed his grasp and dropped his hand. “Please, don’t run away.”

Raising her gaze, she noted concern in his dark brown eyes.

“What do you want?” she demanded, keeping her shoulders back, her chin jutting forward. No need to cut him any slack.

He drew a business card from his pocket. “Information about a woman named Dixie Collins.”

She took a step back. Collins? “I…I don’t know anyone named Dixie.”

The lab guy crooked a brow and leaned in closer. He raised a finger to her eye. “You’ve got a little brown dot in your iris.”

The mark she’d had since birth. Her adoptive father called it the devil’s curse. Not what a child needed to hear.

“Look, I don’t have time for this,” she said with a huff.

He held up his hand. “Sam Collins and his wife Hazel adopted a baby twenty-four years ago.”

Meredith’s world shifted. Vertigo or lack of food, but for half a second, everything swirled around her.

“The infant was born on November sixteenth.” He stepped closer. “The Collins family lived in Augusta, Georgia, at the time. Now a woman named Dixie claims she’s the adopted daughter.”

Questions flew through her mind, not that she’d give them voice.

“I’m helping Eve Townsend, the birth mother, find her rightful heir.” He stared at her, waiting for a reply.

Meredith swallowed, trying to form a response. “Seems…seems to me someone who gave her child up for adoption wouldn’t want to revisit the past,” she managed to stammer.

“Unless the woman’s dying.”

His words hit Meredith hard. “Dying?”

Pete looked past her down the street. “Is there someplace we can talk? A coffee shop? Or the diner? I’ll buy you lunch.”

She shook her head. Much as she wanted to believe the man with the even gaze and the calming voice, she’d learned things weren’t always as they seemed.

She took the offered card. “I need to go.”

Frustration washed over his face. “Eve has the same mark on the iris of her eye, which you evidently inherited from your biological mother. She also has a fatal genetic condition that could have been passed on as well.” He glanced at Meredith’s belly. “You need to be tested, for your baby’s sake.”

She shook her head, not ready to absorb what he was saying. Every action and reaction she’d had in the last seven months had been to protect her child.

Now a stranger she didn’t know tells her about a woman to whom she may be related, and a disease that could adversely affect the precious life growing within her.

Her husband had been murdered. The men who’d killed him were after her, and this guy wanted to compound the situation?

For all she knew, he could be working with the thugs. Right now, she couldn’t trust her instincts, and the last thing she needed was another problem to weigh her down.

Meredith took another step back.

“Wait. I didn’t mean to scare you,” he insisted.

She turned, needing space and time to process everything he’d just thrown her way.

“I’m staying at the Lodge. Think it over and we can meet later.”

Meredith dashed around the corner and stumbled into the alleyway on the far side of the bank.

She wasn’t ready to trust anyone. Certainly not the police, who hadn’t believed her when she was a child and had questioned her more than she felt necessary after her husband’s death. Had they thought she was somehow involved?

Her hand brushed over the rough brick wall. She needed support. Her world was in chaos and shifting far too quickly out of control.

Two months before delivery wasn’t the time to be thrown off track because of a woman who had a deathbed wish to right a mistake she’d made twenty-four years ago.

Pete had mentioned Atlanta, so Meredith wouldn’t head west. Charleston and Hilton Head were up the coast. Maybe the Carolinas would offer a safe haven.

She found her car and fell into the front seat. For a moment, she stared at the business card.

Who was she kidding? She had no place to go and no one to help her. If things didn’t change soon, her child would be born into a life on the run.

She needed to know more about the disease that could affect her baby.

The way she looked at it, she had two options. Hit the road to nowhere or find out what Pete Worth had to say.

Pete sat on the deck and watched the boat dock at the neighboring marina. Gulls cawed overhead as waves lapped against the side of the fishing vessel. The day’s catch must have been good the way the birds swooped low over the deck, begging for scraps of fish.

The setting sun cast the sky in shades of pink and blue like a patchwork quilt. Something Eve might create with her tiny stitches and pieced fabric.

Or Meredith.

The brown pigment on her left eye was identical to Eve’s. Seems Dixie Collins—whoever she was—had led him to Eve’s long-lost daughter.

He doubted that Meredith knew about the vast wealth that would fall into her lap if she and Eve reconnected. Unless Dixie or the boyfriend had told her.

Although that seemed unlikely, since Dixie was trying to pass herself off as the legitimate heir.

Nice gal, huh? She needed a lesson in honesty and integrity and the worth of a person’s word.

The shopkeeper had mentioned a Latino who was looking for Meredith. Could he be in cahoots with Dixie and her boyfriend?

Pete needed more information to take back to Eve. Surely, she wouldn’t fall into the trap of believing the blond impostor was her child?

Not if Pete could set her straight.

He glanced at his BlackBerry on the glass tabletop. All afternoon, he’d waited for its insistent chirp, hoping Meredith would call.

After she’d scurried off earlier, he’d driven back to her bungalow in hopes that she might return home. He’d go there again tomorrow, just in case. Hopefully, she wasn’t on I-95 heading north…or south.

His last recourse was to talk to the police. Not that he wanted to stir up trouble for Meredith, but Eve needed to know the truth.

The ocean scene soothed his unease. Far out at sea, a trawler moved along the horizon.

His BlackBerry rang, breaking the serenity.

Raising it to his ear, he heard Meredith’s voice. “Go south out of Refuge Bay for eight miles and take the left fork in the road. At the third stoplight, turn left again and then right at the water’s edge. You’ll see the Dock House Restaurant straight ahead. I’ll meet you there.”

“Meredith—”

The phone disconnected.

Relieved that she’d called, Pete hustled to his car and followed her directions.

He found the modest wooden building, weather-worn and in need of repair. Inside, the place seemed clean and the waitress welcoming. He asked for a booth in the corner with a view of the water and the door.

Pete ordered a cola, which the waitress refilled twice and downed a fish sandwich and fries fast enough to leave his stomach burning with indigestion. An hour later, he paid his bill, left the waitress a sizable tip and headed back to his car, annoyed at being stood up.

As he climbed into his Jeep, he hit the RECEIVED file on his BlackBerry, highlighted the most recent incoming number and punched the green CALL button.

A gravelly male voice answered after the fourth ring. “Lloyd’s Laundry.”

Meredith hadn’t used her own phone to call him with directions to this waterfront eatery. Instead, she’d stopped at a Laundromat and placed the call from there, on a landline, like a woman used to covering her tracks.

“Someone phoned me earlier from this number,” Pete explained. “Have you seen a woman with black hair, about five-five?”

“I’m just washing my clothes, buddy. Haven’t seen anyone tonight except a pregnant gal when I first arrived. She left about an hour ago.”

Of course, she’d moved on. If he were lucky, she’d call again.

And if not?

He’d be back to square one.

Frustrated with his luck—or lack of it—Pete started the ignition and turned onto the road leading back to Refuge Bay.

Meredith’s phone call had sent him out of town. For what reason? To give her time to break into his room and rummage through his belongings?

Not that she looked like a con artist, but still…

She was carrying Eve’s grandchild. Was that skewing his common sense?

Meredith watched Pete pull his Jeep into the motel parking lot, turn off the ignition and step onto the pavement. Hopefully, he wouldn’t see her hiding in the shadows.

He studied the surrounding area of tall pines, then locked his car and headed for his room.

Meredith waited ten minutes. The quiet fishing town folded up by nine o’clock this early in spring. The hum of a car engine would announce someone’s arrival along the two-lane road that led to the Lodge. All she heard were waves slapping against the beach.

Cautiously, she edged around the side of the building and picked her way down a path through the sea oats that led to the beach. Once her shoes sank into the soft sand, she stopped and looked back at the motel. A long common deck area and pool stretched in front of the row of rooms. Most sat empty.

A light glowed in Pete’s window. She’d left the lamp on, as she’d found it earlier when she’d searched the room, being careful to put everything back in its place. Not that he had brought much with him to Refuge Bay, only a change of clothes and some toilet articles stuck in a zippered case marked with the Magnolia Medical logo.

A phone call to the lab confirmed that he worked there, although the receptionist had declined to provide any additional information, and Meredith hadn’t left a message when she’d been connected to his voice mail.

At least she knew that part of his story was true. He worked at Magnolia Medical.

She glanced once again at the weathered facade of the old Lodge. The sliding-glass door that led to the deck was open, and Pete stood in the doorway. Peering at him from the shadows, Meredith wondered why this man had stumbled into her life, especially so close on the heels of her recent middle-of-the-night encounter with the two guys in the pickup.

Was Pete just a nice guy trying to right her birth mother’s past wrong? Or was his lab persona a ruse to trick her into letting down her guard?

Her first priority was her baby. She needed the information Pete promised to provide about a disease that could threaten the fragile life growing within her.

With a heavy sigh, Meredith pulled her cell from her purse, tapped in the number from Pete’s business card and pushed the green button.

“Meet me on the beach,” she said when he answered her call.

God willing, in the next few minutes, she’d find out about the mother she’d never known and the disease they both might carry.

Most important, she would learn if that legacy had been passed on to her child.

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