The Pregnant Witness

* * *

BLAINE SHOULD HAVE been in hot pursuit of the robber. He should have been firing shots and taking him down in the parking lot. Instead he was standing over a pregnant woman, waiting for her to regain consciousness. And as he waited, he drew in some deep breaths—hoping to ease the tightness in his chest.

The intern, who had come running, along with the security guards, when Blaine had yelled for medical help, assured him that she was fine. She and her baby were fine. She must have just hyperventilated. And with someone shooting at her, it was understandable—or so the intern had thought.

Blaine wasn’t sure what to think. Had she really passed out? Or had she only staged a diversion so the robber could get away from him and those guards that nurse Nyla had called to the locker room?

But then, if Maggie was an accomplice, why had she fought the man so hard? Why had she looked so terrified?

His older sisters had pulled off drama well in their teens. They’d worked their parents to get what they wanted, so he’d seen some pretty good actresses work their manipulations up close and personal. But if Maggie Jenkins had been acting in the locker room, she surpassed his sisters.

“Who are you really, Maggie Jenkins?” he wondered aloud. Innocent victim or criminal mastermind?

Her thick, dark lashes fluttered against her cheeks, as if she’d heard him and his words had roused her to consciousness. She blinked and stared up at him, looking as dazed and shocked as she had when she’d fallen against the lockers.

When he’d inadvertently knocked her against them. A pang of guilt had him flinching, and he fisted his hands to keep them from reaching for her belly to check on the baby. It had been real to him even before he’d seen the picture, but now it was even more real.

“The doctor said you and your baby are not hurt,” he assured her. And himself.

“Are you okay?” she asked, and her brown eyes softened with concern.

He shrugged off her worry. “I’m fine.”

He would probably have a bruise where the bench had clipped his shoulder, but his physical well-being was the least of his concerns right now.

She stared up at him, her smooth brow furrowing slightly, as if she doubted his words. “Really?”

No. He was upset about Sarge. And he was frustrated as hell that he’d lost one of the leads to Sarge’s killer—or maybe the actual killer himself—when the robber had run out the employee exit to the parking lot. But Blaine had another lead—one he didn’t intend to let out of his sight.

“I’m worried about you,” he admitted. For so many reasons...

She tensed and protectively splayed her hands over her belly. “You said the baby isn’t hurt.”

“The baby is fine,” he assured her. “And so are you.”

She stared up at him again, this time full of doubt.

So he added, “For now.”

Despite the blanket covering her, she shivered at his foreboding tone.

“You’re obviously in danger,” he said, “since one of the robbers risked coming here to abduct you from the ER.” Or had she called him? Had she wanted to be picked up before Blaine could question her further?

He needed to take her down to the Bureau, or at least the closest police department for an interrogation. But if he started treating her like a suspect, she might react like one and clam up or lawyer up. Maybe it was better if he let her continue to play the victim...

But her eyes—those big, dark eyes—didn’t fill with tears this time. Instead her gaze hardened and she clenched her delicate jaw. Angrily she asked, “Why won’t they leave me alone?”

“I’m not sure why you were tracked down at the hospital today,” he replied.

Could it have been another coincidence? Could the robber have been here to get treatment for the gunshot wound Blaine had inflicted and then stumbled upon her?

But the robber hadn’t seemed injured—especially since he’d had the strength to hurl the bench with such force at Blaine. And he’d been fighting with Maggie before that. Maybe he wasn’t the injured robber, but had been bringing that one for treatment...

But where was that person?

He’d already lost so much blood in the van.

“Why did one of them come here?” she asked—the same question Blaine had been asking himself. “What do they want with me?”

That was another question Blaine had been asking himself. “Maybe you saw or heard something back at the bank,” he suggested, “something that might give away the identity of one of them?”

She shook her head. “I couldn’t see any of their faces. They wore those horrible masks...” And she shuddered.

“What about their voices?”

“Only one of them spoke at the bank,” she said, “and I didn’t recognize his voice.”

Did the others not speak because she would have recognized one of their voices? And now he wondered about the father of her baby...

But wouldn’t she have recognized him despite the disguise? Wouldn’t she have recognized his build, his walk, any of his mannerisms? Or maybe she had but wasn’t about to implicate him and possibly herself.

Blaine waited, hoping that she would voluntarily admit to having been robbed before. But if she’d been about to confess to anything, she was interrupted when the hospital security chief approached.

The chief was a woman—probably in her fifties, with short gray hair and a no-nonsense attitude. Blaine had been impressed when he’d spoken with her earlier when she’d joined her security guards in the locker room. She was furious that someone had brought a gun into the hospital and nearly abducted one of the patients.

“Agent Campbell,” Mrs. Wright said. “As you requested, I have all the footage pulled up from the security cameras.”

“Thank you,” he said. “That was fast.” Hopefully one of those cameras had caught the robber without his hideous disguise. But Blaine hesitated again.

“The security room is this way,” Mrs. Wright said, making a gesture for him to follow her from the emergency department.

But he didn’t want to leave Maggie Jenkins alone and unprotected. “Do you have a guard that you can post here with Ms. Jenkins?”

Mrs. Wright nodded. “Of course. The police are here now, too. Sergeant Torreson is waiting in the security room to meet with you.”

He needed Sergeant Torreson posted by Maggie Jenkins’s bed, so that nobody could get to her. And so that she couldn’t get away before she finally and truthfully answered all his questions. “Is he the only officer?”

Because he really didn’t want to use one of the security guards—not when the zombie robber had to either be an employee or be close friends with an employee. He couldn’t trust anyone who worked for the hospital. Not a doctor, nurse or even a security guard...

Mrs. Wright gestured to where a young policeman stood near the nurse who’d brought Blaine back to the employee locker room. He wasn’t sure if the man was interrogating or flirting with her, so he waved him over to Maggie’s bedside. “I’m Agent Campbell.”

“Yes, sir,” the young man replied. “We’re aware you’re the FBI special agent in charge of the investigation into the bank robberies.”

Blaine studied the kid’s face, looking for the familiar signs of resentment from local law enforcement. But he detected nothing but respect. The tightness in his chest eased slightly. He had backup, and given how relentless the bank robbers were, he needed it.

Of course, he could have called in more agents. Immediately after the robbery, he’d checked in, and the Bureau chief had offered him more FBI resources. But Blaine had thought the bank robbers gone—the immediate threat over—until he’d come to the hospital and nearly lost the witness. But was Maggie a witness or an accomplice?

“Officer, this is Maggie Jenkins, the woman who was nearly abducted,” he introduced them. “I need you posted here to protect her until I come back.”

“I’ll be fine,” Maggie said. “I’ll be safe.” But her hands trembled as she splayed them across her belly again. She was either afraid or nervous. “I’ll be safe,” she repeated, as if trying to convince herself.

“We can’t be certain of that,” Blaine said. After all, the robbers kept returning...for her.

She slowly nodded in agreement, and tears welled now in her dark eyes. The tightness returned to his chest. But, growing up with three older and very dramatic sisters, he should have been immune to tears—especially since Maggie actually looked more frustrated than sad. But something about the young woman affected him and brought out his protective instincts.

But maybe the person he needed to protect when it came to Maggie Jenkins was himself.

“Be vigilant,” Blaine advised the young officer. “For some reason these guys keep coming after her.” And he intended to find out that reason. But he suspected he could learn more from the footage than he could Maggie Jenkins. She obviously wasn’t being forthcoming with him.

So he headed to the surveillance room. But his mind wasn’t on the footage he watched or on the police sergeant’s questions, either. The hospital was a busy one—with so many people coming and going that it wouldn’t be easy to determine which one might have walked in as himself and emerged as a zombie robber.

That was the only footage in which he could positively identify the person—as he burst through the back door and ran across the employee parking lot. But he kept the disguise on even as he jumped into an idling vehicle.

The sergeant cursed. “These guys—with those damn silly Halloween masks—have hit two banks in my jurisdiction.”

As the vehicle, another van, turned, the driver came into view of the camera. But they must have known that camera would be there because the driver wore one of those damn masks, too.

“I want you to review your employees,” Blaine told the hospital security chief. “Find out who wasn’t working today.”

“The hospital has hundreds of full-and part-time employees,” Mrs. Wright said. “That’ll take some time.”

“Your employees,” Blaine said. “I want you to focus on the security staff.” He was really glad that he hadn’t left Maggie Jenkins in the protection of one of the hospital guards.

“You think it’s one of my people?” Mrs. Wright asked—with all the resentment he usually confronted with local law enforcement.

He pointed toward the masked men. “They knew where the cameras are—they knew how to get a gun in and out. They were familiar with employee-only areas of the hospital.”

“But...” The woman’s argument sputtered out as she grimly accepted that he was right.

Blaine turned toward the police officer. “I’d like you to bring in more officers, Sergeant. And check out anyone on that footage who walked in carrying a bag or a suitcase—anything big enough to carry that disguise and a weapon.”

The woman sighed. “There is a metal detector at the front door.”

Blaine was well aware of that—since he’d had to have a security guard wave him through it. But he’d wanted the security chief to come on her own to the same realization that he had. It had to be one of her people. But that didn’t mean another robber hadn’t come through the front door—an injured one.

“It’ll still take me some time,” she said. “We have three shifts, and since we have some trouble with gangs in this area, we have several guards on staff.”

“Check out ex-staff, too,” Blaine suggested.

“I’ll help you,” the sergeant offered.

He wanted the robbers, as well. But he didn’t want them as badly as Blaine did. One of them had killed his friend and former mentor. Blaine couldn’t let them get away with that—with ending what should have been Sarge’s golden years way too soon.

“I have one of your officers helping me now,” Blaine told the sergeant. “He’s guarding the hostage for me.”

The sergeant winced. “That kid’s a trainee and easily distracted.”

Blaine cursed and rushed out of the security room. He had wasted too much time on footage that had revealed no clues when he should have been interrogating his only concrete lead. But when he returned to the emergency department, he found the young officer flirting with the nurse once again.

And he found the bed where he’d left Maggie Jenkins empty. She was gone. Either she’d been grabbed again, or she’d escaped...

Chapter Five

Even though they had left the hospital a while ago, Special Agent Campbell had yet to speak to her. He only spared her a glare as he drove. The man was furious with her. A muscle twitched along his jaw, and his gaze was hot and hard. Maggie found his anger nearly as intimidating as his devastating good looks. But she couldn’t understand why he was mad at her. Unless...

His stare moved off her to focus on the road again. He hadn’t said where he was taking her. She had foolishly just assumed it would be to her apartment. Now she wasn’t so certain...

Her wrists were bare; he hadn’t cuffed her. She sat in the passenger’s seat next to him—not in the back. But was he arresting her?

“Do you think I’m involved in the robberies?” she asked. “Is that why you were so upset when you couldn’t find me at the hospital?”

That muscle twitched in his cheek again. “When you were gone, I assumed the worst.”

The worst to her would have been one of the robbers in the creepy zombie mask returning. But she wasn’t convinced that Agent Campbell thought the same.

“Is that really what you thought?” she asked. “That one of them had come back for me? Or had you thought that I’d taken off on my own?”

“I thought you were gone,” he said, which didn’t really answer her question. “And I had left that young officer to protect you...”

“I was only using the restroom,” she reminded him. “And he couldn’t go into the ladies’ with me.” She had stepped out of the room to raised voices in the ER. For a moment she’d feared that one of the robbers had returned...until she’d recognized the voices.

At first she had been touched that Agent Campbell had been concerned about her. But he hadn’t been relieved that she was okay; he had stayed angry. Even after checking her out of the hospital and seeing her safely to his vehicle, he was still angry.

“You do suspect that I’m involved in the robberies,” she said, answering her own question.

“Robberies?” he queried, his tone guarded. But then, everything about Special Agent Blaine Campbell was guarded and hard to read—except for the grief he’d felt over Sarge’s death. It had been easy to see his pain.

“They’ve robbed more than one bank,” she said. “But you know that...” Or the FBI wouldn’t have taken over the case. She suspected he was also aware of something else, too. “You probably know that they robbed the other branch of this bank where I previously worked.”

“And then they followed you to the bank where you’re working now...” His tone was less guarded now and more suspicious.

Of her?

Her stomach pitched. She hadn’t had morning sickness even in her first trimester, so that wasn’t the problem. It was nerves. He obviously did suspect that she was involved in the robberies.

“They have robbed a lot of other banks that I haven’t worked at,” she pointed out.

“How do you know that?” he asked, as if she had somehow slipped up and implicated herself. “How do you know how many other banks have been robbed?”

“From the news,” she said. “They’ve even made national broadcasts. And our corporate headquarters sends out email warnings about robberies at other branches or other banks in the area. So it was just a coincidence that they hit both banks where I’ve worked.”

A horrible coincidence—that was what she’d been trying to tell herself since the robbers, in those grotesque disguises, had burst through the doors of the bank earlier that afternoon.

“They have robbed other banks,” he agreed. “But you’re the only hostage they’ve tried taking. They didn’t abduct anyone from any other bank.”

She shuddered. “That was just today...” They hadn’t tried to take her last time; they’d only had her open the security door to the alley. Then they’d left.

“So what was different about today?” he asked.

“You.” He was the first thing that came to mind. Actually, since he’d saved her from being kidnapped the first time, Special Agent Blaine Campbell—with his golden-blond hair and intense green eyes—hadn’t left her mind. Then he’d saved her a second time...

That muscle twitched again in his cheek, which was beginning to grow dark with stubble a few shades darker than his blond hair. “I wasn’t the only thing different about today.”

She uttered a ragged sigh and blinked back the tears that threatened as she remembered what else had been different. “They killed Sarge.”

“Until today they hadn’t killed anyone,” he said. “Do you know what that means?”

She shook her head. She didn’t know how a person could take another life for any reason. That was why she hadn’t been able to understand Andy’s insistence on joining the military. He had always been so sensitive. He had never even hunted and had been inconsolable when he’d accidentally struck and killed a deer with his truck.

Agent Campbell answered his own question, his voice threatening. “It means that whoever has been helping them will face murder charges, as well.”

So he didn’t think she was only a thief; he thought she was a killer, too. Anger coursed through her. She was the one who was mad now.

“Sarge was my friend,” she said. “And what today means to me is that I lost a friend. I thought it meant the same to you. I thought you knew him and cared about him.”

His teeth sank into his lower lip and he nodded. “That’s why I want to find out who killed him and bring them to justice. All of them.”

Her anger cooled as she realized she had no right to it. Agent Campbell was only doing his job, and not just because it was his job but because he’d cared about Sarge. And if she were him, she might have suspected her, too. She had been at the scene of two robberies.

She reached across the console and touched his hand. But it tensed beneath hers, tightening around the steering wheel. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I understand that you have to question me. I just wish I could be more help for your investigation. I really don’t have any idea who the robbers are.”

He tugged his hand from beneath hers and reached for the shifter, putting the car in Park after pulling into a space in the parking lot of her apartment complex.

She breathed a soft sigh of relief. He hadn’t arrested her after all. He had actually brought her home. But she wasn’t foolish enough to think that he no longer suspected her of being involved.

* * *

WAS HE BEING a fool? Blaine silently asked himself. Probably.

He should have taken her down to the Bureau or a local police department for questioning. But she was already trembling with exhaustion and dark circles rimmed her dark eyes. He wasn’t heartless, but he hoped she wasn’t playing him.

Maggie Jenkins had a sincerity and vulnerability that made him want to believe her and to believe that she was just an innocent victim.

Like Sarge...

He flinched over the loss of his friend. Instead of dealing with that death, he’d been busy trying to prevent another—to make sure that Maggie Jenkins stayed safe. He’d believed that was what Sarge had wanted. But what if his old friend had been trying to tell him something else about the assistant bank manager?

That she wasn’t just involved in the robberies but maybe that she’d plotted them?

Her fingers trembled as she fumbled with the seat belt. Was she exhausted or was she nervous that he was questioning her? Or nervous that he’d brought her here?

He turned off the car, opened his door and hurried around the car to open hers. She was still having trouble with the seat belt, so he reached across her, brushed her fingers aside and undid the clasp. But now he was too close to her, too close to the curly hair that tumbled around her shoulders, to the big brown eyes staring up at him—to the full breasts that pushed against the thin material of her blouse. He’d never considered a pregnant woman sexy...until now. Until Maggie Jenkins...

Something shifted beneath his arm, which was pressed to her belly, as if her baby was kicking him for the thoughts he was entertaining. He jerked back and stepped away from the car. She slid her legs out first. Since she’d lost her shoe earlier, she wore slippers from the hospital. But she didn’t need to wear heels for her legs to look long and sexy.

Remembering how his sisters had struggled to get out of cars while they were pregnant, he reached out to help her. She clutched his hand but barely applied any pressure to pull herself up. And then she was standing right in front of him, so close that her breasts nearly brushed against his chest.

She tugged her hand free of his, and a bright pink color flushed her face. “I—I don’t have my purse,” she said. “I don’t have my keys to get inside.”

“You live alone?”

“Now I do,” she replied. “But I can get an extra key from my super.” She glanced up to the darkening sky. “If he’s still awake...”

“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?”