The Runaway Daughter

Why wouldn’t they pick up!

“911 Emergency,” a calm, feminine voice finally answered.

“Please,” Maggie begged through her chattering teeth. “Please… People have been shot. S-Send an ambulance.”

She recited the apartment’s location as she glanced back to the bedroom. The baby’s cries had reached ear-splitting decibels.

“And the names of the victims?” the operator asked.

“What?” Maggie stared at the clearly dead stranger on the living room’s shabby beige carpet.

Marcus.

Sam had called him Marcus, then he’d shot him. And one of the men had shot Claire.

“The victims,” the woman prompted. “I need their names.”

Get Max out of here… Not safe…Sam can’t know you were here…

“Their names?” Maggie repeated.

“Yes, names.” Suspicion crept into the woman’s voice. “Why don’t we start with yours. Is that your baby I hear crying?”

Protect him for me, Maggie…. Get Max out of here…. To my parents…like you promised.

“Miss? The paramedics are on their way. Please give me your name. How did the shootings occur?”

Maggie slammed the phone onto its receiver. Fought not to run screaming out of the apartment. She had to stay and make sure Claire was okay. She should wait for her dad’s deputies to get there.

But if she did, they’d take Max away for sure.

Protect him for me, Maggie….

She stumbled to the bedroom and found Claire still unconscious, though she was breathing. Baby Max was beside himself, demanding to be picked up. She grabbed him and knelt beside her friend.

“Claire, the ambulance is on its way.” Maggie jiggled the baby, scared out of her mind, but trying not to sound it. “Claire, can you hear me?”

No response came, only Max’s whimpers.

God, please don’t let my friend die.

This was all her fault. None of this would have happened if she’d talked to Angie, or her parents or somebody yesterday.

Get Max out of here….

She didn’t dare. Running with the baby was stupid. But she’d promised…. Once the paramedics and her dad’s deputies got there, would they really turn Max over to his local family?

Sam’s family.

Tears streaming down her face, she pulled herself together and up off the floor. Forget how sick she felt. Forget how much she wanted to hold her friend close and start sobbing right along with the baby.

Don’t be a coward, Maggie.

Don’t just stand there. Move!

Shaking, she kissed Claire’s forehead and said another quick prayer she was terrified was too little, too late. Then she did the scariest thing she’d ever done in her life.

She ran.

CHAPTER FOUR

SPENDING HIS SATURDAY OFF doing what he thought any self-respecting, stand-in parent should be doing, Tony pulled a fresh batch of laundry from the dryer. With classic rock blaring from the radio on the shelf behind the washer, he breathed in the scent of detergent and home, and shoved aside thoughts of his family’s imminent move to New York.

Last night’s dinner had been great.

It was all great.

So put Eric’s move out of your mind, man. It’s a done deal.

Except his mind didn’t clear as Billy Joel sang about a sweet girl named Virginia, as much as it shifted to thoughts of a certain chief deputy.

The softness of her lips. The fact that he felt like he belonged wherever they were, every time they were alone. The curves he’d discovered beneath her unisex clothes, filling his hands—

The side door off the kitchen crashed open.

His niece was home from wherever she’d disappeared to an hour ago. When she sped upstairs without saying hello, he dropped the towels back into the dryer and headed after her. Billy crooned that only the good died young.

Maybe he and Maggie could grab burgers and shakes for lunch. Maybe they could hang out for the rest of the day. The world would be fine again, as soon as he got his head out of his butt and stopped obsessing about things he couldn’t change. Not to mention a woman he was nuts to want in the first place.

“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.