Читать книгу Interrupted Lullaby - Dana Lynn R. - Страница 12

THREE

What had her husband been involved with? The question reverberated around Maggie’s brain time and time again as she rushed about getting herself and the twins ready to go. Maggie got herself and her cranky kids out the door in record time. The idea that someone had been watching her gave her the willies.

Not to mention the obvious fact that somebody had tried to kill her earlier. This house was no longer safe for her. Or her babies. She glanced over at the lieutenant just in time to see him wince and rub his side. She grimaced, feeling guilty that he had been injured while protecting her. With her hair tucked inside a hat, Maggie followed the cops out to the cars. With reluctance, she watched her babies being belted into their car seats in the chief’s car. Lieutenant Willis straightened up, sketched a cocky salute at the chief and sauntered to his own car on the street. She definitely would have preferred to ride with the lieutenant rather than his stern-faced chief. But she went where her children went, so she stepped into the car without protest and buckled up.

“I don’t suppose it would be possible to let the owner know no one is in her house?” Wendy had been a good friend. She hated to let her down.

“We can do that. Will she shorten her mission trip?” Realizing her mouth had fallen open, Maggie closed it with a click. They really had researched everything.

“Either that or she’ll have to find someone else to house-sit.”

“Good.” Chief Garraway touched her radio. “Move out, Lieutenant. We don’t have all day.”

Lieutenant Willis’s voice responded back with a pert “You got it.”

Almost as soon as they merged onto the interstate, Siobhan started to fuss. Maggie looked at the chief, expecting to see an impatient frown. Instead, she saw the other woman’s lips twitch.

She blinked, sure she had imagined it. Nope. Chief Garraway’s mouth had turned up at the corners. Amazing.

“It never fails, does it?” The chief’s voice was mild, conversational. “They can be as quiet as mice, but the moment you are trapped in a car with them, they start wailing. At least that was my experience with my own.”

Maggie had no idea how she was supposed to respond to that. It had never occurred to her that Chief Garraway might be a wife and mother. The older woman wore her authority like a cloak. It was hard to look past it.

“I’m going to see if she will calm down with a pacifier.” Maggie twisted in her seat to place a pacifier in her daughter’s mouth. As she did so, she noticed a car moving toward them. It was dodging in and out of the traffic. Unease slithered down her spine and sank into her stomach, leaving a greasy, queasy feeling.

“Chief,” she began, her voice pitched low so as not to further disturb the babies.

“I see him.” She touched the button to the radio. “Lieutenant? We have a vehicle that appears to be moving in on us.”

“I’m a little ways behind you, Chief. I will—”

They never heard what he was going to do. The car was beside them. It jackknifed, slamming into the chief’s car’s side. She yelled as the driver’s door caved in and her left arm slammed against the window. It remained limply at her side as she continued to steer with her right hand. In the backseat, the twins started screaming in terror. Desperate to see her babies and ascertain if they were hurt, Maggie started to unbuckle.

“Don’t you dare!” the chief barked.

Realizing how her being unbuckled could affect the chief’s driving, Maggie clenched her fists and remained seated. Her jaw started to ache. She had started grinding her teeth.

A siren blared as Lieutenant Willis roared up behind their attacker, a blue light flashing on the dashboard of his unmarked car.

The other vehicle sped away, zigzagging furiously through the traffic. Lieutenant Willis pursued the car, but Maggie could see the distance between the cars growing. His voice came over the radio, snapping out a description of the car, its license plate and location. Maggie could almost feel his frustration crackling through the radio.

“Lost him, Chief.” They could barely hear his voice over the howling twins.

“Understood, Lieutenant. We are pulling off. Need to have the babies checked over.”

Chief Garraway maneuvered the cruiser awkwardly off the next ramp, calling for an ambulance crew as she did so. Her face was drawn with pain, and sweat was beading on her forehead.

The car had barely stopped moving when Maggie pushed open the door and ran to the back door. After wrenching it open, she checked on the twins. Only the chief’s demand that she not remove the children from their seats or the vehicle prevented her from grabbing her babies out of the car. Worry simmered in her gut as she tried to soothe the angry twins. A couple of times she winced as Siobhan hit a piercing note.

When the ambulance crew arrived, it soon became apparent that the chief was stuck inside the vehicle. Maggie’s heart bled for Chief Garraway. The older woman was obviously in pain, wincing and muffling groans. Maggie couldn’t help but feel that this situation was somehow her fault. Stop it! You didn’t ask for any of this. Still, the knowledge that within twenty-four hours two officers had been injured trying to protect her was humbling. Maggie felt the weight of the debt she owed them. She grimaced. She didn’t like being in debt to anyone.

Two members of the crew used a set of metal cutters and set about the arduous task of extracting the chief from the damaged vehicle. The noise was horrendous. While they were doing that, another team member carefully examined Rory, Siobhan and Maggie. Lieutenant Willis pulled in as the crew was strapping Chief Garraway onto a stretcher. He leaped from his car and hurried over to his chief, an anxious expression on his face. Even injured, the woman was reluctant to hand over control.

“This is an attempted murder investigation here, Lieutenant. But we need to know what happened back in LaMar Pond that started all of this. She’s the only one who can identify the man who shot her husband. Do what you can to uncover the truth at that end. She’s the key to all of this. If our department can help you in any way, just ask.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll take care of it.”

“Your children seem to be fine, miss.” Maggie turned her attention to the young paramedic who was looking over Rory. The baby boy had stopped fussing now that he had been removed from the terrifying vehicle and had a full view of his mother. He smiled and waved his chubby arms at her. Overwhelmed with relief, Maggie’s eyes burned as tears gathered. She blinked them away, although one managed to escape down her cheek. The paramedic handed Rory to her, and she cuddled him close. When he protested and squirmed, she realized she was gripping him too close. She had almost lost them. These children were the only things that mattered in her life. She had to do everything she could to protect them.

“Mama! Mama!” Siobhan demanded her attention. Maggie bent down and made what she called the twin exchange. Rory stopped fussing as soon as he was free.

Siobhan was another story.

* * *

Dan stepped back from the ambulance as the driver closed the door, effectively cutting off his view of Chief Garraway. It was rather shocking to see the indomitable chief put out of commission. As far back as he could remember, she had never even taken a sick day. And here she was being wheeled away in an ambulance.

The sniffling noises behind him reminded him of the reason why his former chief was injured. Maggie was comforting Siobhan, bouncing the disgruntled little girl on her hip and shushing her. It wasn’t fair, but he felt an irrational surge of anger toward the woman. If it hadn’t been for her, Chief Garraway would be fine. All because she’d been too chicken to go to the police a year and a half earlier. If she was telling the truth about the corrupt cop, going to the police might have caused her to be killed herself.

Enough. He had a job to do.

“Can you get her settled down enough to move to my car?”

Maggie jerked up her head, startled.

“You’re not supposed to reuse car seats that have been in accidents,” she gasped. “They might be defective.”

He sighed impatiently and rolled his neck on his shoulders. This day had been too long already.

“Look, Maggie, right now I’m more worried about the jerk that has it out for you. Defective car seats are better than none at all. You and your kiddos are targets here. We need to move. Now.”

Maggie hesitated, then nodded. She handed Siobhan to him. Startled, he grabbed for the little girl. Sweat broke out on his forehead. He had never held a baby before. What if he dropped her? What if...? Siobhan trained huge blue eyes on his face and stared. Oh, no. What if she started screaming? But she didn’t scream. She grinned, then laughed. Her chubby hands found his beard and pulled. Hard.

Dan winced.

“Vonnie,” Maggie cooed near his ear, deftly reaching out her free hand to disentangle her daughter. “Don’t touch his beard, sweetie. Who knows when he last washed it?”

Dan swung his head around to glare and encountered her mischief-filled blue eyes.

“Huh. Your kids have your eyes.” Well, now that was a dumb thing to say.

She blushed. She sure was cute when she got flustered.

Focus, man. Focus. You don’t need to start thinking about women. They’re pure poison to you. Too many things go wrong when women and children get involved.

He turned on his heel and led the way to his waiting vehicle. As soon as the seats were set up and the kids were buckled in, he started driving. A couple exits down, he turned off and headed north.

“Where are we going, Lieutenant Willis?” Maggie asked, her voice tense and worried. He remembered that she had a distrust of police officers. “The police station isn’t this way. I drive past it every week when I go shopping.”

“I know. My priority right now is the safety of you and your children. And that means I need to find out what happened to your husband. The good thing is that I’m not actually with Garraway’s unit anymore, so I don’t need to stick around while they investigate at this end.” He glanced at her. The anxious look on her face had faded, and she looked thoughtful instead. “And I’m thinking we need to stay under the radar for a while. Which means you should probably call me Dan instead of Lieutenant.”

She gave him a pointed look. “I noticed that you never call me Ms. Slade like Chief Garraway. You always call me Maggie. As if we know each other.”

A wave of heat flooded his face. He hadn’t realized he had been doing that. “Sorry. I’ve been looking for you for a long time. In LaMar Pond, we got used to referring to you as Maggie. It stuck. I meant no offense.”

A feminine shrug answered him. “I’m not offended. I just was surprised at how casual you were.”

Dan nodded but didn’t speak. His mind was busy with a problem. He was positive that Phillip Nelson’s murder, the arson on the house and the attack on Maggie were all linked. Which meant someone was out to get her. Probably because of whatever it was that they had wanted from Phillip. That raised several urgent questions.

What had Phillip gotten himself into? Who was after Maggie? And how was he supposed to keep her low profile if she was conspicuously traveling around with twins? Not that the kids weren’t adorable. He sneaked a glance in the rearview mirror. They were facing backward. All he could make out were Rory’s feet as he kicked them in the air. A smile tugged at his mouth. He tried to keep it down. He needed to come up with a solution.

“Hold on.” He pulled to the side of the road. The driver of the car behind him swerved to miss him and blared his horn.

“Should have followed the two-second rule, buddy,” he muttered.

“Hey, watch how you drive, Dan! You have kids in the car.” Maggie glared at him.

“Yeah, sorry.” Dan pulled out his cell phone and shot off a quick message to Paul. He had an idea, but he needed the LaMar Pond chief to handle the logistics.

Paul sent a message back a minute later. Satisfied, Dan flipped on his blinker and slipped back into traffic.

“Is everything all right?”

Maggie looked tense again, her hands clenching and unclenching in her lap.

“Just solving a problem. Nothing you need to worry about.”

Unfortunately, her expression darkened. She bit her lip, hard. He winced, half expecting her to draw blood. Obviously, his words weren’t reassuring.

“Honestly, Maggie, it’s nothing. I just had a question, so I texted my chief.”

“Chief Garraway is on the way to the hospital.” Maggie furrowed her brow and tilted her head. The corners of her mouth turned down in a slight frown.

“Not Garraway. Chief Kennedy. In LaMar Pond. He’s my official boss now.”

At the words LaMar Pond, the blood drained from Maggie’s face. Her eyes grew huge in her face. She clenched her hands together so tightly that her knuckles whitened. The air almost vibrated with her fear.

“LaMar Pond? I can’t go back there! I just can’t!” A slight edge of hysteria shadowed her words.

Dan reached over and set his hand over her clenched fists. He took his eyes off the road long enough to look into her eyes. Seeing that she was in control again, he removed his hand and returned his eyes to the road.

“I know you are scared.” He kept his voice low, just a soft rumble in the strained silence. “I don’t blame you. But for your safety, and for your kids’ safety, we have to find out who is after you. And what secret is in your husband’s past.”

Sneaking a peek over, he saw that Maggie looked far from convinced. Her face was still pale, and he could detect a tremble in her hands, which she tried to hide as soon as she noticed him looking at them. Not much he could do about that. Whether she trusted him or not, he had a job to do. And to his way of thinking, the sooner this particular job was done, the better.

He saw a sign for the next gas station. It was sheer reflex to check the fuel gauge. Oh, man, they were getting pretty low. They would have to stop.

“What are we doing?” Maggie asked as he pulled off at the exit ramp.

“We have to get gas.” He pulled into the station, carefully watching out the windows for any sign of pursuit before he opened the door. The chain gas station was equipped with a food mart. Dan could see nothing but trees and hills behind them, although there were houses down the road a bit. Maggie threw open the other door, but he grabbed her arm before she could exit.

“You should stay in the car,” he said. “It’s safer.”

“I should change the twins’ diapers,” she argued. “Can’t you smell it?”

Dan took a deep whiff and wished he hadn’t. Okay, so she had a point. He let go of her arm, and she rushed out of the car and to the backseat. He listened with half an ear for squalling and was shocked when there was none. Huh. Guess the kids were going to cooperate. With an efficiency born of the urgent situation, he filled the gas tank, tapping his fist impatiently on the roof until it was done. He grabbed his receipt from the machine.

Maggie had the twins unbuckled as she hurried to finish up changing their diapers.

“If we hurry, could we go in and grab some milk and snack items?” she asked. “It’s going to be a long ride. The kids will get hungry.”

Dan kept his eyes scouring the road in front of them. He really didn’t like sitting out in the open like this. But he trusted Maggie to know what was best for her kids.

“Okay.” He squinted at Maggie. She had the serviceable backpack she used as a diaper bag slung across her back. He’d never thought of it, but it was probably hard to carry a diaper bag with a wiggling kid in each arm. By unspoken agreement they each bent down on their side to grab a kid.

Smash!

The window shattered as a bullet hit it. Two inches from Maggie’s head.