Читать книгу Watching Over Her - Lisa Childs, Carla Cassidy - Страница 17

Chapter Nine

Maggie insisted on going to the bank, and Blaine agreed. The bank wasn’t open for business, though. Not yet. Repairmen were working on replacing the broken windows and fixing the damaged walls and furniture. So Blaine took her around the back, through the security door that the robbers had dragged her out.

That was hard enough—watching her face drain of color as she relived those moments. She probably hadn’t thought she was going to get away from the robbers. And for a few moments Blaine hadn’t thought he was going to get her away from them—then or later at the hospital or the motel.

He relived all those moments and found his arm coming around her thin shoulders. “Maybe this was a bad idea,” he murmured.

“I need to go to my office,” she said. “And make sure I didn’t leave anything out yesterday.”

“The manager closed up the bank yesterday,” he assured her. “I’m sure he locked up whatever paperwork you might have had out.”

He did not want her going to her office. Since her walls were glass, it had also been damaged from the gunfire. And in the lobby was the outline where Sarge’s body had been. She didn’t need to see that, and neither did he.

Maggie shook her head. “No, Mr. Hardy wouldn’t have done it himself. He probably let Susan do it and that’s how she got hold of my purse.”

Blaine hadn’t been that impressed with the manager—especially when the guy had been firing questions at her while the paramedics were trying to assess her condition. It was obvious that most of the day-to-day administration had fallen on Maggie’s slim shoulders. “She got your purse, your keys and your credit cards.”

She sighed. “I should cancel my credit cards.”

“She already used a couple of them,” he said. While Maggie had been at the hospital, the greedy woman had used her cards. “Why did you ever have her as your roommate?”

Maggie shrugged hard enough to dislodge his arm and stepped away from his side. Maybe he had offended her by implying that she wasn’t the greatest judge of character. “She was really nice to me when I first started working here,” she said in defense of their relationship, “so I agreed to let her move in when her boyfriend kicked her out and she had nobody else to stay with.”

He wondered if that had been a ruse. Maybe he had underestimated Susan Iverson’s intelligence. He would take another look at her. But first he wanted Maggie to look at something; that was why he had agreed to bring her down to the bank.

He had also wanted to get out of Ash’s small house before he lost all objectivity where Maggie Jenkins was concerned. She was too damn beautiful for his peace of mind. He couldn’t lose the image of her hair tangled from sleep, her body all soft and warm and sexy. When she’d tossed back the blankets and revealed her bare legs and the shapely curve of her hips, he had been tempted to crawl into bed with her.

She sighed again. “But I learned quickly why her boyfriend had kicked her out.”

“The woman can’t be trusted.” Blaine wondered if this one could. He wanted to trust Maggie Jenkins; he wanted to believe she was every bit as sweet and innocent as she seemed.

But he couldn’t rule out any possible suspects yet. And she was a possible one—even after the attempts on her life. Or maybe because of them. Her coconspirators could be trying to prevent her from giving them up.

He led Maggie to a back office, near the rear exit, where he had had the bank security footage set up across six small monitors. He pressed a remote and started it rolling.

“What is all this?” she asked.

“Security footage.” Sarge’s security footage. “I want you to watch it.”

“All of it?” She sounded overwhelmed. The six monitors probably were a bit daunting.

Blaine was used to it, as he often watched days, sometimes weeks or even months, of security footage when he was investigating bank robberies. But this time while they watched the monitors, he saw only Maggie—her full breasts and belly pushing against his old T-shirt. Those long, bare legs...

How would they feel wrapped around him? How would she feel when he buried himself inside her?

He shook his head, shaking off the thoughts. They would never happen. She wasn’t just pregnant with another man’s child; she was still in love with that man. It didn’t matter that Andy was dead. A love like theirs—where she had told him everything—was deep and enduring.

Blaine had never had anyone in his life to whom he’d told everything. He had learned at a young age that if he told his sisters anything they would tell everyone. So he’d been keeping his own counsel for a long time—which was good because he had no intention of sharing his thoughts about Maggie with anyone else. In fact, he wanted to forget all about them.

So he focused on the video screens playing out on the monitors in Sarge’s office. It might have been hard to be there, if Sarge hadn’t been like Blaine and Ash—too nomadic to personalize any space. It wasn’t as if they would be there long enough to put down roots anyway. If Ash hadn’t inherited that house in the Chicago burbs, he would have just had an apartment like Blaine had in Detroit—something devoid of decoration and sparsely furnished.

Days of security footage passed before his eyes in a blur—slow enough to pick out faces but fast enough that hours passed in minutes. His head began to pound—maybe more from his mostly sleepless night than from watching the footage.

If staring at those monitors had affected him, he worried how it was affecting Maggie. “Are you okay?” he asked her.

Maggie nodded. “I’m fine.” But her fingers touched her temple and she closed her eyes.

“We can take a break,” he offered.

“I don’t understand why we’re watching these videos,” she said as she gestured at the screens. “All of this happened a week or more ago.”

Had she expected him to show her the footage of the robbery? That would have been too much for her—to relive those terrifying moments, to relive Sarge getting killed...

He may have already told her. So much had happened that he couldn’t remember exactly, so he asked, “Do you know why I showed up when I did yesterday?”

“Because you’re working those bank robberies.”

That was what he’d told the state troopers in the alley. “Sarge called me,” Blaine said. “He told me that he thought the bank was going to be hit.”

She gasped in surprise. “He knew?”

“Yeah, he must have realized that someone was casing the place.” And hopefully that someone had been picked up on the security footage.

She shrugged. “But I don’t know how to tell who’s casing the place.”

“I do,” he said. While he’d worked his way up in the Bureau through other divisions, he specialized in bank robberies now. To date, his record was perfect; he always caught the thieves.

Always...

And this time he had even more incentive than his record and his career. He had Sarge. And Maggie...

“So what am I looking for?” she asked.

“Someone you know.”

She laughed as if he’d said something ridiculous. “I know a lot of these people.”

He could tell. Even though she hadn’t been at this branch that long, she often stepped out of her office to talk to bank clients, her face breathtakingly beautiful as she smiled welcomingly at them. They all smiled back, charmed by her friendly personality.

But he stopped the footage on one monitor as he noticed that one man smiled bigger than the others. And he hadn’t left his greeting at a smile. He had gone in for a hug—a big one that had physically lifted Maggie off her feet. She hadn’t looked happy, though; she had looked uncomfortable.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

She stared at the screen, her eyes wide and face pale as if she’d seen a ghost. “I always forget how much he looks like Andy...”

“Who is he?”

She released a shaky breath. “Mark—that’s Andy’s older brother, Mark.”

“Does he have accounts at the bank?”

She shook her head. “No, he just came by to see me. To check on me.”

Blaine’s senses tingled as he recognized a viable lead. “Did he use to come by the other branch you worked at?”

“Sometimes.”

He nodded.

“It’s not what you think,” she assured him.

She had no idea what he was thinking. People rarely did. He wasn’t even thinking of the case. He was thinking that the man wasn’t just looking at her with concern or familial affection. He was looking at her with attraction. The way Blaine looked at her...

But in the footage she wasn’t looking at the man at all. Like the ring, it was as if she couldn’t bear to look at him. Because he looked so much like her dead fiancé?

He was a good-looking man. With their frequently inappropriate comments, his sisters would’ve gone on and on about his dark hair and light-colored eyes. And Andy had looked like that?

A weird emotion surged through Blaine—anger or resentment? Jealousy?

He was jealous of a dead man...

* * *

“WHAT AM I THINKING?” Blaine was asking her, his voice gruff with a challenge as if he doubted she could read him.

Few people probably could. The man was incredibly guarded. But he’d let that guard down, briefly, to mourn the loss of his friend and former drill instructor. So Maggie felt as if she had found a tiny hole in his armor.

“You’re thinking that Mark is involved in the robberies,” she replied. “And that’s ridiculous.”

Blaine turned back to the monitor and studied the frozen frame of Mark lifting her off her feet. That muscle twitched in his cheek—almost as if it bothered him that another man was holding her.

But her thought was even more ridiculous than his thinking that Mark Doremire was a robber. Blaine Campbell was not jealous of another man touching her. Blaine had no interest in her beyond helping him figure out who the robbers were.

“Why is it ridiculous?” Blaine asked.

“Because he’s Andy’s brother.”

A blond brow arched, as if that made Mark guiltier. Because of what she’d told Andy? If only she’d kept her mouth shut...

Maybe her mother had been right—she talked too much. Or, in this case, she’d written too much.

Once again, she defended her best friend. “Andy was the most honest person I’ve ever known.”

Blaine didn’t challenge her opinion of Andy. He just pointed out, “That doesn’t mean that his brother is honest, too.”

“I understand their personalities being different. But not their fundamental beliefs. They were raised by the same parents—raised the same way,” she said. “How could they be that different?”

“You are obviously an only child.” He laughed. “I have three sisters, and they are very different from each other.”

“How?” she asked. She had always wished she’d had siblings. But her dad’s career was demanding, and he hadn’t been around that much to help her mother. So Mom had won the argument to have only one child.

He laughed again. “Sarah is a car salesperson—with that over-the-top bubbly personality. Erica is a librarian—quiet and introspective. And Buster...”

“Buster?” She’d thought he’d said they were all sisters.

“Becky is her real name,” he explained. “She’s in law enforcement, too. She’s a county deputy. So my sisters are absolutely nothing alike.”

“Maybe not personality-wise,” she said. Mark and Andy hadn’t been that much alike, either. Mark had liked to tease and joke around, and Andy had always been so sensitive and serious. “But morality and ethics...”

“Sarah sells cars,” he repeated. “I’m not so sure about the ethics...”

She laughed now. From the twinkle in his green eyes, it was obvious how much he loved all of his sisters—even the car salesperson.

“Mark has been coming around because of his ethics,” she said, “because he made a promise to Andy—the last time Andy left for a deployment—that he would take care of me if something happened to him.”

That blond brow lifted again with a question and suspicion. “How is he taking care of you?”

If he was asking what she thought he was...

She shuddered in revulsion. “Not like that. Mark is like my brother, too. We all grew up together.”

Blaine clicked the remote and unfroze Mark’s image. Andy’s brother kept smiling at her...before Susan walked up and started flirting with him. “What about with her?” he asked. “Is he brotherly with Susan Iverson?”

She hoped not. “Mark is married. He’s not interested in Susan.” But as she watched the footage, she wondered. “Maybe he’s just a flirt...” Sometimes it felt as if he was flirting with her, which always made her extremely uncomfortable. Because she really thought of Mark as a big brother and only a big brother.

“I need to talk to Mark,” Blaine said. “Where can I get hold of him?”

“I think I have his address somewhere in my office. He and his wife invited me to dinner before.” But she had politely declined because it was so hard to see him. “I can call him...”

She would really prefer calling him to seeing him.

But Blaine shook his head. “I’ll get his address from your office. Then I’ll put you back into protective custody.”

“Because that worked out so well last time?” she asked. “How is that young officer?” Before they had left the little bungalow for the bank, Blaine had called the hospital to check on him, but all he’d told her was that the young man had made it through surgery.

“He’s still in critical condition,” he said.

“Then just let me call Mark,” she urged, her heart beating fast with panic at the thought of being separated from Blaine again. “You can talk to him—you’ll know that he had nothing to do with the robberies.”

But Blaine shook his head in refusal. “No, I have to see him face-to-face.”

So he had to leave her again.

And every time he left her, there was another attempt to grab her. One of these times the attempt was destined to be successful.

Would this be the time?