“Ma’am, where do you hurt?”

Randy stared at the way her hands were gripping her stomach. “Are you in labor? Can you hear me?” He resisted the urge to push deeper inside the car. Forcing a tenuous position would put his victim at more risk. But a mother in danger—nothing got to him faster.

And this one mother…

Something about her seemed familiar, even if he couldn’t put his finger on what. He scanned the parts of her body he could see, looking for anything he’d missed. Hair raised on the back of his neck.

His subconscious was trying to tell him something. What?

“Ah!” she cried, louder than before. “Help me…”

Randy’s trained gaze cataloged each potential injury. It tracked up her torso and arms and shoulders, over the ebony hair framing the face that was finally uncovered.

A lover’s face, not a stranger’s.

“Oh, my God. Sam?”

Dear Reader,

My letter in To Save a Family promised readers a firefighter story was in the works. For several ATLANTA HEROES novels, I’ve been teasing everyone, including myself, with glimpses of the hunky Montgomery brothers. I fell in love with this trio of rescue workers, and so have many of the fans who’ve written me. Now, the wait is over!

The youngest of the brothers, firefighter Randy Montgomery, loves his siblings, and he loves saving lives. But when a secret baby and an ex-lover on the run from the mob drop into Randy’s lap, his well-ordered world explodes. Sam Gianfraco is his match in every way, including her dark past and her distrust in happily-ever-afters. For the sake of their newborn daughter, can these soul mates follow their hearts and fight together, when life has taught them it’s safer to battle alone?

While you read The Firefighter’s Secret Baby, keep your eye out for future heroes. You’ll love Charlie Montgomery for how hard he fights to protect his baby brother—you haven’t seen the last of him, I promise. And there’s another recurring character refusing to sit on the sidelines…. Bet you can guess who’s lobbying the hardest to take the lead in my next Harlequin Superromance!

Until next time, dream big, love with your heart wide open, and love fearlessly.

Anna DeStefano

P.S. Let me know what you think of the ATLANTA HEROES stories at www.annawrites.com. And join the fun and fabulous giveaways at www.annawrites.com/blog!

The Firefighter’s Secret Baby
Anna DeStefano

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bestselling, award-winning author Anna DeStefano volunteers in the fields of grief recovery and crisis care. The rewards of walking with people through life’s difficulties are never ending, as are the insights Anna has gained into what is most beautiful about the human spirit. She sees heroes everywhere she looks now. The top life lesson she’s learned? Figure out what someone truly needs, become the one thing no one else could be for that person, and you’ll be a hero, too!

For exciting news about her other Harlequin titles and her paranormal romantic suspense series, visit Anna at www.annawrites.com.

To those who stand and fight.

To those who run toward danger,

so others may be free.

To those who put all they are on the line.

To the heroes.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER ONE

THUNDERSTORMS IN NOVEMBER?

Only in the south.

Sam peered through the greasy streaks her rental car’s wipers were making of the rain. She squinted at her rearview mirror. Were those the same headlights as before? Was she just imagining the danger bearing down on her?

Yes, Sam.

It’s been two years of constant fear, but you’re imagining it all now.

A stabbing pain gripped her stomach. She forced her attention back to the road. Who cared who might be following her? She was going to careen into a guardrail if she didn’t keep her eye on the road! She had to keep going. She had to get as far as she could before she tried to call her contact. Then everything would be okay. It had to be.

She was good at running, until the loneliness got too close. The hopelessness. Then she’d do something stupid. Something dangerous, because she needed to feel real for just a little while. She cradled her palm over the very real cramps in her belly.

Not anymore. Not after tonight. Once she made it through this, there would be no more risky chances. No more flirting with danger. Only playing it safe and protecting the lives that were depending on her.

She straightened her shoulders and tried to see through her rain-soaked windshield. Enough. What’s done was done. Running was her only shot now. Their only shot. She refused to believe they couldn’t make it.

“Whatever it takes,” she said to her unborn child. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

A film-noir-worthy bolt of lightning spotlighted where her latest risks had gotten her. The storm beat down on the car. Dark pines danced on either side of the interstate. Pain streaked through her body.

Her grip on the wheel tightened. Her tires lost traction for an eternal moment. Then they grabbed again.

“Focus, Sam,” she hissed.

She hated the panic and fear. No matter what she did, she couldn’t make them go away for good. But she would shove the darkness back. She wouldn’t let the hopelessness win tonight. She just had to make it a little bit farther.

Past Atlanta. Out of the state. She had to get somewhere less on-the-map. Then she’d contact her federal handlers and find a way to trust them for a while longer. Long enough to testify and cut all ties with everyone and everything from her past—everything but her kid sister and her unborn child.

Headlights rushed from behind. A vehicle swerved at breakneck speed, barely missing her back bumper. It passed on the shoulder. The truck careened in front of her, brake lights flashing. Its back end fishtailed. The 4x4’s mud flaps sprayed a wave of water, blinding her.

Sam screamed and hit the brakes. Her tires spun and slid. Her car crossed into the next lane. She pulled at the wheel to avoid another vehicle.

Impact came with a horrible jolt. Her seat belt caught. Her head bashed into her window, cracking the safety glass. Dazed, she yanked the wheel again. The car swerved in protest. Then it skidded into the concrete median.

Scraping.

Dragging.

Her driver’s door would be ripped away!

She fought for control. Blood trickled into her eyes. Pain ripped at her bulging stomach.

It’s not going to end this way.

I’m not going to let it end this way…

Life became a slow motion nightmare. The truck that had cut her off barreled into a minivan. The van swerved in a deadly arc, crashing into her. Her rental car spun like a top while she banked the wheel and shoved the brake pedal to the floor.

More headlights. More rain. More vehicles crashing.

Lightning and thunder.

Terror.

Pain.

Then she was flipping, rolling, over and over. Glass shattering, metal shredding and crushing, while she wrapped her arms around her baby and prayed the seat belt would protect her daughter.

The windshield collapsed inward. Ice-cold rain soaked her. Her world shrank to the pinpoints of light spiraling behind her closed eyelids.

It was forever before anything made sense again. She realized the car was still rocking. Teetering. Her door had become the car’s uncertain base.

Then she realized the pain was gone, too. The labor pains. She couldn’t feel the baby moving, and her daughter was always moving these days. There was nothing left but the roaring in her ears. Her arms and legs were growing numb.

Shock.

She was going into shock.

“Please,” she begged, praying for one more miracle. “Please, just give me one last chance….”

RANDY MONTGOMERY SCALED the pulverized wreck his team was securing. The air at the crash site vibrated with a frantic kind of calm while they prepared to crack the car with the Jaws of Life. The acrid smell of leaking fuel shimmered off everything Randy touched. His guys and several other teams responding to the multiple car pileup had doused the entire scene in fire retardant foam. But with this much petroleum in the mix, an errant spark could still set off a flash fire. It wasn’t the worst scene Randy had triaged, but it would do.

And there had been many others. He’d certified in accident recovery in the first class that opened after 9/11, moving from an engine company to rescue because he’d thought that’s where he could do the most good.

A faint, feminine groan whispered up from inside the vehicle.

He was point. His job was to triage and stabilize the victim for what promised to be a delicate extraction. Advanced life support would follow once his team had secured the vehicle.

“We have a live one,” he called to his crew. “Someone position that spotlight over here.”

Never lose a victim. It was Randy’s mantra. He wasn’t delusional enough to believe he had that kind of control. Still, he fought for every life with everything he had.

He reached through the slit that had once been the front passenger window—now the highest point of the rumpled vehicle. It would be his only view inside until a new one could be ripped open. He draped himself over the mangled mess of metal and fiberglass. There were razor-sharp edges to avoid. Possible weak spots. Stressing the wreck further could compromise the integrity of the safety cage. Randy let his instincts and years of experience guide him as he did his careful work of getting a visual on the victim.

Careful was his forte.

He stayed in control, no matter the crisis. Ice had been stenciled onto his helmet after he’d joined his first engine company, recognition of how hard he’d fought at every scene even as a newbie straight from the academy. His two older brothers, Chris and Charlie, whom he’d followed into fire and rescue, had given him the nickname. The moniker had stuck when Randy transferred to his rescue company.

It wasn’t as if he didn’t care about his victims. But as the go-to man on critical calls, emotion on the job wasn’t a luxury he indulged in. And off the job…He was the son of a brutal father and an abused mother. Emotional entanglements weren’t something he courted.

Levering as much of his body as he could through the sedan’s passenger window, he took a deep breath and shoved his wandering thoughts away. He owed whomever was inside his total focus.

“What do you see, man?” The floodlights had been repositioned at a more direct angle, illuminating the safety cage that was manufactured into all modern vehicles.

“One occupant.” He strained to see the still form huddled between the bent-back hood, what was left of the steering wheel, and the driver’s door.

The body was covered in voluminous, bloodstained material. White cotton. Arms and legs, neither noticeably broken. The victim was lying on her side. Seat belt clipped into place and still attached. Sandals. One still on, the other lying close enough for Randy to reach.

“It’s a woman.” He cleared the delicate shoe from the field, along with whatever debris he could, transferring them down to waiting hands.

From the size of the body curled in on itself, the victim appeared larger than average weight. Except large didn’t jibe with the slender ankles and calves and arms and wrists he could see better as his eyes adjusted to the dimness. She groaned and shifted, rolling off her side. The car objected, rocking against the stabilization his men had added from the outside.

“Hold still, miss.” Randy kept his voice reassuring. It was good that she could move. There wasn’t as much blood as he’d originally thought. But—“You could have a spinal injury. There’s glass and metal everywhere, and—”

She settled onto her back, still out of it, probably not hearing a word he said. But her protruding belly spoke loud and clear.

“Holy hell, she’s pregnant!” He stretched his arm as far inside as he could, but he couldn’t reach her. “Third trimester, if I had to guess.”

In response to his raised voice, the victim’s head gave an agitated jerk. Her features stayed hidden from him by a wealth of dark hair.

“Ma’am, where do you hurt?” He stared at the way her hands were gripping her stomach. “Are you in labor? Ma’am, can you hear me?”

Randy controlled the instinct to push deeper inside. Forcing a tenuous position would only put his victim at more risk. But a mother in danger—nothing got to Randy faster.

And this mother…

Something about her seemed familiar, even if he couldn’t put his finger on what. He fought the urge to rip his way into the wreck. He forced himself to scan the parts of her body he could see, looking for anything he’d missed. Hair raised on the back of his neck.

His subconscious was trying to tell him something.

What?

“Ah!” the woman cried out, louder than before. “Help me…”

Randy’s trained gaze catalogued each potential injury. It tracked up her torso and arms and shoulders, over the ebony hair framing the face that was finally uncovered.

A lover’s face, not a stranger’s.

“Oh, my God. Sam?” Randy’s focus jerked back to her swollen belly. He’d last seen her in his hotel-room bed in Savannah nine months ago…. “Oh, my God.”

CHAPTER TWO

SAM TRIED TO RUN. She wouldn’t give up. She had to keep fighting, even though a part of her knew that she couldn’t move. There was something precious she had to save. A miracle she wouldn’t let go of.

What was it…

And there was that voice again. The one from her dreams.

She’d run from the voice before, back to the U.S. marshal in charge of her protection. She’d pulled herself together and regrouped. Hidden the memories of her lover and her reckless weekend in Savannah, so she could start over. Again. But the voice…It was so close now. Which meant so was the danger. The men chasing her. Had they found her?

“Sam?” the voice asked. “Can you hear me?”

No! her mind screamed.

Her name wasn’t Sam anymore. Sam was being hunted. She couldn’t be found. Not even in her dreams.

What was her name now?

“Robyn…” she insisted. “I’m Robyn Nobles.”

Two years ago, Sam Gianfranco had left behind everything and everyone she knew. Even her baby sister. It had been the only way.

Except Sam had caved and called Gabriella that morning, before her security could tighten and she lost her chance. Her teenage sister had cried at the sound of Sam’s voice. She’d begged Sam to come home. Too bad Gabby hadn’t been the only one listening on the line.

They’d found Sam so quickly. One TV program. One phone call. One strange car parked outside her apartment…

Pain low in her belly jerked her away from the memories. Where was she? What had happened?

“My baby. Please, save my baby!”

“Sam?” the voice asked.

Her dreams had tormented her with that voice, night after night. She wanted Savannah back so badly. She wanted the precious life they’d created, more than she’d ever let herself want anything. She had to wake up! She had to keep fighting. Keep running.

“Get away from me,” she whispered, terrified.

“Try to relax,” the voice coaxed. “Trust me. We’ll help your baby. We’ll get you both out of this. Tell me where you hurt.”

“Leave me alone!”

She tried to make her eyes open. To move.

Pain sliced through her. Reality came into blurry focus. She was lying on what used to be the side of her car, pinned against the shattered window. Totally helpless. Except she’d be damned if she’d just give up. Not while she could feel her daughter moving inside her again, fighting to live.

“You bastards,” she gasped as another contraction took hold. “I won’t let you hurt my baby. I’ll kill you first.”

Rage cleared her vision. But what she saw as she gazed up convinced her that she was still delirious. Because the face looking down at her belonged in her dream. Her baby’s father was wearing a fire rescue uniform, not the metal band T-shirt he’d looked so sexy in on Savannah’s River Street.

Was it real? His voice. Her terrifying need to trust him…

“Hold still, baby,” he cautioned. “No one’s going to hurt you. But you’ve gotta hold still, for your and the baby’s sake.”

“It—” The next contraction cut her in two. So did the concern in his gaze. “This isn’t possible. You can’t be—”

“It’s me, sweetheart.” He flashed that bad-boy grin that had weakened her knees. There was worry there, too, and a world of questions swirling behind his forced confidence. “You sure know how to get a country boy’s attention.”

Then he winked, God help her. A surreal giggle escaped her chest. A croaking cough followed. The kind of cough that old people made when they only had a few breaths left.

Sam let the memories flood back. They were stronger than reality. Closer. Memories that reminded her how much she’d needed him over the last nine months. Memories of a strong, dark-haired man with deep brown eyes and a surprisingly gentle touch. Of how his playfulness had given way to a passion she couldn’t resist. Just like she couldn’t stop herself from gazing up at him now and clinging to the miracle of him being there.

“Sam?” that voice from her dreams said.

“Randy?”

“You may be hurt badly, baby.” The car shifted around her. Then the magic of his touch was smoothing across her cheek, down to the pulse beating a tantrum at the base of her throat. “You have to hold still until we can free you from this mess. Stay with me, Sam. Do you hear me? Sam? Damn it, answer me!”

“I…I’m here. My stomach…Ah!” She tried to draw her legs up against the next wave of cramps, but she couldn’t pull them close enough. “It hurts.”

“I know. You have to hold still until we can stabilize your entire body.” He pulled away. Yelled something toward the footsteps she could hear outside the car. Then his handsome face reappeared above her. His helmet was gone. His hair was tousled and matted with sweat, even though Sam was freezing from the cold night air. He inched his body back inside, a little closer this time. “Does anything else hurt besides your belly? Does it feel like your water’s broken?”

“How…”

How could Randy be there, exactly when she and her baby needed him most?

He’d asked her a question.

Where did it hurt?

Actually…

“I…I can’t feel much of anything again.” The next contraction was weaker than the last. “The baby’s not moving as much…”

“Just hang tight,” he said. “We’ll get you out of there.”

Despite his assurances, Randy’s voice had tightened. He was pushing even further into the unstable wreck.

“Help me,” she begged.

“What the hell are you doing, Montgomery?” someone demanded. “You trying to bring the whole damn thing down on top of us! We don’t have this mess secured. Back off!”

And that’s when Sam saw the truth in Randy’s eyes.

“I’m dying, aren’t I?” she asked. “Because I didn’t wait for my security. Because I panicked. They don’t know where I am, and…and it’s too late, anyway. But the baby—”

“Are you kidding me?” Randy flashed his killer grin again. “There’s no such thing as too late. Not on my watch. Losing you would ruin my rep. You’re not going to do that to me, are you? Keep talking until my guys can get me all the way in there, okay? Stay with me, Sam. Talk to me about something good. Tell me…Tell me about your baby.”

Her baby. The only reality that mattered now.

“It’s not just my baby…” Sam closed her eyes. The concern on Randy’s face, the shredded mess she’d made of the car. The memory of Gabby’s voice over the phone. It was all twisting together now. Pulling Sam in a million directions. Further away from Randy.

No!

Not until he promised.

She forced her eyes open. She had to see his face. She had to tell him.

“No matter what happens to me, take the baby,” she whispered. “Promise me you’ll protect her. Don’t let them hurt her….”

“Let who hurt her?”

Randy’s frown, the protectiveness behind his bewildered tone, pierced Sam’s heart.

“Who are you running from?” he asked over the growing racket outside the car. “Is that why you weren’t there when I woke up that morning? Tell me who’s got you so scared, Sam. Let me help you.”

This wasn’t about her. She had to make him understand.

“No! Our daughter.” Sam shook her head. She could hardly see him now. “This baby…she’s yours. Don’t tell anyone that you know. Don’t trust anyone. But you have to protect her, Randy. Promise me…Don’t let him destroy our baby, too….”

“CAREFUL!” There was nothing about being on the outside of an extraction, looking in, that Randy had ever liked. But waiting was his job, once he’d scouted the wreck and his team was in place. Getting out of the way and letting the other guys work was the best thing for a victim. Except this was no ordinary victim his men were fighting to free.

The last time—the only other time—he’d seen Sam, they’d slept together. Except what they’d shared went deeper. From the second he’d first seen her, he’d sensed she was different. Special. Now, nearly nine months later, she was pregnant and fighting for her life at an accident scene that was at the moment beyond Randy’s control.

The storm raged on around them. Rain was showing no sign of letting up. The hydraulic drive of the Jaws of Life made a deafening sound as it did its dirty work. The cutters had already sliced through the crumpled roof and the car’s dash. The guys were readying the spreader and ram, techniques for opening and lifting the interior of a vehicle enough to clear space for EMTs to get in. That was, if they didn’t bring the whole mess down on top of the woman who’d said she was carrying Randy’s baby.

The equipment started up again and the entire car shook. Randy felt the next crash in his bones.

“Careful!” he snarled.

“Easy, man,” Donaldson said beside him. He wiped his sleeve over his eyes to clear the rain splattering under the bridge of his helmet. “They got it under control.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Randy’s guys rocked. Each team member trusting the other was the key to saving a victim. Any delay he caused by distracting the other men could be the extra time the medical professionals needed to preserve life.

Except this was Sam.

Randy had to get to her. He had to talk to her. Ask her a million questions, especially about the baby.

She’s yours, too. Don’t tell anyone that you know. Don’t trust anyone…Protect her. Promise me.

What the hell had she meant, Don’t let him destroy our baby, too?

An Atlanta police officer trudged through the storm and toward the impending temper tantrum Randy was going to have if Sam wasn’t free in the next five minutes.

“Do we have an ID yet?” the officer asked.

APD’s first priority was to secure the scene and reroute traffic. Only then did they worry about who was involved in the accident itself.

“No,” Randy yelled over his team’s work. Had Sam really meant not to trust anyone? Even the police? “I didn’t get to anything personal while I triaged her. She’s delirious. Not making much sense. I’d recommend investigating the possibility she was run off the road. Sounds like there was another car involved.”

Delirious or not, Sam had said someone was trying to kill her.

“Yeah.” The officer motioned behind him with his thumb. “That federal marshal over there suggested the same thing. But we don’t have enough details from witnesses yet to classify it a hit-and-run. Did she say—”

“She’s out of her mind in pain, and prematurely delivering her baby!” Randy caught Donaldson’s narrowed glance at his outburst. He sighed and gave the officer his full attention. “You’re going to have to wait until…Wait. What federal marshal?”

A tall man had followed the officer. His dark business suit was unwrinkled and spotless, despite the water the storm was dumping on him. Everyone else at the scene looked like drowned rats.

“I need whatever information you can give me about what happened here,” he said. “Tell me what the victim in that car has said to the first responders.”

“You need to step back, sir.” Randy indicated to a spot well away from the scene. His raised eyebrow asked the APD officer what was going on.

“Yeah.” APD crossed his arms. “That’s what I was trying to tell him. But—”

“I’m a deputy federal marshal.” The man pulled a wallet from his coat and flashed a badge. “The name’s Max Dean.”

“Dean?” Seriously? It sounded like something out of a western. “Well, Marshal Dean. Your information is currently trapped inside a few tons of scrap metal. You’re going to have to step back and—”

“I assure you I have the authority to conduct whatever investigation is necessary,” the man said.

And Randy was going to keep everyone the hell away from Sam, until she was safe and could explain what was going on.

“Your federal authority is real impressive and all.” Randy produced his slowest southern-boy smile. “But the security of this scene and everyone here is my call until EMT has my victim stabilized. You’re going to wait, sir. For your own safety, of course.”

“We’re in!” Gibson shouted from the wreck.

Randy’s crew was already disengaging their tools. They’d have the EMT team in place in under sixty seconds.

“I need to get in there.” Dean tried to shoulder his way closer.

Randy braced a forearm against the marshal’s chest.

“Let my team work.” Randy curbed his own impulse to rush to Sam. “All it takes is one slip of our equipment. One miscalculated move. The victim was unconscious when I climbed down. Before that, she was talking nonsense. There’s nothing for you to do here, unless you’re trying to put her life in even more danger.”

Randy studied the marshal’s reaction. There was nothing to see but the man’s growing irritation. Whatever Dean was doing there, he didn’t give a shit about Sam.

A female EMT eased into the wreck. Her partner hunkered down and began feeding her equipment and supplies.

“You spoke with the driver?” Dean wanted to know.

Randy didn’t answer. He didn’t breathe. He narrowed his attention to what was happening in the car.

“What exactly did you two discuss?” the marshal pressed. “I need to be made aware of everything that’s happened. Your victim is a principal in one of my operations.”

Randy grabbed the man by his suit’s rain-soaked lapels, losing patience with every out-of-control thing swirling around him.

“All you need to be aware of, is that your principal is most likely about to lose her baby, if not her own life!”

CHAPTER THREE

SAM SURFACED from the nightmare. She could hear Max’s voice. He was nearby. Separate from the fuzziness of her thoughts. What was Max doing in her bedroom? Why couldn’t she get her eyes to open?

Other voices were clamoring around her. Above her. Someone reported on her condition. Very official. Something pinched her arm, then her hand. There was talk about IVs and leads. Beyond it all, Sam could still hear her federal marshal.

Max sounded furious. But whatever was wrong, he would take care of it. And something was wrong. That was the one thing she was sure of. What had she done this time?

Max was shouting at someone….

Randy?

Why was she dreaming about the federal marshal in charge of her protection arguing with a long-ago voice she refused to let herself think about anymore?

Unless…

Sam’s belly cramped. Rain flooded over her. A storm raged around her, beyond her, beating against her face.

She hurt.

Everywhere.

“Ah!” she gasped, reality racing back.

The vehicle chasing her…The accident! Randy being there when he shouldn’t have been, his deep voice and the concern in his eyes and his warm touch. It was real. It was all real.

She’d told him to protect the baby. Their baby. She’d told him too much. She hadn’t told him enough. Now Max was there, and the two of them were arguing. What had she done?

She tried to fight the pain and the weight pressing down on her body.

Move!

Warn Randy!

“The APD is under my authority at this scene,” Max shouted. “You can’t keep me from interviewing her. And you wouldn’t want to if you knew what was at stake.”

“Then fill me in,” Randy demanded. “Otherwise, medical attention is all she’s receiving. The hell with your interview.

“Isolate her from all but essential personnel,” Max insisted.

An incredulous laugh followed.

“Okay,” he said. “Which of my team or the cops or the EMTs do you consider unessential?”

“I can have you restrained, Lieutenant, if that’s what it takes to—”

“Try it. You’re not isolating this victim from me, Marshal Dean. Not until I—”

“You got her out alive.” Max’s voice held an edge Sam had never heard before. Or maybe it was the buzzing in her ears that was growing louder, washing over every word until she had to strain to hear. “Job well done. Now get the hell out of the way and let me do mine. Before…”

“Before what?” Randy wanted to know. “What the hell is going on?”

“We need to transport her,” another voice said. Something gripped Sam’s arm. Tight. Tighter. “Her pressure’s bottoming out. If we don’t get her and the baby to the hospital…”

The pain and the fear and Sam’s need to tell Randy to listen to Max and get out before the danger got too close—it was all fading, along with the cramping in her belly that was her baby fighting for her life. The dream was there again, reaching for her.

The one where her daughter would be okay no matter what happened to Sam. Because Randy was there. He was smiling. Promising her he’d protect their child. Inside the dream, Sam could believe in promises and happily-ever-afters.

“My baby…” she finally managed to say out loud.

His touch stroked down her hair. She felt him lean closer. “You and the baby are going to be okay.”

“Protect our daughter, no matter what,” she whispered to him. She’d spent nine months telling herself she had to let the ridiculous fantasy of being with Randy go. Now, it felt as if he was the only thing standing between their child and the danger Sam had brought into their lives. “Never should have happened…All my fault. But you have to—”

“Everything’s fine, Robyn,” Max reassured her. He was closer, too. “We’re going to get you—”

“Robyn?” Randy asked.

“Robyn Nobles. That’s your victim’s name.” There was a silent pause. “Or is there something else you need to tell me?”

“I don’t need to tell you a damn thing!”

“Please stop,” she begged them both. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

She fumbled for Randy’s hand. She could barely feel it in her own.

Maybe it was the weakness stealing through her. Maybe it was having Randy there. But it finally felt safe. She could let the fear and the fight go. There was nothing else to do. There was only this moment. It had all come down to this. Even if she didn’t make it, there would be someone there for her daughter.

“Promise me.” She squeezed Randy’s hand. “Take care of our baby….”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, it’s too early to tell?” Randy had been badgering Atlanta Memorial’s top pediatric nurse for ten minutes.

He was being an ass, but his head was too full of pointless questions. He needed answers, and Kate Rhodes had been a family friend for years. As soon as she’d gotten wind that he’d ridden along with Sam’s ambulance and staked out the O.R. waiting room, she’d found him and stayed glued to his side, no matter how much he growled.

“Emma will be here soon,” she said. “I’m sure she headed over the second you called her. Once she’s here, I’ll find your victim and get more information. Her injuries looked surprisingly minor, considering what I’ve heard about the accident. But her pregnancy puts her at greater risk for complications—”

“I don’t need you to hold my hand until my big sister gets here. I need to know what’s going on. Go—”

“Not while you’re making the kind of scene that’s going to get you tossed off this floor.”

Kate dragged him to a chair. She was a tall woman, but Randy still towered over her. She got him to sit, regardless, then settled beside him. The room was silent around them. They were alone, at least for the moment. He was still soaking wet and filthy from the scene. And Kate was right—he was punch drunk, reeling from everything that had happened.

“Why are you so hung up on this victim?” she asked. “You’re usually thrilled to be the hero who walks off into the sunset. Not that anyone you’ve saved has ever complained. But it’s not like you to let the job get personal, Randy.”

No, no one complained. And no one ever got close enough to mess with the calm Randy had carved out for his life. That’s how he wanted his career. That’s how he wanted his relationships outside his family. Except for the chaos his brothers and sister supplied in a steady stream, Randy just wanted peace. A peace that had been unsettled for months by his bizarre attachment to a woman he barely knew. And now…

Don’t let him destroy our baby, too…

Your victim is a principal in one of my operations….

“Who is she?” Kate asked.

Randy managed a careless shrug. “A pregnant twentysomething who’s banged up and giving birth.”

“Yeah. I could have read that off the EMT’s report. But who’s she to you? Where are her people? It’s been hours since the accident. You’re the only one here waiting to see what happens.”

Randy nodded, even though he was certain Federal Marshal Max Dean was ruthlessly asserting his authority somewhere nearby. Which only added to Randy’s determination to get some answers. He had no reason to believe that Sam’s child was really his, or to feel responsible for their well-being. But there had been cold deliberation in Dean’s eyes. Randy couldn’t shake the unreasonable compulsion to protect Sam from the man and whatever had her so terrified.

Reason was how his world of fire and rescue worked. Except fear had taken control when he’d surprised his team and insisted on riding in Sam’s ambulance. Fear had kept him pacing at Atlanta Memorial ever since.

“I have no idea who she is,” he finally said. “But…I have to know she and her baby are okay.”

Kate nodded slowly.

“Martin said APD alerts have gone out, trying to find hits for her ID and description.” Kate’s hulking brother taught at the police academy, which gave him a lot of contacts in the Atlanta Police Department. “I suppose it’s possible no one knows she’s missing yet.”

“It’s also possible the ID we found in her purse is a dead end, and we’re not meant to find out where she and her baby belong.”

“Is that why you’re calling her Sam when her license says her name is Robyn?”

“Something like that.” Don’t tell anyone you know….

“You don’t think this was just another accident, do you?”

“Witnesses at the scene said someone hit a minivan, sending it skidding into her car. It sounds like the truck that caused the pileup had been dogging Sam for miles.”

“And how, exactly, do you know this Sam? Why don’t you want me using any other name but Robyn Nobles with the staff?”

Kate’s perfectly logical questions hung in the air, waiting for perfectly logical answers.

“Got a dollar?” Randy asked.

Kate fished into the pocket of her scrubs and handed a bill over. Randy headed for the hall and the dilapidated vending machine that had already denied him Yoo-hoo twice. Ignoring his friend, who walked at his side, Randy inserted the money into the machine.

Wrrr.

Grind.

It spat the bill back out at him.

“Damn it!” He pounded the side of the contraption with a clenched fist and inserted the dollar again.

“So, your plan is to make Herbie pay, “Kate said, “because you can’t smack around anyone else?”

“Herbie?” The bill flew back out of the slot and drifted to Randy’s feet. He growled and bent over to pick it up.

“This old wreck picks and chooses who it wants to bestow its bounty on. It’s not mercenary. Herbie always refunds your money if he’s not feeling the love. But he’s fickle. Reacts badly to stress. And from the looks of you, I kind of feel bad for whatever soda you get your hands on. You’ll crush it to oblivion when you’re done. You can understand why Herbie would feel protective.”

Randy stared at her. Never-ending overtime on the pediatric ward and dressing daily in cartoon scrubs had finally shredded her sanity. He wadded her dollar into a ball. Kate chuckled. He threw the money to the floor and stomped away.

He was furious. Deadly furious—at himself, not a tyrannical drink machine. He didn’t know anything about the woman his team had extracted. Not her mind. Her fears. Her secrets. All he knew was the instinct to keep her, now that he had her back. The memory of Sam’s contented sighs in that hotel room in Savannah had been messing with his head for months. Was that really all this was—him still being hung up on a one-night stand?

He might be a shallow sonovabitch when it came to relationships, but him losing it was about more than not being with another woman since St. Patrick’s Day. Seeing Sam again had stirred up more than a physical itch he needed to scratch. He was terrified for her and her unborn baby. It had been a lifetime since any emotion had gotten this close.

The elevator by the soda machine dinged. Randy’s sister emerged.

“Hey, Em,” Kate said.

Emma stepped onto the floor, stalled beside Herbie and pulled a wrinkled bill from her purse. She fed the machine, scooped up the can that was agreeably provided, collected her change and marched down the hall toward them. Her expression was worried, but her determined stride said I’ve got this covered.

Classic Emma.

She’d had everything covered for as far back as Randy would let his memory go. She reached his side and held out the can.

“You must be needing a chocolate fix something awful by now,” she said.

Kate hugged her, then she and her pink scrubs with yellow ducks floating all over them were heading down the hall.

“I’ll let you know when there’s an update on our patients,” she said over her shoulder.

“Patients?” Emma asked while Randy sat in one of the lounge’s chairs and snapped open his drink. She joined him. “You said you knew a woman in the accident. That you might need Rick’s help with information about her. Was there someone else in her car?”

Randy downed half the Yoo-hoo and let its coolness take the edge off the drive to go hand-to-hand with Herbie.

“There’s a baby.” He tunneled his free hand through his hair. “The victim is pregnant. Very pregnant. It’s only a matter of hours pregnant. No one’s saying anything about either of their conditions yet.”

“And?” Emma had on her lawyer’s face. The one that revealed nothing about what she was feeling, while she listened to absolutely everything that was being said.

“And it sounds like Sam and the baby were in trouble a long time before the MVA,” he added. The kind of trouble that Emma’s APD detective husband could look into.

“And?” Emma asked again.

“And I owe it to her to—”

“Owe it to her?” Emma slipped her hand into his, like she had when he was a little boy and their world had fallen apart. “Randy, this woman. How do you—”

“We…met, on my trip down to Savannah in March.”

Emma watched him drain the last of his drink. When he still didn’t say anything else, she headed back to the vending machine and beguiled another can out of the beast. She returned to Randy’s side, her eyes narrowing.

Her mind had always been able to sift through facts faster than should be legal.

“So, you met this woman the weekend you and Chris and Charlie and some of the guys headed south to blow off steam,” she said. “Only you came back more uptight than ever. You’ve been impossible to deal with since, the few times any of us have seen you off the job. All because of some hook-up you haven’t wanted to talk about. And now she’s here…and she’s very pregnant?”

“Yeah.” Randy took the fresh Yoo-hoo. He handed over his empty can, which he didn’t remember crushing. The thing was little more than a ball of aluminum now. “That weekend…It was strange. We were both looking for something easy and fun. It shouldn’t have meant anything more. Except it did, somehow. Being with her was…different. There was a connection. At least, I thought there was. But when I woke up the next morning, Sam had bolted. I figured I’d never see her again and tried to tell myself it was a good thing.”

“And now that you have seen her again?”

Randy curled both hands around his drink.

“She’s in trouble, Em. I’m sure of it. Nothing she was saying at the scene made any sense. I think she may have been in trouble when I met her in March, too. Maybe that’s what stuck with me all this time—what I couldn’t let go of.”

“You do have a weakness for saving people.” Emma nudged his shoulder with hers, only half kidding. “My little brother, the hero.”

Her biggest worry for him—for Randy and both his brothers—was how much of themselves they buried in their jobs. For Randy and Charlie and Chris, navigating relationships was the impossible thing—not walking into blazing infernos for a living. So far, Em had been the only one who’d been able to carve out a life with someone.

“If Sam wanted my help,” Randy reasoned out loud, “she wouldn’t have run that morning.”

“I don’t know about that. I almost torched what I had with Rick, before I learned how to stop shoving him away.”

“That was different.”

Emma had always been different.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “I wasn’t pregnant with Rick’s baby when he gave me the space to realize I couldn’t live without him. If I’d been carrying his child, he wouldn’t have let me out of his sight, whether I wanted to be saved or not.”

“I don’t know what this woman wants. I don’t have the first clue what’s going on.”

It wasn’t an admission anyone who knew Randy was used to hearing. His sister’s eyebrows disappeared beneath her honey-colored bangs. But she didn’t push. Her silence was an open invitation to trust her with more, whenever he was ready.

And Randy did trust her. There was nothing his family wouldn’t do for him. Whatever secret Sam was keeping, even if the danger she’d been rambling about was real, Randy’s brothers and sister would be his safety net.

“She said someone was after her,” he admitted. “That whoever it was would be back, and she and the baby were in danger. I don’t know how much of it is true, or even if the child is mine. But she was terrified. Then a federal marshal showed up on the scene….”

Emma nodded. Her lawyer’s face was back, but she was holding Randy’s hand again.

“And you need to know what about Sam’s situation is real,” she said. “So you’ll know where you stand once she’s stable enough for you to ask about the rest.”

The rest.

Sam and the baby and what the hell they meant to Randy…

“I need Rick’s help, Em. Your husband’s a bulldog. He knows exactly how to bend the rules without breaking anything important. He’s served as APD liaison on task forces with God knows how many federal agencies. He has to have a few favors to call in. I need to know everything he can dig up on this woman, her federal handler and whoever she’s running from.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“EXCUSES ARE USELESS TO ME.”

Luca Gianfranco smoothed a hand down the tie that, along with his private Gulfstream jet, was ruinously expensive but worth every dime he’d spent. In his world, money was power. It intimidated the people he needed kept in place, and wooed the ones he wanted closer.

Know who you can trust, and deal firmly with the ones you can’t.

It had been the wisest advice Luca’s father had ever given him.

“I guarantee she couldn’t have survived that accident,” the head of Luca’s southeastern operations insisted over their cell link.

“Really? Because it occurs to me that a guarantee would have been you watching her take her last breath.”

“Fire and rescue was there in under ten minutes. We couldn’t have—”

“You chose to make a public spectacle out of your responsibility, then you didn’t finish the job. Almost as if you didn’t want the same outcome I do, and you didn’t want me to have another chance once you failed.”

“I did what you asked,” said the voice of a man Luca had been sure could be trusted. It wasn’t the first time he’d been wrong about family. “You wanted the world to know you aren’t weak. No matter what you have to do. No one who hears about how you took Sam out will doubt—”

“But I haven’t taken her out. She was rushed to the hospital. She’s been in emergency surgery for hours.” Luca took a deep breath, resisting the wave of familiarity that came with thinking of her as Sam. She was a loose end. A challenge to his control that would be his death warrant if he didn’t eliminate her.

There was a long pause.

Something crashed on the other side of the line.

“She’s alive?” the gruff voice said.

“I’m assured she’s in bad shape, but alive. That’s all the details I can get. My source won’t risk attracting suspicion by asking too many questions. But that’s a risk I’m confident you’d be happy to take, to make up for your failure.”

“But even if I can get someone to—”

“Get your ass over there. I want a detailed report before morning. Then I’ll tell you exactly what I want done to end this. The trial’s less than a month away. My Vancouver associates are nervous. I’m on my way to reassure them that I’ve isolated the leak, that there’s no way I’ll be indicted, and that their investment is secure. You either take care of this for me, or you become part of the collateral damage you caused.”

Luca slapped his phone shut. The flight attendant bringing him cappuccino flinched as she set the cup down. He caught her hand before she could draw away.

“Share some of this with me?” It wasn’t a request.

She sat. Her smile was beautiful, if not completely genuine. She didn’t resist as Luca’s fingers threaded through hers. He lifted the cup of steaming coffee with his free hand, offering it to her as if it were a precious jewel. Hesitating, she took a sip and licked foam from her upper lip.

Sam had once craved private time with him. She’d needed companionship and a sense of belonging so badly. She’d been his shadow, until she betrayed him.

Luca’s hand tightened around the attendant’s, becoming a crushing vise. A squeak of pain escaped as he leaned forward, staring into her blue eyes. The same color as Sam’s.

“No one leaves my family,” he whispered to the attendant.

His mind raced with his plans to expand his West Coast operations into Vancouver. Everything was riding on him neutralizing this ridiculous grand jury mess. His fist clenched tighter. A bone snapped in the petite blonde’s hand. She cried out. The thrill of it swamped the rush of unfamiliar anxiety that had momentarily taken hold.

“No one challenges me,” he explained, his voice gentle. “Understand?”

The flight attendant nodded frantically, her eyes glazing. Pain. Fear. It was the same broken expression that had been on Sam’s face the night she’d run from him and their world. He wanted to see fear in her eyes again, just once more before she died. Fear of him, while he took away the life she had no right to live without his permission.

“You’d never betray me.” He yanked the attendant closer, until their lips brushed. “Would you?”

“YOU HAVE TO DO THIS,” Charlie Montgomery insisted, begging for help from a man he’d once threatened to kill with his bare hands.

His family’s relationship with their sister’s husband had come a long way since he and Chris and Randy had tried to beat the crap out of Rick Downing on Emma’s front lawn.

“I’ve never seen Randy this way,” he pressed when Rick didn’t respond. “Not even when we were kids. Not even when…”

“I understand.” Emma’s APD hero husband sounded both sympathetic and annoyingly professional. “But there’s no way—”

“There is, too, a goddamned way!” Charlie thundered.

This was Charlie’s baby brother they were talking about. Helping Randy through the first crisis any of them had seen get to him since they were kids—that was the only way. Except Rick didn’t know Randy like the rest of them. He couldn’t know how out of character Randy asking for Emma’s help had been—then asking Charlie to wade into the situation when Emma had come up empty.

“When it was your best friend’s ass on the line,” Charlie said, “you pushed and shoved until you were right in the middle of an FBI sting Alexa Vegas got herself in. When my sister told you to butt out of her life and turned my brothers and me loose on you, you took us all on to stay by her side. You put your job on the line to help her and get her to believe in you. But my brother’s problems aren’t important enough to risk your neck for, is that it?”

Rick was the big gun Charlie and his family needed. He’d married their sister last year, and they’d all accepted him, regardless of the bad blood between their families. It was time for the man to prove he knew what family meant.

Rick folded his arms across his chest. The guy was talking himself out of letting those meaty fists of his fly—a diversion Charlie would have welcomed at the moment.

Damn, he hated being back at Atlanta Memorial. Even though he didn’t personally know the patient they were all waiting around to hear news about, the place gave him the creeps. It hadn’t been that long ago that Emma had been the one clinging to life, after a courthouse shooting left her bleeding in Rick’s arms.

“Say whatever you got to say,” Charlie challenged. “I have got no feelings for you to hurt. And I got no problem taking you on right here and now, if you don’t care how much it’s hurting Emma to watch Randy fall apart over a stranger while there’s something you can do to help him.”

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my wife, as long as my actions don’t make the situation worse. And from what I’ve heard, that’s exactly what would happen if I started throwing my weight around digging for answers. Martin Rhodes already got nowhere trying to find information on this Robyn Nobles woman.”

“Making things worse for your cushy career, you mean.”

“No, you asshole.” Downing slid his hands into his filthy jeans pockets. The guy had come to the hospital straight from work. Being a detective meant he wore whatever earned him the street cred he needed. “Worse for Emma, when my questions put someone her brother cares about at even more risk.”

Rick had clearly done a bit of digging already.

“What have you heard?” Charlie asked.

“Not much.” Rick scanned the empty waiting area. Chris had dragged Emma downstairs for coffee. Lord knew where Randy was prowling while he waited like a caged lion for an update about this woman and her baby. “Except that the guys’ weekend you took down the coast may have landed Randy in the middle of a whole lot of shit he was never supposed to be involved in.”

“Well, he’s involved now. At least enough to ask his own questions if I can’t get them for him through safer channels. Think about what that will do, if things are as dicey as you say. He’s attached to this woman, whether the rest of us understand it or not. I’ve never seen him like this. Chris or Emma neither. Randy’s all about logic and reason and keeping things simple. But he’s neck deep in whatever this is and not looking for a way out. All for a woman he hasn’t spent more than a few hours with. I don’t see him stopping until he has some answers, do you?”

A wave of understanding passed between them. Randy might work nonstop and party hard and all the other things that guaranteed his personal life stayed superficial and uncomplicated. But nothing stopped him when it came to keeping the people he really cared about safe. And this accident victim had Randy caring like she was family—in the midst of a situation that sounded more unstable by the second.

“Get my brother whatever information you can,” Charlie insisted. “Whatever it’s going to take to keep him and this woman safe.”

“Randy should back off. Now.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Not even if pushing might be the worst thing he could do for the lady in question?”

“He’ll never believe that, not after she begged him for his help.”

“She was delirious. Injured. Giving birth.”

“And she reached out for my brother, after nine months of the rest of us having to deal with him sulking because he couldn’t see her again. She told him she was in so much trouble he shouldn’t say anything to anyone, but he’s trusting my family. Now we’re trusting you. He needs your help, Rick. We all do.”

Downing blinked at the closest to begging Charlie had ever come. Then he nodded.

Simple.

Direct.

Rick was all-in, the same way he’d been when it had been Emma’s well-being on the line.

“All right,” Rick said. “I’ll get you everything I can. Just don’t expect to like it. And don’t expect my information to make whatever Randy’s next decision has to be any easier.”

CHAPTER FIVE

SAM COULD HEAR, but she couldn’t feel. She could remember, but only what was far away. What was closer, what was happening around her, made no sense.

All that made sense was that she had to be sure. She had to make him understand. He had to keep their baby safe.

“You have to believe me!” she whimpered.

Whimpered?

The woman who’d ditched Luca Gianfranco and stayed ditched for nearly two years didn’t whimper. About anything.

“Try to relax,” a soothing feminine voice said.

Then the voice belonged to a nurse wearing pink clothes that were covered in ducks.

Not the him Sam had been begging.

Not Randy.

Had he only been part of a dream? Everything was so muddled. Sam could remember feeling safe, because Randy had been there. Even though Luca would keep coming for her…

“Your baby will be here soon,” the nurse said. “The doctors want to deliver her without a C-section. They’re bringing you around enough to push, but there will be no pain.”

“My baby…”

The room swam into sharper focus. She was in an O.R. Her nurse was wearing a surgical mask. Other people moved around her.

Terrifying flashes of the accident sliced through her pounding head. She clenched her fingers against her cramping stomach.

“My baby!” It had all been real. The accident. Randy. Going into labor. Was it too late? “Is she—”

“Your little girl’s fine.” The pretty nurse smiled. “We did an ultrasound. She’s in distress, but as long as we deliver her soon, she’ll be fine. Your condition is stabilized. You’ll need a sling to protect your shoulder for a while, but somehow nothing was broken. Your head injury is minor. There are stitches, and we’ll have to monitor your concussion for a few days. But the seat belt seems to have saved you from the worst of it.”

But not her baby.

Sam wasn’t due for another two weeks.

Everything that had happened swirled through Sam like bolts of sizzling lightning that couldn’t hurt her, because they weren’t quite real. All that felt real was the man she’d been dreaming about for close to a year. A stranger who’d left her with a piece of himself. A miracle. A promise that there would be a tomorrow.

“Randy’s baby…” Sam whispered.

A moment of shock crossed the other woman’s face.

“Do you know him?” Sam asked, grappling to remember what his response had been to her revelation that he had a child on the way. A daughter who was in danger. But there was nothing there—no memory to reassure her. “You have to make him believe me. You have to tell him. Luca…Don’t let Luca hurt our baby….”

“…she’s hemorrhaging…”

“The baby’s heart rate…”

“Save her,” Sam begged. “Tell Randy he has to…”

“…can tell him yourself,” the nurse was saying. “We’ll take good care…your baby and you…”

“…fully effaced…This baby’s delivering now!”

The nurse was lifting Sam’s shoulders. She’d been right, there was no pain. Only the need to push so her daughter—Randy’s daughter—could be born. The nurse supported Sam’s back. Everything faded but the realization that the baby was coming. It still wasn’t safe. Luca couldn’t know there was a child. But—

Voices told her to push.

To push again.

Pressure.

More pressure.

Then, finally, relief, followed by a wave of loneliness no drug could numb.

“She’s beautiful.” The nurse eased Sam back.

“Is she…” Sam was so tired, but she had to know. “Is she okay? She…she isn’t crying…”

“Let the doctors take care of her,” the nurse said.

“You’re going to sleep again,” a male voice added.

“No! I want to see her. Just once…” Sam fought the touch restraining her.

“You’ll see her when you wake up,” the nurse reassured her. “You and your daughter are safe. Rest…”

“You don’t understand…” What if she didn’t wake up quickly enough? What if she didn’t wake up at all? Someone had to make Randy understand.

They’d be back.

Luca’s men.

They’d come for her. Luca would come for her baby, and Sam didn’t trust the feds to protect her daughter. A child wouldn’t be their priority. Sam’s testimony was all they cared about.

Where was Randy?

Randy had to know. He had to keep their daughter out of Luca’s clutches. And he would. Sam had sensed it the morning she’d woken in his hotel room in Savannah. Randy was the kind of man who’d stop at nothing to protect someone he cared about. She’d run from the temptation of wanting to be cared for that completely.

Now she was reaching for the dream, needing it to be real while the world faded.

“Tell Randy he has to protect our baby.” She fought the pull of the drugs. “Tell him…I’m so sorry I’ve done this to him.”

“HER RECORDS ARE SEALED, man.” Rick winced at the murderous expression that crept across Randy’s face.

“And that means, what?” Randy glanced at Emma, who was standing beside her husband. “That whatever’s going on is at a level even you can’t access?”

“It most likely means that me snooping into Robyn Nobles’s life is putting people at risk,” Rick explained. “This woman and her baby, if no one else. Someone’s got to have a pretty good reason for there being no record of her anywhere, except a note not to pursue information.”

It wasn’t the answer Randy had been hoping for. A jealous ex. An abusive husband. Someone Sam had been running from last night, and months ago, that could be stopped from causing her more trouble. This was about something far worse.

Emma took his hand and squeezed.

“What kind of danger is she in?” Chris asked. He and Charlie had joined them.

“There was a federal marshal on scene,” Rick explained. “That much I confirmed from the APD officer’s report. Which means Randy’s instincts are right—there’s reason to question the cause of the accident. Beyond that, all I know for sure is that APD brass has agreed to secure the victim’s safety until further notice.”

“A federal marshal?” Charlie asked.

“As in federal protection?” Chris added.

Randy hadn’t mentioned Dean to anyone but his sister. Now all of his siblings were staring at him, while Rick stared at the floor.

“Did she give you her full name in Savannah?” Rick asked.

“No.”

“Give you any idea where she was from? If she was married? Why she would be passing through Atlanta with South Georgia plates that trace back to a dead end?”

“I don’t know!” Randy shook off Emma’s hold. “We just…It never got that far. All I remember is that there was a northern accent. Not much of one, but it stuck out in a place like Savannah.”

And it had been sexy as hell.

“What kind of northern accent?” Rick asked. “Like New York?”

“Maybe.” Randy waited for his brother-in-law to say something else, but Rick hesitated. “Just say it. What do you think all this means?”

“With federal marshals involved? I’d guess she’s hiding from something or someone that’s coming at her from wherever she’s originally from. And the feds are interested enough in whatever she knows to keep her hidden.”

“You’re saying this woman’s been on the run since March?” Chris sputtered.

“Maybe longer.” Rick rolled his shoulders beneath his Atlanta Braves T-shirt. “Not that we’re ever going to know.”

“Why?” Charlie asked.

“Depending on what she’s offering in return for protection,” Rick said. “She might be—”

“Running for the rest of her life,” Randy finished.

The possibility of federal relocation made Sam’s disappearance from his arms that morning go down a little easier. But it also made everything he didn’t know about her situation harder to stomach. Not to mention that he might be responsible for the innocent, newborn life she’d have with her from now on.

“Excuse me, folks.” Seth Washington stepped into the lounge.

Atlanta Memorial’s chief of staff was another family friend—by way of having bonded with Emma’s husband when they’d both gotten sucked into helping an FBI deep cover agent who’d landed in Emergency. Rick crossed the room to shake the man’s hand.

“I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this.” Seth shifted his attention to Randy. “But I knew you were waiting for news about the patient you rode in with, and I didn’t want Kate to have to deliver it. We had her stabilized, but there were complications with the delivery, and—”

“The baby?” The strain in Randy’s voice made it unrecognizable to his own ears.

“A girl. She’s a week or two premature, and there were some breathing issues at first. But she’s responding well now and shouldn’t even need to stay the night in neonatal ICU. I imagine she’ll be moved to the general nursery in a matter of hours. Unfortunately, the mother’s hemorrhaging was beyond our ability to—”

“Sam…” Randy’s relief at the news about the baby choked in his throat. “She’s…”

“I’m sorry, Randy,” Seth said while Emma, Chris and Charlie stepped closer. “I’m afraid she’s gone.”

RANDY STOOD at the nursery window of Atlanta General’s pediatric wing, staring blindly at the tiny lives being nurtured inside. He didn’t even know if Sam’s baby was in there. And he had absolutely no right to ask. But the invisible pull that had lured him here had been stronger than logic.

What the hell was he doing?

“I haven’t seen you this shut down,” Emma said beside him, “since…”

“Since we lost Mom,” he finished for her. The last thing he’d felt this strongly had been grief over their mother’s death, which had come less than a year after she’d killed their father—to keep the bastard from ever threatening her kids again. “Mom gave up her freedom and then her life to protect us.”

“It sounds like your Sam was fighting just as hard to protect her baby.”

His Sam.

“You can’t save everyone,” Emma insisted gently.

No one had tried to persuade him to leave the hospital. His brothers had let him be, walking away with parting slaps of support on Randy’s shoulder. Emma had wanted to talk with Seth a little more. And Randy had somehow ended up at the nursery.

Of course Emma had found him there. When she’d been barely more than a teenager herself, she’d fought to get Randy and his brothers back from the different foster homes they’d been scattered to. No way was his big sister leaving Randy alone to face this, even if no one could tell them exactly what this was.

“She wasn’t just another victim,” he said, finally verbalizing the ache that had been gnawing at him since Seth’s news. “She…”

“Was someone you knew for less than a day! Stop torturing yourself over something that isn’t your responsibility.”

If only it were that simple.

He wished to God it was that simple.

“She begged me to protect her daughter.” Kate had relayed the message that Sam had still been terrified in the delivery room. Asking for Randy by name and insisting he had to save their baby from some unseen evil that was closing in. “She said they were in danger.”

“She was in shock. Look around you.” Emma gestured at the early-morning calm of the hallway. “Does it look like anyone thinks a baby’s in danger? Where is that marshal you said was on scene? Why hasn’t Seth heard anything about any of this? He runs this place. If there was really a problem—”

“Sam said her little girl is mine.” It was the only reality that mattered right now. “I don’t know which I want to be less true—that a baby might be alone and in danger because I couldn’t save her mother, or that I might be the father of an infant who has no one else in the world to look after her but me.”

“You don’t know that her baby is alone now.”

“No. But I know that Sam didn’t want someone named Luca to get anywhere near the child.”

“Then what are you doing just standing here, staring off into space?” Emma’s smack on his shoulder wasn’t nearly as encouraging as their brothers’ had been. “You’ve harassed Kate and me to get people to pull strings for you and find out who this woman is. That didn’t pan out, but you’re clearly not ready to move on. If you think you should have a say in what happens to her baby, if you feel obligated to step in, then do what you have to do to make that happen.”

Randy closed his eyes, hating the growing impulse to walk away before he grew even more attached.

“And if a paternity test turns out to be positive?” he asked.

Protect her, Randy.

Don’t let him destroy our child, too…

“Then you and I will be taking your beautiful daughter home as soon as her doctors will let us.” Emma’s features turned somber, as if she could sense how much he was mourning Sam, on top of his confusion about his responsibility to her child.

Emma more than anyone else understood Randy’s inability to process that kind of connection to another person. She’d almost lost Rick over her own battle with the same fear. Then her expression grew determined.

“Man up, Montgomery,” she said. “It’s time to crack that hero’s heart of yours open and join the rest of us in the emotional uncertainty we like to call reality.”

“LUCA’S GOING TO FIND ME!” Sam struggled to sit up in her hospital bed, shrugging off the confusion that had clouded her mind since she woke.

Every move she made hurt. The pain meds weren’t making a dent. Not that it mattered. If she didn’t fight, she’d die. She hadn’t remembered much yet, but one thing was certain—she’d never felt in more danger. And that was saying something.

She looked wildly around the tiny room where they’d hidden her on Atlanta Memorial’s psychiatric lockdown ward. Her IV line pulled as she crossed her arms. The needle feeding the vein in the back of her hand pinched.

What was she doing in Atlanta? She was supposed to be hiding in a tiny house on the rural outskirts of Macon. She’d been in a car accident, that much she knew. But she could only remember the sounds of crashing vehicles, an oppressing sense of panic, then nothing until she’d woken in this bare room.

How long had she been unconscious?

How long had it taken her protection detail to find her?

“What’s going on?” she asked for the third time.

“You’re clear,” Max Dean reassured her, still giving no real answers. “Take it easy so your mind can sort the rest out. The doctors don’t want you to push it right away.”

Push it?

There was something she should be remembering. Something terrible. Life or death.

“I’m clear? Of Luca?” Luca she could remember. No one was ever clear of him. Sam laughed, and her head nearly exploded. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

The doctor who’d been there when Sam regained consciousness a few minutes ago had said she’d be sore for several days, but none of her injuries were life-threatening. It was a miracle, he’d added, after her blood pressure had bottomed out. They almost hadn’t gotten her back. But there was no reason to worry about the short-term memory loss. If she took it easy, the concussion would ease and she’d recover everything before long.

Sam rubbed her temple, careful to avoid the gash that had been stitched back together. The few sketchy details her marshal had given her weren’t enough. Not nearly enough.

“Your death ends this,” Max explained. “Whoever looks will find evidence that your injuries were fatal. It’s a fact. All you have to do now is relax until you’re ready to remember the rest.”

“The rest?”

Max was always there to clean up whatever mess she made of her protection. He even looked a little relieved to see her alive—and maybe not just because losing her would have damaged his spotless record at the U.S. Marshals Service. But he was also watching her as if he expected her to fall apart at any second.

If she was “clear” and his team had taken care of everything, why was he so worried still?

“It’s only been an hour since they treated you,” he hedged. “Give it time.”

“But I’m…You’re telling everyone I’m dead. How…”

“The O.R. staff was interviewed. The hospital powers that be are on board. Robyn Nobles is dead. Catastrophic injuries incurred during a fatal hit-and-run. Any record to the contrary, here or with the fire and rescue team, will be dealt with. My team’s already on it. Stop worrying. Stop running. Let me and my team do our jobs, Sam.”

Running…

Sam had been driving. Someone had been chasing her. And…she’d been in pain, even before she crashed into the guardrail, then into another car. And in the O.R…. She’d been screaming in pain that hadn’t been from her injuries. There’d been…

A delivery nurse?

Sam’s hands flew to her now-soft belly.

“My baby!” A nurse had told Sam everything would be okay. And Sam had said…What? “I had my baby? But…Where is she? Why can’t I remember?”

“You will,” Max assured her. “All that’s important now is that you’re okay, and so is the baby. I asked the doctor not to tell you anything—”

“You what!”

“Worrying you until you were ready wasn’t going to accomplish anything. You need to rest and recover, Sam, so we can get you moving. My people are taking care of your daughter’s cover story. The records will show that she died, too. There will be another report that an unnamed child was left outside the E.R. tonight. She’ll be admitted to the pediatric unit, once she’s released from ICU.”

“ICU!” Sam’s thoughts wouldn’t stay focused. They kept tangling all over themselves and Max’s half truths and the huge hole still in her memory.

How could she have forgotten she’d delivered her daughter? She couldn’t remember having her. Holding her. Making sure she was okay.

“You said she’s fine,” Sam said. “Then why is she in ICU? What’s wrong?”

“She’s a little premature, and they’re taking precautions because of the accident, nothing more. For all I know, they’ve already moved her. One of my deputies is keeping an eye on the situation, but there’s no reason to think anyone will be looking for your child. There’s nothing to trace her to you. She’ll be safe in foster care until—”

“Until someone who saw me deliver her says the wrong thing to the wrong people and…”

And what?

There was more, but her mind wouldn’t grab hold of it.

Sam closed her eyes. Tried to think. Warning bells clamored over everything. What wasn’t Max telling her? What hadn’t she told him?

“We’ve explained to the trauma and O.R. staffs that they’re under a federal gag order. They’ll be arrested if the truth leaks. If Luca is behind your accident, and—”

“It was Luca.” The man the federal government was supposed to be protecting her from was closer than ever.

“Then when he investigates what happened tonight, he won’t find anything more than your and your baby’s death certificates. It’s actually a good development. Now he’ll call off his dogs.”

“You don’t know him.”

The memories were rushing back, at least the ones from before she’d run. Luca had found her in Macon the same day the travel channel had shown pictures of her. The same day! Only hours after she’d called Gabby.

Which meant he’d already had men close.

Too close.

“He won’t stop until he sees my dead body for himself.”

“The records show your body was cremated, due to a mix-up in paperwork. We’re covering all the bases, Sam. Stop fighting me. This latest stunt of yours means you’ll have around-the-clock protection from now on. The grand jury’s convening soon. Calm down enough to heal, so you can testify the way the federal prosecutor needs you. Then I’ll place you and your daughter in a permanent identity thousands of miles from here. We’ll get Gabby to you, too. You’ll all be free. But you have to stick to the plan. Stop panicking and screwing up and making it impossible for me to keep you safe.”

“Free?” The word felt empty. It felt like fear, because something was still terribly wrong.

“You’ve been self-destructing from day one.” Max sat in the only chair in her stark room. “Let’s just call this what it is, Sam. Rock bottom. Having pictures of yourself plastered all over basic cable. Calling Gabby before I could get to you. Running, thinking you could evade your brother’s men on your own? You’ve done just about everything you can to ruin your chances to stay alive long enough to get custody of your sister. But somehow, you’re still here. This is your last chance. Don’t throw it away like you have all the others.”

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