Baby On The Run

“Can you get up?”

“The men—”

“They’re gone. Come on—stand up.”

“Gone?” he said as she helped him to his feet. He groaned, clutching his ribs.

“They left. I called 9-1-1 and told them I was at Scooter’s Pancake House in Cedar River.”

“What about...the little boy?”

“He’s in the car.”

He blinked to clear the stars from his vision, but it didn’t help much. Safe to say the chief’s thugs had gifted him with a doozy of a concussion. When he reached his truck, Jenna led him to the passenger side.

“I’ll drive,” he said.

“You can barely stand. Get in.” She glanced nervously over her shoulder. A few people inside the truck stop were watching from the window.

As he started to argue, he realized how right she was. Matt was in no shape to drive and they needed to get out of here, quick. The concussion was messing with his judgment. He’d have to rely on Jenna’s acumen for the time being.

Once inside the truck, he closed his eyes. He heard her get behind the wheel, but she didn’t start the vehicle.

He cracked open his eyes. “What...what’s happening?”

“I need to take my contacts out.” She dug through her bag.

“Do it when we’re safe.”

“I’ll do it now, thank you very much,” she snapped.

He’d made her angry. Why? He was trying to protect her, get her away from danger.

She pulled out a small container, and before he could say Miranda rights, she’d removed her contacts and was transformed with the help of large, dark-rimmed glasses. Her auburn hair had been tucked into a ski cap.

“Okay, let’s take care of you. Where’s the first aid kit?” she said.

“I’m fine.” As he said the words, he found himself drifting into that dark place—the place between consciousness and sleep, the place where time didn’t exist. Distant memories flooded his brain, memories of laughter, then anger...

A casket being lowered into the ground.

Sarah.

A gentle hand pressed a gauze pad against the side of his head. “Shh, hold still.”

It was a firm voice, tinged with sweetness and concern. Who was it again? He’d distanced himself from relationships because of his work, his dedication to the job.

He’d attempted commitment with Sarah. And she was dead.

His fault.

There wasn’t a day that went by when he didn’t pray for forgiveness.

Shutting down the romantic part of his life was what had made him a good agent, an agent willing to devote all his energy into nailing criminals, men who pretended to be heroes, when they were actually...

He was falling again, floating like a leaf dropping from a tree. Where would he land? Back at her funeral? His remorse strangling him as he pleaded with God for forgiveness?

“It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“Sarah?” he said.

“Almost done.”

“I’m sorry.”

* * *

An hour later, Jenna glanced at her passenger and wondered if she should take him to a hospital. His skin was pale and he groaned in his sleep every few minutes. Plus, he’d been having delusions back at the truck stop when she’d bandaged his head wound.

He’d whispered the name Sarah. His girlfriend? Wife?

“Stay focused,” she said softly. She couldn’t afford to be distracted by her passenger’s nightmares. She needed to strategize what to do next, other than to distance herself from Cedar River.

“Stay back,” Matthew muttered in his sleep.

Jenna suspected he had a concussion and knew the best treatment for that was sleep. She’d learned as much when she’d ended up in the hospital after one of her “falls.”

She clenched her jaw. This was not the time, nor the place, to be thinking about the past. She had two people to protect—Little Eli and...an FBI agent. Which begged the question, why was he working undercover as a janitor at the community center?

“Medic,” he said. He jerked awake, eyes wide, breathing heavily.

“Hey, you’re okay,” she said.

He glanced at her with a dazed expression.

“Just a bad dream,” she said.

He snapped his attention away, as if embarrassed, and directed his gaze to the road ahead.

“Best thing for a concussion is sleep,” she offered.

A moment later he closed his eyes. Wow, that surprised her. She thought she’d get more of an argument, or a lecture about how she should have left him back at the truck stop.

Why didn’t you abandon him, Jenna?

Because of the vulnerability in his dulled blue eyes. She couldn’t leave a semiconscious man lying on the cold, wet ground. After all, once the thugs figured out Jenna had diverted them from her true location, they would have returned to the truck stop and done even more damage to Matthew. He was in no position to defend himself.

She’d been in survival mode back at the office, driven by the trauma of her past. The chief’s actions solidified her opinion of law enforcement, and her cautious nature had made her draw the conclusion that Matthew was a serial criminal, not a cop. Even if he was a cop, she knew they had their own code, and the normal rules of civility didn’t apply to them.