Cinderella's Secret Agent

The smile turned to a bared-teeth grimace as she rode out another pain. Del did what he could to help her through the next contraction, and each one after that, encouraging her to breathe while her body worked and then using conversation to distract her during the brief respites.

Yet he didn’t have to do all that much—she was a marvel of courage. He had known seasoned agents who couldn’t handle pain as well as Maggie Rice. This woman was refusing to let anything dampen her spirit.

But that didn’t really surprise him. He’d been admiring Maggie’s spirit since the first time he’d seen her. She always had a warm smile and a pleasant word for everyone. Open, caring and genuinely kind, she was a sharp contrast to the world he inhabited.

That was why he felt so drawn to her. He’d started coming to the coffee shop because it was convenient, situated only a few blocks from the surveillance site he and Bill were working. It hadn’t taken him long to learn the details of the pregnant waitress’s predicament. She’d been seduced and abandoned by a married man. Hers was a hard luck story that could have turned any other woman bitter.

Yet there was nothing bitter about Maggie. She never failed to make a special fuss over any children who happened to come into the restaurant, and on more than one occasion Del had seen her slip an extra sandwich to a customer who looked down-and-out. The camaraderie she shared with the rest of the staff was more typical of a small town than a big city. And there had even been times when she’d brought in flowers to put in the little juice glasses to brighten up the tables.

She would have liked those daffodils. But he couldn’t give her the wrong idea. He couldn’t get close to her or get involved in her life. Because of his job…

Oh, hell. It was too late to think about that now. He was already involved up to his elbows. If the ambulance didn’t arrive in the next five minutes—

“Del!” Maggie cried, her eyes widening.

He checked the clock. The last contraction had scarcely finished and already her body was being contorted by another one. “Hang on,” he urged. “The paramedics are on their way.”

“I can…feel…something…” Her words ended in a groan.

“Maggie?”

She clutched his hand hard enough for her short nails to draw blood. “Something’s happening.”

Until now, he’d endeavored to let her preserve some modesty, but the distress in her voice told him this wasn’t the time to worry about the niceties. He pried her fingers loose from his hand and lifted the hem of her dress past her hips.

One look and he realized the birth wasn’t merely imminent, it was already in progress.

There would be no help from that other waitress, Joanne. She had turned green merely at the sight of Maggie’s water breaking. The cook was almost as bad. And Del wasn’t going to trust Maggie to some stranger in the restaurant. Ignoring the fact that he was essentially a stranger, he positioned himself between her feet.

Maggie felt as if her body were being ripped open with each successive contraction, but she kept her lips pressed tightly together to keep the scream inside. She didn’t want her scream to be the first sound her baby heard. She wanted her child to know she was loved and welcomed and cherished…but oh, God, she couldn’t endure this much longer….

“I can see the head,” Del said. “You’re right. Your baby is as impatient as you are.”

She felt Del’s hands on her thighs, gently easing her legs apart. She didn’t care that she barely knew him—it didn’t enter her mind. Modesty was irrelevant. She was running on instinct. “You can see her?” she gasped.

“Yes.”

“Oh, God. I want to see her, too.”

“Just keep on doing what you’re doing. You’ll get there.”

The urge to push was overwhelming. Maggie held her breath, giving in to the command of her body. Time shrank to a bright pinpoint. Dimly she was aware of Del’s calm encouragement, the warm touch of his hands, the strength he was giving her just by his presence…but all of her thoughts, her energy, her being, were focused on the task nature had given her.

“That’s it, Maggie,” Del murmured. “A little more, just a little more.”

She didn’t know how long it lasted. She lost track of everything outside the intimate connection between her and the man she was trusting to deliver her baby. Gradually, her body no longer seemed to be fighting her. Every muscle was working, straining, tightening, pushing…until suddenly, just when she thought she would tear in half, the pressure eased.

And the room was filled with the most glorious sound Maggie had heard in her life. It was the tiny, tremulous wail of her newborn child.

Exhausted, drenched in sweat, Maggie somehow found the strength to lift her head.

Del was kneeling between her legs, his large hands carefully cradling a beautiful, wrinkled, red-faced, squirming miracle. “It’s a girl,” he said, his voice hushed. His gaze met hers, his amber eyes unabashedly moist. “Congratulations, Maggie. You have a daughter.”

Chapter 2

“‘They also serve who only stand and wait,’” Bill Grimes intoned. With his bald head and habitually benign expression, he could have passed for an absentminded English professor, an image Bill deliberately played on with the pipe he held between his teeth and his penchant for issuing quotations.

Del shut off the tape player and ejected the cassette. It was barely past midnight and Bill was already into Milton. This was going to be a long night. “I hate to admit it, but that about sums things up.”

Bill grunted and adjusted the focus on the telescope he was using. The adjustment wasn’t really necessary—the instrument was already carefully positioned on a tripod and calibrated for the optimum range—but it gave him the impression that he was doing something.

Del understood his partner’s state of mind all too well. Still, good hunters had patience, and they were going to need a lot of it. The briefing tape he and Bill had just listened to had come directly from Jonah, the head of SPEAR, so they knew it was the best information possible. The situation was essentially the way Del had figured it: Simon had gone underground, but he was running out of places to hide. That’s why Del, Bill and the rest of the surveillance team would have to stay where they were. Stand and wait.

Del looked around at the forest of equipment that crammed the small apartment. Bill’s telescope was about the lowest-tech piece here. The steel shelf by the back wall held night vision binoculars, infrared detectors, cameras, weapons and body armor. Two video cameras and a parabolic microphone were hooked up to a bank of recording equipment, all of it focused on the window of the apartment across the courtyard.

A studio apartment identical in design to this one, the place hadn’t undergone any major renovations in years. Apart from a countertop fridge and a range in the tiny kitchen, and half a dozen folding chairs, it was unfurnished. There was little to recommend it to a potential tenant…other than the location. Situated in midtown Manhattan near the East River, it happened to have an excellent view of one of New York’s most famous landmarks: the shimmering glass cereal-box-shaped structure that housed the headquarters of the United Nations.

Weeks ago SPEAR intelligence had learned that particular apartment across the courtyard had been rented for Simon’s use. What they didn’t yet know was why.

It had to have something to do with the proximity to the UN, that much was obvious. But why? Was Simon’s next target some diplomat or politician? Was he going to use the apartment’s vantage point to coordinate an assault or hide a sniper? Until now, all Simon’s schemes had been aimed at destroying SPEAR itself. Had he changed his tactics?

Del rubbed his face wearily. There were too many questions. With luck, this surveillance would bring them some of the answers.

“By the way, what happened to your hands?” Bill asked without lifting his head. “I hadn’t thought those burns were so deep.”

Del focused on his hands. To his surprise, he noticed the healing pink skin behind his knuckles was marred by crescent-shaped gouges in several places, deep enough to be noticeable even in the dim light that filtered through the window.

He felt a moment’s confusion before understanding dawned. The marks were from Maggie’s fingernails. She must have done it when she’d been holding on to him during those contractions.

Immediately, the simmering frustration of his hunt for Simon faded. Despite the state-of-the-art equipment that surrounded him and the grim reality of his job here, Del felt an echo of Maggie’s presence. Her warmth, her twinkling good nature seemed to brighten the stark apartment.

It was such an unlikely juxtaposition. Only a few hours ago he had shared in the most basic event in life, the birth of a child. Now here he was immersed in the complex business of international terrorism. His world and Maggie’s world couldn’t get much further apart than that.

“Those cuts aren’t from the explosion,” he said. One corner of his mouth quirked upward in a half smile. “They have nothing to do with Simon. They’re from something else entirely.”

“Something else? Like what?”

“Do you remember that short blond waitress who works in the diner on the next block?”

“The diner that Polish guy runs?”

“Hungarian. Laszlo’s place.”

“Blond waitress,” Bill said, frowning into the eyepiece. “You don’t mean the one that’s pregnant, do you?”

“Yeah. Maggie.”

“I didn’t know you went in for pregnant women.”