Reese whirled back into the bank and checked to make sure Charlie was still out cold.
He was.
Next he checked on the woman with the baby. She sat on the floor, eyes dry, jiggling her infant in her lap. He noticed the ringless left hand. And wondered why he would notice such a thing at a time like this.
“Are you all right?”
She lifted soul-deep dark brown eyes to his and the fear in them felt like a sucker punch to his midsection. Her low “Yes” vibrated through him. Then she drew in a deep breath and a tinge of color returned to her pale cheeks. “Yes, we’re all right. Thank you.” Then the baby turned her attention to him, spit out the pacifier, stuck a finger in her mouth and grinned around it.
This time it was a blow to his kidneys.
He nodded and turned, hoping his desperate need to get away from them didn’t show on his face. He forced his mind to the matter at hand. Thank goodness she’d kept her cool over the last few minutes. If she’d been the hysterical type, they might all be dead. His ringing ears testified to just how close the gun had been to his head when it went off. He just hoped the ringing wasn’t permanent.
“Is it over?” One of the bank tellers—the one named Lori—peered over the edge of the counter, mascara streaking her cheeks.
Grateful for the interruption—and the fact that he heard her, Reese nodded. “All except for the cleanup.”
More tears leaked from her eyes and he saw her lips move in a grateful, whispered prayer.
Rose Mountain Police cruisers pulled in. Eli Brody, sheriff of Rose Mountain, bolted from the first one like he’d been shot from a cannon. The man strode toward him and Reese quickly filled him in. Eli snapped orders into his radio and two cruisers immediately headed out after the escaping getaway car. He then marched toward the other two officers, leaving Reese to question the tellers.
“Thank you.”
The quiet words captured his attention and he turned to see the woman with the baby gazing up at him. Clearing his throat, Reese said, “You’re welcome.”
“I’m Maggie Bennett.” She shifted and before Reese could gracefully slip away, she blurted out, “Was he serious? Do you think he’ll come back and—” She bit off the last part of the sentence, but the fear lingered and he knew exactly what she was asking.
Reese shook his head. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. All those guys care about is getting away.”
Doubt narrowed her eyes. “But we made him really mad. And you have one of his partners in custody because I interfered. We saw his face. You honestly don’t think they’ll be a tad upset about that?”
So she had spunk and she wasn’t comforted because he told her what she wanted to hear. She wanted the truth, no matter what. He liked that.
He said, “All good points. The fact is, I don’t know. We’ll take precautions, get his picture from the bank camera and distribute it around the town. But as for whether he would really come back here...” He shrugged. “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you.”
“No, you can’t.” A sigh slipped out and she placed a kiss on the baby’s forehead.
A baby girl with big brown eyes like her mama.
A knife through his heart wouldn’t be any more painful. He had to get away. He’d come to Rose Mountain to escape memories of a wife and baby who were no more. Grief was sharp. Growing up in foster families, all he’d ever dreamed of was having a family of his own. And he’d had that for a while. Until they’d died.
“What’s your baby’s name?” He couldn’t help asking.
“Isabella. But I call her Belle.”
She said the name with such love that his heart spasmed once again. “That’s a pretty name.”
Her face softened as she looked at the baby in her arms. “Thanks. It was my mother’s.”
Was. Past tense. Her mother was dead. He recognized the pain in her eyes. The same pain he saw when he thought about his own mother who’d died when he was nine. Clearing his throat, he asked, “Do you need to call someone? A husband or...?”
“No, no one.” A different sort of pain flashed in her eyes for a brief moment and Reese wondered what that story was. Then he blinked and told himself it wasn’t his business.
A bank robbery was.
She was saying, “You said you were a cop. I don’t remember seeing you around here before.”
“It’s my first week.” He shook his head. “I just moved here from Washington, D.C. One of Eli’s deputies quit, he needed another one and asked me if I’d take the job.” He lifted his shoulders in a slight shrug. “Eli caught me at the right time. I was ready for a change.” Eli said he’d seen something in Reese that had been familiar, something Eli had experienced only a few years before. Burnout.
A weariness of the soul. And grief.
And why was he sharing this with her? There was something about the way she looked at him. As though she really cared about what he had to say.
* * *
“Maggie, are you all right?”
Reese snapped his head around, and Maggie’s gaze followed his to see Eli bearing down on them. The man’s thunderous expression said the bank robbers had escaped.
Maggie nodded. She’d met Eli her first day in town. His wife, Holly, owned the Candy Caper shop on Main Street and when Maggie had stopped in for a bite to eat, Eli had been having lunch with Holly. They’d asked her what she was doing in town, and she’d told them she was looking for her grandfather’s old cabin. They’d helped her move in, and they’d been friends ever since.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Shaken, but fine.”
“I see you’ve met Reese.”
“Yes.” She tried to smile. “He saved the day, I do believe.”
Eli lifted a brow. “Oh?”
Reese shifted, the flush on his face revealing that he wasn’t comfortable with the praise. “Just doing my job.”
“Not even on the clock yet and already a hero, huh?”
“All right, that’s enough,” Reese said, his mild tone not hiding his embarrassment. “Maggie’s the one who kept me from getting shot.”
At Eli’s raised brow, Maggie shook her head and refused to let Reese turn the attention back on her. However, she let him off the hook as she shifted Belle to her other hip. She couldn’t help shivering as she remembered the look in the one robber’s eyes. “He was going to make me go with him,” she whispered.
“What?” Eli demanded.
She nodded. “If Reese hadn’t intervened, the robber would have taken me and Belle with him.”
Eli snapped a look at Reese. “That true?”
“It sure looked that way.”
Eli’s frown deepened. “Robbing a bank is serious business, but they were willing to add kidnapping, hostage taking, to it?”
“They were.” Reese’s nose flared. “And not only that, but one of them threatened Maggie and her baby—and me—as he escaped.”
Now Eli’s brow lifted and he reached up a hand to stroke his jaw. “Do you feel threatened?”
Reese looked at Maggie. “I’m not worried for myself, but I think you should make sure you have extra patrols around Maggie’s place.”
So he was worried about her.
Eli