“That’s Andy’s child!” Mr. Doremire lurched out of the chair and reached for her as if he intended to rip the baby from her belly.
She jerked back to protect her baby. She didn’t even want his hands on her belly, didn’t want him hurting her child—before he or she was born or after—the way he must have hurt Andy had he ever spoken to him the way he’d spoken of him.
“Mr. Doremire,” she said, “please calm down.” And sober up.
“Andy won’t be letting some other man raise his kid,” he ominously warned her. “You’ll see. He’ll show himself to you, just like he’s shown himself to me.”
She wondered how many bottles of whiskey it had taken for Andy to show himself. She suspected quite a few.
“Andy is gone, Mr. Doremire,” she said. “He’s dead.”
His hand swung quickly, striking her cheek before she could duck. Tears stung her eyes as pain radiated from the slap.
“That’s what you want,” Mr. Doremire said. “You want him dead. But he’s not! He’s not dead!”
“Okay, okay,” she said, trying to humor the drunk or deranged man. “He’s alive, then. He’s alive.”
He had no idea how much she really wished that Andy was alive. Then she wouldn’t have lost her best friend. She wouldn’t feel so alone that she was clinging to an FBI agent who was only trying to do his job.
Maybe she was as crazy as Andy’s dad to think that Blaine could have any interest in her beyond her connection to the bank robberies.
The older man started crying horrible wrenching sobs. “If he’s dead, it’s your fault,” he said again. “It’s all your fault!”
She nodded miserably in agreement. Maybe it was...
If he hadn’t wanted to buy her that damn ring...
If he hadn’t wanted to take care of her...
“You’re the one who should be dead!” He swung his arm again.
And, realizing that the man wasn’t just drunk but crazy, too, she cried out in fear that he might actually kill her.
Maggie’s scream chilled Blaine’s blood. He dropped his phone and ran back into the house—afraid of what he might find.
Why the hell had he left her alone? He hadn’t even checked the house. Mark Doremire could have been hiding somewhere, waiting for his next chance to grab Maggie.
But when he burst into the living room, he found only the older Doremire and Maggie. She was backing up, though, and ducking the blows of the man’s meaty fists.
Blaine jumped forward and caught the man’s swinging arms. He jerked them behind his back. “Dustin Doremire, I am placing you under arrest for assault.”
“No,” Maggie said. “You don’t need to arrest him.” But her cheek bore a red imprint from the older man’s hand.
Blaine jerked Doremire’s arms higher behind his back, wanting to hurt him the way he had hurt Maggie. The old drunk only grunted. After all that whiskey, he was probably beyond the point of feeling any pain. Only inflicting it...
“He hurt you,” he said. And Blaine blamed himself for leaving her alone with Andy’s drunken father.
“He’s hurting,” she said, making excuses for the man’s abuse. “He misses his son.”
Blaine had placed a few calls. But nobody had really answered his questions about Andy Doremire. In fact, they’d thought he was crazy to even ask. Of course the man was dead. His family wouldn’t have been notified if his death hadn’t been confirmed.
Otherwise, he would have been listed as missing. Blaine knew that. But for some reason he had wanted to think the worst of Andy Doremire. He’d wanted proof that her dead fiancé wasn’t the saint that Maggie thought he was—he wasn’t a man worth loving for the rest of her life.
But he was a better man than Blaine was. Andy wouldn’t have willingly left her alone and in danger.
“Are you all right?” he asked her. “How badly did he hurt you?”
She brushed her fingertips across her cheek and dismissed the injury. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
She wasn’t fine. He could hear the pain in her voice. But he wasn’t sure whether it was physical or emotional pain. He suspected more emotional. She hadn’t wanted to come here—to Andy’s childhood home. And now he understood why.
“He needs to be brought in,” he said. “I need to arrest him.” Actually he only intended to hand him over to the officer outside to make the arrest and process Mr. Doremire.
“Please don’t,” she beseeched him, her big brown eyes pleading with him, too.
“You never want me to arrest anyone,” he said. “You make it hard for me to do my job.” He had ignored her and arrested Susan Iverson anyway. He was tempted to do the same with Mr. Doremire. “I need to question him.”
“Let me question him,” she said.
He settled the older man back into his chair. The guy collapsed against the worn cushions. The chair was one of the only pieces of furniture left in the nearly empty house. In fact, the Cape Cod made Ash’s little bungalow look almost homey.
Blaine had no intention of letting Maggie question him. But before he could ask, she already was. “When did you see Mark last?”
“Mark?” The older man blinked his bloodshot eyes, as if he had no idea whom she was talking about.
“Mark is your oldest son,” she prodded him. “His wife, Tammy, said he was here—visiting you.”
He shook his head in denial. “I haven’t seen that boy for months. He’s not like Andy. Andy keeps coming around to check on me.”
Did he have his sons confused? Even Maggie thought they looked a lot alike. He shared a significant glance with her as they both came to the same realization.
“When was Andy here last?” she asked. “When did he come see you?”
Doremire’s eyes momentarily cleared of the drunken bleariness, and he stared at her with pure hatred. “You have no right to say his name.”
The old man would have reached out again; he would have swung his arm if Blaine hadn’t squeezed his shoulder and held him down onto the chair.
“She has every right to say his name,” Blaine insisted. “They were engaged.”
The older man shook his head. “She never would’ve married him. She didn’t care about him...”
“That’s not true,” Maggie said, but her voice was so soft she nearly whispered the words.
“She loved him,” Blaine said. “You know that. You have the letters she wrote to your son. Where are they?”
The drunk blinked in confusion, the way he had when she’d asked about Mark. “Letters?”
“My letters,” she said. “The ones I wrote to Andy when he was overseas. Do you have them?”
He shook his head. “His mother probably took them—like she took everything else when she left.”
Blaine could see that she had taken most everything. And he could see why she had left, too, if the man had been like this with her. If he had been abusive...
“Where did Mrs. Doremire go?” Maggie asked.
“She