The Baby's Guardian

She would get out of this before they managed to take her out of the city and to God knows where. She needed a miracle.

The man reached down and pulled off her sandals. “In case you figure out how to get out of those cuffs, there’s broken glass on the floor. It’ll slice your feet to shreds,” he snarled and went down the hall with her shoes dangling in his hand.

Being shoeless wouldn’t stop her, either. Sabrina looked around the dark room, praying there was something she could use to cut the tough plastic. Maybe a piece of the glass he’d mentioned. It was there, all right. Beer bottles had been shattered, but none of the pieces was close enough for her to reach.

There were only threads of light coming from the single window on the center wall. The glass panes were coated with grime and taped yellowing newspapers that practically blocked off illumination from the nearby streetlights. But it allowed her to see just enough to realize there was nothing she could use as a cutter. With the exception of the broken glass and some trash on the floor, the room was empty.

Inside her, the baby began to kick, hard. Probably to protest her cramped sitting position. Sabrina shifted, trying to get more comfortable, but that was impossible on a hard tile floor.

Up the hall, she heard the peppermint-popping gunman say something, and she wiggled closer to the doorway in the hopes that she could hear and see what was going on. The men had apparently stepped into one of the other rooms because they were nowhere in sight, but she did get bits and pieces of their softly spoken conversation.

“Tolbert,” one of them said.

That grabbed her attention. They were talking about Shaw. Sabrina tried to wriggle even closer though the plastic cuffs were digging into her wrists.

“It’ll work.” That was from the gunman who’d driven them away from the hospital. He was whispering as if he wanted to ensure she didn’t hear what he was saying, but the empty building carried the sound. “We can use her to get Tolbert to cooperate in case something else turns up.”

Oh, God. They were going to use her to force Shaw to do something. But cooperate with what?

All of this had to be connected to the hostage mess that’d just gone on in the hospital, but Sabrina was clueless as to why she and the others had been terrorized all those hours.

What did any of this have to do with Shaw?

The men didn’t know she was carrying Shaw’s child. Or did they? It certainly wasn’t in her medical records, but they had seen that she had listed Shaw as the person to contact in case there was an emergency. Maybe the men thought she and Shaw were lovers.

As if.

Shaw hated her with a passion. And this situation was only going to make him hate her more. Once again, she’d brought danger to someone he loved. This time, the danger was aimed at his unborn child. He would never forgive her for placing the baby at risk.

Of course, Sabrina wouldn’t forgive herself, either.

Had that call she’d received all been a hoax? Something designed to get her into the hospital?

If so, then her abduction wasn’t a spur of the minute thing as she’d originally believed. She might have been their target all along, and she hadn’t even questioned the call. She’d blindly responded to the request and had walked right into a hornet’s nest.

The minute she’d stepped off that fourth floor elevator, one of the men had aimed a gun at her and then corralled her into the hall where they were already holding several dozen hostages. Sabrina wouldn’t forget their faces. The fear. The overwhelming feeling of doom.

“The car’ll be here in ten minutes,” she heard one of her captors say. “Go ahead, give her back the shoes. I want us to be ready to roll.”

Ten minutes. Not much time at all. And judging from their other conversation, they’d be taking her with them. If that happened, they might kill her once they had what they wanted. Because of the ski masks, she hadn’t seen their faces, but she did know details about them. She was a loose end and a dangerous one.

The man appeared again, his ski mask still in place, and he carefully placed the shoes on the floor beside her. When she didn’t move to slip them on, he cursed at her, shoved them on her feet and walked away.

She waited until he was out of sight before she fought with the plastic cuffs again. No luck. So, she decided to try to chew her way through them, though she knew that would be next to impossible. The cuffs were designed to prevent such an escape. Still, she had to try. Those ten minutes were already ticking off.

There was a sound. Just a slight bump. It didn’t come from the men up the hall but from the window. Someone was outside.

Sabrina chewed even harder on the cuff, while she kept watch up the hall and at the shadowy figure on the other side of that murky glass.

There was a soft pop. And the window eased open. She got a good look at the dark-haired man then.

It was Shaw.

Relief flooded through her entire body. He’d come for her. Well, he’d come for the baby anyway. Now the question was, could he get them safely out of there?

Shaw glanced around the room and put his index finger to his mouth in a stay-quiet gesture. Sabrina quit struggling with the plastic cuffs and tipped her head toward the men up the hall.

“There are two of them,” she mouthed, and in case Shaw hadn’t heard, she held up two fingers.

Shaw nodded, climbed through the window, swung his legs over the sill and quietly placed his feet on the floor. He had his standard-issue Glock ready in his right hand, and he lifted it, aiming it at the door. If her captors heard Shaw’s entrance, they would no doubt come running.

But they didn’t.

The men continued to talk, and Shaw used the sound of their muffled voices to cover his footsteps as he made his way across the dusty floor toward her. Shattered glass crunched softly under his feet. He spared her a glance.

Barely.

That was normal. Shaw never looked in her eyes, which was probably a good thing. Even something as simple as eye contact between them brought back the painful memories of Fay’s death. But Sabrina knew that his eyes were multiple shades of blue. Cool and piercing when he was in a good mood. Dark and stormy when he was wasn’t.

She didn’t have to guess the intensity level tonight.

With his attention fastened to the hall and doorway, Shaw reached in his pocket, brought out a small knife and used it to slice through the plastic. He didn’t waste a second; he took her arm, got her to her feet and eased her behind him. His hand brushed against her stomach. An accident for sure.

Like eye contact, touching was out, too.

Shaw motioned toward the window. “You think you can climb out?” he whispered.

Sabrina glanced down at her megapregnant belly and then at the window. It’d be a tight squeeze, but the alternative was going out into the hall and then trying to make their way through a locked door at the end. That was far riskier than the window.

She nodded, and he maneuvered her behind him while he continued to face the door.

Shaw leaned closer and put his mouth to her ear. No peppermint and sweat smell for him. She took in the scent of his starched white shirt, the leather of his boots and the woodsy aftershave he favored. Not that he would have shaved recently. He had dark desperado stubble on his chin, but a hint of the aftershave was still there.

“Once we’re outside and away from the scene, SWAT will storm the building,” Shaw whispered.

Good. This had to end, and she didn’t want those gunmen to be able to hurt anyone else.

Thankful that she was wearing shorts so she could maneuver better, Sabrina somehow managed to get her leg onto the sill. But then, she heard the footsteps in the hall.

Oh, no. One of the gunmen was coming.

Sabrina tried to hurry, but Shaw clamped on to her arm to stop her from moving. Without the sound of her rustling, the room fell silent.

So did the footsteps.

They waited there. Listening. Sabrina prayed the men wouldn’t come closer. The last thing she wanted was a gun battle where the baby could be hurt. Obviously, Shaw felt the same because he moved protectively in front of her. Close. With his back right against her front.

As a cop, he’d perhaps been in situations similar to this where his life was on the line, but this whole ordeal was a first for her, and Sabrina hoped she didn’t lose it. Falling apart wouldn’t get them out of there, and it wouldn’t help the baby.

“Call him back,” the gunman finally said. It was the peppermint guy. “I’m getting a weird feeling about being here. We need to get out now.”

With her breath stalled in her lungs, Sabrina stayed still, and she finally heard what she prayed she would hear. The gunman went back down the hall away from them. At least she hoped that’s what he’d done.

Shaw nudged her to get moving, and Sabrina didn’t waste any time. She climbed through the window, trying to protect her belly from scraping against the sill. Her feet finally touched down onto the ground. Shaw was right behind her. While continuing to face the direction of the gunmen, he shimmied out the window and landed right next to her.

“Come on,” he ordered. Using his left hand, he grabbed her arm and started to move as fast as she could.

The baby kicked even harder, and her stomach started to cramp. Sabrina silently cursed the Braxton Hicks contraction.

False labor.

Her body was merely practicing for the real thing, but she didn’t need the distraction now. She had to keep moving and get to safety.

She saw the SWAT team then, on the building across the street. There were other officers crouched down behind a Dumpster and the gunmen’s SUV.

The baby and she were safe.

Or so she thought.

But then, the shots rang out.

Chapter Three

Shaw cursed and hooked his arm around Sabrina.

Despite the urgency that the deadly gunfire created, he tried to be careful with her, and he took the brunt of the fall when he pulled her to the ground. His shoulder hit hard, but he held on tight to his gun so that it wouldn’t be jarred from his hand.

Shaw didn’t stop there. He crawled over Sabrina, sheltering her with his body, and he came up ready to return fire.

This was obviously a situation he’d wanted to avoid at all costs. He didn’t want his baby in the middle of a fight with these armed fugitives, but when they fired that shot, they’d left him no choice. Now, the trick was to get Sabrina safely out of there.

There was another shot. It slammed into the rough brick wall just inches from Shaw’s head. Not close, a good foot away, but the sound and the impact allowed him to pinpoint the origin of the shot. It was coming from the window where Sabrina and he had escaped.

“Get down,” someone on the SWAT team yelled from the roof of the adjacent building.

Shaw did. He dropped lower, covering Sabrina as best he could.

She was breathing way too hard and fast, and he hoped like the devil that she didn’t hyperventilate. While he was hoping, he added that the baby hadn’t been harmed in all of this. Sabrina didn’t appear to have any physical injuries, but the stress couldn’t be good. She needed to get to a doctor so she could be checked out.

There was another shot, but this one came from a rifleman on the SWAT team. Shaw didn’t look up, but he heard the sound of glass being blown apart.

Good!

That would stop the gunmen from aiming any more shots at Sabrina and him. At least from that window. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t go elsewhere to return fire. The abandoned building was large, at least five thousand square feet, and there were a lot of places for someone to hide or get into a position to kill.

The shots continued, all coming from his men, which meant it might be time to try to get Sabrina to better cover. Shaw glanced at the front of the building. Hell.

Too many windows.

And a set of double doors with glass fronts.

The gunmen could use any of those points of attack to fire again. That meant staying put until the officers and SWAT had apprehended the suspects. The one advantage that his officers did have was that the building was only one floor. The gunmen wouldn’t be able to move upstairs and launch an assault there. They were going to have to face the SWAT team and other cops head-on.

So that Sabrina’s pregnant belly wouldn’t be smashed against the ground, Shaw eased off her and moved her to a sitting position so that her back was against the brick wall. They were close. Too close. And face-to-face.

He found himself staring right into those sea-green eyes.

Shaw quickly looked away. Then he turned around so he was facing outward. This would make it easier for him to cover all sides. It was a solid strategic move, he assured himself. And it was far better than staring at her.

With the gunmen no longer firing at them, Shaw’s men started to close in around the building. One of the SWAT members bashed in the double front doors, and officers began to pour inside. It shouldn’t be long now before he could get Sabrina out of there.

Once he had her in an ambulance and on the way to a hospital, he could return to the original crime scene and try to mop up things. He’d left Lieutenant Bo Duggan in charge, but that was strictly temporary. Since Bo’s own wife was a hostage, Shaw needed to get back on scene so that Bo could be with his wife. If their situations had been reversed, Shaw would have certainly wanted to be with Fay.

“The gunmen said they were going to use me,” Sabrina muttered, her voice a shaky whisper. But it was loud enough to cut through his thoughts and snare his attention. “To get you to cooperate.”

“What?” Shaw said that a little louder than he’d intended and glanced at her over his shoulder.

Sabrina shook her head, sending a curl of that wild red hair flinging over her cheek. “I don’t know what they meant by that. Do you?”

“No.” But he could guess. “I’m a police captain.” A lot of people might want him to cooperate, especially when it came to helping with a plea bargain or reduced charges.

That wouldn’t happen in this case. Shaw turned his head away from her so he could keep watch of all the areas around them. “What else did they say?”

“Not much. They were careful not to talk in front of me or the others. But I think they knew I’d be at the hospital this afternoon. They were waiting for me.”

Oh, man. That didn’t sound good at all. “Why the heck were you even there?”

Sabrina took a deep breath. “Someone from the hospital phoned me. A male nurse named Michael Frost, and he said Nadine Duggan had called an urgent meeting of the moms’ support group. So, I went.”

Shaw cursed and didn’t bother to keep the profanity to himself. Sabrina knew how he felt about that group. It was headed by Nadine Duggan, the wife of one of his lieutenants and a woman who’d also become a hostage. Bo’s wife. Nadine was a psychologist and probably bound to keep secret whatever she was told in that support group, but Shaw didn’t want Sabrina baring her soul to someone who might share those soul-baring secrets with her husband, a man whom Shaw worked side by side with. Bo and all the other officers knew about Shaw’s late wife, of course.

Everyone also knew about the baby.

But Shaw hadn’t wanted Sabrina to talk about the problems that he’d had adjusting to her pregnancy. About all the appointments he’d missed for her checkups. All the calls from her that he hadn’t returned.

Their arrangement was complicated since, after all, he’d ultimately given her approval to get pregnant. Hell, he’d provided the semen for the procedure, but he and Sabrina both knew he wasn’t really on board. Not emotionally.

And it was those emotions Shaw wanted to keep to himself.

Best not to let his men know the mental turmoil he was going through right now. Something like that could perhaps water down his authority, and as their leader, the last thing he wanted in a dangerous situation was to have his authority questioned or undermined.

That’s why Shaw had offered to pay for Sabrina to attend another support group. But she’d refused.

What else was new?

They didn’t see eye to eye on, well, anything.

“Is that why Nadine Duggan was there at the hospital, too?” Shaw asked, still keeping watch. Another wave of officers went into the building.

“No. She was actually in labor. I saw her when I first arrived, but then she disappeared when the gunmen starting shouting. A lot of people did. It was chaos, and some of the women ran and hid.”

Shaw had to take a deep breath. He hoped that didn’t mean anything bad had happened to the lieutenant’s wife or any of the patients, staff or babies.

“What about this Michael Frost who called you?” he asked. “Did you see him after you arrived at the hospital?”

“No.” She paused. “Why?”

“No reason.” Not yet anyway. He’d make a call in a minute or two to have a background check run on the male nurse. Everything and everyone would be checked.

“The gunmen killed someone,” Sabrina added.

That caused Shaw to glance at her again, and this time those green eyes were filled with tears. “Who?”

“A lab tech. I don’t know his name. They shot him. Right in front of me.”

This time Shaw added a groan to the profanity. Sabrina had witnessed a murder, and in addition to the emotional trauma that created, it could mean that she was now a target. If those gunmen thought for one minute that she could identify them, they wouldn’t want her around, so that’s why it was critical for this to end now.

“Did the men shoot at you, too?” Shaw asked.

She didn’t answer right away. “Yes. But not when they killed the tech. It was later. I could tell they were getting ready to leave, and I had a gut feeling they’d take me with them. So, I tried to sneak away.”

Unfortunately, he could picture that scene all too well.

“The gunman didn’t shoot at me, not really,” she added. “The bullet went in the ceiling.”

Which confirmed the gunmen wanted her alive. After all, the gunmen had already killed others, so that meant they had a reason for allowing Sabrina to live.

Was he that reason?

“I’m sorry, Shaw. I’m so sorry,” Sabrina said. But he knew she wasn’t talking about this situation alone. She was dredging up the past.

Something he wouldn’t discuss with her.

“Don’t,” he warned.

He didn’t add more because his phone buzzed. He glanced at the caller ID and saw it was from the SWAT team commander, Lieutenant José Rivera. “Tolbert,” Shaw answered.

“Captain, we need you to stay put for a couple more minutes. We’re trying to secure the building now, but we don’t want Ms. Carr or you out in the open just yet.”

“Yeah. Make it as fast as you can,” Shaw insisted. Because he didn’t want to stay there with Sabrina any longer than necessary, and he was anxious to get back to the primary crime scene.

Shaw ended the call and waited with the sounds of the search going on in the building behind them. He didn’t stop watching the place. Definitely didn’t lower his gun. Because he didn’t want those men, those killers, coming back outside to grab Sabrina.

“Think hard,” Shaw said. If he had to wait there with her, he might as well start the interrogation that had to happen for the reports and the cleanup. “What did these men want? “

“I don’t know.”

Sabrina was crying. He could hear the tears in her voice. Part of him wanted to comfort her, but Shaw resisted. He couldn’t open up his heart to that kind of intimacy with her. The only way he had survived Fay’s death was to shut himself off, and he would continue to do just that.

Shaw tried again with the questions. He wanted to keep this conversation on the business at hand. “Other than you and the lab tech they killed, did it seem as if the gunmen were after anyone specific?”

“They kept calling out for someone named Bailey. I don’t think they found her though because they kept shouting her name. And then they had a group of us sit in the hall. One of them held us at gunpoint while the other gunman took this one pregnant woman. I don’t know where they took her, but she was gone for several hours. Then, she tried to escape, but she fell and hit her head. She was bleeding.”

Each new thing he learned disgusted him even more, and it was just starting. All kinds of details would no doubt be brought out when the other hostages were questioned. He’d definitely need to speak to this woman whom the gunmen had yelled at.

If she was still alive, that is.

“What else did the gunmen do?” he asked. “Did they appear to be searching for anything specific?”

“Other than the person named Bailey, I don’t think so.” She paused, shook her head. “Wait. One of them went into the lab and the records room. The lab door wouldn’t open so he shot the lock, and he stayed in there a long time. He also had one of the hostages with him a lot of time.”

Okay. That was a start. He’d have every inch of those rooms processed and review the surveillance camera footage to see what the men had been after.

“How about a drug cabinet or something like that?” Shaw didn’t enjoy forcing her to go over all the details, but with her memory still fresh, this was the time to do it. Later, the shock and the adrenaline crash might rob her of critical details.

“No drugs. At least, I didn’t see them take or use any.” Behind him, Sabrina shifted her position, probably because she was trying to get comfortable. But with the shift, her belly pressed against his back.

Shaw felt it then.

The soft bumps.

He glanced back at the contact and realized what he was feeling was the baby.

“The baby’s kicking,” Sabrina explained, moving away again so that she wasn’t touching him.

Shaw immediately felt the loss. It was the first time he’d felt his child move. The timing was lousy, but he couldn’t totally stop himself from reacting.

In a month, maybe less, he’d be a father.

His phone buzzed again. Thank God. He needed something to slap him back to the moment. It was Rivera, the SWAT team commander.

“Captain, we have a patrol car ready to get you and Ms. Carr out of here. It’s pulling up to the curb right now.”

Well, that was good news. “And the situation with the search?”

“We have all points of the building secure. But no sign of the gunmen yet. We’re still looking.”

“Find them!” Shaw ordered after he got his teeth unclenched.

He pulled Sabrina to her feet so he could get her moving. The sooner he had her away from the building, the better.

Even though she was obviously slowed because of the pregnancy, she hurried, keeping up right along with him, but she was breathing hard again by the time he got her into the backseat of the cruiser. The driver, a uniformed officer, drove away.

“Ms. Carr will need to go to a hospital,” Shaw instructed the driver.

She didn’t protest. Which wasn’t a good sign. Since Sabrina often protested any-and everything he suggested.

Did that mean she was hurt?

While the driver meandered his way through the deserted downtown streets, Shaw called Harris, the hostage negotiator, for a situation report from the maternity hospital. It took a while—four rings—before Harris answered, and the moment Shaw heard the strain in the man’s voice, he knew this conversation wasn’t going to be good.

“The fire’s out,” Harris started. “It wasn’t much of one. The gunmen lit some damp papers, and that created more smoke than fire.”

And they’d used that smoke to escape. “Casualties?” Shaw asked, dreading the answer.

“Four so far.”

Shaw cursed. “Not one of the babies?”

“No, they all seem to be fine, but we have doctors on the way to check them all out,” Harris answered quickly, and then hesitated. “Three of the dead were on the medical staff here. The other was a patient. She died just a few minutes ago.” Another pause. “It was Nadine Duggan.”