Cinderella's Secret Agent
- -
- 100%
- +
Maggie couldn’t reply. Another contraction caught her in a vise, turning her abdomen to steel. She moaned, tightening her hold on Del’s shirt. One of his buttons flew off and hit the floor.
“Laszlo, call nine one one,” Del ordered. “Now.”
It seemed to last forever. The world shrank behind a red haze as her entire body seized. Maggie tasted a moment of panic. This was no false alarm. It was happening. It really was happening.
She was going to have the baby.
The panic retreated as quickly as it had arisen. What was she afraid of? This is what she wanted. The months of waiting were over. Everything she had gone through—the heart-ache of Alan’s desertion, the struggle to stretch her budget, the discomfort of this pregnancy—all of it faded to insignificance at the enormity of what was taking place.
She was going to have the baby.
Now.
Tears were streaming down her cheeks as the contraction retreated. They could have been from the pain, but they also could have been from the joy. A child to love, her own little family of two. It blew her away.
Del wiped her cheeks with his knuckles. “It’ll be all right, Maggie. Don’t be afraid. Everything will be fine.”
“I’m not afraid.” She grinned, licking the tears from the corners of her mouth. “How could I be afraid? My God, Del! I’m having a baby. My baby. Isn’t that the most fabulous thing in the world?”
The room in the back of the diner was crammed with boxes of surplus supplies and a battered metal desk where Laszlo did his bookkeeping. It was dim and stuffy, but at least it was private. Del knelt beside Maggie as she lay on the makeshift mattress he’d fashioned out of a flattened cardboard box and layers of towels. Slipping his arm beneath her back, he propped her head and shoulders up on the cushion he’d ripped from Laszlo’s chair. “How’s this?”
“Better,” she said. “Thanks. This is really nice of you, Del. Laszlo and Joanne looked so upset, I’m glad you thought of…bringing me back…here…oh!”
“Maggie?”
She inhaled sharply, her face flushing red. “Uh. Here…comes…another one.”
Del caught her hand, breathing with her as she worked her way through the contraction. Where the hell was that ambulance? The pains were coming fast and hard now, three minutes apart and more than a full minute long. Beneath the thin fabric of Maggie’s maternity dress, her abdomen was clenching into the shape of a loaf. The standard SPEAR firstaid training didn’t include any obstetrics, and this situation was a far cry from the calvings Del had witnessed on his parents’ farm, but he was fairly certain the baby’s birth was imminent.
He glanced at the clock on the wall as the contraction finally eased. Longer than the last one. Damn. “The paramedics should be here any minute.”
“She’s as impatient as I am,” Maggie said.
Del rubbed his palm lightly over her taut abdomen and shifted his gaze to her face. “I think you’re right about that.”
“My baby. She must know how much I want to see her.” She exhaled shakily and smiled.
Del barely saw the way Maggie’s dark blond hair was plastered to her forehead, or how her features tightened from the agony her body was going through. Her smile was so radiant, it eclipsed everything else.
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.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Isn’t it? You’ve been eating there practically every day since we started this gig. What happened? Didn’t she like the tip you left her?”
“She had her baby tonight.”
Now Bill did lift his head, peering at Del over the telescope. “You’re kidding.”
“She went into labor right there at the coffee shop. She held my hand during the contractions. I doubt if she realized how hard she was gripping.”
“So you were there?”
“That’s right.”
“Geez, what a place to have that happen. The ambulance would have needed to use the sidewalk to get through the traffic.”
“The ambulance got there too late. I delivered the baby.”
“Holy—” Bill removed his pipe and pointed the stem toward Del. “You delivered a baby?”
“Yes. It was a girl.” He paused. “She has blond hair and blue eyes just like her mother.”
“Are they all right?”
“They’re both doing fine.”
“Good God, what do you know about delivering babies?”
“There wasn’t that much I needed to know. It was Maggie who did the work. All I really did was catch.” He thought about the look of sheer wonder that had lit up Maggie’s face when she’d gazed at her daughter for the first time. He cleared his throat, surprised at the sudden thickness he felt there. “Bill, it was incredible.”
“If you say so.”
“I was the first person to touch that child. She took her first breath while I held her in my hands.” He turned his palms upward. “I actually saw the exact moment when she filled her lungs with air.”
“And you said she’s all right? She’s healthy?”
“That’s what the paramedics said. She has all her fingers and toes. And she’s not too small, either. She felt like she weighs about the same as a nine-millimeter Colt submachine gun with a thirty-two round clip.” He smiled with satisfaction. “That would put her at over six pounds. Not bad for a few weeks early.”
Bill shook his head. “I just can’t believe this.”
“Did I mention her eyes were blue? She looked right at me, and her eyes hardly crossed at all.”
“Maggie?”
“The baby. That’s pretty smart for a newborn. She’s going to be a bright kid.”
“Listen to yourself,” Bill said, chuckling. “This really got to you, didn’t it?”
“It was an experience I’ll never forget. I felt…privileged to be there.”
“Privileged? I would have been scared spitless.”
That made Del laugh. Bill might look like a harmless middle-aged professor, but he was as stolidly fearless as a bulletproof vest. Del couldn’t think of anyone else he’d rather have covering his back in a tight situation. “Yeah, right.”
“You think I jest?” Bill asked. “I’d rather juggle six pounds of Semtex with a nitro fuse than take on an infant.”
“You’d like this infant,” Del said. “She’s a feisty little thing, just like her mother.”
“Spoken just like a proud papa.” Still chuckling, Bill put his pipe in his mouth and returned to the telescope.
The shaft of pain took Del off guard. Papa? No, not him. Holding Maggie’s child would be as close as he would ever get to that. His grin faded.
“And speaking of the papa, where is the bastard?” Bill asked.
“From what I heard around the coffee shop, Maggie hasn’t seen him since last Christmas.”
“She’s going after him for child support, isn’t she?”
“Not that I know of. She seems determined to manage on her own.”
“Poor kid. She’s going to have a rough time, raising that baby by herself.”
That was true. Maggie had been working double shifts in order to save up money for the baby. It was going to be a struggle for her to cope. Ideally, a child should have two parents, a mother and a father, a team.
Maggie was intelligent enough to be aware of the problems she faced. Her persistent good humor wasn’t from ignorance of what lay ahead, it was from determination to make the best of it. She was a remarkable woman.
Scowling, Del went over to pick up the metal case he’d left on the equipment shelf. There was no point dwelling on Maggie. He had already gotten more involved in her life than he should have. And he shouldn’t let himself get carried away by those feelings her baby had stirred. He’d left all that behind when he’d joined SPEAR.
He opened the case and gazed at the gleaming pieces of wood and metal that were nestled in the pockets of foam rubber. With an ease of motion that was as practiced as breathing, Del assembled the components into his custom-made sniper’s rifle. When it was done, he held the weapon in his hands, his fingers fitting themselves around the familiar shape.
Like all the other operatives in the top-secret government agency of SPEAR, he accepted whatever assignment he was given and went wherever he was posted. It made no difference whether it was deep infiltration or simple surveillance, he did his job. But his specialty, the real talent that had brought him to the attention of SPEAR in the first place, was his uncanny ability with a rifle. He was the agency’s best sharpshooter, the one they called in for the impossible shot.
This was who he was, Del thought. This was what he did. He was proud of his skill. With this rifle and the right setup, he could shoot the weapon out of a terrorist’s hand or disable any getaway vehicle. He knew all the vulnerable spots on everything from a Learjet to a so-called bulletproof limo, and for those special occasions when no other option was open to him, he knew, too, within a millimeter how closely a bullet had to graze a man’s skull in order to knock him out.
He had a perfect record—in his eight years with the agency, he hadn’t taken a single life.
Yet even as he felt the familiar weight of the rifle in his hands, he remembered how these same hands had cradled Maggie’s baby. Instead of smooth wood and cold metal, he felt the slippery, shaved-velvet softness of the newborn’s skin. And as he settled himself at his post to one side of the window, his mind kept returning to the back room of the diner and the sight of Maggie’s tears as he’d placed her daughter in her arms.
His presence at the birth had been nothing but a fluke. He shouldn’t want to see them again, or worry about how they were doing, or wonder how Maggie was going to manage on her own. He had no business thinking about either Maggie or her baby.
That’s what he told himself, anyway. Yet over the next few hours, he failed to get his thoughts of her out of his head.
After what he and Maggie had shared, how could he shrug the whole thing off and go on as if nothing had happened? That’s what the baby’s father had done, turning his back on Maggie at the time she needed him most. Granted, it wouldn’t be wise for Del to get further involved, but it was only natural for him to feel a certain amount of responsibility for Maggie and her baby’s welfare.
It wouldn’t do any harm to check on them. That would be the decent thing to do, wouldn’t it?
“‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace.’”
At Bill’s murmured comment, Del swallowed a sigh.
From Milton to Shakespeare’s Macbeth? It was going to be a long night.
Maggie ran her index finger over the back of her baby’s hand, marveling yet again at the tiny perfection of her daughter. Perfect little nails, perfect pink dimpled knuckles, absolutely perfect. Not even one day old, yet already her presence filled the room. Heck, more than the room, it filled Maggie’s entire life.
“I love you, sweetheart,” she whispered, moving her hand to the baby’s head. She ran her fingertips over the wispy blond curls, inhaling deeply as she absorbed the warm, fresh baby scent that rose from her scalp. “I love you so much. Every day, for the rest of my life, I want you to know that.”
The baby’s mouth pursed in her sleep. Maggie didn’t even consider putting her down in the plastic-sided bassinet that rested beside the hospital bed. After those long months of anticipation, she didn’t want to squander one minute of the chance to hold her baby in her arms.
For what had to be the hundredth time that day, Maggie felt her eyes brim with tears. Had she thought the mood swings of pregnancy were bad? Now her body was bubbling with postpartum hormones. All she had to do was look at her child and the happiness simply overflowed.
“My child,” she said, marveling at the way the word tasted on her tongue. She’d had months to prepare for this, but she was still trying to wrap her mind around the concept. Nothing she had read or heard could possibly have prepared her for this feeling that was growing in her heart.
Maternal love was no myth. Her child was no longer connected physically to her, but another, far stronger bond had already formed. It was an emotional tie that no doctor’s shears could cut.
Loving Alan had been a mistake. She had been seduced by his smooth talk and clever hands and her own dreams of a husband and family. When she had discovered she was pregnant, she’d been overjoyed. He hadn’t. That’s when she discovered he already had children…and a wife.
Yes, Alan had been a mistake, but Maggie could never regard her baby as one. This child was a gift.
Sniffing hard, Maggie turned her head to wipe her eyes against the pillowcase, stirring up the boiled cotton smell of the bedding. Normally, she hated hospitals. She did her best to avoid them after spending so much time in them as a young girl. Strangely enough, though, she didn’t feel a breath of uneasiness now. The bad memories had been swept away by a tidal wave of good ones.
The other bed in the double room was empty. The woman who had occupied it had gone home this morning, along with her new son. Her husband and their other two children had come to fetch them—it had been a giddy, noisy celebration as they’d needed to take two trips to carry all the flowers and gifts to their car. They had all waved to Maggie and wished her well, then disappeared into the corridor, a cloud of bright foil balloons bobbing behind them.
Someday, it would be nice to belong to a family like that. A houseful of children to lavish with love, a husband to share her hopes and dreams…deep in her heart, that’s what Maggie really wanted.
Someday. But not today. Today—right now—was what mattered. That was Maggie’s approach to life. It was how she had learned to cope. As the old proverb went, the longest journey begins with a single step. And at this moment, Maggie had never been happier.
“You and me, sweetheart,” she murmured. “We’ll have more love between the two of us than a family of ten, you’ll see.” She dried her cheek against the pillow again, then focused on her baby’s features one by one. Sweetheart. Pumpkin. Darling. Her daughter was almost a day old. She really should settle on a name.
“Who do you look like?” she mused. “You have a mouth like a rosebud. Shall I call you Rose? Rose Rice?”
The baby waved her fist in a jerky movement, bumping herself in the nose. Her forehead wrinkled briefly.
“Okay, not Rose,” Maggie said. “Maybe I should call you Buttercup, because of your hair. It’s a beautiful color.” She tilted her head and smiled. “No, don’t worry, I wouldn’t saddle you with a name like that. How about…Angel. My little gift from heaven. Angel. Angela.” She sighed. “No, that makes me think of the Angela who lived next door when I was six. She used to trap cats in the garbage cans.”