Return by Karen Kingsbury Page A

back to New York.
    Then maybe it wasn’t her; maybe it was a different tall blonde, one who looked like Reagan. He was about to ask her mother when his partner looked over his shoulder. “What’s the victim’s name, ma’am?”
    The girl’s mother was shaking harder now, looking like she might pass out.
    “Reagan. Reagan Decker. She’s … she’s twenty years old.”
    “Is there a husband, someone who should be called?” “No.” The answer was quick-too quick. “There’s no one.” Landon pushed the towel harder against Reagan, and his stomach lurched. The dates were coming together. If she was almost nine months pregnant, then she got pregnant before September 11. Either that or immediately afterward, and Landon doubted that was possible. Which meant that maybe just maybe-the baby Reagan was carrying was Luke’s.
    And Luke knew nothing about it.
    Before Landon could give the matter another moment’s thought, paramedics burst into the room and took over. An immediate determination was made that Reagan was critical, perhaps fatally so. She’d lost too much blood, and despite their efforts she was still bleeding.
    Landon stepped back and watched them lift her limp, pregnant body onto the stretcher and carry her from the apartment. Her mother stayed close behind, her voice tight and pinched as she
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    rambled on about Reagan’s stomachache. “Because she had noth ing wrong with her yesterday, and if something had been wrong yesterday, we would’ve taken her in right away. I mean, even with the blood this whole thing is strange because the doctor saw her a few days ago and told her she wasn’t dilated at all and …
    she’s going to be okay, right? I mean you can save the baby, right? Because …”
     
    The group headed into the hall, leaving the firefighters, half a dozen women, and the terrible silence that always came in the wake of an emergency. Landon helped his partner pack up their equipment while the others from their engine company inter viewed the women about what led up to Reagan’s collapse. Any information would be included in the final report.
    Landon walked through the next five minutes without regis tering any of what was being said. His mind was on Reagan and the fact that unless God breathed a miracle into her, odds were against her surviving. The baby had almost no chance at all. And what about Luke? If he was indeed the baby’s father, didn’t he have a right to know what was happening?
    Mrs. Decker’s words came back to him: “No … there’s no one.” If Luke was the father, Reagan clearly hadn’t intended to tell him. When they were back in the engine, Landon’s partner el
    bowed him as they pulled away. “You haven’t said a word since we got here.”
    Landon swallowed and met his partner’s gaze head-on. “I know the girl, Phillips.
    She’s-” he stared out the window “she’s a friend from back in Bloomington.”
    His partner hesitated. “How good a friend?”
    “Very good.” Landon sucked in a slow breath and found Phil lips’s eyes.
    “What about the baby?” Phillips’s mouth hung open. “I didn’t know until today.”
    “So …”
    “So … she’s gotta make it.”
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CHAPTER SEVEN
    T H E R E S T OF L A N D o N’ S shift passed in a blur of prayer and wild thoughts, and it was all he could do to keep from call ing Ashley. If Reagan didn’t want the Baxters to know, he could hardly break the news to them.
    Especially now, in the middle of an emergency. But what if the baby died? What if Reagan did?
    He finished work at midnight, took a cab to Mt. Sinai, and there he got word about Reagan’s condition. A woman at the front desk explained that she’d been upgraded from critical to stable. She’d delivered the baby, and she was in the maternity ward under close watch.
    Landon exhaled for what felt like the first time all evening. He took the elevator to the right floor and found Reagan’s mother staring through the glass at a roomful of babies.