She pressed her hand to her stomach, breathing in deeply when she paused by the counter. If he didn’t believe in her, he would never have dared to risk a pregnancy with her, she thought with a surge of hope. Joe was very family-oriented. Even though he had many disagreements with his family, she knew he loved them and she knew he was fiercely protective of them.
She hated this. Hated the position Grant had placed her in. He was so lucky he was dead; if he weren’t, Maggie believed she would have been tempted to kill him herself at this moment.
As she reached for a coffee cup she heard the two men in the living room moving for the front door.
“Let me know what Johnson says,” Joe was saying as the front door opened. Maggie knew the “Johnson” in question had to be the DA she had met at the police station.
“Will do, and you watch your ass,” Craig grunted. “Hopefully this will be over soon.”
“Hopefully,” Joe answered just before Maggie heard the door close.
She left the cup sitting on the counter in front of the coffeepot as she waited. Within seconds, she felt him. First, it was just an impression of strength, of warmth, then his arms were coming around her waist and his lips were pressing into her hair.
“What’s wrong, Maggie?” His voice was husky, the dark undertone of arousal threading through it.
She breathed in roughly.
“Grant wouldn’t have hidden that information at the house.” Her heart was racing in fear. “It would have been too easily found. He didn’t work that way.”
“I figured as much.” He kissed the top of her head again before pulling away and allowing her to turn and face him.
Meeting his gaze wasn’t easy, but she did. She found the dark chocolate depths of his eyes filled with warmth and a question. The suspicion she had feared wasn’t there, but that did little to temper her fears.
“What did you remember, Maggie?” He tipped his head to the side, watching her closely as she clenched her fingers together in front of her.
“You’re so sure I remembered it? Not that I already knew it?” She was slicing her own throat, and she felt the breath strangling in her throat from it.
A small smile quirked his lips.
“I deserved that,” he admitted with a small nod of his head. “I’m not stupid, baby. You lived with him for two years. It’s only logical that you may have heard of something that you’ll eventually remember.”
“Not that I was working with him?”
“Maggie.” He reached up to push back the strands of hair that had fallen over her face back behind her ear. “I don’t believe you were involved with this, so let’s stop tiptoeing around each other and finish this up. If you’ve remembered something, then let me know. We’ll get this taken care of, get the danger off your back and start our lives together.”
She inhaled with a trembling breath, tears filling her eyes at the gentleness in his voice.
“Your car,” she whispered. “Grant was always going on and on about that Mustang. While you were talking to Craig, I remember how smug he acted the last time. The expression on his face. I think he might have hidden the information in that car someplace.”
His eyes narrowed as he rubbed at his jaw.
“He helped me put that car back together,” he finally sighed. “We worked on that for months.”
The painful knowledge that the man he believed was his friend had betrayed him still lingered in his eyes, in the tight grimace in his expression as he turned away from her.
“He would have hidden it where you would never think to look,” she pointed out. “He didn’t expect to get killed. This was insurance in case he needed to buy his way free of a conviction,” she said slowly. “The last few months, before he was killed, he was so certain he was suddenly better than you were. I never thought he would go this far.”
She had thought he was insane, not criminal. She should have known better, she admitted. Grant had dropped enough hints, she just hadn’t wanted to hear them.
“We’ll head back to Atlanta tonight.” He nodded abruptly. “The Fuentes family will know by now that I’m the one watching you. They’ll be watching my house. I doubt very seriously Grant was the only spy they had in either the Atlanta Police Department or the DEA. So we’ll go in quiet, check out the car, and if it’s there, we’ll head straight to the department from there.”
“What about Craig?” she asked nervously.
Joe’s broad shoulders tightened before he turned back to her.
“Craig’s my backup,” he sighed. “But at this point, I’m not trusting anyone else with your life.” His expression hardened as he faced her. “We’ll go in alone. I’m not taking any chances.”
“And if the information is there?” she asked him. She could see the doubt in his eyes that it could be.
“If it’s there, then we’ll do just as I said.” There was a fighting tension in his body now, a readiness that assured her he was planning, plotting out each move from here on out.
“And where will that leave us? Your DA, Craig, and everyone else involved will believe I knew where it was all along, Joe.”
“We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it,” he growled. “And we won’t. The DA doesn’t give a shit one way or the other as long as he gets what he wants, and neither do the Feds. And I’ll make certain they don’t want you.”
Which didn’t reassure her on the fears rising inside her. But did it really matter? The main objective was to see if the information was there. If it was, then she would deal with whatever came later the best way possible. The way she had always dealt with unpleasantness. Straight ahead. She was going into this with her eyes open. Joe was here to get the information. If he believed in her, then he would trust in her. If he didn’t … Well, if he didn’t, then she would face it, and she would survive, just as she always had. The main thing was to get the proof needed and get Fuentes and his men off her back.
She nodded slowly. It was only a matter of hours before dark, and the trip to Atlanta wouldn’t take long.
“Do I need to pack?”
He shook his head. “No need. If the information is there then your part in this will be over. The DA won’t need your testimony or much of a statement. I’ll bring you back here until we’re certain it’s safe.”