Expecting to Die

What progress? You know the name of the father of the victim’s unborn child,
and he’s missing. Wait until you talk to Kywin Bell and put the screws to him,
then discuss it with Pescoli before going to the sheriff with only half-baked
theories.
She was about to step into her office when she spied Zoller heading her way.
“Glad I caught you,” Sage said without preamble. “I was about to leave for the
night when I got a call from Carlton Jeffe. The guy with the drone.”
“Yeah?”
“Seems as if he’s found something with his drone. Possibly another dead
body.”
“Another? Whose?” she asked, a needle of dread piercing her heart. Kywin
Bell was missing. No one was claiming to have heard from him.
“Unknown. Rescuers are on their way.”
“Where?”
“Federal land. About a mile south of Reservoir Point.”
“Anything else we know about it?”
“Just that it looks like a woman. The drone couldn’t get too close because of
the foliage, but a leg and arm were visible. The shoe was a woman’s sandal. And
neither appendage moved. Jeffe sent over a file, so I’ve got a visual.”
“Let’s see it.”
Zoller led the way into the conference room where they’d met earlier and sure
enough, Jeffe had uploaded footage from the drone. As Zoller had stated, the
forest was dense, but caught on the drone’s camera was a slim, naked leg, and
from the toes of the visible foot, a gold sandal dangled. A hand was visible as
well, and as Zoller zoomed in, Alvarez saw that the fingernails were tipped with

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a pearlescent pink color and on her ring finger was a glittering diamond ring.
“Married,” Sage said. “Or engaged.”
“Has anyone reported a woman missing?”
“Don’t know. This just came in.”
“Let’s find out.” Alvarez was already out the door and in the hallway when
Zoller caught up with her.
Taj Nyak was working the desk, and upon Alvarez’s inquiry about recently
filed reports about missing women, she nodded. “We’ve got a couple that came
in. Penelope Jarvis, eighty-six. Went missing from Safe Haven Adult Care.”
“Not so safe,” Zoller said. “They might want to change their name.”
“Someone younger,” Alvarez said.
“Got one, just today.” Taj pulled the file up on the computer and spun the
screen around so Alvarez could view it. “Marjory Tufts,” she said. “Her husband
was in about three this afternoon.” A picture was attached to the file. Alvarez
recognized Emmett and Preston Tufts’s stepmother. “He’s worried sick about
her, said they had a fight and she took off last night. I guess it happens often
enough that he wasn’t worried, thought she’d spend the night with a friend or in
a hotel. It’s happened before. But this is the first time she’d taken off, he claims,
since she found out she was pregnant. When she didn’t show up, he called
around. Her friends, the local hotel where she stayed before, even a couple of
hospitals, but no one had seen her. So he left work—he owns a car dealership—
and came down here to file a report.”
Alvarez was nodding, but her eyes were on the photograph attached to the
missing persons report. Marjory was young, not yet twenty, with a bright smile,
a twinkle in her eye, and a glittery wedding ring that was identical to the one in
the image captured by Carlton Jeffe’s drone.
* * *
No! No! No! Not now. It couldn’t be happening now.
The baby had to wait. It had to! She didn’t have time to go into labor now, to
birth a child, not while this investigation was ongoing.
And what if the case goes on for weeks, for months, even years? Do you
expect the baby to wait?
Another hard contraction stole her concentration as Santana drove, pushing
the speed limit along the darkened country road. “Hang in there,” he advised as
she labored in the passenger seat, the baby definitely on its way. The
contractions were coming faster now, the forest and fields speeding by, the sun
having set and dusk crawling over the land.

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“This is such bad timing,” she gritted out.
“The department will function without you,” Santana assured her. “Trust me,
the crime rate won’t go up in the next few days just because you’re not able to
go in.”
“Very funny,” she said, though neither laughed and for once Pescoli didn’t
argue. She couldn’t. The baby was coming and coming fast. Pains as intense as
any she’d ever felt in her life tore through her, with ever decreasing intervals in
between.
In flashes of memory, as she clutched the passenger seat, she remembered her
previous deliveries. Both Jeremy and Bianca had arrived quickly, her labor
lasting less than six hours, but this one, Santana’s kid, seemed determined to
break their records and race headlong into the world.
Santana floored it on a straightaway.
“Don’t kill us,” she advised, thinking of the deer and rabbits and whatever that
came out at twilight, animals that wandered along the road.
“Before I meet my kid?” he said, slanting a glance in her direction. His grin
was an enigmatic and irreverent slash of white. “You hang in there. Concentrate
on bringing that baby into the world and leave the driving to me. Deal?”
“Deal,” she said, her heart swelling. Damn, but she loved this man. And then
another contraction hit with the force of an earthquake and all she could think
about was getting through the pain.
She even forgot that life as she’d known it was about to end as he called the
hospital and said to the operator who answered: “This is Nate Santana. I’m
bringing my wife, Regan Pescoli, to the ER. She’s in labor and the baby’s just
about here! We’re preregistered and our Doctor is . . . Peeples . . .” He glanced at
Regan.
“Ramona.”
“Ramona Peeples. We’ll be there in five minutes.”
“Hurry,” she said through gritted teeth and couldn’t believe she had the urge to
push. Right here in the Jeep. “It’s . . . it’s coming!”
“Hold on!” Horn blasting, Santana slowed for a red light and apparently saw
no traffic, as he twisted on the steering wheel and the Jeep careened on to the
main street leading to the hospital.
Oh. Dear. God.
“I . . . I can’t. It’s . . .” She let out a wrenching groan as pain ripped through
her body. The fingers of her right hand dug into the armrest, while her left
gripped the console. “Oh, oh . . .” Northern General came into view. “It’s . . .
he’s . . . she’s . . . almost . . . almost . . . here!” She was fighting the urge to push
and failing.

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Speeding around a final corner, Santana roared onto the access road, then hit
the brakes and slid to a stop in front of the double glass doors of the emergency
room. He cut the engine and was out of the Jeep in an instant, rounding the
vehicle as Pescoli, deep into a contraction, bit back a scream and clawed at her
seat belt, releasing the buckle.
When Santana opened the passenger door, she nearly tumbled out just as two
attendants with a gurney arrived and somehow hoisted her onto the stretcher and
began wheeling her inside. “Hold on,” one of the attendants said, and to Santana:
“We’re taking her straight to a birthing room. You can do the paperwork later.”
They hustled her through the emergency room doors, the lights of the interior
of the hospital bright, the walls seeming to gleam, and into an elevator.
The rest of the delivery came fast. They barely got her into the bed and
removed her clothes before she could hold back no longer and began to push in
earnest. She didn’t care that the doctor hadn’t arrived or that the staff was
scrambling around, not prepared. This baby was being born!
“Okay, Mama,” one of the nurses said. “Baby has crowned. Now—”
Regan didn’t hear the rest, didn’t know if Santana was in the room or what
had happened to her other children, who were supposed to have followed them
to the hospital. All she knew was that she had to push this thing out of her, and
in a rush, she did.
A nurse caught the baby, she heard a squall and Regan fell back on the raised
portion of the bed. She was vaguely aware of a large, warm hand on her head,
then Santana’s voice in her ear. “Good job, Mama,” he whispered as the baby
was placed on her abdomen. “We have a son.”
Tears filled her eyes as she held the boy, and raw emotion, as deep as the
craters in the sea, filled her. “Oh, sweetie,” she whispered, all of the worries of
her job, her family, the world and universe vanishing with the little gurgling
sounds of this tiny, minutes-old infant. “Welcome to our crazy life,” she
whispered.
Smiling despite the glisten in his eyes, Santana touched his son for the first
time, his hand seeming huge as it caressed the back of the dark-haired baby.
“Hey, there,” he said softly as he looked for the first time at the tiny face of
Tucker Grayson Santana.

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