Read Online A Baby Before Dawn by Linda Castillo - Free Book Online Page A

eyes paused on her abdomen. He stared and for a moment she thought he would ask to touch her belly, but he didn’t.
    “Sit on the table,” he said. “Put your feet on the chair.”
    Lily scooted onto the table and set both feet on the chair, careful to keep her panties and the tops of her thighs covered by his shirt. She knew it was silly to worry about something as trivial as modesty during a crisis, especially when she’d been intimate with this man on more than one occasion. But being pregnant and determined not to repeat the mistakes of her past, Lily had no intention of letting down her guard.
    Without speaking, he approached, his attention focused on the cut. “Looks like you could have used a couple of stitches.”
    “Like I’m going to let you stick a needle in me.”
    He didn’t smile. Instead, he settled into one of the chairs and reached for the pail of water and the soap dispenser. “I guess we’ll just have to make do with a bandage.”
    Up until now, Lily hadn’t gotten a good look at the cut. In relation to her other discomforts, the cut had barely rated on the pain scale. Judging from the stain on her pants, though, it had bled plenty. The wound looked deep, with the flesh laid open the width of her little finger.
    “Think you can butterfly it?” she asked.
    His gaze flicked to hers. “I’m an EMT. I think I can handle it.”
    He dipped the paper towel into the water, then dispensed a generous amount of soap onto it and pressed it against the cut. The soap stung, but it wasn’t the pain that had Lily’s heart beating double time. It was the sight of Chase’s hand on her thigh.
    “Sorry,” he said. “I know it hurts.”
    What hurts, she thought, was your inability to put your dangerous lifestyle aside for me, the woman you claimed to love.
    Water under the bridge, she reminded herself and concentrated on the sting. She clung to the small physical pain because it was so much easier to deal with than the truth of what had happened between them.
    “It’s clean.” He reached for a roll of masking tape and a paper towel he’d neatly folded. “Now here comes the bandage.”
    Setting his hand on the underside of her thigh, he gripped it while applying the makeshift bandage with the other. “Going to hurt when I tighten this thing.”
    “It’s okay,” Lily heard herself say. But, looking at him, feeling the old emotions churn inside her, she felt certain nothing was ever going to be okay again.

Chapter Five
    Chase leaned back in the chair and listened to the whisper-soft sound of Lily’s breathing. After he bandaged the cut on her leg, he’d talked her into lying down. As usual, she’d protested. But she must have been exhausted, because the instant her head hit the towel he’d folded for her to use as a pillow, she’d gone out like a light.
    He wished he could turn off his own mind as readily, but he couldn’t. He should try to get some sleep, or at the very least, rest. But he was wound as tight as a man could be and not snap. He needed to know who was behind the attempt on Lily’s life. On his life and Shane’s. He needed to know if that same person was behind the kidnapping of Vice President Davis and if the incidents were related to the blackout or merely coincidence.
    Chase had long ago decided such a thing didn’t exist. So who was behind the actions?
    He had made plenty of enemies over the years, many of whom were violent and powerful men. The Federal Bureau of Prisons kept him informed of recent parolees. Was it possible one had slipped through the cracks? Still, one question nagged at him. Why sabotage the Boston power plants to get at him?
    In that instant, in some small corner of his mind, something pinged. Dread swept through him with the violence of a tidal wave when he recalled a threat that had been made against his Special Forces team some eleven years ago after a high-profile and ultimately disastrous Middle Eastern rescue mission.
    Fifty-eight people, including