Page 81 of Protecting Maggie
“Borysko?”
“Yeah.”
“It looks like it.”
“What happens now? With the kids?” Maggie asked next.
“No clue. But I know that MacGyver is going to fight like hell for them.”
“What can we do to help him? Keep them, I mean.”
This was just another reason Preacher loved this woman. Her huge heart. She wasn’t asking about what happened with herself next. With Robertson. She was worried about the children. And MacGyver. She should be curled into a ball, paralyzed with anxiety over everything that had happened to her in the last few days. But instead, she was thinking about everyone but herself.
“I don’t know. We’ll play it by ear. But I’m guessing the authorities will want to hear about what happened and the situation we found them in.”
Maggie nodded firmly. “Right. Well, whoever I have to talk to and whatever I have to say, I’ll say it. They deserve a second chance.”
Preacher agreed one hundred percent.
“Where are we headed now?” she asked.
“Probably Germany. Borysko will be checked out, then we’ll head home.”
“I don’t have any identification,” Maggie said, looking up at him with a frown. “How am I going to get back into the US?”
“It’ll be fine,” Preacher soothed. “Trust me.”
To his amazement, she simply nodded and melted against his side once again. How this woman could trust him as deeply as she did when she’d had that trust broken so badly in the past was astounding. But he wasn’t going to ever take it for granted. He’d give her no reason to distrust him. Ever. He’d be her rock. The person she looked to when she was happy, sad, scared…whatever she was feeling, he wanted to be the man she came to first.
“Shawn?”
“Yeah?”
“I know I should be freaking out about going back to Riverton, about what’s waiting for me there. I’ll need to get a hold of my probation officer and tell her what happened, talk to your Navy people, face Roman…but all I can feel right now is relief. That we made it out of there. All of us.”
“Me too, baby. Me too. We’ll tackle whatever comes next together.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” he agreed, floored again by her trust in him.
As she dozed, Preacher’s mind spun with plans.
The threats against his Maggie needed to be stopped. Immediately. He’d do whatever it took to make that happen. Starting with calling Tex the second they landed in Germany. By the time they arrived in Riverton, he needed the ball to already be rolling. Didn’t want to give Robertson any sliver of a chance to combat what was coming. He was going to regret not walking away from Maggie and never looking back. Preacher would make sure of it.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Maggie was petrified. But she did her best to hide any emotion from the man at her side. Shawn had been hovering ever since they’d landed back at the naval base. Just being here made her nervous. This was Roman’s territory. Even though Shawn and his friends were badasses, what could they do against such a high-ranking officer?
Thankfully, they’d arrived in the middle of the night and the base felt deserted.
She was distracted by Artem and Yana’s wide-eyed wonder at stepping foot on US soil for the first time. Now that they’d realized Borysko would be fine, that the bullets somehow hadn’t hit anything vital, they were feeling much more curious about everything happening around them.
And Tex had come through in a huge way for MacGyver. He’d somehow arranged for the children to be temporarily placed in his care. There was a long road aheadfor the newfound family, but Maggie had high hopes that things would work out for them.
Shawn was taking her to his apartment, and to her surprise, Smiley was coming with them. He said that he didn’t think it was smart for them to be on their own, not as long as Robertson was out there gunning for them both. The woman who owned the house where Shawn rented a room had another tenant who’d just left, so there was an empty room next to Shawn’s. It was one more way that things simply seemed to be working out. Maggie didn’t want to dwell too long on the hows and whys. She was just trying to be grateful instead.
Shawn explained that it was likely Roman had already learned how badly his plans had gone, and that he was probably even now trying to figure out how to spin what happened to his advantage. That didn’t exactly give Maggie warm and fuzzy feelings, but she couldn’t think about it…otherwise she would break.
