Sheriff’s Runaway Witness

“Copy.”

“How are you doing?”

The worry in Katie’s voice made him respond with more confidence than he was feeling. “Doin’ fine. I think we have everything we need.”

“Okay, Ridgecrest says you’re going to have to help her push.”

“Uh-huh.” Lord, how do I do that?

“They say when the contractions come you should lift her so she sits up, don’t let her lie flat. Gravity helps.”

“Gotcha.”

“And J.J.? They say don’t let her push too hard. You, um…don’t want her to tear.”

No, I sure as hell don’t want her to do that. He swallowed down another wave of queasiness and muttered, “Ten-four.” And then, although he wasn’t exactly a praying man and it had been a long, long time since his last appearance in Sunday school, he sent up a little one: Okay, Lord, I could use a little help, here!

“I have to push again.”

The sound of her voice startled him, it had been so long since she’d spoken. And when he looked at her he got a jolt that startled him even more. He wasn’t sure what it was, something about the determination in her voice, maybe, contradicting the stark fear in her eyes, but whatever it was, it made something kick in his chest, and the next thing he knew he had a lump in his throat and a big ball of fear in his belly. Because that went against his grain and everything he thought he knew about himself, his voice grated hard in his ears when he said, “Okay, let’s do this thing.”

Those fearful eyes clung to his, and she whispered, “I don’t know if I can.”

The truth was, he didn’t know if she could, either. It seemed an impossible thing she was trying to do, and it didn’t help to tell himself it had been done billions of times before, even under worse circumstances than these. Though he didn’t like admitting it, he felt just plain scared, more scared than he’d ever been in his life. Going into a house where a guy crazy high on PCP had just hacked up his wife and the family dog with a machete and was threatening to do the same to his kids-that had been a piece of cake compared to this. That, he’d been trained for. Prepared for. He’d felt confident, capable, sure. Here, he felt lost. Clueless. What if she couldn’t do it? There wasn’t anybody here who could help her. Just him.

What if I can’t?

“That’s not like you, Jethro,” he muttered to himself, and imagined he could hear his mother saying the words, the way she’d said them to him so many times when he was growing up.

“Who’s Jethro?” She was gazing at him, looking confused.

And he was saved from having to answer that when all of a sudden her face crumpled up and her eyes filled with tears and she grabbed hold of his shirt as if she was going over a cliff and he was the only thing saving her.

He got his arms around her shoulders and held her up while she made sounds that turned his insides to ice water. He realized his own body had gone rigid and his jaws were clamped tight, as if somehow that was going to help her, and to make himself stop it, he began to talk to her in a voice that sounded like a truckload of rocks.

“You’re doin’ fine, sweetheart…that’s it…just a little bit more…okay, ease up now…that’s it…rest a minute… almost there, darlin’…”

And it became a kind of rhythm, almost like a dance they were doing. She’d grab on to him and he’d hold her, and while she strained and hollered he’d talk to her and tell her how strong and brave and beautiful she was, and it never occurred to him he couldn’t possibly know whether she was really any of those things because he’d only known her for an hour or so. Just then, it seemed to him he’d always known her, and always would. Right then, it felt like they were the only two people on the face of the earth-the two of them plus the baby she was trying to push into the world. The SUV’s air-conditioning did the best it could, but sweat ran into his eyes and stung like fire, and soaked his shirt and every bit of clothing they were wearing between the two of them. Between contractions he gave her sips of water and poured some on the cloth thing she’d been wearing on her head and bathed her face with it. And it occurred to him while he was doing that, that once he looked past the sweat and the bruises, she really was beautiful.

Who in the hell would hit a little bitty pregnant woman? Especially one with a face like that?

He vowed if he ever found out who’d done this to her, he’d give the animal a dose of his own medicine.

Yeah, idiot, and it was that kind of impulse that got you banished to this desert Siberia in the first place. Last thing you need is to get emotionally involved again.

Great advice, he told himself, but hard to follow when the woman in his arms was twisting the buttons off his shirt and soaking his collar with her tears and sweat.

“One more,” he told her grimly.

She screamed at him in desperate fury, “You said that the last ten times!”

Then, when he thought neither of them had enough left in them for one more time…

“That’s it-I see the head! Come on, baby, just a little bit more…keep pushing…almost there…”

“J.J.,” Katie’s voice squawked from his shoulder, “Ridgecrest wants to know…” And he didn’t even hear the rest.

He was yelling, laughing and…who knows what else, but he didn’t give a damn who heard him. “How ’bout that, honey, we have a head!”

“A head? Really?” She was laughing and crying, too, weakly, and breathless with relief. “Is it…is he…?”

But J.J. was too busy to answer her, using his hands and whatever else happened to be within reach, wiping off the scrunched-up face, remembering the bulb-thing to clear stuff out of the flattened lump of a nose and the puffy purple mouth. Then she was pushing again, and he gently held the head while first one shoulder appeared…then the other, and suddenly there he was, with his hands full of slippery, squirmy, brand-new living human being.

He couldn’t believe it. He’d never felt such exhilaration in his whole life. Or such awe. And when, after a strangled-sounding gurgle, he heard the first mewing cry, such sheer overwhelming relief.

“My baby…” She was struggling to sit up, sobbing, hands frantically reaching.

J.J. shoved all the habit material out of the way and placed the baby right on her stomach. “Well, Rachel,” he said gruffly, as he guided her hands to cradle her newborn, “looks like you have a son.”

Chapter 4

Time passed in a haze for Rachel. Fearful and trembling, she watched her unlikely Western movie hero tie and cut her baby’s umbilical cord, then wrap him in a blanket and place him in her arms. She had a sense that she might be crying; she didn’t know why, she wasn’t sad, except that maybe there was just too much emotion inside her, too much joy and relief and awe, and it had to find its own way out.

She could hear the woman’s voice on the radio giving her hero-J.J., she called him-instructions from the hospital in Ridgecrest, telling him how to help her to get the baby to nurse, which was important because that would help stop the bleeding. And it didn’t seem strange to her at all that this big man with whiskers and long hair and a gun on his belt should be touching her in intimate ways; she barely registered the fact that it was the stranger’s rough hand on her breast, gently guiding the nipple to her son’s seeking mouth…another hand cradling and dwarfing his tiny, still-wet head. All she could see was her baby’s face…his beautiful, perfect round little face, with black hair, wavy like Nicky’s. And Nicky’s eyes, dark slate-gray now, like all newborns’ eyes, but wide open and looking straight back at her.

Nicky…you-we-have a son.

She thought of Carlos then, and began to shiver.

“Here,” J.J.’s raspy John Wayne voice said, and he unwrapped the blanket he’d wrapped the baby up in and brought it around both of them, so that her baby was nestled against her skin to skin, naked against her nakedness, the two of them cocooned together inside the warmth of the blanket.