The Mountain Midwife Read Free

all wrong, but they had nothing to do with no dial tone. This was the country. Phone lines went dead. No problem. Her cell phone rested on the nightstand beside her car keys and wallet and another phone. She tested that one, too, conscious of wasting time. No dial tone.
    She caught up cell, keys, and wallet and sped back to the door. “I’m going to go open my car.” She called out her intent as she took the steps down two at a time.
    Silence greeted her. The baby had stopped crying.
    Ashley slammed open the front door. “I’ll be back to help in a minute.”
    Once outside where she could get a signal, she told her phone to call the hospital. By the time she reached her SUV, the phone was ringing. By the time she clicked the electronic locks on the doors, someone answered, “Memorial Hospital. Jenny speaking.”
    “Ashley Tolliver.”
    Jenny knew her, and Ashley let out a breath knowing an excellent nurse was on duty tonight.
    “I’m bringing in a woman—”
    The roar of an engine speeding up the drive drowned her voice from her own hearing. Headlights, high and too bright, cut an arc across the trees lining the drive and her Tahoe before heading straight for her.
    She flung herself back against the house. The black hulk of a jacked-up truck barreled past her with a bare yard to spare and swept around the circular drive. Seconds before it reached the rear of the house, another smaller pickup blasted from near the tree line edging the backyard and shot down the drive. The black truck accelerated in pursuit. Both vehicles accelerated on their way downhill, tires sending gravel spraying behind. Ashley flung up her arms to protect her face. Her phone sailed from her hand and landed in a rosemary bush.
    The rumble of the trucks’ engines dwindled around a curve in the road. In the ensuing quiet, she caught a tinny voice calling, “Ashley, are you there?”
    “Keep talking. I dropped my phone in the bushes.”
    And her patient had just been abandoned.
    What about the newborn she had so far rejected?
    Ashley plucked her phone from the bush and raced toward the exam room. “Emergency delivery. Potential hemorrhage.” She reached the kitchen. “I know nothing about her. She—” She slid to a halt halfway across the kitchen.
    A trail of blood led through the exam room to the open back door.
    “Ashley, are you still there?” Jenny called through the phone. “Ashley?”
    “I’m here.” Ashley could barely push the words out of her throat. “But I think—” She swallowed and tried again. “I think you’d better call the sheriff. My patient and her baby have disappeared.”

C HAPTER 2

    A FTER SIXTEEN HOURS of travel, with one flight delay resulting in a missed connection and hours spent pacing the aisleways of Gatwick Airport, Hunter McDermott wheeled his luggage through the rear security gate of his complex and approached his condo. So far so good. No one had accosted him—yet. Once inside, he should be fairly safe from reporters and curiosity-seekers.
    He dragged his suitcase and briefcase up the steps, unlocked the door, disarmed the security system. The suitcase he left in the utility room to empty of laundry later. The briefcase he carried across the kitchen to the hallway leading to the steps. His footfalls echoed on the wooden floorboards. The mustiness of a house too long closed from outside air stirred around him. Beyond the front windows, shielded from the street with the drapes his mother insisted he needed, bright lights and slamming doors suggested that the press had found his home—or maybe a neighbor was having a party—he could hope. He didn’t care. As weary as he was, he doubted a rock band in the middle of the street would keep him awake. The time might only be midnight eastern daylight time, but his body remained on Greenwich meantime, which meant he had been awake for over thirty-six hours.
    Those thirty-six hours felt more like thirty-six days since a simple act of kindness had