Книга - The Bounty Hunter’s Baby Surprise
The Bounty Hunter's Baby Surprise
Lisa Childs
They could be a family… if he can win her heartWhen Lillian Davies is accused of a crime she didn’t commit, Jake Howard knows he must save her. But Lillian has bigger concerns and Jake has to fight even harder to win her trust and her heart.
“It’s whose baby?”
Top Secret Deliveries delivers again
When bounty hunter Jake Howard tries to apprehend bail jumper Lillian Davies, he gets a surprise: she’s pregnant! He’s more surprised that she’s accused of embezzlement...and someone wants her dead. Is she being framed? Having betrayed Lillian once, Jake wants to regain her trust and exonerate her. He’ll even risk his life to save her and their little family before it’s too late.
Ever since LISA CHILDS read her first romance novel (a Mills & Boon story, of course) at age eleven, all she wanted was to be a romance writer. With over forty novels published with Mills & Boon, Lisa is living her dream. She is an award-winning, bestselling romance author. Lisa loves to hear from readers, who can contact her on Facebook, through her website, www.lisachilds.com (http://www.lisachilds.com), or her snail-mail address, PO Box 139, Marne, MI 49435, USA.
Also by Lisa Childs (#uc73a48e1-d6dc-5411-b7f2-fb468cf58a4b)
The Bounty Hunter’s Baby Surprise
His Christmas Assignment
Bodyguard Daddy
Bodyguard’s Baby Surprise
Beauty and the Bodyguard
Nanny Bodyguard
Single Mom’s Bodyguard
In the Bodyguard’s Arms
The Colton Marine
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
The Bounty Hunter’s Baby Surprise
Lisa Childs
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-07901-3
THE BOUNTY HUNTER’S BABY SURPRISE
© 2018 Lisa Childs
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
With great appreciation for Patience Bloom; it is a privilege and a joy to work with you!
Contents
Cover (#uf658b746-c8bd-58bd-8f22-600697e5eb13)
Back Cover Text (#u4c232ffd-496f-5333-a6b1-c3a5424ef3df)
About the Author (#uc97d8df8-0463-59d5-af6e-4f73f3988d58)
Booklist (#ub6a7d48d-82fd-5653-90dd-92eebecf0400)
Title Page (#u73fc049a-5089-5ceb-9fee-d221cc7e45c0)
Copyright (#u4b73a20f-c9f7-5bd4-8540-09c226280559)
Dedication (#u18ed7d8a-7b00-5f80-8224-79d7b7c5335f)
Prologue (#uf1292c12-8666-549f-9776-d24874576152)
Chapter 1 (#u453573cc-478b-587a-906f-c243ffcbdd10)
Chapter 2 (#u6bbcb5c1-f97a-53b2-aee0-244314974253)
Chapter 3 (#uf220d756-db35-52e7-ab41-a5c5b11f33fe)
Chapter 4 (#u537b6928-bdf2-53c4-8e9b-da6b4938f3ac)
Chapter 5 (#u76d753a1-42f3-5379-a229-4780139b0735)
Chapter 6 (#u5ddf1057-d3c9-558a-b56b-daca31b95555)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#uc73a48e1-d6dc-5411-b7f2-fb468cf58a4b)
Pulling the flash drive from the computer with trembling fingers, Lillian Davies ducked under the desk just as the office door creaked open to the corridor. A beam of light flashed across the space, bouncing off the filing cabinets and the back of the chair she’d pulled up against the desk to cover her. She closed her eyes so the beam would not glint in them, and she crouched even lower. Her heart pounded wildly with fear that she would be caught.
If that happened, she would never have a chance to show anyone the evidence that would clear her name. And she would be sent to prison for certain. She held her breath, waiting to be discovered.
If the security guard noticed that the monitor was on...
She could only hope that he would call the police. Because if he called his boss—her former boss—first...
Then she might not make it back to jail. He would undoubtedly kill to cover up his crime—the one for which he’d framed her. Tom Kuipers must have hired her so he would have a scapegoat for the blame. She’d thought he was one of the few people in River City, Michigan, who hadn’t judged her based on her last name and who her family was and had been giving her a chance to prove herself.
But she had been wrong. Again.
Tears stung her eyes. She should have been used to it, used to being used. She blinked back the tears, opened her eyes and lifted her chin.
No. She damn well was not going to get used to it. She was going to fight back this time. Because she wasn’t fighting just for herself anymore.
And if the security guard discovered her, she would fight him, too. Sure, he carried a gun. But he wouldn’t actually shoot her, would he? Maybe if she propelled the chair into his legs and knocked him over she would have a chance to run for it.
She locked the trembling fingers of her free hand around the legs of the chair, ready to use it as a weapon. But the beam shut off, plunging the office into darkness again, except for the faint glow from the parking lot lights outside the windows. Then the door creaked closed and snapped shut.
Lillian finally released the breath she’d been holding. She waited several more moments, though, before she pushed out the chair and crawled out of her hiding space. She opened her purse and dropped the flash drive inside it. The plastic device slid to the bottom where she’d dropped the pregnancy test. She’d enclosed that in a bag, and through the clear plastic she could see the results that she hadn’t waited to read.
She already knew she was pregnant. She’d never missed one month let alone two, going on three. The plus sign staring up at her confirmed it, though. That was why she had risked her life and her freedom to come back here. She needed the evidence to prove her innocence, so that yet another Davies didn’t wind up in prison.
If the flash drive didn’t get the charges dropped against her, she was going to run. She was not going to have her baby behind bars. It was bad enough that was where most of the Davies family wound up later in life; her child was not going to begin his or her life in jail.
Chapter 1 (#uc73a48e1-d6dc-5411-b7f2-fb468cf58a4b)
Six months later...
“I should have listened to you,” Seymour Tuttle said. The bail bondsman paced the small confines of his office, nearly tripping over Jake Howard’s feet as the little man made the pass between his desk and the door Jake was leaning his back against, his long legs crossed at the ankles.
Tuttle had called him into his office and told him to shut the door. That was never a good sign for Jake. Every time someone had spoken to him in private before, it had been to give him bad news.
Your mother is dead...
Your father is gone...
But usually Tuttle didn’t give a damn about privacy—his or anyone else’s. But since he’d just admitted he was wrong, Jake understood his not wanting anyone else to overhear his admission. He was surprised the stubborn old guy had admitted it even to himself, let alone Jake. That must have been Tuttle’s version of bad news: being wrong.
“What should you have listened to me about?” Jake asked, holding back his “I told you so” until he knew the specifics.
“The Davies family.” Tuttle uttered the last name as if it was a vulgar curse word.
Jake flinched at just the mention of it, and a twinge of pain clenched his heart, stealing away his breath and his words. He couldn’t speak.
But Tuttle didn’t stop talking. He rarely did. His wide mouth was nearly as big as his short body. “You told me not to bail out another one of them.” He shook his little bald head in self-disgust. “You warned me that they always run.”
Jake’s pulse was running now in overtime. He didn’t want to think about the Davies family, didn’t want to think about what he’d done, the extremes he’d gone to the last time that he’d had to apprehend two of them.
“Why aren’t you saying it?” Tuttle demanded as he stopped in front of him.
Jake blinked and stared down at the little man. Tuttle was barely five feet tall to Jake’s well over six-foot height. “Saying what?”
“I told you so,” Tuttle said. “You were right. I paid the bail and now you need to go bring back another damn Davies for me.”
Jake shook his head and ran a slightly shaking hand through his thick hair. He needed a haircut. But then he always needed a haircut. “Not me. That’s not going to happen.”
“You’re the expert on the Davies family,” Tuttle persisted. “You know where to find them.”
“In jail,” Jake said. “That’s where most of them are.” He couldn’t believe Don or Dave would have gotten bail again after jumping it last time. And if a judge had been stupid enough to give it to them, Seymour had been even stupider to pay it. “I told you so” wasn’t enough recrimination for risking his money on one of them again.
“Not her,” Seymour said.
And Jake’s blood froze in his veins, sending a chill straight to his soul. “What?”
Tuttle paced around his desk, pulled out his chair and plopped down onto it. The metal desk was old and scratched up. His leather chair was more duct tape than leather. The bail bondsman liked money, but he didn’t like spending it. Leafing through a sheaf of papers on his desk, he held up a mug shot. “Her. I thought she was different than the rest of them. She has no record. No prior arrests at all. That’s the only reason the judge granted her bail. That’s why I posted it, even though I know you warned me not to.”
He trailed off as if waiting for Jake to say something—anything—but Jake was too stunned. He couldn’t move as shock gripped him. Seymour couldn’t be talking about...
Not Lillian.
But she was the only female Davies now. Her mother had passed away when Lillian was eighteen, leaving her with her degenerate father, three older brothers and one younger one.
“Her trial was supposed to start Monday,” Seymour said, “but she never showed up for court.”
Trial. For what? What the hell was going on?
Jake’s spine stiffened. He shot away from the door to grab the mug shot from Tuttle’s hand. As he stared down at the photo, myriad emotions passed through him.
Guilt. He’d felt that for the past eight months every time he had thought of her, which had been always. She had never left his mind. He remembered how devastated she had looked that last time he’d seen her, how her beautiful blue eyes had been dark with betrayal and pain. She’d thought he’d used her. And he had. That had been his plan all along, to get close to her to find out where her dad and brother Dave were hiding, but then something else had happened to him.
Desire. He hadn’t planned on that, hadn’t plotted to get as close to her as he had gotten. But he’d wanted Lillian Davies more than he’d ever wanted any woman. With her shimmery pale blond hair and deep blue eyes, she was stunningly beautiful. And sweet. She had acted and tasted so damn sweet. Her kisses had gone straight to his head and desire had gone to his groin. He hadn’t been able to resist her. And he’d nearly forgotten all about apprehending her dad and eldest brother.
Maybe that had been her plan, though. Maybe she had known all along who he really was and she’d set out to seduce him into forgetting about the bounties on her brother and father.
Anger. He felt it now as he stared down at her mug shot. He could barely look at her beautiful face, and she was still beautiful—even with dark circles rimming her eyes. He looked instead at the charge printed on the photo: embezzlement. She must have played him, just like she had everyone else. Her boss, the judge and the bail bondsman. Lily-white Lillian Davies was anything but. She was a con artist just like the rest of her criminal family.
“I know, I know,” Tuttle said. “You told me that if I bailed one of them out again, that you didn’t want to hear about it, that you wanted nothing to do with any of them again. But...”
Jake had been adamant about that because he hadn’t thought he’d ever be able to face her again—because he’d felt so damn guilty over hurting her.
He’d staged their whole cute first meeting, literally bumping into her in the grocery store. She’d apologized when their carts had collided, even though he’d deliberately plowed his into hers. Somehow he had sweet-talked her into dinner and then he’d made it for her.
All he had been after was information on her dad and brother Dave. But he’d gotten so much more...
Had he seduced her, though? Or had it been the other way around?
“I’ll call one of the O’Hanigans to bring her in instead,” Tuttle offered.
“No!” was Jake’s sharp retort as some emotion even uglier than anger coursed through him. Was it jealousy? He’d never felt such a sick, twisty feeling in his stomach before. He didn’t want Lillian seducing one of the O’Hanigans like she’d seduced him.
No, if she was going to seduce anyone...
Images flitted through his mind, like they did every night when he tried to sleep. Images of her lying naked in his bed, her silky skin flushed with desire, her lips parted on a husky moan.
No. She wasn’t going to seduce him this time. He would not be conned twice. He’d spent the past eight months hating himself for making her hate him. He’d felt guilty and remorseful because he’d hurt her.
And she’d probably been laughing at him—as she stole money just like her brother and father had. She’d been laughing at him and her hapless trusting employer.
She wasn’t going to get away with it.
Not this time.
She wasn’t going to elude justice.
This was why he had resigned from the US Marshals and gone into business for himself as a bounty hunter. The US Marshals didn’t have the time or the resources to bring back all the fugitives from justice. So Jake had taken it upon himself to do the job.
“Don’t call the O’Hanigans,” he said with more control. “I will bring back Lillian Davies.” He’d spent the past eight months dreading ever seeing her again, but now he couldn’t wait.
His pulse tripping away with anticipation, he turned toward the door but not so fast that he missed the little smile that curved Seymour Tuttle’s thin lips. The old bail bondsman had played him—just like Lillian had.
He would deal with Tuttle later. Right now, he had a fugitive to apprehend. A beautiful fugitive...
* * *
Lillian felt sicker than she had during her first trimester when she hadn’t just had morning sickness but all-day sickness. Of course, that might have had less to do with her pregnancy than the charges she faced—charges that could put her behind bars for a very long time.
But jail was the least of her concerns at the moment.
Her heart pounded fast and her palms sweated against the steering wheel she clutched. She had no idea where to go now. Since ditching court, she was a fugitive.
She knew what that meant. She knew who might come looking for her. That was her biggest concern, even bigger than finding out what the hell had happened to the flash drive.
Her lawyer claimed she’d never received it. But dare Lillian believe her?
Or had he gotten to her? Her former boss.
Mr. Kuipers was wealthy, even wealthier since he’d embezzled all that money from his company. He could have easily bribed an underpaid legal aid attorney to lose the evidence that would have proved Lillian’s innocence and his guilt.
That had to be what happened. She couldn’t consider the alternative. Then it would only prove that Jake Howard had been right about her family.
And he wasn’t...
He hadn’t been right about anything. But the man was good at his job—so good that he would use whatever means necessary to get what he wanted. Just like he had used her.
She hadn’t been complaining at the time, though. Of course, she had been totally unaware that he was using her. She’d been so naive.
Again. Why did she trust people that she shouldn’t?
But Jake had overwhelmed her—with his good looks, his charm. Her pulse quickened just thinking about him, how he’d looked at her that first time he’d literally bumped into her. His dark eyes had twinkled with amusement, and his sexy lips had curved into that wicked grin of his. He was so damn good-looking with those chiseled features and overly long thick dark hair. And his body.
Tall, broad and muscular.
And powerful.
While she was naive, Lillian had never been romantic or foolish. She’d never believed in love at first sight—until that moment. But it had been like she’d always known Jake and he her.
Of course she had—she just hadn’t realized it at the time, especially since he’d given her a different name. He’d called himself Jacob Williams. If he’d told her Jake Howard, she would have recognized him as the ruthless bounty hunter her family feared. She had felt a flicker of fear at that first meeting—because she’d somehow instinctively known her life was about to change forever.
Her baby kicked her belly, and she moved her hand from the steering wheel to rub over the bump where a little foot pushed against her abdomen. “Shh...”
She needed to calm down; she couldn’t risk her anxiety causing any harm to her baby. She had to think.
Where could she go?
If Jake came looking for her, he was bound to figure out where she was hiding. But he wouldn’t come, would he? After what he’d done, how he’d deceived and hurt her, he couldn’t have the guts to ever face her again.
That was what she was counting on...
She’d also been counting on that flash drive clearing her of all charges, though. And now the flash drive was gone. What the hell was she going to do?
Should she break into the lawyer’s office and look for it? She stared up at the dark building and considered it. What would breaking and entering charges add to her embezzlement sentence? Too long to risk it.
She had to think of something else. But first, she needed some rest. Because she didn’t trust Mr. Kuipers, she’d ignored the judge and the bail bondsman’s order to not leave the state, and she’d gone to Florida and the place her grandmother owned but hadn’t been able to use this winter. To get back in time for the court date in River City, Michigan, Lillian had driven all night.
If only she’d called her lawyer before she’d made the trip...
But she’d waited until she’d been back in Michigan only to be told that the flash drive had never arrived. The lawyer had to be lying. Lillian refused to consider that another person she’d trusted had let her down.
She blinked back the tears stinging her eyes and focused on the street in front of her. She wasn’t far from her apartment, but she’d given that up six months ago, right after she’d been bailed out of jail.
She should have given up the place sooner. All it had done was remind her of Jake, of how he’d cooked for her the first time they’d met, bumping into each other in the tiny kitchen, bodies brushing against bodies, that awareness making her tingle everywhere...
It had reminded her of how he’d grinned at her, his dark eyes sparkling with amusement. She’d thought he was the one man who appreciated her goofy sense of humor. But he’d probably only been amused because he was making a fool of her for falling for him when he was just using her.
And because of how he’d used her, she would always have a reminder of him now. She rubbed her hand over her belly again, and the baby moved beneath her touch.
His baby.
But she didn’t want him to know that, not after how he’d treated her. She didn’t want their child to have a father like him—one so ruthless and uncaring.
He couldn’t find her.
Nobody could.
* * *
“I want her dead!” Tom Kuipers shouted the words at the men gathered before him. Some of them flinched. A couple of them looked away from him.
They might be appalled at his ruthlessness, but they wouldn’t turn on him. Unlike Lillian Davies, they knew what happened to people who crossed him. They were never able to cross anyone again.
He raised his picture of Lillian Davies, blown up from her employee ID badge, and waved it at the group of seven or eight men gathered in the middle of the warehouse between the rows of building equipment and supplies. It was after hours. No one would overhear this meeting. And no one would repeat the contents of it.
He trusted these men because he knew they feared him. He wasn’t a large man or particularly muscular, and at fifty-six, he was no longer as young as he’d once been. But he was so much more powerful than he’d ever been. And they all knew it.
“She might have altered her appearance.” If she was smart.
And Lillian Davies was actually smarter than he’d realized. He’d thought she was so ignorant and trusting. And he had counted on her unsuspecting nature when he’d set her up to take the fall for all that money going missing.
But she wasn’t tumbling down as easily as he’d thought. Instead of showing up in court for the trial that would have sentenced her to prison, she was fighting back.
And he could not tolerate that.
“Whoever kills her and provides me with proof of her death will get a huge bonus for their loyalty,” he promised. It was, like so many others, a promise on which he would probably renege.
Tom had already spent more of that money he’d stolen than he’d wanted to. He had plans for it, plans for a new life.
But they didn’t know he was lying. Just like Lillian once had, they trusted his word.
“Do you have any idea where she is?” one of the men asked him.
He glared at the idiot. “If I knew, she’d already be dead.” He would have taken immense pleasure in doing it himself for all the trouble she’d caused him. Not only had she not taken the fall for which he’d set her up, but she’d recently tried to extort money from him, too.
Did that damn flash drive even really exist?
Once she was found, he would have her searched for it, just in case.
But first, she had to be found. Then she and the flash drive would both be destroyed.
Lillian Davies could not hide forever.
Chapter 2 (#uc73a48e1-d6dc-5411-b7f2-fb468cf58a4b)
Jake leaned against the door frame as the elderly woman foraged around her living room. He could barely see over her boxes and stacks of magazines and plastic totes that were so full the lids wouldn’t even snap into place. One day he would probably see her apartment again—on the news or on an episode of Hoarders.
“I know I left her box over here,” she murmured from behind one of the stacks. “She left in a hurry and left quite a bit of stuff behind.”
Of course Lillian had left in a hurry. She had been eluding authorities. She’d had no intention of showing up for that court date. He was surprised that Seymour had been so surprised. She was a Davies. And Jake had warned him.
The landlady shuffled back with a cardboard box in her hands. She peeled back one of the tabs and peered inside. “Yes, this is Lilly’s stuff.” She reached inside and said, “Aha, that’s why you look so familiar. I found these pictures of you in her place.”
Jake took the strip of photos she held out to him. He had a strip of nearly identical photos at home. He and Lillian had taken them in one of those silly photo booths on the pier near the Lake Michigan shoreline. She was smiling up at him in every photo but the last—in that one they were kissing.
His stomach muscles clenched as he remembered leaning down and brushing his lips across hers. She’d tasted so damn sweet, like the cotton candy he’d bought her.
“Those were actually in her trash can,” the woman remarked, then shrugged.
Of course the old hoarder had gone through Lillian’s trash. But it was fortunate for Jake that she had. He noticed some other letters inside the box and, put together with that strip of photos, he realized exactly where she was hiding.
“I don’t understand why she threw them out,” the woman remarked. “You are a good-looking son of a gun. Tall, dark and handsome...” She offered him a nearly toothless smile.
He forced himself to smile back. Lillian had rented the upstairs apartment from the older woman who owned the old Victorian house near downtown River City, Michigan. Mrs. Truman—that was her name.
“You haven’t been around for a while, but I haven’t forgotten about you,” the elderly widow teased. “I’m sure Lillian hasn’t, either.”
Jake wondered if she’d thought of him as much as he had her. Of course, she hadn’t been happy that he’d brought her dad and brother into custody. Her plan must have been to make him fall in love with her so that he wouldn’t do his job. That must have been why she’d acted so sweet and innocent when she was really anything but.
She was a thief—just like the rest of her family. And she’d nearly stolen his heart all those months ago. He’d thought he was falling for her, but he hadn’t known who she was, either.
“Now, those other men...” The older woman shuddered. “I don’t remember them. They claimed to be her friends.” She shook her head, and the blond wig she wore slipped slightly, revealing the thin wisps of white hair beneath it. “But you were the only guy I ever saw come around, except for her brothers and her dad.”
Her brow furrowed. “But now that I think about it, I haven’t seen her family around for a while, either—even before Lilly gave up the apartment.”
That was because most of them were behind bars. But he didn’t share that information with the elderly woman. He was stuck instead on what else she’d shared with him.
Had Jake been the only boyfriend she’d brought home? As passionate as Lillian had been, he doubted it. The old woman was obviously going senile.
But what if she wasn’t?
“What other men?” he asked.
Damn Tuttle. The old bail bondsman wasn’t just playing Jake; he was probably also playing him off against the O’Hanigans. Those bounty hunters were ruthless when it came to tracking down a fugitive. They would go much further than Jake would in order to collect their bounty. Jake looked more closely at the older woman, making certain they hadn’t roughed her up any.
She chuckled. “Nobody for you to be jealous of, honey. They had nothing on you.”
“Did you show them any of this stuff?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Heavens no, like I said—I didn’t recognize them. I don’t think they were friends of hers at all, not like you.”
He had never been Lillian’s friend, either. For a little while, he’d hoped he could be more. But when he’d done his job and apprehended her dad and brother, she’d sworn she would never forgive him.
What would she do when he apprehended her? Because now he knew exactly where she was...
* * *
He knew where she was. The thought both thrilled and terrified Lillian. Even as much as she hated him, she had missed him. She’d missed seeing his handsome face with the faint stubble that always shadowed his strong jaw no matter how recently he’d shaved. She’d missed seeing his brown eyes go black with desire when they’d made love.
But that hadn’t been love.
That had been deception.
He’d deceived her. That was why she’d been furious with him—not because he’d apprehended her dad and brother but because he’d used her to do it. She didn’t approve of the things her family did, and she never would have helped or harbored any of them once they became fugitives. But when other family members had told her dad and brother Dave that she was getting serious about a man, their protective instincts had kicked in and they’d wanted to check him out—to make sure he was good enough for her.
He wasn’t, because he was a liar and a sneak. All he’d been after was the bounty for her family. The minute he’d seen them, he’d taken them into custody. And Lillian had told Jake, among several other things, that she never wanted to see him again.
She certainly didn’t want to see him now.
She knew he wasn’t looking for her to declare his undying love. Or he would have done that months ago. He would have continued to apologize and beg her forgiveness if he’d wanted to see her again. So obviously, he had never cared about her; he’d only been using her. The only reason he wanted to find her now was to bring her in and collect the bounty on her. And doing that would probably get her killed.
“Thanks for calling me, Mrs. Truman,” she told her former landlady.
The older woman’s voice crackled in the cell phone Lillian had pressed to her ear as she leaned back in the driver’s seat. “I’m sorry I showed him what you left behind, honey, but when I dug those photos out of your trash can, I knew that man was special.”
If he had truly been special, she wouldn’t have thrown the photos away. But she didn’t bother pointing that out to Mrs. Truman. However, Lillian had taken those photos out of the trash several times herself. Every time she’d tossed them, something had compelled her to fish them back out. Maybe she’d been holding out hope that he would come back and beg her forgiveness. She hadn’t been able to completely give up on him or to completely forget about him.
She touched her belly.
And now she never would. Would the baby look like Jake, with those big dark eyes, chiseled features and naturally tanned-looking skin?
The older woman cackled. “He sure got jealous when I told him about the other men looking for you.”
Lillian’s heart stopped beating for a moment before resuming at a frantic pace. “Other men?”
“They said they knew you.” She paused to inject a derisive snort. “But I never saw them around before.”
And Mrs. Truman, despite her age and cataracts, didn’t miss a thing.
So how many people were looking for Lillian? Were these guys Tom Kuipers’s men or more bounty hunters? Or police officers?
But police officers would have identified themselves. No. It had to be someone else. Someone she wouldn’t want to find her any more than she wanted Jake to find her.
“Thanks for letting me know,” she said. And she was glad that she’d given the older woman her new cell number. Mrs. Truman didn’t have any family to call if something happened to her. She and her late husband had never had children, and their extended families had already passed on, too.
Lillian didn’t need to worry about Mrs. Truman right now, though. She wasn’t the one that something was about to happen to. It was Lillian. Had she left anything behind that might have given a clue to her whereabouts? She tried to remember what she’d left and what she’d thrown out.
Since Mrs. Truman had fished out the photos, she might have taken the old letters from the trash can, too. Lillian looked through the windshield at the small cottage her maternal grandmother owned.
Gran was in a nursing home now. That was why she hadn’t gotten down to her place in Florida. But she was just in the rehabilitation part of the nursing home to recuperate from a broken hip. It was taking a little longer than expected, or maybe not since she was eighty-nine, but with as sharp and feisty as she was, she might be able to live on her own again someday.
Or with Lillian, if Lillian wasn’t in prison.
What had happened to the flash drive?
She had to find that evidence—if it hadn’t already been destroyed.
A chill raced over her skin with the thought. What if it had been destroyed? She would never be able to get into the office again, never be able to gain access to the records to prove her innocence.
She shivered. She’d shut off the ignition a while ago, since the car had been making odd clunky noises when Mrs. Truman had called. She’d wanted to be able to hear her, so she’d shut off the car and coasted to a stop on the road just a few yards away from the cottage. With the heater off, it had grown cool inside the vintage Buick.
Fortunately, it wasn’t her car, so Jake wouldn’t recognize it. Knowing that once she failed to appear in court a warrant would be issued for her arrest, she had left her vehicle at the courthouse. Then she’d had a taxi driver bring her to the lakeshore. From there, she had walked to her grandmother’s cottage. This was Gran’s car, her pride and joy. Like her cottage, she hoped to use it again someday.
“It’s good to hear your voice,” Mrs. Truman said.
Lillian felt a twinge in her heart. The older woman obviously missed her. She missed her, too. She wanted her life back—the one she’d had before the embezzlement charges. The one she’d had before Jake.
Her baby kicked, as if in protest. And Lillian ran her hand over her belly again. She was happy she was pregnant. She wanted this baby. So she didn’t regret making love with Jake. She just wished it had been love and not deception.
“It’s been good to hear your voice, too,” she told Mrs. Truman. Before her landlady hung up, Lillian thought to ask, “How long ago was he there?”
“Who? Tall, dark and handsome?”
Despite her resentment of Jake, Lillian smiled. “Yes.”
The older lady paused as if looking around for a clock. Or her TV. She judged time by her shows as much as the hands on a clock. “He was here during Wheel,” she replied, “so over an hour ago.”
Which was more than enough time for him to have made it to the cottage. Lillian glanced down the street at the little yellow structure, but she saw no other vehicles parked near it. And the inside of the cabin was as dark as it was outside. It looked as empty as it had when Lillian had arrived earlier that day.
Nobody was there.
Was he?
She felt a flutter in her belly and pressed her hand over it. Was it the baby? Or nerves?
Usually the baby kicked hard, and she had no doubt it was him or her moving around inside her—as if the baby felt trapped and was anxious to get out. He or she still had a few weeks to go, though.
No. Lillian felt sick now with nerves.
She couldn’t stay here now. Did she have enough time to go inside and grab the bag she hadn’t even bothered to unpack? The car wasn’t the only thing Gran had had to leave at the cottage. She had a gun, too. And even with her concealed weapons permit, it hadn’t been allowed in the nursing home.
Years ago, she’d taught Lillian how to shoot the gun. Maybe she should grab that, too. Lillian didn’t care who was coming after her.
She was not going to jail.
* * *
“Who the hell is he?” Tom Kuipers demanded to know. He divided his attention between the cell phone in his hand and the doors to his den. Beyond those French doors, he had a house full of people.
None of them could overhear this conversation.
None of the who’s who of River City society could know what he had done, what he really was. Not a one of them was smart enough to suspect the truth, not even his wife and father-in-law who owned the building equipment and supply company from which Tom had taken all that money. He had fooled them all—just like he’d fooled Lillian Davies.
“I don’t know,” the man replied. “I didn’t see him flash a badge at the old woman or anything.”
Would the police be looking for Lillian Davies already, though? She’d just missed the first court date. And it wasn’t as if she was being tried for murder.
Maybe he should have framed her for that, too. He had a few people he’d like to kill, but the first was Lillian Davies herself.
“So whoever the hell showed up at her old place—he’s not a lawman?” Tom asked.
A long silence was his reply.
“Well?”
“I don’t know,” the man finally answered him. “He carried himself a certain way, like ex-military or former Secret Service or something.”
Tom heard a voice from someone else talking inside the vehicle they were driving as they tailed the guy they’d seen at Lillian Davies’s apartment. But that other man speaking wasn’t close enough to the cell phone to be understood.
“What?” he asked impatiently.
He hated this, hated not knowing what the hell was going on. And most of all, he hated not knowing where the hell she was and if she had that damn flash drive with her.
Maybe she was more like her notorious family than the naive young girl he’d thought she was.
“He was armed,” the man replied. “Wilson saw a holster under his coat.”
Who the hell was this guy? Some Rambo wannabe?
Tom cursed. Who else was looking for Lillian Davies and why? Maybe the authorities were already involved and looking for her. After all, when she hadn’t shown up in court, she had jumped bail.
So maybe this guy was a bounty hunter.
“We don’t have time for this,” he said. Especially now. Voices rose behind the door as his guests milled around the estate that also belonged to his wife and father-in-law. Tom was pretty much just a damn guest, too. But he’d started to turn that around when he’d taken all that money.
Pretty soon he would have more than they had. And he would no longer need either of them.
Laughter rang out. People were close. His wife was probably showing guests around the house. She wouldn’t hesitate to barge into his den, even though it was the one part of the house that was supposed to be his alone.
He lowered his voice and spoke quickly but succinctly into the phone. “Lillian Davies needs to be found and eliminated. Now.”
Before she could turn over that flash drive—if it actually existed—to the authorities.
“What about the big guy?” his man asked, and there was a faint crackle of nerves in his voice. Or maybe it had just been the phone.
There were seven or eight of them. They couldn’t be afraid of one man. And if they were, Tom needed to hire tougher guys. At least these weren’t the only men he had working on this special assignment.
“If he gets in the way,” Tom said, “eliminate him, too.” He didn’t care who the hell he was. Tom had come too far to go back now. He was too close to pulling off the plan.
Chapter 3 (#uc73a48e1-d6dc-5411-b7f2-fb468cf58a4b)
Jake was so close. He dragged in a deep breath and could smell her scent yet inside the cottage. It was like flowers and grass after a summer rain—fresh and new. She had been here recently, maybe just moments ago.
How the hell had he missed her?
He’d parked down the block at the empty lot for the beach access. But it was after dark, so nobody else had been there. Nobody was here, either.
After seeing those old letters from her grandmother, he’d realized this was where she’d be. And he’d found the little yellow cottage easily because he’d been here before, that day they’d taken those photos in the booth on the beach. He’d been pressing her to introduce him to her family. So she’d brought him to meet her elderly grandmother.
It hadn’t been what he’d had in mind, but he’d certainly enjoyed meeting her grandmother more than he had any of the rest of her family. Gran wasn’t a Davies and had had less use for the family her now-deceased daughter had married into than even Jake had. While she loved her grandsons, too, the only one she trusted and respected was her granddaughter.
Where was Gran?
He couldn’t believe the octogenarian would have willingly left her house. Maybe finding out that her precious granddaughter was no different than the other Davies had killed her, because the old woman had told him the only way she’d leave this place was in a pine box.
And he hadn’t blamed her. The cottage had access to and a breathtaking view of Lake Michigan with its gorgeous sunsets.
Was that where Lillian had gone? Down to the beach? He started toward the door when he heard the knob rattle. He’d turned on no lights so he wouldn’t alert her to his presence. He had also locked the door behind him for the same reason.
Of course, he’d remembered where the hide-a-key was kept, too—in the little birdhouse, which was an exact replica of the yellow cottage her grandfather had made for her grandmother. Lillian had wistfully remarked how she envied their love and wanted one like that for herself someday. Then she’d looked at him—with those ocean-blue eyes of hers—and something had shifted inside his chest.
It must have been fear—because he felt it now when the door blasted open and gunfire erupted. He ducked and drew his weapon.
What the hell?
Where had they come from? There was more than one shooter. Glass shattered as the windows were shot out. Wood chipped off the bead-board cabinets and the shabby-chic furniture. Jake raised his weapon and returned fire.
Unless they’d gotten a hell of a lot more zealous than they’d been before, these were not the O’Hanigans. Even they wouldn’t have gone to these extremes to bring back a jumper for a bounty.
Lillian wasn’t wanted dead or alive, at least not by the law. So who the hell else was after her? And why were they so willing to take him out along with her?
* * *
The gunfire erupted, shattering the silence of the summer night. Lillian could see the flashes of the shots inside the dark cabin. She could also see glass exploding from the windows and bullets ripping through the walls. She gasped in shock and horror.
Gran’s little haven was being destroyed. Because of Lillian...
They had to be after her. Had they gone inside and just started shooting up the place?
Were they that determined to kill her?
Lillian needed to get the hell out of there. Her hands shaking, she reached for the keys dangling from the ignition. She turned them but the ignition just clicked. The engine didn’t turn over; it didn’t even rumble. And she remembered that it had sounded funny before she’d heard her cell ringing. She’d shut it off and coasted to a stop on the road just a few yards from the cottage.
The gas gauge proclaimed it had half of a tank. But it had been stuck there since she’d started using it, and she’d driven it all the way into the city to her lawyer’s office building. Oh, no, the gauge was probably broken. She had no gas. No way of escaping.
While she’d been working up the nerve to go inside the cottage and retrieve Gran’s gun and her clothes, she’d seen a van pull in to the short driveway. At least half a dozen men, maybe more, had jumped out and headed for the cottage. She should have run then.
She needed to run now. She threw open the door and headed toward the lot down at the beach. Someone might have left a vehicle there. Sometimes people walked the beach at night, despite it being closed after dark. Tools clanged inside her big purse. She didn’t have the gun. But she had other weapons she could use.
She blew out a breath of relief when she found an older truck parked in the lot. Hopefully, it didn’t have an alarm system. She pulled a slim jim from her bag and, slipping it between the window and the door, unlocked the door. Then she pulled it open and reached under the dash for the wires.
She hadn’t been old enough to drive when her oldest brother, Dave, had taught her how to hot-wire a car. He’d insisted she would need to know how someday. She hadn’t—until today. Could she remember what he’d shown her?
She reached into her bag for the flashlight she’d also stashed in there. She needed to know what color the wires were to remember which ones to splice together. But before she could turn on the flashlight, she heard someone coming—footsteps pounding across the asphalt as they ran—straight toward her.
Had he seen her get out of the Buick and run down here? Was he chasing her? Since she hadn’t heard those footsteps until now, she didn’t think he’d seen her yet.
So she jumped into the truck and pulled the door shut. Maybe she could hide in there. But before she could lock it, he pulled open the door and jumped in beside her, his broad shoulder and hip bumping against her side with such force that he slid her across the long bench seat. She turned away to protect her belly.
“What the hell?” he exclaimed between pants for breath. Then he must have recognized her because he exclaimed, “Lillian!”
Her heart slammed against her ribs with shock at Jake’s sudden appearance. He had definitely found her. Or maybe she had inadvertently found him.
“Were you stealing my truck?” he asked, as he noticed the wires dangling below the dash.
Before she could reply, the back window shattered with another blast of gunfire. He pushed her off the seat and onto the floor as he jammed a key in the ignition and started the engine. Tires squealing and gravel flying, he steered the pickup out of the parking lot.
“Friends of yours?” he asked. “Or family?”
“I don’t know who they are,” she replied. But she had a very good idea who had sent them. Tom Kuipers.
“Did they hit you?” she asked with concern. He must have been inside that cottage with them—with all those bullets flying.
“No,” he said, “which probably disappoints you to no end.”
She’d once considered shooting him herself not that long ago. But she couldn’t imagine actually hurting him or wanting him hurt. There had already been enough pain between them. Unfortunately, all that pain had been hers when he had shattered her trust and broken her heart.
She flinched as the baby kicked her ribs. Her last ultrasound hadn’t been able to determine the sex, but the baby had to be a boy. He was already causing her pain, too, just like his father. Crouched on the floor, she hid her belly behind her raised knees. She didn’t want Jake to see that she was pregnant and it was easier to hide in the dark. She had never wanted him to know—unless he came to her of his own accord. Not to take her to jail, but to apologize for what he’d done. She didn’t think he’d shown up tonight to apologize. But unless she jumped out of the speeding truck, she didn’t know how she was going to get away from him now.
More gunshots rang out, pinging off the metal of the truck. The side mirror broke, sending bits of glass and plastic flying. She gasped in fear.
She didn’t have to worry about getting away from Jake right now. She had to worry about staying alive.
“Stay down!” he yelled at her over the sound of the wind rushing through the shattered windows.
Even if she hadn’t been paralyzed with fear, she wasn’t about to move, not at the risk of getting hit by one of the flying bullets.
“And hang on,” he added, as he jerked the wheel and careened around a corner.
Lillian’s shoulder bumped against the passenger’s door, and she grimaced. But she wasn’t worried about her shoulder. She was worried about her baby. She couldn’t risk anything happening to her unborn child—to their unborn child.
“You have to slow down!” she yelled back at him.
“If I slow down, they’ll catch us,” he countered.
But he must have slowed down enough that the van had caught up with them because something rammed against the back bumper, sending the pickup into a spin.
Lillian grabbed tightly on to the seat and screamed. Earlier she’d been worried about losing her freedom. Now she was worried about losing her life.
* * *
What the hell had Donny Davies done? Guilt weighed heavily on his thin chest, making it difficult for him to breathe.
Lillian had trusted him...
But then the rest of the family had trusted her. And she’d betrayed them with that damn bounty hunter, Jake Howard. She had literally been sleeping with the enemy. She claimed she hadn’t known who he was. But she hadn’t stepped in and stopped the man from taking Dad and Dave into custody. From collecting his bounty.
Sure, she’d been crying, but it had been about the man lying to her. Not about her family getting arrested. Just like Gran, she’d always disapproved of the things some of the Davies family did.
She and Gran would certainly disapprove of what Donny had done. But Dad and Dave had declared that they owed her nothing now...
She was no longer one of them.
But since she hadn’t shown up for court that day, she was a fugitive now. So maybe for the first time in her twenty-five years, Lillian was one of them.
What would it cost her?
Her freedom?
Or her life?
The people after her were more dangerous than Donny had realized. And he had betrayed them, too. But unlike her, he had a place to hide where no one would find him.
Not even her.
He lay in the dark, unable to sleep, barely breathing, as he fingered the plastic device in his hand. What the hell should he do with it?
The right thing?
The thing his sister had asked him to do in the first place? Just like she’d asked him to stick with school and not resort to the life of crime the rest of their family lived. But Davieses rarely did the right thing.
Even Lillian.
She had made some big mistakes. Jake Howard was the biggest one, though. It was his fault that it had come to this, that her own family had turned against her.
So whatever happened to her was Jake’s fault.
Not his...
Chapter 4 (#uc73a48e1-d6dc-5411-b7f2-fb468cf58a4b)
His knuckles ached, straining from his efforts, as Jake clutched the steering wheel, fighting to keep it from spinning out of his grasp as the old truck careened wildly across the road.
Crouched yet in the small space between the dash and the front seat, Lillian screamed in fear. It wasn’t safe for her down there. She could hit her head on the passenger’s door or the dash. But it was better than getting it blown off.
The men in the van kept firing at them. Bullets pinged off the metal and cracked what was left of the glass.
He steered the truck out of the tailspin the van had sent it into when it had slammed into the rear bumper. Before the men could catch up again, Jake pressed hard on the accelerator. The truck jerked forward, and Lillian’s forehead bumped against the dash.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“No!” Her voice cracked with fear.
At least she hadn’t lost consciousness.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t lost the van yet, either. Bright lights glinted off his rearview mirror as the van accelerated, too, closing the distance between the vehicles again. He had to move faster.
“Hang on!” he warned her. Then he gunned the engine.
A whimper of fear slipped between her lips. He wanted to reach out and reassure her. But then he reminded himself that this was all her fault. Those men were shooting at them because of her.
“You must know who these guys are,” he insisted. “They showed up at your grandma’s house.”
“They must have followed you there,” she said.
Damn it. She was right. If these were the guys Mrs. Truman had talked about, the ones who’d shown up at Lillian’s place, they hadn’t seen the things she’d left behind six months ago. They couldn’t have learned what he had. But they might have staked out her apartment in case she showed up there. And they’d seen him instead.
“They probably don’t even know I’m in this truck,” she continued.
And they might not. He hadn’t known that she was inside it when he’d jumped into his truck. But she hadn’t just been inside it, she’d been trying to steal it. She couldn’t have known the rusted old pickup was his, though.
Could she?
He hadn’t used this vehicle when he’d been dating her. He’d used his pleasure vehicle instead, an old Chevrolet Nova he’d restored himself. This old truck was his work vehicle because its big block engine had more power. But at the moment it wasn’t fast enough.
“The last place I was before driving out here was your apartment. If they followed me...” And how the hell had they managed that without his noticing? “...then they followed me from there.”
The truck lurched forward as the van struck again. Metal crunched. He wasn’t sure if it was the truck’s rear bumper or the front of the van. He hoped like hell it was the front of the van. Maybe they’d disable their own damn vehicle.
“Lose them!” she yelled at him.
Her voice cracked now with anger. She wasn’t the sweet soft-spoken woman he remembered and whom he’d spent the past eight months missing. But then she must have never actually been that woman—the one he had started to fall for.
No, she was definitely a Davies.
Not that she didn’t have every right to be mad, with people shooting at them and trying to run them off the road.
Jake’s pulse pounded with fury. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so angry. He could remember the last time he’d felt helpless, though—when Lillian had sobbed heartbrokenly as he’d taken her dad and oldest brother into custody. He hadn’t been able to make her understand he’d just been doing his job.
But he suspected now that she’d always known who he was. She’d probably been playing him just as she must have played her boss when she’d embezzled money from the company for which she’d worked.
No matter what she’d done, though, he didn’t want anyone to hurt her. And with the way those guys had opened fire in the cottage, it certainly looked as though someone was trying to kill them. Jake didn’t intend to die, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let anyone harm Lillian.
He pressed harder on the accelerator. But then he took one hand from the steering wheel and pulled his gun from his holster. He extended it through the shot-out back window and using the rearview mirror, he took aim and fired at the van. Over and over again.
Glass shattered and the van tires squealed as it braked and then slipped into a skid. While it careened out of control behind them, Jake accelerated more and increased the distance between them. Despite this, he was tempted to turn back and find out who the hell they were and if he’d hit any of them...
But he glanced down at Lillian crouched yet on the floorboards, and he knew that he couldn’t risk it. He couldn’t risk her life.
If he hadn’t been outnumbered...
But even if he’d hit one or two of them, he would still be outnumbered. There had been so many of them firing at him in her grandmother’s house.
They had to be after her.
And he intended to find out why.
He steered around a couple of sharp hairpin curves, nearly raising the truck onto two wheels as he did. Then he spied a slight space between trees on the side of the street. It was probably some old two-track road leading back to an old cabin or an oil well. He braked and turned onto the nearly obscured trail. He turned so fast that the truck nearly flipped over on the passenger’s side.
And Lillian screamed again.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m trying to lose them.” And so far it looked as though he had.
The truck bounced along the rough road, as he continued down the two-track, deeper into the trees. Night had fallen, but the moon was big and bright enough that it might reveal their location unless he drove farther from the main road. Of course, if those guys found them Jake wouldn’t be able to escape with the truck.
He and Lillian would have to outrun the men on foot. As shot up as the truck was, that might not be a bad idea, even now. He wasn’t sure how much farther the beat-up old pickup could make it.
He stopped the truck and glanced out the back window to make sure they were deep enough into the woods so that they wouldn’t be seen from the road. But before he could even put the vehicle in Park, the passenger’s door opened—flashing on the dome light as she jumped out.
“Lillian!”
If the van went past and saw the light in the trees, their hiding place was blown. But she seemed more intent on getting away from him than the shooters.
Had she set up the ambush?
Jake followed her out and slammed the door shut behind him. But he couldn’t see her in the trees. He could only hear the occasional snap of a branch and the rustle of brush as she ran. She wasn’t getting away from him that easily.
But as he started after her, he heard the squeal of tires against pavement as a vehicle braked on the street. Maybe finding her was the least of his concerns right now. He had to worry instead that they had been found. And if the shooters had been determined to kill him before, they would be even more determined now that he had fired back at them.
Who the hell was after Lillian?
And where the hell had she gone?
* * *
Branches slapped Lillian in the face, making her gasp in shock and pain as she rushed through the underbrush. Twigs snapped beneath her feet and briars caught her pants, tugging on the thin knit maternity leggings. She heard fabric tear and felt the sting of the thorns scratching her skin.
Tears stung her eyes at the pain. But she rushed ahead, even though she had no idea where she was going. She didn’t even have any idea where she was. She might keep running and fall right off a bluff into Lake Michigan.
This wasn’t smart. But neither was staying where men were shooting and trying to run her off the road. Had they been looking for her at all? She hadn’t been in the cottage. And they couldn’t have known that she had been in the truck with Jake. Nobody had been around when she’d jumped into it.
So who were they really after?
Since they had shown up at her grandmother’s cottage, she suspected it was her—just as Jake had claimed—and he had just gotten caught in the cross fire. But she couldn’t trust him to protect her. He’d already proved that she couldn’t trust him at all.
Briars and brush tripped her, and she stumbled forward, falling onto her knees. A curse slipped through her lips as she reached for her belly, pressing her hands over it. She hadn’t fallen on the mound that was her baby, though. And she hadn’t hit the baby bump on the dash or the door while the men had been crashing into the truck and Jake had been driving like a mad man.
He was mad now.
She’d heard him shout her name just as she’d slipped into the trees and the darkness. She needed to get up and keep running. But her lungs burned and she struggled to breathe.
It wasn’t just the exertion from her run that had stolen her breath away. It was fear.
Men had been shooting at them.
Trying to run them off the road.
She’d suspected before how much danger she’d been in. That was why she’d spent the past six months awaiting her court date hiding out in Florida. But now she knew for certain. Somebody had literally come gunning for her. And it hadn’t been just Jake.
Jake...
The baby leaped beneath her palms. He was doing somersaults, just like Lillian’s heart was within her chest. Every snap of a twig or branch made it flip again. Somebody was coming after her.
And it didn’t matter if it was one of those armed gunmen or Jake, she had to run. She had to get away. She couldn’t let anyone catch her.
She couldn’t let anyone catch them.
She rubbed her palms over her belly again before she moved her hands to the ground and pushed herself to her feet. It wasn’t easy to move quickly—not now. Just getting up from a chair took a concerted effort because of the size of her belly. And it—and her baby—was still growing.
She had weeks yet to go. She couldn’t go into early labor, couldn’t risk her baby coming too soon. Or worse yet, not coming at all.
She needed to be careful. But staying behind to get shot or dragged back to jail was more dangerous than running through the woods in the dark.
Wasn’t it?
She wasn’t sure what was in the woods, either. Gran had told her that dangerous animals had recently been spotted in the area. Coyotes. Black bears.
She was less worried about the four-legged animals than she was the two, so she forced herself to keep going through the woods. Maybe she would come upon another road and a car she could wave down to drive her away. But did anyone stop for hitchhikers anymore?
She wasn’t just any hitchhiker, though. She was an obviously pregnant one. Surely, someone would take pity on her and offer to help her.
First, she had to find that road, though. The woods just kept getting thicker and thicker, the trees growing taller and closer together, the underbrush so dense she could barely fight her way through it. As she crashed into an impenetrable wall of briar bushes, her breath escaped in a hiss of pain.
But before she could turn back to find a way around that thorny wall, a strong hand wrapped tightly around her arm. She couldn’t see who had grabbed her. She could see nothing but darkness and the faint shadows of the tall trees.
She parted her lips to scream, but before any sound could escape, a palm clasped over her mouth—muffling her voice and her breath.
Was this person trying to silence her for just the moment or forever? If it was one of the thugs that Mr. Kuipers must have sent after her, it was undoubtedly meant to silence her forever.
* * *
Seymour Tuttle jumped as the phone on his desk rang. He should have been expecting it. As a bondsman, his phone rang constantly with people needing to be bailed out. Generally, they needed to wait until morning before a judge set the bail amount. But often Seymour was the first call they made from jail—so he’d be ready to post their bond when they were able to get out.
If they were able to get out...
Why had the judge granted Lillian Davies bail? Based on her family history alone, she should have been ruled a flight risk. But why had Seymour posted that bail, especially after Jake had warned him against ever bonding out another Davies?
No matter how old he was, and he didn’t want to think about how old that was, he was still a sucker for a pretty face. And they didn’t come much prettier than Lillian Davies. Although she looked like an angel with her pale blond hair and blue eyes, she was apparently a devil like the rest of her damn family. At least that was what Jake Howard believed.
Maybe this was Jake calling him with an update. The guy was good—his best damn bounty hunter.
With a sigh, he dropped his greasy burger onto his desk, wiped his hand on the polyester pants which matched the polyester suit jacket slung over the back of his chair and picked up the phone. “Tuttle Bonds...”
“Tuttle,” a raspy voice said.
It wasn’t Jake’s. His was even deeper than this guy’s, if it was even a guy calling and not someone just disguising her voice. Sometimes people did that from jail because they were embarrassed at having been arrested. And like Seymour was going to record their call and broadcast it.
He didn’t care about his clients’ reputations. He only cared about getting his money.
“Yeah, this is Tuttle,” he confirmed for the caller.
“Did you send someone after Lillian Davies?”
Speak of the devil...
Or speaking to her?
No. Her voice had been too light and soft ever to become this raspy.
“That’s none of your business,” he remarked.
“It’s a matter of public record that you posted her bail,” the voice replied. Irritation cleared away some of the fake raspiness. The caller was a man, but Seymour wasn’t sure if he’d ever heard the voice before.
Could it be one of her brothers? Or her dad? Of course, then the call would have come from prison and he would have needed to accept the charges. No. It couldn’t be one of them—at least not one of the ones Jake had already apprehended for Seymour and the courts.
“That’s public record,” Seymour agreed. “Not whether or not I sent someone after her.”
“Stands to reason you’ll want your money back.”
“Stands to reason,” Seymour agreed.
“But if you’re a reasonable man, you’ll forget about the money.”
“I will?” Now he was intrigued. Just what the hell was this caller’s agenda? To have him let Lillian Davies go?
“Yeah, I’m sure you value your life much more than you do your wallet.” The line clicked and went dead before Seymour could laugh.
Whoever had called didn’t know him very damn well. Of course he valued his wallet over his life. Without money, life wasn’t worth living anyway.
If this caller had meant to scare him off, he’d done just the opposite. He’d only made Seymour that much more determined to bring her in.
Had it been a member of her family who’d called him? But most of them knew him. They knew that he wouldn’t back down from tracing a skip. So if it wasn’t a Davies, who the hell else was involved with Lillian Davies and why didn’t he want her brought to jail?
Seymour needed to get hold of Jake and find out what the guy had learned so far. Of course, he hadn’t been on the case very long. But then Jake had never needed much time—except that last time—to track down a Davies.
He’d taken weeks to bring in Lillian’s dad and brother Dave. And Seymour couldn’t help but wonder if during those weeks, something had happened between Jake and Lillian—something that Jake hadn’t wanted to talk about.
Not that Jake ever wanted to talk.
All he wanted to do was his job. And that was why he was Seymour’s best bounty hunter. Had the hunter caught his bounty yet?
He punched in the speed dial for Jake’s cell, but the phone rang several times before finally going to voice mail. And a strange chill chased down Seymour’s spine.
How the hell had that caller known he’d sent someone after Lillian? Had he run into Jake?
Had something happened to Seymour’s best bounty hunter?
Chapter 5 (#uc73a48e1-d6dc-5411-b7f2-fb468cf58a4b)
Damn it!
Jake had pressed his hand over Lillian’s mouth to keep her quiet, but then his phone kept vibrating in his pocket. While the ringer was off, the vibration let off a sound—one that seemed loud in the silence of the woods.
Lillian struggled in his grasp, trying to break free of him. Then she clawed at his arms, so that he loosened his grip on her and his palm slipped away from her mouth. Partially free of his grasp, she jerked forward only to cringe and whimper as she struck that wall of briar bushes again.
The woods were full of briars and thorn bushes, and she must have lost a few strands of hair on each one. That was how he’d tracked her: every pale blond strand had glistened in the moonlight as if they were strands of light instead of strands of hair.
“Careful,” he whispered. “You’re going to hurt yourself.” If she hadn’t already...
He knew from experience how soft and silky her skin was. She probably had several scratches and scrapes. He felt a few on his arms, and his skin was hardly soft and silky. Of course, those scratches were from her nails.
He remembered how they’d felt running down his back as he’d moved inside her and she’d writhed beneath him, seeking release. Despite her sweetness, she’d been so passionate. But he knew now, she wasn’t really that sweet.
“Jake,” she gasped his name.
“Shh,” he said, as he peered into the darkness. He couldn’t see much more than shadows, but he knew those men were out there. The sharp snap of twigs breaking echoed throughout the forest. “They’ll find us.”
They must have seen that moment when the dome light had flashed on—because the van had stopped on the road. And unfortunately, he must not have hit any of them when he’d fired at them. Or they would have been heading to a hospital instead of crashing through the woods, searching for them.
Damn it!
Who the hell were these guys? They were nearly as determined as he was to catch Lillian. Or was it really her they were after? Had they seen her in the truck with him before he’d shoved her below the dash?
He’d made some enemies as a bounty hunter and even more before that, as a US marshal. But nobody had recently come after him. The only person who’d been bothering Jake was Lillian. But that was just in his dreams, when he’d managed to sleep at all the past eight months.
So Jake couldn’t know for certain who these guys were really after—unless they caught them. And he wasn’t going to allow that to happen.
“Come on,” he whispered, and he grasped her arm again. This time he led her through the woods. But as he led her, his phone began to vibrate again.
“Shh,” she murmured to him.
A curse slipped through his lips. Whoever the hell was calling him needed to give up. He didn’t have time to talk at the moment. And if he did, it was Lillian he’d talk to; he wanted to know what the hell was going on, why these men were after her, if she was the intended target.
Had Seymour subcontracted with more bounty hunters than him and the O’Hanigans? As if the O’Hanigans weren’t bad enough.
Jake was tempted to pitch his phone into the underbrush. But he might need it to call for backup. Not that he had many options. Since leaving the US Marshals, he worked alone, although he had a few old contacts he could call if he got in a jam.
But he’d never gotten into anything he hadn’t been able to get out of, except Lillian. Something had happened when he’d been seeing her; he’d felt like he was going under and that he’d never break free to the surface again.
But that was before he’d learned about her arrest and had finally been able to see her clearly. Figuratively, at least. Literally, he could barely see her now. She was just a shadow beside him, except for her silvery blond hair. That would be like a beacon drawing the gunmen toward them. He needed to find a place to hide her.
The pungent odor of pines reached his nose. And for the first time in a long time, he let in a memory from his childhood—one of hiding beneath the pines in his backyard. It was what he’d been hiding from that he blocked from rushing back. He had to stay focused right now.
He crouched low and tugged Lillian down beside him. She moved slowly, though—almost too slowly. Once she was on the ground next to him, he pulled back the low boughs of the nearest pine tree and, leaning close, whispered in her ear, “Crawl under there.”
She shivered. It was colder here—in the darkness of the woods—and damp near the ground. She might have hesitated just because she was cold, but when another twig snapped nearby, she froze entirely.
Jake reached out to push her under the bough and as he touched her waist, he felt a jolt. It wasn’t tiny like he remembered. It was swollen over her distended belly. As he slid his hand over that belly, he felt another jolt as a little foot kicked him.
She was pregnant.
He’d had questions for her before, but now he had only one: Is it mine?
But he couldn’t ask that. He couldn’t ask anything because the brush was rustling, twigs snapping, and he knew the men were closing in on them. He had to lead them away from Lillian, especially now that he knew there was no way she could outrun those men.
“Stay here,” he whispered. “I’ll come back when it’s safe.”
If he survived...
But he had to survive now. If he didn’t, there was no way she’d escape those men on her own.
* * *
Safe for whom?
It wasn’t safe for Lillian, not now that Jake had felt her belly. He knew she was pregnant. Did he realize the baby was his?
Maybe not.
She hoped not.
Not that she expected him to take any responsibility for their baby. He hadn’t taken any responsibility when he’d used her to apprehend her dad and oldest brother.
He hadn’t cared then that he’d broken her heart. He’d only cared about collecting his bounty for apprehending the fugitives.
How high was the price on her head now?
Maybe those other men weren’t Tom Kuipers’s minions. Maybe they were bounty hunters like Jake, and like Jake, they were ruthless enough to use whatever means necessary to apprehend her.
At least he’d only taken her heart. The way these guys had fired into the cottage and then tried to run them off the road, they seemed determined to take her life.
“Over here!” someone shouted.
“You’ve got the woman?” another called out.
And she tensed, worried that her hiding place had been discovered.
“I don’t see her,” the first voice replied, “but I saw the man run that way. She’s probably with him.”
She heard the snap and crack of twigs and branches as the men chased after Jake. He’d led them away from her. And away from where the vehicles had been left.
He’d told her to stay put and wait for his return. But there were a lot of men after him. There was no guarantee that he would return.
Pain clenched her heart at the thought of him getting hurt. Or worse...
How could she still care so much after the way he’d treated her? After the way he’d acted since seeing her again? He seemed angry with her, like he was somehow the victim when she was the one he’d used.
And the one that Tom Kuipers had framed.
But Jake hadn’t given her a chance to explain that she wasn’t guilty of those charges—not that they’d had a chance to talk yet. Maybe she shouldn’t have thrown open the passenger’s door and ran. But her instincts had been screaming at her to escape, not just the men but Jake, as well.
Maybe Jake more than the men. She hadn’t wanted him to see that she was pregnant. She hadn’t wanted him to know that he was going to be a father. She hadn’t believed that a man as heartless as he had proven to be could be a loving father to a child.
Her baby kicked again, and she knew why she cared about Jake despite how much he’d hurt her. Because even though she had every reason to hate him, she loved the baby Jake had given her. She hadn’t planned for him or her. But Lillian was very happy that she was pregnant.
And she wanted her baby to be safe and secure. Lillian needed to get her and her unborn child the hell out of there. Holding her breath, she listened and waited until the rustling of brush faded far into the distance.
Then she crawled from beneath those low-lying pine boughs and pushed herself up from the ground to her feet again. She moved more quietly now, following the path beaten down through the brush back to where the truck was parked. She’d thought she had been running for so long, but she hadn’t gone that great a distance from the vehicle. It was as if she’d been running in quicksand.
She moved faster now as she approached the truck. Running around the front, she reached for the driver’s door. But before she opened it, she remembered the dome light flashing on and alerting the men in the van to where they had stopped. She shouldn’t have done that.
But she had been almost as anxious to escape Jake as she was those men, maybe even more so now. She peered through the driver’s window and saw no keys dangling from the ignition. Her hands were shaking too badly right now for her to try to hot-wire the truck, if she could even remember how Dave had showed her to do it.
She glanced toward the road. The white van was visible through the trees, parked on the shoulder where the two-track road began.
Had the men blocked their escape?
She probably wouldn’t be able to drive around that van even if she was able to start the truck before the men returned. Were they all chasing Jake through the woods? Was the van sitting empty?
Realizing it might be her best option to escape, she crouched low and used the brush for cover as she moved toward the road and the van. The front window, which had shattered like a spiderweb, lay crumpled on the hood, as if someone had shoved it out so they could see through it. But she saw no one sitting behind the steering wheel. Since the van was on the road and clear of the trees, the moon shone inside it, illuminating the front.
Lillian could see no one inside. They must all be chasing after Jake. She felt a twinge in her heart again—a twinge of fear for him. She wanted him to be safe, too.
But Jake could take care of himself. He wouldn’t have survived his years as a US marshal and as a badass bounty hunter if he weren’t tough. Lillian didn’t need to worry about him.
She needed to worry about their baby. It was her responsibility to take care of him or her. She smoothed her palm over her belly where the baby kicked again. He or she must have been feeling all the fear and anxiety that coursed through Lillian.
She had to get the hell out of there—away from those men and Jake. So she moved around the front of the van and reached for the driver’s door. As she opened it, that damn dome light flashed on, so she jumped quickly inside and swung the door closed behind her and extinguished the light.
The glow of the moon was illumination enough to see the keys that dangled from the ignition. She didn’t even have to try to hot-wire it. But as she reached for the keys to turn them and start the van, she heard something...
A cock of a gun, and she felt the barrel press against her temple. This wasn’t Jake. There was no way he could have circled back around without her knowing it. And even if he had, she doubted he would have pressed a gun to her head.
He couldn’t be that angry with her. Nor could he ever be that ruthless, especially after he’d discovered she was pregnant. No. This had to be one of the gunmen. They weren’t all chasing after Jake. One of them had her.
* * *
“This damn well better be good news,” Tom growled into the phone as he picked it up. It was late now—so late that all the who’s who of River City were gone, the party long over and he had already fallen asleep until the ringing cell had awakened him.
Fortunately, the ringing had not woken up his wife. She lay on her back, snoring away. He would have killed that bitch if he’d thought he could get away with it. But he knew he’d be blamed if anything happened to her.
So he’d found another way to get rid of her. Take all of her and her rich daddy’s money.
A smile curved his lips as he thought of his escape. Everything was in place. Well, almost in place.
He slid out of bed and walked into the bathroom. After closing the door between it and the master bedroom, he asked, “Did you kill her?”
“Not yet...”
“Not yet!” Rage coursed through him, chasing away the last vestiges of sleep. Hell, he would probably be awake the rest of the night now. “It shouldn’t be this damn hard to catch that stupid little girl!”
But she’d already been missing for months.
He should have tried harder to find her then. But he’d been certain that she’d show up for court, and she’d be convicted and sentenced to jail. He didn’t really believe that flash drive existed.
Despite the flicker of doubt he felt now and then.
“I’ve...got...her.” The man finally spoke again, but he sounded winded, like it was a struggle for him to talk at all.
Tom didn’t know which one it was. He didn’t think he’d talked directly to this guy before. But usually his men didn’t talk, they just listened.
And followed orders.
“Then why isn’t she dead?” Tom impatiently asked him.
“Uh...” The guy’s voice trailed off again. He sounded weak.
Tom hated weakness. “Why not?” he demanded to know.
Had she said something about the flash drive? Had she threatened that it would be turned over to the authorities if something happened to her?
“She’s pregnant.”
Thinking of all the times his wife had begged him over the years to start a family, Tom snorted. What was the big deal about getting pregnant and having babies?
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” he asked.
The guy had been fine with killing a woman. Why get squeamish about killing a pregnant one?
“I—I—uh...” the man stammered.
His patience gone, Tom sighed. “Bring her to me,” he said. “I want to talk to her first anyway.” He wanted to find out what the hell had happened to that flash drive—if it even existed in the first place.
“To—to the house?” the man asked.
What an idiot!
“Hell, no!” he growled. If any woman was going to die within these walls, it was going to be his wife.
Maybe he would find a way to do that anyhow, a way where he would not be blamed.
“Bring her to the warehouse,” he ordered. He didn’t wait for the man to agree. He knew that he would, so he just disconnected the call.
It was better this way. Tom would get his answers from little Miss Lillian Davies. And once he knew the truth about that damn flash drive, then he would pull the trigger and kill her himself.
Yeah, this was better.
When he killed her himself, he would send a message to his men to never mess with him and he would have the assurance that she was no longer a problem.
Chapter 6 (#uc73a48e1-d6dc-5411-b7f2-fb468cf58a4b)
Lillian’s lungs burned with the breath she’d been holding since that barrel had pressed against her temple. Even though the man had pulled the gun away to take out his cell phone and make a call, she hadn’t released it.
She’d overheard that call. The cell phone must have been on speaker because she had listened to every vicious word her former boss had spoken. She had no doubt now that the man, even after learning she was pregnant, wanted her dead. As if framing her for a crime hadn’t been cruel enough...
Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back. She wasn’t giving up yet. She still had time to escape, especially when she heard her captor place another call.
“Not now, Jimmy.” The voice emanated from the speaker of the man’s cell phone.
Jimmy must have been the man left behind in the van. Why hadn’t she noticed him right away?
“We’ll get you to the hospital,” the man assured him, “once we find her.”
Jimmy was hurt. That was why he’d stayed in the van, why he must have been lying in the back when she’d looked through that open front window. How badly was he hurt?
Bad enough that she could overpower him?
“I’ve got her,” Jimmy interrupted. “She walked right up to the van and climbed inside with me.”
“Did you do it yet?” the guy asked, his voice rising with excitement. “Did you kill her?”
“The boss wants us to bring her to the warehouse,” Jimmy replied with obvious relief. “He wants to be the one to pull the trigger. Get back here. You need to drive.”
Jimmy must have been too injured to drive. So he would probably be too injured to chase her if she could manage to escape.
She reached for the door handle. And that barrel pressed against her temple again.
“Don’t even try it,” Jimmy warned her. Then he told the man on the phone, “Hurry the hell up!”
He was worried she would get away from him. And Lillian was worried that she wouldn’t.
What about Jake?
Had he escaped the men? She wished Jimmy would have asked about him. But obviously she was the one they’d been after, and her bounty hunter had just gotten in the way.
“You aren’t going to shoot me,” she said. Or he would have already done it. She wrapped her fingers around the door handle and popped it open.
And the gun cocked. “I will shoot you,” he promised.
“You heard Mr. Kuipers,” she said. “He wants you to bring me to him.”
“He won’t mind if I shoot you first,” he said.
“But you don’t want to.”
“I don’t,” he admitted. “But I don’t want to die. And if I let you get away, Kuipers will kill me for certain.”
“He will anyway,” she said. “He’s not going to leave any witnesses to all these crimes he’s committed. Why do you think he wants me dead?”
The guy said nothing now. She’d obviously made him think. Or maybe he was beginning to lose consciousness. The others had left him behind because he was hurt. How badly?
“You need medical attention,” she said sympathetically. And all that sympathy wasn’t feigned. She hated to see anyone in pain. So she offered, “I can drive you to the hospital.”
He snorted. “Give it up, lady. I’m not falling for any of your tricks.”
“I’m not trying to trick you.” She knew how that felt—to be deceived.
Jake had taught her that.
And she’d learned another lesson when she’d trusted someone else with that flash drive. She should have brought it directly to her lawyer—no, to a judge—herself.
But she hadn’t exactly legally obtained it or the information on it. She’d been worried that she might be charged with breaking and entering. She’d worried that it might not even be admissible in court. But she’d trusted her lawyer to try.
When would she stop trusting the wrong people?
Her baby kicked, and her belly shifted against the steering wheel. She flinched and sucked in a breath.
“What is it?” the guy asked.
“The baby,” she murmured as she rubbed her belly. “I might be going into labor.” It was a lie. Even though she hadn’t had any contractions yet, she knew they would be far more painful than the baby’s kicks. But she couldn’t have any contractions yet. It would be way too soon for her baby to be born.
The guy cursed and murmured, “They better hurry up.” He peered through the open front window into the woods.
And Lillian took the opportunity to push open the driver’s door and run. But as she ran, shots rang out behind her. She flinched with the report of each shot, waiting for the bullet to strike her, to tear into her flesh.
Then she fell and she didn’t know if she had been hit or if she’d just stumbled. But her knees hit the asphalt hard before she fell forward. And she couldn’t get back up.
* * *
I’ve got her. She walked right up to the van and climbed inside with me.
Jake had been close enough to the guy Jimmy had called to overhear their conversation. And he’d been close enough to take out that man, wrapping his arm around his neck and squeezing until the man passed out.
Jake hadn’t wanted him to alert his buddies that Lillian had been captured. He wanted to get to the van before the rest of them did. But as the shots rang out in the woods, he knew he was too late. Either that man must have regained consciousness or someone had spotted him.
But those shots weren’t that loud, so they couldn’t have been that close to him. They sounded as if they were coming from the road.
From the van into which Lillian had unsuspectingly climbed—probably in order to hot-wire it like she’d tried to hot-wire his truck?
Damn it!
He ran toward the road, heedless of the branches slapping across his face and arms. He didn’t give a damn about himself. But if something had happened to Lillian...
If she’d been shot...
Or worse.
He didn’t know what the hell he’d do.
The shots died down ahead of him. But they began to ring out behind him, the bullets rustling the trees around him. He felt the whizz of one close to his ear.
The other men had heard the shots, too, and had come running. And shooting.
Ducking low, Jake rushed forward toward the road. He circled around the van and found two bodies lying on the pavement. One body, a long one, was right next to the van, blood pooling beneath it.
He grabbed the weapon from the man’s outstretched hand and tucked it into his waistband. The other person had made it farther, to the shoulder on the opposite side of the road. She lay half on the pavement, half in the underbrush off the shoulder, her hair lying across the branches.
“Are you hit?” he asked her as he ran toward her.
She whimpered. “No, I’m stuck.” And she tugged, but her hair was tangled in those briar branches. Tears streamed from the corners of her eyes as she struggled to free herself.
“We’ve got to go!” he said as he wrapped his hand around her arm and jerked her to her feet.
She cried out as her hair came free, leaving several strands behind in the briars.
Jake turned back toward the van. Shots rang out from the woods. He positioned himself between her and the men firing at them. Then he lifted his weapon and squeezed off several shots in the direction of the woods and those men. He hoped his barrage of bullets provided enough cover as he tugged Lillian over the unconscious man and pushed her through the open driver’s door. Then he stepped inside the van and swung the door shut behind him.
“The keys are in the ignition,” she said.
That was why she’d gotten right into the van. She’d been trying to escape. And he figured it wasn’t just those men she’d hoped to elude but him, as well.
He turned the key and the engine roared to life, along with more shots from the woods. He pushed her low as the window in the passenger’s door shattered. Another bullet whizzed past his head.
Too close.
He’d been lucky so far, with all the shots fired at him, that no bullets had hit him yet. But his luck was eventually bound to run out.
“Stay down!” he yelled as he slammed the transmission into Drive, pressed on the accelerator and shot forward. The men rushed from the woods, firing wildly.
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- Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература, Триллеры
- Язык: Книги на английском языке
- Объём: 240 стр. 3 иллюстрации
- ISBN: 9781474079013
- Дата выхода книги: 17 мая 2019
- Версия: 📚 Электронная книга
They could be a family… if he can win her heartWhen Lillian Davies is accused of a crime she didn’t commit, Jake Howard knows he must save her. But Lillian has bigger concerns and Jake has to fight even harder to win her trust and her heart.
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