by Childs, Lisa
“That’s good,” Jed said. “Then she won’t hear me take your computer from you to look up Marcus’s address.”
He was not going back to prison to serve out his two life sentences; he had already served enough time for crimes he hadn’t committed. Realistically, he would probably have to serve time for breaking out of prison, but he could accept the punishment for a crime he had committed.
“You don’t need to look up his address,” she said. “I’ll drive you to his office.”
“His office will be closed now.” He gestured toward the darkness beyond Isobel’s bedroom window. “And you’re not driving me anywhere.”
“He lives above his office,” she explained, “in Grand Rapids. You’ll need a ride there.”
“I got here and buses don’t run to Miller’s Valley,” he reminded her. He didn’t need a ride. And he definitely didn’t want Erica with him when he questioned Marcus.
“So you stole a car, too?”
In addition to what? Murder? Did she still have her doubts? Was she not able to completely trust him? But wouldn’t that make her more anxious to get rid of him than to want to go along with him?
“You can’t leave Isobel here alone.” And he wasn’t about to take his daughter anywhere near a possible killer.
“My neighbor from across the hall is coming over to watch her,” she said. “I told Mrs. Osborn that I have an emergency in Grand Rapids.”
“You don’t have anything in Grand Rapids,” he said. “I do.” Hopefully his vindication. “Stay here with our daughter.”
She shook her head, which swirled her golden hair around her slender shoulders.
He swallowed a groan, fighting his attraction to her. It didn’t matter how damn beautiful she was; he couldn’t trust her. He only really had her word that Marcus had lied to her. His friend deserved to give his side of the story before Jed entirely condemned him. Jed had known Marcus far longer and, he’d thought, better than he’d ever known Erica Towsley.
“I have questions only Marcus can answer,” she said. “I want to hear, from his mouth, why he lied to me. And I want to know why he lied about you.”
And, obviously, she didn’t trust Jed enough to bring those answers back to her. But then she had spent the past few years convinced that he was guilty of murder. He was lucky she hadn’t called the police instead of her neighbor.
A knock rattled the front door, and Jed’s heart rattled his rib cage with a sudden jolt of fear. What if she had called the police? What if she had only been playing him when she’d acted as if she was beginning to believe in his innocence?
“Open Isobel’s window and go out the fire escape,” Erica said, her soft voice pitched low with urgency.
“What— Why?”
“You can’t let Mrs. Osborn see you,” she explained. “She obsessively watches the news. She might recognize you from all the media coverage of the prison breakout.”
The door rattled again.
“Go down the fire escape,” she ordered him. “My car’s the blue minivan parked below it in the alley. It’s unlocked.” Her blue eyes gleamed as she added, “I have the keys, though.”
“I don’t need your van,” he reminded her.
He had one of his own parked in the very same alley. The black panel van had belonged to a guard, like the clothes that Jed had found packed in a suitcase in the back of it. The guard, one of the warden’s henchmen, had obviously planned to flee before charges could be filed against him. But he hadn’t made it out of the riot. Like a few others, he had died behind bars because of the crimes he’d carried out for the warden. He had tortured and killed the prison doctor who’d helped the DEA agent escape.
The death of the doctor, who so many of the inmates had loved, was what had inspired the riot. When he’d ordered Doc’s murder, the warden had gone too far. He’d ordered Jed’s death, too, but the riot had protected and eventually freed Jed. But even without Rowe’s warning, he would have known that he was probably in more danger outside of prison than he’d ever really been in it.
At least he didn’t need to worry about Warden James anymore…
“But you need Marcus Leighton’s address,” she reminded him.
“Fine. I’ll wait for you,” he assured her. He also waited before going out the window. Hiding in the dark shadows of Isobel’s bedroom, he watched Erica walk down the hall toward the door.
Her hips, fuller than he remembered, swayed in her jeans. His guts tightened with desire. It wasn’t fair that she was so damn beautiful…
“Thank you for coming,” Erica said as she opened the door. “I’m sorry I woke you up.”
“It’s okay, honey,” a female voice, gruff with sleep and possibly age, assured her. “I know that you would never do that unless you had an emergency. I hate the thought of you going out after dark, though—what with those escaped convicts on the loose. They’re all armed and dangerous, you know.”
“I’m sure the media is exaggerating that,” Erica said, keys rattling as she grabbed her purse.
“No, honey, they’re bad men—every last one of them. But that cop killer—he’s the worst. I hope they catch him soon.” A board creaked, as if the woman had moved down the hall.
Toward Isobel’s bedroom.
If Jed didn’t leave now, he might get caught. He pushed up the window and stepped onto the wrought iron of the fire escape. The wind rustled Isobel’s curtains, so he pulled the window closed. Hopefully Erica would come back and lock it.
He hated the thought of leaving Isobel alone. The old woman sitting with her was no protection for the vulnerable child—not with a killer on the loose who had already tried to ruin Jed’s life once. Harming his daughter would hurt Jed more than spending the rest of his life locked up.
But, hopefully, no one else knew about Isobel. While Erica claimed that his lawyer had always known her whereabouts, Marcus might not have realized she was pregnant. He had certainly never given Jed any hint that he had become a father.
But then he couldn’t trust anything his lawyer had ever told him because he’d apparently kept much more from him than Jed had realized. Like the documents that might have helped Jed in his defense, if he’d been able to track down the funds that had been embezzled from his clients’ accounts. If Marcus had lied about Erica, he might have lied about the warden denying Jed access to those documents.
Or was it Erica that he shouldn’t trust? Maybe she had been working with Marcus. Maybe she was still working with the lawyer.
Maybe instead of driving Jed to Grand Rapids, she intended to drive him right to a police station…
* * *
COULD SHE TRUST JED? Erica studied his face in the glow of the dashboard lights. He had insisted on driving, his hands clamped tight around the steering wheel. His square jaw, shadowed with dark stubble, was also clamped tight—as if he fought to hold in his rage.
How much had that rage built up during three years in prison for crimes he hadn’t committed? If he hadn’t committed them…
Had she been a fool to so easily accept his claims of innocence? While she now remembered more of that night, of their making love again and again, she couldn’t remember every minute of it. She couldn’t swear that he had never left her…
“I didn’t do it,” he said, as if he had read her mind.
She jumped and knocked her knee against the dash, pain radiating up her leg. She had the passenger’s seat pulled up close to it because the child booster seat was behind it and Isobel always kicked the back of it. “How did you know what I was thinking?”
She had never been able to truly tell what Jed had been thinking or feeling. So it wasn’t fair if he could read her that easily…
“I figured you would start doubting my innocence again,” Jed said. “After all, it would be easier for you if I was guilty.”
“Easier?” Then she had willingly gone off alone with a killer. At least she had drawn him away from Isobel, though. At least she had kept her daughter safe…
But she remembered the look on Jed’s face as he had stared down at their sleeping daughter. His jaw hadn’t been rigid then. His dark eyes hadn’t been hard. They had been soft and warm with awe and affection. He would never hurt Isobel.
“If I was really the killer, your conscience would be clear,” he replied. “You wouldn’t feel guilty for doing nothing while I was sent to prison.”
“I explained why I did nothing.” Except for the reasons she’d kept to herself, except for her personal baggage. She had never admitted to him that her parents had abandoned her with her great aunt. He had probably assumed she’d been an orphan—not unwanted.
A muscle twitched along his cheek. “Because of Marcus’s lies.”
He turned the van onto a cobblestone street and parked at the curb. At this hour there was no fight to get a meter. Every one of the metal meters stood guard over an empty parking spot.
“Are you sure this is the place?” he asked as he gazed up at the brick building, which was sandwiched between a restaurant and a bookstore.
“Yes,” she confirmed, as she located the address on the building. The numbers on the brass plate matched the address she had found online.
A couple of lights glowed in the two stories above the ground-floor office. But lights glowed in the office windows, as well. At three o’clock in the morning, it was the only building with more illumination than just security lights.
“He was even written up in the Grand Rapids magazine about his renovation of this historic building,” she said, remembering the article she had found online when looking for his address.
“He must have been more successful with other cases than he was mine,” Jed murmured, “because it seems that since my incarceration, he certainly moved up in the world.”
Erica hadn’t found much else online about Marcus Leighton except his address and articles about his representing the cop killer, Jedidiah Kleyn. “I don’t think he had any other high-profile cases, or they would have come up when I searched for his name on Google.”
“If losing my case or, hell, just representing me, hurt his career, he didn’t pay for this place with what I paid him.” That look was back on Jed’s handsome face, the intense rage that he was barely managing to control with a clenched jaw and flared nostrils.
Afghanistan may not have made him a violent man, but surely surviving three years in a prison as dangerous as Blackwoods Penitentiary had. If she hadn’t insisted on coming along with him, she could not imagine what Jed might have done to Marcus Leighton to get the answers he wanted.
Erica wanted those answers, too. She reached for the door handle, but he leaned over and covered her hand with his. His skin was rough and warm against hers. Since it was spring, she had already packed away her gloves and winter gear. She wished she was wearing gloves now, not because of the unseasonable cold but because of how Jed’s touch affected her. It brought all those images—of the two of them making love—rushing back to her.
“You should stay in the van,” he said, leaning closer to her—so close that only inches separated his head from hers.
“No,” she said. “I didn’t come with you to just sit in the van.”
She wasn’t sure she would mind if he stayed in it with her, sitting so close that she could feel the heat of his heavily muscled body. But he didn’t intend to stay with her; he was going to leave to go after his lawyer. She wasn’t certain what his intentions were when confronting Marcus Leighton. And that was why she had insisted on coming along, to stop him from really becoming a killer.
“If he set me up for the reason I think he did, it’s too dangerous for you to go in there with me.” He glanced at the building. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Because of the lights?” She wondered herself why so many of them were burning.
“Yeah, what’s he doing up at this hour?” Jed asked, his eyes narrowed in suspicion as he stared up at the building. “It’s almost like he knew I was coming. We could be walking into a trap.”
She sucked in a breath as fear squeezed her lungs. But maybe he was just trying to scare her…
Jed turned back to her, his face still close as he leaned across her, his hand covering hers on the door handle. His eyes were so dark that she couldn’t read the emotions swirling in them. But she almost believed one of them could be genuine concern for her safety.
Then she remembered where they were. “We’re only a couple of blocks from the police department. Surely, no one would be bold enough to set up a trap here—where they could so easily be caught.”
Or where Jed could so easily be caught. Maybe it was a trap.
“Erica…” He lifted his hand from hers to cup her cheek.
His touch had her skin tingling and nerves jangling. She had to get away from him and from all those feelings his touch brought back, so she pushed open the door and jumped out of the minivan. Before he could get around the front of the van, she was at the door to the office. It stood open, as if Marcus really had been expecting them.
Jed cursed beneath his breath as he joined her at the open door. “I don’t have a weapon,” he said, as he reached into his pocket. Instead of a gun, he drew out gloves and pulled them on, stretching the leather taut over his big hands. The gloves obviously weren’t his any more than the wool jacket, which was too tight in the shoulders, was. “So I can’t protect you.”
She doubted that Jed really needed a weapon to protect himself or her. All he needed was his size and his muscle. But then that wouldn’t be very effective against bullets.
“You have to stay out here,” he insisted.
Maybe he was right. She had no protection against bullets, either. And she trusted that he wouldn’t let her get hurt. If he had wanted her dead, he could have killed her at any point in the past few hours. If she went inside with him, though, and he lost control of the rage that boiled within him, she wanted to calm him and prevent the lawyer from getting hurt.
There was no telling what he might do if she let him go inside alone.
And if something had already happened inside, wouldn’t the lights be off? Would a killer wait for them with all the lights burning?
She shook her head, unwilling to be left behind. “Jed—”
But he had his own argument for her to stay outside, one she couldn’t fight. “Our daughter needs her mother.”
She shivered as snow began to whirl around them, a cold wind whipping up the powder that already lay on the ground, and tossing around the falling flakes. She nodded, as if she intended to wait.
But he was inside for only a minute or two when she slipped through that open door and down the hall to where the lights burned on the first floor. She passed through a dark reception area to the open door to what must have been Leighton’s office.
She followed him because their daughter needed her father, too. The little girl had already been denied him too long.
But it wasn’t just for Isobel that Erica had gone after Jed. Like Jed, Erica wanted to know why he had been framed. Actually, she wanted to know if he had been framed. But she didn’t intend to use violence to find the answers to all her questions and doubts.
Her muscles paralyzed with horror, she froze in the doorway—unable to move, unable to believe what she was seeing. She hadn’t seen anything as gruesome since the lawyer had showed her those crime-scene photos.
Marcus Leighton was already dead. He was slumped in his chair, his shirt red with his own blood—his eyes open in shock.
* * *
ONE MAN DEAD. ONE TO GO.
He had no illusions that Jedidiah Kleyn would be as easy to kill as Marcus Leighton had been. If Kleyn was that vulnerable, he would have already been dead. He wouldn’t have survived Afghanistan.
And he damn well wouldn’t have survived Blackwoods Penitentiary. But he was in more danger out here, especially if he showed up at Leighton’s office and stepped into the trap left for him.
While he had left the door open, he had reengaged th
e alarm. Once someone crossed the threshold, a call would be placed to the local police department.
As close as the office was to the police station, there was no way Jed would escape if he were the one to trip the alarm. Once police officers discovered the escaped convict standing over a dead body, they would assume the worst, and they would react accordingly—with bullets.
But if Jed hadn’t yet figured out Marcus’s betrayal and someone else set off the alarm, a contingency plan was already in place—thanks to what he’d discovered in Marcus’s files.
He actually hoped that Jed didn’t spring the trap he had set at Marcus’s office. Because the contingency plan would be a much more painful end to Jedidiah Kleyn than going out in a blaze of gunfire.