Baby Breakout

by Childs, Lisa

  He was either holding it, or he must have shoved something beneath it, because moments later an engine revved.

  Tears stung her eyes. “Damn you, Jed…”

  He might have had to go back to prison because of the escape. But he wouldn’t have had to serve much time—not what he would have to serve for murder.

  Isobel would never get to know her father. And Erica would be left with only a few memories of her passionate lover. He would never be anything more to her, never be part of her future—only a bittersweet part of her past.

  No. They all deserved more than that; they all deserved a future. He might have jammed the door, but he hadn’t had time to lock the window. She crossed the room to it and lifted the sash. The ground dropped off below, moonlight shimmering on the rocky hillside. If she tried going out that way, Brandon Henderson might not be the only one who died tonight…

  * * *

  SOMEONE WAS GOING to die tonight.

  Unlike Erica, Jed wasn’t as convinced that he could pull the trigger and take a life. He had the reasons and the rage to want to. It wouldn’t be in cold blood, as Erica had said, that he would kill. It would be in hot blood.

  Anger heated his body, so that he didn’t notice the cold wind blowing around as he walked down the ramp leading to the basement of the parking garage. This was where he would find Brandon and where he should kill him—since this was the crime scene where he had already been convicted of killing him.

  No attendant sat inside the booth. The gates stayed down, so Jed skirted around them. The security lights had been broken out; glass crunched beneath his feet as he strode through the darkness. But moonlight crept over the concrete walls, casting an eerie glow on the cement and shifting the shadows of the few cars parked inside the garage.

  “You took your time,” a deep voice remarked. “And you’re already a man on borrowed time.”

  His gut tightened with dread. He didn’t need to see Brandon’s half-assed disguised face. His voice was unmistakable—not just the tone and the timbre of it but the arrogance in it. Nobody else was that damn cocky.

  It used to amuse Jed; now it infuriated him…because Brandon was entitled to that arrogance. He had fooled everyone.

  Even Jed.

  “I’ve got all the time in the world,” he said with a bitter laugh. “You saw to that.”

  “Two lifetimes.” Brandon’s perfectly capped teeth flashed brightly in the shadows. “But you’re taking a little break right now. It won’t last, you know, not with all those cops out looking for you.” He laughed. “If they find you, you won’t last long at all.”

  Jed yawned as if bored with Brandon. The man had always prided himself on being everything but boring. “That’s old news now. I’m old news. The hot new story is how you faked your own death.”

  “Good luck proving that.”

  “DNA came back.” Probably years ago. “It proves that yours wasn’t the body in the car.”

  Brandon snorted, dismissing the evidence. “That doesn’t prove that I’m alive and well.”

  “Oh, you’re not well at all,” Jed agreed. “You’re bat-shit crazy, my old friend.”

  Brandon laughed again but with genuine humor this time. “I have missed you, my old friend,” he said, turning Jed’s words back on him. “You always entertained me.”

  “I always annoyed the hell out of you,” Jed corrected him, “because you could never be better than me.”

  Brandon’s voice rose with patronization as he replied, “I think we both know that’s not the case anymore.”

  The son of a bitch was choosing his words carefully, as he always had. He had always managed just enough charm to hide the fact that he was actually a psychopath.

  “You ruined my life,” Jed admitted. “But I’m thinking you ruined your own life, too.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You’re not you anymore,” he scoffed. He wasn’t talking about the blond dye or the colored contacts and the unkempt goatee, although those were all things macho Brandon Henderson would have mocked.

  “Fishing for my new name?” Brandon laughed at his attempt. “Fish away…”

  “Your name meant something to you,” Jed reminded him, striking out at the only place Brandon felt anything—his pride. “You wanted everyone to know it. But no one remembers the first murder victim from my trial. They remember the officer who died too young in the line of duty.”

  Brandon snorted. “Line of duty or wrong place at the wrong time?”

  “I guess only the young officer himself would know that, and of course, the man who really killed him would know…”

  “I guess,” Brandon conceded without really conceding anything at all.

  “But the thing people remember most from my trial is me. It’s my name everyone remembers,” Jed taunted him. “It’s me everyone talks about.” And he’d hated that so much. But Brandon wouldn’t understand that; he’d never cared about what people said about him as long as he was all they talked about…

  Brandon’s wide shoulders moved in the shadows in a jerky shrug—his nonchalance totally feigned. His pride was stinging as well as that resentment of Jed that he’d never quite been able to hide or control. He struck back at Jed with, “That must drive you crazy—that everyone talks about how the hero became a villain.”

  “At least they’re talking about me. You’re entirely forgotten, my friend. I think even you have forgotten who you are.” He tsked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, pouring on the pity.

  “I know who I am,” Brandon insisted. “You’re the one who’s lost himself. You’ve totally changed.”

  “Yes. I have,” Jed conceded. “I wasn’t a killer when you framed me for your murder and that young officer’s murder.”

  Brandon snorted again. “But you are a killer now?”

  Jed lifted his gun. “I will be.”

  “You want a third life sentence?”

  “I can’t be convicted of your murder again,” Jed reminded him. “That would be double jeopardy.” He moved his finger to the trigger and prepared to squeeze.

  “No!” a female voice screamed. Panting for breath, Erica ran into the parking garage as if she’d run all the way from the lake. “Don’t do it, Jed. Don’t kill him.”

  “Damn it! Get out of here!” he yelled at her. His heart hammered against his ribs. Even knowing what a monster Brandon really was, he hadn’t been afraid for himself.

  But Erica…

  Before she could run back the way she’d run in, Brandon grabbed her. He locked his arm around her torso, trapping her arms against her sides, and then he pressed a gun to her temple.

  Erica’s eyes widened with fear. She hadn’t thought her action through—hadn’t realized the danger she was putting herself in…

  Jed had known the man would be armed and ready and that he would be waiting for just this opportunity. Brandon wanted to kill Jed but not before he made him suffer more.

  “Don’t hurt her,” he pleaded.

  “You’re the one who keeps hurting her,” Brandon said. “You dumped her before you left for Afghanistan.”

  “I didn’t want to do that,” Jed said. “But I didn’t want her waiting for me.”

  “Yeah, you were being self-sacrificing and heroic,” Brandon said with heavy disgust.

  “I was scared,” Jed admitted. “I didn’t think I was coming home.”

  Brandon sighed. “Yes, I thought you were going to die over there, too.”

  “That’s why you started embezzling from my accounts.” He wasn’t just trying to get him talking now; he was trying to figure out how to distract him so that he could get Erica out of danger.

  Brandon glanced around the parking garage, as if looking for witnesses. Maybe the police officer would have still been alive if Brandon had done that the last time he’d been in this garage.

  “Come on,” Jed said. “You’re going to kill her. I’m going to kill you. Before you go down, you may get a shot off that eventuall
y kills me. Don’t you think I deserve to know the truth before I die?”

  Brandon chuckled. “That must have been the worst thing about your three years in prison—not knowing who put you there or why.”

  “Was it because of me?” Erica asked, her voice trembling with fear. “Did you want to put Jed away because you wanted me?”

  Brandon laughed heartily now. “You think I was in love with you?”

  The man was a narcissist; he loved no one but himself. That was why his former girlfriend and witness for the prosecution was dead; he hadn’t needed her. He hadn’t ever needed anyone. If only Jed had realized that before he’d agreed to become the man’s business partner…

  “I was just using you to get to him,” Brandon admitted.

  “Like now,” Jed said.

  “But I wouldn’t marry you. I only went out with you to feel close to Jed,” she said, “so we could talk about him.”

  Brandon groaned. “I know. Everything’s always been about Jed. All my life. My parents were so damn impressed with him. Our teachers. Our clients. Everything was about brilliant, honorable Jedidiah Kleyn.”

  “So you weren’t in love with me,” she said, “you were in hate with Jed.”

  “To frame me for murder—your murder—and send me to prison, you really have to hate me,” Jed said.

  “Hate is too mild a word for what I feel for you, my old friend,” Brandon admitted, the words surging forth as his control finally snapped. “I thought it would be enough to destroy your reputation, to send you to prison, but it’s not…”

  “What about the money?” Jed asked. “Hasn’t that made you happy? You embezzled nearly a million dollars from my clients.”

  Brandon shrugged, his grip loosening slightly around Erica. Instead of taking advantage, though, and struggling, she stood perfectly still, as if hoping the man would forget all about her. Maybe, with his focus so completely on Jed, he would.

  “It was more than a million,” Brandon boasted. “And I’ve doubled that since. I’m a very wealthy man.”

  “Isn’t that enough?” Jed asked. “I’m in prison and you’re rich.”

  “You weren’t supposed to last in prison,” Brandon said, “just like you weren’t supposed to last in Afghanistan.”

  “You wanted me dead so that I wouldn’t eventually figure it out,” Jed realized.

  “I wanted you dead so I didn’t have to keep hearing about you,” Brandon said, nearly gagging on the admission as if just the thought of Jed made him physically sick.

  “You stayed around here?” Jed asked.

  “No, but I stayed in touch with Marcus, making sure that no new evidence came up that would get you off on an appeal.”

  “That had to be expensive,” Jed mused. “Marcus was always very nervous. You would have had to keep paying him to keep him quiet. Is that why you finally killed him?”

  “I should have killed him years ago,” Brandon admitted.

  “Like you killed the woman?”

  His bright teeth flashed again. “That was a suicide.”

  “It was murder. And if you’d killed Leighton, the authorities might have figured out it was strange that everyone from my trial was dying.”

  “Especially while you were prison,” Brandon agreed.

  “So you would have had no one to blame for Marcus’s murder. Or the other witness’s.”

  Brandon’s teeth flashed in another grin. “You breaking out of prison really helped me tie up the loose ends I had to leave after the last murders.”

  “And what about me and Erica now?” Jed asked. “What are we?”

  Brandon shrugged. “Just more loose ends…”

  Jed had never hated the man more than he did right now. How could he dismiss Erica Towsley—who was a loving, devoted mother—as nothing more than a loose end?

  If only Jed could get the shot…

  But even though Brandon had loosened his grip around Erica, he still held the gun pressed against her temple with his finger right on the trigger. If Jed took the shot and missed, she was dead. If Jed took the shot and hit him, she might still be dead; Brandon could pull the trigger as a reflex before he died.

  * * *

  JED WAS DYING TO KILL HIM. Brandon could see the hatred in his eyes as he studied his options, trying to determine if he dared to take a shot.

  He wasn’t the man Brandon was. He wouldn’t dare. He cared too much about the woman to risk her life. So, soon Jed would just be dying.

  All these years of anticipation and it might be over this quick? Brandon wanted to savor the moment, wanted to taunt him a little bit more. He leaned forward and pressed his face into the woman’s hair.

  Erica shuddered as if in revulsion.

  “Oh, come on, honey,” he said. “Don’t act like you don’t like it when I touch you. You went out with me after this guy dumped you. You wanted to see what a real man was all about.”

  Jed’s darkly stubbled jaw tensed, a muscle twitching in his cheek.

  “If only I had time to show you now,” Brandon teased. “You would forget all about this guy—just like you did before. But I don’t have time.”

  He had a private plane to catch, to bring him back to the island with no extradition treaty where he had spent most of the past three years. He hadn’t trusted Marcus or the witness not to eventually give him up.

  But when he’d heard about Jed’s escape, he’d had to return. The opportunity had been too good to pass up.

  Brandon figured either Jed or the woman had some kind of recorder, taping his confession. That was why Jed had kept him talking instead of just killing him the minute he had stepped into the parking garage.

  If Jed had stolen three years of his life, his money and his reputation, Brandon would have killed him the minute he’d seen him. Jed cared more about honor than revenge. His very integrity would be what finally destroyed him completely, though.

  Brandon would just kill them both and check them for recording devices, probably Jed was using the voice recorder on his cell phone. Brandon would destroy that and then no one would ever know the truth.

  “I really appreciate you making this easy for me,” he told them. “Your showing up here, Erica, makes it all so easy to stage another double murder. Or should I say murder, suicide.”

  He grinned as his new plan took shape and taunted them with the details. “Jed here is going to kill himself before going back to prison, and because he doesn’t want any other man to have you, he’s going to kill you, Erica, before he takes his own life…in the very same spot where he committed those murders three years ago.”

  “Who was he?” Jed asked.

  He snapped at the inane interruption. “Who?”

  “The man you passed off as yourself,” Jed reminded him. “The man you murdered and then burned his body to pass off as yours.”

  Brandon sighed. “Enough with the questions. It doesn’t matter anymore. You’re not going to prove your innocence. And you’re not going to stall me until help arrives.” He laughed at his own joke. “Help? You have no one who can help you.”

  He must have just imagined that Jed’d had help to escape the woods because if he’d had someone there, the guy would have been here already. He wouldn’t have let him walk into the parking garage alone, and he certainly wouldn’t have let Erica run between two armed men—especially if it was the DEA agent, the only person besides Jed’s sister who had expressed belief in his innocence.

  “Everybody hates you now,” he reminded Jed. “Your parents, your clients—everyone who thought you were such a hero has forsaken you. Even you…” He pressed a kiss to Erica’s temple where he didn’t hold the gun. “You doubted him. You believed he was a killer.”

  “I didn’t… I wouldn’t have…” she stammered, “but Marcus convinced me.”

  He snorted in derision. “Marcus never made a compelling argument in his life. You doubted Jed because you didn’t trust him then. And you don’t trust him now or you wouldn’t have shown up here.
So I guess you really have no one, Jed, not even the woman you love…”

  He cocked the gun. It was time to pull the trigger—time to end all this nonsense and get back to paradise.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “You’ve been so brave,” Macy praised her niece, keeping her voice bright and happy.

  Over the phone, Erica had calmed her daughter’s fears but for just a short while. The little girl must have felt the same awful sense of foreboding that gripped Macy. Something bad was going to happen.