by Lisa Childs
“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.
But he couldn’t duck like she was or he wouldn’t be able to see where he was driving. But he wouldn’t be able to do that if he was dead, either.
And those bullets were getting closer and closer to striking their target.
Him...
* * *
Unable to sleep, Donny had parked himself in front of the TV in the living room of the place he’d found to lay low. He felt even lower as he recognized the cottage in front of which news crews were filming a breaking report.
“Shots were fired at this deserted beachfront home tonight.”
Grandma’s house.
Of course that was where Lillian would have gone, where she would have felt safe.
But she hadn’t been safe there.
Apparently, she’d been in so much more danger than he’d realized. Why hadn’t he helped her?
Was it too late now?
“The shooters escaped before police arrived at the scene,” the reporter continued, but his face piqued with interest as he listened to whatever someone was saying through his earpiece. “Further calls to 911 indicate that there was a car chase not far from here and more reports of shots being fired. When police responded, they discovered a casualty in the road along with another body in the woods.”
Donny shuddered as regret and fear overwhelmed him. It was too late for him to do the right thing now.
They’d killed her.
Or had he?
Chapter 7
She was dead. Lillian knew it from the look of fury on Jake’s face. If Tom Kuipers didn’t kill her, Jake might. And after what he’d gone through that night, she couldn’t really blame him.
Of course, he hadn’t had to come after her in the first place. If he hadn’t, the gunmen wouldn’t have followed him to Gran’s cottage. They wouldn’t have shot it up. They wouldn’t have shot at him.
But because he had been shot at, concern squeezed her heart and had her pulse racing. “Did you get hit?” she asked him.
Wind rushed through the van, blowing over his handsome face. He was so damn good-looking, his features perfectly chiseled. The wind pushed back his thick black hair, which he’d always worn a little longer than conventional. With his hair away from his face, she noticed the trail of blood. It ran from his temple and trickled off his jaw onto his chest.
“Oh, my God,” she murmured in fear and dread, “you did get hit.”
She tried to rise up from the floorboards, but the speed of the van—and the girth and weight of her belly—glued her to the ground.
“Stay down,” he warned her.
“You lost them,” she said.
He had to have lost them. Since he had the keys to the van, they’d had no way to follow them but on foot. Unless one of those men had been taught to hot-wire a car like her brother Dave had taught her.
Because it was a distinct possibility, she didn’t try to rise from the floor again.
“I think I lost them,” Jake said. “But I didn’t think I was being followed to the cottage, either.”
She cared less about that at the moment than she cared about him. Not that she cared about him.
But she didn’t want anyone to be hurt, especially because of her. “Did you get hit?” she asked again.
He lifted his fingers to where the blood dribbled from his face. “Just a scratch,” he murmured. “Probably from a branch in the woods.”
She expelled a slight breath of relief. “Not a bullet.”
He didn’t confirm that, just shrugged.
“The man in the road.” She shuddered as she remembered stepping over his body to get into the van the second time. Sure, he’d been shooting at her, but even then she hadn’t wanted him to die. And he’d certainly looked dead.
“He might have just been unconscious,” Jake said. “I must have hit him when I fired back at the van earlier. Or hell, he could have been hit at the cottage.”
Fortunately for her, Jimmy had been injured so badly that his shots had gone wild instead of hitting her. Unless he hadn’t really wanted to hit her. But the exertion of just firing those shots and getting out of the van must have been too much for him. Hopefully, he’d just lost consciousness from the pain. But Lillian worried it was worse than that.
“I’ll call it in,” Jake said.
When he reached for his phone, she managed to jump up and grab it from his hand. “You can’t,” she said. And she felt bad, but surely other people in the area would have reported all the gunfire.
“I need to file a report,” Jake said.
“But if you do, you’ll have to bring me in,” she said.
“Yeah...” He glanced over at her. “That was my whole point of finding you.”
Of course it was. He wouldn’t have come looking for her if there hadn’t been a bounty on her head. For the past eight months, she’d heard nothing from him. He’d never once tried to contact her—proving to her further that she had been nothing but a means to an end for him.
A way to apprehend her family.
Except that her dad and oldest brother no longer considered her family. They blamed her for Jake duping her and catching them. That was fine, though. She blamed herself, too, for being such a fool to fall for him.
That was the reason she was mad at him, for making her fall for him when he’d only been using her. That was what hurt.
Much worse than her family disowning her. If she’d listened to Gran, she would have disowned them long ago. Gran had warned her that the Davies men were nothing but trouble and would cause her pain, just like they had her poor mother.
She felt a twinge of pain now as she remembered losing her mother the way she had, to that sudden heart attack. But Lillian didn’t believe it had really been sudden. Her heart had been under attack for years from all the grief her husband and sons caused her.
Maybe it was good that Mama was gone and didn’t know Lillian had been arrested now, too. But unlike the majority of her family, Lillian had not committed a crime. At least she hadn’t committed the crime for which she’d been arrested. But she had failed to show up for court, which was breaking a law.
“You can’t bring me in,” Lillian told Jake. “You must see now how much danger I’m in.”
“You’ll be safe in jail,” he assured her. “Which is where you belong since you skipped your court date.”
“I won’t be safe in jail,” she said. She doubted she would be safe anywhere since she had no one she could trust. Despite him saving her from those men firing at her, she still couldn’t trust Jake to protect her, especially since it sounded as if he had no desire to help her, only to collect the bounty on her. But maybe he would protect their child. “And neither will your baby.”
His hands jerked the wheel and she fell onto the passenger’s seat and knocked her shoulder against the door. The wind blowing through the windshield tangled her hair across her face, so she couldn’t see his. She couldn’t see how he’d reacted to the news.
And he said nothing.
She doubted her revelation, that he was about to become a father, had swayed him. He still probably fully intended t
o bring her to jail. And if Mr. Kuipers had gotten to her legal aid lawyer, he could probably get to jail inmates or even some of the guards.
The man wanted her dead. She doubted he would stop trying until she was.
* * *
Jake should have brought her to jail. Or at least called the damn police and let them know what was going on...
If the guy he’d left lying in the street was dead from a bullet fired from Jake’s weapon, he’d killed him in self-defense. If that wasn’t clear, Jake was going to become a wanted fugitive himself. But hell, he would almost rather be a fugitive than what she had claimed he was: a father, the father of her baby...
No.
It wasn’t possible.
They had used protection every time they’d had sex. Hadn’t they? He did remember once waking up with her lips on his chest before she’d slid them lower.
And he’d lost all control as the need to be inside her body—joined with her—had overwhelmed him. She’d fit him so perfectly, had always been so warm and wet. And the way her inner muscles had felt convulsing around him as she’d found her release.
No. He hadn’t used a condom that once. But it only took once.
“Where are we?” she asked when he stopped the van.
She peered through the open front window at the garage in to which he’d pulled the stolen vehicle. He had needed to stash it somewhere it wouldn’t be seen. He was certain there was probably an APB out on it—if anyone had managed to take down the license plate number back at the cottage or while it had been trying to run his truck off the road.
“It’s not jail,” he assured her, because there were some jails where officers would pull in to a garage before releasing the suspects from their vehicles. It cut down on the chance of them escaping, like she had briefly escaped him in the woods. “At least not yet.”
She turned back to him, her blue eyes wide with surprise. “Why not?”
She must have thought she hadn’t talked him out of bringing her in. Was that why she’d claimed that baby was his? To manipulate him?
Probably. The baby couldn’t be his. They had only had sex that one time without protection. She’d just broken up with someone before they’d met. Maybe it was that guy’s baby. Or maybe there had been someone after Jake.
He had no idea how far along she might be. He didn’t know anything about pregnant women or babies.
“I brought you here because I want to talk to you,” he told her.
She released a ragged sigh. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” he said and warned her, “I’m still bringing you in.”
“Then you’ll be killing me and our baby,” she said, and she ran her palms over her belly as she leaned back in the passenger’s seat.
He sucked in a breath at her blatant manipulation. “Don’t try to use your kid to manipulate me,” he said. “That baby’s not mine.”
It couldn’t be—for the baby’s sake more than Jake’s. This kid had been dealt a bad enough hand with the Davies family’s DNA. It would be a lot better off if it didn’t have his, too.
She sighed again, but this sigh was full of frustration. “You’re right,” she said as she continued to move her hands over her belly. “This baby isn’t yours.”
A twinge of pain squeezed his heart, but it couldn’t have been disappointment. At least not disappointment that the baby wasn’t his. Maybe he was just disappointed that he’d been right about her, that she wasn’t the woman he’d thought she was eight months ago. “I’m surprised you’re admitting you lied.”
But since she was a liar, she was probably a thief as well. He should have brought her straight to jail. Or called the police back in the woods.
But there hadn’t really been time to call then. He’d been too busy trying to stay alive and keep her alive. And then he’d wanted to find out why someone wanted her dead.
“This baby isn’t yours,” she said, but her voice sounded funny now, like she was trying to convince herself as much as she was him. “He or she is just mine.”
Now the frustration was all his. She wasn’t making any sense. But then nothing about tonight had—from those men shooting at them to someone ordering her death.
“What’s really going on, Lillian?” he asked. But he didn’t know why he bothered. Would he be able to trust anything she told him? She was obviously as big of a liar and manipulator as the rest of her disreputable family. But she was more dangerous than any member of her criminal family—because she was so damn beautiful.
Too beautiful to resist...even when he knew he should. That he had to...and not just for the bounty he’d get off her but for his life.
Then she reached out and touched his face, skimming her fingertips along the cut near his temple before tracing them down the dried trickle of blood to his jaw.
His pulse quickened, and a sensation raced over his skin from her touch. Every time she’d touched him, she had affected him like this, had had him tensing with desire for her. There was just something about her, something that got inside him and wrapped around his heart, squeezing it tightly.
Nobody had ever affected him like Lillian Davies had. And despite her arrest, that obviously hadn’t changed. He still wanted her, even though he knew he couldn’t trust her. She was definitely playing him. To escape from him? Or to convince him to help her?
“Are you sure you weren’t hit?” she asked.
He felt as if the color had drained from his face, as if he was on the verge of passing out. But that was from her touching him, not from getting hurt.
He assured her, “I wasn’t shot.”
Which was something of a miracle, considering all the bullets that had been fired at him that evening. She was going to get him killed.
“Then you must have hit your head,” she said, “and hard, if you aren’t able to figure out yet that someone wants me dead.”
“Oh, I have no doubt about that,” he admitted. He’d overheard Jimmy’s phone call to his colleague. “I know someone wants you dead.”
“Then you know that I’m innocent,” she said matter-of-factly.
He shook his head—because it was not a matter of fact to him. “Explain to me—how does that prove your innocence?”
“Why would my boss want me dead if I was guilty?”
“Because you stole money from him,” Jake said, and he’d made his voice sound as straightforward as hers had.
It seemed obvious to him now. Her boss was apparently one of those people who chose to take justice into his own hands—probably especially since she’d skipped bail and her court date and was trying to elude the authorities. He didn’t trust the courts to deliver justice or to get his money back, so he’d taken it all into his own hands.
“I didn’t steal that money!” she hotly denied.
So vehemently that he felt a niggling doubt. Could she be telling the truth?
She’s a Davies, he reminded himself. They lie, cheat and steal. It was the family business.
She had once denounced that business to him and had sworn she would never be a part of it. But she’d only told him that after she’d brought him to meet her grandmother and the old woman had disparaged the Davieses. Until then, Lillian had said nothing about her family despite all his efforts to get her to talk. She’d acted as if she was ashamed of them and what they’d done.
That was another thing Jake had found he had in common with her. That, and the loss of their mothers. Maybe that was why he’d thought he was falling for her, because they’d seemed to share so many experiences—bad and good. But then, what must have been shortly after they’d broken up, she had been arrested for embezzlement. And he was no thief.
“If you didn’t steal that money,” he asked, “why would your boss want you dead?”
“Because I can prove that he is the one who really stole it,” she replied.<
br />
Jake snorted. “From himself?”
“From the company,” she said. “He’s not the only one with ownership in it. He might actually not have any ownership in it.”
And that doubt niggled at him again. Now she was beginning to make sense, or at least provide a plausible excuse for the charges against her.
“His wife and her father have controlling interest,” she continued. “Tom Kuipers is just the CFO.”
Which gave him access to the funds and control over Lillian since she was an accountant. Kuipers could have set up Lillian to take the fall for his theft.
“But if he framed you, why does he want you dead?” he asked. “Why wouldn’t he just send you to prison? Why risk a murder charge?”
“I have a flash drive of files I downloaded that proves his guilt,” Lillian said.
Now his brow furrowed as doubts rushed in but these doubts were with her again. “If you really have solid evidence that you’re innocent, you could have gotten the charges against you dropped. All you had to do was give it to the police or the prosecutor.”
“I gave it to my lawyer,” she said. “I thought she would take care of that for me. I thought she would take it to the police, the prosecutor or at least the judge.”
Those doubts swirled now in his head and his gut. “She didn’t?”
Lillian looked away from him, through the open front window of the van in which they were still sitting. Then she sighed and said, “She claims she never got it.”
“That’s convenient,” he said, letting his skepticism slip back into his voice.
She shook her head. “It’s convenient for Tom Kuipers,” she said. “Not for me. He must have paid her off.”
“So if he has the flash drive, why would he still be after you?” Jake asked.
Now nothing was making sense anymore, including him. He should have just brought her to the police department, then made an official report regarding everything that had happened. His relationship with the police department was already shaky at best. They didn’t appreciate bounty hunters and the methods some of them employed. Those shootings, and his part in them, would only make things worse for Jake.