The Bounty Hunter's Baby Surprise

by Lisa Childs

  But what if she was telling the truth, not just about her innocence but about his baby?

  She was in danger; she wasn’t lying about that. And because she was in danger, so was her unborn child. Even if the baby wasn’t his, Jake felt a responsibility to protect it—and Lillian.

  He had to find out what the truth really was. He only hoped he didn’t get arrested or killed while he tried to find out.

  * * *

  Maybe he should have just given up, but he’d seen the news...and he had a horrible inkling that Jake was somehow involved. So Seymour pressed Jake’s contact on his cell screen and called him again.

  If Jake had been part of the shooting and that car chase and those casualties, he wouldn’t have been able to answer his phone when Seymour had tried calling him earlier.

  But now...

  If he didn’t answer now, it was probably because he was one of those two casualties.

  Seymour’s heart pounded fast and hard. He didn’t want to lose his best bounty hunter.

  The O’Hanigans were good. But even those three brothers combined weren’t quite as good as Jake.

  Nobody was.

  Jake seemed to take every bounty personally. It wasn’t just a job to him. It was like he was on a mission.

  And a man like that, who took things too seriously, was bound to wind up dead in this business. Seymour hadn’t needed that phone call warning to know his own days were numbered. And Jake probably didn’t need a warning now, either—not if he’d been involved with what was all over the news.

  “What!”

  Jake’s shout startled Seymour into dropping the cell phone on his desk. He was still at work. Hell, he lived at work. He had nothing else.

  Like Jake...

  No family. No life outside of the job.

  Maybe that was why Jake was his favorite bounty hunter. They had so much in common, except for Jake being more than a foot higher and a hell of a lot younger and better looking.

  He fumbled on his desk and grabbed up his cell, wincing as he noticed the crack across the glass. “Jake, where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to call you.”

  “I know,” Jake said. “You’ve been blowing up my damn phone. Why?”

  “I wanted you to know that somebody called me about Lillian Davies,” he said, and that chill chased over his skin again, making him shiver.

  “She just missed her court date,” Jake said. “What’s the rush to bring her in?”

  “This person doesn’t want us to bring her in,” Seymour replied. “This person doesn’t want Lillian Davies going to court.”

  He waited for Jake to jump to the same conclusion he initially had, that it was one of her family. But Jake said nothing. Something must have made him consider that someone else might not want her brought to jail.

  “Whoever it was pretty much threatened me to back off,” Seymour continued. And that wasn’t like a Davies. They were crooks, but they weren’t thugs. The robbery Don and Dave had committed, and for which they were serving time, they’d used airsoft guns—not real weapons. They definitely hadn’t been firing any of those shots tonight. “He advised me that my life was more important than my money.”

  He snorted at that again. That was another reason he knew it wasn’t a Davies who’d called him. The Davies family knew how important his money was to him, which was why he’d always sent Jake after them.

  Jake cursed, but Seymour doubted it was because the bounty hunter was outraged that he had been threatened. More than likely he was worried about Lillian Davies, confirming Seymour’s suspicion that the pretty blonde meant more to Jake than he was willing to admit.

  Or maybe he wasn’t even aware of how much she meant to him. And that worried Seymour. He didn’t want Jake getting killed over her.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he asked Jake.

  Such a long silence followed that Seymour wondered if the connection had been lost. Or if something had happened to Jake already.

  Someone had threatened Seymour for sending a bounty hunter after her. They were damn well going to threaten the bounty hunter, too. Maybe they would even kill him to stop him from bringing her back.

  Chapter 8

  She was in danger. Jake already knew that. He’d been in danger because of her. And apparently he wouldn’t be out of danger until she was dead. Or at least out of his custody.

  So he should have brought her to jail. Instead, he’d brought her to one of the safe houses he’d set up after leaving the US Marshals. His job with the US Marshals had been dangerous, and he’d needed a place to go in case anyone ever came after him seeking vengeance.

  Since that had happened—a few times—he’d kept the place. He also used it as a haven to recharge. He’d used it a lot over the past eight months because guilt over how he’d treated Lillian had weighed on him. That guilt hadn’t lessened until yesterday when Seymour had told him about her arrest.

  But had she been framed?

  He wasn’t sure what the hell was going on, so he’d lied to the bail bondsman and told him that he hadn’t apprehended her yet. Tuttle would have wanted her brought in right away. He was more concerned about getting back his money than he was about the threat to his life.

  Who’d called him?

  Tom Kuipers?

  The guy was a threat. To Lillian...

  Jake stared at the closed door to the bathroom. She’d been in there a while—showering, changing.

  He hoped. The bathroom had no window, though, so she wouldn’t have been able to escape. There was only a vent to the roof and, with as pregnant as she was, he doubted she would be able to slip through that.

  But just to be sure, he stepped closer to the door and listened. Then, when he didn’t hear anything, he rapped his knuckles against the solid wood. The house was small but tough—everything was reinforced so if someone came after him, they wouldn’t easily get to him. Lillian could lock herself in that bathroom and keep him out. But then she’d be trapping herself inside the small space, and how long could a pregnant woman survive without food?

  He knocked again and called out, “Lillian?”

  The knob rattled, then turned. When she opened the door, her face was flushed and he suspected it wasn’t just from the steam of the shower. The vent cover was a little askew, as if she’d tried taking it down.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  He narrowed his eyes and studied her flushed face. She was beautiful, maybe even more so pregnant than she’d been before. Her blue eyes sparkled, and her silky skin had a definite glow to it.

  He wanted to skim his fingers along her cheek. But he curled them into his palm so that he wouldn’t touch her. Because he knew what happened once he touched her...

  Eight months ago, he had never intended to take things as far as they’d gone with her. He’d only wanted to get close to her to get information on her family. He had never intended to become intimate with her.

  But once he’d touched her...

  He’d been unable to resist her.

  But he had to now. Their lives and that unborn baby’s life depended on his staying focused and alert. Even if someone had hot-wired his truck, he’d been careful so that the men wouldn’t follow him back. And if they’d searched the truck he’d abandoned in the woods, they would find nothing that would lead back to him or to this place.

  The truck belonged to someone else—someone who had disappeared a long time ago. That was the one fugitive Jake had never been able to apprehend.

  At the moment, though, the only fugitive he cared about was Lillian Davies.

  “You were taking a long time in there,” he said as he peered around her into the room. It was so small that he could see everything at a glance. “Everything all right?”

  Her blue eyes glistened with a hint of tears, but she furiously blinked them back. “It wi
ll be once I find that flash drive and prove my innocence.”

  He really wanted to believe that flash drive existed. “How do you think you’re going to do that?”

  Her face flushed again. “I—I was going to break into my lawyer’s office and search for it.”

  He reminded her of the words she’d used in the van, “You said she claimed she never got it.” That had struck him as odd at the time.

  “Yes.” She nodded. “That’s exactly what she claims.”

  “But didn’t you personally give it to her?” he asked. That was what had been peculiar about what she’d said. Wouldn’t she have said, “She claimed I never gave it to her,” if she’d given it to her lawyer herself?

  Her face flushed again. And he knew.

  “If you really had something that important, why would you trust it with anyone else?”

  Let alone her family. And he was pretty damn sure that was who she must have asked to deliver it for her. The only one of them she could trust was her grandmother, but he doubted she would have given the elderly woman something that might have potentially put her in danger.

  “I—I was scared,” she said, and she moved her hands over her belly. She obviously hadn’t been scared just for her own safety. “I wanted to get out of town before Mr. Kuipers could get to me.”

  “Who?” he asked. “Who did you give it to?” It wasn’t like there were many of her family members who weren’t in jail or prison, so she hadn’t had many options.

  Maybe she had given it to her grandmother.

  She pursed her lips for a moment, as if she couldn’t get out the name. Then finally she confessed, “Donny. I asked Donny to deliver it for me.”

  He groaned. Her younger brother wasn’t the career criminal the rest of her family was, but he was an idiot. If he hadn’t sold it, he’d probably lost it.

  “Donny is a sweetheart,” she said in defense of her younger brother. “He would never do anything that would hurt me.”

  But after Jake had apprehended her dad and oldest brother at her apartment, the rest of her family had turned on her. They wouldn’t care if she was hurt. They might want her hurt nearly as badly as Tom Kuipers apparently did. And Donny would do whatever his dad and Dave told him to do.

  Jake wasn’t going to argue with her, though, so he just asked, “Where the hell is he?”

  If that flash drive existed, he’d beat it out of her little brother for not turning it over to her lawyer.

  “He has an apartment down by the community college,” she said. Beaming with pride, she added, “He’s been taking some classes.”

  “They have courses in how to be a criminal?” he asked.

  She glared at him. “I know how you feel about my family, but you’re wrong about them.”

  “And so were all the juries of their peers who convicted them?”

  Her face flushed a deeper red. “I know some of my family have done bad things, and I never condoned that.”

  He had to admit that was true. She had never claimed her dad and brother had been framed, like she was claiming for herself. When she’d been so upset with him, she’d said it was because he’d used her, not because he’d taken them off to jail.

  “But the only reason you caught them is because they care about me,” she said. “They risked coming out of hiding because they wanted to make sure the man Donny told them I was seeing was a good man.”

  He flushed a bit now, his face getting hot over how he hadn’t been good to her. He shouldn’t have let her go on believing the lie of who he was. But maybe he’d wanted to believe it, too.

  Maybe he’d wanted to be as simple and uncomplicated as he’d led her to believe he was.

  “So, no,” she said. “I don’t think any of them would do anything to hurt me, but especially not Donny.”

  Jake had been there. He knew how angry they’d been. He snorted again.

  “Donny is not like the rest of my family,” she insisted. “He has never been arrested.”

  “That doesn’t mean he hasn’t committed a crime.” Maybe he was actually smarter than Jake had thought. So what the hell had he done with that flash drive?

  Her eyes glistened again as if tears had rushed to them. “It’s easy for you to be so sanctimonious and self-righteous. You probably came from the perfect family with a mother who baked cookies and a dad who worked hard to support you and your siblings.”

  “No siblings,” he said.

  And he wasn’t going to talk about his mom and dad. He hadn’t done that for years. He glanced down her body, focusing on her belly. And he hoped, for that kid’s sake, that he wasn’t the baby’s father.

  The kid would have a better chance in life with the Davies family’s DNA than with his. The Davieses were criminals and con artists, but they weren’t killers.

  * * *

  Jake had that look on his face again, the one he’d gotten any time Lillian had tried to get him to open up about his family. What were they like? Where was he from?

  And just as he had every time she’d asked about his, he turned the conversation back to hers. Of course, he’d done that eight months ago because he’d been trying to apprehend her dad and brother Dave for the armed robbery they’d committed. But what was his excuse now?

  He just didn’t care enough to share anything of himself—of his life—with her?

  “Where is Donny’s apartment exactly?” he asked. “Give me the address.”

  “I’ll show you.”

  He narrowed his dark eyes and stared down at her.

  “What?” she asked. “Why do you look so suspicious?”

  “I don’t trust you.”

  She flinched. “I can say the same thing,” she reminded him. “I don’t trust you, either. That’s why we need to stick together.”

  Or she doubted he would really search for the flash drive at all. She didn’t think he even believed that it existed. It was as if he wanted to think the worst of her. Maybe that would ease his conscience over deceiving her eight months ago.

  But she doubted he even had a conscience.

  He uttered a ragged sigh. “You’re right. You proved in the woods that I can’t trust you. The minute I turn my back, you’re going to try to take off.” He pointed toward the bathroom and the vent she’d pulled off and then tried to jam back up. “Couldn’t make it through there?”

  Her face heated up again. And she touched her belly. She should have known without even removing the vent that there was no way she would have fit through that hole. If she’d tried, she would have been stuck like Pooh Bear in Rabbit’s hole.

  And while they were baggy, she couldn’t even blame his clothes for making her look bigger than she was. She was just big—with his baby.

  He’d given her some clothes to wear—an old T-shirt of his and a pair of sweats. The sweats were so long that they were bunched up from her ankles to her knees, which was how long the T-shirt hung.

  No wonder he wasn’t looking at her like he had once—like he wanted her. Instead, he looked at her with suspicion, like she was actually the criminal Mr. Kuipers had framed her to be. She needed that flash drive. Once she had that, maybe she could prove to Jake that she was innocent. Although proving anything to Jake should have been the least of her concerns.

  She needed to prove her innocence to the police and to the prosecutor.

  He sighed. “It doesn’t matter. I know that I can’t let you out of my sight, not until I bring you to jail.”

  She sucked in a breath. How could he still want to turn her in?

  Because he didn’t trust her any more than she did him.

  But at least he’d given her a reprieve. That wouldn’t last, though, if she couldn’t produce the proof she’d promised she had.

  What the hell had Donny done with it?

  She’d tried calling him—several times
—since talking to her lawyer. His phone must have been shut off because it had gone directly to his voice mail. And he hadn’t returned any of her frantic messages.

  She’d gone by his apartment, too. But it had been dark with mail overflowing the box. He hadn’t been there in a while, either. Had something happened to him?

  If it had, it was her fault. Jake was right. She shouldn’t have given him that flash drive—because giving him that had probably put him in danger.

  And she couldn’t help but think that she was putting Jake in danger, too, by asking him to help her find it. She stared up at him and asked the question that had been bothering her, “Why are you helping me?”

  “I’m not sure that I am,” he said.

  “Because you’re not sure the flash drive exists.” She’d heard the doubt in his deep voice and had seen it in his dark eyes. He wasn’t sure he should believe her. “That makes me wonder even more why you’re helping me look for it then.”

  He lifted his broad shoulders in a slight shrug. His chest, beneath his thin black shirt, rippled with the movement. He was so muscular.

  He replied, “Maybe I feel like I owe you one.”

  She forced her gaze from his chest and shoulders to focus on his face. But that was just as distracting. He was so damn handsome. No wonder she hadn’t been able to resist him eight months ago, especially when he’d turned on the charm.

  “You are doing this to ease your conscience,” she said. And although she was relieved that he had one, she didn’t feel any less resentful over how he’d used her.

  His face flushed now, nearly as red as hers had over the vent. “I already apologized for that.”

  An apology that she’d thrown back in his face as he’d carted off her dad and brother to jail. Not that they hadn’t deserved to get arrested. She hadn’t deserved to get her heart broken, though.