by Lisa Childs
She had worried that she shouldn’t have trusted him. Now it was apparent that he never should have trusted her. Giving him that flash drive had put a target on his back, just like she had one on hers.
The car stopped, but she was so distraught it barely registered that they were no longer moving. Maybe Jake had brought her to jail. And if he had, at the moment it was the least of her concerns.
The passenger’s door opened, and he reached for her. But instead of dragging her out, he pulled her against him, and his strong arms wrapped tightly around her as if he was trying to hold her together.
But she doubted that even Jake was strong enough to manage that. If she’d put her brother in danger...
If she’d caused his death...
She wouldn’t have to worry about her family ever forgiving her. She would never forgive herself.
* * *
The phone vibrating on his desktop jerked Seymour awake. He must have dozed off, as he often did, in his chair. It didn’t look like much, with the duct-tape patches, but it was comfortable. He glanced at the cell and saw Jake’s contact popping up.
He stabbed at the accept button and said, “You better be calling because you have her!”
A long silence was his reply.
So long that he prodded, “Jake?”
Had someone else gotten hold of the bounty hunter’s phone?
“Is that you?” he asked. “Are you there?”
“I’m here,” Jake finally answered.
And Seymour expelled a breath of relief. “Are you all right?”
“No,” Jake replied with a ragged sigh. “I’m getting damn sick of getting shot at.”
“There’s been another shoot-out?” Jake had admitted that he’d been involved in those earlier ones when he’d looked for Lillian at her grandmother’s cottage. He’d claimed she wasn’t there, though.
“Yes, at her brother’s apartment,” Jake replied.
He must have been looking for her there. It made sense that he would check in with all her relatives and known associates to see if any of them were harboring her. That was how Jake must have gotten to know her before, when he’d been looking for her father and oldest brother.
So who had been shooting at him? Her brother? Or whoever else didn’t want her brought in?
Jake continued, “I need you to check out Donny Davies for me.”
“Don? He’s behind bars.”
“Not Senior,” Jake replied. “Don Junior.”
“So you think he was the one shooting at you? Or was she?” How dangerous was this woman?
She’d seemed so sweet and innocent. Seymour never would have guessed she would skip bail and cause so much trouble. But Jake had known...
Seymour reached for his keyboard and pulled up his databases. Shaking his head, he murmured, “I don’t see anything outstanding or otherwise for Donald Davies Junior.”
“What about a death certificate?”
“Not yet,” Seymour said, “but if you just shot him, he’d still be in the morgue.” The River City morgue was usually backlogged for the actual autopsy, let alone the paperwork that went along with one. “The death certificate wouldn’t have been recorded yet.”
Jake’s breath rattled the phone as he expelled a sigh of frustration. “I’ll check with the morgue.”
Did he think he’d killed Donny Davies? Or did he think someone else had?
Seymour reached for the remote for the TV mounted on the wall across from his desk. He turned on the set to another news report of shots fired across the city. The address was the same as the one on his computer monitor, the one for the last known whereabouts of Donny Davies Junior.
This was getting serious. The news crew at the scene reported that the River City Police Department was not issuing any statements at this time. Was that because they had no information? Or because they wanted to apprehend all the parties involved?
Jake was involved. Had he talked to the police at all? Seymour suspected that he hadn’t or he would have asked them the questions he’d just asked him.
“Jake—”
The dial tone emanated from Seymour’s phone. Jake had hung up on him.
What the hell was going on?
Shootings?
Casualties?
Jake was probably going to wind up in the morgue, too, if he wasn’t careful. And Seymour had a feeling when it came to Lillian Davies, Jake was too distracted to be as careful as he needed to be in order to survive.
It wasn’t until now that he realized Jake had never answered his first question. Did he have her?
And if he did, why the hell hadn’t he brought her in yet?
Chapter 10
The door creaked open and Lillian stepped out of the bathroom. The space doubled as a laundry room, and she must have taken her clothes from the dryer because she was dressed in her maternity blouse and torn leggings again. Instead of being flushed like it had been before, her beautiful face was deathly pale. She must have overheard his call to the morgue.
“Is he...” Her voice cracked with emotion, and she couldn’t even finish her question.
Jake felt a twinge in his heart, like something was squeezing it. He shook his head. At least her brother wasn’t in the morgue, but that didn’t mean Donny wasn’t dead. Some bodies were never found.
“I never should have given him that flash drive,” she murmured.
As he had in the garage, Jake closed his arms around her. Her body trembled in his embrace.
“You trusted him,” he said. That had been her real mistake—to trust any member of her family but her grandmother. But at eighty-nine, her grandmother was too old and too fragile to involve in any of this danger.
Lillian tensed and tugged free of him. “I still do,” she said. “What happened at his apartment...”
“Us nearly getting killed?” Again.
“That proves his innocence,” she insisted. “The lawyer must have told Tom Kuipers about the flash drive.”
Or Donny himself had.
“He must think Donny has another copy of it,” she said. “That’s why those gunmen were at his place.”
Jake would rather believe that than Lillian setting him up, which had been his first thought when those shots had rung out. But now that his temper had cooled, he didn’t believe she’d staged an ambush. She wouldn’t have risked her own life and her baby’s life. And those bullets had been flying so wildly that she could have easily been hit, too.
He tightened his arms around her. His job was to bring her in to the authorities, but his conscience wouldn’t allow him to do that until he knew for certain that she and her unborn baby would be safe.
“You really think Kuipers got to your lawyer somehow?” he asked. This man was far more dangerous and perhaps more powerful than Jake had initially considered.
Her chin bumped against his chest as she nodded vigorously. “Yes, Tom Kuipers is evil,” she said. “And he has a lot of money. All that money he claims I stole from the company.”
Jake couldn’t rule out her claims until he’d investigated them more. And until he’d done that, he couldn’t turn her over to the authorities.
“I’ll check out your lawyer,” he said.
She eased back and peered up at his face. Her beautiful face was stained with tears, which welled yet in her eyes. “You will?”
She seemed stunned that he believed her. She wasn’t the only one. Not that Jake necessarily believed her. But he had no proof that she was or wasn’t lying. And until he had that, he could make no assumptions.
“Yes.”
She released a shuddery breath that sounded like relief. “Thank you.” She stepped back farther as if she expected him to do that now.
“I need access to the US Marshals’ database,” he said. He could pull up records through them th
at he, on his own, or the bail bondsman couldn’t access.
She glanced at the clock on the living room wall, which was awash in sunlight now. Despite being in the city, the house sat between two empty lots. The houses on those had been abandoned so long that they’d been demolished. And before anyone else could build on them, Jake had bought those lots so he could keep the perimeter around the house safe, as well.
He still wasn’t certain how they had survived the night with all those people shooting at them. But he was glad that they’d made it back here where he could protect her.
She asked, “Are the offices open yet?”
“Yes.” They never really closed.
“Then why are you waiting?”
Because he couldn’t bring a fugitive into the offices of the US Marshals. “I can’t leave you here.”
“You said nobody could find us here,” she reminded him. “It’s safe.”
“It is, but only if you’ll stay here.” And he didn’t think he could trust her to do that. Hell, despite the doubts he was starting to have, he still couldn’t trust her.
She paused and nibbled on her bottom lip. And he wanted to nibble on it, as well. Maybe she wasn’t the liar he was worrying she was—because she hadn’t automatically lied to him and promised she would stay put.
Instead, she held her silence as she stared up at him, as if trying to gauge whether or not she should trust him. After what he’d done eight months ago, he understood her hesitation. But if he’d been honest with her from the beginning, Don and Dave would probably still be on the loose. And she never would have let Jake get close to her, to kiss her, to touch her...
“I was just doing my job then,” he said. “Your dad and your brother Dave are dangerous fugitives.”
She shook her head, and her blond hair swirled then settled around her thin shoulders. “Dangerous?” She sniffed. “They’ve never used real guns.”
“They robbed a bank,” he said. “You condone that?”
She shook her head again. “I told you that I’ve never condoned what they do. I know they broke the law and...” Obviously, she couldn’t bring herself to admit the rest of it.
So Jake continued for her, “And they needed to be apprehended, so they could go to jail.”
“What about me?” she asked.
“You’re a fugitive now,” he said. But he suspected she might only be dangerous to him—if he fell for her again.
* * *
She was a fugitive. Lillian couldn’t argue that right now. She had been arrested, and she’d missed her court date. But she hadn’t been convicted, and she wouldn’t be if the prosecutor or judge was able to see the files she’d downloaded to that flash drive.
She needed to find it. But even before she’d spent the night getting shot at and chased around, she’d been exhausted. Now she fought to keep her eyes open. “I’m not dangerous,” she told him.
He touched the scratch on his temple. “I’m not so sure about that.”
“I didn’t do that,” she protested. She hadn’t even slapped him, despite wanting to really, really badly.
How could he have used her like he had? Why had he made her fall for him as hard as she had for it all to have just been a lie?
“Those men aren’t after me,” he said. “Unless you sent them after me.”
She sucked in a breath. “I’m not dangerous,” she insisted. “And I don’t want anyone getting hurt—not even Kuipers’s men.” And if Donny had been hurt because of her...
No. She couldn’t think about that. She would rather believe that he had betrayed her than that she’d caused him harm.
A muscle twitched in Jake’s cheek. “I had to fire back at those men,” he said.
She nodded. “I know. They were shooting at you. If you hadn’t fired back...” They would have killed Jake. And that thought filled her with horror. She had convinced herself that she’d never wanted to see him again.
But if she couldn’t...
If he was no longer alive...
Pain squeezed her heart, and she reached out and slid her arms around his waist. His body was so tall—so muscular. So strong and warm.
He wrapped his arms around her, as well, and settled his chin against the top of her head. “And I couldn’t let them take you,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said. She wasn’t sure if she had thanked him, really thanked him. He hadn’t had to help her like he had been. He could have just let the bad men take her.
But then he wouldn’t get his bounty.
She pulled back and wrapped her arms around herself now, trying to get a grip. She couldn’t let herself fall for him again—out of gratitude. This time she knew exactly who and what he was.
A bounty hunter.
Of course, he wouldn’t collect that bounty if he didn’t bring her to jail. And he hadn’t done that yet.
Would he? If he found the flash drive, if she proved her innocence...?
“I couldn’t let them hurt you,” he said. He stared down at her so intently that she shivered. But she wasn’t cold; heat flashed through her.
How was she still so attracted to him? Maybe because she knew that he’d just been doing his job. She hadn’t been mad, though, that he’d apprehended her dad and brother—just that he’d used her to do it.
“What about you?” she asked. “Are you going to hurt me? Again?”
He expelled a ragged breath. “Damn, Lillian, I never meant...”
To break her heart? To destroy her? To get her pregnant? Hadn’t he known how hard she would fall for him?
But then how could he have known what she had never guessed? She’d been so careful all her twenty-five years. She’d protected her heart just like Gran had advised her, so that she wouldn’t wind up like her mother, falling for the wrong man and living with criminals.
Jake wasn’t a criminal, though. He hunted them. He’d hunted down her.
She was a criminal, unless that flash drive could be found to prove her innocence. She cared less about herself and that evidence than her brother at the moment. She should have brought it to the lawyer herself. She never should have gotten anyone else involved in the mess that her life had become. “What do you think happened to Donny?”
Jake shrugged. “I don’t know. Your family is good at hiding.”
“Not me...” she murmured.
He had found her easily enough.
“You’re not good at hiding,” he agreed. “So when I leave here to look for that flash drive and Donny, you better not go anywhere—because I will find you. And then I will take you straight to jail.”
Ever since she was a little girl, whenever she got too tired or anxious, she got silly. So these words slipped out almost against her will: “No passing Go? No collecting two hundred dollars?”
He shook his head again, but he was grinning now. And she remembered why she’d fallen for him. This was the Jake she had loved—the grinning one who’d laughed at all her corny jokes, with whom she’d had so much fun.
And so much passion...
The grin slid away from his handsome face, his eyes getting even darker and more intense as he stared down at her. “Damn it,” he murmured.
And she knew he felt it, too: the attraction that she hadn’t been able to fight eight months ago. Not that she’d tried all that hard. She wanted to fight harder this time. She wanted to fight it and win.
But when he leaned down and lowered his mouth to hers, she didn’t push him back. Like the last time he’d kissed her, she clutched her fingers in the soft material of his T-shirt and tugged him closer. Then she rose up on tiptoe and kissed him back. He groaned and deepened the kiss, pushing his tongue between her lips.
Heat flashed through her as her pulse quickened with passion and excitement. It had been so long since she’d felt like this—since she’d felt anything b
ut fear.
She felt the fear, too, along with the excitement and passion. This fear wasn’t just over going to jail or even getting killed. She was afraid that she might fall for Jake all over again.
He moved his hands from her shoulders down to the curve of her hips. But he couldn’t pull her any closer, not with her belly between them.
The baby kicked. And Jake must have felt it, too, because he jerked back.
“Did I hurt him?”
Him.
He’d instinctively called him that, too.
If she was carrying a boy, Jake would have a son. She would have a son, and that thought increased her fear. Her baby was half Davies, too, and the Davies men had not turned out well.
Except maybe for Donny...
“Is he okay?” Jake asked again.
Lillian took Jake’s hand and placed it over her belly. “He’s fine. He’s just very active.”
Jake stared down at her, a look of awe on his handsome face as the baby moved beneath his touch. “Very active,” he murmured.
“Yeah, given my luck, he probably has ADHD,” she said.
And he chuckled, though Lillian hadn’t entirely been joking.
“He does move a lot,” Jake said.
The baby was even more active now, with Jake’s hand lying on her belly. Like the rest of Jake Howard, his hand was so big and strong but still could be so gentle. She remembered the way he’d touched her, and she wanted that touch again.
She wanted Jake.
“You need to go to bed,” he said.
Her heart jumped and her pulse raced away. But then she realized he’d said you and not we. He didn’t want to go to bed with her.
His hand not on her belly cupped her cheek and he skimmed his thumb across the skin below her eye. “You look exhausted.”
She was—so exhausted that she couldn’t fight the rush of disappointment that swept over her. Tears welled in her eyes, and she was too tired to fight them back. So one trailed down her face and over his thumb.