by Lisa Childs
She couldn’t see his face—her back was pressed against his chest. But he was like Jake in that he was big—too big for her to overpower. Too big for her to wrest free of him.
She could not get away.
* * *
Jake Howard had lost his damn mind and probably his life, too. Shane O’Hanigan felt a moment’s regret over the loss of the other bounty hunter. But not even Jake could have survived that barrage of bullets.
Shane had barely survived himself. And he still wasn’t certain about his brothers—until he heard their voices emanating from the two-way radio in his ear.
“All clear,” Ryan said.
“The gunmen drove off in that white van,” Trick confirmed. “I think at least one of them was hit, maybe both of them.”
“What about you two?” he asked. As the oldest, he felt responsible for his brothers—especially since he’d brought them in to the family business with him.
“I’m fine,” Ryan said.
“Me, too,” his brother Patrick, who they all called Trick, added.
Shane breathed a sigh of relief, which stirred the blond hair of the woman he held in his arms. He knew his brothers were old enough and certainly big enough to take care of themselves. They’d proved it over and over. But still, he worried.
“I’ve got her,” he told his brothers. But she was fighting fiercely to escape him. He grunted as the heel of her foot connected with his shin again. Her struggle distracted him from asking the others about Jake.
Had he survived, as well? Or was he lying dead or bleeding out somewhere in his own yard?
Jake must have forgotten he was a bounty hunter. He’d been acting more like a bodyguard to Lillian Davies. Why else had he brought her here instead of jail?
Had old Jake gone soft because she was pregnant? Shane had noticed that immediately when he’d lifted her and his arms had touched the mound of her belly. He could even feel the baby kick. She must be pretty far along.
Hmm...
Hadn’t her dad and oldest brother skipped bail about eight or nine months ago? Jake had brought them in, but it had taken him a few weeks to track them down. Jake never took that long to track down anyone.
But maybe something or someone had distracted him, someone like the pretty blonde struggling in Shane’s arms. Was the baby she carried Jake’s?
Along with another kick inside her belly, Shane felt a pang of sympathy. But it wasn’t his baby she was carrying. So he still intended to bring her to jail. Then he’d collect the bounty for her.
And after he’d cashed the check, he and his brothers would go down to O’Hanigan’s pub and raise a pint in a toast to the dearly departed competition.
Poor Jake...
To risk his life for her, he must have fallen for her. And that was what happened when a man fell in love. He lost his damn mind and his life. Love was the only thing that could have made Jake act like such a fool.
Shane was no fool. He would never fall in love. But suddenly he was falling.
It wasn’t Lillian Davies who’d brought him down, though. Something had struck him over the head. Pain radiated throughout his skull.
He shouldn’t have trusted his brothers to make sure those gunmen were gone. He should have checked himself. But it was too late now...because everything went black.
Chapter 12
“Is he dead?” Lillian asked as she stared at the prone body of Shane O’Hanigan. Concern darkened her blue eyes and puckered her usually smooth forehead.
Jake shook his head. He’d hit him hard but not hard enough to kill him, especially when the guy was as thickheaded as Shane O’Hanigan.
“Are you okay?” Jake asked.
She had fallen, too, and lay sprawled across Shane’s motionless body. Had she been hurt or was the baby hurt?
He dropped to his knees beside her. It had been a risk to knock Shane out like he had. But he’d needed to get a jump on the big bounty hunter or Shane would have had time to fight him. Or alert his even bigger younger brothers.
“I’m okay,” she said, but her voice shook with fear. And she didn’t try to stand.
So Jake picked her up and carried her off the deck. As he headed across the backyard, he asked, “Why’d you go out the back door?”
Had she been trying to escape?
“Someone was coming in the front,” she said, and her voice cracked with the fear she must have felt then.
He should have called out to her. “That was me.” He was the one who’d had the keys. But if he’d been shot, someone would have been able to take those keys off him.
He glanced around as he hurried toward the gate.
The O’Hanigans were like the Three Stooges of bounty hunters. They never went anywhere alone. Since Shane was here, then Ryan and Trick had to be nearby, too.
Jake rushed through the gate he’d left open to the alley and helped Lillian into the passenger’s side of his battered vehicle.
“Are you okay?” she asked as she stared across the console at him.
He nodded as he jammed his key into the ignition and started the car. But before he could drive away, Lillian reached across the console and cupped his face in her palms. She stared at him as if unable to believe that he was real.
“How?” she asked. “I heard all those gunshots...” She shuddered.
He shrugged. But he knew. He probably had the O’Hanigans to thank for helping him survive the gunfight. Their arrival had spooked Kuipers’s men into giving up and driving off. They must have thought they were outnumbered then.
But Jake knew the O’Hanigans were not on his side. They had been his rivals for a few years now, mostly thanks to Tuttle playing them off against each other. What the hell had they been doing at his place?
How had they even figured out where it was? Had he told Tuttle before?
He wouldn’t have had to for the wily old bail bondsman to figure out where it was, though. Tuttle had a way of finding out stuff no one else had. Jake suspected Tuttle even knew what motivated him to pursue fugitives.
And Jake knew what motivated Tuttle, too, although that was no secret. Money.
He glanced into the rearview mirror as he drove away from his place. Were the O’Hanigans following him? Were Kuipers’s men? Even as he kept a vigilant gaze on the road, he grabbed his cell phone from his pocket and punched in Tuttle’s contact.
It rang a few times before Tuttle picked up and slowly murmured, “Hello, Jake...”
“You son of a bitch,” Jake called him out.
“What?”
“You sent the O’Hanigans after me.”
“After her,” Tuttle corrected him.
“How did you know I had her?”
“You’re not a good liar, Jake,” Tuttle admonished him.
Lillian must have been able to hear the other man through the cell because she glanced over at him, as if tempted to chime in that Tuttle was wrong. She thought he was a very good liar. She didn’t know he’d been more honest with her than he had been with anyone else in his life.
He was more the man she’d known than the one everyone else thought he was.
“Well, your boys failed,” Jake said.
And Tuttle groaned. “Damn it, Jake, you gotta bring her in. Her lawyer’s been calling, too, wanting to get her back before the judge.”
“Why?” Jake asked. “Does her lawyer have any evidence to help her?”
“Help her what?” Tuttle asked. “She’s in big trouble, Jake. You know that.”
Unfortunately, he did. He’d nearly gotten killed again protecting her from Kuipers’s men. The guy wasn’t just pissed off because she’d stolen money from him. This was bigger than that, more self-preservation than just revenge.
Jake was beginning to believe that she was telling him the truth about everything. Maybe even about
him being the father of her baby.
She’d only said that once. But after the way he’d reacted, she had probably thought he didn’t want to be a father. That wasn’t the case—not entirely. It was more like he shouldn’t be a father.
“I’ll bring her to you,” Jake offered.
And in the passenger’s seat, Lillian gasped.
“But have her lawyer there—in your office,” Jake said. “I want to talk to her.” He wanted to find out just who the hell was telling the truth here.
“Jake, this is crazy,” Tuttle said. “I don’t want to get any more involved in this mess than I already am. I just want to get my money back.”
“I know,” Jake said. It was all about money. Not just for Tuttle but for Tom Kuipers, too. “And you’ll get it back, but on my terms.”
Tuttle sighed. “Damn you.”
“Get her lawyer in your office within the hour, and I’ll bring her to you.” He clicked off the phone without waiting for Tuttle to argue any more or to agree. Tuttle wanted his money back. He would meet Jake’s terms—terms that Jake had no intention of meeting himself.
He was a better liar than Seymour knew, even though he wasn’t the liar Lillian thought he was. Instead of heading toward Tuttle’s office, he turned in the opposite direction. It was about damn time he figured out who was telling the truth and who was lying.
Before he got killed...
* * *
Just when she’d been starting to trust him again, Jake had betrayed her all over again. Lillian’s heart ached with the pain of that betrayal. The old one and the new one.
“How could you?” she murmured. He’d offered her up like some kind of trophy.
Jake chuckled, totally unrepentant. “I guess I’m a better liar than Tuttle thinks I am.”
“I know you are,” she agreed as her resentment bubbled over. She reached for the door handle. If she wasn’t pregnant, she would have jumped out of the car while it was moving. But because she was pregnant, she would have to wait for Jake to stop the car before she jumped out. She couldn’t risk the baby, not any more than his life had already been risked. “You’ve lied to me over and over again.”
“I lied to him,” Jake said as he braked at a red light.
Lillian’s fingers curled around the door handle, but she hesitated before opening the door.
“What?” she asked.
“I’m not bringing you to Tuttle’s office.”
She wasn’t sure if she should believe him. She glanced from his face to the traffic light, which was still red. How much more time did she have? Her fingers twitched on the handle. Even if she opened it and ran, he was faster. He would catch her—just like he had in the woods.
“Where are you bringing me?” she asked as the light turned green and he pressed on the gas again.
“The lawyer’s office,” he said. “We’re going to search it for that flash drive.”
Relief flooded her. “Thank you.”
He shrugged off her gratitude. “Don’t get your hopes up,” he advised her. “I don’t think we’ll find it.”
Was that because he didn’t think it existed? Or he thought her brother had never brought it to the lawyer?
Lillian wasn’t certain what to believe, either, when it came to her problems and to Jake. Of course, he was her biggest problem, because she had never gotten over him.
And she was afraid that she never would.
But what if he was lying to her instead of the bail bondsman? Maybe he would have to stop at another red light and she could make her escape then.
He stopped again but not at another traffic light. He pulled into a parking lot, one she didn’t recognize.
“This isn’t the lawyer’s office,” she said. The only business she saw was a rental car company.
“We have to ditch the Nova,” he said with a sigh of resignation. “It’s too recognizable.”
And now they had more than Tom Kuipers’s men looking for them. They had those other bounty hunters after them. She nodded in agreement.
“Stay here,” he said as he pushed open the driver’s door. But before he slid out, he grabbed the keys from the ignition. He didn’t trust her any more than she did him.
He didn’t leave her alone for very long before he was back, driving a gray SUV that he pulled up alongside the Nova. He helped her out of his car and into the rental. She breathed a sigh of appreciation as she settled onto the comfortable seat. It had much more cushion than the old bucket seat in his Nova.
His lips curved into a slight grin. “No appreciation for the old girl?”
She shook her head and gestured toward the windows. “That’s not the case,” she said. “I have a greater appreciation for intact glass now than I ever had before.”
“I thought it was like riding in a convertible,” he said, glancing over at his banged-up vehicle. He uttered a ragged sigh. “Maybe I’ll make it into one. Might be easier than trying to repair all that damage.”
“You really did restore it?” she asked.
He nodded.
And she wondered how much he had actually lied to her. He hadn’t lied to her about where he was bringing her, because the next parking lot in to which he pulled was the one she had parked in just the night before when she’d staked out this office.
It wasn’t night now, though. Even if her lawyer had left to meet with the bail bondsman, there were other people in the building and a receptionist and coworkers in the lawyer’s office.
“How are we going to do this?” she asked.
He hadn’t brought her to the bondsman’s office. But she was still concerned that she would be caught and brought to jail.
“Don’t worry,” Jake told her.
Which was an impossible command.
All she had done was worry—for months now. That could not be good for the baby. And it certainly wasn’t good for her.
“Trust me,” Jake said.
She didn’t. She couldn’t. But she really had no choice. She needed the evidence that would prove her innocence. She wanted it to be here for so many reasons—one of which was that it would prove Donny’s innocence as well as hers. If it was in her lawyer’s office, it would prove that her younger brother had not betrayed her.
Jake’s plan was so simple that Lillian smiled when he pulled the fire alarm. Once everyone cleared out of the building, they were easily able to search the lawyer’s office. The lawyer must have backed up all her records to an online storage provider because there wasn’t a single flash drive in the place, let alone the one Lillian had risked her life to get from her former employer.
It was gone.
Her legs began to shake and threatened to fold beneath her. But when she moved to sit down, Jake grasped her arm and tugged her toward the door.
“We have to get out of here,” he said, just as the alarm stopped wailing.
Obviously, it had been identified as false. They wouldn’t have much time to escape. So she hurried with Jake toward the back stairwell, which led down to the parking lot. Another alarm sounded as they slipped out the emergency exit. Jake rushed her toward the SUV and barely waited until she shut the door before he peeled out of the lot.
Lillian felt sick with disappointment. She’d counted on the lawyer having the flash drive. But if Tom Kuipers had bought it from her, then he would have it in his possession.
Or maybe it had never gotten to her lawyer.
Had Donny betrayed her?
Lillian was beginning to think that he had.
And if every man she trusted betrayed her, it was only a matter of time before Jake did again. Was he driving her to the bail bondsman now?
Since they hadn’t found the flash drive, he probably didn’t believe her that it existed. She’d lost her one chance to prove her innocence to him.
And somehow, proving it t
o him mattered almost as much as proving it to the authorities. She wanted Jake to know that she was exactly who she’d shown him she was eight months ago. She hadn’t lied or deceived him.
She was not a criminal like the rest of her family. But unfortunately, at the moment, she was a fugitive.
* * *
Seymour waited until the lawyer walked out of his office before he released the string of profanity he’d suppressed for the hour and a half that he’d waited for Jake Howard to show up with Lillian Davies.
But Jake hadn’t shown up—alone or with the beautiful fugitive. Jake had betrayed him.
“Son of a bitch!” he yelled.
“Hey,” Shane O’Hanigan said, grimacing as he stepped into the office. “Can you keep it down?”
“Howard hit him over the head,” Ryan added as he followed his brother inside the small space. The two dark-haired men were so damn tall and broad that they barely fit, but then the third brother joined them.
Trick O’Hanigan, bringing up the rear, snorted. “Shane’s getting old and slow, or he would have seen him coming.”
“He should have seen it coming,” Ryan agreed.
“He got past the two of you,” Shane said.
Usually the O’Hanigans’ sibling rivalry amused Seymour. But not now. Not when the three of them were making him feel claustrophobic in his own damn office. He jerked at his already loosened tie. Usually he didn’t bother wearing one with his polyester suit, but he’d dressed up for the lawyer.
Only to be made to look like a fool...
Damn Jake Howard!
“How the hell did that happen?” Seymour demanded to know. “How did Jake get the jump on the three of you?” As he stared up at them, their faces flushed slightly, making their green eyes look even brighter. They were all dark haired and green eyed—looking as much like triplets as individual brothers.
“I thought he was dead,” Shane said. “I don’t know how the hell he isn’t. But somehow he dodged every bullet those guys were firing at him.” He shook his head. “He must be bulletproof.”
“Nobody’s bulletproof,” Seymour said.
Not even Jake.
But it was probably going to take a bullet to prove that to him.