by Lisa Childs
“You better run!” Katie shouted at him. “Pervert!” She swung at him again and hit his shoulder as he headed toward the stairs.
He ushered Lillian down the steep steps of the old house. He kept his hand around her arm to steady her. She slipped once and nearly fell but he caught her. As they neared the open front door, shots rang out—chipping wood from the jamb.
Katie screamed again.
“Stay up there!” Jake shouted at her. “Get the kids to the back of the house!”
Katie disappeared from the top of the stairs, so hopefully, she had done as he’d told her. But Jake didn’t wait to find out; he tugged Lillian toward the back of the house, careful to keep himself between her and the front door, where the shooter must have been standing. The shots continued to ring out, breaking the picture window, rustling the blinds, before plunging into the drywall over Jake’s head.
Lillian froze, as if paralyzed with fear.
“Come on!” Jake yelled. Whatever patience he’d possessed—which had never been much—had left him when he’d awakened alone.
Lillian gasped at his shout but then she moved, running through the kitchen with him toward the back door. He stepped out first, with his gun drawn, but the shooter was still at the front of the house. Jake could have slipped around the front; he could have taken out the gunman.
But he had a feeling he knew who it was and Lillian wouldn’t want him to kill her brother. He remembered how she’d screamed when she’d thought he might hurt her dad and her brother Dave. And if that was dimwit Donny with the gun, there was no talking to him now—not unless Jake shot him to make him stop shooting.
Then they would get no answers.
Lillian had parked the SUV down the block. Jake had seen it when the cab had dropped him off. So keeping low on the sidewalk behind the cars parked at the curb, he led her to the SUV. When they opened the doors, though, the gunman saw the lights flash on, and swung his weapon toward them.
One bullet glanced off the metal—another cracked the plastic of the side mirror.
“Keys!” Jake shouted.
And Lillian passed them over to him.
He jammed them in the ignition and started the SUV. The shots kept firing, even as he pulled away. But this gunman was a worse marksman than the other guys who’d fired at them. They escaped with all the glass intact.
But Jake was not appeased. He was furious.
* * *
Lillian had never seen Jake like this. He was so angry that his face was flushed, and his pulse pounded in a jagged vein distended across his temple. Was he angry over getting shot at or over her sneaking out while he was sleeping?
The first question that she asked, though, was, “How did you find me?”
Did their minds work the same? After making love, had he come to the same conclusion she had?
“The rental has built-in GPS,” he said, “for just these instances—when someone steals it.”
“I didn’t steal it!” She didn’t need a charge of auto theft added to the embezzlement charge. “I borrowed it.”
“You didn’t ask permission.”
“Because you would have said no,” she replied.
“And with good reason!”
She’d had a good reason. “I was looking for Donny.”
“I figured as much.”
“You did?” She was nearly as shocked as she’d been when Timmy had screamed. “You didn’t think I was on the run?” She had been worried that leaving like she had, after they’d made love, would make him think he’d been right—that she was just like her family, trying to elude justice. But she’d been trying to make sure it was served—to Tom Kuipers.
“That was my first thought,” he admitted.
She glanced over at him. The streetlights passing over them illuminated his face through the windshield. His pulse was still pounding in that vein. “You’re lying,” she said. “That wasn’t your first thought.”
She knew what he’d thought—the same thing she would have if she was him. “You thought I used sex to trick you...”
His face flushed again. But it wasn’t with anger now. “That might have crossed my mind, as well,” he admitted.
And she didn’t think that thought had completely left it. “That wasn’t the case at all,” she assured him. “I couldn’t fall asleep—I just kept thinking about the flash drive and Donny. And it dawned on me that he might have gone back to an ex.” Now her face flushed with embarrassment as she realized it might sound to Jake as if she’d made an assumption about the two of them.
She and Jake weren’t back together. He hadn’t come to her like Donny had come to Katie, begging for another chance. Jake had come for her—to take her into custody so he could collect another bounty for a Davies fugitive.
“Not that we’re back together,” she hurriedly added. “We’re not. We can’t be.”
“Because you hate me,” he murmured.
“I don’t even know who you are now,” she said, and she pulled the wad of papers from the glove box. “I don’t know if you lied to me when we met, or if you’re living the lie now as Jake Howard. Who are you really?”
He took the papers from her hand and tossed them back into the glove box. “I’m trying to keep you safe,” he said.
“By using aliases?” Which was the alias, though, and which was the real Jake?
“I’m making sure that nobody can track us down,” he said. “But it’s hard to keep you safe when you run off again and again.”
“I didn’t run off.” This time. She couldn’t argue that she had run away from him before, though. “I needed to find Donny. And I didn’t think he’d talk to me if you were around.”
He sighed. She took it as an acknowledgment that she was right. Donny wouldn’t have talked with him present.
“He didn’t talk,” Jake agreed. “He just started shooting.”
“No! That wasn’t Donny shooting,” she said. “One of us must have been followed from the hotel.”
And now Jake pulled the SUV into the parking lot of that same hotel. “Why did you bring me back here? It’s not safe. I just said one of us must have been followed from here.”
He shook his head. “That was one gunman wildly firing those shots. And Kuipers hasn’t ever sent just one man after us.”
That was true. But what he was saying...
She shook her head. “Donny doesn’t even own a gun.”
“He does now,” Jake said. “But lucky for us, he’s a horrible shot.”
Donny would be, since he had never fired one before. Lillian was the only grandchild that Gran had taught how to shoot. She hadn’t wanted to be responsible for teaching the boys. She’d figured they’d learn on their own.
Lillian still couldn’t accept that Donny had a gun, though. “My gran is the only one with a real gun. My dad and brothers only use airsoft ones.” Her face heated with embarrassment because she knew Jake was well aware of what they had used those guns to do. Rob people.
Jake uttered a ragged sigh and pushed one of his hands through his overly long hair. “Those were real bullets, Lillian. Pellets wouldn’t have made it through the wood and drywall.”
And nearly into Jake’s head. Those shots had come so close to hitting him. Lillian shuddered. But she still didn’t want to believe it. “That wasn’t him. He wouldn’t shoot bullets into Katie’s house.”
Jake shrugged. “Maybe he heard her or the kid scream, and he thought...”
What Lillian had thought, that Jake was a bad man who’d broken into the house. Even after learning his identity—whatever that was—Donny would have still thought Jake was a bad man breaking into the house.
“I need to go back without you,” she said. “I can get Donny to talk to me, to hand over that flash drive.” If he still had it.
He hadn’t given it to her
lawyer like she’d requested. But he wouldn’t have given it to Tom Kuipers, would he?
“They’re gone,” Jake said. “They probably took off the moment we did.”
“You don’t know that. Katie has kids. A house. A job. She can’t just take off,” Lillian said. “She’s there.”
“And so are the police by now,” Jake said. “If you go back, you’ll be taken right into custody.” He turned off the ignition and turned toward her. “But maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.”
She gasped. How could he say that? After what they’d just shared?
Sex. That was all it was. At least for him.
For her, it had been so much more.
Another mistake. A terrible mistake. Because she was beginning to fall for him, even though she had no idea who he really was. Last time she’d done that, she’d been unaware. This time she had no excuse.
* * *
Seymour had actually considered going home tonight. At least to shower and maybe sleep in his bed instead of slumped over his desk. But when he headed toward the office door, someone started pounding on it. “Police, open up!”
He could have asked if they had a warrant. But it was late. And he didn’t care. He opened the door. “Yes, Officer?”
The cop didn’t look familiar to him. And Seymour knew most of River City PD’s finest. He wasn’t even sure if that was really a River City PD uniform. The color was right—the navy blue. But the insignia...
Didn’t the shield on the shoulder look different? More like a Boy Scout badge than what real officers wore.
He quickly looked away from it, though. He would go along with the ruse. After that call that had threatened his life, it was safer than letting the guy know he was onto him.
“Seymour Tuttle?” the man asked. He was an older guy, probably in his fifties, but still younger than Seymour. He had hair, too, but it was mostly gray. And he had some kind of bearing about him that made Seymour think of Jake, like a military bearing or something.
Seymour nodded. “Yes, Officer...?”
He wanted a name. But the man didn’t provide one.
Instead, he launched into a monologue. “We’ve been investigating several shootings around the city and outskirts of it the past two nights. We believe these incidents involve a fugitive and perhaps one of your bounty hunters.”
Seymour shared the man’s suspicions. But he just shrugged. “I don’t know anything about that but what I’ve seen on the news.”
Because Jake was damn well not talking to him, or when he did, he wasn’t telling him the damn truth.
“You didn’t post bond for a Lillian Davies?”
It was already a matter of public record—as his threatening caller had informed him, so Seymour nodded. “I did.”
“And since she missed her court date, she is now in violation of her parole.”
Seymour nodded again.
“So you’ve sent a bounty hunter to bring her back?”
He had sent several now, thanks to Jake not doing his job. Of course, the O’Hanigans had backed off, though, which had surprised Seymour. Usually they’d do anything to collect a bounty, especially if they could beat Jake to it.
This visit was another surprise, one that had a chill chasing down his spine. “Has there been another incident?” he asked.
Had something happened to Jake?
Again, the officer didn’t answer his question. “We need to know the identity of the bounty hunter you’ve sent to apprehend Lillian Davies.”
Seymour shrugged and lied, “I don’t know who went after her. I post the fugitives, and every bounty hunter can go after them.”
“I need a list of your bounty hunters, then,” the officer said.
Seymour resisted the urge to smile. A beat cop in a uniform wouldn’t have been sent to investigate a string of shootings. A detective would have been sent instead.
“You’ll need to show me a warrant for that list,” Seymour said.
The man showed his gun instead, pulling it from the holster to point it at Seymour. “Here’s my warrant, old man.”
Because sometimes fugitives came after him before he could go after them, Seymour had a panic switch on his key chain. He hit it now and alarms blared and lights flashed.
Over the commotion, he shouted, “The real police will be on their way soon.”
So if the guy pulled that trigger, there was the possibility he would be seen fleeing the murder scene. That possibility must have occurred to the gray-haired man, as well, because instead of pulling that trigger, he turned and ran.
Through the door the guy had left open, Seymour watched the pseudo-cop jump into the passenger’s side of a white cargo van.
That hadn’t been a prank call from one of Lillian Davies’s idiot relatives that Seymour had received the other night. Whoever was after Lillian Davies didn’t want her getting brought to the authorities.
They wanted her brought to the morgue and apparently they now wanted Jake brought along with her.
Chapter 16
For the first time since Jake had known Seymour Tuttle he heard fear in the old man’s voice. From all the years he’d dealt with criminals, the bail bondsman had seen so much that nothing had ever seemed to faze him.
Until now.
“I don’t like this, Jake,” Tuttle told him through the cell phone speaker.
Jake didn’t like it, either, any of it. “Did you get a plate for the van? And did you give that information to the police?”
“There was dirt smeared over the plate,” Tuttle replied. “I couldn’t read it.”
These guys knew what they were doing, knew how to elude the police.
“Damn it.”
“Jake, you need to talk to the police,” Tuttle urged him. “The real police. You’re getting in too deep.”
He knew that. He felt like he had the last time he’d been seeing Lillian Davies, like he was going under and couldn’t fight his way to the surface anymore.
But he admitted nothing to Tuttle, who added, “You’re harboring a fugitive, Jake. That will land you in jail.”
He couldn’t argue that, either. He would undoubtedly be facing criminal charges himself before all this was over. He just hoped it ended with the charges against Lillian being dropped.
“So are the police going to investigate Tom Kuipers now?” Jake asked.
“Why?” Tuttle asked. “Nothing has been traced back to him. Not that call to my office. Not that van with the smeared plate.”
“Not those men who died?” Jake asked.
“Nope,” Tuttle replied. “There was no record of any connection between them.”
Jake cursed again. Kuipers was good. Maybe too good to be caught. And if his guilt couldn’t be proven, Lillian’s innocence couldn’t be, either.
“You need to bring her in,” Tuttle said. “Or this isn’t going to end well for either of you.”
Jake clicked off the cell, not that he thought Tuttle would try tracing the call or anything. Seymour wouldn’t turn him in to the police. The O’Hanigans probably wouldn’t, either. But it would eventually be discovered that he was helping Lillian. And then he’d be in trouble.
“He’s right,” Lillian said from the bed across the hotel room. She was lying down yet, with her head resting on the pillow, but her beautiful blue eyes were open. “This isn’t going to end well.”
He’d had the call on speaker but with the volume turned low. He hadn’t wanted to wake her. But he wondered now if she’d actually been sleeping.
She needed to rest. There were dark circles beneath her eyes, marring the silky perfection of her skin.
“Are you okay?” he asked. He’d brought her back food from a nearby diner. But the burger and fries probably hadn’t been the healthiest meal for a pregnant woman.
She sighed,
sat up and pushed her hair back from her face. The pale blond locks tangled around her shoulders. “No. I won’t be okay until we find that damn flash drive. You should have let me go back and talk to Donny.”
“And I told you Donny was already gone,” he reminded her. “And the police were probably swarming the place after the reports of shots fired.”
“Will you face charges, too?” she asked as she sat up, her face tight with concern. “For helping me?”
He nodded. “Yes, I was supposed to bring you in the moment I found you.”
“Why didn’t you?” she asked. “Do you feel that guilty for deceiving me?”
He had felt guilty for a long time. Now he wasn’t sure what he felt...except protective. And not just of her.
“Is that baby mine?” he asked.
Her teeth sank into her bottom lip, and she hesitated a long moment before nodding.
“Damn it...”
She flinched. “I didn’t plan on getting pregnant,” she said. “It just happened.”
“I know.” That night they hadn’t used protection. That wondrous night, like the night before.
He uttered a ragged sigh.
“Are you really that upset with me?”
“I’m upset you didn’t tell me.” Maybe if he’d known months ago, she wouldn’t have been framed and arrested. If he’d been involved in her life, she might not have been in the danger she was.
Or she might have been in more. His job wasn’t the safest career choice.
“I knew you wouldn’t be happy,” she said. “You probably wanted to forget about me as much as I wanted to forget about you.”
He flinched now. But he deserved the emotional blow. And maybe he was a sucker for more, because he approached the bed and sat down beside her. Then he reached out and placed his hand over her burgeoning belly. The baby moved beneath his touch, fluttering and kicking, as if he was doing somersaults in her womb.
They had created a life together.
“Are you upset, then?” he asked. “Are you mad that you’re pregnant?”
“No,” she said—immediately and vehemently. “I am so happy about this baby. I can’t wait to hold him. To love him.”