by Lori Ryan
Before she could argue any further, Jennie blanched and became even more pale, if that were possible, and Chad could swear she was about to pass out.
“Okay, I’m taking you home. Time for bed, Jen.”
Chad was surprised when Jennie didn’t try her usual negotiation with him. She let him lead her out of the office. He grabbed her purse and helped her out to his truck. She didn’t even try to fight him when he left her car at the office or during the car ride to her house – he could see how worn out she was. He got her settled in bed with her Labrador, Zeke, babysitting her, and was walking down her front porch when it hit him. Something had been digging at Chad’s brain for weeks. He froze as he realized what it was.
He knew Jennie’s body like he knew his own. And her breasts were larger than they used to be.
Chad’s mind flipped back to the Sutton Capital softball team’s last game. Jennie drank water instead of beer when they all went for pizza after the game. He remembered starting to pour her a beer, but she shook her head and pointed to her water. She’d shrugged it off when he raised an eyebrow.
Oh, Christ Jen.
Chad closed his eyes against the pain of knowing what Jennie was hiding from him. Such a handful of details shouldn’t be enough to tell him the truth, but he knew in his gut, he was right. Knew with certainty that Jennie was pregnant.
And, she hadn’t come to him. Hadn’t told him.
Oh, Jennie.
Chad sank down on the porch steps, head in his hands. Part of him wanted to storm back into the house and demand that she marry him. But, he couldn’t do that. Not to Jennie. Chad knew even the suggestion of marriage to someone other than Kyle would kill Jennie. Somehow, someway, Chad was going to have to come to grips with the fact that he wasn’t going to be able to be with the woman who was having his baby.
Chapter Twenty-one
Chad packed the last of the items in the extended cab of his truck. He was now ready to run with Jennie on a moment’s notice with everything they needed to stay off the grid for months. He had called some old friends and arranged for fake IDs for both of them. If anything came of this, and it looked like she was in danger, he’d keep her safe until she was ready to take the stand. If he had to, he’d relocate his whole life with her to keep her and the baby safe, both before and after the trial.
He hoped like hell he was overreacting. In fact, there was nothing more than his gut telling him he needed to be ready. As far as they knew, the Masters brothers were feeding the FBI evidence and would continue to do so until all of the people involved could be arrested. There was no reason to think Jennie would be in much danger from this.
But Chad trusted his gut. Listening to the creeping-finger feeling that walked up and down his spine had gotten him through a lot of tight scrapes in the military. He sure as hell wouldn’t ignore that feeling where Jennie was concerned.
At this point, Chad loved Jennie more than he could have ever imagined loving someone other than his family. But he also hated her for keeping his child a secret from him. No, that wasn’t true. It wasn’t hate. It was an anger that coursed through his veins like poison.
When he was away from her, he seethed with anger. How could she be pregnant with his child and not tell him about it? He trusted that she would never do what Andrew’s ex-girlfriend had done to him. She would never abort the baby without telling him. He knew Jennie and knew she didn’t have that in her to do. But as the week dragged on, and Jennie didn’t come to him, his fury built.
Until he saw her. Whenever he saw Jennie, the anger drained away. She looked so lost. She was hurting more than he could imagine. Whenever he saw her, he realized that it must be killing her to be having a child with a man who wasn’t her husband. The husband he knew in his heart she still loved.
And, so he waited. She would come to him eventually. He knew that. She just needed time.
In the meantime, he planned. He had cash ready to go. Burn phones. Clothes for both of them. Dog food and a crate for Zeke. And a remote cabin. If the time came, Chad wouldn’t trust Jennie’s safety to anyone other than himself.
***
The call came three days later. The FBI had lost track of the Masters brothers. They had missed their last two checkins with their handler and hadn’t been spotted since then. They were missing in the wind and no one had any idea where Rick Bandon had gone either.
Something suddenly felt very wrong to Chad.
Chapter Twenty-two
Jennie opened the door to a very intense-looking Chad. He didn’t wait for an invitation or even for her to step out of his way. He pushed his way into her house and dropped his duffle bag on the floor. Zeke didn’t bat an eye at Chad’s entrance. He knew Chad and didn’t consider him an intruder.
Jennie eyed her ‘faithful’ dog with raised brow.
Traitor.
“Gee, Chad. Please, come in. Mi casa is apparently su casa,” Jennie said with her typical bite of sarcasm.
All she wanted to do was crawl into bed. It might only be nine o’clock at night but her body was done. She needed sleep. Jennie couldn’t get over how tired this pregnancy was making her. Kelly had told her how tired she was when she was pregnant with Maddy but Jennie had no idea it could be this bad. She walked around in a constant fog.
“The Masters brothers are missing. I’m your new protection detail.” Chad kicked off his shoes, dropped his large body onto Jennie’s small couch, and put his feet up on the coffee table.
“Chad, I don’t need protection. My name isn’t even on the record yet. They have a whole investigation to do before my testimony even becomes a possibility,” Jennie said.
She crossed to the door and opened it, waiting for Chad to leave.
Naturally, he didn’t budge.
“Listen, Hulk, I’d love to have a slumber party and braid each other’s hair and all that, but that’s not happening tonight. I’m too tired. You need to go.”
“The hell I do. You’ll have to get over this, Jennie. The Masters brothers know you heard something and when their uncle showed up with a lawyer a few days later I’m sure they put two and two together. I’m not taking a chance that they know about you or that they may have told Rick Bandon about you. Until we know where they are, I’m not going anywhere. You’re going to have protection whether you like it or not. Whether it’s me or someone else.”
Oh, enough is enough. What the hell?
Jennie was more than a little annoyed at this point. She sure as hell couldn’t share a house with Chad. Not now. Not until she figured out what to do about the baby.
“Chad, I told you––”
In the split second before he rose from the couch, Jennie saw something she had never seen in Chad before. Unbridled anger. Anger he wasn’t trying to cover or calm or neutralize the way he usually did. The man who was always in control was suddenly, very much out of control and coming at her full force and there wasn’t anything funny about it.
Jennie swallowed her words and stepped back as Chad filled the space in front of her.
“You’re having my fucking baby, Jennie!” Chad bellowed. “I’ll protect you for as long as I damn well please.”
Jennie stood, eyes wide, speechless for several minutes as she watched Chad regain control. She could feel the tears coming and she clenched her jaw to try to stop them as she watched Chad coil back all of the rage he had let loose moments before, until his mask was back in place. When he spoke again he was quiet. Controlled. But the anger was there. She could feel it pouring off him in waves.
“Did you think I wouldn’t figure it out? Did you think I wouldn’t notice? That I don’t know you better than you know yourself, Jennie?” Chad’s words spat from his mouth and Jennie recoiled. There was nothing she could say, she realized. Nothing to make him forgive her for this.
“H-how did you know?” Her voice sounded quiet, almost foreign to her own ears.
Chad’s smirk was bitter. “I observe, Jennie. It’s what I do. I saw how tired you were. Yo
u’re tired all the time. Just like Kelly was.” Chad’s gaze fell to her breasts, and Jennie had to purposefully resist the urge to cross her arms over them. She knew they were slightly bigger than they used to be. But, how the hell could he know that?
“At first, I thought you must be sick but then I noticed the difference in your body. I know every inch of you, remember, Jen?”
He always said ‘Jen’ so playfully, almost intimately. This time, it shot out of his mouth like the taste of it was bitter on his tongue. “You’re not gaining weight yet, but your body has changed.”
Jennie shook her head, trying to clear the fogginess she felt all the time now.
“What makes you think the baby is yours?” It was probably the wrong tactic to try to deny what they both knew was true, but she wasn’t ready to share her secret yet. She wasn’t ready for anyone to know. She hadn’t even told Kelly.
Chad’s face fell. With a sad defeated voice, he spoke what they both knew couldn’t be denied. “Because you haven’t been with anyone but me, Jennie.”
Jennie shook her head, hanging on to the denial as long as she could. “You don’t know that. You don’t––”
“I do, Jen.” Chad reached out, brushing his fingertips down her cheek, causing a shiver of longing for what she couldn’t have. “I do know, Jen, because it damn near killed you to be with me.”
Chad let his hand drop to his side and stepped back from Jennie. He crossed to the couch and lay on it, arms behind his head, feet propped on the arm because they wouldn’t fit on the couch itself. He didn’t look at her. Only closed his eyes. She knew he was done talking.
“Go to sleep, Jennie. Just go to sleep.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Special Agent Burke of the FBI, the agent who was in charge of the Bandon investigation in Florida, called Chad at seven the next morning to let him know the Masters brothers had been found. They were both dead and neither death had been easy. Rick Bandon was spotted on video at the airport in Hartford, Connecticut. They didn’t have a clue where the man had gone after that.
Chad brushed off the aches and pains from his night on the couch and sat up. Hartford was much too close to Jennie for Chad’s comfort. There was no way in hell it was a coincidence the guy was here. As he called quietly to Zeke, luring the dog out of Jennie’s bed with sausage treats, he dialed Jack’s number.
When Jack answered, Chad could hear the sound of a crying baby in the background. He felt a sharp pain as the thought crossed his mind that Jennie might not let him raise his baby with her.
Screw that. I’ll raise my child with her no matter what.
Chad shoved aside those thoughts. He needed to get Jennie out of there. He snapped a leash on Zeke and took the dog outside.
“Jack, I’m taking Jennie away for a while. The Masters brothers are dead. Tortured and shot. Rick Bandon is missing but he was last seen in Connecticut.”
“I don’t like the sound of that. Could he have found out about Jennie?”
“I don’t know, but I’m not taking any chances. The Masters brothers knew someone had found evidence that forced their uncle to come to them and get them to turn themselves in. It would be easy for them to narrow it down to Jennie and me after they ran into her outside their office. When their uncle showed up two days later with a lawyer, they had to suspect it was Jennie and me. We used our real names for that trip. I’m not taking that chance. I’ve got everything set in place. I’ll call you from a burn phone when we get where we’re going. But, listen, Jack. I don’t know how long we’ll be gone. I hate to leave you guys with half your security team gone.”
Chad and Jennie worked with three others in the security and investigations department at Sutton. If they were out for months, that could really screw things up.
“Don’t even think about that. Keeping Jennie safe is your only job right now. And, make sure she knows her job is safe no matter how long she’s gone. We’ll manage until you get back.”
“Can you send Andrew out to Jennie’s parents’ place to let them know what’s going on? I don’t want her to tell them by phone but they need to know she’s safe.” As he spoke, Chad opened his truck to let Zeke, who had now had a potty break, jump into the cab. He took off the leash, shut the door and walked back into the house.
“Yeah. I’ll send him out there this morning. Kelly knows where they live.”
“Go in the bottom drawer of my desk at the office. There are two bags of burn phones. The top bag is for you and Kelly and the bottom bag is for Jennie’s parents. I’ve got the numbers for all of them so we can reach you when we need to. Make sure Jennie’s parents know they need to throw the phone away in a dumpster or public trash can after they use it. We’ll only use each phone one time,” Chad instructed.
“Got it. Be careful, Chad,” Jack said.
“Always,” Chad said with a grin he didn’t feel and then he ended the call.
He tossed his phone on the kitchen counter and grabbed Jennie’s purse. He dug for her phone and pulled it out. She had several missed calls from a number Chad recognized immediately. Agent Burke.
Shit.
He was willing to bet that Burke would be pushing for Jennie to make a statement now and Chad didn’t want her talking to anyone about what she saw until Rick Bandon was in custody. Chad tossed her phone on the counter with his. He had five burn phones waiting for them in the car. They’d use each once and then toss or destroy it. They were taking his truck but in the cab he had plates that couldn’t be traced back to him. They’d get out of town and then stop and put the new plates on. He had everything in place.
Now to deal with the little hellcat in the bedroom who probably wouldn’t go with him willingly. Chad stood at the foot of the bed and watched Jennie sleep. He hated to wake her, but they needed to get on the road. Chad pondered how to get a pregnant woman to the car. He’d normally toss her over his shoulder but that was out since he didn’t want to put any pressure on her stomach. She wasn’t showing yet, but he had no clue what could or couldn’t hurt the baby at this stage, so he wasn’t taking chances.
Chad finally slipped his arms under her shoulders and legs, lifting her in a cradle hold. If he held her tightly, she shouldn’t be able to slip away.
Jennie came awake groggily and looked up at him. “Chad?” Her brow furrowed with confusion but he could also see the exhaustion evident in her face. When they got to the cabin, he needed to find out if this level of fatigue was normal for someone at her stage of pregnancy. She seemed too tired, too sick. And, that also scared the hell out of him.
“Time to hit the road, Jen. Rick Bandon may be headed this way and I’m pretty sure he has your name. You and I are going away for a bit until the feds can pick him up,” Chad said as they moved quickly through her small house and out the front door.
“What? No! Put me down, Chad. You can’t do this!” Jennie kicked and squirmed in his arms but Chad held tight.
Oh, shit.
Old Mrs. Stempski was out on her porch in her bathrobe, newspaper in hand, watching as Chad forcibly removed Jennie from her house.
Not good.
“Hi, Mrs. Stempski! How are you this morning?” Chad called out cheerfully as he pinned Jennie’s arms with a tighter grip.
“Is everything all right, Chad?” the nosy busybody asked.
“Oh sure. Dentist appointment,” he said. “She does this every time.”
“I do not! Call the police, Mrs. Stempski! He’s kidnapping me!”
Chad put Jennie down in front of the passenger side door, holding her tightly with one arm as he swatted her ass with the other. “Knock it off. You’re going whether you like it or not.”
He smiled again at Mrs. Stempski.
Zeke barked excitedly from the back seat as if he were going on a fun trip, apparently unconcerned that his mistress was being carted off against her wishes.
“Some watchdog,” Jennie mumbled.
“You listen to that boy, Jennie, and let him take you to the
dentist. You have to take care of your teeth, Dear!”
Chad barely suppressed a laugh at the look of shock on Jennie’s face when Mrs. Stempski not only bought his story but began to lecture Jennie about proper oral hygiene.
Chad put Jennie in the truck and buckled her in, ignoring the rush his already ridiculously turned-on body felt when his arm grazed her chest.
As Chad rounded the front of his truck, he kept the key chain pointed at the truck. Jennie unlocked the electronic locks; he locked them. She unlocked them again; he locked them.
Now how to unlock them fast enough to get in and then lock them again without her getting out? He’d have to get Jennie to go along with his plan somehow. He crossed back over to her side and opened her door, blocking her escape with his body.
Speaking quietly so Mrs. Stempski couldn’t hear, he appealed to Jennie, hoping she’d see reason.
“Jen, the Masters brothers were found dead. They were tortured and then shot in the head. This guy isn’t screwing around. I know you’ll never love me the way I love you, Jennie. And I’ll find a way to live with that. But, I won’t lose you. You are leaving with me now, whether you like it or not.”
Jennie stilled and watched him wide eyed. He hated to scare her like that, but she needed to understand what they were up against. She needed to know the truth so he could protect her.
Jennie nodded her head, saying nothing, but he knew she’d acquiesced. She would let him protect her, at least for the time being.
Chad shut the door, raised a hand to wave at Mrs. Stempski, and pulled away from Jennie’s home, not at all sure when or if he’d ever be able to bring her back to it.
Chapter Twenty-four
Jennie stared out at the yellow lines of the road. It seemed they’d passed miles and miles of them.