Baby Breakout (12 page)

“About the money?” Rowe asked. “I checked all her financial records. Erica Towsley doesn’t have it.”

Jed released a breath of relief. For three years he had believed she had betrayed him, and he’d hated her for it. And he’d hated himself for being a fool for her. It was good to know that he had been wrong about that. About her…

“A couple of years ago she inherited some money,” Rowe continued, “a building and a bookkeeping business in a trust from an aunt, but there’s no other money. She barely has enough to cover her expenses.”

He had seen the building and the bookkeeping business on the main floor of it. It was nothing like the building Marcus Leighton had owned. As dilapidated as it was, she hadn’t inherited much—more a money pit than a source of income.

“What about Leighton? Did you check his financials, too?”

“He got a chunk of change before your trial began and some mysterious deposits over the past three years,” Rowe said, confirming his suspicions, “but not the amount that was embezzled from your clients and your firm before the murders.”

“That money had to go somewhere…”

“I can’t find it,” Rowe said, frustration making his voice even raspier. “I’ve brought the records along with me, so you can go over them. That’s your area of expertise, not mine.”

“You track down drug money all the time, following it up the ladder to whoever’s in charge.” That was partially how the man had busted the warden of Blackwoods Penitentiary. The other part involved the hit the warden had put out on the DEA agent, ordering Jed to carry out that murder.

Rowe nodded in acceptance, not arrogance. “But this person’s skills exceed mine. By far. Whoever hid those embezzled funds knows how to hide money where it won’t ever be found.”

Oh, God, it had to be…even though it made no sense, even though it wasn’t possible…

“She’s right and you’re a damn liar,” Rowe accused him, his eyes narrowed as he studied Jed’s face. “You definitely know who the hell set you—”

Sirens saved Jed from uttering another lie. They echoed inside the hangar, bouncing off the tin walls and ceiling. Then the thump, thump, thump of helicopter blades drowned out the sirens.

Had Jed been a fool to trust this lawman? Had he been set up? And now, even before a voice announced it, he was surrounded with no means of escape.

* * *

J
ED
PROBABLY
THOUGHT
he’d lost him. He ignored the quick sting to his pride. It didn’t matter what Jed believed. It didn’t even matter if he believed what he’d seen…

Nobody else would believe him if he shared his suspicions. It sounded crazy and would make Jed sound crazy. And the escaped convict would have no way of proving his suspicions.

He
would make certain of that. He twisted a silencer onto the end of his gun. All he had to do was wait for the perfect moment.

It would all be over soon.

No one else would know who was really responsible for Jedidiah Kleyn’s tragic fall from hero to desperate convict but
him
.

And Jed…

Chapter Eleven

Was this how prison had felt for Jed?

Enclosed?

Tight?

Airless?

Erica had never realized she had issues with claustrophobia…until now. Thank God Isobel was safe with her aunt, and even though Erica had just met Macy, she knew the woman would protect her niece. While Erica worried about her child, she wouldn’t have wanted her with her mother.

Erica was trapped beneath a grate in the cement floor, in a shallow drainage tunnel through which oil, gas and water ran from overhauled planes into holding tanks under the hangar.

But was it the small space in which she was confined or was it the man with whom she was confined that had her feeling panicked and overwhelmed?

Jed lay half-sprawled across her, as if shielding her with his body in case someone opened fire on them. But no one knew they were here…

“I know he’s here,” a deep male voice declared with absolute certainty.

“Sheriff York, you wasted your time coming all the way here from Blackwoods County,” Rowe Cusack told the man. “And you wasted the time of all of these local officers you brought in as backup.”

Fortunately the sheriff had already dismissed those officers after they had thoroughly searched the hangar. Or maybe not so thoroughly…

York pitched his voice lower when he replied, “I’m out of my jurisdiction, so I had to notify the local authorities that they potentially had one of the escaped convicts in their area.”

“You should have let me handle this,” a woman remarked with little respect for the sheriff’s efforts. “Since I wouldn’t have had to notify anyone. They overreacted and scared off the escapee before I had a chance to apprehend him.”

“Ms. Franklin is a bounty hunter,” Sheriff York explained to Rowe, his voice gruff with disdain. “She is the one that used some questionable measures to determine that you’re helping Kleyn.”

Rowe snorted loudly. “And you believed
a bounty hunter?
”

“On national television and to me personally, you admitted yourself that you think he’s innocent,” York said.

Erica had seen the DEA agent’s interview replayed that morning when Jed had been in her room, watching their daughter sleep. Until then she hadn’t seen the whole interview, just a few terse responses from the DEA agent to the reporters’ incessant questions. He had been much more loquacious during his interview and had shared his opinion of Jed with the reporters.

“I do believe he’s innocent,” Rowe told the sheriff and the bounty hunter. “And I intend to prove his innocence so that his conviction gets overturned and he’s released from prison.”

“But first he has to go back to prison in order to be released,” the sheriff pointed out, “so tell us where he is.”

“Why do you think that Jedidiah Kleyn would come to me?” Rowe asked.

“Because you’re dating his sister,” the bounty hunter answered. Apparently it was no lie that she had some sources.

“I’m engaged to his sister,” Rowe corrected her with obvious pride in his fiancée. “But I’m still a lawman. If Jed comes to me, I will bring him in to authorities myself.”

Ms. Franklin snorted now as loudly—and unladylike—as Rowe had. “Like your
fiancée
is going to allow that.”

“My fiancée respects the law,” Rowe replied, his voice deepening with the implication that the bounty hunter did not.

“Who’s the kid she’s hanging on to?” Ms. Franklin asked, prying for even more information. “I pulled up some information on Kleyn’s sister and nothing ever mentioned her having a baby.”

Over Jed’s shoulder and through the thin slats of the grate, Erica discerned the shadow of the woman’s arm pointing toward the room where Macy had stayed with Isobel while Mommy and her friend Jed “played hide-and-seek” with the police officers.

“But she looks just like your fiancée,” the woman continued, “so she must be a relative.”

Erica opened her lips, but before so much as even a gasp of fear could slip out, a big hand closed over her mouth. And Jed’s face blocked her view of the grate, his eyes staring down into hers. With no words, he was asking her to trust him—that somehow, he would protect their daughter.

“She’s proof that Jed’s not here,” Rowe said. “No one would want a child anywhere near a wanted man with a shoot-on-sight order out on him.”

“That’s not true,” the sheriff said, quick to deny the claim.

“It may not be official, but it’s true,” Rowe insisted. “The governor put out the bounty on his head and someone else put out the shoot-on-sight order with a substantial reward offered for his death.”

The sheriff sucked in a breath as if in acknowledgment of what the DEA agent claimed.

“He’s right,” the bounty hunter agreed. “There actually is a shoot-on-sight order out on this escaped convict. He killed a cop, man—”

“He didn’t kill anyone.” Rowe defended him, his voice rising in anger.

“He was convicted,” Ms. Franklin stubbornly maintained, “so in everyone else’s mind, that makes him guilty.”

Jed’s stare intensified, as if he was looking in Erica’s eyes to see if she also found him guilty. While she had completely accepted his innocence of the crimes for which he’d been convicted, she couldn’t trust that he hadn’t changed in prison. That being sent there despite his innocence hadn’t so embittered him that he wasn’t an entirely different man from the one she’d fallen in love with so long ago.

“And a lot of people don’t think that two lifetimes was a sufficient sentence for what he’d done,” the bounty hunter said. “They think he deserved death.”

“Michigan doesn’t have the death penalty,” Rowe reminded her.

She snorted again—even louder than before. “That’s too bad.”

Erica shivered at the woman’s coldness. No doubt she would comply with the shoot-on-sight order if she actually caught sight of Jed. If Erica were stronger, she would have shifted them around, so that she was on top. But she wasn’t big enough to hide Jed. She could only hope that the bounty hunter didn’t look into the grate and discover them.

“Cusack’s also right about not wanting the kid around,” Ms. Franklin continued. “Kleyn might be monster enough to use a child as a shield…”

Jed’s body had already been tense as he lay atop Erica, but now his muscles tightened more, as if he were struggling for control.

Was that why he had insisted that she and Isobel come along with him? Not to protect them but to protect himself?

To use his daughter as a shield…

A muscle twitched along his jaw, as if his control was slipping. Or as if he had read her reaction and knew that her doubts were back.

She had been a fool to trust him, though. A fool to come along with him. While it might not have been a good idea for her to wait for the police to show up at her apartment, especially given the way they had stormed the hangar, she could have taken Isobel someplace else. She had enough money in her account to hole up in hotels for a few nights.

The woman continued, “But I doubt Cusack here would do the same. Until this mess at Blackwoods, his record was exemplary.”

“Still is,” Rowe said. “Sheriff, you wasted your time and the officers’ time in coming here.”

“I don’t think so,” the sheriff replied. “I think you know a lot more than you’re willing to admit.”

“Yes,” the bounty hunter agreed. “But he’s not going to tell us anything.”

“No.” Rowe confirmed her accusation. “I’m not…”

“If you’re aiding and abetting him, you’re going to lose your job,” the sheriff threatened, “and your freedom. Again.”

According to what he had shared on the news broadcast, the DEA agent had been undercover at Blackwoods Penitentiary when his cover had been blown and someone had nearly killed him. So he knew what it was like to be locked up like Jed had been locked up the past three years.

“Don’t worry about me,” Rowe said. “Worry about catching all those escaped convicts. Kleyn isn’t the only one, you know.”

Several prisoners had broken out of Blackwoods Penitentiary during the riot—not just Jed, but Jed was the one everyone had focused on apprehending.

Or killing.

* * *

M
ACY
COULDN
’
T
STOP
STARING
at her brother’s child—her niece. The little girl was so adorable. And smart. She’d said nothing when the officers had stormed the hangar. But her little chubby fingers had tightly gripped Macy’s hand—as they did now while they waited to see if Mommy and her friend were discovered in their hiding place.

Her friend?

She didn’t know Jed was her father. But then how would Erica Towsley have explained to the child why she couldn’t see her daddy—because he was in prison for two murders.

Macy wanted Erica to explain some things to her, though, like why she hadn’t come forward at Jed’s trial. And why she had never let Jed know that he was a father. He couldn’t have known before he’d broken out of prison, or he would have asked Macy to check on the little girl and her mother and make sure they were doing okay.

They weren’t doing okay now. Just by being with Jed, they were in danger. Those local officers had all had their guns drawn until Sheriff York had ordered them holstered. If he hadn’t been present, she was certain shots might have been fired.

And if Jed was discovered hiding in that grate, she suspected that shots might still be fired.

Macy lifted the child in her arms and turned away from the window that looked onto the rest of the hangar. She couldn’t protect her brother now—not if the sheriff and the bounty hunter found him.

But she would protect his daughter. She didn’t want the little girl to witness the executions of her parents…

* * *

E
VEN
AFTER
THE
HANGAR
DOOR
slid closed again, Jed held his breath. Rowe might not have really convinced the sheriff and the bounty hunter to leave. They might have only pretended to accept his claims and could be waiting for Jed to step out of his hiding place.

If he had been alone, waiting them out would have been no problem. He’d waited three years for the opportunity to prove his innocence. And those three years had been spent in a hole far worse than this hiding place.

The reason it was so hard to wait was Erica. She lay under him, her body soft and warm beneath his. Her face was so close to his that all he had to do was turn his head slightly to skim his lips across hers. But he wanted more than her kiss.

More even than her body.