Читать книгу Baby Breakout - Lisa Childs - Страница 9

Despite having sworn that she wouldn’t watch the news anymore, Macy Kleyn couldn’t look away from the television screen. But the reporters or, worse yet, the mug shot from when Jed had been arrested weren’t on the TV. The man whose face filled the screen was devastatingly handsome with a strong jaw, icy blue eyes and golden-blond hair.

But she didn’t have to watch the news to see him. All she had to do was glance over to where he sat at a desk in a corner of his open apartment. It was what he was saying to the reporters gathered for that prerecorded press conference that held her attention.

“Jedidiah Kleyn is not the dangerous convict that earlier reports are claiming,” he said, his deep voice vibrating in the TV speakers. “If not for Mr. Kleyn, I would not have made it out of Blackwoods Penitentiary alive. He saved my life, not once, but twice.”

Macy’s breath caught, but she released it in a shuddery sigh of relief. She would never be able to thank her big brother enough for saving the man she loved. But proving Jed’s innocence would be a great place to start. If she had ever been able to figure out where to start …

“Are you suggesting that three years in prison reformed him?” a disembodied voice asked from behind the camera.

Rowe snorted. “Blackwoods reforms no one. Three years incarcerated there would have broken a lesser man than Jedidiah Kleyn.”

“You seem to have an awful lot of respect for a cop killer,” another disembodied voice, this one full of derision, remarked.

“That’s not a question,” Rowe pointed out. “But I’ll answer it anyway. I don’t believe Jedidiah Kleyn is guilty of the crimes of which he was convicted. And I intend to prove his innocence.”

“Is that because Kleyn saved your life or because you’re dating his sister?”

The screen went black, the speakers silenced instead of vibrating with his sexy voice. So she turned toward the real man.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I’m not doing it for you,” he replied, as he tossed the remote onto the couch and turned back to his laptop.

She crossed the room to his desk and leaned over him. Pressing against his back, she rested her head on one of his broad shoulders. His soft hair tickled her cheek, making her tingle.

Everywhere.

She caught just a glimpse of his laptop screen before he snapped it shut. “GPS?” Hope quickened her pulse almost as much as being close to her fiancé had. “Did you find him?”

Rowe shook his head. “He terminated the call before I could pinpoint his location.”

“But you found out something,” she surmised.

He opened up the screen again and pointed to the number on it.

“There aren’t enough digits,” she said, her hope dashed.

“No,” her fiancé admitted, but he didn’t sound as defeated as she felt. “But the area code and first few digits indicate that he called from a pay phone.”

“Pay phone?”

He turned his face slightly toward her, his lips curving into a slight grin. “Apparently they still exist.”

“And you can track it down?”

“Yes. But that number—well, the digits we have of that number—is registered to several phones in rural areas surrounding Grand Rapids.”

“Rural?” Pay phones in farm towns? Maybe it made sense given that there were fewer towers and poorer cell reception.

Rowe shrugged. “Maybe he’s hiding somewhere in the countryside …”

The sick feeling in her stomach convinced her otherwise. “We both know Jed didn’t break out of prison to hide,” she said. “My brother isn’t hiding.”

She suspected that he actually wanted to be found. Not by authorities but by the person who had framed him.

After a slight hesitation, Rowe said, “He’s trying to clear his name.”

“You don’t believe that’s all he’s doing.”

“Do you?” Rowe asked. He spun his chair around and tugged her down so that she straddled his hard thighs. His hands cupped her face, tipping up her chin so that their gazes met.

“No,” she admitted. “If I had been framed for something I didn’t do, I’d want justice.” Even if she had to dole it out herself …

But did her brother want justice or revenge?

JED COULD KILL HER—for everything she had cost him: his freedom, his reputation, his heart …

But despite her duplicity, she still looked beautiful to him. She had the pale golden hair of an angel; it shimmered even in the dim light of the antique chandelier dangling from the high ceiling of her apartment. And her eyes were a bright clear blue—wide now with fear. With her delicate features and flawless skin, she looked so young and innocent.

Where were the lines of guilt and stress? Where was the regret for what she had done to him? Was she so heartless that she had never given him another thought after she’d so callously destroyed his life?

“You’re impersonating a government agent,” she accused him, gesturing toward the badge Jed had lifted off Rowe Cusack when he had saved the DEA agent during the prison riot.

With a twinge of guilt, he slid it back into the pocket of his jeans. Rowe hadn’t mentioned it, so he probably hadn’t realized that Jed was the prisoner who had stolen it from him. The riot had been so chaotic and dangerous that the man had, no doubt, been more concerned about his life than his badge.

“That’s the least of the charges I’m facing,” Jed pointed out. “Thanks to you.”

“Me?” Her voice cracked with emotion, and she stepped back, as if cowering from him in fear. “I had nothing to do with any of the things you’ve done.”

“You had everything to do with it.”

She shook her head. “No …”

He followed her, closing the distance between them. “Why did you do it?”

For three years that question had nagged at him. He could not figure out what her motivation had been.

Greed? Revenge? Once he had thought her too sweet and innocent for either emotion, but he’d had three years to realize how wrong he’d been about her.

“Wh-what did I do?” she asked, as if she really didn’t know.

He chuckled at her attempt to feign innocence. But then those looks of an angel had probably always let her get away with her misdeeds. No one would ever suspect how devious she really was. “You set me up, sweetheart.”

He had once called her sweetheart and meant it; he had been such a fool. “What did you get out of it? Money?”

If she had, she hadn’t spent it on this place. There were cracks in the plaster ceiling and walls, and the hardwood floors were worn. The curtains even fluttered at the windows, as if the cold air blew right through the thin panes of glass.

He moved closer, trapping her between his body and the wall she had backed up against. “Revenge?”

He’d thought that she had understood why he’d had to break up with her before he left for Afghanistan. It wouldn’t have been fair to expect her to wait for him, especially when there had been a strong possibility that he might not even return.

But he shouldn’t have worried about her; she definitely hadn’t waited for him. When he had come back home after his year-long deployment, she had already been wearing another man’s ring.

“Revenge?” She echoed his question. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. She hadn’t seemed to care enough about his dumping her to want revenge on him. But then they hadn’t been going out long when he’d received his deployment orders, calling him from the reserves back into active duty. “I don’t know why you did it.”

“Did what?” she asked, her brow furrowing with confusion.

Jed leaned down, so that his forehead nearly touched hers. “I don’t know why you helped frame me for murder. Or was it all your idea?”

From having once interviewed her for a job, he knew her educational background and IQ. She was more than smart enough to have masterminded the embezzlement, murders and frame-up herself. And he wasn’t the only man on whom she might have wanted revenge.

She gasped, and her breath was warm against his face. “I didn’t. I had nothing to do with those murders.”

Jed eased back to study her beautiful face. No wonder she had fooled him into falling for her lies and for her; she was a damn good actress because she nearly had him believing she wasn’t involved. And he knew better.

“You had to be in on it,” he insisted. “Or you would have come forward when I was arrested. Instead you disappeared.”

She shook her head, tumbling her blond hair around her slender shoulders. In a bulky wool sweater, she looked so small and fragile. But he wouldn’t let her looks deceive him again.

“I didn’t disappear,” she protested. “My aunt Eleanor’s health was failing, so I came home to take care of her.”

“My lawyer couldn’t find you.” And Jed had told the man that she might have returned to Miller’s Valley where she’d grown up with her great aunt.

Her brow furrowed again. “Mr. Leighton definitely found me. I talked to him.”

“No …”

Marcus Leighton wouldn’t have lied to him. He was more than Jed’s defense lawyer; he’d been his fraternity brother, too. And his friend.

“If he found you, he would have made you come forward.” And provide the alibi that would have cleared Jed of all the charges against him.

“Mr. Leighton didn’t want me to testify,” she said, “because my testimony would only make you look guiltier.”

Now he knew she was the one lying. He chuckled at her weak attempt to fool him. “I was with you during the murders. Your testimony would prove my innocence. You were my alibi.”

Her face flushed bright red, but she shook her head again in denial. “I can’t testify to what I can’t remember.”

“What the hell …? You’re claiming amnesia?” There was no way Marcus would have believed that, and if he’d put her on the stand, the jury would have realized she was lying, too. Why hadn’t Marcus put her on the stand if he’d actually found her?

“I was drugged,” she said. “And I have the test results to prove it. I don’t remember that night.”

No matter how hard he’d tried over the past three years, he hadn’t been able to forget that night. Or her …

How could she claim to remember none of it?

“So if using me was part of your plan, it didn’t work,” she said, anger replacing the fear in her eyes as she glared up at him. “I can’t alibi you.”

“You’re lying.” She had to be, otherwise he had lost his one hope of proving his innocence.

“Why would I lie?” she asked.

That was the question that had nagged at him.

Why?

A board creaked behind him, alerting him to someone else’s presence. Had he been set up again?

He grabbed Erica, wrapping one arm around her waist and his other around her neck, so he could threaten to snap it if her backup had a weapon. Then he whirled toward the intruder.

And pain clutched his heart with all the force of a gunshot. But he hadn’t been shot; he’d just been shocked by the appearance of the child who stumbled down the hall, wiping sleep from her dark eyes.

“Don’t hurt her,” Erica pleaded in an urgent whisper. “She’s just a baby.”

The child was actually two—probably almost three years old. She blinked and stared blearily up at him and Erica.

“Mommy?”

“Sweetheart, you need to go back to bed,” Erica said, her voice tremulous despite her obvious efforts to sound calm and reassuring.

The little girl’s lips pursed into a pout. “I wanna a drink,” she stubbornly insisted.

Suddenly aware of how tightly he held her, Jed dropped his arms from around Erica’s delicate frame. “You can get her the drink.” He pitched his voice lower, so only she could hear him. “I won’t hurt her.”

Erica glanced from him to her daughter and back, obviously reluctant to leave him alone with her child.

But this kid was his, too. She was the spitting image of his sister, Macy.

Erica must have taken him at his word because she left the little girl standing in front of him. But the refrigerator was only steps away, through an open archway. Erica watched him carefully as she backed into the kitchen.

He dropped to his knees in front of the little girl and asked, “How old are you?”

Her chocolate-brown eyes widened as she studied him. She was as fearful as her mother had seemed of him. But his size had even intimidated violent criminals enough that during his three years in one of the most dangerous prisons in the United States, not very many inmates had been brave enough to try to mess with him. So of course he was going to scare a small child.

But she lifted her pointy little chin, as if forcing herself to be brave, which made her even more like his feisty kid sister. Then she held up two fingers.

“You’re two years old?”

“I’ll be thrwee soon,” she replied with a slight lisp, like the one his sister had had until the speech therapist their parents hired had corrected it.

His parents had constantly been hiring specialists to fix Macy, so that she could be as perfect as they had considered their firstborn: him. But he had only been perfect until he had been charged with double homicide; then they had stopped considering him their son entirely. They’d forgotten all about him just as Erica had apparently tried to forget him.

“What’s your name?” he asked the child.

“Isobel,” she replied. “What’s yours?”

Dad. I’m your father.

Sure, Erica had been engaged before that night she’d spent with him—the night she claimed not to remember. But Isobel was not Brandon Henderson’s daughter, or she would have been blue-eyed and blond-haired like both her parents.

Instead she shared his coloring and looked exactly like his sister. She even sounded like Macy had at her age. Jed didn’t need a DNA test; he was certain. But before he could open his mouth to utter anything, Erica interrupted.

“Here’s your water, sweetheart!” She pressed a sippy cup into her daughter’s small hand and lifted the child into her arms. “Now let me tuck you back into bed.”

Jed could have vaulted to his feet and stopped her from carrying the child off down the hall. His reflexes were quick or he wouldn’t have survived three years at Blackwoods, not to mention his tour in Afghanistan.

But he let them go.

Then he slowly drew in deep breaths, steadying his racing pulse. The apartment was small, so he overheard their conversation, no matter how softly they spoke.

“Who is that man?” the little girl asked her mother. “What’s his name?”

“Jed,” Erica replied.

“But who is he?” The little girl persisted as stubbornly as she had demanded her now-forgotten glass of water. “I never seen him ‘fore. And he’s so big.”

“He’s just a friend,” Erica murmured. And he was surprised she didn’t choke on her lie.

But that proved just how consummate a liar she was. She was obviously lying about not remembering that night, and now he had the proof. No matter what she claimed about her child, he knew the truth.

He had a daughter.

So whoever had framed him, obviously with Erica’s help, hadn’t just stolen years of Jed’s life. He had lost precious years of Isobel’s life, as well. He had missed his daughter being born, taking her first steps, uttering her first words …

Somehow, that person would have to pay for what he had taken from Jed.

THE BLACKWOODS COUNTY JAIL offered the same basic amenities that the prison once had—before it had been destroyed during the riot. Former warden Jefferson James had a cot on which to sleep. He went to the cafeteria for meals and a recreational area for entertainment. But what he’d just seen on television hadn’t been entertainment, so he’d demanded to return to his cell.

The DEA agent continued to make Jefferson’s life difficult. If only Kleyn had killed him, like Jefferson had ordered the inmate …

But instead of killing him, he’d helped the DEA agent escape Blackwoods. Now the DEA agent wanted to return the favor and prove Kleyn innocent of the crimes of which he’d been convicted. He probably was innocent—that was why he’d disobeyed Jefferson’s order to kill. But his innocence made him even more dangerous to Jefferson. If proved unjustly convicted, his testimony would carry more significance. That was why he couldn’t testify …

A shadow, sliced by the bars, fell across the floor in front of Jefferson. “You wanted to see me?”

No. He could barely look at Sheriff Griffin York. The young lawman was everything Jefferson despised—self-righteous, honorable and law-abiding as well as law-enforcing. But he did want to talk to the man.

“Took you damn long enough to get here,” Jefferson griped.

“Kind of got my hands full cleaning up the mess from the riot,” York bitterly remarked.

“Did you round up all the escapees yet?”

York’s gaze hardened with resentment. “It’s only been a few days.”

“So you haven’t apprehended any of them?”

“Some of them,” the sheriff claimed and then goaded, “and some of your guards, as well. They’re already talking. They have a lot to say about you.”

Jefferson’s lawyer wasn’t worried about the testimony of coconspirators who had benefited from the crimes of which he was being convicted. It was Kleyn he worried about; he was the one who couldn’t talk.

“What about the cop killer?” he asked. “He still at large?”

The sheriff’s nostrils flared. “You don’t need to worry about him.”

Hope lifted Jefferson’s spirit. “He’s dead?”

“No. But his face is all over the news. He will be apprehended soon.”

Jefferson didn’t want him arrested. He wanted him dead. He had already put into motion the shoot-on-sight order; he just had to trust that someone else out there wanted Jedidiah Kleyn dead as badly as he did.

If the man had been framed, then the real killer would probably want to make sure Kleyn didn’t live long enough to discover his identity …

HE’S OUT. HOW DID THE son of a bitch break the hell out of prison?

How had he survived it? How had he survived the year he’d spent in a war zone? Jedidiah Kleyn was some kind of superhero. Or he had been, until his shining armor had been permanently tarnished.

He grinned, his chest swelling with satisfaction in accomplishing what he had barely considered possible. The perfect murder. Murders.

And the perfect revenge. Jedidiah Kleyn had lost everything.

But his life. Now it was time to take that, too.