Читать книгу The Bounty Hunter's Baby Surprise - Lisa Childs, Lisa Childs, Livia Reasoner - Страница 13

Chapter 4

His knuckles ached, straining from his efforts, as Jake clutched the steering wheel, fighting to keep it from spinning out of his grasp as the old truck careened wildly across the road.

Crouched yet in the small space between the dash and the front seat, Lillian screamed in fear. It wasn’t safe for her down there. She could hit her head on the passenger’s door or the dash. But it was better than getting it blown off.

The men in the van kept firing at them. Bullets pinged off the metal and cracked what was left of the glass.

He steered the truck out of the tailspin the van had sent it into when it had slammed into the rear bumper. Before the men could catch up again, Jake pressed hard on the accelerator. The truck jerked forward, and Lillian’s forehead bumped against the dash.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“No!” Her voice cracked with fear.

At least she hadn’t lost consciousness.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t lost the van yet, either. Bright lights glinted off his rearview mirror as the van accelerated, too, closing the distance between the vehicles again. He had to move faster.

“Hang on!” he warned her. Then he gunned the engine.

A whimper of fear slipped between her lips. He wanted to reach out and reassure her. But then he reminded himself that this was all her fault. Those men were shooting at them because of her.

“You must know who these guys are,” he insisted. “They showed up at your grandma’s house.”

“They must have followed you there,” she said.

Damn it. She was right. If these were the guys Mrs. Truman had talked about, the ones who’d shown up at Lillian’s place, they hadn’t seen the things she’d left behind six months ago. They couldn’t have learned what he had. But they might have staked out her apartment in case she showed up there. And they’d seen him instead.

“They probably don’t even know I’m in this truck,” she continued.

And they might not. He hadn’t known that she was inside it when he’d jumped into his truck. But she hadn’t just been inside it, she’d been trying to steal it. She couldn’t have known the rusted old pickup was his, though.

Could she?

He hadn’t used this vehicle when he’d been dating her. He’d used his pleasure vehicle instead, an old Chevrolet Nova he’d restored himself. This old truck was his work vehicle because its big block engine had more power. But at the moment it wasn’t fast enough.

“The last place I was before driving out here was your apartment. If they followed me...” And how the hell had they managed that without his noticing? “...then they followed me from there.”

The truck lurched forward as the van struck again. Metal crunched. He wasn’t sure if it was the truck’s rear bumper or the front of the van. He hoped like hell it was the front of the van. Maybe they’d disable their own damn vehicle.

“Lose them!” she yelled at him.

Her voice cracked now with anger. She wasn’t the sweet soft-spoken woman he remembered and whom he’d spent the past eight months missing. But then she must have never actually been that woman—the one he had started to fall for.

No, she was definitely a Davies.

Not that she didn’t have every right to be mad, with people shooting at them and trying to run them off the road.

Jake’s pulse pounded with fury. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so angry. He could remember the last time he’d felt helpless, though—when Lillian had sobbed heartbrokenly as he’d taken her dad and oldest brother into custody. He hadn’t been able to make her understand he’d just been doing his job.

But he suspected now that she’d always known who he was. She’d probably been playing him just as she must have played her boss when she’d embezzled money from the company for which she’d worked.

No matter what she’d done, though, he didn’t want anyone to hurt her. And with the way those guys had opened fire in the cottage, it certainly looked as though someone was trying to kill them. Jake didn’t intend to die, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let anyone harm Lillian.

He pressed harder on the accelerator. But then he took one hand from the steering wheel and pulled his gun from his holster. He extended it through the shot-out back window and using the rearview mirror, he took aim and fired at the van. Over and over again.

Glass shattered and the van tires squealed as it braked and then slipped into a skid. While it careened out of control behind them, Jake accelerated more and increased the distance between them. Despite this, he was tempted to turn back and find out who the hell they were and if he’d hit any of them...

But he glanced down at Lillian crouched yet on the floorboards, and he knew that he couldn’t risk it. He couldn’t risk her life.

If he hadn’t been outnumbered...

But even if he’d hit one or two of them, he would still be outnumbered. There had been so many of them firing at him in her grandmother’s house.

They had to be after her.

And he intended to find out why.

He steered around a couple of sharp hairpin curves, nearly raising the truck onto two wheels as he did. Then he spied a slight space between trees on the side of the street. It was probably some old two-track road leading back to an old cabin or an oil well. He braked and turned onto the nearly obscured trail. He turned so fast that the truck nearly flipped over on the passenger’s side.

And Lillian screamed again.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m trying to lose them.” And so far it looked as though he had.

The truck bounced along the rough road, as he continued down the two-track, deeper into the trees. Night had fallen, but the moon was big and bright enough that it might reveal their location unless he drove farther from the main road. Of course, if those guys found them Jake wouldn’t be able to escape with the truck.

He and Lillian would have to outrun the men on foot. As shot up as the truck was, that might not be a bad idea, even now. He wasn’t sure how much farther the beat-up old pickup could make it.

He stopped the truck and glanced out the back window to make sure they were deep enough into the woods so that they wouldn’t be seen from the road. But before he could even put the vehicle in Park, the passenger’s door opened—flashing on the dome light as she jumped out.

“Lillian!”

If the van went past and saw the light in the trees, their hiding place was blown. But she seemed more intent on getting away from him than the shooters.

Had she set up the ambush?

Jake followed her out and slammed the door shut behind him. But he couldn’t see her in the trees. He could only hear the occasional snap of a branch and the rustle of brush as she ran. She wasn’t getting away from him that easily.

But as he started after her, he heard the squeal of tires against pavement as a vehicle braked on the street. Maybe finding her was the least of his concerns right now. He had to worry instead that they had been found. And if the shooters had been determined to kill him before, they would be even more determined now that he had fired back at them.

Who the hell was after Lillian?

And where the hell had she gone?

* * *

Branches slapped Lillian in the face, making her gasp in shock and pain as she rushed through the underbrush. Twigs snapped beneath her feet and briars caught her pants, tugging on the thin knit maternity leggings. She heard fabric tear and felt the sting of the thorns scratching her skin.

Tears stung her eyes at the pain. But she rushed ahead, even though she had no idea where she was going. She didn’t even have any idea where she was. She might keep running and fall right off a bluff into Lake Michigan.

This wasn’t smart. But neither was staying where men were shooting and trying to run her off the road. Had they been looking for her at all? She hadn’t been in the cottage. And they couldn’t have known that she had been in the truck with Jake. Nobody had been around when she’d jumped into it.

So who were they really after?

Since they had shown up at her grandmother’s cottage, she suspected it was her—just as Jake had claimed—and he had just gotten caught in the cross fire. But she couldn’t trust him to protect her. He’d already proved that she couldn’t trust him at all.

Briars and brush tripped her, and she stumbled forward, falling onto her knees. A curse slipped through her lips as she reached for her belly, pressing her hands over it. She hadn’t fallen on the mound that was her baby, though. And she hadn’t hit the baby bump on the dash or the door while the men had been crashing into the truck and Jake had been driving like a mad man.

He was mad now.

She’d heard him shout her name just as she’d slipped into the trees and the darkness. She needed to get up and keep running. But her lungs burned and she struggled to breathe.

It wasn’t just the exertion from her run that had stolen her breath away. It was fear.

Men had been shooting at them.

Trying to run them off the road.

She’d suspected before how much danger she’d been in. That was why she’d spent the past six months awaiting her court date hiding out in Florida. But now she knew for certain. Somebody had literally come gunning for her. And it hadn’t been just Jake.

Jake...

The baby leaped beneath her palms. He was doing somersaults, just like Lillian’s heart was within her chest. Every snap of a twig or branch made it flip again. Somebody was coming after her.

And it didn’t matter if it was one of those armed gunmen or Jake, she had to run. She had to get away. She couldn’t let anyone catch her.

She couldn’t let anyone catch them.

She rubbed her palms over her belly again before she moved her hands to the ground and pushed herself to her feet. It wasn’t easy to move quickly—not now. Just getting up from a chair took a concerted effort because of the size of her belly. And it—and her baby—was still growing.

She had weeks yet to go. She couldn’t go into early labor, couldn’t risk her baby coming too soon. Or worse yet, not coming at all.

She needed to be careful. But staying behind to get shot or dragged back to jail was more dangerous than running through the woods in the dark.

Wasn’t it?

She wasn’t sure what was in the woods, either. Gran had told her that dangerous animals had recently been spotted in the area. Coyotes. Black bears.

She was less worried about the four-legged animals than she was the two, so she forced herself to keep going through the woods. Maybe she would come upon another road and a car she could wave down to drive her away. But did anyone stop for hitchhikers anymore?

She wasn’t just any hitchhiker, though. She was an obviously pregnant one. Surely, someone would take pity on her and offer to help her.

First, she had to find that road, though. The woods just kept getting thicker and thicker, the trees growing taller and closer together, the underbrush so dense she could barely fight her way through it. As she crashed into an impenetrable wall of briar bushes, her breath escaped in a hiss of pain.

But before she could turn back to find a way around that thorny wall, a strong hand wrapped tightly around her arm. She couldn’t see who had grabbed her. She could see nothing but darkness and the faint shadows of the tall trees.

She parted her lips to scream, but before any sound could escape, a palm clasped over her mouth—muffling her voice and her breath.

Was this person trying to silence her for just the moment or forever? If it was one of the thugs that Mr. Kuipers must have sent after her, it was undoubtedly meant to silence her forever.

* * *

Seymour Tuttle jumped as the phone on his desk rang. He should have been expecting it. As a bondsman, his phone rang constantly with people needing to be bailed out. Generally, they needed to wait until morning before a judge set the bail amount. But often Seymour was the first call they made from jail—so he’d be ready to post their bond when they were able to get out.

If they were able to get out...

Why had the judge granted Lillian Davies bail? Based on her family history alone, she should have been ruled a flight risk. But why had Seymour posted that bail, especially after Jake had warned him against ever bonding out another Davies?

No matter how old he was, and he didn’t want to think about how old that was, he was still a sucker for a pretty face. And they didn’t come much prettier than Lillian Davies. Although she looked like an angel with her pale blond hair and blue eyes, she was apparently a devil like the rest of her damn family. At least that was what Jake Howard believed.

Maybe this was Jake calling him with an update. The guy was good—his best damn bounty hunter.

With a sigh, he dropped his greasy burger onto his desk, wiped his hand on the polyester pants which matched the polyester suit jacket slung over the back of his chair and picked up the phone. “Tuttle Bonds...”

“Tuttle,” a raspy voice said.

It wasn’t Jake’s. His was even deeper than this guy’s, if it was even a guy calling and not someone just disguising her voice. Sometimes people did that from jail because they were embarrassed at having been arrested. And like Seymour was going to record their call and broadcast it.

He didn’t care about his clients’ reputations. He only cared about getting his money.

“Yeah, this is Tuttle,” he confirmed for the caller.

“Did you send someone after Lillian Davies?”

Speak of the devil...

Or speaking to her?

No. Her voice had been too light and soft ever to become this raspy.

“That’s none of your business,” he remarked.

“It’s a matter of public record that you posted her bail,” the voice replied. Irritation cleared away some of the fake raspiness. The caller was a man, but Seymour wasn’t sure if he’d ever heard the voice before.

Could it be one of her brothers? Or her dad? Of course, then the call would have come from prison and he would have needed to accept the charges. No. It couldn’t be one of them—at least not one of the ones Jake had already apprehended for Seymour and the courts.

“That’s public record,” Seymour agreed. “Not whether or not I sent someone after her.”

“Stands to reason you’ll want your money back.”

“Stands to reason,” Seymour agreed.

“But if you’re a reasonable man, you’ll forget about the money.”

“I will?” Now he was intrigued. Just what the hell was this caller’s agenda? To have him let Lillian Davies go?

“Yeah, I’m sure you value your life much more than you do your wallet.” The line clicked and went dead before Seymour could laugh.

Whoever had called didn’t know him very damn well. Of course he valued his wallet over his life. Without money, life wasn’t worth living anyway.

If this caller had meant to scare him off, he’d done just the opposite. He’d only made Seymour that much more determined to bring her in.

Had it been a member of her family who’d called him? But most of them knew him. They knew that he wouldn’t back down from tracing a skip. So if it wasn’t a Davies, who the hell else was involved with Lillian Davies and why didn’t he want her brought to jail?

Seymour needed to get hold of Jake and find out what the guy had learned so far. Of course, he hadn’t been on the case very long. But then Jake had never needed much time—except that last time—to track down a Davies.

He’d taken weeks to bring in Lillian’s dad and brother Dave. And Seymour couldn’t help but wonder if during those weeks, something had happened between Jake and Lillian—something that Jake hadn’t wanted to talk about.

Not that Jake ever wanted to talk.

All he wanted to do was his job. And that was why he was Seymour’s best bounty hunter. Had the hunter caught his bounty yet?

He punched in the speed dial for Jake’s cell, but the phone rang several times before finally going to voice mail. And a strange chill chased down Seymour’s spine.

How the hell had that caller known he’d sent someone after Lillian? Had he run into Jake?

Had something happened to Seymour’s best bounty hunter?