Читать книгу The Bounty Hunter's Baby Surprise - Lisa Childs, Lisa Childs, Livia Reasoner - Страница 14

Chapter 5

Damn it!

Jake had pressed his hand over Lillian’s mouth to keep her quiet, but then his phone kept vibrating in his pocket. While the ringer was off, the vibration let off a sound—one that seemed loud in the silence of the woods.

Lillian struggled in his grasp, trying to break free of him. Then she clawed at his arms, so that he loosened his grip on her and his palm slipped away from her mouth. Partially free of his grasp, she jerked forward only to cringe and whimper as she struck that wall of briar bushes again.

The woods were full of briars and thorn bushes, and she must have lost a few strands of hair on each one. That was how he’d tracked her: every pale blond strand had glistened in the moonlight as if they were strands of light instead of strands of hair.

“Careful,” he whispered. “You’re going to hurt yourself.” If she hadn’t already...

He knew from experience how soft and silky her skin was. She probably had several scratches and scrapes. He felt a few on his arms, and his skin was hardly soft and silky. Of course, those scratches were from her nails.

He remembered how they’d felt running down his back as he’d moved inside her and she’d writhed beneath him, seeking release. Despite her sweetness, she’d been so passionate. But he knew now, she wasn’t really that sweet.

“Jake,” she gasped his name.

“Shh,” he said, as he peered into the darkness. He couldn’t see much more than shadows, but he knew those men were out there. The sharp snap of twigs breaking echoed throughout the forest. “They’ll find us.”

They must have seen that moment when the dome light had flashed on—because the van had stopped on the road. And unfortunately, he must not have hit any of them when he’d fired at them. Or they would have been heading to a hospital instead of crashing through the woods, searching for them.

Damn it!

Who the hell were these guys? They were nearly as determined as he was to catch Lillian. Or was it really her they were after? Had they seen her in the truck with him before he’d shoved her below the dash?

He’d made some enemies as a bounty hunter and even more before that, as a US marshal. But nobody had recently come after him. The only person who’d been bothering Jake was Lillian. But that was just in his dreams, when he’d managed to sleep at all the past eight months.

So Jake couldn’t know for certain who these guys were really after—unless they caught them. And he wasn’t going to allow that to happen.

“Come on,” he whispered, and he grasped her arm again. This time he led her through the woods. But as he led her, his phone began to vibrate again.

“Shh,” she murmured to him.

A curse slipped through his lips. Whoever the hell was calling him needed to give up. He didn’t have time to talk at the moment. And if he did, it was Lillian he’d talk to; he wanted to know what the hell was going on, why these men were after her, if she was the intended target.

Had Seymour subcontracted with more bounty hunters than him and the O’Hanigans? As if the O’Hanigans weren’t bad enough.

Jake was tempted to pitch his phone into the underbrush. But he might need it to call for backup. Not that he had many options. Since leaving the US Marshals, he worked alone, although he had a few old contacts he could call if he got in a jam.

But he’d never gotten into anything he hadn’t been able to get out of, except Lillian. Something had happened when he’d been seeing her; he’d felt like he was going under and that he’d never break free to the surface again.

But that was before he’d learned about her arrest and had finally been able to see her clearly. Figuratively, at least. Literally, he could barely see her now. She was just a shadow beside him, except for her silvery blond hair. That would be like a beacon drawing the gunmen toward them. He needed to find a place to hide her.

The pungent odor of pines reached his nose. And for the first time in a long time, he let in a memory from his childhood—one of hiding beneath the pines in his backyard. It was what he’d been hiding from that he blocked from rushing back. He had to stay focused right now.

He crouched low and tugged Lillian down beside him. She moved slowly, though—almost too slowly. Once she was on the ground next to him, he pulled back the low boughs of the nearest pine tree and, leaning close, whispered in her ear, “Crawl under there.”

She shivered. It was colder here—in the darkness of the woods—and damp near the ground. She might have hesitated just because she was cold, but when another twig snapped nearby, she froze entirely.

Jake reached out to push her under the bough and as he touched her waist, he felt a jolt. It wasn’t tiny like he remembered. It was swollen over her distended belly. As he slid his hand over that belly, he felt another jolt as a little foot kicked him.

She was pregnant.

He’d had questions for her before, but now he had only one: Is it mine?

But he couldn’t ask that. He couldn’t ask anything because the brush was rustling, twigs snapping, and he knew the men were closing in on them. He had to lead them away from Lillian, especially now that he knew there was no way she could outrun those men.

“Stay here,” he whispered. “I’ll come back when it’s safe.”

If he survived...

But he had to survive now. If he didn’t, there was no way she’d escape those men on her own.

* * *

Safe for whom?

It wasn’t safe for Lillian, not now that Jake had felt her belly. He knew she was pregnant. Did he realize the baby was his?

Maybe not.

She hoped not.

Not that she expected him to take any responsibility for their baby. He hadn’t taken any responsibility when he’d used her to apprehend her dad and oldest brother.

He hadn’t cared then that he’d broken her heart. He’d only cared about collecting his bounty for apprehending the fugitives.

How high was the price on her head now?

Maybe those other men weren’t Tom Kuipers’s minions. Maybe they were bounty hunters like Jake, and like Jake, they were ruthless enough to use whatever means necessary to apprehend her.

At least he’d only taken her heart. The way these guys had fired into the cottage and then tried to run them off the road, they seemed determined to take her life.

“Over here!” someone shouted.

“You’ve got the woman?” another called out.

And she tensed, worried that her hiding place had been discovered.

“I don’t see her,” the first voice replied, “but I saw the man run that way. She’s probably with him.”

She heard the snap and crack of twigs and branches as the men chased after Jake. He’d led them away from her. And away from where the vehicles had been left.

He’d told her to stay put and wait for his return. But there were a lot of men after him. There was no guarantee that he would return.

Pain clenched her heart at the thought of him getting hurt. Or worse...

How could she still care so much after the way he’d treated her? After the way he’d acted since seeing her again? He seemed angry with her, like he was somehow the victim when she was the one he’d used.

And the one that Tom Kuipers had framed.

But Jake hadn’t given her a chance to explain that she wasn’t guilty of those charges—not that they’d had a chance to talk yet. Maybe she shouldn’t have thrown open the passenger’s door and ran. But her instincts had been screaming at her to escape, not just the men but Jake, as well.

Maybe Jake more than the men. She hadn’t wanted him to see that she was pregnant. She hadn’t wanted him to know that he was going to be a father. She hadn’t believed that a man as heartless as he had proven to be could be a loving father to a child.

Her baby kicked again, and she knew why she cared about Jake despite how much he’d hurt her. Because even though she had every reason to hate him, she loved the baby Jake had given her. She hadn’t planned for him or her. But Lillian was very happy that she was pregnant.

And she wanted her baby to be safe and secure. Lillian needed to get her and her unborn child the hell out of there. Holding her breath, she listened and waited until the rustling of brush faded far into the distance.

Then she crawled from beneath those low-lying pine boughs and pushed herself up from the ground to her feet again. She moved more quietly now, following the path beaten down through the brush back to where the truck was parked. She’d thought she had been running for so long, but she hadn’t gone that great a distance from the vehicle. It was as if she’d been running in quicksand.

She moved faster now as she approached the truck. Running around the front, she reached for the driver’s door. But before she opened it, she remembered the dome light flashing on and alerting the men in the van to where they had stopped. She shouldn’t have done that.

But she had been almost as anxious to escape Jake as she was those men, maybe even more so now. She peered through the driver’s window and saw no keys dangling from the ignition. Her hands were shaking too badly right now for her to try to hot-wire the truck, if she could even remember how Dave had showed her to do it.

She glanced toward the road. The white van was visible through the trees, parked on the shoulder where the two-track road began.

Had the men blocked their escape?

She probably wouldn’t be able to drive around that van even if she was able to start the truck before the men returned. Were they all chasing Jake through the woods? Was the van sitting empty?

Realizing it might be her best option to escape, she crouched low and used the brush for cover as she moved toward the road and the van. The front window, which had shattered like a spiderweb, lay crumpled on the hood, as if someone had shoved it out so they could see through it. But she saw no one sitting behind the steering wheel. Since the van was on the road and clear of the trees, the moon shone inside it, illuminating the front.

Lillian could see no one inside. They must all be chasing after Jake. She felt a twinge in her heart again—a twinge of fear for him. She wanted him to be safe, too.

But Jake could take care of himself. He wouldn’t have survived his years as a US marshal and as a badass bounty hunter if he weren’t tough. Lillian didn’t need to worry about him.

She needed to worry about their baby. It was her responsibility to take care of him or her. She smoothed her palm over her belly where the baby kicked again. He or she must have been feeling all the fear and anxiety that coursed through Lillian.

She had to get the hell out of there—away from those men and Jake. So she moved around the front of the van and reached for the driver’s door. As she opened it, that damn dome light flashed on, so she jumped quickly inside and swung the door closed behind her and extinguished the light.

The glow of the moon was illumination enough to see the keys that dangled from the ignition. She didn’t even have to try to hot-wire it. But as she reached for the keys to turn them and start the van, she heard something...

A cock of a gun, and she felt the barrel press against her temple. This wasn’t Jake. There was no way he could have circled back around without her knowing it. And even if he had, she doubted he would have pressed a gun to her head.

He couldn’t be that angry with her. Nor could he ever be that ruthless, especially after he’d discovered she was pregnant. No. This had to be one of the gunmen. They weren’t all chasing after Jake. One of them had her.

* * *

“This damn well better be good news,” Tom growled into the phone as he picked it up. It was late now—so late that all the who’s who of River City were gone, the party long over and he had already fallen asleep until the ringing cell had awakened him.

Fortunately, the ringing had not woken up his wife. She lay on her back, snoring away. He would have killed that bitch if he’d thought he could get away with it. But he knew he’d be blamed if anything happened to her.

So he’d found another way to get rid of her. Take all of her and her rich daddy’s money.

A smile curved his lips as he thought of his escape. Everything was in place. Well, almost in place.

He slid out of bed and walked into the bathroom. After closing the door between it and the master bedroom, he asked, “Did you kill her?”

“Not yet...”

“Not yet!” Rage coursed through him, chasing away the last vestiges of sleep. Hell, he would probably be awake the rest of the night now. “It shouldn’t be this damn hard to catch that stupid little girl!”

But she’d already been missing for months.

He should have tried harder to find her then. But he’d been certain that she’d show up for court, and she’d be convicted and sentenced to jail. He didn’t really believe that flash drive existed.

Despite the flicker of doubt he felt now and then.

“I’ve...got...her.” The man finally spoke again, but he sounded winded, like it was a struggle for him to talk at all.

Tom didn’t know which one it was. He didn’t think he’d talked directly to this guy before. But usually his men didn’t talk, they just listened.

And followed orders.

“Then why isn’t she dead?” Tom impatiently asked him.

“Uh...” The guy’s voice trailed off again. He sounded weak.

Tom hated weakness. “Why not?” he demanded to know.

Had she said something about the flash drive? Had she threatened that it would be turned over to the authorities if something happened to her?

“She’s pregnant.”

Thinking of all the times his wife had begged him over the years to start a family, Tom snorted. What was the big deal about getting pregnant and having babies?

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” he asked.

The guy had been fine with killing a woman. Why get squeamish about killing a pregnant one?

“I—I—uh...” the man stammered.

His patience gone, Tom sighed. “Bring her to me,” he said. “I want to talk to her first anyway.” He wanted to find out what the hell had happened to that flash drive—if it even existed in the first place.

“To—to the house?” the man asked.

What an idiot!

“Hell, no!” he growled. If any woman was going to die within these walls, it was going to be his wife.

Maybe he would find a way to do that anyhow, a way where he would not be blamed.

“Bring her to the warehouse,” he ordered. He didn’t wait for the man to agree. He knew that he would, so he just disconnected the call.

It was better this way. Tom would get his answers from little Miss Lillian Davies. And once he knew the truth about that damn flash drive, then he would pull the trigger and kill her himself.

Yeah, this was better.

When he killed her himself, he would send a message to his men to never mess with him and he would have the assurance that she was no longer a problem.