by Childs, Lisa
And guilt.
“I’m glad I didn’t give her the gun,” Rowe told Jed. With an uneasy chuckle, he added, “She might have shot me back there.”
“You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you,” Jed admitted. In the heat of the moment, he hadn’t realized what Erica had—that Rowe had left their daughter unprotected.
“Your sister has proven again and again that she’s formidable,” Rowe reminded him, with obvious pride in, and awe of, the woman he loved. “She won’t let anything happen to her niece.”
Jed nodded in agreement. Macy was tough—far tougher than he had ever realized. So was Erica. She had survived finding dead bodies and getting shot at, and her only worry and concern was for their child. She was another formidable woman.
“Isobel is in no danger,” Rowe assured him. “She and Macy are in a safe house that only I know about, like this one.”
This was a log cabin on a hill overlooking Lake Michigan. The setting sun streaked across the water and through the windows that overlooked the rocky hill that was washing away into the lake. It was a wild, beautiful, remote area just north of Muskegon.
“How the hell do you find these places?” Jed wondered. “And vehicles?” The van he’d picked them up with had been like the car, with untraceable plate and vehicle identification numbers.
“It’s all seized property,” the Drug Enforcement Administration agent briefly explained.
“But no one else knows about them?”
Rowe shook his head. “Not anymore. The only other agent that knew about this one and the one Macy’s at is gone now.”
His handler agent had recently been killed, as Rowe nearly had been in Blackwoods. While Jed regretted the agent’s death, he breathed a sigh of relief. “So Macy and Isobel are really safe?”
Rowe nodded his assurance. “Yes. You and Erica aren’t, though.”
A headache of frustration gnawed at Jed’s temples, which he rubbed. “But you said no one else living knows about this place…”
“We could have been tailed from the crime scene,” Rowe said. “I don’t think we were, but…”
“But this guy always seems one step ahead.” At least one step. Maybe more.
“And the authorities are right behind you,” Rowe needlessly reminded him.
“They never identified themselves,” Jed said. “They never even tried to apprehend us. They just started shooting.”
Rowe gave a grim nod. “I know. I’d like to believe that not everyone would do that, that they were convinced that you’d just killed a man and that you were armed and dangerous…”
“But you know that’s not the case.” They’d wanted him dead, and it had had nothing to do with protecting themselves from a dangerous suspect. It may not have had anything to do with his being convicted of killing a cop, either.
“You weren’t armed,” Rowe acknowledged. “Then…”
The gun was cold and heavy against the small of Jed’s back. “Thanks for the weapon.”
“I would rather you not use it.”
“You and me both.” But he couldn’t promise that he wouldn’t be forced to.
He glanced over to where Erica stood in the kitchen, leaning against the soapstone counter while she clutched the cellular in both hands, as if she was holding her daughter instead of a phone. “I need something else from you,” Jed said, pitching his voice lower.
Rowe expelled a weary sigh. “I’m almost afraid to ask…”
Jed was aware and sorry that the DEA agent had had to compromise his principles and his career in order to help him. But because he had, the man deserved the truth—no matter how crazy it sounded.
“I don’t think you’re the only one who’s faked his death,” he said.
Rowe’s brow furrowed with confusion. “No one thinks you’re dead. You’d be a hell of a lot better off if they did, though.”
“Dead won’t clear my name,” Jed pointed out, “only finding the real killer will.”
“So you do know who it is…”
Jed nodded, not even caring that he might sound crazy. “He’s a dead man.”
“You said you weren’t going to use that gun unless you had to,” Rowe reminded him, with a nervous twitch of the muscle along his jaw.
“No. He’s already a dead man,” Jed clarified.
“That wasn’t a dead man shooting at us,” Rowe pointed out.
“He’s been dead for three years,” Jed explained. “At least that’s what everyone believes…”
The furrows in Rowe’s brow deepened as his confusion deepened. “Who the hell are you talking about?”
“Brandon Henderson, my former partner,” Jed said. “The man whose murder I was sentenced to serve life in prison for.”
Rowe still looked skeptical.
“Think about it,” Jed said. “It all makes sense.” And that was why he was disgusted with himself for not figuring it out sooner. “He embezzled the money from our clients just before I left for Afghanistan.” Because Rowe had been too distracted to realize what he’d been doing. “Then he staged his murder because he knew that when I came back I would figure it out and find the money.”
“I brought the books,” Rowe said. “They are beyond my area of expertise.”
It was Jed’s area of expertise. But he hadn’t thought he would have time to go over the old records, what with trying to stay ahead of the authorities determined to either put him back in prison or kill him.
“I’ll go through them,” Jed said. “But I can use your expertise in another area. DNA. I need you to rerun everything from the crime scene. That wasn’t Brandon’s body that burned up in that car.”
Rowe studied his face, as if trying to gauge his sanity.
Jed waited for all the comments he had already anticipated. That he was grasping at straws. That he was crazy. Those comments and his own doubts were why he hadn’t shared his suspicion with the DEA agent right away.
“You saw him?” Rowe asked.
“Not clearly,” Jed admitted. “And his hair is a different color and he’s wearing a beard. But my gut tells me it’s him.” Even though his head had kept telling him he was crazy.
After another long moment Rowe nodded. “It makes sense.”
Jed should have known that if anyone would believe him, it would be the man who had already staged his own murder. In that play, Jed had also been cast as the killer.
* * *
BRANDON LIFTED HIS GUN and fired it, sending bullet after bullet into the target. He pushed a button and brought the target close to the booth at the deserted shooting range.
Jed’s mug shot covered the head of the cutout. Two bullet holes pierced each of his eyes, while another single shot penetrated his forehead.
He breathed a sigh, relieved that he could have killed Jed—had he wanted. But it had been more satisfying to have the man trapped in the brush like a rabbit—too stupid and helpless to save himself or the woman he loved.
The officers Brandon paid had come through for him, shooting at but not hitting Jed. Just as they had been instructed. He hadn’t even had to pay them much since they thought Jed a cop killer and Brandon a relative of the deceased officer who wanted justice. They had been more than happy to help him.
He had thought that, given his convictions, Jed would have had no one to help him. But someone had come to his rescue, getting him out of the woods and into a getaway vehicle before Brandon could kill him. First he would have killed Erica Towsley, though.
The stupid prude hadn’t given him the time of day, but she had given Jed everything. Her heart. Her soul. Even a child.
When he killed the woman and the little girl, he would take all those things away from Jed. Then—and only then, when the man had absolutely nothing—would Brandon take his best friend’s life.
He didn’t even have to try to track down Jed again. Brandon knew him too well. Jed would find him this time. And when Jed did, Brandon would be waiting…and ready.
He lifted his gun and fi
red again.
And again.
Brandon pushed the button and brought his target back to the booth. The face of the outline had been covered with a picture he had taken from the collection of family photos in Erica Towsley’s apartment. It was the gorgeous blonde, smiling brightly, as she held her daughter tight in her arms.
A bullet hole pierced the paper between her beautiful blue eyes. A matching hole pierced the paper between the big, dark eyes of the child.
He would definitely be ready next time to, once and for all, win this rivalry with Jedidiah Kleyn.
Chapter Sixteen
A fire burned inside the hearth, the flames casting light and warmth on Erica. She stood in front of it, but she couldn’t stop shivering.
It was the conversation she had overheard before the DEA had left, not the cold, that had chilled her to the bone. The outside door creaked open, so she reached into her pocket and closed her fingers around the sheathed scalpel. Jed had gone outside to say goodbye to his friend and future brother-in-law, but that didn’t mean he was the one coming back inside. She’d heard an engine a while ago and had just assumed it was from the car Rowe had had stashed in the garage. But what if it had been that other car, the one that had nearly forced them off the road leading away from Miller’s Valley? What if they had been followed from the house of the dead witness?
Something crashed, and she withdrew her weapon and whirled around. Jed stood next to the box he had dropped onto the rough-hewn wood coffee table.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
A laugh, more from hysteria than mirth, bubbled out of her. “Not this time,” she conceded. “But you’ve wanted to scare me other times. Like when you first showed up at my door.”
“I wanted to scare you into doing the right thing then,” he said.
“Coming forward as your alibi.”
“Instead I scared you into doing the wrong thing,” Jed remarked with a weary-sounding sigh. He dropped onto the floor next to the coffee table and lifted the lid from the banker’s box.
“Wrong thing?” she questioned. What had she done wrong besides trusting her daughter to a relative stranger? Besides nearly losing her life? Apparently she’d done everything wrong.
“I made you feel guilty, and now you’ve risked your life to help me prove my innocence,” he said, his eyes dark with regret and torment. “I never wanted that. I never wanted to put you in any danger.”
She laughed again with more dark humor than hysteria now. “I imagine, since you believed I helped set you up, you spent the past three years wanting to kill me yourself.”
His mouth curved into a slight grin. “Maybe,” he conceded.
“I don’t blame you,” she said. “I can’t imagine being locked up for crimes I didn’t commit.”
“You believe that now?” he asked. “Because I still see doubts in your eyes.” But he wasn’t looking at her. He was focused on the contents of the box instead.
She nodded and admitted, “I have doubts.” About the kind of man he had become, about what he was capable of. And now she had something else to doubt. “I overheard what you told Rowe.”
His broad shoulders tensed, but he didn’t look up from the files he’d pulled from the box. “You did?”
She shuddered. “It’s not possible. Brandon Henderson can’t be alive.”
“It’s possible to fake your own death,” Jed said. “Rowe did it when his cover was blown in Blackwoods, and we had a lot less time to plan his escape than Brandon had to plan his.”
“Escape?” she repeated. “What would Brandon need to escape from?” The man had loved his life and lived it to the fullest, going to the nicest restaurants, owning the fastest cars and wearing the most expensive tailored suits.
“Embezzlement charges,” Jed replied. “When I was deployed for that year, he must have started embezzling from our clients.”
She nodded with sudden understanding of Brandon’s motive. “And he would know that you would figure out what he had done when you returned. And that you would turn him in.”
Jedidiah Kleyn had been the kind of man who would always do the right thing. Was he still that kind of man?
“I think he was counting on me not coming back,” Jed said.
She gasped. “He didn’t think you would make it home from Afghanistan?”
She hadn’t been the only one to think that he was never coming back. But then, in her experience, people didn’t come back for her once they’d left her…
Jed nodded. “That was probably when he decided to start siphoning money from my clients’ accounts.”
“Because he had a scapegoat for the embezzlement charges that would eventually be filed when the clients discovered their money missing,” she said, following how Brandon’s twisted mind would have worked. “But how could he frame you when you were gone…”
She joined him at the table, stepping away from the fire; it wasn’t warming her. “How could he make it look like you were responsible?”
“Because he started when I got my orders—when I was still home but distracted.” He glanced up at her, as if she were to blame for his being distracted. But he had broken up with her.
He hadn’t even given her the chance to find the courage to wait for him. If he’d given her any indication that he’d shared her feelings, she might have become brave…
He returned his attention to one of the files. “And he was tapping my clients, the accounts that I thought I was the only one who could access.”
“Are you sure it was him?” she asked.
“You think it was me again?” he asked, his voice gruff with frustration. “You think I embezzled that money but hired Marcus as my lawyer? I knew he wasn’t the most competent representation, but he was a friend. He was also all I could afford.”
In the end, Marcus Leighton had cost him much more than money, though. He had cost Jed his reputation and three years of his life and maybe more if they couldn’t find any evidence to clear him.
She knelt on the floor beside him and reached for the files. “Can I help?”
“You’ve already done more than you should have,” Jed said. “I shouldn’t involve you anymore.”
“It’s too late.” She had been too involved even before he’d broken out of prison and shown up at her door flashing a DEA badge.
As she knelt beside him, he reached out and grabbed her hand. “I’m sorry. I’ll do everything I can so no charges are pressed against you for aiding and abetting. I don’t know if anyone will believe me, but I’ll swear that I coerced you, that I threatened you.”
“It’s my own fault,” she admitted although she was touched that he would try to take the blame and risk more charges against him. “I shouldn’t have insisted on going along with you to Leighton’s. I shouldn’t have stowed away in the car at the hangar.”
“Why did you?”
“For Isobel,” she assured him, so that he didn’t worry that she was falling for him. It was enough that she worry. “She deserves to have a father.”
“I’m not sure how this will all turn out,” he cautioned her. “Even if I’m cleared of the murder charges, I will face other charges for breaking out of prison.”
“So, no matter what, you’re going to have to go back?” She should have realized as much, but she’d just been focused on learning the truth of what had happened three years ago. She hadn’t thought about current charges. So no matter what, Isobel would be denied a relationship with her father.
Disappointment overwhelmed Erica, and she realized she wasn’t upset just for her daughter. But she didn’t want a relationship with Jed, though.
He had already broken her heart more than once; she knew better than to ever risk it on him again. Especially now, knowing that he wouldn’t truly be free even if he was cleared of the murder charges.
“I don’t know how long they’ll give me for breaking out,” he said. “It won’t be as long as a murder sentence. I will get out again.�
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“That’ll only happen if you’re still alive,” she said. And if Brandon was alive, if he stayed alive and Jed didn’t kill him when he caught up with him. Or Jed would wind up serving time for murder. Even if he didn’t kill Brandon, he might be charged with killing his lawyer and the other witness. It didn’t matter that he was innocent; a case could still be made against him, just as it had in the murders of Brandon and the police officer.
“I survived three years in Blackwoods—”
“Back at the witness’s house those cops were all shooting at you.” And her. But she couldn’t remember that or she would start trembling in reaction. She had held it together during their ordeal, but exhaustion undermined the strength she hadn’t known she had.
