Unexpected Father

by Delores Fossen

  Considering that it was the sergeant's night off and that he was doing this surveillance as a favor, Jason didn't want to take him up on the offer. Still, he didn't want to leave Megan and Lilly alone any longer. Not that they were alone, exactly. There were two officers standing guard at the house. Jason knew the cops would do their job, but it wasn't personal for them.

  It was personal for him.

  He would do whatever it took to protect Megan and Lilly.

  "Thanks," Jason told O'Malley. "I think I will go back to the house and check on things. I won't be long. Oh, and call me the minute you have any information."

  "Will do. And while you're checking on things at home, why don't you get some rest?"

  Before he ended the call, Jason assured him that he would. It was a lie. There'd be no rest tonight. Not with the suspects at large. Not with so many things unresolved.

  Yes, this was indeed personal.

  On the drive home, that one sentence kept going through his head, and though he knew he should be focusing solely on catching a would-be killer, he couldn't help but think of what had happened earlier.

  He'd had sex with Lilly.

  Unprotected sex at that.

  If there was a name worse than idiot, that's what he should call himself. No, he didn't regret the sex part. Though he should have regrets. He didn't.

  He couldn't.

  Making love to her, even in that heated, frantic rush was exactly what he'd dreamed about doing since Lilly had first set foot inside his house. And that need he had for her didn't have anything to do with Megan. What had happened between Lilly and him was about two people who couldn't keep their hands off each other.

  Part of that disgusted him. The lack of control. Yet, another part of him wanted to lose control with her all over again.

  Hopefully, this time with a condom.

  It had been reckless to have unprotected sex. Here she was, just recovering from the coma. She would need lots more physical therapy before she was a hundred percent, and yet he'd risked getting her pregnant.

  He frowned at the reaction that caused deep inside him.

  A baby. A brother or sister for Megan. Why did that sound so damn appealing when it could cause nothing but problems for Lilly? She was just getting used to being Megan's mom. She didn't need any more pressure.

  She didn't need him.

  There.

  That was it.

  The niggling thought that kept at him. Day by day, Lilly was getting back to her old self, and once she was no longer in danger, she would be on the road to a full recovery. She'd resume her business, balance it with motherhood. Lilly was a pro at balancing. At efficiency. At being self-reliant.

  She wouldn't need him.

  But he would still need her.

  Worse, that need was growing, and he was certain it wouldn't simply go away. With that thoroughly depressing revelation, he took the turn into his neighborhood and stopped at the security gate.

  "Please tell me it's been a quiet night," Jason said to the guard as he punched in his security code.

  The guard nodded. "Just a few people coming home from work and a pizza delivery."

  That snagged his attention. "You checked them all out before you let them in?"

  "I did. I had the residents show picture IDs, and I called the folks that ordered the pizza and had them confirm it."

  Though Jason was appreciative of those security measures, he didn't relax. He drove home, wondering how in the name of heaven he was going to put an end to all of this. Because without an end, Lilly and he didn't stand a chance at having a beginning.

  He approached the house with his cop's gaze on full alert. And maybe it was that full alert that had him concerned when he noticed that the lights were off. Then, he checked his watch.

  10:00 p.m.

  Well past Megan's bedtime, and as tiring as the day had been, it was no doubt past Lilly's, as well. He pulled into the garage and sat there for a moment, listening. He was still listening when the sound shot through his SUV.

  The sound nearly caused him to jump out of his skin. Before he realized it was his phone ringing.

  "Sheez. Settle down," he warned himself. He'd snap if he kept up this intensity.

  "It's Garrett," Sgt. O'Malley said when Jason answered the call. "And before you ask, no, I didn't find any of the suspects. But we've had a Corinne Davies sighting."

  Well, Jason hadn't counted on hearing that, ever. "I take it she's alive?" He used the remote to close the garage door and got out of his SUV.

  "According to her neighbor, yeah. He says this afternoon he saw Corinne going into her house through the back door. We sent a unit out to see if she was there, but there was no sign of her."

  Which made her all the more dangerous. Well, dangerous if she was guilty of anything. Maybe Corinne was simply a victim, like Lilly. A case of learning a little too much and now having to pay the consequences.

  "Thanks for the update," Jason said, clicking the end button on his phone. He unlocked the door that led from the garage into the house and went inside.

  And he came to a complete stop.

  Two things immediately struck him as totally wrong. The security alarm didn't kick in, and the house was much too quiet. It was bedtime, he reminded himself. But that reminder did nothing to stop the slam of adrenaline. That instant jolt of fear.

  His stomach dropped to his knees.

  Jason pocketed his cell and drew his weapon. Because the sense of urgency was growing stronger with each passing second, he hurried. Running, he made his way through the utility room and into the kitchen. No one was there. Including the officers he'd left to guard the place. But there was a half-eaten sandwich and a nearly full glass of milk sitting on the counter.

  He considered calling out to them, but his instincts told him it was already too late for that.

  Trying not to make a sound, he made his way across the kitchen and to the hall that led to the back of the house. With each step, his heart pounded, his focus pinpointed and his body prepared itself for the fight. Maybe, just maybe, he wasn't too late.

  But he was.

  Jason confirmed that when he saw Lilly.

  There she was. At the end of the hall. Just outside the door of the playroom.

  The only illumination came from the night-light on the wall halfway between Jason and her. But it was more than enough for him to see the stark expression on her face.

  The fear.

  No. The terror.

  That's when Jason realized she wasn't alone. There was someone behind her. With a gun that'd been rigged with a silencer.

  And the gun was pointed right at Lilly's head.

  * * *

  LILLY THOUGHT she couldn't have possibly been more frightened, but she wrong. Her fear went up a significant notch when she saw Jason step into the hall.

  Another minute or two, and this could possibly have been avoided.

  Of course, another minute or two, and she might have been dead, but at least Jason wouldn't be in danger.

  He was definitely in danger now.

  Jason stood there. Not frozen. Not panicking. He inched toward them, his gun aimed and his wrist bracketed with his left hand. He was ready for anything.

  Well, maybe not this.

  There was no way he could be ready for this.

  "Put down the gun," Jason said, his voice hardly more than a whisper. Probably so that he wouldn't wake up Megan. Lilly was praying the same thing. She wanted to keep her daughter sheltered from this.

  "I can't," the woman behind Lilly answered.

  Now, that stopped Jason. Lilly completely understood his reaction. She'd experienced a similar reaction about ten minutes earlier when she first realized that someone had gotten into the house.

  And who that someone was.

  "Erica?" Jason questioned.

  Behind her, Lilly heard Erica's breath shudder. Not good. While Jason seemed relatively unruffled, she couldn't say the same for Erica. It wasn't just the
woman's voice that was shaking. Erica was shaking, too. Lilly didn't care much for a jittery person with an equally jittery hand holding a gun to her head.

  "She's trying to kidnap me," Lilly confirmed, not surprised that her own voice was trembling. Oh, she was scared. But she was even more frightened of staying put, where Erica could do heaven knew what to Jason or Megan.

  There were worse things than dying.

  Lilly knew that now. And losing Jason and Megan would be far worse than anything Erica could do to her.

  "Is Megan okay?" Jason asked. No calmness that time. He had to get his teeth unclenched so he could speak.

  "She's asleep," Erica volunteered. "I wouldn't hurt her."

  Not intentionally, anyway. But Lilly knew if bullets started flying, then good intentions weren't worth anything.

  "Put down the gun, Erica," Jason warned, the grip tightening on his own gun.

  "I can't. Not now. I have to stop this. I have to stop her."

  "None of this is Lilly's fault. All she did was wake up from a coma."

  "All she did was ruin my life," Erica snapped. "I love you, Jason—"

  "Put down the weapon," Jason repeated. "And think this through. Megan is in that room right next to where you're standing with a loaded gun. If she wakes up, she'll be scared. Is that what you want?"

  "No." Erica repeated it several times, her voice becoming edgier with each syllable. "All I want is to leave. With Lilly. I have to take her with me."

  "You don't have to do anything but put down the weapon and step to the side." Jason inched closer.

  "Stop," Erica said, pushing the gun even harder against Lilly's temple.

  Jason stopped, and Lilly could almost see him thinking this through. She only hoped he had a better solution than anything she'd been able to come up with—which was exactly nothing. If she fought back, Erica might shoot and accidentally hit Megan. If she remained passive and cooperated, the same might happen.

  "How did you get in here, anyway?" Jason asked Erica.

  Lilly shook her head, indicating that she didn't know. She'd literally come out of the playroom to discover that she was looking down the barrel of a gun.

  "I paid off the pizza delivery guy. He let me hide in the trunk of his car. Then I used my key to get in the house," Erica explained. "I turned off the security system."

  Even in the darkness, she saw the flash of anger in Jason's eyes. "Where were the two police officers during all of this?" he snarled.

  "I, uh, used a stun gun on both and tied them up."

  There, she saw it. The skepticism on Jason's face. It would have been next to impossible to get close enough to two trained officers and surprise them with a stun gun. Lilly didn't know for sure, but she suspected both officers were probably dead. And that meant Erica had shot them with her gun fitted with a silencer.

  Would she try to do the same to Jason?

  It was too painful for Lilly to consider. Here, she'd just gotten back her life, and she might lose everything.

  She frowned.

  Listening to herself.

  What the heck was she doing standing here, waiting for the worst to happen? So what if Erica had a gun on her? She had something that Erica didn't. She loved Jason and Megan. And it wasn't Erica's kind of psycho possessive love, either. It was the kind of love that could make her do anything to protect them.

  Anything.

  Lilly stared at Jason. Hoping that her now unyielding expression conveyed that she was about to do something to get them out of this dangerous situation. He obviously got the point, and didn't approve, because he narrowed his eyes.

  Jason's change in facial expression must have alerted Erica because Lilly felt the woman go stiff. "Don't do anything stupid," Erica warned.

  Lilly didn't have anything stupid in mind.

  She hoped.

  Of course, anything could qualify as stupid if it wasn't successful.

  Lilly gave Jason one last glance, and she gathered all her fear, all her energy, all her anger, and focused those emotions right into the elbow that she rammed hard into Erica's stomach.

  Erica gasped and made a kind of garbling sound that indicated she was fighting for air. Good! Lilly did some fighting of her own. She turned, ignoring the wobble in her legs, and slammed her hand against the gun to try to dislodge it. Erica somehow kept control of it.

  Jason charged toward them and, fearing that Erica would turn her gun on him, Lilly grabbed the woman's wrist and put it in the tightest lock she could manage.

  Erica reacted. Mercy, did she ever. With the strength of ten men, she shoved her entire weight against Lilly, off-balancing her. Not that it was that hard to do. Wobbly legs didn't give her much of an advantage.

  Lilly felt herself falling, and she couldn't do anything to stop it. She reached out for anything, but her hands only grabbed at the air. She landed hard on the floor just inside her bedroom.

  Thankfully, Jason didn't fall right along with her. He launched himself at Erica. They both crashed into the wall. But the crash didn't cause Jason to loose focus. When the scuffle was over, Lilly could see that he now controlled both weapons.

  The breath of relief that Lilly was about to take stalled in her lungs. Before she could take that breath, she heard the sound behind her.

  But it was too late for her to react.

  Too late to stop what was happening.

  The arm curved around her neck, and Lilly felt the barrel of a gun jam into the back of her head.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jason had known this situation could quickly get out of hand. That was why he'd been so anxious to get the gun away from Erica. During all his concern about doing that, while also being worried about how to keep Lilly and Megan safe, he'd overlooked one important detail.

  That Erica might not be working alone.

  And she wasn't.

  He became painfully aware of that when he came up off the floor with Erica in tow, and he saw Lilly. She didn't have a triumphant, we-got-her expression. But a frightened one.

  Lilly was in the doorway of her bedroom, and even though the room itself was pitch-black, Jason could see the shadowy figure behind her. It took a moment to figure out why he couldn't distinguish any facial features.

  The person was wearing a ski mask.

  In addition to the ski mask, he or she had a gun aimed at Lilly. Like Erica's weapon, it, too, was rigged with a silencer. So, who was the brains behind this operation: Erica, or this person who had seemingly come out of nowhere?

  The person didn't speak, but Jason saw the arm-grip tighten around Lilly's neck, and he saw the slight gesture with the gun. The gesture was directed at Erica.

  "Jason, give me those," Erica insisted, obviously responding to the gesture.

  She reached for the guns that Jason had in his hands, but he sidestepped her. He could have easily brought her down with one hard punch. Or with one shot. And, man, he wanted to do that after what she'd just pulled. However, the person holding Lilly would retaliate.

  "Think of Megan," Lilly whispered to him. A warning for him to do whatever it took to prevent gunfire. Drywall wasn't much protection against bullets, and he couldn't risk Megan getting hurt.

  But he could say the same for Lilly.

  He couldn't risk her life, either.

  Now, the problem was how was he going to convince her to play it safe? That elbow ploy had worked on Erica, but Jason had a feeling that the success had been more luck than anything else. He didn't want to rely on luck to keep his family safe. And it didn't matter that Megan wasn't his biological daughter, or that Lilly wasn't his wife, they were his family in every way that counted.

  "I want the guns," Erica prompted, motioning for Jason to hand them over.

  Jason said a prayer and made his move. He reacted as fast as his hands could react. He tossed one of the guns aside and, in the same motion, he latched on to Erica. He shoved her in front of him and put the remaining gun to her head.

  "Drop your weapon," Jason
ordered the person in the ski mask.

  The person made a slight huffing sound. "Not on your life. Or rather, should I say, not on Lilly's life."

  Jason didn't have any trouble recognizing that voice, and obviously neither did Lilly. Her eyes widened a fraction, and her mouth tightened. "Raymond Klein," she mumbled.

  Another huff and Klein loosed his grip around Lilly's neck so he could peel off the ski mask. Jason almost made a lunge for him then and there, while he was briefly distracted with the mask removal, but never once did Klein take the gun from Lilly's head. Jason figured he was fast, but he wasn't faster than a finger already poised on the trigger.

  "I'd hoped to avoid all of this," Klein said in a discussing-the-weather tone. He aimed his attention at Erica. "We need to do this quickly. We don't want those two cops waking up."

  "They're alive?" Jason asked.

  "For now. I used a stun gun on them once Erica had them amply distracted. Then, I gave them each a dose of barbiturates that should keep them out for a while longer."

  Jason processed that information. And it didn't process well. With that ski mask, the two cops probably hadn't seen their attacker's face. But they'd sure as heck seen Erica's. Jason figured that meant Klein planned to set Erica up so she would take the blame.

  Erica obviously hadn't figured that part out yet.

  "Drop your weapon, Detective Lawrence," Klein insisted. "Or I'll kill Lilly before you've even had a chance to say goodbye to her."

  Jason wasn't immune to that threat. It cut through him like a switchblade. But he pushed aside his fear and concern and focused on being a cop. Somehow he had to get Lilly and Megan safely out of this.

  "Have you forgotten that I could do the same to Erica?" Jason fired back at Klein.

  "Be my guest," Klein calmly said.

  Because he still had hold of Erica, Jason felt her body tense. The quick, almost frantic intake of breath was an obvious clue that she'd just realized she was expendable.

  "What are you saying?" Erica asked, frantically shaking her head. "The plan was to kidnap Lilly. That's it."

  "The plan has changed," Klein informed her. "I can't leave witnesses behind, now, can I?"