by Lisa Childs
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 v
estiges 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.
Chapter 6
Lillian’s lungs burned with the breath she’d been holding since that barrel had pressed against her temple. Even though the man had pulled the gun away to take out his cell phone and make a call, she hadn’t released it.
She’d overheard that call. The cell phone must have been on speaker because she had listened to every vicious word her former boss had spoken. She had no doubt now that the man, even after learning she was pregnant, wanted her dead. As if framing her for a crime hadn’t been cruel enough...
Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back. She wasn’t giving up yet. She still had time to escape, especially when she heard her captor place another call.
“Not now, Jimmy.” The voice emanated from the speaker of the man’s cell phone.
Jimmy must have been the man left behind in the van. Why hadn’t she noticed him right away?
“We’ll get you to the hospital,” the man assured him, “once we find her.”
Jimmy was hurt. That was why he’d stayed in the van, why he must have been lying in the back when she’d looked through that open front window. How badly was he hurt?
Bad enough that she could overpower him?
“I’ve got her,” Jimmy interrupted. “She walked right up to the van and climbed inside with me.”
“Did you do it yet?” the guy asked, his voice rising with excitement. “Did you kill her?”
“The boss wants us to bring her to the warehouse,” Jimmy replied with obvious relief. “He wants to be the one to pull the trigger. Get back here. You need to drive.”
Jimmy must have been too injured to drive. So he would probably be too injured to chase her if she could manage to escape.
She reached for the door handle. And that barrel pressed against her temple again.
“Don’t even try it,” Jimmy warned her. Then he told the man on the phone, “Hurry the hell up!”
He was worried she would get away from him. And Lillian was worried that she wouldn’t.
What about Jake?
Had he escaped the men? She wished Jimmy would have asked about him. But obviously she was the one they’d been after, and her bounty hunter had just gotten in the way.
“You aren’t going to shoot me,” she said. Or he would have already done it. She wrapped her fingers around the door handle and popped it open.
And the gun cocked. “I will shoot you,” he promised.
“You heard Mr. Kuipers,” she said. “He wants you to bring me to him.”
“He won’t mind if I shoot you first,” he said.
“But you don’t want to.”
“I don’t,” he admitted. “But I don’t want to die. And if I let you get away, Kuipers will kill me for certain.”
“He will anyway,” she said. “He’s not going to leave any witnesses to all these crimes he’s committed. Why do you think he wants me dead?”
The guy said nothing now. She’d obviously made him think. Or maybe he was beginning to lose consciousness. The others had left him behind because he was hurt. How badly?
“You need medical attention,” she said sympathetically. And all that sympathy wasn’t feigned. She hated to see anyone in pain. So she offered, “I can drive you to the hospital.”
He snorted. “Give it up, lady. I’m not falling for any of your tricks.”
“I’m not trying to trick you.” She knew how that felt—to be deceived.
Jake had taught her that.
And she’d learned another lesson when she’d trusted someone else with that flash drive. She should have brought it directly to her lawyer—no, to a judge—herself.
But she hadn’t exactly legally obtained it or the information on it. She’d been worried that she might be charged with breaking and entering. She’d worried that it might not even be admissible in court. But she’d trusted her lawyer to try.
When would she stop trusting the wrong people?
Her baby kicked, and her belly shifted against the steering wheel. She flinched and sucked in a breath.
“What is it?” the guy asked.
“The baby,” she murmured as she rubbed her belly. “I might be going into labor.” It was a lie. Even though she hadn’t had any contractions yet, she knew they would be far more painful than the baby’s kicks. But she couldn’t have any contractions yet. It would be way too soon for her baby to be born.
The guy cursed and murmured, “They better hurry up.” He peered through the open front window into the woods.
And Lillian took the opportunity to push open the driver’s door and run. But as she ran, shots rang out behind her. She flinched with the report of each shot, waiting for the bullet to strike her, to tear into her flesh.
Then she fell and she didn’t know if she had been hit or if she’d just stumbled. But her knees hit the asphalt hard before she fell forward. And she couldn’t get back up.
* * *
I’ve got her. She walked right up to the van and climbed inside with me.
Jake had been close enough to the guy Jimmy had called to overhear their conversation. And he’d been close enough to take out that man, wrapping his arm around his neck and squeezing until the man passed out.
Jake hadn’t wanted him to alert his buddies that Lillian h
ad been captured. He wanted to get to the van before the rest of them did. But as the shots rang out in the woods, he knew he was too late. Either that man must have regained consciousness or someone had spotted him.
But those shots weren’t that loud, so they couldn’t have been that close to him. They sounded as if they were coming from the road.
From the van into which Lillian had unsuspectingly climbed—probably in order to hot-wire it like she’d tried to hot-wire his truck?
Damn it!
He ran toward the road, heedless of the branches slapping across his face and arms. He didn’t give a damn about himself. But if something had happened to Lillian...
If she’d been shot...
Or worse.
He didn’t know what the hell he’d do.
The shots died down ahead of him. But they began to ring out behind him, the bullets rustling the trees around him. He felt the whizz of one close to his ear.
The other men had heard the shots, too, and had come running. And shooting.
Ducking low, Jake rushed forward toward the road. He circled around the van and found two bodies lying on the pavement. One body, a long one, was right next to the van, blood pooling beneath it.
He grabbed the weapon from the man’s outstretched hand and tucked it into his waistband. The other person had made it farther, to the shoulder on the opposite side of the road. She lay half on the pavement, half in the underbrush off the shoulder, her hair lying across the branches.
“Are you hit?” he asked her as he ran toward her.
She whimpered. “No, I’m stuck.” And she tugged, but her hair was tangled in those briar branches. Tears streamed from the corners of her eyes as she struggled to free herself.
“We’ve got to go!” he said as he wrapped his hand around her arm and jerked her to her feet.
She cried out as her hair came free, leaving several strands behind in the briars.
Jake turned back toward the van. Shots rang out from the woods. He positioned himself between her and the men firing at them. Then he lifted his weapon and squeezed off several shots in the direction of the woods and those men. He hoped his barrage of bullets provided enough cover as he tugged Lillian over the unconscious man and pushed her through the open driver’s door. Then he stepped inside the van and swung the door shut behind him.
