The Bounty Hunter's Baby Surprise

by Lisa Childs

  Or was about to happen. Secret meetings like this one. She doubted it was the only one Tom Kuipers had had here. Was this where he’d met with the men he’d ordered to kill her?

  Was this where she was going to die?

  The baby kicked her belly, and that kick reminded Lillian of everything she had to fight for.

  The baby.

  Jake.

  If he would ever forgive her. And she doubted that he would. He had to be furious with her for drugging him, for sneaking out...

  Did he think that she had done all of that just to escape him? Did he think that she’d planned it all along so that she could remain on the run with the money she’d stolen?

  She should have left him a note. She should have explained...

  She didn’t want to die with him thinking that she’d used and deceived him. So she couldn’t die. She wouldn’t die. She would fight.

  With the man dragging her along, they’d crossed the asphalt quickly to the open side door of one of the warehouses. She would have preferred that the big door was open, since it would have been easier to escape.

  Maybe she could hit one of the switches that activated it.

  The man tightly grasped her arm, though, so when they passed through the service door, she couldn’t reach the panel for the big doors, even though it was close. Just a foot or more from the service door. But she couldn’t reach it with her free arm because in that hand she grasped something else. Something she couldn’t put down until she got Tom Kuipers’s confession on it.

  She fumbled with her phone, hitting the record switch. Maybe it would have been smarter to call 911. But she hadn’t wanted them to show up too soon and arrest her before she could get the evidence to clear her name. She needed Tom’s confession before she could call for help.

  But she didn’t even see Tom yet.

  Had he ever intended to show up? Or had he just ordered these men to kill her? After the way they’d shot up the cottage and tried running them off the road, they might have had orders to shoot on sight. She wouldn’t put it past Tom to have given them those orders. Then he could blame her death on someone else. Just like he’d blamed his stealing on her.

  “I came here to meet with Mr. Kuipers,” she told the man dragging her across the floor.

  The guy pitched his voice low and murmured, “That was crazy, lady. You should have kept running.”

  But Tom would have kept chasing her. And so would have the authorities and the bounty hunters.

  And what would Jake have done? Would he have brought her to jail or would he have run with her? She hadn’t been able to trust him enough to find out.

  Trust would always be an issue for them—on both sides. He would struggle to trust her and she him. So she couldn’t fight for a future with Jake.

  They didn’t have a chance for one. She had to fight for a future for their baby.

  Pain gripped her, clutching at her stomach. She bent over and groaned.

  “What the hell...” the guy murmured. And he finally released her and stepped back.

  Here was Lillian’s chance to try to escape. But when she whirled around to head back to that service door, someone blocked the opening.

  Tom Kuipers stepped forward and chuckled. “Long time no see, Lillian.” His gaze skimmed up and down her body. “You’ve gained a little weight since the last time I saw you.”

  “I’m pregnant,” she said. Not that she thought that would make a difference to him.

  He wasn’t going to spare her life because she was about to bring another life into the world. That pain gripped her belly again, and she grimaced.

  She couldn’t be in labor, though. It was too soon. Maybe she was just sick over what she’d done to Jake and over the mistake she’d made in coming here. It couldn’t be for nothing, though.

  She grasped her phone carefully, making sure that the microphone on it pointed toward her former employer. She had to catch every word he said, hoping that he would incriminate himself.

  She didn’t have to wait long.

  He continued, “Maybe that was why it was so easy to frame you for embezzling that money.”

  Bingo.

  She had it. Everything she needed to prove her innocence.

  But still he kept talking, “Now I know why you spent so much time in the bathroom, which gave me so much time at your desk to put all that evidence into place for the police and the prosecutor.”

  This was almost as good as the flash drive. If only she had that, too.

  But she couldn’t count on that, and she never should have counted on her brother. She had everything she needed now, except a way to escape.

  Tom moved away from the side door, but he stepped closer to her. His eyes narrowed and he studied her face now instead of her body. “You were so naive and trusting that you made it easy for me.”

  She’d been the same way with Jake. Too naive. Too trusting.

  “Just like your showing up here,” he continued. “You’ve made it so easy for me to get rid of you once and for all.”

  She flinched. And it wasn’t just because another cramp gripped her stomach. “If you kill me, the police will look into my murder. They’ll figure out the truth.”

  He snorted disparagingly. “They haven’t managed that yet.”

  “They will,” she said. “If anything happens to me, they’ll get that flash drive...”

  Tom snorted again. “Yeah, that’s what your brother claimed when he called me. But you know...”

  She held her breath as another wave of pain gripped her.

  “I don’t think that flash drive ever existed,” he said. “You’re just not smart enough to have collected evidence against me.”

  She couldn’t defend herself against his criticism. She hadn’t been very smart to show up here. But she could escape. She had to.

  “And if you had any evidence,” Tom continued as he walked around her, “then you’d be at the police department turning it over to them. Not here.”

  That was true. “My brother has it,” she said. “He will turn it in for me.”

  Tom shook his head. “No. He promised it to me. For a price.”

  She gasped with shock. But she shouldn’t have been surprised. She’d suspected for a while now that Donny had betrayed her.

  “Of course, he already sold it to me once,” Tom said. “But he didn’t produce it.”

  So he had betrayed Tom Kuipers, too.

  “Your family really is a bunch of degenerates,” Tom said.

  “That’s why you hired me,” she said. “So you could set me up to take the fall for your crime.”

  He nodded. “Of course. And given your family’s reputation, no one will suspect the truth.”

  They would, if she could get her recording out of the warehouse. She waited until he circled around her again. Then she started edging toward the open door. If she could get through it.

  And the gates.

  But she didn’t get but a few feet away before a hand grasped her hair and jerked her back.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Tom asked her. “You came here to sell me that flash drive. Where is it?” He grabbed both her arms and pulled her hands toward him. And the phone dropped from her grasp. He laughed as he saw that it had been recording. “So that was your plan?”

  It had been stupid. She saw that now. Jake had been right. Even with his help, it wouldn’t have worked.

  Tom Kuipers stomped hard on the phone, breaking the screen and crunching the plastic between his boot and the concrete floor.

  Lillian knew she had just lost her last shot at proving her innocence. But that was the least of her concerns now, when Tom ordered the men, “Now kill her...”

  * * *

  Tom was a heartless son of a bitch and damn proud of it. But for some reason, he didn’t wan
t to be the one to pull the trigger anymore. He didn’t even want to see it—when one of his men put a bullet in Lillian Davies’s brain.

  He’d had no problem framing her for his crime, no problem sending her to prison. But killing her...

  Maybe if she hadn’t been pregnant.

  And scared and vulnerable.

  There was something about the woman, something that made a man feel protective, even when he wasn’t the protective type. That must have been why, instead of bringing her to jail, the bounty hunter had started protecting her.

  Tom wasn’t going to protect her, though. He wanted her dead. He just didn’t want to do it himself anymore. He’d almost made it to the door when someone called out, “Mr. Kuipers?”

  It wasn’t her. She wasn’t begging for her life. It was one of the men.

  Tom turned back. “What?”

  “I—I thought you wanted to do this yourself.” The guy gestured at Lillian.

  That was what he’d been saying.

  And if he changed his mind now, the men might think he’d gone soft. Hell, he had to do it himself. He had to pull the trigger—or he risked his guys disrespecting him and questioning his authority. He couldn’t have that. He needed their respect.

  But more than that, he needed their fear.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll do it.” And he reached for his weapon.

  Chapter 23

  Each ring of the phone increased the tension that already gripped Jake. Why the hell wasn’t he answering?

  Did he not want the flash drive anymore? Maybe he didn’t believe it existed—like Jake had started to think until Shane O’Hanigan had handed it over—in exchange for Jake’s car. He would have given his life for that flash drive if it would save Lillian’s.

  Was he too late?

  He had no idea how long Lillian had been gone. How long he’d been out before the O’Hanigans had thrown that ice water in his face.

  They stood around him yet, probably waiting for him to bring them to the Nova. He didn’t want to do that, though. Once they saw the condition it was in, they would probably want out of his deal.

  And he couldn’t give back that flash drive. He had plans for it. He was so damn glad that Shane hadn’t believed Donny lying about not having it. Apparently, the O’Hanigans had held him upside down until it had fallen out of his pocket.

  “Where the hell are you?” The question emanated from the cell phone pressed to Jake’s ear.

  It wasn’t his cell. It was Donny’s.

  “You’re late for the meeting you requested,” the voice continued in a low snarl.

  Jake looked at Donny, whose face was flushed. Maybe that was because he continued to struggle against the bindings at his wrists and ankles. Jake hadn’t had the O’Hanigans cut him loose yet. And now he never wanted to free the guy. He wanted to kill him.

  “Your sister showed up, though,” Tom Kuipers continued.

  Jake’s heart slammed against his chest. She had gone there. He felt a twinge of guilt that he’d doubted her, that he had thought, even for a moment, that she might have been lying to him.

  “She’s not my sister.” Jake finally spoke.

  She was the mother of his child. If she was still alive...

  And if she wasn’t alive, the baby wouldn’t have survived, either.

  Panic gripped him, stealing his breath away, but he fought it back. He had to stay focused.

  “Who the hell is this?” Kuipers asked.

  “The man who has what you want,” Jake replied. Hopefully, Kuipers still had what he wanted.

  Kuipers snorted. “Donny Davies? I don’t want him.”

  “No. You want the flash drive he has,” Jake said.

  There was a long silence. “He sold you that fantasy, too?”

  “It’s real,” Jake said. And he glanced down at the plastic device in his hand. “And I have it.”

  “I’ve already paid for that thing once,” Tom said. Then he lowered his voice to a mutter and remarked, “And a new cell phone.” Then louder and more emphatically, he added, “I’m not buying it again.”

  “I don’t want money,” Jake said. “I want Lillian Davies.”

  There was another long pause before Kuipers replied, “What makes you think I know where the hell she is?”

  “You just said she showed up,” Jake reminded the lying son of a bitch. “Like her brother, she set up a meeting with you, too.”

  Jake never should have believed that she was singing in the kitchen. He never should have trusted her. And he wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  But as furious as he was with her, he didn’t want anything to happen to her or to their baby.

  “And you let her come alone...” Kuipers made a tsking noise in the phone.

  Jake sucked in a breath that burned his lungs. She had definitely met him. “You better not have hurt her,” he warned the man. “Or the authorities getting a hold of this flash drive will be the least of your concerns.”

  Jake would take the man apart—literally—if he’d harmed Lillian.

  “If you want to work a deal, you shouldn’t be threatening me,” Kuipers said, and he made that tsking noise in the phone again.

  “Deal?” Jake asked.

  “You claim to have something I want,” Kuipers said. “And it sounds like I have something you want.”

  “Is she okay?” Jake asked.

  Kuipers chuckled. “I wondered if you were after the bounty. Now I know—it’s the baby.”

  “Baby?” he asked. It hadn’t been born, had it? Lillian wasn’t due for weeks yet, though, so of course it hadn’t been born.

  “Is it your baby?” Kuipers asked. “Is that why you kept risking your life for her?”

  Jake didn’t want the man to know how much leverage he had over him, so he didn’t answer. But he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “Are Lillian and the baby okay?”

  “You can see for yourself when you show up here,” Kuipers said.

  “Where is here?” Jake asked.

  “I thought you knew she was meeting me?” Kuipers asked, and now there was suspicion in his voice. “So you should damn well know where.”

  “His warehouse,” Donny whispered. “That’s where he’d want to meet her. That’s where I was supposed to meet him.”

  “Your warehouse,” Jake said. “I’ll meet you there. And Lillian better be fine.” He would have demanded to speak with her, but he didn’t get the chance.

  Kuipers disconnected the call.

  “What the hell are you thinking?” Shane asked. “You’re walking into a trap. And I do mean walking—you don’t have a ride anymore.”

  No. He didn’t. Not since Lillian had taken off in the rental.

  “If you want your ride,” Jake said, “you have to drive me to that warehouse.”

  Shane shook his head. “That wasn’t part of the deal.” He gestured at Donny and the device in Jake’s hand. “We delivered. Now it’s time for you to deliver.”

  “I will,” Jake said. But he needed help—their help—to get Lillian back. “After I meet Kuipers at the warehouse...”

  “You won’t be alive to give us a car then,” Shane said. “The guy wants to kill you—like I’m sure he already killed Lillian Davies.”

  Jake sucked in a breath. But he couldn’t argue that; Shane was probably right. Tom Kuipers had probably shot Lillian on sight, like he’d had his men try to shoot her and him so many times before.

  His heart ached with loss. But even if she was gone, he had to bring her killer to justice and clear her name.

  He owed her and their child that. Their baby...

  He couldn’t think about everything he might have lost, though. He had to stay focused. “Come on, Shane.” It was as close to begging as he would come.

  Shane shook his hea
d. “This is why you don’t get involved with women, man.”

  Jake couldn’t argue that with him. But it was too late. He’d already fallen for Lillian.

  “They make you act crazy,” Shane said, “make you risk your life.”

  Jake had no life without Lillian.

  But then the oldest O’Hanigan sighed. “Damn it. We’ll go with you.”

  “Shane?” Trick questioned his brother.

  Shane shrugged. “We can’t let him go off alone.”

  Like Lillian had gone off alone.

  “We could get killed, too,” Ryan said.

  Shane snorted. “Not a chance. No matter what Tuttle thinks, we’re better than Jake.”

  Jake was beginning to think the O’Hanigans were. Lillian probably wouldn’t have been able to drug them and escape. Hopefully, she could manage to escape Kuipers—if it wasn’t already too late for her.

  And if it was too late, Jake wasn’t certain what he would do. He would need the O’Hanigans there to stop him from becoming what his father was—a killer.

  * * *

  Lillian released the breath she’d been holding since Tom Kuipers had turned around earlier and walked back toward her, his gun drawn. She had already braced herself, waiting for the shot to sound, to penetrate her body...

  But instead of the gunshot ringing out, Kuipers’s phone rang. And rang.

  He’d taken a long time to answer it. And once he had, she knew to whom he’d talked: Jake.

  How had he gotten Tom Kuipers’s private cell number? But then he was Jake: he had his ways and would use whatever means necessary to get what he wanted.

  Just as he had with her.

  But was she what he wanted this time?

  And why? Could he possibly return her feelings? Or was he only after the bounty on her like he’d been with her dad and oldest brother? After she’d drugged him, she couldn’t blame him. He had to be furious with her.

  Tom Kuipers reached out and grasped her hair like he had before. He jerked her forward and stared into her face. “Does that damn flash drive really exist?” he asked. “Or has it all been a scam hatched by you and your brother?”