Baby Breakout Page 8

  But Jed didn’t stop.

  So Erica rushed inside after him. He wasn’t alone. But it wasn’t Mrs. Osborn he grappled with in the dark living room. The black-clothed figure was nearly as big as he was. But not big enough to overpower Jed, even though the man swung a punch at him. While it connected, it didn’t even faze Jed.

  Then Jed swung back, knocking the man to the ground. He reached for the intruder and dragged him to his feet, but the man broke free of Jed’s grasp.

  He turned toward the open door. Erica stood there, blocking the exit. Her heart slammed against her ribs, and her muscles froze so that she couldn’t move out of the way.

  But he didn’t charge at her. He didn’t even look at her. He kept his head down, as Jed had demonstrated he did so that he wasn’t recognized. Then the man turned again and ran down the hall toward Isobel’s room.

  Despite his size, Jed’s reflexes were quick and his stride fast as he pursued the intruder. Erica’s muscles recovered as fear and determination pulsed through her, and she chased after them.

  Her primary concern was protecting her daughter. She wouldn’t let anyone hurt her little girl. Size and muscle was no match for a mother’s protective instinct.

  Jed’s primary concern was obviously catching the intruder, since he didn’t spare so much as a glance toward the little twin bed as they ran past it. The men did not even stop inside the small bedroom. The intruder vaulted through the open window, and, with a hard thump on the metal, Jed followed him out onto the fire escape.

  The curtains fluttered in the breeze blowing through the open window, whipping the hot-pink satin against the walls. It was freezing in the room, but it wasn’t nearly as cold as the blood pumping hard and fast with fear through Erica’s veins.

  She stopped next to her daughter’s bed, but she didn’t even need to look down at the tangled blankets to know that it was empty.

  Her baby was gone.

  Chapter Seven

  “It’ll be too late. By the time you get there, he’ll be well on his way somewhere else,” Macy warned her husband-to-be.

  Rowe cursed and dropped his car keys back onto the desk before dropping his body onto the chair behind his desk. “I know. But…”

  “But what?” she asked. “You’ve been keeping something from me, and we promised we’d never do that.”

  “I want to protect you,” he said.

  “But I’m not in danger.”

  “Not anymore,” he agreed, his deep voice vibrating with the torment of remorse for what she had recently endured. He blamed himself.

  She blamed Warden Jefferson James.

  “But Jed is,” she said.

  “Macy…” The torment hadn’t left his voice.

  Her pulse quickened. “How much danger?” she demanded to know.

  “You know everyone considers him a cop killer…”

  “That’s why you went on the news,” she said, suddenly realizing. “You wanted to put doubts in the minds of the officers looking for him. You wanted to make it so that they won’t shoot first and ask questions later.”

  A muscle twitched along his tightly clenched jaw, and he nodded. “Someone put out a shoot-on-sight order on him.”

  “Someone?” She snorted. “It’s Warden James. He doesn’t want Jed able to testify against him.” And the unscrupulous man had already proven he had no problem with killing. Of course, he always had preferred that others get the blood on their hands instead of him getting it on his.

  Rowe nodded again, sending a lock of blond hair over his furrowed brow. “Someone even put out an unofficial reward…”

  “For my brother’s murder?” She sucked in a breath as pain jabbed her heart. “Does he know this?”

  “I warned him about the shoot-on-sight order. I didn’t know about the reward until another officer told me what he’d heard.”

  “So Jed knows he’s in danger out there, but he won’t come in?”

  Rowe shook his head. “I promised I’d protect him.”

  Her brother had always been stubborn…but she understood what he was thinking. “He won’t turn himself in until he proves his innocence.”

  “His lawyer was murdered—”

  “Marcus?” She wouldn’t have chosen the man to represent her brother for a parking ticket, much less murder. But Jed had always been loyal to his friends. She suspected they couldn’t say the same.

  “It looks like he was paid off to throw the trial,” Rowe said. “I was already beginning to think that from going over the court transcripts.”

  Macy had been premed, not prelaw, but she’d thought so, too. “He never objected to anything.”

  “And he didn’t really challenge the eyewitness testimony,” Rowe said. “Your brother asked me to find the witnesses.”

  She met her fiancé’s gaze. “Jed didn’t kill his lawyer.”

  “I had to ask him…” He groaned. “If someone had helped set me up to spend the rest of my life in a hellhole like Blackwoods…”

  “I know.” She crossed the room and dropped onto his lap, looping her arm around his neck. “I understand why you would have doubted him. But he’s not a killer. He won’t hurt the witnesses.”

  Rowe pressed a kiss to her lips, the stubble on his jaw erotically scraping her skin. “You even wondered if he might not want revenge more than justice.”

  “We have to make sure that we help him choose justice. Find the witnesses.”

  Rowe sighed. “I’d rather find Jed. Bringing him in is the only way to make sure he stays safe.”

  He wouldn’t be safe in custody, either. They both knew it. “The only way to make sure my brother stays safe is to prove his innocence.”

  “We have to find the real killer,” Rowe agreed.

  Before Jed found him…

  * * *

  THE FIRE ESCAPE VIBRATED beneath Jed’s feet as he chased the dark shadow down into the alley he had left just moments ago with Erica. His borrowed van was parked alongside hers. If he had done as she’d asked and gotten into it and left…

  She would have walked into her apartment alone—and at the mercy of a brute of a man who’d immediately attacked Jed. If the guy had attacked Erica…

  His fist stung from the one blow he’d connected, which had knocked the guy back on his feet and loose from his grasp. Jed hadn’t been able to catch him since. The guy had been just enough faster than he was that Jed hadn’t been able to outrun him in the hall. And he’d lost him on the fire escape.

  He dropped off the last rung of the metal ladder and connected with the asphalt, his ankles stinging at the impact. Jed focused on the snowfall, trying to discern footprints. But the wind had whipped up, swirling around the light dusting of snow, so that he couldn’t track him. But the guy had to be around here somewhere. The short hairs lifting on his nape, Jed could feel him close. Maybe crouched behind one of the vans?

  Jed moved silently, as he had learned to move during his deployment. He crept closer to the van and peered through the windows, trying to spy a shadow on the other side. Then he held still—perfectly still—and waited. As he’d learned in his National Guard training, he could hold his breath and slow his heart rate.

  Could the man he’d chased from Erica’s apartment do the same? Eventually the guy would have to breathe, and Jed would hear him as he listened intently.

  But he didn’t hear a breath. He heard a scream. Erica’s scream. It rent the eerie, predawn silence.

  His heart lurched, shifting in his chest. “God, no…”

  Instead of wasting time to go back through the building, Jed jumped for the last rung of the fire escape and pulled himself up. As he vaulted up the steps, his heart pounded hard with fear and dread.

  Had he followed out a staged distraction while the guy’s accomplice had stayed behind for Erica and Isobel? Had that accomplice already hurt them?

  He stopped outside the window and peered into the room to assess the situation before rushing in blind. Erica stood alone by Isobel’s be
d, her hands clasped against her mouth as if she fought to hold back more screams. He scanned the corners of the room, checking for a man holding a gun on her. Because if this was an ambush, it would be for him. And Jed wouldn’t be able to protect her and their daughter if he was dead.

  But seeing Erica in such fear and pain was killing him. He stepped through the window and joined her inside the room. “You screamed—”

  She whirled toward him. “She’s gone! He took her, Jed! He took our daughter!”

  He cupped her shoulders and then her face in his slightly shaking palms. “No. He wasn’t carrying anything down the fire escape. He didn’t take her.”

  He damn well wouldn’t have let the bastard grab their child. If he had seen the man even reach toward the bed, he would have finally become that murderer everyone already thought he was.

  Erica’s voice cracked with hysteria. “She’s gone…”

  He pulled her into his arms, clutching her trembling body close to his chest. “He didn’t take her…”

  But Jed must have been right about the accomplice. Instead of staying behind, though, he had gone ahead—with Isobel. And the other man had provided the distraction so that he could get away with the child.

  Jed had only known about Isobel for a few hours, but he’d already lost her. He clutched Erica closer, but instead of offering comfort, he was seeking it. He didn’t deserve it, though; this was his fault.

  Isobel had been taken because of him. Whoever had framed him for murder had found an even more effective way to hurt him than sending him to prison.

  * * *

  NO MATTER HOW CLOSE Jed held her, Erica felt no comfort. His heart raced at the same frantic pace as hers. He was scared, too. Maybe even more scared than she was because he had seen more horrors in his life than she had in her relatively sheltered one.

  Even though she watched the news, those things happened to other people—not her. In her safe little world here in Miller’s Valley, her child could never be taken. Her child would not be harmed. But Jed had shaken her safe world. He’d brought danger and murder to her life, making all horrible things possible. Even to her sweet angel baby…

  Sobs broke free of her control, shaking her—making her so sick with fear that she nearly gagged. Big hands patted her back, trying again to offer comfort. But his touch chilled her, making her shudder.

  “Erica, we’ll find her,” he promised. “We’ll get her back.”

  “No, I want you out of here!” she yelled, wedging her hands between them so that she could shove him away from her—out of her safe, little world. “I want you to leave! This is your fault. This is all your fault!”

  He flinched. He was so big and muscular that he probably couldn’t be physically hurt. But she had emotionally hurt him. Even though he had only just discovered he had a daughter, he cared about Isobel. He was as scared as she was.

  A twinge of guilt penetrated her fear and hysteria. But anger pushed that guilt away. “It’s your fault that my baby is gone!”

  Jed’s breath caught, and his eyes widened.

  But she didn’t care anymore that he was hurting, too. She stepped back again. She didn’t care if he got hurt, either. She was going to call the police this time. She couldn’t waste another moment worrying about Jedidiah Kleyn.

  But before she could turn away from him, a small hand slipped into hers and tugged on her fingers.

  “Mommy, I’m not gone,” a soft voice informed her. “I’m right here.”

  Erica whirled around and dropped to her knees to wrap up Isobel in her arms. “Oh, sweetheart…” Tears streaked down her face.

  “Mommy, why are you crying?”

  She couldn’t tell the child about the man who had broken into their home. But she couldn’t lie to her, either. “I was scared, honey, when I found your bed empty.”

  “I was at Mrs. Osborn’s,” the little girl explained. “I woked up and she tooked me over there.”

  Erica glanced up, her nerves returning as she discovered her neighbor standing in the bedroom doorway. The older woman’s gaze was focused on Jed’s face, her faded blue eyes narrowed with suspicion.

  “Mrs. Osborn—” Erica jumped up and headed toward her, trying to block her view of Jed. But he was so much taller than she was—until he crouched down in front of their daughter.

  “What’s going on here?” Mrs. Osborn demanded to know with equal parts anger and fear.

  With a pointed glance at Isobel to indicate that she didn’t want to talk in front of the child, Erica guided the woman back down the hall toward the front door. “Nothing’s wrong…”

  Not now that her baby was back.

  “I heard screaming and nearly called the authorities.” Mrs. Osborn stared down the hall toward the dark shadow enveloping the little girl. “Looks like I should have called.”

  “No. I just overreacted to finding Isobel’s bed empty,” Erica explained with a self-deprecating chuckle. “It’s late and I’m tired.”

  “And you’re not alone,” Mrs. Osborn said. “Who is that man? I’ve never seen him around before…”

  She had never seen any man around Erica unless he was a client of her accounting business. After Jed, she hadn’t dared trust another man—especially when she had Isobel’s safety to worry about even more than her own.

  Her stomach pitched again with the horror over what could have happened to her baby had Isobel been in the apartment when that man had broken in…

  The old woman’s wrinkled brow furrowed into deeper lines of confusion. “Actually I think that I might have seen him before…”

  “He’s an old friend of mine,” Erica said. “You’ve probably seen him in some pictures I’ve had around here.” She opened the door to the hall before the woman could ask to see those photos.

  But Mrs. Osborn was already peering into the living room and, with a trembling hand gesturing toward it, noted a lamp lying on the floor.

  Erica forced a smile. “He—he couldn’t find the lights in the dark.”

  Mrs. Osborn leaned closer and clasped her hand. “If he’s threatening you, I’ll go back to my apartment and call the police. I’ll get you help.”

  “I don’t need help,” Erica lied.

  She desperately needed help. She had stumbled into a murder scene, had had her apartment broken into and, for long, horrific moments, had believed that her daughter had been abducted.

  “Everything’s fine.” She glanced back at Jed and forced a smile. “He really is a friend.”

  “Oh.” Mrs. Osborn nodded in sudden understanding. “He’s an old boyfriend.”

  “Yes.” She hadn’t had to lie this time.

  For a short while before his deployment, Jed had been her boyfriend. Their connection had been so instant and deep that she had believed it could have lasted forever.

  But, like everyone else who had mattered in her life, he hadn’t given her the chance.

  Now she couldn’t give him one. She had to get rid of him this time—had to make sure that he took his danger out of her previously safe world.

  She clasped Mrs. Osborn’s hand tighter—ready to give her the message the older woman had already suspected Erica wanted to give her.

  Call the police…

  * * *

  JEDIDIAH KLEYN HAD CHANGED. That was the first thing he’d noticed before he’d punched the man. With his buzz cut and bulky muscles, Jed didn’t look all that physically different from the war hero who had returned from his tour in Afghanistan with a Purple Heart.

  But he was very different—mentally and emotionally.

  He was harder. Tougher. Ruthless in a way that he had never been. Jed would undoubtedly kill to protect the woman and her child.

  Before Jed and Erica had walked in on him, he’d had time to look at all the family photos inside the apartment. But the kid hadn’t been in her bed. Not that Jed would have given him time to grab the little girl. He had been too focused on catching him.

  And killing him?

 
He rubbed his jaw, which had swollen from the blow Jed had dealt him. He snorted in derision at his quick flash of anger. He had no right to be mad about it. He’d had that one coming. Hell, he had a lot more than one coming to him.

  But Jed wouldn’t land another punch. Jed had already won too much in his life.

  It was his turn to win.

  And Jedidiah Kleyn’s turn to die.