Baby Breakout
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“I got deployed.”
“You left me before you got deployed,” she reminded him. “You didn’t want me waiting for you.” And, haunted by all the years she’d spent waiting for someone she loved to come back for her, she had readily agreed to end their budding relationship even though—or maybe because—she had already fallen for him.
“We’d only gone out a few times before I got called back to active duty,” he reminded her. “I couldn’t ask you to wait for me.”
“Yes, you could have.” Then, even if she hadn’t been able to agree to wait, she would have at least known that he cared about her, too. “But you told me that you didn’t see us working out anyway. That we weren’t really compatible.”
And she had believed him … until she’d seen his face when he had returned and found her in Brandon’s office, wearing his ring. She had been trying to give it back that day, too. She’d only gone out with his business partner a few times over the year Jed had been gone, and mostly just so she could ask about Jed. So she had been using Brandon as a connection to the man she really wanted. That was why she had let him talk her into wearing that ring to think about his proposal—because she’d felt guilty.
“I was lying then,” Jed said.
“I didn’t know that. I believed that you really didn’t see any future for us,” she said. And that was why she had felt like a fool when she’d awakened in his arms. What if he’d only been jealous of his friend and hadn’t really cared about her at all? Because if he had, how had he dropped her so easily?
Just as easily as her parents had dropped her at Aunt Eleanor’s and never returned despite all their promises …
“Is that why you didn’t come forward to offer me an alibi?” he asked. “Because you wanted revenge over my dumping you before I left for Afghanistan?”
She sucked in a breath. Apparently he didn’t think very highly of her at all. When he’d told her that he saw no future for them, he must have been telling the truth then. And he was lying now, to try to make her feel guilty enough to help him.
“I have told you,” she said, “again and again that I did come forward. I talked to your lawyer.”
Jed shook his head, once again rejecting her claim. “Marcus swore to me that he never found you.”
“Then he lied.”
And, she thought, if Marcus really had lied to his friend and former fraternity brother, he would have had no qualms about lying to a woman he had barely known. Had Marcus lied about everything? Jed’s guilt? His violent temper?
After that first initial jolt of fear at realizing she had let Jed into her apartment, she hadn’t remained afraid—if she had, she would have tried to get to the phone or she would have shouted for her neighbor to call the police. Of course she would have had to shout really loud for Mrs. Osborn to hear her, but the elderly lady definitely would have come to her aid.
But instinctively she had known that she was in no real danger from Jed—that he wouldn’t physically harm her or their daughter. He may have had reason to harm her, though, had she stupidly believed lies about him …
Jed’s brow furrowed. “I don’t understand … why would he lie?”
“He thought you were guilty,” she divulged. “He said that Afghanistan changed you—that you came back so angry and violent.”
A muscle twitched along his jaw, as if he tightly clenched it—controlling that rage of which his friend had warned her. “Was I violent with you that night?”
“From what I remember …?” She bit her lip and shook her head. He had been anything but violent. He had definitely been passionate but gentle, too.
“So I didn’t rape you.”
“No, but I was drugged. I don’t care if the results came too late. I know that something wasn’t right that night. I felt dazed or drunk, and I’d had nothing but that water at the office.” At the time, she’d thought it had just been the surrealness of finally making love with the man she had loved for so long and had worried that, because of his deployment, she would never have had the chance to be that close to him.
Jed nodded, almost as if he was beginning to accept that what she told him was the truth.
“My memory of that night is sporadic,” she continued. “I can testify that I was with you that night, but I can’t swear that you never left me. Your lawyer was right that I wouldn’t have been a convincing alibi—that my testimony could have actually hurt you more than I could have helped you.”
And that was why she hadn’t gone to the police, despite the twinges of guilt she’d felt over staying silent. While she believed that a man should be punished for his crimes, she hadn’t wanted to help dole out that punishment. Not to Jed—not given what he might have endured in Afghanistan.
According to his lawyer, there had been more than sufficient evidence for his conviction without her muddying the waters. But would she have muddied the waters, or had Leighton already done that?
His broad shoulders slumped, and his breath shuddered out in a ragged sigh. “I spent all these years thinking that all I had to do to clear my name was find you.”
“Is that really all you want?” To clear his name—not to kill her? If she could have been his alibi but hadn’t come forward, she wouldn’t blame him for wanting to harm her.
He glanced toward the hall down which was his daughter’s room. “That was all I wanted.”
“To clear your name?”
“I am innocent, Erica,” he insisted, his voice and gaze steady with sincerity. “I didn’t kill anyone. Not in Afghanistan and damn well not when I returned.”
Guilt gripped her heart, making it ache. Had she been wrong? Had she stood by and done nothing while an innocent man rotted in prison? “But there was the witness—the one who actually saw you shoot the cop.”
Jed shrugged. “He was a vagrant who hung out in the parking garage. He was usually drunk. His testimony shouldn’t have held any weight.”
“He didn’t look like a vagrant in court. The jury believed him.” And so had she.
“You followed the trial?”
Erica nodded. The judge had opened up the courtroom to news crews, which had covered and replayed every salacious detail of the trial. “But your lawyer told me how it would go before it even started. He knew the evidence against you was insurmountable, and that my testifying would only make you look guiltier, that it would help prove premeditation.”
“Or your alibi might have given me reasonable doubt …”
Instead she had been the one with the doubts. But then, pretty much everyone she had ever loved had lied to her. Over and over again …
“Your lawyer showed me pictures of the crime scene, too.” She shuddered. Because of the graphic nature of the images, the media hadn’t been allowed to show crime-scene photos on the news. For years Erica had wished she had never seen them, either.
“Why would Marcus do that?” Jed asked.
“I don’t know …” She hadn’t understood any of it—the rivalry between men who were supposed to be friends and business partners or the lawyer being so certain that his client was guilty. She’d wondered then if Jed had actually confessed to his friend.
Jed’s brow furrowed with lines of confusion. “It’s as if he was trying to convince you of my guilt when he was supposed to be doing everything in his power to prove my innocence.”
“He didn’t prove your innocence to a jury. He did a much better job of proving your guilt,” she said, “at least to me.”
Jed shook his head, as if trying to make sense of it all. “I thought he was my friend. He and Brandon and I all belonged to the same fraternity.”
“Brandon wasn’t really your friend,” she pointed out.
Jed must have realized how much his former fraternity brother and business partner had envied and resented him. But then Brandon had been very good at hiding that resentment behind a façade of charm and humor—otherwise she never would have spent any time with him—not even to stay connected to Jed.
“And apparently neither was Marcus,” Jed said with a heavy sigh. “So is he the one who framed me?”
Framed? The idea didn’t seem all that preposterous anymore. In fact it seemed highly likely, which both relieved and sickened her.
“It would explain why he knew how much evidence there was against you—if he planted it.” Just as he had planted the doubts in her muddled mind, so that she had done nothing when Isobel’s father had gone to prison for a crime he hadn’t committed. She should have at least talked to him, let him tell her his side of that night.
But she had worried that she would fall for his lies again.
What if she’d been wrong about him?
Her head pounded, and her stomach pitched as she realized the full impact of what she’d done … to Jed and their daughter. She had cost them three years together, and, from what she had seen on the news about the corruption at Blackwoods Penitentiary, she had nearly cost Jed his life.
“I CAN’T BELIEVE JED KLEYN got out,” Marcus Leighton said, his hand shaking as he poured himself another drink.
“It was your job to make sure he stayed in prison for the rest of his life,” the man with Marcus reminded his partner in crime.
But Marcus had never really been a partner, just a greedy ally. Not even so much an ally as a puppet, really. Easily manipulated. Too easily …
Marcus stared up at his companion, his eyes already clouded with confusion and drunkenness. “I’m not responsible for him breaking out of prison.”
“He was supposed to die in prison.” That had been how the plan—the brilliant plan—was to have concluded.
“He’d only been inside three years.” Marcus was sober enough to remember. As if realizing that his brain was fogging, he pushed his glass aside. Alcohol sloshed over the rim and onto the case file lying on his mahogany desk. It was an antique, like most of the furnishings in the elegant office. Marcus enjoyed the finer things in life.
“Three years wasn’t long enough.” Jed wouldn’t have suffered enough. Not yet. If he had lasted just a few more years, an inmate would have been rewarded—just as Marcus’s ineptitude had been rewarded—for taking Jedidiah Kleyn’s life.
But maybe this was a better and far more satisfying conclusion to his plan. Now he would get to take Jed’s life himself—with his own hands. And he would be able to watch Jed’s face while he did it.
“He’ll be apprehended,” Marcus said. “It doesn’t matter how many other prisoners escaped during the riot, every cop is out there looking for Jed.”
He shook his head. “You heard that DEA agent on the news, didn’t you? The guy praises Kleyn for saving his life. He believes his claims of innocence.”
Marcus’s breath shuddered out. “That’s why he asked for copies of all my records. He already got the police files and court transcripts.”
His heart pounded a little faster. Marcus was so inept that he might have left something in those records that could lead back to him. “When is he coming for them?”
The color left Marcus’s face, leaving him even pastier than the long Michigan winter had. “He’s coming by tomorrow.”
He had time. “Then we’ll have to destroy them tonight.”
Marcus nodded eagerly, and his shoulders slumped with relief. “Of course. Yes, we will.”
The man really was an idiot, which made him a liability. “We’ll have to get rid of any evidence leading back to me.”
“To us.”
“No, to me.” He lifted his gun from beneath the edge of Marcus’s desk. “Just like the evidence, you’re going to get destroyed tonight, my friend.”
It wouldn’t matter who had begun to believe Jedidiah Kleyn’s claims of innocence. He wouldn’t be able to prove it. He wouldn’t die a hero; he would die a killer.
And like Marcus Leighton, he would die soon. But first he would suffer so much that he would be almost grateful for death …
Chapter Four
Jed stood in the open doorway, casting a dark shadow over his sleeping daughter.
His daughter.
He had a child—one he would have never learned about had he not broken out of prison. Knowing about Isobel and now wanting to get to know Isobel made him even more determined to prove his innocence. But most of all he couldn’t have her growing up with the stigma of everyone thinking her father was a killer. Or worse yet, with her thinking her father was a killer.
Because he wasn’t.
Yet.
His skin prickled on the nape of his neck, and the muscles between his shoulder blades twitched. He was no longer alone with his daughter. After three years in one of the most dangerous prisons in the world and, before his incarceration, a year in Afghanistan, his instincts were finely honed. So honed that he didn’t need to turn around to know that Erica had joined him. He could smell her—that sweet vanilla scent that reminded him of baking cookies and pies. And he could feel her as his skin tingled with the heat of awareness.
“I couldn’t find the business card Marcus Leighton gave me,” she said.
Regret tightened his guts. He didn’t have any time to waste tracking down the Judas who’d betrayed him. Not only had Marcus not put Erica on the stand, but he’d convinced her that Jed was guilty.
Why?
Unlike Brandon, Marcus had always been a true friend to Jed. He hadn’t been competitive with him; he’d actually seemed to be in awe of him—more fan than friend.
“But I looked him up online,” Erica said, “and I found his address.”
For the past few years he’d thought she had sold him out. But like him, she had been a victim, too. Along with the jury of twelve of his peers, she had believed the evidence that had been manufactured to prove his guilt.
Had Marcus manufactured that evidence? But he had no motive to frame Jed … unless he had been hiding his own guilt. Brandon Henderson and Marcus Leighton had not been friends. Brandon had bullied and harassed Marcus, as he had bullied and harassed everyone but Jed.
Jed had thought he only needed to find his alibi and make her come forward to prove his innocence. But Erica had raised valid points about her testimony. With the holes in her memory, she wouldn’t be able to convince an appeals court that he hadn’t left her alone in his bed that night, gone back to the office and committed the double murder.
No, the only way to prove his innocence beyond a shadow of anyone’s doubt—the appeals court, Erica’s and their daughter’s—was to find the real killer. “Where is he?”
“I’m not going to tell you,” she said.
Finally able to drag his gaze away from Isobel, he turned to Erica. She stood in the light from the hall, still looking like an angel, but from the firm set of her jaw and the hard gleam in her eyes, she intended to be as stubborn as the devil to keep the information he wanted from him.
Over the past few years, he had dealt with people far more stubborn than she could ever be. Like the warden of Blackwoods, who had been the very devil himself. Now Warden James was behind bars for all his criminal activities.
And Jed was out.
A bitter chuckle at the irony slipped through his lips, and he glanced back at Isobel, worried that he had awakened her.
“She sleeps like a rock,” Erica assured him. “She doesn’t hear anything when she’s out.”
“That’s good,” Jed said. “Then she won’t hear me take your computer from you to look up Marcus’s address.”
He was not going back to prison to serve out his two life sentences; he had already served enough time for crimes he hadn’t committed. Realistically, he would probably have to serve time for breaking out of prison, but he could accept the punishment for a crime he had committed.
“You don’t need to look up his address,” she said. “I’ll drive you to his office.”
“His office will be closed now.” He gestured toward the darkness beyond Isobel’s bedroom window. “And you’re not driving me anywhere.”
“He lives above his office,” she explained, “in Grand Rapids. You’ll need a ride there.”
“I got here and buses don’t run to Miller’s Valley,” he reminded her. He didn’t need a ride. And he definitely didn’t want Erica with him when he questioned Marcus.
“So you stole a car, too?”
In addition to what? Murder? Did she still have her doubts? Was she not able to completely trust him? But wouldn’t that make her more anxious to get rid of him than to want to go along with him?
“You can’t leave Isobel here alone.” And he wasn’t about to take his daughter anywhere near a possible killer.
“My neighbor from across the hall is coming over to watch her,” she said. “I told Mrs. Osborn that I have an emergency in Grand Rapids.”
“You don’t have anything in Grand Rapids,” he said. “I do.” Hopefully his vindication. “Stay here with our daughter.”
She shook her head, which swirled her golden hair around her slender shoulders.
He swallowed a groan, fighting his attraction to her. It didn’t matter how damn beautiful she was; he couldn’t trust her. He only really had her word that Marcus had lied to her. His friend deserved to give his side of the story before Jed entirely condemned him. Jed had known Marcus far longer and, he’d thought, better than he’d ever known Erica Towsley.
“I have questions only Marcus can answer,” she said. “I want to hear, from his mouth, why he lied to me. And I want to know why he lied about you.”
And, obviously, she didn’t trust Jed enough to bring those answers back to her. But then she had spent the past few years convinced that he was guilty of murder. He was lucky she hadn’t called the police instead of her neighbor.
A knock rattled the front door, and Jed’s heart rattled his rib cage with a sudden jolt of fear. What if she had called the police? What if she had only been playing him when she’d acted as if she was beginning to believe in his innocence?
“Open Isobel’s window and go out the fire escape,” Erica said, her soft voice pitched low with urgency.
“What—Why?”
“You can’t let Mrs. Osborn see you,” she explained. “She obsessively watches the news. She might recognize you from all the media coverage of the prison breakout.”
The door rattled again.
“Go down the fire escape,” she ordered him. “My car’s the blue minivan parked below it in the alley. It’s unlocked.” Her blue eyes gleamed as she added, “I have the keys, though.”
“I don’t need your van,” he reminded her.
He had one of his own parked in the very same alley. The black panel van had belonged to a guard, like the clothes that Jed had found packed in a suitcase in the back of it. The guard, one of the warden’s henchmen, had obviously planned to flee before charges could be filed against him. But he hadn’t made it out of the riot. Like a few others, he had died behind bars because of the crimes he’d carried out for the warden. He had tortured and killed the prison doctor who’d helped the DEA agent escape.
The death of the doctor, who so many of the inmates had loved, was what had inspired the riot. When he’d ordered Doc’s murder, the warden had gone too far. He’d ordered Jed’s death, too, but the riot had protected and eventually freed Jed. But even without Rowe’s warning, he would have known that he was probably in more danger outside of prison than he’d ever really been in it.
At least he didn’t need to worry about Warden James anymore …
“But you need Marcus Leighton’s address,” she reminded him.
“Fine. I’ll wait for you,” he assured her. He also waited before going out the window. Hiding in the dark shadows of Isobel’s bedroom, he watched Erica walk down the hall toward the door.
Her hips, fuller than he remembered, swayed in her jeans. His guts tightened with desire. It wasn’t fair that she was so damn beautiful …
“Thank you for coming,” Erica said as she opened the door. “I’m sorry I woke you up.”
“It’s okay, honey,” a female voice, gruff with sleep and possibly age, assured her. “I know that you would never do that unless you had an emergency. I hate the thought of you going out after dark, though—what with those escaped convicts on the loose. They’re all armed and dangerous, you know.”
“I’m sure the media is exaggerating that,” Erica said, keys rattling as she grabbed her purse.
“No, honey, they’re bad men—every last one of them. But that cop killer—he’s the worst. I hope they catch him soon.” A board creaked, as if the woman had moved down the hall.
Toward Isobel’s bedroom.
If Jed didn’t leave now, he might get caught. He pushed up the window and stepped onto the wrought iron of the fire escape. The wind rustled Isobel’s curtains, so he pulled the window closed. Hopefully Erica would come back and lock it.
He hated the thought of leaving Isobel alone. The old woman sitting with her was no protection for the vulnerable child—not with a killer on the loose who had already tried to ruin Jed’s life once. Harming his daughter would hurt Jed more than spending the rest of his life locked up.
But, hopefully, no one else knew about Isobel. While Erica claimed that his lawyer had always known her whereabouts, Marcus might not have realized she was pregnant. He had certainly never given Jed any hint that he had become a father.
But then he couldn’t trust anything his lawyer had ever told him because he’d apparently kept much more from him than Jed had realized. Like the documents that might have helped Jed in his defense, if he’d been able to track down the funds that had been embezzled from his clients’ accounts. If Marcus had lied about Erica, he might have lied about the warden denying Jed access to those documents.
Or was it Erica that he shouldn’t trust? Maybe she had been working with Marcus. Maybe she was still working with the lawyer.
Maybe instead of driving Jed to Grand Rapids, she intended to drive him right to a police station …
COULD SHE TRUST JED? Erica studied his face in the glow of the dashboard lights. He had insisted on driving, his hands clamped tight around the steering wheel. His square jaw, shadowed with dark stubble, was also clamped tight—as if he fought to hold in his rage.
How much had that rage built up during three years in prison for crimes he hadn’t committed? If he hadn’t committed them …
Had she been a fool to so easily accept his claims of innocence? While she now remembered more of that night, of their making love again and again, she couldn’t remember every minute of it. She couldn’t swear that he had never left her …
“I didn’t do it,” he said, as if he had read her mind.
She jumped and knocked her knee against the dash, pain radiating up her leg. She had the passenger’s seat pulled up close to it because the child booster seat was behind it and Isobel always kicked the back of it. “How did you know what I was thinking?”
She had never been able to truly tell what Jed had been thinking or feeling. So it wasn’t fair if he could read her that easily …
“I figured you would start doubting my innocence again,” Jed said. “After all, it would be easier for you if I was guilty.”
“Easier?” Then she had willingly gone off alone with a killer. At least she had drawn him away from Isobel, though. At least she had kept her daughter safe …
But she remembered the look on Jed’s face as he had stared down at their sleeping daughter. His jaw hadn’t been rigid then. His dark eyes hadn’t been hard. They had been soft and warm with awe and affection. He would never hurt Isobel.
“If I was really the killer, your conscience would be clear,” he replied. “You wouldn’t feel guilty for doing nothing while I was sent to prison.”
“I explained why I did nothing.” Except for the reasons she’d kept to herself, except for her personal baggage. She had never admitted to him that her parents had abandoned her with her great aunt. He had probably assumed she’d been an orphan—not unwanted.
A muscle twitched along his cheek. “Because of Marcus’s lies.”
He turned the van onto a cobblestone street and parked at the curb. At this hour there was no fight to get a meter. Every one of the metal meters stood guard over an empty parking spot.