“You need to leave. Now.”

“I can’t just leave you …” he said.

“Why not?” she asked. “You didn’t come here to protect me. You came here to force me to provide you with an alibi. I can’t do that. I can’t perjure myself and swear you never left me that night.”

“I didn’t want you to perjure yourself,” he said. “I wanted you to tell the truth.”

“I have,” she said.

He wished he could be certain that he believed her.

“So why are you still here?” she asked.

He gestured toward her bedroom, to where their daughter lay sleeping. He couldn’t put into words what he already felt for his daughter—the protectiveness, the affection, the devotion …

“Until a few hours ago you didn’t even know she existed,” she reminded him.

“Whose fault was that?” he asked, the question slipping out with his bitterness.

About the Author

Bestselling, award-winning author LISA CHILDS writes paranormal and contemporary romance for Mills & Boon. She lives on thirty acres in west Michigan with her husband, two daughters, a talkative Siamese and a long-haired Chihuahua who thinks she’s a rottweiler. Lisa loves hearing from readers, who can contact her through her website, www.lisachilds.com, or snail mail address, PO Box 139, Marne, MI 49435, USA.

Baby Breakout

Lisa Childs

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To my babies, who are now amazing young women.

Ashley and Chloe, I am so proud and blessed to be

your mother. There is nothing the two of you can’t

accomplish with your intelligence and determination.

Prologue

The high-pitched beep of a breaking-news bulletin drew Erica Towsley’s attention to the television screen. “During a prison riot tonight at Blackwoods Penitentiary in northern Michigan, cop killer Jedidiah Kleyn was among several prisoners to escape.”

Jedidiah Kleyn.

Legs shaking, Erica dropped onto the edge of her sofa. She grabbed a pillow and clasped it against her chest as she struggled to breathe.

No. No. No. Not Jedidiah …

The report continued, “He is considered extremely dangerous.”

Goose bumps lifted on her skin. Dangerous was an understatement for Jedidiah Kleyn’s capacity for violence. Images flitted through her mind, as she recalled the graphic photographs she had been shown of the scene of the horrific crimes Jedidiah had been convicted of committing.

“If anyone believes they have seen this man or any of the other escaped …”

Ears buzzing with her pounding pulse, Erica could catch only snatches of what the serious-faced anchor-woman said.

“… contact authorities immediately. Do not approach these men …”

What if one of these men approached her? Would she have time to contact authorities before he killed her?

Chapter One

“Jed, let me bring you in,” DEA agent Rowe Cusack’s voice crackled in the beat-up pay-phone receiver.

Because everyone had cell phones nowadays, Jed had been lucky to find a pay phone, let alone one that was still working. But then this small mid-Michigan town was a throwback to about fifty years ago. With bright-colored awnings on its storefronts that faced out onto cobblestone streets, Miller’s Valley might as well have been called Mayberry.

“You’re not safe out there,” Rowe continued.

Even at night, with the antique street lamps barely burning holes into the darkness, it was hard to imagine any danger here. Despite the cold and blowing snow, in any other city, people would have still been out—selling or buying things or services that shouldn’t be commodities. Jedidiah Kleyn would like to believe that there was actually a place where no crime happened, where no evil existed, but he’d learned the hard way that nothing and nobody were ever as innocent as they might appear. And at times, some things and some people weren’t as guilty, either.

“Is that because I’m a cop killer?” Jed asked quietly with a quick glance around him to make sure nobody overheard. But the cobblestone street was really deserted. No one lurked in the shadows here, as they had at Blackwoods.

This town, on the outskirts of Grand Rapids, Michigan, was so rural that everyone was early to bed, early to rise. So hopefully no one, inside their little houses behind their picket fences, was awake yet to notice the stranger in the borrowed dark wool jacket with the knit cap pulled low over his face, walking the snow-dusted streets of their town.

“You’re not a killer.” The certainty in the lawman’s voice eased some of Jed’s anxiety.

“That’s not what a jury of my peers and a judge decided three years ago.” He had been convicted of killing his business partner and a police officer who must have happened upon the murder.

“I’ve been going through the case file and the court transcripts,” the agent said.

For the past three years he’d wanted to get his hands on those files, but his lawyer hadn’t been able to get the records past the guards at Blackwoods Penitentiary. The maximum security prison had had no law library, no way for prisoners to learn about their legal rights.

The warden hadn’t cared that even convicted killers had the right to aid in their own appeals. Jefferson James hadn’t been just the prison warden. He’d been the judge, at least the appeals court judge, the jury and, more often than not, the executioner.

But Jed was no longer in any danger from Warden James. The warden was the one behind bars now. So Jed focused on what was truly important—on what had kept him going for the past three years.

“Did you find anything that will prove I was framed?”

And who the hell had done it?

A sigh rattled the already crackling connection. “Not yet. But I will.”

Jed appreciated the agent’s support but there was only so much the man could do. “You don’t even know where to start.”

“You do,” Rowe surmised. “That’s why you broke out of prison.”

“The prison broke,” Jed reminded him. From the gunfire and explosions, the brick, mortar and wood structure had nearly imploded. “It was more dangerous to stay than to leave.”

“Not now. It’s too dangerous for you on the outside,” the DEA agent insisted, his voice deep with a life-and-death urgency. “You need to let me handle this.”

Over the past three years, Jed had learned that his black-and-white code of integrity was something few people followed. Most people, even law-enforcement officers, lived life with shades of gray. Some darker shades than others.

“Is there a shoot-on-sight order out on me?”

Rowe’s silence confirmed Jed’s suspicion.

The prison guard who had stepped aside and let him escape the burning ruins of Blackwoods had warned him that his life would be more at risk on the outside. That there were lawmen who took it very personally when one of their own was killed. Cop killers rarely survived in jail or on the outside.

“Then it’s not safe for me to go back into custody, either,” Jed pointed out. “No doubt I’d wind up having a fatal accident.”

“I will bring you in,” the DEA agent said. “And I’ll vouch for your innocence.”

A smile tugged at Jed’s lips. “Do you really think anyone is going to take your word that I’m innocent just because your girlfriend says so?”

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

Jed’s breath left his lungs in a whoosh of surprise. He had only seen Rowe Cusack once since helping the agent survive his undercover assignment at Blackwoods Penitentiary, but during that brief meeting in the midst of the riot, he had been able to tell that the guy had fallen hard for Jed’s younger sister. “Is Macy all right?”

Because if Rowe had hurt her, the DEA agent would be seeing Jed again—but not to bring him back to prison.

“She’s my fiancée now,” Rowe said.

“You proposed?” The guy had fallen really hard.

“She’s everything you told me she was,” Rowe said, his voice gruff with emotion, “and so much more. I would have been a fool if I let her get away.”

Jed had been a fool like that once. He’d fallen hard but had let the woman get away. In the end, it had cost him his freedom. And given that shoot-on-sight order, it could wind up costing him his life, too.

“I hope she wasn’t a fool to accept,” Jed said. As he’d learned, people weren’t always what you thought they were or what your heart wanted them to be.

“Your sister is no fool,” Rowe said, defending her, his voice sharp with anger now.

“No,” Jed agreed. Macy was the only one who had believed in his innocence … until the DEA agent. But Jed suspected that Rowe just believed in Macy, which was fine with him. His younger sister deserved to have someone who supported her and who obviously loved her. “Congratulations.”

“If I had my way, she would already be my wife,” Rowe admitted, “but she won’t set a date for our wedding until your name is cleared.”

Jed choked on a laugh. “So Macy’s given you some incentive to help me.”

“You gave me the incentive—when you saved my life,” Rowe reminded him. “Twice.”

“I didn’t do that to give you incentive,” Jed said. “I did it because it was the right thing to do.” And because he could never have lived with himself had he let an innocent man be murdered.

“I know,” Rowe said. “That’s why I believe you. That’s why I want you to do the right thing now. Tell me where you are, so I can bring you in.”

Jed blew out a breath that steamed up the cracked Plexiglas of the old pay-phone booth. He’d already talked to the agent too long, just hopefully not long enough for the man to have tracked Jed’s location. “Tell my sister I love her.”

“If you love her, you would—”

“Stay alive. That’s what Mace wants most of all,” Jed said with absolute certainty, “my safety.” Macy would have broken him out of prison herself if he’d agreed to go along with her plan. But he hadn’t wanted her to risk her freedom for his. And for years he had believed that justice would prevail and his innocence would be proven—the real killer finally caught.

He wasn’t that idealistic and naïve anymore. He knew that he was the only one who could prove his innocence. “I won’t be safe until I have irrefutable proof that I killed no one.”

Yet. Because he couldn’t trust the justice system to work, he might have to take his own justice.

“Jed, you have to come back, or it won’t matter if you clear your name,” Rowe said, trying to reason with him.

But no one really understood that nothing mattered to Jed but clearing his name. Not even his own life …

“I’ll keep in touch, Rowe.”

Jed hung up, hopefully before Rowe had had time to trace his call. The DEA agent would excuse his interference as help. But Jed didn’t need anyone’s help. He had broken out of prison because there were certain things—certain people—only he could handle.

Erica Towsley was one of those people. He wadded up the page he had ripped from the dangling phone book and shoved it into the pocket of his jeans. He had found her. For over three years he’d had his lawyer looking for her to no avail. In the three days since he had escaped from Blackwoods Penitentiary, Jed had tracked down his alibi.

He stepped out of the booth and sucked in a breath as the wind picked up, whipping icy chunks of snow at him. But then he thought of her, and his blood heated. Oblivious to the freak late-spring snowstorm, he trudged along the deserted street deeper into the heart of the small town. The businesses were closed, the storefronts dark. But above a few of those businesses, lights glowed in some of the apartments on the second and third stories.

Behind the blinds at one of those windows, a shadow moved. He couldn’t see any more than a dark, curvy silhouette, but his pulse quickened and his breath shortened.

He knew it was her.

ERICA SHIVERED BUT NOT because of the cold air seeping through the worn frames of the front windows. She shivered at what she saw as she gazed through the slats of the blinds.

Despite it being spring for a few weeks now, winter had snuck back into Miller’s Valley in the form of a blizzard. But the return of winter wasn’t what chilled her blood even with the snow blowing outside, nearly obscuring the street below the third-floor apartment. Nearly.

Erica still caught a glimpse of someone standing on the sidewalk across the street. He was just a tall, broad-shouldered shadow. But she could feel his gaze as he stared up at her window. And it chilled her far more than the cold air.

“There is no way that he found you,” she whispered, reassuring herself again, like she had been doing since that special report three nights ago. Nothing was in her name. Not the business. Not the building. Not even the car she drove. “It’s safe here.”

But despite all of her assurances, those doubts niggled at her, jangling her already frazzled nerves. That was why she was up so late, because every creak and clunk of the old building had her pulse jumping and heart racing.

Even though her eyes were gritty and lids heavy, sleep eluded her. So she paced and kept watch, making sure those creaks and clunks were nothing but weather testing the structure of the old building.

But what about the shadow watching her window? She stepped closer but caught no glimpse of him now. Had there really been someone there, or had her overwrought nerves conjured up the image? She studied the street for several more moments, but the wind picked up, swirling the snow around and obliterating whatever footprints might have been on the street or sidewalk.

The snowstorm was late in the spring even for Michigan’s unpredictable April weather. The temperatures had dropped, and rain had turned to sleet and then snow. No one would be out walking in such a storm.

She must have just imagined someone watching her. She exhaled a shaky breath of relief. As her nerves settled, exhaustion overwhelmed her. Maybe she could finally sleep. She stepped back from the window and crossed the living room to shut off the light switch by the door before heading down the hall.

Bam!

Her heart slammed into her ribs. This was no creak or clunk.

Bam! Bam! Bam!

Midstep, she stopped in the hall and whirled back toward the door that rattled under a pounding fist. Her hand trembling, she reached out and flipped on the lights as if the light alone would banish the monsters that had crept out of the shadows.

“Who’s there?” she called out, her voice quavering as her nerves rushed back and overwhelmed her. She couldn’t move—couldn’t even step close enough to the dead-bolted door to peer through the peephole—as if he might be able to grab her through the tiny window.

“Ms. Towsley,” a gruff voice murmured through the door, “I’m an agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration.”

How the hell did he know who she was? And what could he possibly want with her? She knew nothing about narcotics; she rarely even remembered to take her vitamins.

“Prove it,” she challenged him.

She shook off the nerves, so that she had the courage to press her eye to the peephole. But the man was so tall that he blocked most of the light in the hall. And he stood so close to the door that Erica couldn’t see his face, only his wide chest.

“What?” he asked with an impatient grunt.

“Prove that you are who you say you are.” Because she had been fooled before; she had thought a man was something he wasn’t, and the mistake could have cost her everything.

Now she had even more to lose …

“Open the door,” he replied, “and I’ll show you my credentials.”

“Just hold your ID up to the peephole,” she directed him.

She had once chuckled over Aunt Eleanor installing the tiny security window in the door—given that no one had ever committed a crime in Miller’s Valley. But now she was grateful for her great aunt’s paranoia; too bad it had actually been the first symptom of the Alzheimer’s that had eventually taken the elderly woman’s life.

The shadows shifted as he stepped back and finally she was able to see—but just the identification the man held up: Rowe Cusack, Special Agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration. He was the lawman the news hadn’t stopped talking about since the prison break. He was the DEA agent who had gone undercover to expose the corruption at Blackwoods Penitentiary and had nearly lost his life.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

What possible business could a DEA agent have in Miller’s Valley? Fear clutched her stomach, tying it into knots. Perhaps this wasn’t about drugs at all but about whom he’d met on that last assignment of his at Blackwoods.

“I need to talk to you about Jedidiah Kleyn,” he said. His voice was raspy and gruff—just as it had been when he’d made his brief replies to the reporters’ incessant questions.

She fumbled with the dead-bolt lock and opened the door. “Do you think he’s looking for me?”

The man stepped inside and shoved the door closed behind himself. “He’s not looking for you.”

His dark eyes narrowed, he stared down at her—his gaze as cold as the snow melting on his mammothly wide shoulders. Dark stubble clung to his square jaw. “Not anymore.”

Her heart slammed against her ribs as she realized her mistake. Once again she had fallen for this man’s lies.

“He’s found you,” Jedidiah Kleyn said.

Erica had let a killer into her home. And now she was probably going to become his next victim …

Chapter Two

Despite having sworn that she wouldn’t watch the news anymore, Macy Kleyn couldn’t look away from the television screen. But the reporters or, worse yet, the mug shot from when Jed had been arrested weren’t on the TV. The man whose face filled the screen was devastatingly handsome with a strong jaw, icy blue eyes and golden-blond hair.

But she didn’t have to watch the news to see him. All she had to do was glance over to where he sat at a desk in a corner of his open apartment. It was what he was saying to the reporters gathered for that prerecorded press conference that held her attention.

“Jedidiah Kleyn is not the dangerous convict that earlier reports are claiming,” he said, his deep voice vibrating in the TV speakers. “If not for Mr. Kleyn, I would not have made it out of Blackwoods Penitentiary alive. He saved my life, not once, but twice.”

Macy’s breath caught, but she released it in a shuddery sigh of relief. She would never be able to thank her big brother enough for saving the man she loved. But proving Jed’s innocence would be a great place to start. If she had ever been able to figure out where to start …

“Are you suggesting that three years in prison reformed him?” a disembodied voice asked from behind the camera.

Rowe snorted. “Blackwoods reforms no one. Three years incarcerated there would have broken a lesser man than Jedidiah Kleyn.”

“You seem to have an awful lot of respect for a cop killer,” another disembodied voice, this one full of derision, remarked.

“That’s not a question,” Rowe pointed out. “But I’ll answer it anyway. I don’t believe Jedidiah Kleyn is guilty of the crimes of which he was convicted. And I intend to prove his innocence.”

“Is that because Kleyn saved your life or because you’re dating his sister?”

The screen went black, the speakers silenced instead of vibrating with his sexy voice. So she turned toward the real man.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I’m not doing it for you,” he replied, as he tossed the remote onto the couch and turned back to his laptop.

She crossed the room to his desk and leaned over him. Pressing against his back, she rested her head on one of his broad shoulders. His soft hair tickled her cheek, making her tingle.

Everywhere.

She caught just a glimpse of his laptop screen before he snapped it shut. “GPS?” Hope quickened her pulse almost as much as being close to her fiancé had. “Did you find him?”

Rowe shook his head. “He terminated the call before I could pinpoint his location.”

“But you found out something,” she surmised.

He opened up the screen again and pointed to the number on it.

“There aren’t enough digits,” she said, her hope dashed.

“No,” her fiancé admitted, but he didn’t sound as defeated as she felt. “But the area code and first few digits indicate that he called from a pay phone.”

“Pay phone?”

He turned his face slightly toward her, his lips curving into a slight grin. “Apparently they still exist.”

“And you can track it down?”

“Yes. But that number—well, the digits we have of that number—is registered to several phones in rural areas surrounding Grand Rapids.”

“Rural?” Pay phones in farm towns? Maybe it made sense given that there were fewer towers and poorer cell reception.

Rowe shrugged. “Maybe he’s hiding somewhere in the countryside …”

The sick feeling in her stomach convinced her otherwise. “We both know Jed didn’t break out of prison to hide,” she said. “My brother isn’t hiding.”

She suspected that he actually wanted to be found. Not by authorities but by the person who had framed him.

After a slight hesitation, Rowe said, “He’s trying to clear his name.”

“You don’t believe that’s all he’s doing.”

“Do you?” Rowe asked. He spun his chair around and tugged her down so that she straddled his hard thighs. His hands cupped her face, tipping up her chin so that their gazes met.

“No,” she admitted. “If I had been framed for something I didn’t do, I’d want justice.” Even if she had to dole it out herself …

But did her brother want justice or revenge?

JED COULD KILL HER—for everything she had cost him: his freedom, his reputation, his heart …

But despite her duplicity, she still looked beautiful to him. She had the pale golden hair of an angel; it shimmered even in the dim light of the antique chandelier dangling from the high ceiling of her apartment. And her eyes were a bright clear blue—wide now with fear. With her delicate features and flawless skin, she looked so young and innocent.

Where were the lines of guilt and stress? Where was the regret for what she had done to him? Was she so heartless that she had never given him another thought after she’d so callously destroyed his life?

“You’re impersonating a government agent,” she accused him, gesturing toward the badge Jed had lifted off Rowe Cusack when he had saved the DEA agent during the prison riot.

With a twinge of guilt, he slid it back into the pocket of his jeans. Rowe hadn’t mentioned it, so he probably hadn’t realized that Jed was the prisoner who had stolen it from him. The riot had been so chaotic and dangerous that the man had, no doubt, been more concerned about his life than his badge.

“That’s the least of the charges I’m facing,” Jed pointed out. “Thanks to you.”

“Me?” Her voice cracked with emotion, and she stepped back, as if cowering from him in fear. “I had nothing to do with any of the things you’ve done.”

“You had everything to do with it.”

She shook her head. “No …”

He followed her, closing the distance between them. “Why did you do it?”

For three years that question had nagged at him. He could not figure out what her motivation had been.

Greed? Revenge? Once he had thought her too sweet and innocent for either emotion, but he’d had three years to realize how wrong he’d been about her.

“Wh-what did I do?” she asked, as if she really didn’t know.

He chuckled at her attempt to feign innocence. But then those looks of an angel had probably always let her get away with her misdeeds. No one would ever suspect how devious she really was. “You set me up, sweetheart.”

He had once called her sweetheart and meant it; he had been such a fool. “What did you get out of it? Money?”

If she had, she hadn’t spent it on this place. There were cracks in the plaster ceiling and walls, and the hardwood floors were worn. The curtains even fluttered at the windows, as if the cold air blew right through the thin panes of glass.

He moved closer, trapping her between his body and the wall she had backed up against. “Revenge?”

He’d thought that she had understood why he’d had to break up with her before he left for Afghanistan. It wouldn’t have been fair to expect her to wait for him, especially when there had been a strong possibility that he might not even return.

But he shouldn’t have worried about her; she definitely hadn’t waited for him. When he had come back home after his year-long deployment, she had already been wearing another man’s ring.

“Revenge?” She echoed his question. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. She hadn’t seemed to care enough about his dumping her to want revenge on him. But then they hadn’t been going out long when he’d received his deployment orders, calling him from the reserves back into active duty. “I don’t know why you did it.”

“Did what?” she asked, her brow furrowing with confusion.

Jed leaned down, so that his forehead nearly touched hers. “I don’t know why you helped frame me for murder. Or was it all your idea?”

From having once interviewed her for a job, he knew her educational background and IQ. She was more than smart enough to have masterminded the embezzlement, murders and frame-up herself. And he wasn’t the only man on whom she might have wanted revenge.

She gasped, and her breath was warm against his face. “I didn’t. I had nothing to do with those murders.”

Jed eased back to study her beautiful face. No wonder she had fooled him into falling for her lies and for her; she was a damn good actress because she nearly had him believing she wasn’t involved. And he knew better.

“You had to be in on it,” he insisted. “Or you would have come forward when I was arrested. Instead you disappeared.”

She shook her head, tumbling her blond hair around her slender shoulders. In a bulky wool sweater, she looked so small and fragile. But he wouldn’t let her looks deceive him again.

“I didn’t disappear,” she protested. “My aunt Eleanor’s health was failing, so I came home to take care of her.”

“My lawyer couldn’t find you.” And Jed had told the man that she might have returned to Miller’s Valley where she’d grown up with her great aunt.

Her brow furrowed again. “Mr. Leighton definitely found me. I talked to him.”

“No …”

Marcus Leighton wouldn’t have lied to him. He was more than Jed’s defense lawyer; he’d been his fraternity brother, too. And his friend.

“If he found you, he would have made you come forward.” And provide the alibi that would have cleared Jed of all the charges against him.

“Mr. Leighton didn’t want me to testify,” she said, “because my testimony would only make you look guiltier.”

Now he knew she was the one lying. He chuckled at her weak attempt to fool him. “I was with you during the murders. Your testimony would prove my innocence. You were my alibi.”

Her face flushed bright red, but she shook her head again in denial. “I can’t testify to what I can’t remember.”

“What the hell …? You’re claiming amnesia?” There was no way Marcus would have believed that, and if he’d put her on the stand, the jury would have realized she was lying, too. Why hadn’t Marcus put her on the stand if he’d actually found her?

“I was drugged,” she said. “And I have the test results to prove it. I don’t remember that night.”

No matter how hard he’d tried over the past three years, he hadn’t been able to forget that night. Or her …

How could she claim to remember none of it?

“So if using me was part of your plan, it didn’t work,” she said, anger replacing the fear in her eyes as she glared up at him. “I can’t alibi you.”

“You’re lying.” She had to be, otherwise he had lost his one hope of proving his innocence.

“Why would I lie?” she asked.

That was the question that had nagged at him.

Why?

A board creaked behind him, alerting him to someone else’s presence. Had he been set up again?

He grabbed Erica, wrapping one arm around her waist and his other around her neck, so he could threaten to snap it if her backup had a weapon. Then he whirled toward the intruder.

And pain clutched his heart with all the force of a gunshot. But he hadn’t been shot; he’d just been shocked by the appearance of the child who stumbled down the hall, wiping sleep from her dark eyes.

“Don’t hurt her,” Erica pleaded in an urgent whisper. “She’s just a baby.”

The child was actually two—probably almost three years old. She blinked and stared blearily up at him and Erica.

“Mommy?”

“Sweetheart, you need to go back to bed,” Erica said, her voice tremulous despite her obvious efforts to sound calm and reassuring.

The little girl’s lips pursed into a pout. “I wanna a drink,” she stubbornly insisted.

Suddenly aware of how tightly he held her, Jed dropped his arms from around Erica’s delicate frame. “You can get her the drink.” He pitched his voice lower, so only she could hear him. “I won’t hurt her.”

Erica glanced from him to her daughter and back, obviously reluctant to leave him alone with her child.

But this kid was his, too. She was the spitting image of his sister, Macy.

Erica must have taken him at his word because she left the little girl standing in front of him. But the refrigerator was only steps away, through an open archway. Erica watched him carefully as she backed into the kitchen.

He dropped to his knees in front of the little girl and asked, “How old are you?”

Her chocolate-brown eyes widened as she studied him. She was as fearful as her mother had seemed of him. But his size had even intimidated violent criminals enough that during his three years in one of the most dangerous prisons in the United States, not very many inmates had been brave enough to try to mess with him. So of course he was going to scare a small child.

But she lifted her pointy little chin, as if forcing herself to be brave, which made her even more like his feisty kid sister. Then she held up two fingers.

“You’re two years old?”

“I’ll be thrwee soon,” she replied with a slight lisp, like the one his sister had had until the speech therapist their parents hired had corrected it.

His parents had constantly been hiring specialists to fix Macy, so that she could be as perfect as they had considered their firstborn: him. But he had only been perfect until he had been charged with double homicide; then they had stopped considering him their son entirely. They’d forgotten all about him just as Erica had apparently tried to forget him.

“What’s your name?” he asked the child.

“Isobel,” she replied. “What’s yours?”

Dad. I’m your father.

Sure, Erica had been engaged before that night she’d spent with him—the night she claimed not to remember. But Isobel was not Brandon Henderson’s daughter, or she would have been blue-eyed and blond-haired like both her parents.

Instead she shared his coloring and looked exactly like his sister. She even sounded like Macy had at her age. Jed didn’t need a DNA test; he was certain. But before he could open his mouth to utter anything, Erica interrupted.

“Here’s your water, sweetheart!” She pressed a sippy cup into her daughter’s small hand and lifted the child into her arms. “Now let me tuck you back into bed.”

Jed could have vaulted to his feet and stopped her from carrying the child off down the hall. His reflexes were quick or he wouldn’t have survived three years at Blackwoods, not to mention his tour in Afghanistan.

But he let them go.

Then he slowly drew in deep breaths, steadying his racing pulse. The apartment was small, so he overheard their conversation, no matter how softly they spoke.

“Who is that man?” the little girl asked her mother. “What’s his name?”

“Jed,” Erica replied.

“But who is he?” The little girl persisted as stubbornly as she had demanded her now-forgotten glass of water. “I never seen him ‘fore. And he’s so big.”

“He’s just a friend,” Erica murmured. And he was surprised she didn’t choke on her lie.

But that proved just how consummate a liar she was. She was obviously lying about not remembering that night, and now he had the proof. No matter what she claimed about her child, he knew the truth.

He had a daughter.

So whoever had framed him, obviously with Erica’s help, hadn’t just stolen years of Jed’s life. He had lost precious years of Isobel’s life, as well. He had missed his daughter being born, taking her first steps, uttering her first words …

Somehow, that person would have to pay for what he had taken from Jed.

THE BLACKWOODS COUNTY JAIL offered the same basic amenities that the prison once had—before it had been destroyed during the riot. Former warden Jefferson James had a cot on which to sleep. He went to the cafeteria for meals and a recreational area for entertainment. But what he’d just seen on television hadn’t been entertainment, so he’d demanded to return to his cell.

The DEA agent continued to make Jefferson’s life difficult. If only Kleyn had killed him, like Jefferson had ordered the inmate …

But instead of killing him, he’d helped the DEA agent escape Blackwoods. Now the DEA agent wanted to return the favor and prove Kleyn innocent of the crimes of which he’d been convicted. He probably was innocent—that was why he’d disobeyed Jefferson’s order to kill. But his innocence made him even more dangerous to Jefferson. If proved unjustly convicted, his testimony would carry more significance. That was why he couldn’t testify …

A shadow, sliced by the bars, fell across the floor in front of Jefferson. “You wanted to see me?”

No. He could barely look at Sheriff Griffin York. The young lawman was everything Jefferson despised—self-righteous, honorable and law-abiding as well as law-enforcing. But he did want to talk to the man.

“Took you damn long enough to get here,” Jefferson griped.

“Kind of got my hands full cleaning up the mess from the riot,” York bitterly remarked.

“Did you round up all the escapees yet?”

York’s gaze hardened with resentment. “It’s only been a few days.”

“So you haven’t apprehended any of them?”

“Some of them,” the sheriff claimed and then goaded, “and some of your guards, as well. They’re already talking. They have a lot to say about you.”

Jefferson’s lawyer wasn’t worried about the testimony of coconspirators who had benefited from the crimes of which he was being convicted. It was Kleyn he worried about; he was the one who couldn’t talk.

“What about the cop killer?” he asked. “He still at large?”

The sheriff’s nostrils flared. “You don’t need to worry about him.”

Hope lifted Jefferson’s spirit. “He’s dead?”

“No. But his face is all over the news. He will be apprehended soon.”

Jefferson didn’t want him arrested. He wanted him dead. He had already put into motion the shoot-on-sight order; he just had to trust that someone else out there wanted Jedidiah Kleyn dead as badly as he did.

If the man had been framed, then the real killer would probably want to make sure Kleyn didn’t live long enough to discover his identity …

HE’S OUT. HOW DID THE son of a bitch break the hell out of prison?

How had he survived it? How had he survived the year he’d spent in a war zone? Jedidiah Kleyn was some kind of superhero. Or he had been, until his shining armor had been permanently tarnished.

He grinned, his chest swelling with satisfaction in accomplishing what he had barely considered possible. The perfect murder. Murders.

And the perfect revenge. Jedidiah Kleyn had lost everything.

But his life. Now it was time to take that, too.

Chapter Three

“I was wrong,” a deep voice murmured. Jed spoke from where he stood in the hall, as if reluctant to step any closer to the child he had helped her conceive.

Erica stared down at her daughter’s sleeping face. After a sip of water, the toddler had dropped immediately back into a deep slumber. The stranger hadn’t unsettled or scared her like he had Isobel’s mother. But that was because Erica knew him, although he wasn’t the friend she’d told her daughter he was. If he had actually been a friend, she would have known him better; she would have known better than to trust him, let alone fall for him.

And even though he had been sentenced to spend two lifetimes in prison, Erica had known that this day would eventually come. She had known she would see Jedidiah Kleyn again. She stepped out of Isobel’s room and closed the door.

He stared at it, though, as if he could see through the wood. As if he could see his child …

“You were wrong?” She prodded him for an explanation and a diversion. Hoping he would follow her, she led him away from her daughter, down the short hall and back into the living room.

She hadn’t wanted to let him near her daughter. But she hadn’t wanted to scare the little girl either by showing her own fear. Some instinct, as well, had assured Erica that no matter what else Jed might have done, he wouldn’t hurt a child.

“You’re not my alibi,” he agreed as he rejoined her in the front room.

Finally he admitted it, banishing the doubts that had plagued her for the past three years. What if his lawyer had been wrong? What if Jedidiah hadn’t committed those heinous crimes? But Marcus Leighton had known Jed far longer and better than she had. If his own friend had believed he was guilty …

“Isobel’s my alibi.”

She gasped in surprise at his bizarre claim.

“She’s irrefutable proof that I was with you that night.”

Anger surged through her, chasing away her fears. She stepped close to him and stabbed his massive chest with her fingertip. “She’s irrefutable proof that I was drugged and raped that night.”

His neck snapped back as if she’d slapped him. “You think I raped you?”

“You drugged me—”

“I did not drug you,” he insisted with a weary-sounding sigh. From the dark circles beneath his eyes, she doubted he’d had any sleep since his escape. He had probably spent every minute of that time tracking her down. “I don’t even believe you were drugged.”

“Your lawyer has the lab results,” she informed him. “When I told him that my memory of that night was cloudy, he had my blood drawn.”

She should have known better than to believe, even for a moment, that Jed might have actually cared about her. Her own parents hadn’t. She had been just a few years older than Isobel was now when they’d dropped her off at her great aunt’s with the promise that they would come back for her. Despite sending her cards and letters over the years that had reiterated that promise and renewed her hope, they had never come back.

“When was that?” he asked, his dark eyes intense.

She had to refocus on their conversation to realize what he was asking, but she still didn’t understand why. “Three years ago, of course.”

“No,” he impatiently replied. “How many hours or days after we were together?”

Erica shrugged, wondering why he thought it mattered so much how many days or hours had passed. “I don’t know. It was after you were arrested.”

“So at least two days after that night?” he prodded her.

Would it have mattered how many days or hours? Her pulse quickened as she began to wonder and hope that she might not have been so wrong about him. Cautiously, she replied, “I guess.”

He shook his head with disgust, as if he’d caught her in a lie. “If you had been drugged, it wouldn’t have been in your system any longer.”

“How do you know that?” she asked, her stomach tightening with dread.

She had hoped she was wrong about him; that he hadn’t been the one responsible. But he seemed familiar with the drug she’d been slipped, probably in the water he’d given her at the office before she’d left with him that night.

He wouldn’t have had to drug her to get her to go home with him. She had been so grateful, and relieved after a year of worrying, that he’d come back from Afghanistan alive that she would have done anything for him. And to be with him …

“Everyone knows that the drug you’re talking about—the one that erases your memory—doesn’t stay in your system very long,” he said.

Growing up in Miller’s Valley with her great aunt, Erica had been sheltered. She knew nothing about drugs. At her high school no one had used anything more dangerous than marijuana.

“I didn’t know that,” she murmured, embarrassed by her naïveté.

“I know you’re lying,” he said.

“I really didn’t know—”

“You’re lying about that night,” he clarified. “I was with you. I know you weren’t drugged. You were just upset after catching Brandon with another woman.”

That hadn’t upset her. Brandon Henderson hadn’t even been her real fiancé; he had just been too stubborn and too arrogant to accept her no to his proposal. So he had insisted she think about it and wear his ostentatious diamond ring while she did. When Jed had returned from Afghanistan, she had realized why. Brandon had wanted to stick it to the friend he had always envied and resented. That was why she had gone into Brandon’s office the night the man had been murdered—to tell him where to go with his ring.

“I was upset,” she agreed. But not for the reasons Jed thought. She’d been upset that she had let Brandon use her to hurt him. But then Jed had used her, too, and far worse than Brandon had.

After being a pawn in their sick, deadly game, she had realized that she should have stayed in Miller’s Valley. It was much safer for her here. So even if her neighbor hadn’t called to warn her about her great aunt’s deteriorating health, she would have come home.

But Marcus Leighton had always known where she was. Why had he lied to Jed?

Had he lied to her, too?

If Jed’s rage was out of control, as his friend had claimed, wouldn’t he have killed her already for not coming forward with the alibi he’d planned? But he had yet to lay a hand on her. Her pulse quickened at the thought of him touching her. Again.

“I took you back to my place,” Jed said. “You remember that, don’t you?”

“I remember you threatening to kill Brandon for hurting me,” she replied.

“His girlfriend remembered me threatening him, too,” he said with a sigh. “And she testified to it in court. She also claimed that she left me and Brandon alone together.”

Doubts began to niggle. She hadn’t heard that testimony. But she hadn’t gone to court. Leighton hadn’t wanted her there. And she had needed to be with her aunt in Miller’s Valley. She had followed news reports, though, but must have missed the day the girlfriend had testified.

“You and I both know she lied,” Jed said, “that you and I left her alone with him. You could have testified to that even if you really don’t remember what else happened.”

“I don’t remember …” But heat warmed her face at the lie. She didn’t remember everything, but images flashed through her mind. Images of the two of them, naked and wrapped tightly in each other’s arms.

“You’re lying again,” he accused her, his voice sharp with frustration.

“I remember that you took me back to your place,” she admitted.

“It was close to the office, and I didn’t want you driving, as upset as you were.”

She remembered that, too, and that she had been mad, so mad that the anger had made her light-headed and unsteady enough that Jed had carried her up the steps of his loft to his bedroom. Then when Marcus Leighton had told her she’d been drugged, she had realized it hadn’t been the anger that had affected her like that.

“Just rest,” Jed had told her, as he’d leaned down to press a kiss to her forehead.

But she’d grabbed his hand. She’d stopped him from leaving her. And she suspected she would have done that even if she hadn’t been drugged.

“You remember more than that,” he challenged her, as he studied her face.

It had to be flushed because her skin was hot and tingling.

“You know I didn’t rape you,” he said, leaning down so that his mouth was mere inches from hers. “You wanted me …”

She swallowed hard, unable to deny her desire. “I was a fool.”

“Is that why you didn’t come forward?” he asked, his brow furrowing in confusion. “Because you were too embarrassed?”

“I went to your lawyer,” she told him again. “Mr. Leighton said—”

“Forget Marcus for now,” he said as if he couldn’t deal with the possibility that his friend might have betrayed him. “Why didn’t you go to the police?” he asked. “I told the investigating detectives about you, but they didn’t believe that I really had an alibi. Did they even talk to you?”

She shook her head, and sympathy tugged at her that no one had believed him. But his sister …

The news crews had relentlessly hounded Macy Kleyn, ridiculing her for supporting a cop killer. The young woman had always staunchly defended her brother’s innocence.

Had he been innocent?

“Why didn’t you go to the police?” He repeated his question.

“I didn’t know if my testimony would help you or hurt you,” she explained. Because even then, despite what his lawyer had said, she’d had doubts about his guilt. But she’d written those doubts off as pride that she hadn’t wanted to have been so wrong about the man for whom she’d fallen. “And Marcus was adamant that it would hurt you.”

“How?”

“It would have shown premeditation. The prosecutor would have said that you drugged me to provide yourself with an alibi.” He had used her, just as his friend had in their rivalry against each other. But, as Marcus Leighton had said, Jed had taken their sick rivalry too far. “Once I passed out, you left me and returned to the office and killed Brandon. With as close as your apartment was to the office, you had plenty of time.”

“Plenty of time to bludgeon him to death, carry him down to the parking garage, put his body into his car and set it ablaze?” Jed fired the questions at her as if he was the lawyer, and she was the one on trial. “Oh, and kill the police officer who caught me burning the dead body?”

“It’s possible …” Wasn’t it?

He shook his head. “I made love to you all night.” His voice dropped even lower so that it was just a rough whisper as he added, “Over and over again.”

Those images flitted through her mind again—their naked bodies intimately entwined, their mouths fused together. Their hearts beating in the same frantic rhythm. So many images had haunted her over the past few years, staying as vivid as if they’d just made love hours—not years—ago.

Would he have had time to commit those horrific crimes and make love to her so thoroughly?

“I never left you,” he insisted. “You left me.”

“I left you that morning,” she admitted. When she had awakened in his bed, in his arms, she’d slipped out of his loose grasp and hurriedly dressed. She hadn’t been able to believe what she’d done—how she’d given in to her desires to spite her pride. After he’d dumped her before leaving for Afghanistan, she never should have trusted him with her body or her heart. “But you’d left me first—more than a year before.”

“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 …

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