Baby Breakout

“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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