Baby Breakout

“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.