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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.
