Baby Breakout

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“No, to me.” He lifted his gun from beneath the edge of Marcus’s desk. “Just like the evidence, you’re going to get destroyed tonight, my friend.”

It wouldn’t matter who had begun to believe Jedidiah Kleyn’s claims of innocence. He wouldn’t be able to prove it. He wouldn’t die a hero; he would die a killer.

And like Marcus Leighton, he would die soon. But first he would suffer so much that he would be almost grateful for death …

Chapter Four

Jed stood in the open doorway, casting a dark shadow over his sleeping daughter.

His daughter.

He had a child—one he would have never learned about had he not broken out of prison. Knowing about Isobel and now wanting to get to know Isobel made him even more determined to prove his innocence. But most of all he couldn’t have her growing up with the stigma of everyone thinking her father was a killer. Or worse yet, with her thinking her father was a killer.

Because he wasn’t.

Yet.

His skin prickled on the nape of his neck, and the muscles between his shoulder blades twitched. He was no longer alone with his daughter. After three years in one of the most dangerous prisons in the world and, before his incarceration, a year in Afghanistan, his instincts were finely honed. So honed that he didn’t need to turn around to know that Erica had joined him. He could smell her—that sweet vanilla scent that reminded him of baking cookies and pies. And he could feel her as his skin tingled with the heat of awareness.

“I couldn’t find the business card Marcus Leighton gave me,” she said.

Regret tightened his guts. He didn’t have any time to waste tracking down the Judas who’d betrayed him. Not only had Marcus not put Erica on the stand, but he’d convinced her that Jed was guilty.

Why?

Unlike Brandon, Marcus had always been a true friend to Jed. He hadn’t been competitive with him; he’d actually seemed to be in awe of him—more fan than friend.

“But I looked him up online,” Erica said, “and I found his address.”

For the past few years he’d thought she had sold him out. But like him, she had been a victim, too. Along with the jury of twelve of his peers, she had believed the evidence that had been manufactured to prove his guilt.

Had Marcus manufactured that evidence? But he had no motive to frame Jed … unless he had been hiding his own guilt. Brandon Henderson and Marcus Leighton had not been friends. Brandon had bullied and harassed Marcus, as he had bullied and harassed everyone but Jed.

Jed had thought he only needed to find his alibi and make her come forward to prove his innocence. But Erica had raised valid points about her testimony. With the holes in her memory, she wouldn’t be able to convince an appeals court that he hadn’t left her alone in his bed that night, gone back to the office and committed the double murder.

No, the only way to prove his innocence beyond a shadow of anyone’s doubt—the appeals court, Erica’s and their daughter’s—was to find the real killer. “Where is he?”

“I’m not going to tell you,” she said.

Finally able to drag his gaze away from Isobel, he turned to Erica. She stood in the light from the hall, still looking like an angel, but from the firm set of her jaw and the hard gleam in her eyes, she intended to be as stubborn as the devil to keep the information he wanted from him.

Over the past few years, he had dealt with people far more stubborn than she could ever be. Like the warden of Blackwoods, who had been the very devil himself. Now Warden James was behind bars for all his criminal activities.

And Jed was out.

A bitter chuckle at the irony slipped through his lips, and he glanced back at Isobel, worried that he had awakened her.

“She sleeps like a rock,” Erica assured him. “She doesn’t hear anything when she’s out.”

“That’s good,” Jed said. “Then she won’t hear me take your computer from you to look up Marcus’s address.”

He was not going back to prison to serve out his two life sentences; he had already served enough time for crimes he hadn’t committed. Realistically, he would probably have to serve time for breaking out of prison, but he could accept the punishment for a crime he had committed.

“You don’t need to look up his address,” she said. “I’ll drive you to his office.”

“His office will be closed now.” He gestured toward the darkness beyond Isobel’s bedroom window. “And you’re not driving me anywhere.”

“He lives above his office,” she explained, “in Grand Rapids. You’ll need a ride there.”

“I got here and buses don’t run to Miller’s Valley,” he reminded her. He didn’t need a ride. And he definitely didn’t want Erica with him when he questioned Marcus.

“So you stole a car, too?”

In addition to what? Murder? Did she still have her doubts? Was she not able to completely trust him? But wouldn’t that make her more anxious to get rid of him than to want to go along with him?

“You can’t leave Isobel here alone.” And he wasn’t about to take his daughter anywhere near a possible killer.

“My neighbor from across the hall is coming over to watch her,” she said. “I told Mrs. Osborn that I have an emergency in Grand Rapids.”

“You don’t have anything in Grand Rapids,” he said. “I do.” Hopefully his vindication. “Stay here with our daughter.”

She shook her head, which swirled her golden hair around her slender shoulders.

He swallowed a groan, fighting his attraction to her. It didn’t matter how damn beautiful she was; he couldn’t trust her. He only really had her word that Marcus had lied to her. His friend deserved to give his side of the story before Jed entirely condemned him. Jed had known Marcus far longer and, he’d thought, better than he’d ever known Erica Towsley.

“I have questions only Marcus can answer,” she said. “I want to hear, from his mouth, why he lied to me. And I want to know why he lied about you.”

And, obviously, she didn’t trust Jed enough to bring those answers back to her. But then she had spent the past few years convinced that he was guilty of murder. He was lucky she hadn’t called the police instead of her neighbor.

A knock rattled the front door, and Jed’s heart rattled his rib cage with a sudden jolt of fear. What if she had called the police? What if she had only been playing him when she’d acted as if she was beginning to believe in his innocence?

“Open Isobel’s window and go out the fire escape,” Erica said, her soft voice pitched low with urgency.

“What—Why?”

“You can’t let Mrs. Osborn see you,” she explained. “She obsessively watches the news. She might recognize you from all the media coverage of the prison breakout.”

The door rattled again.

“Go down the fire escape,” she ordered him. “My car’s the blue minivan parked below it in the alley. It’s unlocked.” Her blue eyes gleamed as she added, “I have the keys, though.”

“I don’t need your van,” he reminded her.

He had one of his own parked in the very same alley. The black panel van had belonged to a guard, like the clothes that Jed had found packed in a suitcase in the back of it. The guard, one of the warden’s henchmen, had obviously planned to flee before charges could be filed against him. But he hadn’t made it out of the riot. Like a few others, he had died behind bars because of the crimes he’d carried out for the warden. He had tortured and killed the prison doctor who’d helped the DEA agent escape.

The death of the doctor, who so many of the inmates had loved, was what had inspired the riot. When he’d ordered Doc’s murder, the warden had gone too far. He’d ordered Jed’s death, too, but the riot had protected and eventually freed Jed. But even without Rowe’s warning, he would have known that he was probably in more danger outside of prison than he’d ever really been in it.

At least he didn’t need to worry about Warden James anymore …

“But you need Marcus Leighton’s address,” she reminded him.

“Fine. I’ll wait for you,” he assured her. He also waited before going out the window. Hiding in the dark shadows of Isobel’s bedroom, he watched Erica walk down the hall toward the door.

Her hips, fuller than he remembered, swayed in her jeans. His guts tightened with desire. It wasn’t fair that she was so damn beautiful …

“Thank you for coming,” Erica said as she opened the door. “I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“It’s okay, honey,” a female voice, gruff with sleep and possibly age, assured her. “I know that you would never do that unless you had an emergency. I hate the thought of you going out after dark, though—what with those escaped convicts on the loose. They’re all armed and dangerous, you know.”

“I’m sure the media is exaggerating that,” Erica said, keys rattling as she grabbed her purse.

“No, honey, they’re bad men—every last one of them. But that cop killer—he’s the worst. I hope they catch him soon.” A board creaked, as if the woman had moved down the hall.

Toward Isobel’s bedroom.

If Jed didn’t leave now, he might get caught. He pushed up the window and stepped onto the wrought iron of the fire escape. The wind rustled Isobel’s curtains, so he pulled the window closed. Hopefully Erica would come back and lock it.

He hated the thought of leaving Isobel alone. The old woman sitting with her was no protection for the vulnerable child—not with a killer on the loose who had already tried to ruin Jed’s life once. Harming his daughter would hurt Jed more than spending the rest of his life locked up.

But, hopefully, no one else knew about Isobel. While Erica claimed that his lawyer had always known her whereabouts, Marcus might not have realized she was pregnant. He had certainly never given Jed any hint that he had become a father.

But then he couldn’t trust anything his lawyer had ever told him because he’d apparently kept much more from him than Jed had realized. Like the documents that might have helped Jed in his defense, if he’d been able to track down the funds that had been embezzled from his clients’ accounts. If Marcus had lied about Erica, he might have lied about the warden denying Jed access to those documents.

Or was it Erica that he shouldn’t trust? Maybe she had been working with Marcus. Maybe she was still working with the lawyer.

Maybe instead of driving Jed to Grand Rapids, she intended to drive him right to a police station …

COULD SHE TRUST JED? Erica studied his face in the glow of the dashboard lights. He had insisted on driving, his hands clamped tight around the steering wheel. His square jaw, shadowed with dark stubble, was also clamped tight—as if he fought to hold in his rage.

How much had that rage built up during three years in prison for crimes he hadn’t committed? If he hadn’t committed them …

Had she been a fool to so easily accept his claims of innocence? While she now remembered more of that night, of their making love again and again, she couldn’t remember every minute of it. She couldn’t swear that he had never left her …

“I didn’t do it,” he said, as if he had read her mind.

She jumped and knocked her knee against the dash, pain radiating up her leg. She had the passenger’s seat pulled up close to it because the child booster seat was behind it and Isobel always kicked the back of it. “How did you know what I was thinking?”

She had never been able to truly tell what Jed had been thinking or feeling. So it wasn’t fair if he could read her that easily …

“I figured you would start doubting my innocence again,” Jed said. “After all, it would be easier for you if I was guilty.”

“Easier?” Then she had willingly gone off alone with a killer. At least she had drawn him away from Isobel, though. At least she had kept her daughter safe …

But she remembered the look on Jed’s face as he had stared down at their sleeping daughter. His jaw hadn’t been rigid then. His dark eyes hadn’t been hard. They had been soft and warm with awe and affection. He would never hurt Isobel.

“If I was really the killer, your conscience would be clear,” he replied. “You wouldn’t feel guilty for doing nothing while I was sent to prison.”

“I explained why I did nothing.” Except for the reasons she’d kept to herself, except for her personal baggage. She had never admitted to him that her parents had abandoned her with her great aunt. He had probably assumed she’d been an orphan—not unwanted.

A muscle twitched along his cheek. “Because of Marcus’s lies.”

He turned the van onto a cobblestone street and parked at the curb. At this hour there was no fight to get a meter. Every one of the metal meters stood guard over an empty parking spot.

“Are you sure this is the place?” he asked as he gazed up at the brick building, which was sandwiched between a restaurant and a bookstore.

“Yes,” she confirmed, as she located the address on the building. The numbers on the brass plate matched the address she had found online.

A couple of lights glowed in the two stories above the ground-floor office. But lights glowed in the office windows, as well. At three o’clock in the morning, it was the only building with more illumination than just security lights.

“He was even written up in the Grand Rapids magazine about his renovation of this historic building,” she said, remembering the article she had found online when looking for his address.

“He must have been more successful with other cases than he was mine,” Jed murmured, “because it seems that since my incarceration, he certainly moved up in the world.”

Erica hadn’t found much else online about Marcus Leighton except his address and articles about his representing the cop killer, Jedidiah Kleyn. “I don’t think he had any other high-profile cases, or they would have come up when I searched for his name on Google.”

“If losing my case or, hell, just representing me, hurt his career, he didn’t pay for this place with what I paid him.” That look was back on Jed’s handsome face, the intense rage that he was barely managing to control with a clenched jaw and flared nostrils.