Baby Breakout

“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

MILLS & BOON

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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.