His Child

Jessie gave a frustrated groan. “Why me? Why did you have them do this to me? Why did you tell them to use me like that?”

“If you’ll tell me what you think I had them do to you, then maybe I can help you clear this up.”

“Why did you give the order for them to kill me and do those other things? Why would you want this to happen?” She shook her head in disgust. “What you had them do was sick.”

“Back up some. Who wants to kill you?”

Jessie frowned. “You!”

“Not me. Who?”

“Your hired help, then. Three men and a woman. I never saw their faces, but they chloroformed me and took me to that warehouse. They held me for, uh—what’s the date?”

He didn’t look as if he intended to answer her. He just stood there, the picture of intimidation. “It’s July sixteenth,” he finally said.

“July?” How could that be? Jessie pressed her fingertips against her temple, and her bottom lip started to tremble. She’d seen the date on the newspaper, of course, but it hadn’t registered until now. Suddenly, it all became much clearer. “Three months. They took me back in April.”

He shrugged. “And what exactly do you think these people did to you during these three months?”

“Things. And now I think I might be…” But the word stuck like wet clay in her throat.

“What? Lady, will you just spit this out so I can get you out of here?” he demanded. “What might you be?”

“Pregnant.” It left her mouth on a gasp. The room started to whirl in a black circle. Jessie leaned against the balcony door and let it support her.

“Pregnant,” he spat out, in the same way he did the profanity he uttered next. “This sounds like a personal problem to me. Why would you hold me at gunpoint just to tell me you’re pregnant?”

“Because—” She grabbed the drapes, but it didn’t stop her from sinking to her knees. The plush carpet broke her fall, some. “It’s your baby.”

LIKE HELL IT WAS.

Jake was one-hundred percent sure of that. He hadn’t been with a woman, any woman, in nearly a year. She was obviously some kind of strung-out nut. A stalker maybe. And definitely mentally unstable. There was no way he could be the father of her child, assuming she was even pregnant. That, too, could be the product of her drug-induced imagination.

Now he just had to figure out what to do with her.

Jake reached for the phone to call the police. Then stopped. He looked at her. Really looked at her. It was easier to do now, since she no longer had the gun pointed at him. He’d taken that from her as soon as she fainted. He had also moved her to the sofa. Why, he didn’t know. He should have gotten her out of there as quickly as possible. He should have turned this over already to the police.

He should have.

But for some reason, he hadn’t.

She wore an ill-fitting maid’s uniform that was several sizes too big for her rail-thin body. Obviously, the garment was something she’d stolen. Jake pushed her badly cut, midnight-colored hair away from her face and tried to remember if he’d seen her before.

Nothing about her seemed familiar. Absolutely nothing.

He’d never had sex with her—that was for sure. Since his wife’s death, there had been only a few women. Rare encounters that he could definitely count on one hand. She wasn’t one of those encounters.

Despite the clothes and the bad haircut, she was pretty. Well, she would have been if she hadn’t looked so ill. Her skin was pale, like skim milk. It emphasized the sprinkling of freckles on her slim nose. Maybe she wasn’t just strung-out, but sick. The bruise-colored smudges under her eyes and her parched lips said loads about her health. Or, if she hadn’t lied about her condition, then maybe the pregnancy had taken its toll.

Still, it was no skin off his hide. So what if the woman was pregnant?

It’s your baby.

No way was that humanly possible. Boy, had she picked the wrong guy to try to pin this on.

She stirred, moaning softly, and touched her fingertips to her forehead. Slowly, her eyelids fluttered open. She squinted. Then, groaned. “No. Please not this. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.”

Jake frowned. She had to be talking about herself. Not him. He hadn’t decided if she was actually stupid. Or maybe she was just crazy. He intended to find out soon enough.

“How long before the cops get here?” she asked.

“I haven’t called them yet.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and stared down at her. “Let me tell you how this is going to work. I’ll ask the questions, and you’ll answer them. If the answers please me, I won’t call the cops at all.”

Wincing and mumbling, she sat up and scrubbed her hands over her face. “You’ll just kill me, then.”

Well, she was definitely crazy. “Right. Lady, I’m a congressional candidate, not a hired gun. No, I won’t kill you.”

“Then, what else could you possibly do to me that you haven’t done already?”

There was some fight left in her last question, making Jake rethink the sick theory. She was down but not out. Somehow, it made it easier for him to confront her. He hated to kick someone when they were down.

“I can have you arrested—that’s what I can do,” he informed her. “I think a breaking and entering charge and possession of a firearm will put you away for a while, don’t you?”

She ran her fingers through her hair. “Like I care about those piddly charges, when you want me dead. Why? Why did you have them do this and then order a hit on me?”

“Oh, no. We’re not going down that road again. I haven’t done anything to you—especially get you pregnant and order a hit on you. Now let’s go back to the part about me asking the questions and you answering them. For starters, exactly who the heck are you?”

“Jessie—”

She boldly met his gaze. Her eyes were the color of a gun barrel. Steely gray and just as hard.

“But you already know that.”

“Uh-uh. Don’t start that again. If I knew, I wouldn’t have asked. What’s your full name?”

“Jessie…Smith.”

He made an annoying sound like the buzzer on a game show. “Wrong answer. Try again.”

A muscle flickered in her sleek jaw. “Briggs.”

He didn’t believe her, but at least he had something to work with. It was certainly better than calling her lady. She was anything but a lady. “All right, Jessie Briggs, tell me why you think I’m trying to kill you.”

“I don’t know why, but you ordered those people to kidnap me.”

“People,” Jake flatly repeated. “The three men and the woman you mentioned? The ones who held you for three months?”

She nodded. “But you’re the one who hired them to take me to that warehouse. You had them use me, and—”