Unexpected Father

Or rather, what the lieutenant had ordered him to do.

Talk about the ultimate distraction. That order kept repeating itself through Jason’s head, and he doubted it’d go away any time soon. Especially since he had no clue as to how he could carry it out.

“Please tell me you have answers,” he said to Detective Mack O’Reilly. Jason kept his voice low so he wouldn’t wake Lilly. To get her to fall asleep, it’d taken nearly a half hour of questions and assurances from him that she was safe. Jason didn’t want to go through that again until he could make good on those assurances.

If that were even possible.

O’Reilly shrugged. “I have answers, but I don’t think you’ll like them. There’s only one surveillance camera in or around this entire place. It’s in the parking lot and static, fixed in only one direction.”

Jason tried not to curse. “Let me guess—the wrong direction?”

“You got it. It was aimed at the center of the parking lot. Someone came up from the side and, while staying out of the line of sight, smashed the lens with a rock. All we got for a visual was a shadow. The crime-scene guys are dusting both the camera and the rock for prints, but it looks clean. Whoever it was probably had on gloves.”

Definitely not good. Jason had hoped for a sloppy crime scene, even though deep down he’d known it wouldn’t be. Whoever was behind this was brazen. Yes. Determined—that, too. Maybe even downright desperate.

But not sloppy.

Jason had personally gone over every inch of Lilly’s room and hadn’t found even trace evidence.

“How about the rookie guarding Ms. Nelson’s room?” Jason asked. “Did you find him?”

O’Reilly nodded. “He was in the utility closet at the end of the hall. Duct tape on his mouth, hands and feet. He has a goose-egg-size lump on his head, and someone had used a stun gun on him, but he can’t remember being knocked out.”

Probably because the guard had fallen asleep.

This time, Jason didn’t even try to contain his profanity, but it was aimed just as much at himself as it was at the guard. When Jason had checked on him about a half hour prior to Lilly’s attack, the guy had looked a little drowsy. Jason had asked if he’d wanted to be relieved, but he’d said no, that the double espresso he was sipping would keep him awake all night.

Yeah, right.

Jason wanted to kick himself. Hard. How could he have let this happen?

He’d been positive that nineteen months ago someone had tried to kill Lilly. That’s why he’d had a guard assigned to the convalescent hospital in the first place. What he should have anticipated, however, was that one guard wouldn’t be enough. After all, the person responsible for this latest attempt on Lilly’s life had no doubt been the one who’d forced her off the road and left her for dead.

Getting past one guard in the middle of the night obviously hadn’t been much of a challenge. Murdering Lilly wouldn’t have been a challenge, either, if Jason hadn’t returned to the hospital to talk to Lilly’s doctor about additional security measures for the facility.

Ironic.

While he’d been discussing the need for extra security, someone had been breaching it. And Lilly had nearly paid for that breach with her life.

“So far, no witnesses,” O’Reilly continued. “But we’re canvassing the neighborhood. Something might turn up.”

Not likely. It was late. Midweek. The small downtown hospital was surrounded by specialty shops that mainly did business from ten to six o’clock. That meant there probably weren’t a lot of potential witnesses milling around to see someone escaping through a window.

“I gave one of the detectives the names of two suspects, Wayne Sandling and Raymond Klein,” Jason explained. “Both are former attorneys. About two years ago, Lilly uncovered some information that caused them to be disbarred.”

What she’d uncovered, though, wasn’t an offense that would have earned them jail time. While Sandling and Klein had been working as advisors to the city council, the two had somehow managed to get a construction company a lucrative contract to renovate historic city-owned buildings. The problem? The owners of the construction company were Sandling and Klein’s friends. A definite conflict of interest. That suspicious contract wasn’t enough for an arrest and, coupled with other similar unethical activity, it was barely enough to get them disbarred and fired as city council advisors.

But Jason knew there was more.

His brother, Greg, had even suspected it. After dealing with Sandling and Klein on a city contract deal, Greg too had noticed inconsistencies with bid dates and altered estimates that had ultimately cost him a contract to do auditing work for the city. Greg had been more than ready to request an investigation into the two attorneys’ dealings. It hadn’t happened, of course.

Because Greg had died in the car accident.

“Sandling and Klein have already been contacted,” O’Reilly assured him. “Neither seemed pleased about that.”

“I’ll bet not. I want them questioned—hard.”

“Absolutely.”

Not that it would do much good. Questioning them hadn’t been effective nineteen months ago. Jason had no doubts about Sandling’s and Klein’s guilt as far as unscrupulous business practices, but what was missing was solid proof that their unscrupulousness had gone much deeper than what the police had already found. There was no remaining evidence since the files that Lilly had copied from her computer had disappeared the night she’d been run off the road.

Jason knew that wasn’t a coincidence.

Detective O’Reilly craned his neck to peer over Jason’s shoulder. “By the way, how’s Ms. Nelson?”

“Other than a few bruises, she wasn’t hurt physically.”

He couldn’t say the same for her mental health, though. Here she was, only hours out of a coma. Hours where she’d learned she had a daughter that she hadn’t even known she’d conceived. That in itself was enough trauma to face, but Lilly now had to deal with the aftermath of an attempted murder and a full-scale police investigation.

Jason looked back at Lilly, as well, and saw that she was in the exact place he’d left her. Well, sort of. She was still in the hospital bed. Still asleep. But it wasn’t a peaceful sleep by any means. Her arm muscles jerked and trembled as if she were still in a fight for her life.

Which wasn’t too far from the truth.

Someone wanted her dead, and wanted it badly enough to have tried not once but twice. Jason had been a cop for nearly eleven years and had learned a lot about criminal behavior.

This guy wasn’t going to give up.

But then, neither was Jason.

It’d been a mistake not to beef up security, a bigger mistake to let down his guard, and he wouldn’t do that again.

“Who knew Ms. Nelson was out of the coma?” O’Reilly asked.

It was a question Jason had already asked the hospital staff, and he’d gotten answers that hadn’t pleased him. “Too many people. One of the nurses called a few friends to tell them the news. Another nurse called Lilly’s former secretary—again, to share the good news. The doctors spoke to colleagues. Even Lilly’s insurance company was contacted.”

Jason couldn’t consider himself blameless, either. He’d told Megan’s nanny, Erica, though he didn’t think Erica would pass on the information to anyone. And of course, there’d been paperwork processed at headquarters to assign the cop to security detail outside Lilly’s room. In others words, at least several dozen people had learned that Lilly was no longer in a coma, and obviously one of those several dozen was someone who wanted her dead.

Lilly stirred again, and this time her eyes opened. In the same motion, she sat up, spearing him with her gaze. Her eyes were wild. Her breath, racing. She scrambled back toward the wall, banging into it with a loud thud.

O’Reilly immediately stepped away. “I’ll let you know what the crime-scene guys say about the security camera.” With that, the detective made a hasty exit, leaving Jason to deal with Lilly.

There was just one problem. Jason didn’t know how to deal with her.

Seemingly disgusted with herself, she shook her head. “I keep dreaming.”

Nightmares, no doubt. Jason wanted to tell her that they would go away, but he’d fed her enough lies tonight. Reassurances that she was safe didn’t contain even a shred of truth.

Not yet, anyway.