Baby Breakout

“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.