The Bounty Hunter's Baby Surprise

Then she fell and she didn’t know if she had been hit or if she’d just stumbled. But her knees hit the asphalt hard before she fell forward. And she couldn’t get back up.

* * *

I’ve got her. She walked right up to the van and climbed inside with me.

Jake had been close enough to the guy Jimmy had called to overhear their conversation. And he’d been close enough to take out that man, wrapping his arm around his neck and squeezing until the man passed out.

Jake hadn’t wanted him to alert his buddies that Lillian had been captured. He wanted to get to the van before the rest of them did. But as the shots rang out in the woods, he knew he was too late. Either that man must have regained consciousness or someone had spotted him.

But those shots weren’t that loud, so they couldn’t have been that close to him. They sounded as if they were coming from the road.

From the van into which Lillian had unsuspectingly climbed—probably in order to hot-wire it like she’d tried to hot-wire his truck?

Damn it!

He ran toward the road, heedless of the branches slapping across his face and arms. He didn’t give a damn about himself. But if something had happened to Lillian...

If she’d been shot...

Or worse.

He didn’t know what the hell he’d do.

The shots died down ahead of him. But they began to ring out behind him, the bullets rustling the trees around him. He felt the whizz of one close to his ear.

The other men had heard the shots, too, and had come running. And shooting.

Ducking low, Jake rushed forward toward the road. He circled around the van and found two bodies lying on the pavement. One body, a long one, was right next to the van, blood pooling beneath it.

He grabbed the weapon from the man’s outstretched hand and tucked it into his waistband. The other person had made it farther, to the shoulder on the opposite side of the road. She lay half on the pavement, half in the underbrush off the shoulder, her hair lying across the branches.

“Are you hit?” he asked her as he ran toward her.

She whimpered. “No, I’m stuck.” And she tugged, but her hair was tangled in those briar branches. Tears streamed from the corners of her eyes as she struggled to free herself.

“We’ve got to go!” he said as he wrapped his hand around her arm and jerked her to her feet.

She cried out as her hair came free, leaving several strands behind in the briars.

Jake turned back toward the van. Shots rang out from the woods. He positioned himself between her and the men firing at them. Then he lifted his weapon and squeezed off several shots in the direction of the woods and those men. He hoped his barrage of bullets provided enough cover as he tugged Lillian over the unconscious man and pushed her through the open driver’s door. Then he stepped inside the van and swung the door shut behind him.

“The keys are in the ignition,” she said.

That was why she’d gotten right into the van. She’d been trying to escape. And he figured it wasn’t just those men she’d hoped to elude but him, as well.

He turned the key and the engine roared to life, along with more shots from the woods. He pushed her low as the window in the passenger’s door shattered. Another bullet whizzed past his head.

Too close.

He’d been lucky so far, with all the shots fired at him, that no bullets had hit him yet. But his luck was eventually bound to run out.

“Stay down!” he yelled as he slammed the transmission into Drive, pressed on the accelerator and shot forward. The men rushed from the woods, firing wildly.