Baby Breakout. Lisa Childs
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,