Baby Breakout. Lisa Childs

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      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, “He’s trying to clear his name.”

      “You don’t believe that’s all he’s doing.”

      “Do you?” Rowe asked. He spun his chair around and tugged her down so that she straddled his hard thighs. His hands cupped her face, tipping up her chin so that their gazes met.

      “No,” she admitted. “If I had been framed for something I didn’t do, I’d want justice.” Even if she had to dole it out herself …

      But did her brother want justice or revenge?

      JED COULD KILL HER—for everything she had cost him: his freedom, his reputation, his heart …

      But despite her duplicity, she still looked beautiful to him. She had the pale golden hair of an angel; it shimmered even in the dim light of the antique chandelier dangling from the high ceiling of her apartment. And her eyes were a bright clear blue—wide now with fear. With her delicate features and flawless skin, she looked so young and innocent.

      Where were the lines of guilt and stress? Where was the regret for what she had done to him? Was she so heartless that she had never given him another thought after she’d so callously destroyed his life?

      “You’re impersonating a government agent,” she accused him, gesturing toward the badge Jed had lifted off Rowe Cusack when he had saved the DEA agent during the prison riot.

      With a twinge of guilt, he slid it back into the pocket of his jeans. Rowe hadn’t mentioned it, so he probably hadn’t realized that Jed was the prisoner who had stolen it from him. The riot had been so chaotic and dangerous that the man had, no doubt, been more concerned about his life than his badge.

      “That’s the least of the charges I’m facing,” Jed pointed out. “Thanks to you.”

      “Me?” Her voice cracked with emotion, and she stepped back, as if cowering from him in fear. “I had nothing to do with any of the things you’ve done.”

      “You had everything to do with it.”

      She shook her head. “No …”

      He followed her, closing the distance between them. “Why did you do it?”

      For three years that question had nagged at him. He could not figure out what her motivation had been.

      Greed? Revenge? Once he had thought her too sweet and innocent for either emotion, but he’d had three years to realize how wrong he’d been about her.

      “Wh-what did I do?” she asked, as if she really didn’t know.

      He chuckled at her attempt to feign innocence. But then those looks of an angel had probably always let her get away with her misdeeds. No one would ever suspect how devious she really was. “You set me up, sweetheart.”

      He had once called her sweetheart and meant it; he had been such a fool. “What did you get out of it? Money?”

      If she had, she hadn’t spent it on this place. There were cracks in the plaster ceiling and walls, and the hardwood floors were worn. The curtains even fluttered at the windows, as if the cold air blew right through the thin panes of glass.

      He moved closer, trapping her between his body and the wall she had backed up against. “Revenge?”

      He’d thought that she had understood why he’d had to break up with her before he left for Afghanistan. It wouldn’t have been fair to expect her to wait for him, especially when there had been a strong possibility that he might not even return.

      But he shouldn’t have worried about her; she definitely hadn’t waited for him. When he had come back home after his year-long deployment, she had already been wearing another man’s ring.

      “Revenge?” She echoed his question. “What are you talking about?”

      “I don’t know,” he admitted. She hadn’t seemed to care enough about his dumping her to want revenge on him. But then they hadn’t been going out long when he’d received his deployment orders, calling him from the reserves back into active duty. “I don’t know why you did it.”

      “Did what?” she asked, her brow furrowing with confusion.

      Jed leaned down, so that his forehead nearly touched hers. “I don’t know why you helped frame me for murder. Or was it all your idea?”

      From having once interviewed her for a job, he knew her educational background and IQ. She was more than smart enough to have masterminded the embezzlement, murders and frame-up herself. And he wasn’t the only man on whom she might have wanted revenge.

      She gasped, and her breath was warm against his face. “I didn’t. I had nothing to do with those murders.”

      Jed eased back to study her beautiful face. No wonder she had fooled him into falling for her lies and for her; she was a damn good actress because she nearly had him believing she wasn’t involved. And he knew better.

      “You had to be in on it,” he insisted. “Or you would have come forward when I was arrested. Instead you disappeared.”

      She shook her head, tumbling her blond hair around her slender shoulders. In a bulky wool sweater, she looked so small and fragile. But he wouldn’t let her looks deceive him again.

      “I didn’t disappear,” she protested. “My aunt Eleanor’s health was failing, so I came home to take care of her.”

      “My lawyer couldn’t find СКАЧАТЬ