The Bounty Hunter's Baby Surprise. Lisa Childs

Chapter 21

       Chapter 22

       Chapter 23

       Chapter 24

       Chapter 25

       Extract

       About the Publisher

       Prologue

      Pulling the flash drive from the computer with trembling fingers, Lillian Davies ducked under the desk just as the office door creaked open to the corridor. A beam of light flashed across the space, bouncing off the filing cabinets and the back of the chair she’d pulled up against the desk to cover her. She closed her eyes so the beam would not glint in them, and she crouched even lower. Her heart pounded wildly with fear that she would be caught.

      If that happened, she would never have a chance to show anyone the evidence that would clear her name. And she would be sent to prison for certain. She held her breath, waiting to be discovered.

      If the security guard noticed that the monitor was on...

      She could only hope that he would call the police. Because if he called his boss—her former boss—first...

      Then she might not make it back to jail. He would undoubtedly kill to cover up his crime—the one for which he’d framed her. Tom Kuipers must have hired her so he would have a scapegoat for the blame. She’d thought he was one of the few people in River City, Michigan, who hadn’t judged her based on her last name and who her family was and had been giving her a chance to prove herself.

      But she had been wrong. Again.

      Tears stung her eyes. She should have been used to it, used to being used. She blinked back the tears, opened her eyes and lifted her chin.

      No. She damn well was not going to get used to it. She was going to fight back this time. Because she wasn’t fighting just for herself anymore.

      And if the security guard discovered her, she would fight him, too. Sure, he carried a gun. But he wouldn’t actually shoot her, would he? Maybe if she propelled the chair into his legs and knocked him over she would have a chance to run for it.

      She locked the trembling fingers of her free hand around the legs of the chair, ready to use it as a weapon. But the beam shut off, plunging the office into darkness again, except for the faint glow from the parking lot lights outside the windows. Then the door creaked closed and snapped shut.

      Lillian finally released the breath she’d been holding. She waited several more moments, though, before she pushed out the chair and crawled out of her hiding space. She opened her purse and dropped the flash drive inside it. The plastic device slid to the bottom where she’d dropped the pregnancy test. She’d enclosed that in a bag, and through the clear plastic she could see the results that she hadn’t waited to read.

      She already knew she was pregnant. She’d never missed one month let alone two, going on three. The plus sign staring up at her confirmed it, though. That was why she had risked her life and her freedom to come back here. She needed the evidence to prove her innocence, so that yet another Davies didn’t wind up in prison.

      If the flash drive didn’t get the charges dropped against her, she was going to run. She was not going to have her baby behind bars. It was bad enough that was where most of the Davies family wound up later in life; her child was not going to begin his or her life in jail.

       Chapter 1

      Six months later...

      “I should have listened to you,” Seymour Tuttle said. The bail bondsman paced the small confines of his office, nearly tripping over Jake Howard’s feet as the little man made the pass between his desk and the door Jake was leaning his back against, his long legs crossed at the ankles.

      Tuttle had called him into his office and told him to shut the door. That was never a good sign for Jake. Every time someone had spoken to him in private before, it had been to give him bad news.

       Your mother is dead...

       Your father is gone...

      But usually Tuttle didn’t give a damn about privacy—his or anyone else’s. But since he’d just admitted he was wrong, Jake understood his not wanting anyone else to overhear his admission. He was surprised the stubborn old guy had admitted it even to himself, let alone Jake. That must have been Tuttle’s version of bad news: being wrong.

      “What should you have listened to me about?” Jake asked, holding back his “I told you so” until he knew the specifics.

      “The Davies family.” Tuttle uttered the last name as if it was a vulgar curse word.

      Jake flinched at just the mention of it, and a twinge of pain clenched his heart, stealing away his breath and his words. He couldn’t speak.

      But Tuttle didn’t stop talking. He rarely did. His wide mouth was nearly as big as his short body. “You told me not to bail out another one of them.” He shook his little bald head in self-disgust. “You warned me that they always run.”

      Jake’s pulse was running now in overtime. He didn’t want to think about the Davies family, didn’t want to think about what he’d done, the extremes he’d gone to the last time that he’d had to apprehend two of them.

      “Why aren’t you saying it?” Tuttle demanded as he stopped in front of him.

      Jake blinked and stared down at the little man. Tuttle was barely five feet tall to Jake’s well over six-foot height. “Saying what?”

      “I told you so,” Tuttle said. “You were right. I paid the bail and now you need to go bring back another damn Davies for me.”

      Jake shook his head and ran a slightly shaking hand through his thick hair. He needed a haircut. But then he always needed a haircut. “Not me. That’s not going to happen.”

      “You’re the expert on the Davies family,” Tuttle persisted. “You know where to find them.”

      “In jail,” Jake said. “That’s where most of them are.” He couldn’t believe Don or Dave would have gotten bail again after jumping it last time. And if a judge had been stupid enough to give it to them, Seymour had been even stupider to pay it. “I told you so” wasn’t enough recrimination for risking his money on one of them again.

      “Not her,” Seymour said.

      And Jake’s blood froze in his veins, sending a chill straight to his soul. “What?”

      Tuttle paced around his desk, pulled out his chair and plopped down onto it. The metal desk was old and scratched up. His leather chair was more duct tape than leather. The bail bondsman liked money, but he didn’t like spending it. Leafing through a sheaf of papers on his desk, he held up a mug shot. “Her. I thought she was different than the rest of them. She has no record. No prior arrests at all. That’s the only reason the judge granted her bail. That’s why I posted it, even though I know you warned me not to.”

      He trailed off as if waiting for Jake to say something—anything—but Jake was too stunned. He couldn’t move as shock gripped him. Seymour couldn’t be talking about...

      Not Lillian.

      But