Her Baby's Father Page 17

“I can’t leave my car here.”

  “Yeah. Let’s split. I’ll go first.”

  As Sara followed Jack down the long driveway, she scanned the woods on either side of the lane. But apparently the coward wasn’t planning an ambush. He was still trying to make this look like it fit some other pattern.

  What was his next move?

  Maybe he was counting on their not calling the police, since they hadn’t done that last night. Which meant that perhaps they should have a long chat with Detective Montgomery, after all.

  She was torn when she thought about talking to the detective. He clearly assumed they were hiding something. Maybe the murder of the robber.

  By the time they arrived at Jack’s house, she was wiped out. She pulled into the parking area and sat in the car, leaning on the steering wheel.

  Jack came over, opened the door and helped her out.

  “You need to lie down.”

  “Probably.”

  “Certainly.”

  He unlocked the door, and she stepped into the living room. When she headed for the sofa, he gently guided her toward the bedroom.

  They’d left without making the bed, and he straightened it now while she kicked off her shoes, then lay down on top of the spread.

  She’d held herself together while the killer was after her and on the drive back here, but now she started to shake. Jack held her in his arms, rocking her. When she felt tears stinging her eyes, she struggled to hold them back.

  “It’s all right to let go,” Jack murmured.

  “We need to talk about what happened—while it’s fresh in our minds.”

  “Okay.”

  “I guess the killer showed up earlier, opened the door and broke the lamp. But he was hanging around outside waiting for me to go in.”

  “Why wasn’t he already inside?”

  “I guess he was afraid I might leave. I was going to. Then it was too late.”

  Jack nodded. “What did I hear just before he started cursing at you?”

  “I found a box of old toys and threw a bunch of marbles onto the floor and made him slip.”

  “Good going.”

  “It made him mad. He would have caught up with me if you hadn’t arrived. But I had a piece of glass from the window. I wasn’t going to make it easy for him to kill me.” She turned her head toward Jack. “Do we have any idea who it was?”

  He dragged in a breath and let it out. “It’s not my father or my brother. I would have recognized them.”

  “Yes. But they could have hired the guy.”

  “I hope not.”

  She wanted to keep discussing what had happened, but maybe the mention of Jack’s relatives had put him on edge. He kept backing away from that idea, and she couldn’t blame him.

  “You get some sleep,” he said.

  “I have to call Pam. I can’t just let her find that mess.”

  “What are you going to say?”

  “I guess what we already decided.”

  She pressed Redial for Pam’s number. The real-estate agent answered on the first ring.

  “Jack?”

  “This is Sara. I’m using his phone.” She swallowed before saying, “I went over to that house you showed to Ted Morgan. It’s been vandalized.”

  “Jack said you thought I’d emailed you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it a prank, do you think?”

  “I don’t know. But you’ll want to take care of it. There’s a broken window by the front door.”

  “Good Lord. Did you call the police?”

  “I just got out of there as fast as I could.”

  “I need to evaluate the damage. Do you want to meet me there?”

  “I’m kind of wrung out. Can we talk about it later?”

  “Of course. You take care of yourself.”

  Sara clicked off and lay back on the bed. “She’s probably going to call the police. And then they’ll find the gun. And Montgomery will question us again. Maybe we can figure out what’s going on before that.”

  Another thought struck her, and she gasped.

  “What?”

  “What if it’s Pam?”

  “Huh?”

  “What if she has something to do with this? I mean, what if she deliberately got me over there?”

  “Why?”

  “Lord, I don’t know. I like her, but I get the feeling she’d do…things…for money.”

  “Where does that leave us with her?”

  “Cautious.”

  He shook his head. “We can’t figure it out now. But you should get some rest.”

  She felt her chest tighten. “Are you going to stay with me?”

  “I’ll be right here.”

  He lay down beside her, pulling her close. She wanted to make love with him, but she thought she wasn’t in good enough shape to make it good for either one of them.

  Closing her eyes, she tried to relax. At some point she drifted off.

  Her sleep was restless. She dreamed of being in the attic, only it was larger, an obstacle course where the killer chased her around boxes and pieces of furniture. Then Jack was there, fighting with the man, who ran away. But when she tried to reach for Jack, he kept moving away from her.

  She screamed for him to stand still, but he kept fading into the background.

  Jack’s hand on her shoulder woke her. “Sara, wake up.”

  She looked at him, relief flooding through her. “I was having a nightmare.”

  “I gathered. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m fine,” she answered, knowing it was a lie. The bad dream came from her subconscious fears that she was going to lose Jack again. She moved closer to him, closing her eyes, struggling for calm. “Did I wake you up?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Hold me.”

  He settled down beside her, taking her in his arms, and she clung to him. When they’d come in, she’d been too wrung out to make love, but now she was rested, and she wanted him.

  She found the hem of his shirt and slipped her hand inside, stroking the hair on his chest.

  When she slid a finger over his nipple, she felt it tighten.

  “Um, nice,” she whispered, then lifted her face to his. Every time with him was precious. A gift from fate.

  She knew how lucky she was to have him again. And she knew she would do almost anything to keep him.

  He brought his mouth to hers, responding with an urgency that thrilled her.

  His fingers stroked over her arms, combed through her hair. “I was so scared for you.”

  “You got there in time.”

  “You slowed him down. Maybe you would have stopped him with that piece of glass.”

  “I would have tried.”

  He came back to her mouth for another devastating kiss. Rolling her to her back, he moved one of his legs between hers, pressing where she needed to feel him.

  They clung together, both of them caught up in the need for each other.

  He sat up and started unbuttoning his shirt.

  She was about to do the same when his cell phone rang.

  “Damn. Bad timing.”

  Fumbling in his pocket, he pulled out his cell.

  “Yes?”

  She could hear the man on the other end of the line. It was Ted Morgan.

  “You have to come. Right away,” he was saying.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t tell you over the phone.”

  “Where are you?”

  Ted gave an address, but she didn’t hear where it was.

  “Sit tight. I’ll be right over.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Sara sat up, staring at Jack as he put the phone back into his pocket, a sick feeling gathering in her throat. It was happening again. The endgame. When she’d come back here, she’d met Jack the same way she’d met him the first time. They’d gone out to dinner and a man had tried to rob Jack—only it was a cover for a murder attempt. After that, things had started ch
anging. Events she remembered from the first hadn’t happened again. And other things had taken their place. Things that she never would have anticipated.

  The first time around, she hadn’t really realized someone was trying to kill Jack, until too late. This time she’d been ready for it.

  And this part she did remember.

  Well, not exactly. Nothing was exactly the same. But Jack had gone off to meet someone at an isolated location. And he’d never come back. Last time she hadn’t known who he was meeting. This time she’d been here when he got the phone call.

  “That was your brother?” she asked.

  “Yes. He says he has a problem, and he needs me to come right over.”

  “Is he at home?”

  “No. He’s at this property the firm bought on Willow Lane.”

  He had mentioned Willow Lane before. This time, she couldn’t hold back a gasp. “Not there.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  She closed her hand around his arm and pleaded, “Don’t go.”

  “It’s my brother. He sounded like he was in some kind of trouble.”

  “That’s what he wants you to think. He wants you off alone because he’s going to kill you.”

  He stared at her in disbelief.

  “We’ve been trying to find out who wants you dead. Now we know. It’s him.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “This call proves it. Jack, if you’re going, take a gun. And take me.”

  “I’m not taking you, because he wants to meet in private. And I’m not taking a gun because he’s my brother, and he wouldn’t do anything to harm me.”

  Panic threatened to overwhelm her. She’d come back to save Jack, and she’d thought she was going to accomplish her mission. Now she saw she was going to fail because he was too trusting to listen to her.

  She hung on to him. “I won’t let you do this. I won’t let you get killed again.”

  He stared at her. “What do you mean, again? I’m not dead.”

  “But you were.”

  “I lost a lot of blood in Afghanistan, but I was never technically dead.”

  Things she hadn’t intended to say tumbled from her lips. “I’m not talking about the war. I mean here. In Howard County, Maryland.”

  “You’re not making sense.”

  Desperation forced her to keep speaking. “Jack, it all happened before. You were murdered, and I came back from the future to save you.”

  That got his attention. He went very still, his gaze locked on her. “Of course not.”

  “Haven’t you had the feeling that you’ve known me for longer than a week?”

  When he said nothing, she leaped in to fill the silence.

  “It’s because we’ve done this all before. Well, not the exact same things. I came back, and it started off the same. Your meeting me at the house Pam was showing to your brother. And the robbery. That happened before. Well, at a different restaurant. But after that, it started changing. Like I didn’t expect to see Tucker Swinton in the mug shots because I didn’t see him last time. But there he was, and then Detective Montgomery said someone had killed him. And the part about the well, that’s new, too.”

  “You’re not making sense,” Jack said.

  “I know it’s hard to believe. It was hard for me to believe when I came back, but it’s true. Last time, you went off to a secret meeting. I didn’t know who it was with, but you ended up dead.” She gulped. “And you left me pregnant with your baby.” She began talking faster as she saw the doubt in his eyes. “I had to move out of the warehouse because I couldn’t raise a child there. I was living in a little rented house off 108. It was winter, and I was driving myself to the hospital in a snowstorm. I skidded down a hill and hit a truck. Just where the car almost hit us on the way to dinner that first night. The day of the snowstorm, I should have been dead. Only the angels who had come to take me to heaven decided that I could go back and have a second chance.”

  He stared at her with doubt in his eyes that made her stomach clench. “I thought there was something…off about you. I guess my instincts were right. You’re delusional. I mean, do you seriously expect me to believe any of that?”

  “It’s true. I can prove it.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “You asked how I knew where to find the massage lotion. I knew where it was because I’ve used it before. And then there was the coffee machine. I didn’t go into the kitchen. I’ve been here before. I can tell you what’s in your kitchen cabinets. I can tell you—”

  He cut her off. “Stop. I’ve heard enough of this nonsense. Are you really expecting me to believe that you came back from the future? We both know that’s impossible.”

  “I thought it was impossible. It should be impossible, but it’s true. The angels let me come back because I love you.”

  “You love me. But that story you told me about a fortune-teller in D.C. was a lie?”

  She gulped. “Yes.”

  “Maybe you should get your story straight.”

  “I couldn’t tell you the truth. Look how you’re reacting now.”

  “Yeah, right. Your time-travel story is impossible.” He sighed. “And I’ve had enough of this.”

  When he wrenched away from her and strode from the room, she followed.

  “Jack, don’t do this.”

  “I’m going to meet my brother,” he clipped out. “And when I get back, I don’t expect to find you here.” He waited another beat before saying, “My family warned me about you. I guess I should have listened to them. What are you going to do, tell me you’re pregnant and try to get money out of me?”

  She gasped. “Of course not.”

  “Stupid of me not to use a condom with you.”

  The cruel words tore at her, even when she knew he was upset and being deliberately harsh.

  Really, what had she expected? That he’d embrace her wild story? She hadn’t dared tell him before because she knew he wouldn’t believe her. And she’d picked the worst possible time to tell him. It had seemed like her only option. Instead it had made things worse.

  He walked out the front door and closed it with a loud bang. Through the front window, she saw him get into his car and drive away.

  She might have collapsed on the floor weeping, if she had been a different kind of person. But she had too much determination for that. She’d been sent here for a purpose, and she wasn’t going to give up, even if Jack Morgan thought she should be in a mental institution.

  Back in the bedroom, she pulled on her shoes. Then she opened the dresser drawer. The gun was where he’d said it would be.

  Her mother had kept a gun in the shop in case anyone tried to rob her, and Mom had insisted that Sara take shooting lessons.

  She checked the clip, and it was loaded.

  Jack had said he was going to Willow Lane. And he must think she didn’t know where the house was located. But it was where his body had been found before. After the police were through with the place, she’d gone over there to see if she could figure anything out. And to mourn. She hadn’t gotten any insights. And soon that tie to Jack was broken.

  Not long after Jack had been killed, Morgan Enterprises had torn the house down. Maybe to make sure no evidence remained.

  She exited the house and paused to scoop up the key Jack had told her about, then locked the door. It might be a stupid move, she thought, but she wasn’t getting locked out this time.

  * * *

  JACK HEADED FOR WILLOW LANE, trying to focus on the meeting with his brother. Ted had sounded upset. What the hell was wrong with him?

  It couldn’t be what Sara had said. No way was his brother luring him to an isolated location to kill him.

  When push came to shove, he simply couldn’t believe that a member of his family wanted him dead. And certainly not Ted. There was too much history between them. They’d been at odds plenty of times, but they loved each other. Yet Sara’s warning rang in his mind.

  She’d sound
ed panicked. And sure of herself. And terrified for him. Yet he couldn’t let himself believe her wild story. It was simply too crazy.

  On the other hand, he couldn’t stop remembering the first time they’d kissed, and he’d thought it was almost like she knew what he wanted her to do. Like she knew him already.

  Forget about kissing. What about the robbery attempt, and she’d come up with so many details he’d missed. Even before that, she’d been ready to assault the guy.

  A smattering of conversation drifted back to him. After they’d made love for the first time, she’d said he was a man who didn’t make calculations. He’d asked how she knew. And she’d said she knew him better than he thought.

  He made a snorting sound. It was probably just an assumption she’d made—but what about the fear in her voice when he said he was going to meet Ted? She was sure that something was going to happen to him. What if she had some inside information that she was afraid to tell him? So she’d come up with the insane time-travel story to keep him from meeting with Ted.

  He heaved in a breath and let it out. Yeah. Maybe she did know something. And maybe he shouldn’t go charging into the meeting. He’d park down the road and walk up to the house. Get the lay of the land before he went inside.

  He thought about the gun in the nightstand. He’d left it at home because he was sure his brother was no threat. But maybe somebody else was.

  With a curse, he slowed. He could go back for the gun.

  But there were a couple of good reasons not to go back. He’d already delayed too long. And Sara was at the house. He didn’t want to get into another confrontation with her.

  Because he didn’t want to believe what she’d said? Or because she might convince him it was true?

  He’d left the house absolutely certain of what he needed to do and why. As he drove toward Willow Lane, he was second-guessing everything.

  His mind scrambled back over the conversation with Sara. He’d said some pretty nasty things to her. Things that would be hard to forgive. If he even wanted forgiveness.

  * * *

  SARA JUMPED IN HER CAR and headed down the access road from Jack’s house. He had a ten-minute head start on her. It would be impossible to get to the Willow Lane property before he did, unless she drove like a bat out of hell. And she couldn’t let herself get picked up for speeding. The way things were going, the cop would probably call Robards or Montgomery. Then she’d never be able to save Jack.