Surrendering to the Sheriff (8 page)

“It could be an ambush,” he reminded her.

She frantically shook her head. “But she might need our help.”

Or she could be the reason Kendall and he needed help in the first place.

Something about that didn’t ring true for him, though. If Jewell had planned an escape from jail, she wouldn’t have involved Kendall. Not like this. And that guard had fired a shot at them. The guy could have just run off, but he’d come after them. That likely meant this wasn’t Jewell’s plan.

But then, whose sick plan was it?

“We can’t just leave my sister here,” Kendall argued. “That guard could go after her.”

True. At the moment, though, Aiden wasn’t nearly as concerned about that as he was about Kendall’s safety. Still, it was clear he wasn’t going to get her out of there until he found Jewell.

Cursing the potential
damned if you do, damned if you don’t
situation, Aiden reminded Kendall again to stay behind him, and he raced toward the hall where he’d heard Jewell’s shouted no.

Thankfully, it didn’t take Aiden long to spot her. With her blond hair and pale skin, she looked like a ghost in the shadows. She was cuffed, no guard in sight, and it appeared that she was trying to make her way toward them.

“Kendall!” she said, rushing toward her sister. Kendall did some rushing of her own, and she pulled Jewell into her arms. “The guard’s going to try to kill you,” Jewell warned them.

“Yeah, we know,” Aiden confirmed.

What he wanted to find out, though, was how Jewell knew, but this wasn’t exactly the time for questions. Especially since he was going to try to get out of this lethal tinderbox with a cuffed murder suspect and a woman who was already sporting one gunshot wound.

“Follow me,” he said to them.

Huddled together, they did just that. Aiden tried to keep watch all around them. Hard to do with the darkness and the rooms that seemed to jut out from every direction.

Every step caused his heart to pound even harder, and that didn’t improve when he got to the checkpoint and spotted the guard. Just in case this was the bald guy’s partner, Aiden lifted his gun.

“I’m Sheriff Braddock,” he announced.

The young guard whirled around and nearly lost his footing. If this was a partner in crime, then he sucked at it, because the kid was shaking more than Kendall was.

“What’s going on?” Aiden asked him.

“Somebody tampered with the generator. That new fella, I think, because he just went tearing out of here.”

Hell.
The guy was getting away, no doubt, and Aiden really didn’t want that to happen. Not that he had a lot of choices here.

“Where are the rest of the guards?” Aiden pressed.

“Some are trying to get that generator going and get everything locked down. The rest are in the cell blocks. We got some bad people down there.”

Yes, and one of them was right behind him.

“The front door was open,” the guard went on. “The new guy left it that way. I just locked it, but you got any idea how many regs it breaks to leave that door open?”

Plenty.

But an open door only meant the rogue and any of his helpers would have an easier time getting to Kendall for round two.

“I’m transporting this prisoner to the sheriff’s office for questioning,” Aiden let the man know. Not exactly standard procedure, but this was a protocol-bending situation if ever there was one. “Unlock the front door for me.”

Aiden didn’t wait to get his permission to leave. He got Jewell and Kendall moving again up the hall and toward the front exit. However, he did spare Jewell a glance.

“If you try to escape, I’ll make you pay,” Aiden warned her.

Jewell blinked, as if that’d been the last thing on her mind. Maybe it was, but it was best to make that crystal clear.

“Just keep Kendall safe,” Jewell said, her voice as thin and ghostly as the rest of her.

That was exactly what he planned to do.

The moment the guard unlocked the door, Aiden lifted his gun and with Jewell and Kendall in tow, he ran toward his truck.

CHAPTER NINE

The nightmare came again, and Kendall woke with a jolt. And she immediately groaned.

The sharp movement caused the stitches in her arm to pull, and she got an instant reminder of the pain. It wasn’t as bad as it had been, but coupled with the images from the nightmare, it was more than she could take.

She looked down at the floor, expecting to see Aiden, knowing that just a glimpse of him would steady her nerves.

But he wasn’t there.

Instead of steadied nerves, Kendall got another jolt of fear and adrenaline before she heard the water running in the adjoining bathroom. Aiden was apparently in the shower. Probably for the best. It would give her a moment to regain her composure and try to come to grips with the nightmare.

About her sister.

In the dream, Jewell hadn’t made it out of that jail alive. The bald guard had succeeded in killing her. But it was just a nightmare. Jewell was very much alive and temporarily in the jail over in Silver Creek, a town not too far from Sweetwater Springs. Even though the warden had wanted Jewell returned within hours after regaining control of the county jail, Aiden had refused, citing his concern for her sister’s safety.

Kendall was thankful beyond words for that.

Yes, Jewell was still in a cell, but Kendall figured she’d be a lot safer there than at the county jail. She knew the Ryland brothers, who were the lawmen in Silver Creek, and they’d protect her sister until other arrangements could be made. Of course, the Silver Creek Jail didn’t have the right security level for the county to agree to keep Jewell there for long, but it was better than turning Jewell right back over to the warden before a thorough investigation of the security breach could be carried out.

She hadn’t had a chance to talk to Jewell about the baby. Soon, though, Jewell would have to know exactly what had gone on between Aiden and her, and Kendall wanted to be the one to tell her.

When she heard Aiden turn off the shower, she got out of bed and put on her robe. She was wearing her pj’s again, but with Aiden around, the more clothes, the better.

Aiden, however, didn’t play by the rule of the wearing more clothes.

He came out of the bathroom, toweling his hair. No shirt. No boots. He had on his jeans, but they were only partially zipped. And goodness, he smelled like soap and sex. Her soap at that, but it smelled a heck of a lot better on him than her.

Since she was certain she was just standing there ogling him again, Kendall darted past him and went into the bathroom.

The room smelled like him, too.

She didn’t shower. Didn’t want to strip down and step into the shower where he’d just been. It might cause her to go running to him and beg him to join her. Instead Kendall washed up, brushed her teeth and forced herself not to put on makeup. Like her more-clothes rule, no makeup might make him take one look at her and decide their lustful past was over.

Or not.

That was certainly not a chaste look she got from him when she went back into the room. He was sitting on the foot of her bed again, still only partially dressed, and now he had his phone sandwiched against his shoulder and appeared to be talking to Leland. However, when he looked up, their gazes met.

And just like that, she was lost.

Good grief.

Since it wasn’t a smart idea for her to stay there and risk another kiss, Kendall headed downstairs to the kitchen to take her prenatal vitamin and have a glass of milk. Since she’d gotten pregnant, the taste of coffee made her queasy, but she started a pot for Aiden.

She heard him coming down the stairs, his footsteps echoing in the empty house, and Kendall tried to prepare herself for the sight of him. She would have had an easier time stopping a tornado with a paper fan.

He was now wearing a shirt, thank goodness, one from the clothes he’d had a deputy pick up from his house and bring to him. There was nothing special about the dark gray shirt or his jeans, other than the fact that Aiden was the one wearing them.

“There should be some kind of cure for you,” she mumbled.

Obviously, she didn’t mumble it softly enough, because he heard, and the corner of his mouth lifted. For a split second anyway. Then he followed the smile with a scowl, no doubt reminding himself that this attraction was only going to get them in more trouble.

And trouble came her way.

Aiden slipped his phone into his pocket and studied her as if trying to figure out what he should do or say about her mumblings.

“Anything wrong at the Silver Creek Jail?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Your sister’s fine.”

That was it. All the conversation he apparently intended, because Aiden cursed, slipped his hand around the back of her neck and pulled her to him. Before her breasts even landed against his chest, his mouth was on her.

And he tasted so good.

It wasn’t fair that with just one little kiss, he could send her body into such a tailspin.

He was fighting it, she could tell. The muscles in his arms were stiff. His hands, too, but he didn’t back away. Instead, with his mouth still on hers, he groaned and deepened the kiss.

So not good.

Well, not good for their situation, but Kendall soon forgot all about that. There was no booze involved in this kiss. No quick peck like yesterday to get back at him for his snark. This was all heat.

Kendall hadn’t intended to move, but she soon found her lower back pressed against the counter. With Aiden pressed against her. Everything fit, of course. His strong arms around her. Body to body. With his right leg wedged between hers.

His scent coiled around her. Mingling with the heat and the pressure that his leg was creating. The right pressure in the right place.

Which made it incredibly wrong.

The pregnancy was going to be plenty hard enough for their families to handle. They didn’t need to add an affair to it.

Thankfully, that was enough to get her to unravel herself from his arms. Her body didn’t thank her for it, but it was the right thing to do.

Kendall repeated that to herself.

Her body wasn’t quite buying it, though, and with Aiden standing in front of her looking like the hottest of her hot fantasies, it took everything inside her to step away from him.

“My hormones are all out of whack,” she said. Of course, they usually were when she was within ten feet of Aiden.

“Hormones,” he repeated, sounding skeptical.

With good reason. Pregnancy hormones didn’t have anything to do with this, and for a moment Aiden looked as if he might prove that to her with yet another kiss. But hopefully he wouldn’t. Because Kendall didn’t think she had enough willpower to resist another onslaught from that sizzling mouth of his.

Since the coffee was ready, it seemed like a good time to pour him a cup. “What did Leland have to say? Are there any updates?” Something she should already have asked him along with any other question she could come up with fast.

“I need to apologize for that kiss first,” he grumbled.

But Kendall waved him off. “We’ve been apologizing for kisses for over twenty years now.”

And it was the truth.

Twenty-three years. A lifetime to be lusting after Aiden, and the memory of that first kiss came flooding back. The news of his father’s disappearance had just hit. No details yet of the blood in the cabin. Only the speculations, gossip and questions as to why Whitt was gone.

In those days the Braddocks had lived close enough to the McKinnons, and Kendall had ridden her horse over there to check on Aiden. He’d said he was fine. But he hadn’t been. Even as a young girl, she’d been able to see that, and she had put her arms around him to try to comfort him.

The kiss had happened there in the barn with the smell of the hay and horses. If she’d known that just a couple of days later her sister would be whisking her away, Kendall would have made that kiss last a lot longer.

He stayed quiet a moment. “Yeah.” And he gulped down some coffee as if it were the cure for what ailed him. “But we were young and stupid back then. Now we’re just stupid.”

Kendall couldn’t help it, she laughed. Aiden stared at her as if she’d lost it, but then the corner of his mouth lifted. “It was clumsy but effective,” he said.

It took her a moment to realize he was talking about that kiss. An apt description for it. Her braces hadn’t helped, that was for sure, but that twenty-three-year-old kiss had stayed with her all this time.

A benchmark of sorts.

Too bad no other man had quite lived up to it.

A truly sad thought.

“Palmer’s already out of jail on bond,” Aiden tossed out there.

Since her mind was still on the kiss, it took her a moment to switch gears. “You knew his lawyers wouldn’t let him stay there long.” She paused. “But there’s something else, isn’t there?”

He had another sip of coffee first. “Leland said Palmer went off on him. Yelling and cursing. Leland seems to think if Palmer hasn’t already done something crazy, he will.”

Yes, that definitely qualified as
something else
. “He could have been the one to orchestrate that attack at the jail.”

But why? The attack definitely seemed to have been aimed at Aiden and her, and while Palmer didn’t care much for Aiden, he’d never had anything against her.

Unless...

“What if Palmer thinks I can connect the missing kidnapper back to him?” she asked.

Aiden shook his head. “How could you do that?”

“Well, I admitted to Joplin that there was something familiar about the guy. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Maybe Palmer doesn’t want me to remember the man because it’ll connect to him.”

“The same can be said for Joplin,” Aiden reminded her.

She couldn’t argue with that. “When I talk to Jewell about the baby, I also want to tell her our suspicions about Joplin. She might fire him and hire someone else. Of course, that wouldn’t be smart with Jewell’s trial so close, but if Joplin had anything to do with these attacks, then I don’t want him anywhere near my sister. Jewell would feel the same way about me.”

Well, maybe.

“Bingo,” Aiden said as if reading her mind. “Jewell won’t like that I’ve gotten you pregnant.”

Take a number.
Plenty of people weren’t going to like it.

Aiden stared at her from over the rim of his cup. “I’m not going to walk away from this baby.”

“Even if it causes a rift in your family?” she asked.

“Even then,” he answered just as quickly.

He sounded so confident, and Kendall immediately got a dose of another fantasy. Aiden and her raising their son together. A little boy who’d look just like his daddy with that sandy-blond hair and those mood-changing gray eyes. Since it was a fantasy she’d had most of her life, it wasn’t hard to consider it now.

And dismiss it.

“You’re talking about shared custody?” she asked.

Aiden stared at her again. Then nodded.

Okay. Not ideal in the fantasy department. Heck, not even ideal in the real world, because she’d wanted to raise her child herself. She definitely didn’t want him to be shuffled from one house to another the way she had been as a child. Her parents had divorced shortly after she was born, and Kendall had often felt pulled between her mom and her dad.

She hadn’t wanted that for her baby.

Before Kendall could ask Aiden how he thought such an arrangement would play out, his phone rang, and she saw Leland’s name on the screen. She hoped the deputy wasn’t calling with bad news about Jewell or some plan that Palmer had to get back at them.

Aiden didn’t put the call on speaker, and he actually stepped away from her only seconds after his conversation started with the deputy. Not a good sign. Neither was Aiden’s forehead, which bunched up.

“When and where?” Aiden asked.

Kendall moved closer to see if she could hear anything Leland was saying. She couldn’t. So she could only stand there and wait.

“What’s the COD?” Aiden continued a moment later.

That caused her breath to go thin. COD was cause of death. Oh, God. What had happened now?

By the time Aiden finished the call, Kendall’s heart was in her throat. “It’s not Jewell,” she managed to say.

“No.” He put away his phone, reached out and touched her arm. “It’s the bald guard. His name is Deacon Lynch, and his body was found in a wooded area just off the interstate. He died from gunshot wounds to the head.”

Her breath rushed out. Pure relief. Jewell was okay.

But it didn’t take long for the obvious question to come to her. “Who killed him?”

Aiden shook his head. “No sign of anyone but the dead body. He was shot at point-blank range.”

Even though she wasn’t a criminal trial attorney, Kendall was familiar enough with police investigations to know what that meant. “Lynch probably knew his killer.”

“Yeah, and his killer is likely the person who hired him. Maybe to silence him so he wouldn’t talk.”

Of course. The guard had botched the attack and was on the run. His boss wouldn’t have wanted him trying to work out a plea deal with the cops. Too bad. Because a plea deal could have given them information so they could put an end to the danger and lock up the monster behind these attacks.

“It’s not over,” Kendall heard herself mumble, heading out of the kitchen. “I should get dressed so I can visit Jewell.”

And then the blasted tears threatened.

She’d already cried way too much, and it only made things worse because it put an even more troubled look in Aiden’s eyes. He was worried enough about the safety of the baby and their situation, and now he had to be concerned about how this stress was affecting the pregnancy.

Aiden caught up with her in the foyer. As he’d done earlier, he cursed. Then reached out for her. No kiss this time, but he tugged her away from the door and the two sidelight windows. He didn’t stop there. Aiden pulled her into his arms and tucked her head beneath his chin.

“You don’t seem to have a lot of faith in my abilities as a sheriff,” he said.

Maybe that was meant to lighten the mood. She did have faith in him, because Aiden was a good cop, but someone wanted them dead. And the worst part? Kendall wasn’t even sure why.