Wrongly Accused Read online

  She and Kaitlin would likely be safer on their own. She trusted the police would protect them. Why wouldn’t they?

  Somehow, she needed to find a way to escape.

  * * *

  Caleb dragged a hand over his face as the SUV ate up the miles, and tried to think rationally. He didn’t know who’d fired those shots at him, but if he hadn’t picked up Kaitlin’s stuffed giraffe, he’d be dead.

  Leaving Kaitlin an orphan.

  Somehow, he felt stupid for not realizing that whoever had killed his wife would still be out there somewhere, waiting for him. But the attempt on his life didn’t make much sense. Why not try to plant more evidence to get him back behind bars? What would they gain from killing him?

  “Where’s Giffy?” he heard Kaitlin ask. The little girl had napped for a while but was obviously awake now.

  “Right here, sweetheart.” In the rearview mirror, he saw Kaitlin hug the stuffed giraffe close.

  “Ah, Mr. O’Malley?” Noelle’s voice was soft, almost hesitant. He hated seeing the shadow of fear in her eyes, but he didn’t know how to reassure her he was innocent of the crime he’d been accused of. He could talk all he wanted, but without proof that he was being framed, there wasn’t much he could do.

  “Caleb,” he corrected curtly. “Call me Caleb.”

  “Uh, sure. Caleb. It’s past five-thirty and Kaitlin usually eats dinner about this time,” she said with a hint of nervousness.

  He flushed, squelching a flash of guilt. He should have realized that his daughter would need to eat soon. After fourteen long months in jail he’d forgotten how to be a father. “Sounds like a plan. What would you like?”

  “Kaitlin, what do you want for dinner?” Noelle asked.

  The little girl pulled her thumb out of her mouth. “Chicken bites.”

  In the rearview mirror he caught the fleeting grimace that passed over Noelle’s face, but she readily agreed with Kaitlin’s decision. “That would be great.”

  “Looks like there’s a fast-food restaurant five miles ahead,” he said, gesturing to a road sign. “We’ll get something there.”

  “Thank you.”

  He swallowed a frustrated sigh. Noelle acted as if he was some sort of ogre keeping her and Kaitlin prisoner. Yet what could he have done differently? If he had left Kaitlin behind and something had happened to his daughter, he’d never have forgiven himself. No question he’d give up his life for Kaitlin.

  And he couldn’t bring himself to trust the police, either. Not when he fully believed that someone from his SWAT team had set him up for his wife’s murder.

  Feeling grim, he imagined that the cops were right now swarming Noelle’s house, gathering evidence. What would they think when they found the slugs from a high-powered rifle and a canister of tear gas in her house? Would that prove his innocence? Or would they turn the whole thing around to somehow make him the bad guy?

  He couldn’t help believing the latter. It wouldn’t be long before the killer was hot on their tail. He needed to figure out a good place to hide until he could find someone to trust.

  Not that he could think of too many people he trusted at the moment. He’d put his faith in his lawyer, Jack Owens, but Jack had been the only person who’d known Caleb’s plan of going to Noelle’s house. Not that he could understand why Jack would try to kill him after working more than a year to set him free.

  His wife’s killer had clearly set him up to rot in prison for the rest of his life. And now that Caleb had been given a get-out-of-jail-free card, it was possible that the same person had tried to kill him. Unless his wife had other lovers who he didn’t know about, someone who’d taken shots at him in an effort to seek revenge?

  He sighed and turned off the highway, heading onto a side road leading to the popular fast-food restaurant. He pulled in and headed down the drive-through lane.

  “I hav’ta go potty,” Kaitlin announced.

  He inwardly winced, feeling guilty for not anticipating his daughter’s needs. He made a quick U-turn in the parking lot so he could pull into a spot located near the front of the building.

  He slid out from behind the wheel but before he could try to help Kaitlin out of her booster seat, Noelle took control, undoing the buckles to free his daughter. She carried Kaitlin out and set her down on the ground.

  “I hav’ta go now!” Kaitlin said, rushing toward the door. Noelle sprinted to catch up, quickly capturing Kaitlin’s hand.

  “I’ll take you to the bathroom, okay, sweetie?”

  Caleb followed them inside, feeling like an outsider. He’d lost so much time with his daughter. The fact that she didn’t want to be near him was like a knife to his heart.

  Standing at the back of the lobby area, he stared blindly at the menu selections. Food wasn’t nearly as important as keeping his daughter safe from harm. He felt exposed standing here in the middle of a fast-food joint, considering how just three hours ago, someone tried to kill him. Yet he’d kept a careful eye out to make sure they hadn’t been followed.

  But they weren’t safe yet, not by a long shot.

  Noelle and Kaitlin returned from the bathroom and he couldn’t help smiling at the way his daughter was giggling.

  “I had no idea public restrooms could be fun,” he said with a smile.

  Noelle shrugged. “She found the air hand-drying machine entertaining.”

  “So, Katydid, what would you like for dinner?” he asked, capturing his daughter’s gaze. He hoped she remembered his pet name for her.

  She tilted her head to the side and gave him an exasperated look. “I already tole you, chicken bites.”

  She hadn’t reacted to the nickname, but at least she wasn’t crying, either. He tried to take heart at the minor step forward. “Okay, one order of chicken bites. Noelle, what would you like?”

  “I’ll have a grilled chicken sandwich.”

  “What about to drink? I’ll get Kaitlin some milk, but what would you like?”

  “Water is fine.”

  He nodded and decided to order a thick cheeseburger for himself. Soon they had their food piled on a plastic tray. Noelle and Kaitlin picked out a small rectangle table and he made sure to sit where he could keep an eye on the door.

  He found himself distracted by Kaitlin, who’d grown so much in the time he’d been stuck behind bars. Before he could dig into his food, Noelle surprised him by taking Kaitlin’s hand in hers and bowing her head.

  “Dear Lord, we thank You for providing this food for us to eat and we ask for Your protection and Your guidance in showing us the right path. Amen.”

  “Amen,” his daughter echoed.

  He paused, unsure of how he felt about the fact that Noelle was teaching his daughter to pray. He and Heather hadn’t been particularly religious and he instinctively knew Heather would have been upset at Noelle’s teaching Kaitlin about God. But he decided there were worst things than being a Christian so he didn’t say anything. Although he couldn’t help wondering what else Noelle had taught Kaitlin while he’d been gone.

  He bit into his cheeseburger, enjoying the juicy taste he’d long been denied. He divided his attention between Kaitlin and the door. His daughter ate sparingly, spending more time playing with her chicken bites, pretending they were animals talking to each other. Regret burned in the back of his throat for the time he’d lost. He wanted nothing more than to gather his daughter into his arms and hold her close, but he’d rather cut off his arm than scare her again.

  “Eat your dinner, Kaitlin,” Noelle said in a soft but stern tone.

  “Are we goin’ home soon?” Kaitlin asked.

  Noelle lifted her eyebrow and glanced at him. He cleared his throat and smiled. “We’re going to spend the night in a motel. Won’t that be fun?”

  His daughter’s big blue eyes, mirror im
ages of her mother’s, widened with excitement. “Wif a swimming pool?”

  “I don’t know, maybe.” There were plenty of hotels with pools, but he’d wanted to find something small and off the main thoroughfares. Maybe he’d get lucky and find a small motel with an outdoor pool. After all, it was mid-June, warm enough for outdoor swimming. He was eager to gain whatever ground he could with his daughter. “But first you have to finish your dinner.”

  “Okay.” She grinned saucily and popped another chicken bite into her mouth, smearing ketchup across her cheek. He was glad to see she was growing more at ease with him.

  He reached for his napkin but Noelle was quicker, already wiping the red stain away. He curled his fingers into a helpless fist.

  And couldn’t help wondering if Noelle was really trying to help. Or if this was a subtle way of sabotaging his relationship with his daughter.

  * * *

  Noelle finished her sandwich about the same time as Caleb. She gathered all the trash into a neat pile on the tray while they waited for Kaitlin. When they’d first entered the restaurant, she’d considered asking one of the patrons for help, but there weren’t many people inside. And what if they simply looked at her as if she were crazy? Technically, Caleb had legal custody of his daughter, while she didn’t have any right to the child. For now, she’d decided to go along with pretending to be a family.

  The stark longing in Caleb’s eyes as he gazed at his daughter made her wonder if she’d misjudged him. Clearly he loved Kaitlin and during the course of the meal she found herself torn between wanting to get as far away from him as she could and wanting to help him repair his relationship with the daughter who barely remembered him.

  She couldn’t imagine who’d tried to shoot him, but at least now the black truck that had trailed her for days made sense. Whoever was driving it must have been waiting for Caleb to arrive. If Caleb was truly innocent of the crime he’d been accused of, why would someone still want him dead? Was it possible he had really been framed? Or was that wishful thinking on her part?

  “We need to go,” Caleb said.

  “All right,” she agreed. Kaitlin was obviously finished with her food, so she quickly wiped off the little girl’s sticky fingers and then stood up. Caleb took the tray of garbage and headed over to the trash can. Then he waited for her by the door, holding it open for the two of them.

  They walked toward her car and as Caleb opened the back passenger door, she caught a glimpse of a police car pulling into the parking lot of the restaurant. She froze, wondering if she could manage to capture the cop’s attention. Would the cop believe her story? Or would he run a check on Caleb only to find that he did have legal custody of his daughter?

  “You’re welcome to leave, but you won’t take my daughter,” Caleb warned, clamping his hand on her elbow to prevent her from leaving. “So make up your mind, and quick.”

  She hesitated, full of uncertainty.

  “Just get Kaitlin into the car, all right?” he pressed.

  “Uh, sure.” She lifted Kaitlin into the booster seat. Her fingers were shaking so badly that she had trouble buckling the girl in.

  When Kaitlin was safely secured in the seat she shut the door and made her way around to the other side, trying to see where the cop car was located. The officer had pulled into the drive-through lane and had his window rolled down as he perused the menu.

  If she started screaming like a lunatic, would he help her?

  “Sit up front next to me,” Caleb said when she reached for the back door handle.

  She felt trapped but since there was no way she was going anywhere without Kaitlin, she climbed into the front passenger seat.

  When she glanced over to the police car, it was farther away, having moved forward to the next window.

  Within moments Caleb drove back out onto the road, leaving the police car and any hope of getting help behind.

  TWO

  Noelle was grateful that after another two hours of driving, Caleb pulled off onto an exit that advertised a motel with a swimming pool.

  The motel was small, but not so small that there weren’t other guests, at least based on the cars in the parking lot. She was berating herself for not taking a chance by going to the police.

  Too late now. She’d agreed to stay with him for Kaitlin’s sake. Her own deep-seeded fears meant nothing compared to keeping the little girl safe from harm.

  Caleb kept her close by his side, as if worried she might try something rash. She found his presence overwhelming. She wasn’t used to being so close to a man, hadn’t dated anyone in years. The three of them walked into the lobby together, and she knew he wanted to give the clerk the impression that they were a family, especially when he’d requested one room with two beds.

  “How’s the water in the pool?” Caleb asked the older man behind the desk as he paid in cash for the room. The guy barely glanced at his driver’s license.

  The guy shrugged. “Probably a bit on the cold side by now,” he said in a disinterested tone. There was a small television behind the desk and his gaze kept straying back toward the baseball game he had on.

  “Thanks,” Caleb said cheerfully.

  “Can we go swimming? Please?” Kaitlin asked.

  “Soon,” he promised, taking the room key and then holding the door open for Noelle and Kaitlin as they made their way back outside. There were two levels of the motel but Noelle noted their room was on the first floor, closest to the outdoor pool.

  The room was nothing special, but it appeared clean enough. Kaitlin disappeared into the bathroom. When the child was out of earshot Noelle turned to Caleb. “Now what?” she asked in a low tone.

  His enigmatic gaze didn’t reveal much. “There must be spare clothes in that backpack that Kaitlin can use to swim in.”

  “There’s one change of clothes, the rest is in her suitcase we left behind. And I don’t have any other clothes and neither do you. She’s too young to swim by herself.”

  “There’s a strip mall a few miles down the street. We’ll stop by tomorrow to pick up a few things,” he said. “And the pool isn’t that deep. At the very least she can dangle her feet in the water.”

  As annoyed as she was with him, she couldn’t help appreciating the way he was trying so hard to make his daughter happy. But at the same time, she also wished he’d simply let them go.

  Was he right in thinking that the person who’d shot at him would use Kaitlin to get to Caleb? Or was that just a handy excuse? She wished she knew.

  Kaitlin came out of the bathroom and jumped up beside her on the bed. “Can we swim now, Noa? Puleeze?”

  Looking down into Kaitlin’s big blue eyes, she couldn’t bear to disappoint the little girl. “Sure, sweetie.”

  “Why does she call you Noa?” Caleb asked, a small frown puckering his brow.

  Did he resent their closeness? It certainly wasn’t her fault he’d been arrested.

  She dug in the backpack for a pair of shorts and a top that Kaitlin could use in lieu of a swimsuit. “Because she couldn’t pronounce my name. Noa was as close as she could get to Noelle.”

  “How is it that you became her foster mother?”

  She had no intention of giving him her life story. Especially since that would include confessing her horrible past along with her more recent failures. Trusting him as much as she had so far had been difficult enough. Under normal circumstances she avoided men, especially macho, dangerous types like Caleb. She forced a casual tone. “I’m your daughter’s preschool teacher and happen to be licensed as a foster parent. I asked for custody and the state agreed.”

  If he was embarrassed that he didn’t recognize her from the preschool, he didn’t show it. She wasn’t necessarily surprised that he hadn’t remembered her, because his wife had been the one who’d come in to drop off and pi
ck up Kaitlin, at least 80 percent of the time. The few times Caleb had come, he hadn’t seemed to notice her.

  She still remembered the last time she’d seen Heather, the day before she’d died. Caleb’s wife had come in late on that Friday, almost twenty minutes past closing. Heather had looked nervous and hadn’t been alone. There had been another man with her, who’d waited impatiently near the doorway.

  It wasn’t until after Heather’s affair had hit the news that she’d understood what she’d seen that evening.

  Tearing her thoughts away from the past, she turned her attention to helping Kaitlin change her clothes into a shorts-and-top set.

  “But this isn’t my swimming suit,” Kaitlin protested with a frown. “My swimming suit has sparkles.”

  “We left your swimming suit at home, remember?” she said patiently. “Do you want to check out the water or not?”

  “I do! I do!” The little girl jumped up and down for emphasis.

  “All right, let’s go.” She ducked into the bathroom, grabbed a towel off the rack and then came back out to take Kaitlin’s hand in hers.

  Caleb silently held the door open once again. A criminal with manners, she thought, fighting a sense of hysteria as they walked over to the pool area. He unlatched the fence, and she was surprised and a bit disappointed to find there weren’t any other guests there.

  Kaitlin ran over to the edge of the pool.

  “Wait for me,” Noelle called out, quickly taking off her sandals. “We have to check the water first.”

  She glanced over at Caleb, surprised to see he was taking off his running shoes, too. He then proceeded to roll his jeans halfway up his calves, which would have looked geeky on anyone else.

  But there was nothing geeky about Caleb. He must have worked out while he was in jail because he was lean and muscular, without an ounce of fat to be seen. His dark hair was short and she wondered if that was by choice. Or if he’d been forced to get it cut.

  Did they have barbers in jail?