Condemned to Run

By P. L. Byers

As the guardrail came closer, Lainey Hall knew it would most likely be the last minutes of her life. The vehicle intent on pushing her off the bridge was relentless. The night was dark, the hour late, and the embankment steep. Suddenly, the reasons for her investigation didn’t seem as important as they had when she’d begun this journey. She was right in what she had done, she knew that as well as she knew her own name. But in this moment…the cost was more than she was willing to pay.
After rebuilding his life from the ground up, Ashton Jameson, was content. He’d come to grips with the fact that his best friend was dead. And while the scar on his face was a constant reminder of that night, he’d moved on. It didn’t matter that he chose to seclude himself from an unforgiving world. His life was full and included only those trusted few whom he chose to surround himself with.
But life has a way of throwing you curves you don’t expect. Proven one day when a strange woman was dumped unceremoniously—and without his permission—in the house next door. At first, he resented her presence, until it became apparent that she was in trouble. He wanted to help her, but could he trust her? And if he stepped in, what would he be getting involved with and could it hurt the people he loved most? Sometimes things are worth the risk, but was this one of those times?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665572132

P. L. Byers

P. L. Byers is the author of a dozen novels and counting, including her Out of the Darkness Series and Sister’s of the Heart Trilogy. She is a member of RWA (Romance Writers of America), NERW (New England Romance Writers), and PAN (Published Authors Network). Her love for creating her characters and the stories behind them has been an all-consuming ambition. “If any of my readers get a tenth of the enjoyment in reading my books as I do in writing them, then all the time and effort put into this dream will make it all worthwhile,” she writes. P. L. Byers lives in Franklin, Massachusetts with her kind and patient husband and two incredibly spoiled cats. You can contact P. L. Byers through her website at www.plbyers.com or e-mail her at [e-mail]. You can also follow her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/PLByers.

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© 2022 P. L. Byers. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/28/2022

ISBN: 978-1-6655-7214-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-7212-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-7213-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022917965

Author photo taken by Karen Moriarity at www. Kemphoto.com" and

"P. L. Byers’ website created and maintained by www.bigpresenceagency.com.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgment

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

About the Author

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my wonderful mom. The woman who always made me feel special, who made me feel like I mattered above all else and supported me no matter what I was doing or what my dreams were.

Throughout my life she has always been the one person who could make my life so much better just by hearing her voice. Whenever I was having a bad day, the sound of her voice made it better. When something was upsetting me, she had the ability to let me get it off my chest, then proceed to talk to me showing me another side, another view, or perhaps a different way of looking at things. The tone of her voice, the kindness in her words, and the wisdom in her thoughts, always helped me to be a better person.

This August I lost that voice. My mom passed away so unexpectedly that I am still reeling from the shock. I can’t believe that I will never hear her voice again, see her beautiful face, or read a text to Little One. What I do have, though, are the amazing memories she gave me, the strength she instilled in me, and the love that I will always feel deep in my heart. With every cup of tea I drink, hummingbird I see, or melodic sound of a wind chime I hear, she is with me.

Rest easy now mom and know that you are loved and remembered for all the incredible, thoughtful, amazing things that were so much a part of you. You lived your life with such grace and dignity. I have always been—and will continue to be—very proud that I was your daughter.

Brenda L. Byers

January 10, 1940 – August 3, 2022

Acknowledgment

I always acknowledge my wonderful husband for the support he gives me in my writing. He deserves that…but I want to acknowledge him for being and doing so much more. Prior to this book coming out there was so much going on. The death of my mother was extremely difficult, but he stood beside me when I needed him most, never ceasing to hold my hand, offer a hug, or simply cry with me. You’ll never know, Mark, how much that meant.

For my beautiful, wonderful sister and beta reader…as always, your brain storming sessions and critiques make me a better writer. Thank you for all you do to help with my manuscripts, but most especially for being my sister. We both lost such an important part of our lives. I’m so grateful that I had you by my side. You have amazing strength and such grace, just like our mom. She loved her Honeybee and always talked about the special moments you two shared. Don’t ever forget how happy those times made her.

To my editor, Noel, you continue to give me the expertise I need to grow as a writer. Your inputs/corrections are invaluable, and I truly appreciate the hard work you put into my manuscripts!

Chapter One

T HE TINY SPACE Lainey squeezed herself into was making it extremely difficult to do anything but breathe shallowly. The cramped space barely allowed room for her five-foot three-inch frame to fit, which made it impossible to take a deep breath. Panic nearly took over before she reminded herself to calm down. It wasn’t as if she wasn’t able to take in any air at all. Much like an asthma attack, though…when you know you can’t get enough air into your lungs, anxiety slowly creeps in as fear takes hold, making it more difficult to breathe.

Counting to ten, Lainey settled her thoughts and felt the panic ease as small amounts of air entered her lungs. She could do this! Another few minutes and the men who had entered the lab would depart and she could get the evidence she needed and get the hell out of here. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been in this position before tonight. This was the fifth night her sleuthing skills had been called upon, if only for her own personal investigation.

At first, she wasn’t sure who had followed her into the lab this evening. All along she’d had suspicions of her superior being involved but to have them confirmed was extremely disheartening. The second man who had entered she hadn’t recognized until they started arguing and the voice of the Deputy Chief for the Investigative Services Group for the local police department rang loud and clear. By the tone of their rather loud discussion, it was obvious that he was calling the shots and that her boss, while responsible for his own decisions, was being coerced into being a part of whatever cover-up was happening at the lab.

Being right-handed, it was natural for Lainey to have put the phone in her right pocket. Grateful that she could move the one arm, she awkwardly reached for her cell phone, took it from her pocket and using her thumb, scrolled to her camera, deftly moved it from photo to video, and hit the red button to record. Resting her forehead on the wall in front of her, she strained to catch their voices, praying that her device was recording the conversation that was going on.

The argument raged on for several minutes. Just as her arm was starting to weaken, the voices began to fade, and she heard the door close as the men exited the room. Lainey lowered her arm, sighing with relief as it came to her side. She waited an additional five minutes to make sure they had left before extricating herself from the small space she’d hidden in between the wall and the tall filing cabinet. She hesitated another few minutes, taking in deep, cleansing breaths, then went to the desk and sat at the computer. Looking around one last time to make sure she was alone, she typed in her password, quickly found the forged document she needed, and sent it to the printer. Tapping her finger impatiently on the desk, she waited until it finished before grabbing it from the tray, folding it in half and sliding it into the waistband of her jeans. Knowing her computer e-mails could be tracked, she decided it was better to print it and scan the document later when she got home.

It was hard to fathom what her life had become in the last four months. When she’d been hired on as the new Associate Forensic Scientist for the North Carolina State Crime Laboratory, she thought she’d finally found her dream job. And for the first eight months she had.

In the beginning she’d been assigned the most menial tasks, always in the lab, testing bodily fluids such as blood, examining weapons brought in, or comparing fingerprints. It was months before she’d proven herself and was permitted access to crime scenes to collect the evidence herself. Those were her favorite days, out in the field doing what she loved and had been trained to do.

Since she was a little girl, she’d been fascinated with any show that dealt with crime scenes. She loved watching as the characters followed the evidence to figure out who the killer was. When the CSI crime shows started, she was glued to the television, completely absorbed until the last minute when the suspect was arrested and justice was served.

Each birthday or Christmas her gifts revolved around microscopes, fingerprinting kits, or anything that involved criminal investigations. One of her favorite books was CSI Crime Investigation Brain Games. One year for her birthday, though, her brother Jeremy got her a coloring book titled Bloody Alphabet. It contained pictures of famous serial killers and while she adored it, her parents were horrified at the gift. To offset that, a year later, her mother, in order to get Lainey interested in cooking—something she felt every young woman should know how to do—bought her The Serial Killer Cookbook. It contained not only true crime trivia but recipes as well. Granted, they were recipes from the last meals of death row’s most infamous killers, but it did the trick and got Lainey in the kitchen cooking with her mom.

Now here she was, doing a job that she absolutely adored. Right up until the inconsistencies started happening and she knew she couldn’t let them slide. At first the discrepancies were small. A blood type that she knew she logged as B showed up as AB in the report. A fingerprint that arrived at the lab that was clear to read when she received it but when she went to run it through her computer, it was suddenly smudged and indecipherable. She’d gone to her supervisor, Brad Cummings, with her concerns but he merely said he’d handle it and walked away.

As the months passed, she noticed that more and more reports she clearly had written were changed before they were submitted to attorneys trying certain cases. She once again brought it up to Brad, only to have him snap at her for questioning his judgment. The last straw came when, as the lead on one particular investigation, she was to report to the court to testify on her findings. The day the trial started, however, she was told to stand down and Brad went in her stead, testifying to a report that she had written that had been changed. Her name was on those reports and, not wanting her reputation to be marred since she was still relatively new to the field, she decided to begin her own investigation to try and figure out what was going on.

Unfortunately, the more she looked, the more she found. Reports dating back to before she was hired had been tampered with. Comparing several of the reports that the previous Associate Scientist had prepared for court, she saw they were vastly different than what had actually been presented. It scared her to realize how far back—nearly three years from her estimation—and how deep things went. How many killers were out walking the streets because the findings given in court from their lab were fixed? How much authentic evidence collected had been destroyed or tampered with in order to free a murderer? Lainey had even tried reaching out to find the previous Associate Forensic Scientist for questioning, but her messages so far had gone unanswered.

Lainey knew she couldn’t reveal anything until she had plenty of evidence to prove her accusations. Her plan was to collect this last piece, then turn it over to the FBI to deal with. She had no idea who all was involved so it made sense to her to take it out of the hands of the local police and court system and go right to the top. Especially now that she recognized the voice of one of the local police officers threatening her boss. She had all the evidence she needed in the trunk of her car, all on a USB thumb drive hidden in the wheel well under her car jack. All she had to do was make sure the coast was clear, get out of the lab, and out to her car. Her reputation was sure to take a hit coming forward with her findings but there was no way in good consciousness she could let things continue.

Cracking the door an inch, Lainey looked out to make sure no one was around. She knew which wall to hug to avoid the surveillance camera and slipped out once she was certain she was alone. The lights were low, given it was nearly midnight, so she scurried toward the back exit and quietly shut the door as she left. Once in her car, she didn’t breathe a sigh of relief until she’d pulled out onto the main road and was nearly a mile away from the crime lab.

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Exhaling angrily, the man stepped from around the corner as Lainey made her way to the exit in the back of the building. He knew he’d smelled her perfume. For months he’d warned that idiot that they were being watched but no one took him seriously. Now it was up to him to clean up this mess before she had a chance to speak to anyone. God knows how long she’d suspected anything or how much information she’d stolen from the lab that implicated them. She could bring the whole damn thing down on all of them if he didn’t take care of it now. Thank God he happened to be there to see her sneak out!

Chapter Two

L AINEY PULLED ONTO the quiet road, grateful to have left the city limits without incident. Her Spidey senses were on full alert so to have gotten out of the lab and away from the otherwise booming metropolis was a relief. Her first order of business was to get back to her father’s house, get a good night’s sleep, and head to the FBI field office first thing in the morning.

Being so late in the evening, the roads were nearly empty. Unfortunately, while it made getting back home go more quickly, the quietness led to the eerie feeling of being more alone. The moon shining through the trees made every shadow seem more ominous and every sound coming in through the open window more frightening.

Lainey lectured herself to take a deep breath and calm down. Rolling up the window, she inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. It was abundantly clear that she wasn’t made out for this spy business. Her imagination was doing awful things to her state of mind, and she was certain her blood pressure was through the roof as evidenced by her rapid pulse and the sweat on her forehead. Her mother would have been horrified at the risk she was taking.

She was coming close to the bridge that was nearly a mile from her house. Her adrenalin kicked into high gear when a car came out of nowhere, staying behind her flashing its headlights in her rearview mirror, nearly blinding her. Lainey slowed down and moved to the side to let whoever was behind her to pass. When they didn’t make the move, she gripped the steering wheel with both hands and continued to drive, praying as the vehicle behind her got closer. When the headlights disappeared and she felt her car jump forward, she knew she’d been hit from behind. She bit her lip to stifle her outcry, desperately grabbing the steering wheel tighter to gain control.

As the bridge loomed nearer, the car attached to her back bumper kept forcing her to the edge of the road, and Lainey began praying for some sort of divine intervention. It was obvious that the person behind her was going to force her off the bridge. She tried valiantly to turn the wheel to get her car away from the oncoming structure, but her small Elantra was no match for the heavier SUV pushing her around like a bulldozer. She gasped, panting in terror as the railing of the bridge caught her car, jerking her to a stop. Glancing into the review mirror, she saw that the SUV had backed off her bumper. Lainey released her seatbelt and tried to open her car door to scramble out to safety, but the door was dented in from the hit against the railing and wouldn’t budge. There was still the other door, so she started to scoot to the passenger side, but the relief was short-lived. Her car began to teeter with the movement, so she sat motionless and began praying that someone had seen what was happening and that help was on the way. In all the commotion of trying to keep her car steady, she hadn’t realized how close to the edge she had come.

After a few seconds of dead silence—other than her heavy breathing—it became clear that help might not be coming in time. Lainey remembered her cell phone in her right pocket and slowly reached for it, gasping as the slight movement rocked her car. Terror seized her as she looked down the embankment. She might have had a shot at surviving if the bridge had stretched over a body of water. But the rusty metal of the railroad tracks below would do nothing to soften her landing. As the car swayed toward the open space, her only hope now was that she was close enough to the beginning of the slope so the car would roll as opposed to dropping off the steep edge.

The last thing she thought as the SUV nudged her over the metal railing of the bridge was that this was going to break her father’s heart. She let out a loud scream as the crunching of metal rang in her ears right before she lost consciousness.

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It was the sound of fire popping and the feel of immense heat that woke Lainey. It took several minutes for her to become aware enough to realize that she was still in her car and that it was on fire. Reaching for the handle to release her door, she became confused until she realized that her car was upside down. The windshield had shattered from the impact, so she kicked it out and began crawling through the shards of glass as the flames leapt closer to her. She managed to crawl about fifteen feet from her vehicle before she passed out once again.

The next time she awoke it was to the sound of a man’s voice as he called out for a gurney and a backboard. She heard another man call for a second fire hose and yet another voice inquire about other passengers who might have been in the car.

No one… Lainey whispered, trying to answer.

You’re going to be okay, ma’am, the man said calmly before inserting an IV into her arm. We’ve got you.

No, she insisted louder. There were no other people in the car.

The paramedic looked at her for a second before he yelled over to a uniformed man. Captain, he yelled. When the man looked over, he called out. She said there weren’t any other passengers with her.

Shaking his head in confirmation, the man turned back as the one with Lainey continued to tend her. In short order he had the IV started, a collar around her neck, and with the help of another paramedic, was loading her onto the backboard. They strapped her securely, then placed her on the gurney and moved with efficiency to the waiting ambulance at the top of the embankment.

As the sirens wailed in the inky night, Lainey once again lost consciousness. She was completely unaware as the ambulance wound its way through the streets on the way to the hospital. She was equally unaware as the medical professionals, upon arrival, continued their work, ordering scans and other diagnostic tests. In fact, it wasn’t until several hours passed that she finally woke to the soft sound of beeping monitors.

Turning her head, Lainey took in the scene surrounding her. There were machines attached to her registering her blood pressure and monitoring her heart rhythm readings. There was an IV pole hung with several different bags of fluids attached to lines dripping down to her right arm. The lights were softly dimmed, a curtain was enclosing the small cubicle she lay in and turning her head to the left, she saw her father sitting on a chair close to her bed with his head hung down and his eyes closed. Her brother stood behind their father, leaning against the clean white wall of the hospital, watching her through heavily lidded eyes.

When she opened her mouth to speak, her father jerked his head up and immediately leaned in to take her hand. You’re going to be all right, sweetie, he whispered as he stroked her long mahogany hair from her face.

Dad, she croaked.

"Don’t talk, honey. You need to save your strength. I must say, though, that