She’d spoken to the boy, and her soft voice had hit him like a blow to the stomach.

While he might not have recognized her body or face, he could not mistake that voice as hers; her voice had haunted him, too. Before he could recover, he turned his attention to the child, and reeled from another blow. With his curly black hair and dark green eyes, the child was even more recognizable than the woman. He looked exactly like the few childhood photos of Brendan that his stepmother hadn’t managed to accidentally destroy.

He didn’t even remember closing the distance between them, didn’t remember reaching for her. But he held her, his hand wrapped tightly around her delicate wrist.

She lifted her face to him, and he saw it now—in the almond shape and silvery green color of her eyes. What he didn’t recognize was the fear that widened those eyes and stole the color from her face.

“Josie …?”

Royal Rescue
Lisa Childs

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To Philip Tyson for proving to me that heroes really do

exist! Thank you for being my white knight!

Chapter One

Goose bumps of dread rising on her arms, Josie Jessup slipped into a pew in the back of church. She hated funerals, hated saying goodbye to anyone but most especially to someone who had died too soon. And so senselessly and violently—shot down just as his adult life was beginning.

The small church, with its brilliantly colored stained-glass windows, was filled with her former student’s family and friends. Some of them nodded in polite acknowledgment; others glared at her. They probably blamed her for the career he had pursued, the career that had cost him his life. At the local community college where she taught journalism courses, she had recognized the kid’s talent. She had even recommended he cover the story that had killed him, because it had been killing her that she couldn’t cover it herself.

But she couldn’t risk anyone recognizing her. Even though her appearance had changed, her writing style hadn’t. If she had written the story, certain people would have recognized it as hers no matter whom the byline claimed had authored it. And Josie couldn’t risk anyone realizing that she wasn’t really dead.

That was her other reason for hating funerals—because it reminded her of her own, of having to say goodbye to everyone she loved. She actually hadn’t attended her funeral; her ashes hadn’t been in the urn as everyone else had believed. But still she’d had to say goodbye to the only life she’d known in order to begin a new life under a new identity.

But apparently she wasn’t making any better choices in this life than she had in her last, since innocent people were still getting hurt. She hadn’t pulled the trigger and ended this young man’s promising life. But she blamed herself nearly as much as some of these people blamed her. If only she hadn’t mentioned her suspicions regarding the private psychiatric hospital and the things that were rumored to take place there …

The gnawing pangs of guilt were all too familiar to her. The first story she’d covered, back in college, had also cost a young man his life. But then she’d had someone to assure her that it wasn’t her fault. Now she had no one to offer her assurances or comfort.

Chatter from the people in front of her drifted back. “Since Michael was hoping to sell the Serenity House story to one of Jessup Media’s news outlets, I heard Stanley Jessup might attend the funeral.”

Josie’s breath caught with hope and panic. She wanted to see him. But she couldn’t risk his seeing her. For his own protection, her father had to go on believing that his only child was dead.

“Not anymore,” the other person responded. “He’s in the hospital. They don’t even know if he’ll make it.”

Josie leaned forward, ready to demand to know what had happened to her father. But before she could, the other person had already asked.

“He was attacked,” the gossiper replied. “Someone tried to kill him.”

Had all the sacrifices she’d made been for naught? Had her father been attacked because of her? And if so, then she’d done nothing to protect him except deprive him of what mattered most to him. She had already been guilt-ridden. Now that guilt intensified, overwhelming her.

If her father didn’t make it, he would die never knowing the truth. She couldn’t let that happen.

“JESSUP … HOSPITALIZED in critical condition …”

The breaking news announcement drew Brendan O’Hannigan’s attention to the television mounted over the polished oak-and-brass bar of O’Hannigan’s Tavern. At 9:00 a.m. it was too early for the establishment to be open to the public, but it was already doing business. Another kind of business than serving drinks or sandwiches. A dangerous kind of business that required his entire focus and control.

But Brendan ignored the men with whom he was meeting to listen to the rest of the report: “Nearly four years ago, media mogul Stanley Jessup’s daughter died in a house explosion that authorities ruled arson. Despite her father’s substantial resources, Josie Jessup’s murder has never been solved.”

“Josie Jessup?” one of the men repeated her name and then tapped the table in front of Brendan. “Weren’t you dating her at one time?”

Another of the men snorted. “A reporter? Brendan would never date a reporter.”

He cleared his throat, fighting back all the emotions just the sound of her name evoked. And it had been more than three years….

Wasn’t it supposed to get easier? Weren’t his memories of her supposed to fade? He shouldn’t be able to see her as clearly as if she stood before him now, her pale green eyes sparkling and her long red hair flowing around her shoulders. Brendan could even hear her laughter tinkling in his ear.

“At the time I didn’t know she was a reporter,” he answered honestly, even though these were men he shouldn’t trust with the truth. Hell, he shouldn’t trust these men with anything.

He leaned back against the booth, and its stiff vinyl pushed the barrel of his gun into the small of his back. The bite of metal reassured him. It was just one of the many weapons he carried. That reassured him more.

The first man who’d spoken nodded and confirmed, “It wasn’t common knowledge that the girl wanted to work for her father. All her life she had seemed more intent on spending his money, living the life of an American princess.”

An American princess. That was exactly what Josie had been. Rich and spoiled, going after what she wanted no matter who might get hurt. She had hurt others—with the stories Brendan had discovered that she’d written under a pseudonym. Her exposés had started before she’d even graduated with her degree in journalism.

Brendan should have dug deeper until he’d learned the truth about her before getting involved with her. But the woman had pursued him and had been damn hard to resist. At least he had learned the truth about her before she’d managed to learn the truth about him. Somehow she must have discovered enough information to have gotten herself killed, though.

The news report continued: “The death of his daughter nearly destroyed Jessup, but the billionaire used his work to overcome his loss, much as he did when his wife died twenty years ago. The late Mrs. Jessup was European royalty.”

“So she was a real princess,” Brendan murmured, correcting himself.

“She was also a reporter,” the other man said, his focus on Brendan, his dark eyes narrowed with suspicion.

It had taken Brendan four years to gain the small amount of trust and acceptance that he had from these men. He had been a stranger to them when he’d taken over the business he’d inherited from his late father. And these men didn’t trust strangers.

Hell, they didn’t trust anyone.

The man asked, “When did you learn that?”

Learn that Josie Jessup had betrayed him? That she’d just been using him to get another exposé for her father’s media outlets?

Anger coursed through him and he clenched his jaw. His eyes must have also telegraphed that rage, for the men across the booth from him leaned back now as if trying to get away. Or to reassure themselves that they were armed, too.

“I found out Josie Jessup was a reporter,” Brendan said, “right before she died.”

IT’S TOO GREAT a risk … She hadn’t been able to reach her handler, the former U.S. marshal who had faked Josie’s death and relocated her. But she didn’t need to speak to Charlotte Green to know what she would have told her. It’s too great a risk …

After nearly being killed for real almost four years ago, Josie knew how much danger she would be in were anyone to discover that she was still alive. She hadn’t tried to call Charlotte again. She’d had no intention of listening to her anyway.

Josie stood outside her father’s private hospital room, one hand pressed against the door. Coming here was indeed a risk, but the greater risk was that her father would die without her seeing him again.

Without him seeing her again. And …

Her hand that was not pressed against the door held another hand. Pudgy little fingers wriggled in her grasp. “Mommy, what we doin’ here?”

Josie didn’t have to ask herself that question. She knew that, no matter what the risk, she needed to be here. She needed to introduce her father to his grandson. “We’re here to see your grandpa,” she said.

“Grampa?” The three-year-old’s little brow furrowed in confusion. He had probably heard the word before but never in reference to any relation of his. It had always been only the two of them. “I have a grampa?”

“Yes,” Josie said. “But he lives far away so we didn’t get to see him before now.”

“Far away,” he agreed with a nod and a yawn. He had slept through most of the long drive from northwestern Michigan to Chicago; his soft snoring had kept her awake and amused. His bright red curls were matted from his booster seat, and there was a trace of drool that had run from the corner of his mouth across his freckled cheek.

CJ glanced nervously around the wide corridor as if just now realizing where he was. He hadn’t awakened until the elevator ride up to her father’s floor. Then with protests that he wasn’t a baby but a big boy now, he had wriggled out of her arms. “Does Grampa live here?”

“No,” she said. “This is a hospital.”

The little boy shuddered in revulsion. His low pain threshold for immunizations had given him a deep aversion to all things medical. He lowered his already soft voice to a fearful whisper. “Is—is Grampa sick?”

She whispered, too, so that nobody overheard them. A few hospital workers, men dressed in scrubs, lingered outside a room a few doors down from her father’s. “He’s hurt.”

So where were the police or the security guards? Why was no one protecting him?

Because nobody cared about her father the way she did. Because she had been declared dead, he had no other next of kin. And as powerful and intimidating a man as he was, he had no genuine friends, either. His durable power of attorney was probably held by his lawyer. She’d claimed to be from his office when she’d called to find out her father’s room number.

“Did he falled off his bike?” CJ asked.

“Something like that.” She couldn’t tell her son what had really happened, that her father had been assaulted in the parking garage of his condominium complex. Usually the security was very high there. No one got through the gate unless they lived in the building. Not only was it supposed to be safe, but it was his home. Yet someone had attacked him, striking him with something—a baseball bat or a pipe. His broken arm and bruised shoulder might not hurt him so badly if the assault hadn’t also brought on a heart attack.

Would her showing up here as if from the dead bring on another one? Maybe that inner voice of hers, which sounded a hell of a lot like Charlotte’s even though she hadn’t talked to the woman, was right. The risk was too great.

“We shoulda brought him ice cream,” CJ said. “Ice cream makes you feel all better.”

Every time he had been brave for his shots she had rewarded him with ice cream. Always shy and nervous, CJ had to fight hard to be brave. Had she passed her own fears, of discovery and danger, onto her son?

“Yes, we should have,” she agreed, and she pulled her hand away from the door. “We should do that …”

“Now?” CJ asked, his dark bluish-green eyes brightening with hope. “We gonna get ice cream now?”

“It’s too late for ice cream tonight,” she said. “But we can get some tomorrow.”

“And bring it back?”

She wasn’t sure about that. She would have to pose as the legal secretary again and learn more about her father’s condition. Just how fragile was his health?

Josie turned away from the door and from the nearly overwhelming urge to run inside and into her father’s arms—the way she always had as a child. She had hurled herself at him, secure that he would catch her.

She’d been so confident that he would always be there for her. She had never considered that he might be the one to leave—for real, for good—that he might be the one to really die. Given how young she was when her mother died, she should have understood how fragile life was. But her father wasn’t fragile. He was strong and powerful. Invincible. Or so she had always believed.

But he wasn’t. And she couldn’t risk causing him harm only to comfort herself. She stepped away from the door, but her arm jerked as her son kept his feet planted on the floor.

“I wanna see Grampa,” he said, his voice still quiet but his tone determined. Afraid to draw attention to himself, her son had never thrown a temper tantrum. He’d never even raised his voice. But he could be very stubborn when he put his mind to something. Kind of like the grandfather he’d suddenly decided he needed to meet.

“It’s late,” she reminded him. “He’ll be sleeping and we shouldn’t wake him up.”

His little brow still furrowed, he stared up at her a moment as if considering her words. Then he nodded. “Yeah, you get cranky when I wake you up.”

A laugh sputtered out of her lips. Anyone would get cranky if woken up at 5:00 a.m. to watch cartoons. “So we better make sure I get some sleep tonight.” That meant postponing the drive back and getting a hotel. But she needed to be close to the hospital … in case her father took a turn for the worse. In case he needed her.

“And after you wake up we’ll come back with ice cream?”

She hesitated before offering him a slight nod. But instead of posing as the lawyer’s assistant again, she would talk to Charlotte.

Someone else had answered the woman’s phone at the palace on the affluent island country of St. Pierre where Charlotte had gone to work as the princess’s bodyguard after leaving the U.S. Marshals. That person had assured Josie that Charlotte would be back soon to return her call. But Josie hadn’t left a message—she couldn’t trust anyone but Charlotte with her life. Or her father’s. She would talk to Charlotte and see what the former marshal could find out about Josie’s father’s condition and the attack. Then she would come back to see him.

Her son accepted her slight nod as agreement and finally moved away from the door to his grandfather’s room. “Does Grampa like ‘nilla ice cream or chocolate or cookie dough or …”

The kid was an ice-cream connoisseur, his list of flavors long and impressive. And Josie’s stomach nearly growled with either hunger or nerves.

She interrupted him to ask, “Do you want to press the elevator button?”

His brow furrowing in concentration, he rose up on tiptoe and reached for the up arrow.

“No,” she said. But it was too late, he’d already pressed it. “We need the down arrow.” Before she could touch it, a hand wrapped around her wrist.

Her skin tingled and her pulse leaped in reaction. And she didn’t need to lift her head to know who had touched her. Even after more than three years, she recognized his touch. But she lifted her head and gazed up at him, at his thick black hair that was given to curl, at his deep, turquoise-green eyes that could hold such passion. Now they held utter shock and confusion.

This was the man who’d killed her, or who would have killed her had the U.S. marshal and one of her security guards not diffused the bomb that had been set inside the so-called safe house. They had set it off later to stage her death.

Since he had wanted her dead so badly, he was not going to be happy to find her alive and unharmed—if he recognized her now. She needed for him not to recognize her, as she wasn’t likely to survive his next murder attempt. Not when she was unprotected.

If only she’d listened to that inner voice …

The risk had been too great. Not just to her life but to what would become of her son once she was gone.

Would her little boy’s father take him or kill him? Either way, the child was as doomed as she was.

Chapter Two

For more than three years, her memory had haunted Brendan—her image always in his mind. This woman didn’t look like her, but she had immediately drawn his attention when he’d stepped out of the stairwell at the end of the hall. Her body was fuller and softer than Josie’s thin frame had been. And her chin-length blond bob had nothing in common with Josie’s long red hair. Yet something about her—the way she tilted her jaw, the sparkle in her eyes as she gazed down at the child—reminded him of her.

Then she’d spoken to the boy, and her soft voice had hit him like a blow to the stomach. While he might not have recognized her body or face, he could not mistake that voice as anyone’s but hers. Her voice had haunted him, too.

Before he could recover, he turned his attention to the child and reeled from another blow. With his curly red hair and bright green eyes, the child was more recognizable than the woman. Except for that shock of bright hair, he looked exactly like the few childhood photos of Brendan that his stepmother hadn’t managed to accidentally destroy.

He didn’t even remember closing the distance between them, didn’t remember reaching for her. But now he held her, his hand wrapped tightly around her delicate wrist.

She lifted her face to him, and he saw it now in the almond shape and silvery-green color of her eyes. What he didn’t recognize was the fear that widened those eyes and stole the color from her face.

“Josie …?”

She shook her head in denial.

She must have had some cosmetic work done, because her appearance was different. Her cheekbones weren’t as sharp, her chin not as pointy, her nose not as perfectly straight. This plastic surgeon had done the opposite of what was usually required; he’d made her perfect features imperfect—made her look less movie-star gorgeous and more natural.

Why would she have gone to such extremes to change her identity? With him, her effort was wasted. He would know her anywhere, just from the way his body reacted—tensing and tingling with attraction. And anger. But she was already afraid of him and he didn’t want to scare the child, too, so he restrained his rage over her cruel deception.

“You’re Josie Jessup.”

She shook her head again and spoke, but this time her voice was little more than a raspy whisper. “You’re mistaken. That’s not my name.”

The raspy whisper did nothing to disguise her voice, since it was how he best remembered her. A raspy whisper in his ear as they’d made love, his body thrusting into hers, hers arching to take him deep. Her nails digging into his shoulders and back as she’d screamed his name.

That was why he’d let her fool him once, why he’d let her distract him when he had needed to be focused and careful. She had seduced and manipulated him with all her loving lies. She’d only wanted to get close to him so she could get a damn story. She hadn’t realized how dangerous getting close to him really was. No matter what she’d learned, she didn’t know the truth about him. And if he had anything to say about it, she never would. He wouldn’t let her make a fool of him twice.

“If you’re not Josie Jessup, what the—” He swallowed a curse for the child’s sake. “What are you doing here?”

“We were gonna see my grampa,” the little boy answered for her, “but we didn’t wanna wake him up.”

She was the same damn liar she had always been, but at least she hadn’t corrupted the boy.

His son …

JOSIE RESISTED THE urge to press her palm over CJ’s mouth. It was already too late. Why was it now that her usually shy son chose to speak to a stranger? And, moreover, to speak the truth? But her little boy was unfailingly honest, no matter the fact that his mother couldn’t be. Especially now.

“But we got out on the wrong floor,” she said. “This isn’t where your grandfather’s room is.”

CJ shook his head. “No, we watched the numbers lighting up in the el’vator. You said number six. I know my numbers.”

Now she cursed herself for working with the three-year-old so much that he knew all his numbers and letters. “Well, it’s the wrong room.”

“You said number—”

“Shh, sweetheart, you’re tired and must not remember correctly,” she said, hoping that her son picked up the warning and the fear in her voice now. “We need to leave. It’s late. We need to get you to bed.”

But those strong masculine fingers were still wrapped tight around her wrist. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“You have no right to keep me,” she said.

With his free hand, he gestured toward CJ. “He gives me the right. I have a lot of rights you’ve apparently denied me.”

“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Why the hell would she have told the man who’d tried to kill her that she was pregnant with his baby? If his attempts had been successful, he would have killed them both.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about, Josie.”

CJ tugged on her hand and whispered loudly, “Mommy, why does the man keep calling you that?”

Now he supported her lie—too late. “I don’t know, honey,” she said. “He has me mixed up with someone else he must have known.”

“No,” Brendan said. “I never really knew Josie Jessup at all.”

No. He hadn’t. Or he would have realized that she was too smart to have ever really trusted him. If only she’d been too smart to fall for him.

But the man was as charming as he was powerful. And when he’d touched her, when he’d kissed her, she had been unable to resist that charm.

“Then it’s no wonder that you’ve mistaken me for her,” Josie said, “since you didn’t really know her very well.”

She furrowed her brow and acted as if a thought had just occurred to her. “Josie Jessup? Isn’t that the daughter of the media mogul? I thought she died several years ago.”

“That was obviously what she wanted everyone to believe—that she was dead,” he said. “Or was it just me?”

She shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.” You. Just you. But unfortunately, for him to accept the lie, everyone else had had to believe it, too. “I am not her. She must really be gone.”

And if she’d had any sense, she would have stayed gone. Well away from her father and this man.

“Why are you here?” she asked. “Are you visiting someone?”

Or knowing all this time that she wasn’t really dead, had he set a trap for her? Was he the one who had attacked her father? According to the reports from all her father’s media outlets, there was no suspect yet in his assault. But she had one now.

She needed to call Charlotte. But the phone was in her purse, and she had locked her purse in her vehicle so that if anyone was to recognize her, they wouldn’t be able to find her new identity.

“It doesn’t matter why I’m here—just that I am,” he said, dodging her question as he had so many other questions she had asked him during the months they’d been together. “And so are you.”

“Not anymore. We’re leaving,” she said, as much to CJ as to Brendan. As if on cue, the elevator ground to a stop, and the doors slid open. She moved to step into the car, but her wrist was clutched so tightly she couldn’t move.

“That one’s going up,” Brendan pointed out.

“As I said, we got off on the wrong floor.” She tugged hard on her wrist, but his grip didn’t ease. She didn’t want to scream and alarm her already trembling son, so through gritted teeth she said, “Let go of me.”

But he stepped closer. He was so damn big, all broad muscles and tension. There were other bulges beneath the jacket of his dark tailored suit—weapons. He had always carried guns. He’d told her it was because of the dangerous people who resented his inheriting his father’s businesses.

But she’d wondered then if he’d been armed for protection or intimidation. She was intimidated, so intimidated that she cared less about scaring her son than she did about protecting him. So she screamed.

HER SCREAM STARTLED Brendan and pierced the quiet of the hospital corridor. But he didn’t release her until her son—their son—launched himself at Brendan. His tiny feet kicked at Brendan’s shins and his tiny fists flailed, striking Brendan’s thighs and hips.

“Leggo my mommy! Leggo my mommy!”

The boy’s reaction and fear startled Brendan into stepping back. Josie’s wrist slipped from his grasp. She used her freed hand to catch their son’s flailing fists and tug him close to her.

Before Brandon could reach for her again, three men dressed in hospital scrubs rushed up from the room they’d been loitering near down the hall. Brendan had noted their presence but had been too distracted to realize that they were watching him.

Damn! He had been trained to constantly be aware of his surroundings and everyone in them. Only Josie had ever made him forget his training to trust no one.

“What’s going on?” one of the men asked.

“This man accosted me and my son,” Josie replied, spewing more lies. “He tried to grab me.”

Brendan struggled to control his anger. The boy—his boy—was already frightened of him. He couldn’t add to that fear by telling the truth. So he stepped back again in order to appear nonthreatening, when all he wanted to do was threaten.

“We’ll escort you to your car, ma’am,” another of the men offered as he guided her and the child into the waiting elevator.

“Don’t let her leave,” Brendan advised. Because if she left, he had no doubt that he would never see her and his son again. This time she would stay gone. He moved forward, reaching for those elevator doors before they could shut on Josie and their son.

But strong hands closed around his arms, dragging him back, while another man joined Josie inside the elevator. Just as the doors slid shut, Brendan noticed the telltale bulge of a weapon beneath the man’s scrubs. He carried a gun at the small of his back.

Brendan shrugged off the grasp of the man who held him. Then he whirled around to face him. But now he faced down the barrel of his gun. Why were he and at least one of the other men armed? They weren’t hospital security, and he doubted like hell that they were orderlies.

Who were they? And more important, who had sent them?

The guy warned Brendan, “Don’t be a hero, man.”

He laughed incredulously at the idea of anyone considering him a hero. “Do you know who I am?”

“I don’t care who the hell you are,” the guy replied, as he cocked the gun, “and neither will this bullet.”

Four years ago Brendan’s father had learned that it didn’t matter who he was, either. When he’d been shot in the alley behind O’Hannigan’s early one morning, that bullet had made him just as dead as anyone else who got shot. Even knowing the dangerous life his father had led, his murder had surprised Brendan.

As the old man had believed himself invincible, so had Brendan. Or maybe he just remembered being fifteen, running away from the strong, ruthless man and never looking back.

But Dennis O’Hannigan’s death had brought Brendan back to Chicago and to the life he’d sworn he’d never live. Most people thought he’d come home to claim his inheritance. Even now he couldn’t imagine why the old man had left everything to him.

They hadn’t spoken in more than fifteen years, even though his father had known where Brendan was and what he’d been doing. No one had ever been able to hide from Dennis O’Hannigan—not his friends or his family and certainly not his enemies.

Which one had ended the old man’s life?

Brendan had really returned to claim justice. No matter how ruthless his father had been, he deserved to have his murder solved, his killer punished.

Some people thought Brendan had committed the murder—out of vengeance and greed. He had certainly had reasons for wanting revenge. His father had been as cruel a father and husband as he’d been a crime boss.

And as a crime boss, the man had acquired a fortune—a destiny and a legacy that he’d left to his only blood relative. Because, since his father’s death, Brendan was the only O’Hannigan left in the family. Or so he’d thought until he’d met his son tonight.

He couldn’t lose the boy before he even got to know him. No matter how many people thought of him as a villain, he would have to figure out a way to be the hero.

He had to save his son.

And Josie.

Four years ago she must have realized that she was in danger—that must have been why she’d staged her own death. Had she realized yet that those men in the elevator with her were not orderlies or interns but dangerous gunmen? Had she realized that she was in as much or more danger now than she’d been in before?

Chapter Three

Fear gripped Josie. She was more scared now than she’d been when Brendan wouldn’t let go of her. Maybe her pulse raced and her heart hammered just in reaction to his discovering her. Or maybe it was because she wasn’t entirely certain she had really gotten away from him … even as the doors slid closed between them.

“Thank you,” she told the men. “I really appreciate your helping me and my son to safety.”

“Was that man threatening you?” one of them asked.

She nodded. More threatening than they could possibly understand. Brendan O’Hannigan could take even more from her now than just her life. He could take away her son.

“H-he’s a b-bad man,” CJ stammered. The little boy trembled with fear and the aftereffects of his physical defense of his mother.

“Are you okay?” she asked him, concerned that he’d gotten hurt when he’d flung himself at Brendan. She couldn’t believe her timid son had summoned that much courage and anger. And she hated that she’d been so careless with their safety that she’d put him in such a dangerous predicament. Dropping to her knees in front of her son, she inspected him to see if he had been harmed.

His little face was flushed nearly as bright red as his tousled curls. His eyes glistened with tears he was fighting hard not to shed. He blinked furiously and bit his bottom lip. Even at three, he was too proud to cry in front of strangers. He nodded.

Her heart clutched in her chest, aching with love and pride. “You were so brave.” She wound her arms tightly around him and lifted him up as she stood again. Maybe a good parent would have admonished him for physically launching himself at a stranger. But it was so hard for him to be courageous that she had to praise his efforts. “Thank you for protecting Mommy.”

She hadn’t been able to shake Brendan’s strong grip. But CJ’s attack had caught the mobster off guard so that he’d released her and stepped back. She released a shuddery breath of relief that he hadn’t hurt her son.

CJ wrapped his pudgy little legs around her waist and clung to her, his slight body trembling against her. “The bad man is gone?”

“He’s gone.”

But for how long? Had he just taken the stairs to meet the elevator when it stopped? CJ had pushed the up arrow, so the car was going to the roof. She doubted Brendan would waste his time going up. Instead he would have more time to get down to the lobby and lay in wait for her and CJ to leave for the parking garage.

And if he followed her there, she would have no protection against him. Unlike him, she carried no weapons. Just a can of mace and that was inside her purse, which she had locked in her vehicle.

But these men had promised to see her safely to her car. Surely they would protect her against Brendan…

But who would protect her from them?

The thought slipped unbidden into her mind, making her realize why her pulse hadn’t slowed. She didn’t feel safe yet.

Not with them.

Balancing CJ on her hip and holding him with just one arm, she reached for the panel of buttons. But one of the men stepped in front of it, blocking her from the lobby or the emergency call button. Then the other man stepped closer to her, trapping her and CJ between them.

She clutched her son more closely to her chest and glanced up at the illuminated numbers above the doors. They were heading toward the roof. Why hadn’t they pushed other buttons to send the car back down? These men would have no patients to treat up there. But then, just because they wore scrubs didn’t mean that they actually worked at the hospital.

When Charlotte had relocated her more than three years ago, she’d taught Josie to trust no one but her. And her own instincts. She should have heeded that warning before she’d stepped inside the elevator with these men. She should have heeded that warning before she’d driven back to Chicago.

“My son and I need to leave,” she said, wishing now that she had never left her safe little home in Michigan. But she’d been so worried about her father that she’d listened to her heart instead of her head.

“That’s the plan, Miss Jessup,” the one standing in front of the elevator panel replied. “To get you out of here.”

Somehow she suspected he wasn’t talking about just getting her out of the hospital. And, like Brendan, he had easily recognized her.

She should have heeded Charlotte’s other advice all those years ago to have more plastic surgery. But Josie had stopped when she’d struggled to recognize her own face in the mirror. She hadn’t wanted to forget who she was. But maybe she should have taken that risk. It was definitely safer than the risk she’d taken in coming to see her father.

She feared that risk was going to wind up costing her everything.

“COME ON, GUY, just walk away,” the pseudo-orderly advised Brendan.

“You don’t want to shoot me,” Brendan warned, stepping closer to the man instead of walking away. That had always been his problem. Once he got out of trouble, the way he had when he’d run away nearly twenty years ago, he turned around and headed right back into it—even deeper than before.

The other man shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me. The security cameras are not functioning up here.”

Brendan suspected that had been intentional. While he had been completely shocked to see Josie, these men had been expecting her. They had actually been waiting for her … with disabled security cameras and weapons.

So Stanley Jessup’s assault hadn’t been such a random act of violence. It was the trap that had been used to draw Josie out of hiding.

Was he the only one who hadn’t known that she was really alive?

“And Jessup, who’s heavily drugged, is the only patient in a room near here. So by the time someone responds to the sound of the shot,” the man brazenly bragged, “I’ll be gone. We planned our escape route.”

Brendan needed to plan his, too. But he didn’t intend to escape danger. He planned to confront it head-on and eliminate the threat.

“In fact,” the man continued, his ruddy face contorting with a smirk, “it would be better to kill you than leave you behind as a potential witness.” He lifted the gun, so there was no way the bullet would miss. Then he cocked the trigger.

Brendan had a gun, too, holstered under his arm. And another at his back. And one strapped to his ankle. But before he could pull any of them, he would have a bullet in his head. So instead of fighting with a weapon, he used his words.

“I’m Brendan O’Hannigan,” he said, “and that’s why you don’t want to shoot me.”

First the man snorted derisively as if the name meant nothing to him. Then he repeated it, “O’Hannigan,” as if trying to place where he’d heard it before. Then his eyes widened and his jaw dropped open as recognition struck him with the same force as if Brendan had swung his fist at him. “Oh, shit.”

That was how people usually reacted when they learned his identity—except for Josie. She had acted as if she’d known nothing of his family or their dubious family business. And she had gotten close to him, with her impromptu visits to the tavern and her persistent flirting, before he’d realized that she had been doing just that: acting.

She had known exactly who he was or she would have never sought him out. She’d been after a scoop for her father’s media outlets. Even after all those other stories she’d brought to him, she’d still been trying to prove herself to Daddy.

Brendan had devoted himself to just the opposite, trying to prove himself as unlike his father as possible. Until the old man had died, drawing Brendan back into a life that he had been unable to run far enough away from when he was a kid.

“Yeah, if you shoot me, you better hope the police find you before any of my family does,” Brendan warned the man. But it was a bluff.

He really had no idea what his “family” would do or if they would even care. He was the only one who cared about his father’s murder—enough to risk everything for justice. Hell, his “family,” given the way they’d resented his return and his inheritance, would probably be relieved if he died, especially if they knew the truth about him.

The man stepped back and lifted his gun so that the barrel pointed toward the ceiling, waving it around as if there were a white flag of surrender tied to the end of it. “I don’t want any trouble—any of your kind of trouble.”

Brendan didn’t want that kind of trouble, either. But it was too late. He was in too deep now—so deep that he hadn’t been able to get out even after he’d thought Josie had been killed. But then her death had made him even more determined to pursue justice.

“If you didn’t want trouble,” Brendan said, “then you shouldn’t have messed with my son and his mother.” Now he swung his fist into the man’s face.

The guy fell back, but before he went down, Brendan snapped the gun from his grasp and turned it on him. There was no greater power play than turning a man’s own gun on him. His father had taught him that, starting his lessons when Brendan was only a few years older than his son was now.

“What the hell do you want with her?” he demanded.

“I just got paid to do a job, man,” the man in scrubs said, cringing away from the barrel pointed in his face.

“What’s the job?”

The man opened his mouth but hesitated before speaking, until Brendan cocked the trigger. Then he blurted out, “To kill Josie Jessup!”

“Damn it!” he cursed at having his suspicions confirmed.

He had only just discovered that she was alive and that she’d given birth to his son. He didn’t want to lose the boy before he’d gotten the chance to claim him. And he didn’t want Josie to die again. He glanced back at the elevator, at the numbers above the doors that indicated it had stopped—on the top floor.

“You’re not going to make it,” the man advised. “You’re not going to be able to save her.”

Brendan cursed again because the guy was probably right. But still he had to try. He turned the gun and swung the handle at the man’s head.

One down. Two to go …

THE WIND ON the roof was cold, whipping through Josie’s light jacket and jeans. She slipped the side of her unzipped jacket over CJ’s back to shield him from the cold bite of the breeze. He snuggled against her, his face pressed into her neck. Her skin was damp from the quiet tears he surreptitiously shed. He must have felt the fear and panic that clutched at her, and he trembled with it while she tensely held herself together.

She had to do something. She had to make certain these men didn’t hurt her son. But since she hadn’t reached Charlotte, earlier, the former U.S. marshal couldn’t come to her rescue as she had last time. Josie had only herself—and the instincts she’d previously ignored—to help her now.

The two men were huddled together just a few feet away from them, between her and CJ and the elevator. There was no way to reach it without going through them. And with the bulges of weapons at their backs, she didn’t dare try to go through them. Nor did she want to risk turning her back on them to run, for fear that they would shoot. And since they were on the roof, where could she go? How far could she run without falling over the side?

One of the men spoke into a cell phone about the change in plans: CJ.

While they had somehow discovered that she was really alive, they must not have been aware that she was pregnant when she’d gone into hiding.

Despite the fact that he’d lowered his voice, it carried on the wind, bringing the horrifying words to her.

“… never agreed to do a kid.”

“… someone else knows she’s alive and hassled her in the hall.”

Because Brendan wasn’t any happier she was alive than these men apparently were. Of course he hadn’t seemed as eager to rectify that as they were.

“Okay, I understand,” said the man holding the phone before he clicked it off and slid it back into his pocket. Then he turned to his co-conspirator and nodded. “We have to eliminate them both.”

A shudder of fear and revulsion rippled through Josie. Thankfully CJ wouldn’t understand what they meant by “eliminate.” But eventually he would figure it out, when he stared down the barrel of a gun.

“I don’t know what you’re getting paid to do this,” she addressed the men as they turned toward her. “But I have money. Lots of money. I can pay you more than you’re getting now.”

The man who’d been on the phone chuckled bitterly. “We were warned you might make that offer. But you forfeited your access to that money when you faked your death, lady.”

They were right. Josie Jessup’s bank accounts and trust fund had closed when she’d died. And JJ Brandt’s salary from the community college was barely enough to cover her rent, utilities and groceries. She had nothing in her savings account to offer them.

“My father would pay you,” she said, “whatever you ask.” But first they would have to prove to him that she was really alive. She hadn’t dared step inside his room. What would happen if gunmen burst inside with her? The shock would surely bring on another heart attack—maybe a fatal one.

The men shared a glance, obviously debating her offer. But then one of them shook his head. “This is about more than money, lady.”

“What is it about?” she asked.

As far she knew, Brendan was the only one with any reason to want her dead. If these men worked for him, they wouldn’t have held him back from boarding the elevator with her. If they worked for him, they wouldn’t have dared to touch him at all. She still couldn’t believe that she had dared to touch him, that she’d dared to go near him even to pursue her story. The police had been unable to determine who had killed his father, the legendary crime boss, so she had vowed to find out if there was any truth to the rumors that Dennis O’Hannigan’s runaway son had killed him out of revenge and greed.

She had found something else entirely. More than the story, she had been attracted to the man—the complex man who had been grieving the death of his estranged father while trying to take over his illicit empire. She had never found evidence proving Brendan was the killer, but he must have been worried that she’d discovered something. Why else would he have tried to kill her?

Just because he’d learned she’d been lying to him about what she really was? Maybe. He’d been furious with her—furious enough to want revenge. But if he wasn’t behind this attempt to eliminate her, had he been behind that bomb planted more than three years ago?

Could she have been wrong about him?

“I have a right to know,” she prodded, wanting the truth. That was her problem—she always wanted the truth. It was what had made her such a great reporter before she’d been forced to give it all up to save her life. But since it was probably her last chance to learn it, she wanted this truth more than she’d ever wanted any other. If not Brendan, who wanted her dead?

“It doesn’t matter what it’s about,” one of the men replied.

She suspected he had no idea, either, that he was just doing what he had been paid to do.

“It’s not going to change the outcome for you and your son,” the fake orderly continued as he reached behind him and drew out his gun.

What about her father? Had he only been attacked to lure her out of hiding? Was he safe now?

If only her son was safe, too …

She covered the side of CJ’s cold, damp face with her hand so that he wouldn’t see the weapon. Then she turned, putting her body between the boy and the men. Her body wouldn’t be enough to protect her son, though. Nothing could protect him now. “Please …”

But if the men wouldn’t respond to bribes, they would have no use for begging, either. So she just closed her eyes and prayed as the first shot rang out.

Chapter Four

Was he too late?

As the elevator doors slid open, a shot rang out. But the bullet ricocheted off the back of the car near his head. Both men faced him with their guns raised. Maybe this had nothing to do with Josie.

Maybe the woman wasn’t even really her and the boy not really even his son. Maybe it had all been an elaborate trap to lure him here—to his death. Plenty of people wanted him dead. That was why he usually had backup within gunshot range. But he hadn’t wanted anyone to be aware of his visit to the bedside of a man he didn’t really know but with whom he’d thought he’d shared a tragedy: Josie’s death.

So nobody had known he was coming here. These men weren’t after him, because the suspects he knew wouldn’t have gone to such extremes to take him out; they wouldn’t have had to. Whenever they dared to try to take him out, as they had his father, they knew where to find him—at O’Hannigan’s. Inside the family tavern was where Josie had found him. He’d thought the little rich girl had just wandered into the wrong place with the wrong clientele, and he’d rescued her before any of his rough customers could accost her.

Just as he had intended to rescue her now. But both times he was the one who wound up needing to be rescued. Maybe he should have had backup even for this uncomfortable visit. With the elevator doors wide open, Brendan was a damn sitting duck, more so even than the woman and the boy. They might be able to escape. Seeing the fear on their faces, pale and stark in the light spilling out of the elevator, it was clear that they were in real danger and they knew it.

“Run!” he yelled at them.

She sprinted away, either in reaction to his command or in fear of him as well as the armed men. With her and the kid out of the line of fire, he raised the gun he’d taken off their co-conspirator.

But the men had divided their attention now. Standing back-to-back, one fired at him while the other turned his gun toward Josie.

The boy clutched tightly in her arms, she ran, disappearing into the shadows before any bullets struck her. But maybe running wasn’t a good thing, given that the farther away she went, the thicker the shadows grew. The light from the elevator illuminated only a small circle of the rooftop around the open doors. The farther she ran, the harder it would be for her to see where the roof ended and the black abyss twenty stories above the ground began.

He ducked back into the elevator and flattened himself against the panel beside the doors. He could have closed those doors to protect himself. But then he couldn’t protect Josie and the child. His son …

These men weren’t just trying to kill the woman who was supposed to already be dead. They were trying to kill a helpless child.

An O’Hannigan.

His father would be turning over in his grave.

Despite his occasional violent behavior toward them, Dennis O’Hannigan had never really wanted his family harmed—at least not by anyone but him. Brendan didn’t want his family harmed at all. He kept one finger on the button to hold open the doors. Then he leaned out and aimed the gun. And squeezed the trigger.

His shots drew all the attention to him. Bullets pinged off the brass handrail and shattered the smoky glass of the elevator car. The glass splintered and ricocheted like the bullets, biting into his skin like a swarm of bees.

His finger jerked off the button, and the doors began to close. But he couldn’t leave Josie and the child alone up here with no protection. Despite the other man’s warning, he had to play the hero. But it had been nearly four years since he’d been anything but the villain.

Had he gotten rusty? Would he be able to protect them? Or had his arrival put them in even more danger?

“THEY’RE ALL BAD men,” CJ said, his voice high and squeaky with fear and panic. “They’re bad! Bad!”

He was too young to have learned just how evil some people were. As his mother, Josie was supposed to protect him, but she’d endangered his life and his innocence. She had to do her best to keep her little boy a little boy until he had the time to grow into a man.

“Shh …” Josie cautioned him. “We need to be very quiet.”

“So they don’t find us?”

“First we have to find a hiding place.” Which wouldn’t be easy in a darkness so enveloping she could barely see the child she held tightly against her.

She had been able to see the shots—those brief flashes of gunpowder. She’d run from those flashes, desperate to keep her son safe. But now those shots were redirected toward Brendan, and running wouldn’t keep CJ safe since she couldn’t see where she was going. She moved quickly but carefully, testing her footing before she stepped forward.

“Are they shooting real bullets?” he asked.

To preserve that innocence she was afraid he was losing, she could have lied. But that lie could risk his life.

“They’re real,” she replied, aware that they’d come all too close to her and CJ. “That’s why we need to find a place to hide until the police come.”

Someone must have heard the shots and reported them by now. Help had to be on the way. Hopefully it would arrive in time to save her and her son. But what about Brendan? He had stepped into the middle of an attempted murder—a double homicide, actually. And he hadn’t done it accidentally. He had tracked her to the roof, maybe to kill her himself. But perhaps he’d be the one to lose his life, since the men were now entirely focused on him.

She shuddered, the thought chilling her nearly as much as the cold wind that whipped around the unprotected rooftop.

“Let’s go back there, Mommy,” CJ said, lifting his hand, which caught her attention only because she felt the movement more than saw it.

“Where?” she asked.

“Behind those big metal things.”

She peered in the direction he was pointing and finally noted the glint of some stray starlight off steel vents, probably exhaust pipes for the hospital’s heating or cooling system. If only they could escape inside them.

But she could barely move around them, let alone find a way inside them. The openings were too high above the rooftop, towering over her. As she tried to squeeze around them, her hip struck the metal. She winced and swallowed a groan of pain. And hoped the men hadn’t heard the telltale metallic clink.

“Shh, Mommy,” CJ cautioned her. “We don’t want the bad men to hear us.”

“No, we don’t,” she agreed.

“They might find our hiding place.”

“I’m not sure we can hide here,” she whispered. She couldn’t wedge them both between the massive pipes. The metal caught at her clothes and scraped her arms. “We can’t fit.”

“Let me try,” he suggested. Before she could agree, he wriggled down from her arms and squeezed through the small space.

She reached through the blackness, trying to clutch at him, trying to pull him back. What if he’d fallen right off the building?

She had no idea how much space was on the other side of the pipes. A tiny ledge? None?

A scream burned in her throat, but she was too scared to utter it—too horrified that in trying to protect her son she may have lost him forever.

But then chubby fingers caught hers. He tugged on her hand. “Come on, Mommy. There’s room.”

“You’re not at the edge of the roof?” she asked, worried that he might be in more danger where he was.

“Nooo,” he murmured, his voice sounding as if he’d turned away from her. “There’s a little wall right behind me.”

“Don’t go over that wall,” she advised. It was probably the edge of the roof, a small ledge to separate the rooftop from the ground far below. A curious little boy might want to figure out what was on the other side of that wall.

“Okay, Mommy,” he murmured again, his voice still muffled. Was he trying to peer over the side?

She needed to get to him, needed to protect him, from the men and from himself. She turned sideways and pushed herself against the space where CJ had so effortlessly disappeared. But her breasts and hips—curves she’d barely had until her pregnancy with him—caught. She sucked in her stomach, but it made no difference. She couldn’t suck in her breasts or hips. “I can’t fit.”

CJ tugged harder on her hand. “C’mon, Mommy, it’s a good hiding place.”

“No, honey,” she corrected him, her pulse tripping with fear that he’d go over the wall, “you need to come back out. We’ll find another one.”

But then she heard it. She tilted her head and listened harder. And still it was all she heard: silence. The shooting had stopped.

What did that mean?

Was Brendan dead? Were the men? Whoever had survived would be searching for her next—for her and her son. The silence broke, shattered by the scrape of a shoe against the asphalt roofing.

She sucked in a breath now—of fear. But it didn’t make it any easier for her to squeeze through the small space. And maybe pulling CJ out wasn’t the best idea, not when he was safe from the men.

She dropped his fingers. “You stay here,” she said. “In the best hiding place.”

“I wanna hide with you.”

“I’ll find a bigger hiding place,” she said. “You need to stay here and play statue for me.”

She had played the game as a kid when she’d pretended to be a statue, completely still and silent. On those mornings that CJ had woken her up at five, she’d taught him to play statue so she could sleep just a little longer. Now acting lifeless was perhaps the only way for CJ to stay alive.

The footfalls grew louder as someone drew closer. She had to get out of here, had to distract whoever it was from CJ’s hiding place. But first she had to utter one more warning. “Don’t come out for anyone but me.”

Her son was such a good boy. So smart and so obedient. She didn’t have to worry that anyone else would lure him out of hiding. She just had to make sure that she stayed alive, so that he would come out when it was safe. So she drew in a deep breath and headed off, moving as fast as she dared in the darkness. She glanced back, but night had swallowed those metal vent pipes and had swallowed her son. Would she be able to find him again, even if she eluded whoever had survived the earlier gun battle?

She would worry about finding him after she found a hiding spot for herself. But it was so dark she could barely see where she was going. So she wasn’t surprised when she collided with a wall.

But this wasn’t a short brick wall like the one CJ had found behind the pipes. This wall was broad and muscular and warm. Her hands tingled in reaction to the chest she touched, her palms pressed against the lapels of a suit. The other men had been wearing scrubs, which would have been scratchy and flat.

And she wouldn’t have reacted this way to them. Her skin wouldn’t tingle; her pulse wouldn’t leap. And she wouldn’t feel something very much like relief that he was alive. No matter what threat he posed to her, she hadn’t wanted him dead.

“Brendan …?”

IT WAS HER. Despite her physical transformation, he’d recognized her. But now he had not even a fraction of a doubt. That voice in the darkness…

Her touch…

He recognized all that about her, too.

But more importantly, she had recognized him. If she was truly a stranger that he had mistaken for his former lover and betrayer, she wouldn’t know his name. Or, if by some chance, she had just recognized him as the son of a notorious mobster, she wouldn’t have been comfortable and familiar enough to call him by his first name.

“Yes, Josie, it’s me,” he assured her.

She shuddered and her hands began to tremble against his chest. “You—you,” she stammered. “You’re…”

He was shaking a little himself in reaction to what had nearly happened. Adrenaline and fear coursed through him, pumping his blood fast and hard through his veins. “You know who I am. You just said my name,” he pointed out. “And I damn well know who you are. So let’s cut the bullshit. We don’t have time for it. We need to get the hell out of here!”

She expelled a ragged sigh of resignation, as if she had finally given up trying to deny her true identity. Her palms patted his chest as if checking for bullet holes. “You didn’t get shot?”

“No.” But he suspected he had come uncomfortably close. If either of the gunmen, who were probably hired assassins, had been a better shot than he was, Josie would be in an entirely different situation right now.

As if she sensed that, she asked, “And those men?”

Brendan flinched with a pang of regret. But he had had no choice. If he hadn’t shot the men, they would have killed him. And then they would have found Josie and the boy and killed them, too.

“They’re not a threat. But the guy I left on the floor by your father’s room could be.”

Her breath audibly caught in a gasp of fear. “You left him there? He could hurt my father.”

The assailant was in no condition to hurt anyone. Unless he’d regained consciousness …

“I don’t think your father is their target,” Brendan pointed out.

“They hurt him already,” she said, reminding him of the reason the media mogul was in the hospital in the first place. Because he’d been attacked.

“That must have been just to lure you out of hiding.” Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to track her down, and that someone was obviously very determined to do what Brendan had thought had been done almost four years ago. Kill Josie Jessup. If only he had had more time to interrogate the man downstairs, to find out who had hired him.

“They have no reason to hurt your father now,” Brendan assured her before adding the obvious. “It’s you they’re after.”

“And my son,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. “They were going to hurt him, too.”

“Where is he?” he asked. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough to see her before him now. “Where’s my son?”

She shuddered again. “He’s not your son.”

“Stop,” he impatiently advised her. “Just stop with the lies.” She’d told him too many four years ago. “You need to get the boy and we need to get the hell out of here.”

Because the bad men weren’t the only threat.

Sirens wailed in the distance. Maybe just an ambulance on its way to the emergency room. Or maybe police cars on their way to secure a crime scene. He couldn’t risk the latter. He couldn’t be brought in for questioning or, worse, arrested. The local police wouldn’t care that it had been self-defense; they were determined to arrest him for something. Anything. That was why Brendan had used the other fake orderly’s gun. No bullets could be traced back to him. He’d wiped his prints off the weapon and left it on the roof.

“I’m not leaving with you,” she said. “And neither is my son.”

“You’re in danger,” he needlessly pointed out. “And you’ve put him in danger.”

She sucked in a breath, either offended or feeling guilty. “And leaving with you would put us both in even more danger.”

Now he drew in a sharp breath of pure offense. “If I wanted you gone, Josie, I could have just let those men shoot you.”

“But they weren’t going to shoot just me.”

He flinched again at the thought of his child in so much danger. Reaching out, he grasped her shoulders. “Where is my son?” he repeated, resisting the urge to shake the truth out of her. “Someone wants you both dead. You can’t let him out of your sight.” And he couldn’t let either of them out of his.

“I—I …”

“I won’t hurt you,” he assured her. “And I sure as hell won’t hurt him.”

Her head jerked in a sharp nod as if she believed him. He felt the motion more than saw it as her silky hair brushed his chin. She stepped back and turned around and then around again in a complete circle, as if trying to remember where she’d been.

“Where did you hide him?” he asked, hoping like hell that she had hidden him and hadn’t just lost him.

“It was behind some exhaust pipes,” she said. “I couldn’t fit but he squeezed behind them. I—I just don’t remember where they were.”

“What’s his name?”

She hesitated a moment before replying, as if his knowing his name would make the boy more real for Brendan. “CJ.”

Maybe she was right—knowing the boy’s name did make him more real to Brendan. His heart pounded and his pulse raced as he reeled from all the sudden realizations. He had a son. He was a father. He was continuing the “family” of which he had never wanted to be part.

“CJ,” he repeated, then raised his voice and shouted, “CJ!”

“Shh.” Josie cautioned him.

“He might not hear me if I don’t yell,” he pointed out. And Brendan needed to see his boy, to assure himself that his child was real and that he was all right.

“He won’t come out if he hears you,” she explained. “He thinks you’re a bad man.”

Brendan flinched. It didn’t matter that everyone else thought so; he didn’t want his son to believe the lie, too.

“Is that what you told him?” he asked. It must have been what she’d believed all these years, because no matter how determined a reporter she’d been, she hadn’t learned the truth about him.

“It’s what you showed him,” she said, “when you grabbed me by the elevator.”

Dread and regret clenched his stomach muscles. His own son was afraid of him. How would he ever get close to the boy, ever form a relationship with him, if the kid feared him?

He flashed back so many years ago to his own heart pounding hard with fear as he cowered from his father, from the boom of his harsh voice and the sting of his big hand. Brendan hadn’t just feared Dennis O’Hannigan. He’d been terrified of the man. But then so had everyone else.

“I’ll be quiet,” he whispered his promise. “You find him.”

She called for the boy, her voice rising higher with panic each time she said his name. “CJ? CJ?” Then she sucked in a breath and her voice was steadier as she yelled, in a mother’s no-nonsense tone, what must have been his full name, “Charles Jesse Brandt!”

Brandt? The boy’s last name should have been O’Hannigan. But maybe it was better that it wasn’t. Being an O’Hannigan carried with it so many dangers.

But then danger had found the boy no matter what his mother called him. CJ didn’t respond to that maternal command only the rare child dared to disobey. Brendan certainly never would have disobeyed.

Panic clutched at his chest as worst-case scenarios began to play out in his mind. He had seen so many horrible things in his life that the possibilities kept coming. Had the man from the sixth floor somehow joined them on the roof without Brendan noticing? Had he found the boy already?

Another scenario played through his head, of Josie lying to him again. Still. Had she hidden the child and told him not to come out for Brendan? She’d hidden his son from him for three years—a few more minutes weren’t going to bother her.

“Where is he?” he asked, shoving his hands in his pockets so that he wouldn’t reach for her again. He had already frightened her, which was probably why she’d hidden their son from him.

She shook her head. “I don’t know.” The panic was in her voice, too.

Brendan almost preferred to think that she was lying to him and knew where the boy was, having made certain he was safe.

Her hand slapped against a metal pipe. “I thought he was behind here. CJ! CJ!”

“Then why isn’t he coming out?” Brendan had stayed quiet and now kept his voice to a whisper despite the panic clutching at him.

“No, it can’t be …” she murmured, her voice cracking with fear and dread.

“What?” He demanded to know the thought that occurred to her, that had her trembling now with fear.

“He’s at the edge of the roof,” she said. “He told me there was a short wall behind him. I—I told him not to go over it …”

Because there would have been nothing but the ground, twenty stories below, on the other side. If the boy was still on the roof with them, he would answer his mother. Even if he heard Brendan, he would come out to protect her, as he did before.

Oh, God!

Had Brendan lost his son only moments after finally finding him?

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