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
