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.
