really a witness and withdrew their protection. I had to make certain she stayed safe.”
“Why?” he wondered. Then he realized why she’d threatened him, why she cared so much: Josie had become her friend. Hell, the C of CJ’s name, for Charles, was probably for her.
But her answer surprised him when she replied, “Because of you.”
“Because of me?”
“You’re part of a powerful family,” she reminded him needlessly. “You have unlimited resources of both money and manpower. Josie said several gunmen came after her tonight and someone had set a bomb.”
“And those gunmen were shooting at me, too,” he said. “And the bomb was set at my house.”
She sucked in an audible breath of shock.
“I would never hurt her,” Brendan promised. “I can’t believe she thought that I would.” After everything they’d shared.
He hadn’t given her a declaration of his feelings, but he had shown her over and over how he felt. Despite his tough assignment, he’d let her distract him. Of course his superiors had authorized it, saying his having a relationship helped establish his cover—that he would have been more suspicious had he remained on his own.
But hell, he’d been on his own most of his life. He was used to that.
“I protected her and CJ tonight,” he said. “Hell, I would have died for her—for them.” He had wound up having to kill for them instead.
Silence followed his vehement declaration. It lasted so long that he thought he might have lost the connection. Maybe the marshal had hung up on him.
Then she finally spoke again. “I think I know why you wouldn’t hurt her, and it has nothing to do with what you’ve just told me and everything to do with what you haven’t told me.”
Maybe the cell connection was bad, because the woman seemed to make no sense. “What?”
“You love her.”
He’d thought so. Once. But then he’d learned the truth about her and why she’d tried so hard to get close to him. “I can’t love someone I can’t trust.”
She laughed now. “I thought that once, too.”
“But you fell anyway?”
“No,” she said. “My husband did—once Aaron understood my reasons for keeping things from him. He realized that I was only doing my job. Josie will understand when you tell her the truth.”
“I can’t trust her with the truth,” he said.
Charlotte’s sigh rattled the phone. “Then you won’t be able to make her trust you, either.”
“Tell her that she can,” Brendan implored her. “She trusts you.”
“For a good reason,” Charlotte said. “I tell her the truth. And I need to call these people you’ve given me numbers for and check out your story. Once I do, I’ll call Josie back, but I’m not sure she’ll take my word without proof. She’s been afraid of you for a long time.”
Brendan’s heart clutched at the thought of the woman he’d once loved living in fear of him, thinking that he would kill her if he found out she was still alive. Maybe he was more like his old man than he’d realized. He clicked off the cell phone and opened the door to his den, half expecting to find Josie listening outside.
But the apartment was eerily silent. Charlotte was right. He couldn’t make Josie trust him. And now he didn’t have the chance because she’d taken their son and run.
JOSIE WASN’T AS strong as Brendan. She couldn’t carry her son, her purse and the backpack with their overnight clothes and toys, and struggle with the special locks and security panels. So she had awakened CJ for an impromptu game of hide-and-seek.
But she hoped Brendan never found them.
CJ was too tired to play though. The poor child had had such a traumatic day that he was physically and emotionally exhausted. He leaned heavily against Josie’s legs, nearly knocking her over as she stood near the elevator panel.
She realized that even if she had picked up the code Brendan had punched in, she didn’t have the key to work the elevator. He had shoved it back into his pocket.
So she abandoned the elevator and searched for the door to a stairwell. But they were all tall metal doors that looked the same. They could have been apartments. If this place were really an apartment complex …
Its austereness had Josie imagining what Serenity House must have been like. It had her feeling the horror that Charlotte must have felt when she’d been held hostage for six months.
Did Brendan intend to keep her here that long? Longer?
She kept pressing on doors but none of them opened. All were locked to keep her out. Or to keep other people inside?
“Mommy, I wanna go to bed,” CJ whined.
“I know, sweetheart.” Josie was exhausted, too. She wished she were under the covers of her soft bed and that this whole night had been a horrible nightmare.
But the smoke smell clung to her clothes and hair, proving that it hadn’t been a dream. It had happened—every horrible moment of it had been real. She lifted the sleepy child in her arms. For once he didn’t protest being carried but laid his head on her shoulder.
“I’m scared, Mommy.”
“I know.” Me, too. But she couldn’t make that admission to him. She had to stay strong for them both.
“I wanna go home!”
Me, too. Finally one of the doors opened, and she nearly pitched forward, down the stairs. She’d found the stairwell. Her feet struck each step with an echoing thud as she hurried down. Her arms ached from the weight of the child she carried, and her legs began to tremble in exhaustion.
A crack of metal echoed through the stairwell as a door opened with such force it must have slammed against the wall. Then footsteps, heavier than hers, rang out as someone ran down the steps above her. She quickened her pace. But with CJ in her arms, she couldn’t go too fast and risk tumbling down the stairs with him.
Finally she reached the bottom and pushed open the door to the lobby. There was no desk. No security. Nothing but the door with its security lock. She pressed against the outside doors, but they wouldn’t open.
Footsteps crossed the lobby behind her. With a sigh of resignation, she turned to face Brendan.
“ARE YOU GOING to stop running from me now?” he asked as she stepped from his den and rejoined him and CJ in the living room. He hated seeing that look on her face, the one he’d seen at the hospital and again in the lobby—that mixture of fear and dread swirling in her smoky-green eyes.
Because of his last name, a lot of people looked at him with fear and he’d learned to not let it bother him. But he didn’t want her or their son looking at him that way.
