my story about you,” she said, “because you never answered my questions. But I need you to answer at least one if you expect me to stay here.”
He nodded in agreement. “I’ll answer one,” he replied. “But how do you know I’ll tell you the truth?”
“Swear on your mother’s grave.”
He wouldn’t need to tell her the truth then, because his mother wasn’t dead. Like everyone else, he had believed she’d been murdered when he was just a kid. But she was actually the first person he’d known who’d entered witness protection. The marshals hadn’t let her take him along, forcing her to leave a child behind with a man many had considered a psychopath as well as her killer.
If Brendan hadn’t run away when he was fifteen, he might have never learned the truth about either of his parents.
“Do you swear?” she prodded him. “Will you answer me honestly?”
“Yes,” he agreed, and hoped like hell he wouldn’t have to lie to her. But no matter what he’d promised her, he couldn’t tell her what he really was. “What do you want to know?”
“Before tonight, before those men on the roof—” she shuddered as though remembering the blood and the gunshots “—have you killed anyone else?”
He had promised her the truth, so he answered truthfully. “Yes.”
He was a killer. Maybe she should have believed everything she had heard and read about him—even the unsubstantiated stories.
“But just like tonight, it was in self-defense,” he explained, his deep voice vibrating with earnestness and regret, as though killing hadn’t been easy for him. “I have only killed when there’s been no other option, when it’s been that person’s life or mine, or the life of an innocent person.” He flinched as if reliving some of those moments. “Like you or our son.”
“You’ve been in these life-and-death situations before tonight,” she said.
He nodded.
“How many times?” she asked. “Twice? Three times?”
“I agreed to answer only one question,” he reminded her.
She swallowed hard, choking on the panic she felt just thinking of all the times he’d been in danger, all the times he could have died. “And you were trying to say I was responsible for what happened tonight. And for the attempts on my life years ago. You’re the one leading the dangerous life.”
He stepped back from her and sighed. “You’re right.”
She appealed to him. “So you need to let us leave, to let me go home.”
“I can’t do that.”
“How can you expect to keep me and CJ safe when you’re always fighting for your own life?” she asked.
He stripped off his suit jacket. Despite the crazy night they’d had, it was barely wrinkled, but he carelessly dropped it on the floor. And in doing so, he revealed the holsters strapped across his broad shoulders, a gun under each heavily muscled arm. She’d already known about the concealed weapons; she’d already seen all of his guns. Then he reached up and pulled one of those guns from its holster and pointed it toward her.
She gasped and stepped back, but she was already against the door and had no place else to go. Unless she opened the door, but then her son might see that the man he didn’t even realize yet was his father was holding a gun on his mother.
“What—what are you doing?” she stammered. “I—I thought you wanted me to trust you.”
“That’s why I’m giving you this gun,” he said. The handle, not the barrel, was pointed toward her. “Take it.”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Don’t you know how to shoot one?”
“Charlotte taught me.” The marshal had taken her to the shooting range over and over again until Josie had gotten good at it. “She tried to give me one, too. But I didn’t want it.”
“You don’t like guns?”
Until tonight, when they’d been shooting at her, Josie hadn’t had any particular aversion to firearms. “I don’t want one in the same house with CJ.”
“You can lock it up,” Brendan said, “to make sure he doesn’t get to it.”
“So if I take this gun, you’ll let us leave?” she asked, reaching for it. The metal was cold to the touch and heavy across her palms. She identified the safety, grateful it was engaged.
He shook his head. “Until we find out who’s trying to kill you, I can’t let you or our son out of my sight.”
“Then why give me this?”
“So you’ll trust me,” he said. “If I wanted to hurt you, I wouldn’t give you a gun to protect yourself.”
She expelled a ragged sigh, letting all her doubts and fears of Brendan go with the breath from her lungs. A bad man wouldn’t have given her the means to defend herself from him. Had she been wrong about him all these years?
Had she kept him from his son for no reason?
Guilt descended on her, bowing her shoulders with the heavy burden of it she already carried. For her student, and for that other young man’s death she’d inadvertently caused. She hadn’t needed Brendan to remind her that there were other people with reason to want to hurt her, as she’d hurt them. She hadn’t meant to.
She’d only been after the truth. But sometimes the truth caused more pain than letting secrets remain secret. If only she’d understood that sooner.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his deep voice full of concern.
How could he care about her—after everything she’d thought of him, everything she’d taken from him? He had been right that she’d stolen from him. She had taken away the first three years of his son’s life.
Her hands trembled so much that she quickly slid the gun into her purse so that she wouldn’t drop it. “I—I’m fine,” she said. “I’m just overwhelmed.”
“You’re exhausted,” he said.
And he was touching her again, his hands on her shoulders. He led her toward the couch. Like the one in the living room, it was wide and low, and as she sank onto the edge of it, it felt nearly as comfortable as a mattress.
Her purse dropped to the floor next to the couch, but she let it go. She didn’t need the gun. She didn’t need to protect herself from Brendan, at least not physically. But emotionally she was at risk of falling for him all over again.
“You can lie down here,” he said. “And I’ll keep an eye
