Brendan could have taken the gun away from her at any time. He could have snapped it out of her hand more easily than he had taken the weapon off the faux orderly who’d grabbed him on the sixth floor. But he hadn’t wanted to hurt her. She had already been hurt enough. And if he was right, she was about to be hurt a hell of a lot more.
He intimately knew how painful it was to be betrayed by someone you loved. As a friend, as a lifeline to her old life, she had loved Charlotte Green. And he’d been fool enough to trust the woman with the truth about himself.
But he’d wanted her to convince Josie to trust him. Now Josie held a gun on him, forcing him to bring her back to a trap. Should he trust her?
Was she part of it? Was this all a ploy to take him down? If not for the boy, he might have suspected her involvement in a murder plot against him. But she loved her son. She wouldn’t knowingly endanger him.
As he drove north, light from the rising sun streamed through her window, washing her face devoid of all color. Her eyes were stark, wide with fear, in her pale face.
“Are you sure you want to risk it?” he asked.
“You’re trying to make me doubt myself,” she said. “Trying to make me doubt Charlotte.”
“Yes,” he admitted.
She looked at him, her eyes filling with sadness and pity. “You don’t trust anyone, do you?”
“I shouldn’t have,” he said. “But I trusted you.”
She pulled the gun slightly away from his side. “You gave me this gun.”
“The one you’re holding on me.”
“I wouldn’t really shoot you,” she assured him, and with a sigh, she dropped the gun back into her purse.
“I know.”
“Then why did you come here?” She sat up straighter as they passed a sign announcing the town limits of Sand Haven, Michigan. Another sign stood beyond that, a billboard prompting someone named Michael to rest in peace.
Josie flinched as she read the sign.
“Do you know Michael?” he asked.
She jerked her chin in a sharp nod. “I knew him.”
“I’m sorry.” Had her recent loss explained why she’d been so desperate to see her father that she’d risked her safety and CJ’s?
She hadn’t been in contact with her father, as he’d initially expected. The man, who’d looked so sad and old at her funeral, had believed she was dead just as Brendan had.
“You hadn’t seen your dad until—” he glanced at the sun rising high in the sky “—last night?”
“I didn’t see him last night, either,” she said.
“But you were on the right floor,” he said, remembering the lie she’d told him.
She bit her lip and blinked hard, as if fighting tears, before replying, “The assault brought on a heart attack. I didn’t want his seeing me to bring on another one.”
“So he has no idea that you’re really alive?”
She shook her head. “I thought it would be better if he didn’t know. I thought he’d be safer.”
“You and your father were close,” he said. “It must have been hard to leave him.”
“Harder to deceive him,” she said.
But she’d had no problem deceiving him when she’d been trying to get her story. But then she hadn’t loved him.
He drew in a deep breath and focused on the road. She’d given him directions right to her door. Giving her the gun had made her trust him. But she had placed her trust in someone she shouldn’t have.
“Let me go in first,” he suggested as he drove past the small white bungalow where she lived now. “Let me make sure that it’s not a trap.”
She shuddered as if she remembered the bomb set at his house. There had been very little left of the brick Tudor; it wouldn’t take a very big bomb to totally decimate her modest little home.
He turned the corner and pulled the SUV over to the curb on the next street. After shifting into Park, he reached for the door handle, but she clutched his arm.
Her voice cracking, she said, “I don’t want you to go alone.”
“You can’t go with me,” he said. “You have to protect our son.”
“If you can’t?” She shook her head. “It’s not a trap. It can’t be a trap.” She had been on her own so long that she was desperately hanging on to her trust for the one person who’d been there for her.
He forced a reassuring smile for her sake. “Then I’ll be right back.”
She stared at him, her eyes wide with uncertainty. She wanted to believe him as much as she wanted to believe that Charlotte hadn’t betrayed her.
“I’ll be back.” He leaned across the console and clasped her face in his hands, tipping her mouth up for his kiss. He lingered over her lips, caressing them slowly and thoroughly. “Wait here for me.”
She opened her mouth again, but she made no protest. He opened the driver’s door and then opened the backseat door. She turned and looked over the console as he leaned in and pressed a kiss against his son’s mussed red curls. The boy never stirred from his slumber.
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for telling him that I’m his father.”
“You told him.”
“But you didn’t contradict me,” he said. “He would have believed what you told him over whatever I told him.” Because he loved and trusted his mother. Brendan was a stranger to him. And if he was right about the trap, he may forever remain a stranger to him.
The little boy might grow up never knowing his father.
BRENDAN HAD BEEN gone too long. Longer than he needed to check out the house and make sure it was as safe as she was hoping it was. But what if it wasn’t?
The keys dangled from the ignition. He hadn’t taken them this time, because he wasn’t sure he’d be coming back. Josie’s heart rate quickened, pounding faster with each second that passed.
She needed to go to her house. Needed to check on him.
Or perhaps she should call Charlotte for backup. But he wouldn’t need backup unless Charlotte had betrayed them. Panic and dread clutched her heart. Not Charlotte. Not her friend, her son’s godmother.
Charlotte couldn’t have revealed Josie’s new location, not even to protect someone else. But maybe someone had found out anyway. Josie needed to learn the truth.
She wriggled out of the passenger’s seat, over the
