her—in case Brendan was right about her house being a trap now.
So she brought her son where she brought him every morning, where she would have brought him that morning if she hadn’t taken a leave from work. She drove him to day care. It was only a few blocks from her house, at the home of a retired elementary schoolteacher.
Mrs. Mallory watched CJ and two other preschool children. The sixty-something woman opened the door as Josie carried him up the walk. And the smile on her face became tight with concern the closer Josie came.
“Are you all right?” the older woman anxiously asked.
How awful did she look?
A glance in the mirror by the door revealed dark circles beneath her eyes, and her hair was tangled and mussed, looking as though she’d not pulled a comb through it in days. She probably hadn’t.
“I’m fine,” Josie assured her. “I’m just in a hurry.”
Mrs. Mallory reached out for the sleepy child. “I wasn’t even expecting you. I thought you were taking some time off.” As she cradled the boy in one arm, she squeezed Josie’s shoulder with her other hand. “You really should. Let this whole tragic situation with Michael die down.”
“So people are blaming me?”
Mrs. Mallory bit her lip and nodded. “It’s not your fault, though, honey. That boy wanted to be a reporter since he wasn’t much older than CJ here.”
“But I suggested the story ….”
“But you didn’t pull the trigger,” the older woman pointed out. “People are blaming the wrong person and they’ll realize that soon enough. Just give them some time. Or take some for yourself.”
She had no time to lose—not if Brendan had walked into a trap. “Even though you weren’t planning on it, would you mind watching him for a little while?”
“‘Course not,” the older woman assured her, and she cuddled him close in her arms. She was wearing one of the velour tracksuits that CJ loved snuggling into. “I was just starting to miss him.”
CJ lifted his head from Mrs. Mallory’s shoulder as if just realizing where he was. “Daddy? Where’s my daddy?”
Mrs. Mallory’s eyes widened with shock. The boy had never mentioned him before. Of course, before last night he hadn’t even known he had a father. Or a grandfather.
“You have to stay here with Mrs. M,” Josie told him, leaning forward to press a kiss against his freckled cheek, “and be a good boy, okay?”
His bottom lip began to quiver and his eyes grew damp with tears he fought back with quick blinks. “What if the bad men come here?”
“Bad men?” Mrs. Mallory asked, her brow wrinkling with confusion and uneasiness.
Josie shrugged off the question. “He must have had a bad dream.”
If only that had been all it was …
Just a bad dream.
The little boy vehemently shook his head. “The bad men were real and had guns. They were shootin’ at us and then there was a big bang!”
Josie shook her head, too, trying to quiet the boy’s fears and Mrs. Mallory’s. “It must have been quite the dream,” she said, “and his imagination is so vivid.”
Mrs. Mallory glanced from the boy to Josie and back. “He does have quite the imagination,” she agreed, his story, although true, too fanciful for the older woman to believe. “He’s a very creative boy. Did you watch a scary movie with him last night—something that brought on such a horrible dream?”
“No,” Josie replied. She touched her little boy’s trembling chin. “You have no reason to be afraid,” she told him. “You’re perfectly safe here.”
Not buying her assurances in the least, CJ shook his head and wriggled out of Mrs. Mallory’s arms. “I need my daddy to p’tect me.”
Brendan had gone from bad man to hero for his son. He needed to know that; hopefully he was alive for her to share that news with him. She needed to get to her house. If it had blown up, she would have heard the explosion—or at least the fire trucks.
He had to be okay ….
Josie knelt in front of her son and met his gaze. “I am going to go get your daddy,” she promised, “and he will come back here with me to get you, okay?”
“I can get Daddy, too,” he said, throwing his arms around her neck to cling to her.
Her heart broke, but she forced herself to tug him off and stand up. He used to cling to her like this every morning when she’d first started bringing him to Mrs. Mallory, but today was the first time he’d had a reason for his fears. Not only because of the night he’d had, but also because she might not be able to come back—if she walked into the same trap his father might have. But then his godmother would take him ….
Charlotte. She wouldn’t have endangered them. Brendan must have had another reason for not returning to the SUV. Maybe that injury to his head was more severe than he’d led her to believe.
“No, honey,” she said, and it physically hurt her, tightened her stomach into knots, to deny his fervent request. The timid boy asked her for so little that she hated telling him no. “I have to talk to Daddy alone first, and then we’ll come get you.”
Mrs. Mallory had always helped Josie escape before when her son was determined to cling. But now the older woman just stood in the foyer, her jaw hanging open in shock. As Josie stared at her, she pulled herself together. But curiosity obviously overwhelmed her. “His—his father? You’ve never mentioned him before.”
With good reason. She had thought he wanted her dead. “We haven’t been in contact in years,” she honestly replied.
“But he’s here?”
She nodded. “At my house.”
Or so she hoped. Maybe he’d come back to where he’d parked the SUV and found her gone. What would he think? That she’d tricked him again?
Hopefully she wasn’t the one who’d been tricked. Hopefully he wasn’t right about Charlotte.
“I—I have to go,” she said. It had been too long. Now that she’d stood up, CJ was clinging to her legs.
Finally Mrs. Mallory stepped in and pried the sniffling child off her.
“I’ll be back,” she promised her son.
“With Daddy?”
She hoped so. But when she parked in the alley behind her house moments later, her hope waned. She hadn’t seen him walking along the street. And while the house wasn’t in pieces or on fire, it looked deserted.
She opened the driver’s door and stepped out into the eerie quiet. Her neighbors would have already left for work, their kids for school. Josie was rarely home this time of day during the week. Maybe that was why it felt so strange
