blown.
“Josie Jessup? I thought you were dead,” the woman remarked.
Josie had thought the same of her. That Brendan might have killed her by now.
“Are you responsible for this?” Margaret asked, gesturing toward the open gates and the dark house. An alarm sounded from within, an insistent beeping that must have driven her to the door. “Did you disable the security system, forcing open the gates and unlocking the doors?”
Brendan must have. He was here then. Somewhere. Josie wasn’t too late.
“Search her car,” Margaret ordered the man who’d held her arms.
Josie stumbled forward as he released her. But the woman didn’t step back, didn’t allow Josie inside her house.
“I wouldn’t know how to disable a security system,” Josie assured her. “I am no criminal mastermind.”
“No, you’re a reporter,” Margaret said. “That was why you were always asking all those questions.”
“And you were always eager to answer them,” Josie reminded her. Too eager, since she hadn’t realized she’d given herself away. But then neither had Josie. She still wasn’t sure exactly what it was in those folders that had convinced Brendan of the woman’s guilt. “You were eager to point the blame at your stepson.”
“A man shouldn’t benefit from a murder he committed,” she said, stubbornly clinging to her lies.
“Brendan didn’t kill his father,” Josie said, defending the man she loved.
Margaret smiled, but her eyes remained cold. “You weren’t so convinced back then. You suspected him just like everyone else.”
“And just like everyone else, I was wrong,” Josie admitted. “But you knew that.”
The woman tensed and stepped out from the doorway. She held a gun in her hand.
For protection? Because of the security breach? Or because someone had tipped her off that either Brendan or Josie was coming to confront her?
“How would I know something that the authorities did not?” Margaret asked, but a small smile lifted her thin lips. “They all believed Brendan responsible, as well.”
“But they could never find proof.”
“Because he was clever.”
“Because he was innocent.”
The woman laughed. “You loved him.”
It wasn’t a question, so Josie didn’t reply. Or deny what was probably pathetically obvious to everyone but Brendan.
“That’s a pity,” the woman commiserated. “It’s not easy to love an O’Hannigan. At least you don’t need to worry about that anymore.”
“I don’t?” Josie asked.
“Brendan is dead.”
Pain clutched her heart, hurting her as much as if the woman had fired a bullet into her heart. He’d already been here. And gone.
“You didn’t know?” Margaret asked. “Some journalist you are. How did you miss the reports?”
Had his death already made the news? The Volkswagen had no radio—just a hole in the dash where one had once been. The kid who’d sold her the auto had been willing to part with his car but not his sound system.
Margaret sighed regretfully. “And it was such a beautiful estate. I’d hoped to return there one day.”
“The house?”
“It blew up … with Brendan inside.” Margaret shook her head. “Such a loss.” With a nasty smile, she clarified, “The house, not Brendan.”
The explosion. She was talking about the explosion. Brendan wasn’t dead. Relief eased the horrible tightness in Josie’s chest, but the sigh she uttered was of disgust with the woman. “How can you be so …”
“Practical?” Margaret asked. “It’s so much better than being a romantic fool.”
Josie hadn’t been a fool for being romantic; she’d been a fool for doubting Brendan. Then. And maybe now.
If he’d intended to kill his stepmother, wouldn’t he have already been here? Where was he?
“You’re better off,” Margaret assured her. “You were stupid to fall for him.”
“You didn’t love your husband?” Josie asked. That would explain how she’d killed him in cold blood.
She chuckled. “My mama always told me that it was easier to love a rich man than a poor man. My mama had never met Dennis O’Hannigan.” She shuddered but her grip stayed steady on the gun. “You were lucky to get away from his son.”
“Brendan is—was—” she corrected herself. It was smarter to let the woman think the explosion she’d ordered had worked. “He was nothing like his father.”
“You don’t believe that or you wouldn’t have gone into hiding,” Margaret remarked. “You even changed your hair and your face. You must have really been afraid of him.”
She had spent almost four years being afraid of the wrong person.
“Were you afraid of his father?” Josie asked.
Margaret shrugged her delicate shoulders. “A person would have been crazy to not be afraid of Dennis.”
Dennis wasn’t the only O’Hannigan capable of inspiring fear. Neither was Brendan.
Despite her small stature, Margaret O’Hannigan was an intimidating woman.
So Josie should have held her tongue. She should have stopped asking her questions. But maybe Brendan was right—maybe she wasn’t capable of not being a journalist. Because she had to know.
Even if the question cost her everything, she had to ask, “Is that why you killed him?”
Brendan fought against the men holding him. He shoved back with his body and his head. He knocked the back of his skull against one man’s nose, dropping him to the floor while the other stumbled into the equipment. Then he whipped a gun from his holster and whirled to confront his attackers.
Men he had hoped he could trust: fellow FBI agents.
“I should have known,” he berated himself. “I should have known the leak was inside the Bureau. I should have known there was no one I could trust.”
Special Agent Martinez, the man supervising the assignment, calmly stared down the barrel of Brendan’s gun. “I’ve
