the confession that the FBI has recorded.”
She glanced at Josie as if checking her for a wire.
“When your security system was hacked, the house was bugged. Every intercom in the place turned on like a mike.”
She glanced around at the intercom by the door and another on the desk behind her.
“You’re under arrest for the murder of Dennis O’Hannigan,” he said, “and the attempted murders of Josie Jessup and—”
The woman raised her eyebrows and scoffed. “You’re arresting me? On what authority?”
“FBI,” he said. “I’m an FBI agent.”
Josie’s eyes widened with surprise. He’d hoped that she might have figured it out, that she would have realized he was not a bad man.
“You are not,” Margaret said. “You’re bluffing again, treating me like a fool just like your father did.”
With his free hand he pulled out his credentials, which he hadn’t been able to carry for the past four years, and flashed his shield at her. “No. Game over.”
She stubbornly shook her head and threatened, “I am going to pull the trigger.”
“Then so will I,” he replied. And he was bluffing now.
“You won’t risk her life.” Margaret knowingly called him on his lie. “I saw how you were when she disappeared four years ago. You were as devastated as you were when your mother disappeared.”
He couldn’t deny the truth—not anymore.
“So you’re going to step back and let me leave with her,” Margaret said.
“And what do you think you’re going to do?” Brendan asked. “Talk her into taking you to our son?”
Margaret’s gaze darted between him and Josie. That had been her plan—all part of her deranged plan.
“She’ll never do that,” Brendan said. “You won’t be able to kill all the O’Hannigans. And even if you thought you did, you still wouldn’t be the last one.” He chuckled now at how incredibly flawed the woman’s plan was. “You’re actually not even a real O’Hannigan.”
Anger tightened her lips into a thin line. “I married your father.”
“But it wasn’t legal,” he informed her.
She glared at him. “I have the license to prove it, since you’re all about evidence.”
“It wasn’t legal because he was still married,” he explained.
“What?” she gasped.
“My mother isn’t dead.”
“Yes, she is,” Margaret frantically insisted. “Your father killed her. Everyone knows that.”
“He’d beaten her….” Which Brendan had witnessed; he’d been only eleven years old and helpless to protect her. “He sent her to the hospital, but she didn’t die. She went into witness protection.”
But still she wouldn’t testify against him. Not because she had still loved the man but because she’d loved Brendan. And to protect him, she had struck a bargain with the devil.
Maybe he would have to do the same to protect Josie.
“You’re lying,” Margaret said. She was distracted now, more focused on him than Josie.
He shook his head, keeping her attention on him while he tried to ignore Special Agent Martinez speaking through his earpiece. Brendan was calling the shots now. And he wouldn’t do that until Josie was out of the line of fire.
“Where do you think I ran away to when I was fifteen?” he asked. Thank God he hadn’t wound up living on the streets, which he’d been desperate enough to do. He’d found a place to go. A home.
“I didn’t think you really ran away,” Margaret said. “I know you tried, that you stole one of your father’s cars. But that car was returned that same night—without you. And you were never seen again.”
As he relived that night, his heart flipped with the fear he’d felt when his father’s men had driven him off the road and into the ditch. At fifteen he hadn’t had enough experience behind the wheel to be able to outmaneuver them. And when they’d jerked him from behind the wheel and left him alone with his father, he’d thought he was dead, that he’d be going to see his mother in heaven.
His father had sent him to her with a bus ticket and a slip of paper with an address on it. His mother had been relocated to New York, where she had built a life fostering runaway kids. And somehow, either using money or threats, Dennis had found out exactly what had happened to his wife and where she was. Brendan had used that bus ticket to reunite with her and become one of those kids. And in exchange for getting her son back, his mother had agreed to never testify against Dennis O’Hannigan.
“My mom will actually be here soon,” he said with a glance at Josie. “But the other agents will be here before her.”
That was the cue, sent through his headset, to make all hell break loose.
Josie was reeling from all the answers she’d just received to questions she hadn’t even known to ask. Was it true? Was any of it true?
Brendan had flashed the badge, but she hadn’t had a chance to read it. Was it his name on it? Was he really an FBI agent? And what about his mother being alive all these years in witness protection?
It all seemed so unrealistic that it almost had to be real. And it explained so much.
She heard the footsteps then. And so did Margaret. Before the woman could react and pull the trigger, Josie shoved her back and then dropped to the floor as shots rang out.
The house exploded. There was no bomb, but the effects were the same. Glass shattered. Footsteps pounded. Voices shouted. And shots were fired.
She wasn’t sure she would feel if any bullets struck her. She was numb with shock. She’d thought she had fooled and deceived Brendan four years ago. But she had been the fool. In her search for what she’d thought was the truth, she had fallen for the lies. This woman’s lies. The other news reports about him.
He could have set her straight, but he had chosen instead to keep his secrets. And to let her go …
A hand clutched her hair, pulling her head up as a barrel pressed again to her temple. How many times could a gun be held to her head before it was fired? Either on purpose or accidentally?
Josie worried that her luck was about to run out.
“Let her go!” Brendan shouted the order. And cocked his gun.
Another shot
