the hit on her.
“He wasn’t working for anyone,” the man replied. “He was doing a favor for a friend.”
God, no …
She realized that this man was the friend for whom Trigger had been doing the favor. This man was the one who’d wanted her location, and from the nerves tightening her stomach into knots, she suspected he had not wanted her found in order to wish her well. She glanced down at her bag lying on the floor at her feet. Could she reach inside without his noticing? She didn’t have the gun anymore. It had been left at the crime scene back at Margaret O’Hannigan’s house. But if she could get to her phone.
She couldn’t call Charlotte, but she could call Brendan. He would come; he would save her and their son as he had so many times over the past few days.
She should have trusted him four years ago. If she had showed him the information she’d compiled, they would have figured out together that it was Margaret who had killed his father. But apprehending Margaret earlier wouldn’t have kept Josie safe.
“You were the friend?” she asked, as she leaned down and reached for her purse.
“If you’re looking for this,” he remarked as he lifted a cell phone from under his thigh, “don’t bother.” The driver’s window lowered, and he tossed out the phone. “That way Charlotte Green’s little GPS device won’t be able to track you down.”
He must have taken the phone from her purse while she’d been buckling CJ into his seat in the back. She was so tired that she hadn’t even been aware of what the man was doing. She had barely been aware of him.
“Who are you?” she asked, her heart beating fast with panic and dread.
“You don’t recognize me?”
She was afraid to look directly at him. A hostage was never supposed to look at her kidnapper. If she couldn’t identify him, he might let her live.
But as her blood chilled, she realized this wasn’t a kidnapper. Unlike Margaret O’Hannigan, this person wasn’t interested in money. He had an entirely different agenda.
“I—I don’t know,” she replied, but she was staring down at her purse, wondering what might have been left inside that she could use as a weapon. “I’ve been away for so many years.”
“You’re the one who looks different,” he said. “But I know the doctor Charlotte Green sends witnesses to, so I got him to show me your files. I knew what you’d look like. I recognized you in the parking garage.”
“That—that was you?” she asked.
He nodded his head. “And the other so-called orderly was at O’Hannigan’s place, setting up the backup plan.”
She glanced again at CJ and whispered, “The bomb?”
“But you were just so quick,” he murmured regretfully. “Too quick.”
“And Brendan’s apartment?”
“I have a friend with the Bureau, one who knew that your little mob friend is really an agent, so he knew where his safe house is.”
The guy had gotten to another marshal and an agent. Which agent? Were Brendan and his mother safe?
“Is—is this agent going to hurt Brendan?”
He chuckled. “He thinks O’Hannigan walks on water. He didn’t realize why I was asking about the guy.”
“He’ll put it together now,” she warned him. “Since the bomb and the shooting.”
The man shook his head. “No. No one would ever consider me capable of what I’ve done and what I’m about to do.”
“Because you’re a U.S. marshal?”
“Because I’m a good marshal,” he said, “and I’ve always been a good man.”
Then maybe he would change his mind. Maybe he wouldn’t shoot her and her son ….
“But you and your father changed all that,” he said. “That’s why you have to pay. You and your father took everything from me, everything that mattered. So now I’m going to do that to your father. I’m going to take away what matters most to him. Again.”
So even four years ago, this man had been the one—the one who’d cut her brakes and set up the bomb. All of it had been because of him.
“Mr. Peterson,” she murmured as recognition dawned. How had she not remembered that Donny Peterson’s father was a U.S. marshal? Her former college classmate had brought it up enough, using it as a threat against whoever challenged him. She hadn’t heeded that threat, though; she’d continued to pursue the story that had led to Donny’s destruction. So all of it had been because of her.
Neither of the bombs or the shootings at the hospital and the apartment complex had had anything to do with Brendan’s job, his family or his relationship with her.
It was all her fault and she was about to pay for that with her life. But Brendan, who’d had nothing to do with it, would pay, too—when he lost his son.
“Now you know who I am.”
If only she’d realized it earlier …
If only she and CJ hadn’t gotten inside the SUV with him.
“I understand why you’re upset,” she assured him, hoping to reason with him. “But you should be upset with me. Not with my son. Not with my father.”
“You fed him the information, but he wrote the damn story.” He snorted derisively. “Jess Ley.”
“I’m Jess Ley,” she corrected him. “I wrote the story.”
He sucked in a breath as if she’d struck him. He hadn’t known. “But if your father hadn’t printed it and broadcast it everywhere.”
His son might still be alive.
“That was my fault,” she said.
She alone had caused this man’s pain—as she was about to cause Brendan’s. Because this man must have originally planned to take her from her father in his quest for an eye for an eye. Now he would also take her son from her.
“I think you should have gone with them to the hospital,” his mother chastised Brendan.
While other agents slapped him on the back to express their approval, his mother leaned against her minivan with her arms crossed. Her brown eyes, which were usually so warm and crinkled at the corners with a smile, were dark and narrowed with disapproval.
“I have to talk to Margaret,” he said.
“Why?”
