in a deep breath and headed off, moving as fast as she dared in the darkness. She glanced back, but night had swallowed those metal vent pipes and had swallowed her son. Would she be able to find him again, even if she eluded whoever had survived the earlier gun battle?
She would worry about finding him after she found a hiding spot for herself. But it was so dark she could barely see where she was going. So she wasn’t surprised when she collided with a wall.
But this wasn’t a short brick wall like the one CJ had found behind the pipes. This wall was broad and muscular and warm. Her hands tingled in reaction to the chest she touched, her palms pressed against the lapels of a suit. The other men had been wearing scrubs, which would have been scratchy and flat.
And she wouldn’t have reacted this way to them. Her skin wouldn’t tingle; her pulse wouldn’t leap. And she wouldn’t feel something very much like relief that he was alive. No matter what threat he posed to her, she hadn’t wanted him dead.
“Brendan …?”
IT WAS HER. Despite her physical transformation, he’d recognized her. But now he had not even a fraction of a doubt. That voice in the darkness…
Her touch…
He recognized all that about her, too.
But more importantly, she had recognized him. If she was truly a stranger that he had mistaken for his former lover and betrayer, she wouldn’t know his name. Or, if by some chance, she had just recognized him as the son of a notorious mobster, she wouldn’t have been comfortable and familiar enough to call him by his first name.
“Yes, Josie, it’s me,” he assured her.
She shuddered and her hands began to tremble against his chest. “You—you,” she stammered. “You’re…”
He was shaking a little himself in reaction to what had nearly happened. Adrenaline and fear coursed through him, pumping his blood fast and hard through his veins. “You know who I am. You just said my name,” he pointed out. “And I damn well know who you are. So let’s cut the bullshit. We don’t have time for it. We need to get the hell out of here!”
She expelled a ragged sigh of resignation, as if she had finally given up trying to deny her true identity. Her palms patted his chest as if checking for bullet holes. “You didn’t get shot?”
“No.” But he suspected he had come uncomfortably close. If either of the gunmen, who were probably hired assassins, had been a better shot than he was, Josie would be in an entirely different situation right now.
As if she sensed that, she asked, “And those men?”
Brendan flinched with a pang of regret. But he had had no choice. If he hadn’t shot the men, they would have killed him. And then they would have found Josie and the boy and killed them, too.
“They’re not a threat. But the guy I left on the floor by your father’s room could be.”
Her breath audibly caught in a gasp of fear. “You left him there? He could hurt my father.”
The assailant was in no condition to hurt anyone. Unless he’d regained consciousness …
“I don’t think your father is their target,” Brendan pointed out.
“They hurt him already,” she said, reminding him of the reason the media mogul was in the hospital in the first place. Because he’d been attacked.
“That must have been just to lure you out of hiding.” Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to track her down, and that someone was obviously very determined to do what Brendan had thought had been done almost four years ago. Kill Josie Jessup. If only he had had more time to interrogate the man downstairs, to find out who had hired him.
“They have no reason to hurt your father now,” Brendan assured her before adding the obvious. “It’s you they’re after.”
“And my son,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. “They were going to hurt him, too.”
“Where is he?” he asked. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough to see her before him now. “Where’s my son?”
She shuddered again. “He’s not your son.”
“Stop,” he impatiently advised her. “Just stop with the lies.” She’d told him too many four years ago. “You need to get the boy and we need to get the hell out of here.”
Because the bad men weren’t the only threat.
Sirens wailed in the distance. Maybe just an ambulance on its way to the emergency room. Or maybe police cars on their way to secure a crime scene. He couldn’t risk the latter. He couldn’t be brought in for questioning or, worse, arrested. The local police wouldn’t care that it had been self-defense; they were determined to arrest him for something. Anything. That was why Brendan had used the other fake orderly’s gun. No bullets could be traced back to him. He’d wiped his prints off the weapon and left it on the roof.
“I’m not leaving with you,” she said. “And neither is my son.”
“You’re in danger,” he needlessly pointed out. “And you’ve put him in danger.”
She sucked in a breath, either offended or feeling guilty. “And leaving with you would put us both in even more danger.”
Now he drew in a sharp breath of pure offense. “If I wanted you gone, Josie, I could have just let those men shoot you.”
“But they weren’t going to shoot just me.”
He flinched again at the thought of his child in so much danger. Reaching out, he grasped her shoulders. “Where is my son?” he repeated, resisting the urge to shake the truth out of her. “Someone wants you both dead. You can’t let him out of your sight.” And he couldn’t let either of them out of his.
“I—I …”
“I won’t hurt you,” he assured her. “And I sure as hell won’t hurt him.”
Her head jerked in a sharp nod as if she believed him. He felt the motion more than saw it as her silky hair brushed his chin. She stepped back and turned around and then around again in a complete circle, as if trying to remember where she’d been.
“Where did you hide him?” he asked, hoping like hell that she had hidden him and hadn’t just lost him.
“It was behind some exhaust pipes,” she said. “I couldn’t fit but he squeezed behind them. I—I just don’t remember where they were.”
“What’s his name?”
She hesitated a moment before replying, as if his knowing his name would make the boy more real for Brendan. “CJ.”
Maybe she was right—knowing the boy’s name did make him more real to Brendan. His heart pounded and his pulse raced as he reeled from all the sudden realizations. He had a son. He was a father. He was continuing the “family” of which he had never wanted to be part.
“CJ,” he repeated, then raised his voice
