glass of the elevator car. The glass splintered and ricocheted like the bullets, biting into his skin like a swarm of bees.
His finger jerked off the button, and the doors began to close. But he couldn’t leave Josie and the child alone up here with no protection. Despite the other man’s warning, he had to play the hero. But it had been nearly four years since he’d been anything but the villain.
Had he gotten rusty? Would he be able to protect them? Or had his arrival put them in even more danger?
* * *
“THEY’RE ALL BAD men,” CJ said, his voice high and squeaky with fear and panic. “They’re bad! Bad!”
He was too young to have learned just how evil some people were. As his mother, Josie was supposed to protect him, but she’d endangered his life and his innocence. She had to do her best to keep her little boy a little boy until he had the time to grow into a man.
“Shh...” Josie cautioned him. “We need to be very quiet.”
“So they don’t find us?”
“First we have to find a hiding place.” Which wouldn’t be easy in a darkness so enveloping she could barely see the child she held tightly against her.
She had been able to see the shots—those brief flashes of gunpowder. She’d run from those flashes, desperate to keep her son safe. But now those shots were redirected toward Brendan, and running wouldn’t keep CJ safe since she couldn’t see where she was going. She moved quickly but carefully, testing her footing before she stepped forward.
“Are they shooting real bullets?” he asked.
To preserve that innocence she was afraid he was losing, she could have lied. But that lie could risk his life.
“They’re real,” she replied, aware that they’d come all too close to her and CJ. “That’s why we need to find a place to hide until the police come.”
Someone must have heard the shots and reported them by now. Help had to be on the way. Hopefully it would arrive in time to save her and her son. But what about Brendan? He had stepped into the middle of an attempted murder—a double homicide, actually. And he hadn’t done it accidentally. He had tracked her to the roof, maybe to kill her himself. But perhaps he’d be the one to lose his life, since the men were now entirely focused on him.
She shuddered, the thought chilling her nearly as much as the cold wind that whipped around the unprotected rooftop.
“Let’s go back there, Mommy,” CJ said, lifting his hand, which caught her attention only because she felt the movement more than saw it.
“Where?” she asked.
“Behind those big metal things.”
She peered in the direction he was pointing and finally noted the glint of some stray starlight off steel vents, probably exhaust pipes for the hospital’s heating or cooling system. If only they could escape inside them...
But she could barely move around them, let alone find a way inside them. The openings were too high above the rooftop, towering over her. As she tried to squeeze around them, her hip struck the metal. She winced and swallowed a groan of pain. And hoped the men hadn’t heard the telltale metallic clink.
“Shh, Mommy,” CJ cautioned her. “We don’t want the bad men to hear us.”
“No, we don’t,” she agreed.
“They might find our hiding place.”
“I’m not sure we can hide here,” she whispered. She couldn’t wedge them both between the massive pipes. The metal caught at her clothes and scraped her arms. “We can’t fit.”
“Let me try,” he suggested. Before she could agree, he wriggled down from her arms and squeezed through the small space.
She reached through the blackness, trying to clutch at him, trying to pull him back. What if he’d fallen right off the building?
She had no idea how much space was on the other side of the pipes. A tiny ledge? None?
A scream burned in her throat, but she was too scared to utter it—too horrified that in trying to protect her son she may have lost him forever.
But then chubby fingers caught hers. He tugged on her hand. “Come on, Mommy. There’s room.”
“You’re not at the edge of the roof?” she asked, worried that he might be in more danger where he was.
“Nooo,” he murmured, his voice sounding as if he’d turned away from her. “There’s a little wall right behind me.”
“Don’t go over that wall,” she advised. It was probably the edge of the roof, a small ledge to separate the rooftop from the