killer. She didn’t need to see the actual bodies to know that the men were dead. Her instincts were telling her that she shouldn’t trust him. And she damn well shouldn’t trust him with their son.
* * *
BRENDAN HELD HIS son. For the first time. But instead of a fragile infant, the boy was wriggly and surprisingly strong as he struggled in his grasp. He had taken him from Josie’s arms, knowing that was the only way to keep her from running. She cared more about their son’s safety than her own.
Maybe she really wasn’t the woman he’d once known. Josie Jessup had been a spoiled princess, obviously uncaring of whom she hurt with her exposés and her actions. She had never run a story on Brendan though—she’d just run.
Brendan wouldn’t let that happen again. So he held his son even though she reached for him, her arms outstretched. And the boy wriggled, trying to escape Brendan’s grasp.
“Come on,” he said to both of them. “We need to move quickly.”
“I—I can run fast,” CJ assured him.
Not fast enough to outrun bullets. Brendan couldn’t be certain that the guy from the sixth floor hadn’t regained consciousness and set up an ambush somewhere. He couldn’t risk going through the hospital, so he pressed the garage express button on the elevator panel. It wouldn’t stop on any other floors now. It would take them directly from the roof to the parking level in the basement.
“I’m sure you can run fast,” Brendan said. “But we all have to stay together from now on to make sure we stay safe from the bad men.”
But the little boy stopped struggling and stared up at him, his blue-green eyes narrowed as if he was trying to see inside Brendan—to see if he was a bad man, too. He hoped like hell the kid couldn’t really see inside his soul.
It was a dark, dark place. It had been even darker when he’d thought Josie had been murdered. He had thought that she’d been killed because of him—because she’d gotten too close, because she’d discovered something that he should have.
From the other stories she’d done, he knew she was a good reporter. Too good. So good that she could have made enemies of her own, though.
At first he hadn’t thought this attack on her had anything to do with him. After all, he hadn’t even known she was alive. And he’d certainly had no idea he had a child.
But maybe one of his enemies had discovered she was alive. She stared up at him with the same intensity of their son, her eyes just a lighter, smokier green. No matter how much her appearance had been altered and what she’d claimed before, she was definitely Josie Jessup. And whoever had discovered she was really alive knew what Brendan hadn’t realized until he heard of her death—that he’d fallen for her. Despite her lies. Despite her betrayal.
He had fallen in love with her, with her energy and her quick wit and her passion. And he’d spent more than three years mourning her. Someone might have wanted to make certain that his mourning never ended.
Josie shook her head, rejecting his protection. “I think we’ll be safer on our own.”
She didn’t trust him. Given his reputation, or at least the reputation of his family, he didn’t necessarily blame her. But then she should have known him better. During those short months they’d spent together before her “death,” he had let her get close. He may not have told her the truth about himself, but he’d shown her that he wasn’t the man others thought he was. He wasn’t his father.
He wasn’t cruel and indifferent. “If I’d left you alone on the roof...”
* * *
SHE AND CJ would already be dead. She shuddered in revulsion at the horrible thought. She could not deny that Brendan O’Hannigan had saved their lives. But she was too scared to thank him and too smart to trust him.
Despite her inner voice warning her to be careful, she had thought only of her father when she’d risked coming to the hospital. She hadn’t considered that after spending more than three years in hiding someone might still want to kill her. She hadn’t considered that someone could have learned that she was still alive. “I was caught off guard.”
Brendan stared down at the boy he held in his arms. “I can relate.”
He had seemed shocked, not only to find her alive but also to realize that he was a