heartless and unpitying man.
“JJ?” the female voice emanated from her phone as Charlotte prodded her for a reply.
“I’m okay,” she assured the former marshal and current friend.
“And CJ?” Charlotte asked after the boy who’d been named for her.
She had been in the delivery room, holding Josie’s hand, offering her support and encouragement. She hadn’t just relocated Josie and left her. Even after she’d left the U.S. Marshals, she had remained her friend.
But the past six months Charlotte hadn’t called or emailed, hadn’t checked in with Josie at all, almost as if she’d forgotten about her.
“Is CJ okay?” Charlotte asked again, her voice cracking with concern for her godson.
“He had a scare,” Josie replied, “but he’s safe.” While she wasn’t entirely sure how safe she really was with him, she had no doubt that Brendan would protect his son.
The other woman cursed. “They found you? That was part of the reason I haven’t been calling.”
Betrayal struck Josie with all the force of one of the bullets fired at her that evening. “You knew someone was looking for me?”
If Josie had had any idea, she wouldn’t have risked bringing CJ to meet his grandfather. Maybe Josie had trusted the wrong person all these years....
“I only just found that out a few weeks ago,” Charlotte explained. “Before that I had been unreachable for six months.”
“Unreachable?” Her journalistic instincts told her there was more to the story, and Josie wanted to know all of it. “Why were you unreachable?”
“Because I was kidnapped.”
She gasped. “Kidnapped?”
“Yes,” Charlotte replied, and the phone rattled as if she’d shuddered. “I was kidnapped and held in a place you know about. You mentioned it to Gabby.”
“Serenity House?” It was the private psychiatric hospital where Josie’s former student had been killed pursuing the story she’d suggested to him. She had known there were suspicious things happening there. She just hadn’t imagined how dangerous a place it was. Guilt churned in her stomach; maybe Brendan had had a good reason for being so angry with her. Her stories, even the ones she hadn’t personally covered, always caused problems—sometimes even costing lives.
“I’m fine now,” Charlotte assured her. “And so is Gabby.”
“Was she there, too?” Princess Gabriella St. Pierre was Charlotte’s sister and Josie’s friend. Josie had gotten to know her over the years through emails and phone calls.
“No, but she was in danger, too,” Charlotte replied.
And Josie felt even guiltier for doubting her friend. “No wonder I haven’t heard from either of you.” They’d been busy, as she had just been, trying to stay alive.
“We think we’ve found all the threats to our lives,” Charlotte said. “But in the process, we found a threat to yours. My former partner—”
Josie shuddered as she remembered the creepy gray-haired guy who had called himself Trigger. Because Josie hadn’t felt safe around him, Charlotte had made certain that he wasn’t aware of where she had been relocated.
“He was trying to find out where you are.”
She hadn’t liked or trusted the older marshal, and apparently her instincts had been right. “Why?”
Charlotte paused a moment before replying, “I think someone paid him to learn your whereabouts.”
“Who? Did he tell you?”
“No, Whit was forced to kill him to protect Aaron.”
Whit and his friend Aaron had once protected Josie. They were the private bodyguards her father had hired after the accident caused by the cut brake lines. But then Whit had discovered the bomb and involved the marshals. He had helped Charlotte stage Josie’s death and relocate her. But no one had wanted to put Aaron in the position of lying to her grieving father, so he’d been left thinking he had failed a client. He and Whit had dissolved their security business and their friendship and had gone their separate ways until Charlotte had brought them back together to protect the king of St. Pierre.
“I would have called and warned you immediately,” the former marshal said, “but I didn’t want to risk my phone being tapped and leading them right to you.”
So something must have happened for her to risk it. “Why have you called now?”
“I saw the news about your father,” Charlotte said, her voice soft with sympathy. She hadn’t understood how close Josie had been to her father, but she’d commiserated with her having to hurt him when she’d faked her death. “I wanted to warn you that it’s obviously a ploy to bring you out of hiding.”
“Obviously,” Josie agreed.
Charlotte gasped. “You went?”
“It was a trap,” Josie said, stating the obvious. “But we’re fine now.” Or so she