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.
Chapter Eighteen
“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?” she asked with a glance at the car in which her husband’s killer sat. “She confessed, right?”
“To killing my father,” Brendan said.
“Isn’t that all you need?” she asked. “It’s not like there’s any mystery as to why.”
He shook his head. “No, she explained that, too. Dad was going to divorce her and leave her with nothing. She wanted it all. That must be why she wanted to hurt Josie and my son, why she wanted to kill them, too—to make sure there were no more O’Hannigans.”
“Your father’s damn codicil,” she remarked.
He grinned as his mother and stepmother glared at each other through the back window of the police car. “She didn’t know about you.”
His mother shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I’m not an O’Hannigan anymore.”
No. She’d dropped her married name when the marshals had moved her. To the runaways she’d fostered, she’d been just Roma. Perhaps they’d all known the Jones surname was an alias.
“She thought you were dead,” Brendan remarked as he opened the back door to the police car.
“What the hell is it with you people?” Margaret asked. “Is anyone really dead?” She turned her glare on Brendan. “First you come back from the dead and show up