Royal Rescue

chapter Seventeen

Josie was reeling from all the answers she’d just received to questions she hadn’t even known to ask. Was it true? Was any of it true?

Brendan had flashed the badge, but she hadn’t had a chance to read it. Was it his name on it? Was he really an FBI agent? And what about his mother being alive all these years in witness protection?

It all seemed so unrealistic that it almost had to be real. And it explained so much.

She heard the footsteps then. And so did Margaret. Before the woman could react and pull the trigger, Josie shoved her back and then dropped to the floor as shots rang out.

The house exploded. There was no bomb, but the effects were the same. Glass shattered. Footsteps pounded. Voices shouted. And shots were fired.

She wasn’t sure she would feel if any bullets struck her. She was numb with shock. She’d thought she had fooled and deceived Brendan four years ago. But she had been the fool. In her search for what she’d thought was the truth, she had fallen for the lies. This woman’s lies. The other news reports about him.

He could have set her straight, but he had chosen instead to keep his secrets. And to let her go...

A hand clutched her hair, pulling her head up as a barrel pressed again to her temple. How many times could a gun be held to her head before it was fired? Either on purpose or accidentally?

Josie worried that her luck was about to run out.

“Let her go!” Brendan shouted the order. And cocked his gun.

Another shot rang out, along with a soft click, and Josie flinched, waiting for the pain to explode in her head. But then Margaret dropped to the floor beside her, blood spurting from her shoulder. Her eyes wide open with shock, she stared into Josie’s face. Then she began to curse, calling Josie every vulgar name as agents jerked her to her feet.

Then there were hands on Josie’s arms, hands that shook a little as they helped her up. Her legs wobbled and she pitched slightly forward, falling into a broad chest. Strong arms closed around her, holding her steady.

“Are you all right?” Brendan asked, his deep voice gruff with emotion.

She wasn’t sure. “How—how did she not shoot me...when she got shot?”

“She’d already fired all her bullets,” he replied.

She realized the soft click she’d heard had been from the empty cartridge. “Did you know?”

“I counted.”

How? In the chaos of the raid, how had he kept track of it all? But then she remembered that he was a professional. She was the amateur, the one who hadn’t belonged in his world four years ago and certainly didn’t belong there now.

She belonged with her son. She should have never left him.

Exhausted, she laid her head on his chest. His heart beat as frantically as hers, both feeling the aftereffects of adrenaline and fear. At least Josie had been afraid.

She wasn’t sure how Brendan felt about anything. She hadn’t even known who he really was.

* * *

PARAMEDICS HAD PUT her in the back of an ambulance, but she had refused to lie down on the stretcher. She sat up on it, her legs dangling over the side. She wasn’t a small woman, yet there was something childlike about her now, Brendan thought. She looked...lost.

“Is she okay?” he asked the paramedic who’d stepped out of the ambulance to talk quietly to him.

“Except for some bruises, she’s physically all right,” the paramedic assured him. “But she does appear to be in shock.”

Was that because she’d been held and threatened by a crazy woman? Or because she had finally learned the truth about him?

“It looks like you were hit,” the paramedic remarked, reaching up toward Brendan’s head. He hadn’t been hit, but not for lack of trying on his stepmother’s part. As lousy a shot as she was, she must have been very close to his father to have killed him.

Too close for his father to have seen how dangerous the woman really was. His father had been so smart and careful when it came to business. Why had he’d been so sloppy and careless when it had come to pleasure?

Four years ago, when Brendan had found out his lover was really a reporter after a story, he’d thought he had been careless, too. And his carelessness had nearly gotten Josie killed.

“I’m fine,” he told the paramedic. “That’s not even recent.” Two nights ago seemed like a lifetime ago. But then it had been a different life, one that Brendan didn’t need to live anymore. He’d found the justice for which he’d started searching four years ago.

As he watched an agent load a bandaged and handcuffed Margaret into the back of a federal car, he knew he had justice. But he held up a hand to halt the car. Her wounded shoulder had already been treated, so she’d been medically cleared to be booked. But he didn’t want them booking her yet, not before he knew all the charges against her.

“It’s not scabbed over yet,” the young woman persisted, as she continued to inspect the scratch on Brendan’s head.

“I’m fine. But maybe you should double check the suspect,” he suggested. After the paramedic left, he turned back toward the ambulance and found Josie staring at him.

She had lost that stunned look of shock. Her brow was furrowed, her eyes dark, and she looked mad. She had every right to be angry—furious, even. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Are you sorry that you saved my life?” she asked. “Or are you sorry that you lied to me?”

“I never lied.”

She nodded her head sharply in agreement. “You didn’t have to. You just let me make all my wrong assumptions and you never bothered to correct me. Is that why you’re sorry?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, “because I never should have gotten involved with you—not when I had just started the most dangerous assignment of my career.” But he’d been sloppy and careless. He’d let his attraction to her overcome his common sense.

Special Agent Martinez had urged him to go for it, that having a girlfriend gave Brendan a better cover and made him look more like his dad. That it might have roused suspicions if he’d turned down such a beautiful woman. But Brendan couldn’t blame Martinez. It hadn’t been an order, more so a suggestion. Brendan hadn’t had to listen to him.

It was all his fault—everything Josie had been through, everything she’d lost. She hadn’t died, but she’d still lost her home, her family, her career. If only he’d stayed away from her...

If only he’d resisted his attraction to her...

But he’d never felt anything as powerful.

“You thought I was going to blow your cover,” she said. “That’s why you didn’t tell me what was going on. You didn’t trust that I wouldn’t go public with the story.”

“I know you, Josie. You can’t stop being a reporter,” he reminded her. “Even after they relocated you, you were ferreting out stories.”

“But if you had asked me not to print anything, I would have held off,” she said. “I wouldn’t have put your life in danger.”

No. He was the one who’d put her life in danger. And he understood that she would probably never be able to forgive him, especially if her father didn’t make it.

“But you didn’t trust me,” she said.

“You didn’t trust me, either,” he said, “or you wouldn’t have raced here to make sure I didn’t kill Margaret for vigilante justice. You still suspected that I might be a killer.”

“I didn’t know who you really are,” she said.

She hadn’t known what he really did for a living, but she should have known what kind of person he was. Since she hadn’t, there was no way that she could love him.

“How did you figure out where I had gone?” he asked. “You had all that information for years, but you never put it together. And then I took everything to present to the district attorney. So how did you realize it was Margaret?”

“CJ told me.”

He laughed at her ridiculous claim. “CJ? How did he figure it out?”

“You told him,” she said, “when you told him that you were going to get rid of the bad person so he’d be safe.”

He hadn’t even known if the little boy was truly awake when he’d told him goodbye. It was wanting to make sure that goodbye wasn’t permanent that had had Brendan going through the proper channels for the arrest warrant.

“You said bad person,” she said, “not bad man, like we’d been telling him the shooters and the bomber was. Since Margaret was the only female I’d talked to about your father’s murder, it had to be her.”

He glanced to that car where his stepmother sat and waited for him. He needed to question her. But he dreaded leaving Josie after he had nearly lost her. He couldn’t even blink without horrible images replaying in his mind—the burly man slapping her so hard her neck snapped and then the gun pressed to her temple...

Josie shivered as she followed his gaze. “I need to get home to CJ. I need to make sure he’s safe.”

“You don’t need to go home,” he said. “He should be here very soon.”

Her brow furrowed. “How? Is Charlotte bringing him?”

“Charlotte couldn’t come.” He wondered if the former U.S. marshal had had her baby yet. “So I sent someone else to get him from Mrs. Mallory’s.”

She clutched his arm with a shaking hand. “You shouldn’t have trusted anyone else, not with our son.

“I sent the only person I trust,” he said.

She shivered again as if his words had chilled her. He didn’t mean to hurt her feelings, but he hadn’t been able to trust her—any more than she had been able to trust him.

The arrival of another vehicle, a minivan, drew their attention to the driveway. He smiled as an older woman jumped out of the driver’s seat and pulled open the sliding door to the back. A redheaded little boy raised his arms and encircled the woman’s neck as she lifted him from his booster seat.

“Looks like CJ likes his grandma,” he murmured.

Josie gasped. “That’s your mother? She really is alive?”

The dark, curly-haired woman was small, like Margaret, but she had so much energy and vibrancy. She would never be mistaken for fragile. She was the strongest woman he had ever known...until he’d witnessed Josie’s fearlessness over and over again. She would have taken a bullet in the brain before she would have ever led Margaret to their son.

Almost too choked with emotion over seeing his mom and son together, Brendan only nodded. Then he cleared his throat and added, “My dangerous assignment is over now.” And given what he now knew he had to lose, he didn’t intend to ever go undercover again. “So I’d like to have a relationship with my son.”

“Of course,” she immediately agreed. “I’m glad he’s met your mother. She sounds like an amazing woman. She gave up so much for you.”

Just as Josie would have for their son. For him, Brendan’s mother had given up justice for all the pain his father had put her through.

He nodded. “She is.”

Josie smiled as the little boy giggled in his grandmother’s arms as she tickled him. “I would like CJ to meet my father now—if you think it’s safe.”

“It’s all over now,” Brendan assured her. “Margaret knows that. Anyone who worked for her knows that now.” The burly guard was sitting in the back of another car. Agents had apprehended him as he’d hightailed it out of the house. “It will be safe.”

She bit her bottom lip and sighed. “For us. I’m not sure how safe it’ll be for my father though. I don’t want to risk giving him another heart attack. It’s bad enough that he was attacked to draw me out of hiding.”

And that was probably his fault, too—Margaret’s wanting to make sure no other O’Hannigan heirs stood in the way of her greed. He needed to interview the crazy woman and find out who she’d been working with—who she’d bought.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. He couldn’t apologize enough for the danger in which he’d put Josie and their son.

* * *

BRENDAN WANTED A relationship with his son but not her. Would he never trust her? Would he never forgive her for deceiving him?

He had deceived her, too. Of course he’d had his reasons. And his orders. He couldn’t tell her the truth and risk her blowing his cover.

Now she understood why he’d been so angry with her when he’d realized she had initially sought him out for an exposé. It hadn’t been just a matter of pride. It had been a matter of life and death.

After all the times she’d been shot at and nearly blown up, she understood how dangerous his life was. That was why he’d kept apologizing to her.

He’d said he was sorry, but he’d never said what she’d wanted to hear. That he loved her.

She sighed.

“Everything all right, miss?” the driver asked.

She glanced into the back of the government Suburban where CJ’s booster seat had been buckled. Her son was safe and happy. Of course he hadn’t wanted to leave his daddy or his grandma, but he’d agreed when she’d explained he was going to meet his grandpa.

“Yes, I just hope that my dad is better.” That he would be strong enough to handle the surprise of seeing her alive and well.

The older man nodded. She hadn’t noticed him during all the turmoil earlier in Margaret’s house. He didn’t have a scratch on his bald head or a wrinkle in his dark suit. Maybe he hadn’t been part of the rescue. Maybe he’d been in the van that they’d passed as they’d left the estate.

“Thank you for driving me to the hospital, Agent...”

“Marshal,” he replied. “I’m a U.S. marshal.”

“Did Charlotte send you?” she asked. Brendan had told her why her friend had been unable to come to her aid herself; she was having a baby. She hadn’t even known Charlotte was pregnant. It had to be Aaron Timmer’s baby. Josie had realized her friend was falling for her former bodyguard shortly after he’d been hired to work palace security, too. Had they married? She’d been so preoccupied with her own life lately that she hadn’t gotten the specifics of what Charlotte and Princess Gabriella had endured.

“Charlotte?” the man repeated the name.

“Charlotte Green,” Josie explained. “She was the marshal who relocated me in the program.”

The man nodded. “Yes, she didn’t tell anyone else where she’d placed you. Not even her partner.”

Josie shuddered as she thought of the man who would have killed to learn her whereabouts. He must have been working for Margaret O’Hannigan. But then why had the woman thought she was dead?

“It’s a shame that Trigger was killed.”

“In self-defense.” Josie defended her former bodyguard. Whit was the one who’d found the bomb in the safe house and called the marshals. Everything had moved so quickly after that—Josie had moved so quickly.

“He was a friend.”

Josie shivered now and glanced back at CJ to make sure he was all right. “Trigger was a friend of yours?”

“Yes, a close friend. We used to work together,” he said. “But then things happened in my life. I took a leave from work and lost Trigger as my partner with the Marshals. We also lost touch for a while...until recently. Then we reconnected.”

“You had talked to him recently?” she asked.

“Right before he died...”

“Do you know who he was working for?” Josie asked. It might help the district attorney’s case against Margaret to have a witness who could corroborate that she’d hired the hit on her.

“He wasn’t working for anyone,” the man replied. “He was doing a favor for a friend.”

God, no...

She realized that this man was the friend for whom Trigger had been doing the favor. This man was the one who’d wanted her location, and from the nerves tightening her stomach into knots, she suspected he had not wanted her found in order to wish her well. She glanced down at her bag lying on the floor at her feet. Could she reach inside without his noticing? She didn’t have the gun anymore. It had been left at the crime scene back at Margaret O’Hannigan’s house. But if she could get to her phone...

She couldn’t call Charlotte, but she could call Brendan. He would come; he would save her and their son as he had so many times over the past few days.

She should have trusted him four years ago. If she had showed him the information she’d compiled, they would have figured out together that it was Margaret who had killed his father. But apprehending Margaret earlier wouldn’t have kept Josie safe.

“You were the friend?” she asked, as she leaned down and reached for her purse.

“If you’re looking for this,” he remarked as he lifted a cell phone from under his thigh, “don’t bother.” The driver’s window lowered, and he tossed out the phone. “That way Charlotte Green’s little GPS device won’t be able to track you down.”

He must have taken the phone from her purse while she’d been buckling CJ into his seat in the back. She was so tired that she hadn’t even been aware of what the man was doing. She had barely been aware of him.

“Who are you?” she asked, her heart beating fast with panic and dread.

“You don’t recognize me?”

She was afraid to look directly at him. A hostage was never supposed to look at her kidnapper. If she couldn’t identify him, he might let her live.

But as her blood chilled, she realized this wasn’t a kidnapper. Unlike Margaret O’Hannigan, this person wasn’t interested in money. He had an entirely different agenda.

“I—I don’t know,” she replied, but she was staring down at her purse, wondering what might have been left inside that she could use as a weapon. “I’ve been away for so many years.”

“You’re the one who looks different,” he said. “But I know the doctor Charlotte Green sends witnesses to, so I got him to show me your files. I knew what you’d look like. I recognized you in the parking garage.”

“That—that was you?” she asked.

He nodded his head. “And the other so-called orderly was at O’Hannigan’s place, setting up the backup plan.”

She glanced again at CJ and whispered, “The bomb?”

“But you were just 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.