Royal Rescue

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 to claim what was mine. And then your nosy girlfriend comes back from the dead with a kid. And now her...” She curled her thin lips in disgust.

He’d been so scared that Josie had been alone with a suspected killer that he hadn’t been paying much attention to the conversation coming through the mike. But now he remembered Margaret’s surprise that Josie wasn’t dead. He’d thought it was because she’d incorrectly assumed Josie had been killed with him from the bomb set at his house, but he realized now that she’d never admitted to planting it.

But why? When she had confessed to murder, why would she bother denying attempted murder?

“You didn’t know Josie was alive?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I didn’t care whether she was or not until she showed up here with pictures of your damn kid in her purse and all those damn questions of hers. How could you have not realized she was a reporter?”

Especially given who her father was. Brendan had been a fool to not realize it. But then he hadn’t been thinking clearly. He never did around her.

He had just let Josie walk off with their son before he’d confirmed that she was safe. Hell, he’d told her she was—that Margaret wouldn’t be a threat anymore. But had Margaret ever been the threat to Josie?

“You didn’t know Josie was in witness relocation?”

“I didn’t know that anybody was in witness relocation,” the woman replied. A calculating look came over her face. “But perhaps I should talk to the marshals, let them know what I know about your father’s business and his associates.”

Despite foreboding clutching his stomach muscles into tight knots, he managed a short chuckle. “I gave them everything there was to know.” Along with the men who’d disappeared—either into prisons or the program.

“You have nothing to offer anyone anymore, Margaret,” he said as he slammed the door. Then he pounded on the roof, giving the go-ahead for the driver to pull away and take her to jail. He couldn’t hear her as the car drove off, but he could read her lips and realized she was cursing him.

But he was already cursing himself. “Where did Josie go?” he asked his mother.

“To see her father,” she said, as if he were being stupid again. “You and I should have gone along. I could have talked to her father and prepared him for seeing his daughter again after he spent the past four years believing she was dead.”

“Yeah, because you prepared me so well,” he said. He nearly hadn’t gone to the address his father had given him. But after he’d gotten off the bus, he’d been scared and hungry and cold. So he’d gone to the house and knocked on the door. And when she’d opened it, he’d passed out. Later he’d blamed the hunger and the cold, but it was probably because he’d thought he’d seen a ghost.

It had taken him years to live down the razzing from Roma’s other runaways.

“You’re right,” he said. “I should have gone with her.”

“Do you know which hospital?”

He nodded. He knew the hospital well. He just didn’t know how she’d gotten there. “What vehicle did she take?”

Roma shook her head. “She got a ride in a black SUV.”

“With whom?”

“A marshal, I think. The guy had his badge on a chain around his neck.” That was how the men who’d taken her into the program had worn theirs, or so she’d told him when she’d explained how she had disappeared. “He offered to drive her and CJ to see her father.”

How had the man known that her father was in the hospital? And why had a marshal walked into the middle of an FBI investigation? The two agencies worked together, but usually not willingly and not without withholding more information than they shared.

Brendan had become an FBI agent instead of a marshal because he’d resented the marshals for not letting his mother take him along—for making him mourn her for years, as he’d mourned Josie.

He had a bad feeling that he might be mourning her again. And CJ, too, if he didn’t find her. Charlotte wouldn’t have sent another marshal; she had trusted Brendan to keep Josie and their son safe.

And he had a horrible feeling, as his heart ached with the force of its frantic pounding, that he had failed.

* * *

“WHY—WHY DID you bring us here?” Josie asked as she rode up in the hospital elevator with her son and a madman.

Before Donald Peterson could reply, CJ answered, “We came to see Grampa.” He’d even pushed the button to the sixth floor. “We shoulda brought Gramma.”

No. Brendan was already going to lose one person he loved—if Josie didn’t think of something to at least save their son. She didn’t want him to lose his mother, too.

She looked up at their captor. “We should have left him with his grandmother,” she said. “And his father. He isn’t part of this.”

“He’s your son,” Peterson said. “Your father’s grandson. He’s very much a part of this.”

She shook her head. “He’s a three-year-old child. He has nothing to do with any of this.”

The elevator lurched to a halt on the sixth floor, nearly making her stomach lurch, too, with nerves and fear. With a gun shoved in the middle of her back, the U.S. marshal pushed her out the open doors. She held tight to CJ’s hand.

He kept digging the gun deeper, pushing her down the hall toward her father’s room. A man waited outside. He was dressed like an orderly, as he’d been dressed the night he’d held Brendan back from getting on the elevator with her and CJ. She’d been grateful for his intervention then.

He wasn’t going to intervene tonight—just as his partners in crime had refused to be swayed from the U.S. marshal’s nefarious plan. But still she had to try. “Please,” she said, “you don’t want to be part of this.”

“He’s already part of it,” Peterson replied. “Even before he set the bomb, he was already wanted for other crimes.”

She understood now. “You tracked them down on their outstanding warrants but you worked out a deal for not bringing them in.”

Peterson chuckled. “You can’t stop asking questions, can’t stop trying to ferret out all the information you can.”

She shuddered, remembering that Brendan had accused her of the same thing. No wonder he hadn’t been able to trust her.

“But you and your father won’t be able to broadcast this story,” he said.

“You’re not going to get away,” she warned him.

“I know. But it’s better this way—better to see his face and yours than have someone else take the pleasure for me.” He pushed the barrel deeper into her back and ordered, “Open the door.”

“I—I think someone should warn him first,” she said. “Let him know that I’m alive so that he doesn’t have another heart attack.”

“It was unfortunate that he had the first one,” Peterson agreed. “He was only supposed to be hurt, not killed.” He glanced at the orderly as he said that, as if the man had not followed orders. “But the doctors have put him on medication to regulate his heart. He’s probably stronger now than he was when he thought you died four years ago. That didn’t kill him.”

His mouth tightened. “It would be easier to die,” he said, “than to lose a child and have to live.”

He wasn’t worried about getting away anymore, because he had obviously decided to end his life, too.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured.

“Not yet,” he replied, “but you will be.” He pushed her through the door to her father’s room.

“Stop shoving my mommy!” CJ yelled at him. “You’re a bad man!”

“What—what’s going on?” asked the gray-haired man in the room. He was sitting up as if he’d been about to get out of bed. He was bruised, but he wasn’t broken. “Who are you all? Are you in the right room?”

“Yes,” CJ replied. “This is my grampa’s room number. Are you my grampa?”

Stanley Jessup looked at his grandson through narrowed eyes. Then he lifted his gaze and looked at Josie. At first he didn’t recognize her; his brow furrowed as if he tried to place her, though.

“You don’t know your own daughter?” the U.S. marshal berated him. “I would know my son anywhere. No matter what he may have done to his face, I would recognize his soul. That’s how I knew he couldn’t have done the things that article and those news reports said.” He raised the gun and pointed it at Josie’s head. “The things—the lies—your friend told you, claiming that my Donny had tried to hurt her.”

“Donald Peterson,” her father murmured. He recognized her attempted killer but not his own daughter.

“Your son told me, too,” Josie said. “He had once been my friend, too.”

“Until you betrayed him.”

“Until he tried to rape my roommate,” she said. If not for her coming to her father with the article, he might have gotten away with it—just as he’d gotten away with his drug use—but the athletic director hadn’t wanted to lose their star player from the football team. So they’d tried paying off the girl. When she’d refused money, they’d expelled her and labeled her crazy. So just as she had done with Margaret O’Hannigan today, Josie had gotten Donny Peterson to confess.

“Josie...” Her father whispered her name, as if unable to believe it. Then he looked down at the little boy, who stared up at him in puzzlement.

Poor CJ had been through so much the past few days. He’d met so many people and had been in so much danger, he had to be thoroughly confused and exhausted. He whispered, too, to his grandfather, “He’s a bad man, Grampa.”

“Your mama and grandpa are the bad ones,” Donald Peterson insisted. “My Donny was a star, and they couldn’t handle it. They had to bring him down, had to destroy him.”

After the confession and the subsequent charges, Donny Peterson had killed himself, shortly before the trial was to begin, shortly before Josie’s brakes were cut. Why hadn’t she considered that those attempts might have been because of Donny? Why had she automatically thought the worst of Brendan? Maybe because she’d already been feeling guilty and hadn’t wanted to admit to how much to blame she’d been.

“And that is why I’m going to destroy them,” Donald continued.

“You’re a bad man,” CJ said again, and he kicked the man in the shin.

Josie tried to grab her son before the man could strike back. But he was already swinging and his hand struck Josie’s cheek, sending her stumbling back onto her father’s bed. Stanley Jessup caught her shoulders and then pulled her and his grandson close, as if his arms alone could protect them.

CJ wriggled in their grasp as he tried to break free to fight some more. “My daddy told me to p’tect you,” he reminded Josie. “I have to p’tect my mommy until my daddy gets here.”

Donald Peterson shook his head. “Your daddy’s not coming, son.”

“My daddy’s a hero,” CJ said. “He’ll be here. He always saves us.”

“It is a daddy’s job to protect his kids,” Donald agreed, his voice cracking with emotion. “But your daddy’s busy arresting some bad people.”

“You’re bad.”

“And he’s too far away to get here to help you.”

Tears began to streak down CJ’s face, and his shoulders shook as fear overcame him. He’d been so brave for her—so brave for his father. But now he was scared.

And Josie could offer him no words of comfort. As Donald Peterson had stated, there was no way that Brendan could reach them in time to save them.

They had to figure out a way to save themselves. Her father shifted on his bed and pressed something cold and metallic against Josie’s hip. A gun. Had he had it under his pillow?

After the assault, she couldn’t blame him for wanting to be prepared if his attacker tried again. But Donald’s gun barrel was trained on CJ. And she knew—to make her father and her feel the loss he felt—he would shoot her son first. Could she grab the gun, aim and fire before he killed her little boy?

* * *

THE CAMERAS HAD still been running inside the van, and they’d caught the plate on the black SUV that had driven off with Brendan’s son and the woman he loved. The vehicle had a GPS that had led them right to its location in the parking garage of the hospital.

When they’d arrived, Brendan hadn’t gone down to check it out. He already knew where they were. So he ducked under the whirling FBI helicopter blades and ran across the roof where just a few nights ago he’d nearly been shot. Once he was inside the elevator, he pushed the button for the sixth floor.

It seemed to take forever to get where he needed to be.

His mom was right. He should have taken Josie here. He never should have let her and CJ out of his sight. And if he wasn’t already too late, he never would.

Finally the elevator stopped and the doors slowly opened. He had barely stepped from the car when a shot or two rang out. He fired back. And his aim was better.

The pseudo-orderly dropped to the floor, clutching his bleeding arm. His gun dropped, too. Brendan kicked it aside as he hurried past the man. The orderly wasn’t the one who’d driven off with his family. He wasn’t the one with the grudge against Josie.

That man was already inside and he had nothing to lose. Running the plate had tied it to the marshal to whom the vehicle had been assigned, and a simple Google search on the helicopter ride had revealed the rest of Donald Peterson’s tragic story. There was no point in calling out, no point in trying to negotiate with him. The only thing he wanted was Josie dead—as dead as his son.

So Brendan kicked open the door, sending it flying back against the wall. He had his gun raised, ready to fire, but his finger froze on the trigger.

The man holding a gun was not the marshal but the patient. The marshal lay on the floor, blood pooling beneath his shoulder. His eyes were closed, tears trickling from their corners. But his pain wasn’t physical.

It was a pain Brendan had nearly felt himself. Of loss and helplessness...

“See, I knew my daddy would make it,” CJ said, his voice high with excitement and a trace of hysteria. “I knew he would save us.”

Brendan glanced down at the floor again, checking for the man’s weapon. But Josie held it. He looked back at his son. “Doesn’t look like you needed saving at all. Your mommy and grandpa had it all under control.”

Stanley Jessup shook his head. “If you hadn’t distracted him with the shooting outside the door, I never would have been able to...” He shuddered. While the man was a damn good marksman, he wasn’t comfortable with having shot a person.

“Are you okay, Daddy?” Josie asked.

He grabbed her, pulling her into his arms. “I am now. A couple of nights ago I heard a scream and then a female voice, and I recognized it. But I didn’t dare hope. I thought it was the painkillers. I couldn’t let myself believe. Couldn’t let myself hope... You’re alive...”

“I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed, her body shaking with sobs. “I’m so sorry.”

It was a poignant moment, but one that was short-lived as police officers and hospital security burst into the room. It was nearly an hour later before the men had been arrested and the explanations made.

Finally Stanley Jessup could have a moment alone with his daughter and grandson, so Brendan stepped outside and pulled the door closed behind him. He walked over to his mother, who had insisted on coming along in the helicopter with him and the other agents.

“I’m going to get some coffee and food,” Roma said. “I’m sure my grandson is hungry. He’s had a long day.” She rose on tiptoe and pressed a kiss to Brendan’s cheek. “So has my son.”

“It’s not over yet,” he said.

Her brow furrowed slightly. “Isn’t it all over? All the bad people arrested?”

“There’s still something I need to do,” Brendan said. For him it wasn’t all over. It was just beginning.

She nodded as if she understood. She probably did; his mother had always known what was in his heart.

Josie didn’t, but he intended to tell her.

After patting his cheek with her palm, his mother headed down the hall and disappeared into the elevator, leaving him alone. He had spent so much of his life alone—those years before he’d joined his mother in witness protection. Then all the years he’d gone undercover—deep undercover—for the Bureau. He’d been young when he’d started working for the FBI, since his last name had given him an easy entrance to any criminal organization the Bureau had wanted to investigate. And take down.

He had taken down several of the most violent gangs and dangerous alliances. But none of them had realized he was the one responsible.

If the truth about him came out now, his family could be in danger of retaliation—revenge like that the marshal had wanted against the Jessups because of the loss of his son.

Pain clutched Brendan’s heart as he thought of how close he had come to losing his son. CJ had told him how he’d tried to “p’tect” his mommy as he’d promised. The brave little three-year-old had kicked the man with the gun.

He shuddered at what could have happened had Josie obviously not taken the blow meant for their boy. She’d had a fresh mark on her face.

As she stepped out of her father’s room and joined him in the hall, he studied her face. The red mark was already darkening. He found himself reaching up and touching her cheek as he murmured, “I should have kicked him, too.”

She flinched. “I used to worry that CJ was too timid,” she said, “but now I worry that he might be too brave.”

“Are you surprised?” he asked. “You’ve always been fearless.”

“Careless,” she corrected him. “I didn’t care about the consequences. I didn’t realize what could happen to me.”

He’d thought that was because she’d been spoiled, that she’d been her father’s princess and believed he would never let anything happen to her. Now Brendan realized that she’d cared more about others than herself.

“You’re the brave one,” she said. “You’ve put yourself in danger to protect others. To protect me. Thank you.”

He shook his head. He didn’t want her gratitude. He wanted her love.

“I thought you might have left with the others,” she said, glancing around the empty hall. “With your mom...”

“She’s still here,” he said. “She’s getting food and coming back up.” The woman had made a life of feeding hungry kids—food and love.

“I’m glad she’s coming back,” she said. “CJ has been asking about her. He wants his grampa to meet his gramma. I think he thinks they should be married like other kids’ grandparents are.”

A millionaire and a mobster’s widow? Brendan chuckled.

“I’m really glad that you’re still here,” she said.

His heart warmed, filling with hope. Did she have the same feelings he had?

“I owe you an apology,” Josie said. “It was all my fault—all of it. And my mistakes cost you three years with your son.” Her voice cracked. “And I am so sorry....”

He closed his arms around her and pulled her against his chest—against his heart. She trembled, probably with exhaustion and shock. She had been through so much. She clutched at his back and laid her head on his shoulder.

“My father knew who you were,” she remarked. “What you were. From his sources within the FBI, he knew you were an agent. If I’d told him what story I was working on when the attempts started on my life, he would have told me to drop it—that there was no way you could be responsible. I should have known....”

“He knew?” Brendan had really underestimated the media mogul in resources and respect. He could be trusted with the truth, so Brendan should have trusted his daughter, too.

“He’s a powerful man with a lot of connections,” she said, “but still he didn’t know that I wasn’t dead. I hate that I did that to him. I hate what I did to you. I understand why you can’t trust me.”

“Josie...”

She leaned back and pressed her fingers over his lips. “It’s okay,” she said. “I understand now that sometimes it’s better to leave secrets secret. There will be no stories about you or your mother in any Jessup publications or broadcasts. And there will never be another story by me.”

“Never?”

Tears glistened in her smoky-green eyes, and she shook her head. “I should have never...”

“Revealed the truth?” he asked.

“Look what the consequences were,” she reminded him with a shudder.

“Yes,” he agreed, and finally he looked at the full picture, at what she’d really done. “You got justice for your friend—the girl that kid assaulted. If you hadn’t written that article, it never would have happened. And I know from experience that it’s damn hard to move on if you never get justice.”

“That’s why you went after all those crime organizations,” she said, “to get justice for what your dad did to your mom.”

“She gave up her justice for me,” he said.

“So you got it for her and for so many others.”

He shook his head. “No, Margaret got it for her. Go figure. But you helped your friend when no one else would. You can’t blame yourself for what the boy did. And neither should his father.”

“He needs someone to blame,” she said.

Just as the people in her new town had blamed her for her student’s death. Someone always needed someone else to blame.

“And so did I,” she added. “I shouldn’t have blamed you.”

“You shouldn’t have,” he agreed. “Because I would have never hurt you, then or now.” He dragged in a deep breath to say what he’d waited around to tell her, what he’d waited four years to tell her. “Because I love you, Josie.”

“You love me?” She asked the question as if it had never occurred to her, as if she had never dared to hope. Until now. Her eyes widened with hope and revealed her own feelings.

“Yes,” he said, “I love your passion and your intelligence and—”

She stretched up his body and pressed a kiss to his lips. “I didn’t think you’d ever be able to trust me, much less love me.”

“I don’t just love you,” he said. “I want to spend my life with you and CJ. No more undercover. I’ll find a safer way to get justice for others, like maybe helping you with stories.”

She smiled. “That might be more dangerous than your old job.”

“We’ll keep each other safe,” he promised. “Will you become my wife?”

“It will thrill CJ if his parents are together, if every day is like that day at my house,” she said.

That had been such a good day—a day Brendan had never wanted to end. His heart beat fast with hope. She was going to say yes....

“But as much as I love our son, I won’t marry you for his sake,” she said. “And you wouldn’t want me to.”

He wasn’t so sure about that. But before he could argue with her, she was speaking again.

“I will marry you,” she assured him, “because I love you with all my heart. Because even when I was stupid enough to think you were a bad man, I couldn’t stop loving you. And I never will.”

“Never,” he agreed. And he covered her mouth with his, sealing their engagement with a kiss since he had yet to buy a ring. But it was no simple kiss. With them, it never was. Passion ignited and the kiss deepened.

If not for the dinging of the elevator, they might have forgotten where they were. His mother stepped through the open doors, her eyes glinting with amusement as if she’d caught him making out on the porch swing.

“We’re getting married, Mom,” he said.

“Of course,” she said, as if there had never been any question in her mind. “Now, open the door for me.” She juggled a tray of plates and coffee cups and a sippy cup.

He opened the door to his son, who threw his arms around Brendan’s legs. “Daddy! Daddy, you’re still here.”

“I’m never leaving,” he promised his son.

“Gramma!” the little boy exclaimed, and he pulled away from Brendan to follow her to his grandfather’s bedside.

With a happy sigh, Josie warned him, “We’re never going to have a moment alone.”

“Our honeymoon,” he said. “We’ll spend our honeymoon alone.”