Royal Rescue

chapter Eight

Flames illuminated the night, licking high into the black sky. The boy was screaming. Despite the ringing in his ears, Brendan could hear him, and his heart clutched with sympathy for the toddler’s fear.

He could hear the fire trucks, too, their sirens whining in the distance. Ambulances and police cars probably followed or led them—he couldn’t tell the difference between the sirens.

Despite the slight shaking in his legs, he pressed harder on the accelerator, widening the distance between Josie’s little white SUV and the fiery remains of the mansion where he’d grown up.

It had never been home, though. That was why he’d run away when he was fifteen and why he’d intended never to return. If not for feeling that he owed his father justice, he would have never come back.

“Are—are you sure you want to leave?” Josie stammered, wincing as if her own voice hurt her ears. She was in the front seat but leaning into the back this time, her hand squeezing one of their son’s flailing fists. She’d been murmuring softly to the boy, trying to calm him down since they’d jumped back into the vehicle and taken off.

The poor kid had been through so much tonight, it was no wonder he’d gotten hysterical, especially over how violently he’d been awakened from his nap.

“Are you sure?” Josie prodded Brendan for an answer, as she always had.

He replied, this time with complete honesty, “I have no reason to stay.”

“But your staff...”

Wouldn’t have survived that explosion. Nothing would have. If he hadn’t noticed the smell before he’d turned that key, if Josie hadn’t clutched his arms...

They would have been right next to the house when a staff member inside, who must have noticed the key rattling in the door, had opened it for them and unknowing set off the bomb. Instead he and Josie had been running for the SUV, for their son, when the bomb exploded. The force of it had knocked them to the ground and rocked her vehicle.

“Are you all right?” he asked again.

She’d jumped right up and continued to run, not stopping until she’d reached their screaming son. The explosion had not only awakened but terrified him. Or maybe he felt the fear that had her trembling uncontrollably.

She jerked her chin in an impatient nod. “Yes, I—I’m okay.”

“Maybe we should have stayed,” he admitted. But his first instinct had been to get the hell away in case the bomber had hung around to finish the job if the explosion hadn’t killed them.

While Brendan wished he could soothe his son’s fears, his first priority was to keep the boy and his mother safe. And healthy. “We should have you checked out.”

She shook her head. “Nobody can see me, in case they recognize me like you did. And those other men...” She shuddered, probably as she remembered the ordeal those men had put her and CJ through. “We can’t go back to the hospital anyway.”

“There are urgent-care facilities that are open all night,” he reminded her. Maybe her new location wasn’t near a big city and she’d forgotten the amenities and conveniences of one.

She shook her head. “But someone there might realize we were at this explosion...” The smell of smoke had permeated the car and probably her hair. “And they might call the police,” she said. “Or the media.”

He nearly grinned at the irony of her wanting to avoid the press.

“And it’s not necessary,” she said, dismissing his concerns. “I’m okay.”

He glanced toward the backseat. CJ’s screams had subsided to hiccups and sniffles. Brendan’s heart ached with the boy’s pain and fear. “What about our son?”

“He’s scared,” Josie explained. And from the way she kept trembling, the little boy wasn’t the only one.

“It’s okay,” she assured the child, and perhaps she was assuring herself, too. “We’re getting far away from the fire.”

Not so far that the glow of the fire wasn’t still visible in the rearview mirror, along with the billows of black smoke darkening the sky even more.

“It won’t hurt us,” she said. “It won’t hurt us....”

“We’re going someplace very safe,” Brendan said, “where no bad men can find us.”

He shouldn’t have brought them back to the mansion. But the place was usually like a fortress, so he hadn’t thought any outside threats would be able to get to them. He hadn’t realized that the greatest danger was already inside those gates. Hell, inside those brick walls. Had one of his men—one of the O’Hannigan family—set the bomb?

He’d been trying to convince her that he’d had nothing to do with the attempts on her life, years ago or recently. And personally, he hadn’t. But that didn’t mean he still wasn’t responsible...because of who he was.

As if she’d been reading his mind, she softly remarked, “No place, with you, is going to be safe for us.”

But he wasn’t only the head of a mob organization. He had another life, but, regrettably, that one was probably even more dangerous.

* * *

“WHERE ARE WE?” she asked, pitching her voice to a low whisper—and not just because CJ slept peacefully now in his father’s arms, but also because the big brick building was eerily silent.

There had been other vehicles inside the fenced and gated parking lot when they’d arrived. But few lights had glowed in the windows of what looked like an apartment complex. Of course everyone could have been sleeping. But when Brendan had entered a special code to open the doors, the lobby inside looked more commercial than residential.

Was this an office building?

He’d also needed a code to open the elevator doors and a key to turn it on. Fortunately, he’d retrieved his keys from the lock at the mansion...just before the house had exploded.

Her ears had finally stopped ringing. Still, she heard nothing but their footsteps on the terrazzo as they walked down the hallway of the floor on which he’d stopped the elevator. He’d been doing everything with one hand, his arms wrapped tight around their sleeping son.

At the hospital she’d suspected that Brendan had held their son so that she wouldn’t try to escape with him. Now he held him almost reverently, as if he was scared that he’d nearly lost him in the explosion.

If he had parked closer to the house...

She shuddered to think what could have happened to her son.

“It’ll be warmer inside,” Brendan assured her, obviously misinterpreting her shudder as a shiver.

She actually was cold. The building wasn’t especially well heated.

“Inside what? Where are we?” she asked, repeating her earlier question. When he’d told her to grab her overnight bag, which she had slung over her shoulder along with her purse, she’d thought he was bringing them to a hotel. But this building was nothing like any hotel at which she’d ever stayed, as Josie Jessup or as JJ Brandt.

“This is my apartment,” he said as he stopped outside a tall metal door.

“Apartment? But you had the mansion...” And this building was farther from the city than the house had been, farther from the businesses rumored to be owned or run by the O’Hannigan family. But maybe that was why he’d wanted it—to be able to get away from all the responsibilities he’d inherited.

“I already had this place before I inherited the house from my father,” he explained as he shoved the key into the lock.

She wanted to grab her son and run. But she recognized she could just be having a panic attack, like the ones the nightmares brought on when they awakened her in a cold sweat. And those panic attacks, when she ran around checking the house for gas leaks, scared CJ so much that she would rather spare him having to deal with her hysteria tonight.

So she just grabbed Brendan’s hand, stilling it before he could turn the key. “We can’t stay here!”

Panic rushed up on her, and she dragged in a deep breath to control it and to check the air for that telltale odor. She smelled smoke on them, but it was undoubtedly from the earlier explosion. “Someone could remember you lived here and find us.”

“No. It’s safe here,” he said. “There’s no bomb.”

“Bu—”

Rejecting her statement before he even heard it, he shook his head. “Nobody knows where I was living before I showed up at my father’s funeral.”

Some had suspected he hadn’t even been alive; they’d thought that instead of running away, he might have been murdered, like they believed his mother was. Some had refused to believe that he was his father’s son, despite his having his father’s eyes. The same eyes that her son had.

His stepmother had still demanded a DNA test before she had stopped fighting for control of her dead husband’s estate. She hadn’t stopped slinging the accusations though. She had obviously been the source of so many of the stories about him, such as the one that Brendan had killed his father for vengeance and money. She had even talked to Josie back then to warn her away from a dangerous man.

Given the battle with his stepmother and the constant media attention, Josie could understand that Brendan would need a quiet place to get away from it all. And it might have occurred to someone else that he would need such a place.

“But they can find out.” Somehow, someone had found out she was alive.

“They didn’t,” he assured her. “It’s safe.” And despite her nails digging into the back of his hand, he turned the key.

She held her breath, but nothing happened. Then he turned the knob. And still nothing happened, even as the door opened slightly. She expelled a shaky sigh, but she was still tense, still scared.

Perhaps to reassure her even more, he added, “My name’s not on the lease.”

Just as her name was not on the title of her vehicle or the deed to her house...

Did Brendan O’Hannigan have other identities as well? But why? What was he hiding?

All those years ago she had suspected plenty and she had dug deep, but had found nothing. She had never found this place. Back then she would have been elated if he’d brought her here, since he was more likely to keep his secrets in a clandestine location. But when he pushed the door all the way open and stepped back for her to enter, she hesitated.

There was no gas. No bomb. No fire. Nothing to stop her from stepping inside but her own instincts.

“You lost your can of mace,” he said. “You can’t spray me in the face like you intended.”

She gasped in surprise that he’d realized her intentions back at the mansion. “Why didn’t you take it from me?”

He shrugged. “By the time I noticed you held it, I was distracted.”

He must have smelled the gas, too.

“And then you were saving me instead of hurting me,” he reminded her with a smile. “If you were really afraid of me, if you really wanted me gone from your life, you could have just let me blow up.”

She glanced down at the child he held so tenderly in his arms. “I—I couldn’t do that.”

No matter how much she might fear him, she didn’t hate him. She didn’t want him dead.

“Why?” he asked, his eyes intense as he stared at her over the child in his arms.

“I—I...”

Her purse vibrated, the cell phone inside silently ringing.

“You lost the mace but you didn’t lose your phone,” he remarked. “You can answer it.”

She fumbled inside and pulled out the phone. That phone, so it had to be Charlotte. Earlier Josie had wanted desperately to talk to the former marshal. But now she hesitated, as she paused outside his secret place.

“You need to talk to your handler,” Brendan advised. “Tell him—”

“Her,” she automatically corrected him. But she didn’t add that technically she no longer had a handler. When the marshals had failed to find any evidence of his involvement in the attempts on her life, they’d determined they no longer needed to protect her. “Her name is Charlotte Green.” Despite neither of them really being associated with the marshals any longer, the woman continued to protect Josie—if only from afar.

“Tell her that you’re safe,” he said. And as if to give her privacy, he carried their son across the threshold and inside the apartment.

Josie followed him with her gaze but not her body. She hesitated just inside the doorway, but finally she clicked the talk button on the phone. “Charlotte?”

“JJ, I’ve been so worried about you!” the other woman exclaimed.

That made two of them. But Josie hadn’t been worried about just herself. She watched Brendan lay their child on a wide, low sofa. It was a darker shade of gray than the walls and cement floor. But the whole place was monochromatic, which was just different shades of drab to her.

Despite what he’d said, the space didn’t look much like an apartment and nothing like a home. As if worried that the boy would roll off the couch and strike the floor, Brendan laid down pillows next to him. He might have just discovered that he was a father, but he had good paternal instincts. He was a natural protector.

And no matter what she’d read or suspected about him, Josie had actually always felt safe with him. Protected. Despite thinking that she should have feared him or at least not trusted him, she’d struggled to come up with a specific reason why. She had no proof that he’d ever tried to hurt her.

Or anyone else.

Maybe all those stories about him had only been stories—told by a bitter woman who’d been disinherited by a 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 hoped. “But please check on my dad.” The man who had fired at them in the garage was probably the one Brendan had left alive on the sixth floor. He could have gone back to her father’s room. “Make sure my dad is okay. Make sure he’s safe.”

“I already followed up with the hospital,” she said. “He’s recovering. He’ll be fine. And I think he’ll stay fine as long as you stay away from him.”

Pain clutched Josie’s heart. But she couldn’t argue with her friend. She never should have risked going to the hospital.

“You’re in extreme danger,” Charlotte warned her. “Whoever’s after you won’t stop now that they know you’re alive.”

They wouldn’t stop until she was dead for real.

“You have no idea who it could be?” Josie asked. She’d never wanted the facts more than she did now.

“It has to be someone with money,” Charlotte said, “to pay off a U.S. marshal.”

Josie shivered. It wasn’t any warmer in Brendan’s apartment than it was in the hall. But even if it had been, her blood still would have run cold. “And hire several assassins.”

Charlotte gasped. “Several?”

“At least three,” she replied. “More if you count whoever set the bomb.”

“Bomb!” Charlotte’s voice cracked on the exclamation.

“We’re fine,” Josie reminded her. “But whoever’s after me must have deep pockets.”

“It’s probably O’Hannigan,” Charlotte suggested. And she’d no sooner uttered his name than the phone was snapped from Josie’s hand.

Brendan had it now, pressed to his ear, as the former U.S. marshal named him as suspect number one. Charlotte hadn’t been wrong about anything else. She probably wasn’t wrong about this, either.