Royal Rescue

chapter Three

Fear gripped Josie. She was more scared now than she’d been when Brendan wouldn’t let go of her. Maybe her pulse raced and her heart hammered just in reaction to his discovering her. Or maybe it was because she wasn’t entirely certain she had really gotten away from him...even as the doors slid closed between them.

“Thank you,” she told the men. “I really appreciate your helping me and my son to safety.”

“Was that man threatening you?” one of them asked.

She nodded. More threatening than they could possibly understand. Brendan O’Hannigan could take even more from her now than just her life. He could take away her son.

“H-he’s a b-bad man,” CJ stammered. The little boy trembled with fear and the aftereffects of his physical defense of his mother.

“Are you okay?” she asked him, concerned that he’d gotten hurt when he’d flung himself at Brendan. She couldn’t believe her timid son had summoned that much courage and anger. And she hated that she’d been so careless with their safety that she’d put him in such a dangerous predicament. Dropping to her knees in front of her son, she inspected him to see if he had been harmed.

His little face was flushed nearly as bright red as his tousled curls. His eyes glistened with tears he was fighting hard not to shed. He blinked furiously and bit his bottom lip. Even at three, he was too proud to cry in front of strangers. He nodded.

Her heart clutched in her chest, aching with love and pride. “You were so brave.” She wound her arms tightly around him and lifted him up as she stood again. Maybe a good parent would have admonished him for physically launching himself at a stranger. But it was so hard for him to be courageous that she had to praise his efforts. “Thank you for protecting Mommy.”

She hadn’t been able to shake Brendan’s strong grip. But CJ’s attack had caught the mobster off guard so that he’d released her and stepped back. She released a shuddery breath of relief that he hadn’t hurt her son.

CJ wrapped his pudgy little legs around her waist and clung to her, his slight body trembling against her. “The bad man is gone?”

“He’s gone.”

But for how long? Had he just taken the stairs to meet the elevator when it stopped? CJ had pushed the up arrow, so the car was going to the roof. She doubted Brendan would waste his time going up. Instead he would have more time to get down to the lobby and lay in wait for her and CJ to leave for the parking garage.

And if he followed her there, she would have no protection against him. Unlike him, she carried no weapons. Just a can of mace and that was inside her purse, which she had locked in her vehicle.

But these men had promised to see her safely to her car. Surely they would protect her against Brendan...

But who would protect her from them?

The thought slipped unbidden into her mind, making her realize why her pulse hadn’t slowed. She didn’t feel safe yet.

Not with them.

Balancing CJ on her hip and holding him with just one arm, she reached for the panel of buttons. But one of the men stepped in front of it, blocking her from the lobby or the emergency call button. Then the other man stepped closer to her, trapping her and CJ between them.

She clutched her son more closely to her chest and glanced up at the illuminated numbers above the doors. They were heading toward the roof. Why hadn’t they pushed other buttons to send the car back down? These men would have no patients to treat up there. But then, just because they wore scrubs didn’t mean that they actually worked at the hospital.

When Charlotte had relocated her more than three years ago, she’d taught Josie to trust no one but her. And her own instincts. She should have heeded that warning before she’d stepped inside the elevator with these men. She should have heeded that warning before she’d driven back to Chicago.

“My son and I need to leave,” she said, wishing now that she had never left her safe little home in Michigan. But she’d been so worried about her father that she’d listened to her heart instead of her head.

“That’s the plan, Miss Jessup,” the one standing in front of the elevator panel replied. “To get you out of here.”

Somehow she suspected he wasn’t talking about just getting her out of the hospital. And, like Brendan, he had easily recognized her.

She should have heeded Charlotte’s other advice all those years ago to have more plastic surgery. But Josie had stopped when she’d struggled to recognize her own face in the mirror. She hadn’t wanted to forget who she was. But maybe she should have taken that risk. It was definitely safer than the risk she’d taken in coming to see her father.

She feared that risk was going to wind up costing her everything.

* * *

“COME ON, GUY, just walk away,” the pseudo-orderly advised Brendan.

“You don’t want to shoot me,” Brendan warned, stepping closer to the man instead of walking away. That had always been his problem. Once he got out of trouble, the way he had when he’d run away nearly twenty years ago, he turned around and headed right back into it—even deeper than before.

The other man shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me. The security cameras are not functioning up here.”

Brendan suspected that had been intentional. While he had been completely shocked to see Josie, these men had been expecting her. They had actually been waiting for her...with disabled security cameras and weapons.

So Stanley Jessup’s assault hadn’t been such a random act of violence. It was the trap that had been used to draw Josie out of hiding.

Was he the only one who hadn’t known that she was really alive?

“And Jessup, who’s heavily drugged, is the only patient in a room near here. So by the time someone responds to the sound of the shot,” the man brazenly bragged, “I’ll be gone. We planned our escape route.”

Brendan needed to plan his, too. But he didn’t intend to escape danger. He planned to confront it head-on and eliminate the threat.

“In fact,” the man continued, his ruddy face contorting with a smirk, “it would be better to kill you than leave you behind as a potential witness.” He lifted the gun, so there was no way the bullet would miss. Then he cocked the trigger.

Brendan had a gun, too, holstered under his arm. And another at his back. And one strapped to his ankle. But before he could pull any of them, he would have a bullet in his head. So instead of fighting with a weapon, he used his words.

“I’m Brendan O’Hannigan,” he said, “and that’s why you don’t want to shoot me.”

First the man snorted derisively as if the name meant nothing to him. Then he repeated it, “O’Hannigan,” as if trying to place where he’d heard it before. Then his eyes widened and his jaw dropped open as recognition struck him with the same force as if Brendan had swung his fist at him. “Oh, shit.”

That was how people usually reacted when they learned his identity—except for Josie. She had acted as if she’d known nothing of his family or their dubious family business. And she had gotten close to him, with her impromptu visits to the tavern and her persistent flirting, before he’d realized that she had been doing just that: acting.

She had known exactly who he was or she would have never sought him out. She’d been after a scoop for her father’s media outlets. Even after all those other stories she’d brought to him, she’d still been trying to prove herself to Daddy.

Brendan had devoted himself to just the opposite, trying to prove himself as unlike his father as possible. Until the old man had died, drawing Brendan back into a life that he had been unable to run far enough away from when he was a kid.

“Yeah, if you shoot me, you better hope the police find you before any of my family does,” Brendan warned the man. But it was a bluff.

He really had no idea what his “family” would do or if they would even care. He was the only one who cared about his father’s murder—enough to risk everything for justice. Hell, his “family,” given the way they’d resented his return and his inheritance, would probably be relieved if he died, especially if they knew the truth about him.

The man stepped back and lifted his gun so that the barrel pointed toward the ceiling, waving it around as if there were a white flag of surrender tied to the end of it. “I don’t want any trouble—any of your kind of trouble.”

Brendan didn’t want that kind of trouble, either. But it was too late. He was in too deep now—so deep that he hadn’t been able to get out even after he’d thought Josie had been killed. But then her death had made him even more determined to pursue justice.

“If you didn’t want trouble,” Brendan said, “then you shouldn’t have messed with my son and his mother.” Now he swung his fist into the man’s face.

The guy fell back, but before he went down, Brendan snapped the gun from his grasp and turned it on him. There was no greater power play than turning a man’s own gun on him. His father had taught him that, starting his lessons when Brendan was only a few years older than his son was now.

“What the hell do you want with her?” he demanded.

“I just got paid to do a job, man,” the man in scrubs said, cringing away from the barrel pointed in his face.

“What’s the job?”

The man opened his mouth but hesitated before speaking, until Brendan cocked the trigger. Then he blurted out, “To kill Josie Jessup!”

“Damn it!” he cursed at having his suspicions confirmed.

He had only just discovered that she was alive and that she’d given birth to his son. He didn’t want to lose the boy before he’d gotten the chance to claim him. And he didn’t want Josie to die again. He glanced back at the elevator, at the numbers above the doors that indicated it had stopped—on the top floor.

“You’re not going to make it,” the man advised. “You’re not going to be able to save her.”

Brendan cursed again because the guy was probably right. But still he had to try. He turned the gun and swung the handle at the man’s head.

One down. Two to go...

* * *

THE WIND ON the roof was cold, whipping through Josie’s light jacket and jeans. She slipped the side of her unzipped jacket over CJ’s back to shield him from the cold bite of the breeze. He snuggled against her, his face pressed into her neck. Her skin was damp from the quiet tears he surreptitiously shed. He must have felt the fear and panic that clutched at her, and he trembled with it while she tensely held herself together.

She had to do something. She had to make certain these men didn’t hurt her son. But since she hadn’t reached Charlotte, earlier, the former U.S. marshal couldn’t come to her rescue as she had last time. Josie had only herself—and the instincts she’d previously ignored—to help her now.

The two men were huddled together just a few feet away from them, between her and CJ and the elevator. There was no way to reach it without going through them. And with the bulges of weapons at their backs, she didn’t dare try to go through them. Nor did she want to risk turning her back on them to run, for fear that they would shoot. And since they were on the roof, where could she go? How far could she run without falling over the side?

One of the men spoke into a cell phone about the change in plans: CJ.

While they had somehow discovered that she was really alive, they must not have been aware that she was pregnant when she’d gone into hiding.

Despite the fact that he’d lowered his voice, it carried on the wind, bringing the horrifying words to her.

“...never agreed to do a kid.”

“...someone else knows she’s alive and hassled her in the hall.”

Because Brendan wasn’t any happier she was alive than these men apparently were. Of course he hadn’t seemed as eager to rectify that as they were.

“Okay, I understand,” said the man holding the phone before he clicked it off and slid it back into his pocket. Then he turned to his co-conspirator and nodded. “We have to eliminate them both.”

A shudder of fear and revulsion rippled through Josie. Thankfully CJ wouldn’t understand what they meant by “eliminate.” But eventually he would figure it out, when he stared down the barrel of a gun.

“I don’t know what you’re getting paid to do this,” she addressed the men as they turned toward her. “But I have money. Lots of money. I can pay you more than you’re getting now.”

The man who’d been on the phone chuckled bitterly. “We were warned you might make that offer. But you forfeited your access to that money when you faked your death, lady.”

They were right. Josie Jessup’s bank accounts and trust fund had closed when she’d died. And JJ Brandt’s salary from the community college was barely enough to cover her rent, utilities and groceries. She had nothing in her savings account to offer them.

“My father would pay you,” she said, “whatever you ask.” But first they would have to prove to him that she was really alive. She hadn’t dared step inside his room. What would happen if gunmen burst inside with her? The shock would surely bring on another heart attack—maybe a fatal one.

The men shared a glance, obviously debating her offer. But then one of them shook his head. “This is about more than money, lady.”

“What is it about?” she asked.

As far she knew, Brendan was the only one with any reason to want her dead. If these men worked for him, they wouldn’t have held him back from boarding the elevator with her. If they worked for him, they wouldn’t have dared to touch him at all. She still couldn’t believe that she had dared to touch him, that she’d dared to go near him even to pursue her story. The police had been unable to determine who had killed his father, the legendary crime boss, so she had vowed to find out if there was any truth to the rumors that Dennis O’Hannigan’s runaway son had killed him out of revenge and greed.

She had found something else entirely. More than the story, she had been attracted to the man—the complex man who had been grieving the death of his estranged father while trying to take over his illicit empire. She had never found evidence proving Brendan was the killer, but he must have been worried that she’d discovered something. Why else would he have tried to kill her?

Just because he’d learned she’d been lying to him about what she really was? Maybe. He’d been furious with her—furious enough to want revenge. But if he wasn’t behind this attempt to eliminate her, had he been behind that bomb planted more than three years ago?

Could she have been wrong about him?

“I have a right to know,” she prodded, wanting the truth. That was her problem—she always wanted the truth. It was what had made her such a great reporter before she’d been forced to give it all up to save her life. But since it was probably her last chance to learn it, she wanted this truth more than she’d ever wanted any other. If not Brendan, who wanted her dead?

“It doesn’t matter what it’s about,” one of the men replied.

She suspected he had no idea, either, that he was just doing what he had been paid to do.

“It’s not going to change the outcome for you and your son,” the fake orderly continued as he reached behind him and drew out his gun.

What about her father? Had he only been attacked to lure her out of hiding? Was he safe now?

If only her son was safe, too...

She covered the side of CJ’s cold, damp face with her hand so that he wouldn’t see the weapon. Then she turned, putting her body between the boy and the men. Her body wouldn’t be enough to protect her son, though. Nothing could protect him now. “Please...”

But if the men wouldn’t respond to bribes, they would have no use for begging, either. So she just closed her eyes and prayed as the first shot rang out.