She sucked in a breath, either offended or feeling guilty. “And leaving with you would put us both in even more danger.”
Now he drew in a sharp breath of pure offense. “If I wanted you gone, Josie, I could have just let those men shoot you.”
“But they weren’t going to shoot just me.”
He flinched again at the thought of his child in so much danger. Reaching out, he grasped her shoulders. “Where is my son?” he repeated, resisting the urge to shake the truth out of her. “Someone wants you both dead. You can’t let him out of your sight.” And he couldn’t let either of them out of his.
“I—I …”
“I won’t hurt you,” he assured her. “And I sure as hell won’t hurt him.”
Her head jerked in a sharp nod as if she believed him. He felt the motion more than saw it as her silky hair brushed his chin. She stepped back and turned around and then around again in a complete circle, as if trying to remember where she’d been.
“Where did you hide him?” he asked, hoping like hell that she had hidden him and hadn’t just lost him.
“It was behind some exhaust pipes,” she said. “I couldn’t fit but he squeezed behind them. I—I just don’t remember where they were.”
“What’s his name?”
She hesitated a moment before replying, as if his knowing his name would make the boy more real for Brendan. “CJ.”
Maybe she was right—knowing the boy’s name did make him more real to Brendan. His heart pounded and his pulse raced as he reeled from all the sudden realizations. He had a son. He was a father. He was continuing the “family” of which he had never wanted to be part.
“CJ,” he repeated, then raised his voice and shouted, “CJ!”
“Shh.” Josie cautioned him.
“He might not hear me if I don’t yell,” he pointed out. And Brendan needed to see his boy, to assure himself that his child was real and that he was all right.
“He won’t come out if he hears you,” she explained. “He thinks you’re a bad man.”
Brendan flinched. It didn’t matter that everyone else thought so; he didn’t want his son to believe the lie, too.
“Is that what you told him?” he asked. It must have been what she’d believed all these years, because no matter how determined a reporter she’d been, she hadn’t learned the truth about him.
“It’s what you showed him,” she said, “when you grabbed me by the elevator.”
Dread and regret clenched his stomach muscles. His own son was afraid of him. How would he ever get close to the boy, ever form a relationship with him, if the kid feared him?
He flashed back so many years ago to his own heart pounding hard with fear as he cowered from his father, from the boom of his harsh voice and the sting of his big hand. Brendan hadn’t just feared Dennis O’Hannigan. He’d been terrified of the man. But then so had everyone else.
“I’ll be quiet,” he whispered his promise. “You find him.”
She called for the boy, her voice rising higher with panic each time she said his name. “CJ? CJ?” Then she sucked in a breath and her voice was steadier as she yelled, in a mother’s no-nonsense tone, what must have been his full name, “Charles Jesse Brandt!”
Brandt? The boy’s last name should have been O’Hannigan. But maybe it was better that it wasn’t. Being an O’Hannigan carried with it so many dangers.
But then danger had found the boy no matter what his mother called him. CJ didn’t respond to that maternal command only the rare child dared to disobey. Brendan certainly never would have disobeyed.
Panic clutched at his chest as worst-case scenarios began to play out in his mind. He had seen so many horrible things in his life that the possibilities kept coming. Had the man from the sixth floor somehow joined them on the roof without Brendan noticing? Had he found the boy already?
Another scenario played through his head, of Josie lying to him again. Still. Had she hidden the child and told him not to come out for Brendan? She’d hidden his son from him for three years—a few more minutes weren’t going to bother her.
“Where is he?” he asked, shoving his hands in his pockets so that he wouldn’t reach for her again. He had already frightened her, which was probably why she’d hidden their son from him.
She shook her head. “I don’t know.” The panic was in her voice, too.
Brendan almost preferred to think that she was lying to him and knew where the boy was, having made certain he was safe.
Her hand slapped against a metal pipe. “I thought he was behind here. CJ! CJ!”
“Then why isn’t he coming out?” Brendan had stayed quiet and now kept his voice to a whisper despite the panic clutching at him.
“No, it can’t be …” she murmured, her voice cracking with fear and dread.
“What?” He demanded to know the thought that occurred to her, that had her trembling now with fear.
“He’s at the edge of the roof,” she said. “He told me there was a short wall behind him. I—I told him not to go over it …”
Because there would have been nothing but the ground, twenty stories below, on the other side. If the boy was still on the roof with them, he would answer his mother. Even if he heard Brendan, he would come out to protect her, as he did before.
Oh, God!
Had Brendan lost his son only moments after finally finding him?
Tears stung Josie’s eyes, blinding her even more than the darkness. And sobs clogged her throat, choking her. She had been trying to protect her son, but she’d put him in more danger. She clawed at the pipes, trying to force them apart, trying to force her way back to where her son had been last.
“CJ! CJ!” she cried, her voice cracking with fear she could no longer contain.
She hadn’t made sacrifices only to protect her father; she had made them to protect her baby, too. If she hadn’t learned she was pregnant, she wouldn’t have agreed to let her father hire bodyguards after the first attempt on her life—a cut brake line. And if she hadn’t realized that no one could keep them truly safe, she wouldn’t have agreed to fake her death and disappear.
Everything she’d done, she’d done for her son. Maybe that was why she’d brought him to see her father—not just so the two could finally meet, but so that her father would understand why she’d hurt him so badly. As a parent himself, he would have to understand and forgive her.
“CJ …” The tears overtook her now.
“Shh,” a deep voice murmured, and a strong hand grasped her shoulder.
But the man didn’t offer comfort.
“Shh,” he said again, as a command. And his hand squeezed. “Listen.”
Since Brendan was alive, she had just assumed that the men who’d wanted to kill her and CJ were not. But maybe he had just scared them off. And now they had returned. Or maybe that other gunman, the one he’d left near her father’s room, had joined them on the roof.
She sucked in a breath, trying to calm herself. But if her child was truly gone, there would be no calming her—not even if the men had come back