But maybe becoming a mother had changed her priorities. Maybe she cared more about keeping CJ hidden than exposing others.
He stroked his fingers over her shoulder and down her bare back. “Your skin is so soft.” He’d thought it was because of fancy spa treatments she would have had as American princess Josie Jessup. But with the new lifestyle the marshals would have set up for her, she wouldn’t have been able to go to expensive spas.
She would have had to live modestly and quietly, or else she would have been found before now. Because someone was looking for her.
Why?
To get to him?
She was his only weakness. Hurting her would draw him out, and maybe make him careless enough for someone to get the jump on him.
Had she had to give up everything—her home, family and career—because of him? Then she deserved to know the truth.
“Josie.”
“Hmm.” she murmured sleepily.
He looked down at her face and found her eyes closed, her lashes lying on the dark circles beneath. And her body was limp in his arms, relaxed. He couldn’t wake her. After everything she’d been through that night, she needed to rest and recuperate. Because their ordeal wasn’t over yet. It wouldn’t be over until he discovered who was trying to kill her.
But they were safe now, here, wrapped in each other’s arms, so he closed his eyes.
He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep when the alarm sounded. No, the piercing whistle was not from a clock but from the security panel in the den.
“What!” Josie exclaimed as she jerked awake in his arms. “What is that?”
“Security has been breached,” he said, already reaching for his clothes and his weapons.
There were other apartments inside the building, other witnesses or suspects or agents the intruder could have been after. But Brendan knew the alarm was for them—the danger coming for them ….
He had just one question for her. “How well do you know how to shoot?”
While she’d held the gun when he’d handed it to her, the weight of it was still unfamiliar in her hands. Before tonight she hadn’t held one in years, let alone fired one. And when she had fired one, it had only been at targets—not people.
Could she pull the trigger on a person?
“Mommy, the ‘larm clock is too loud,” CJ protested with his tiny hands tightly pressed against his ears.
Brendan scooped him up and headed toward the apartment door. “Grab your stuff,” he told her over his shoulder. He carried the boy with one arm while he clutched a gun in his other hand.
“Sh-shouldn’t we stay here?” she asked. “And just lock the door?”
His turquoise eyes intense, he shook his head. “We don’t know if the breach was someone getting inside or putting something inside.”
A bomb.
Josie gasped and hurried toward the door. But she slammed into Brendan’s back as he abruptly stopped.
“We have to be very quiet,” he warned them.
“CJ, you have to play statue,” she told their son. “No matter what happens, you have to be quiet.”
“Like on the roof?”
Not like that. She wouldn’t dare leave her little boy alone in the dark again. “Well …”
“We’re all staying together,” Brendan said, “and we’re staying quiet.”
She released a shaky sigh.
“Mommy, shh,” the little boy warned her.
A corner of Brendan’s mouth lifted in a slight grin. Then he slowly opened the door. He nodded at her before stepping into the hall. It was clear. He wouldn’t have brought their son into the line of fire.
But they needed to get out of the building. Fast.
She breathed deep, checking for the telltale odor of gas. But she smelled nothing but Brendan; the scent of his skin clung to hers. While they’d been making love, someone had gotten inside the building.
What if that person had gotten inside the apartment? He or they could have grabbed CJ before his parents had had a chance to reach him.
Her heart ached with a twinge of guilt more powerful than any she’d felt before. And she’d felt plenty guilty over the years.
She followed after Brendan, watching as he juggled the boy and his gun. “If we’re taking the elevator …”
He would need to give her the code to punch into the security panel. But he shook his head and pushed open the door to the stairwell.
Of course they wouldn’t want to be in the elevator. If the building exploded, they would be trapped. But wouldn’t they be trapped inside the stairwell, too? If the gunmen were heading up, they would meet them on the way down—and CJ would be caught in the crossfire.
Brendan didn’t hesitate though. He hurried down the first flight and then the second.
“Brendan …”
Over his father’s shoulder, their little boy pressed a finger to his lips, warning her again to be quiet.
They had stopped, but their footsteps echoed. Then she realized it wasn’t their footsteps that were echoing. It was someone else’s—on their way up, as she’d feared. But Brendan continued to go down.
“No,” she whispered frantically. “They’re coming!”
He stopped on the next landing and pushed open the door to the hall. “Run,” he told her.
“To the elevator?” They could take it now. The men wouldn’t have come inside if they’d set a bomb.
“No,” he said. “Door at the end of the hall. Go through it.” He pushed her ahead of him and turned back as the door to the stairwell opened. But he kept his back toward that door, his body between their son and whoever might exit the stairwell. Before anyone emerged, he fired and kept firing as he ran behind Josie.
She pushed through that door he’d pointed at and burst onto a landing with such force that she nearly careened over the railing of the fire escape. Brendan, CJ clutched tight against his chest, exited behind her.
He momentarily holstered his gun, even though the men had to be right behind him, and he grabbed up a pipe that lay on the landing and slid it through the handle, jamming the door shut.
How had he known the pipe was there? Had he planned such an escape before?
The door rattled as another body struck it.
“Go,” he told her. “Run!”
She nearly stumbled as she hurried down the dimly illuminated metal steps. But gunfire rang out again—shots fired against that jammed door.
Brendan, still holding their son, who was softly sobbing, rushed down the stairs behind her. The shots, the urgency, the danger had her trembling so uncontrollably that she slipped, her feet flying from beneath her.
She would have fallen, would have hit each metal step on the long way to the ground. But a strong hand caught her arm, holding her up while she regained her footing.
When they neared the bottom of the fire escape, the gun was back in his hand, the light from the parking lot lamps glinting