Something jammed into his ribs, and he glanced down. She held the gun he’d given her, not just on him but nearly in him as she pushed the barrel into his side. After the night she’d had, he could understand her losing it. But was she irrational enough to pull the trigger?
Had she slid off the safety? If he hit a bump in the road, she might squeeze the trigger. She might shoot him and then he might crash the SUV and take them all out.
He hadn’t realized that he might need to protect Josie from herself.
HE WAS LOOKING at her nervously, as if he worried that she’d lost her mind. Maybe she had.
Could she do it? Could she pull the trigger? If she had to … If killing Brendan was necessary to save her life or CJ’s.
But she believed what she’d told their son. He was a hero—at least he had been their hero—time and time again the past night. Moreover, she believed in him.
She had the safety on the gun, in case there were any bullets left in it. She hoped like hell there were none. But with Brendan looking as nervous as he was, he obviously thought there could be.
And he thought she could fire the gun.
Good. That was the only way she was going to coerce him to take her where she wanted to go. Where she needed to go. Home.
“We’re doing things my way now,” she said. Since the shoot-out at the hospital, he had brought her from one place to another and neither had been safe.
“You’re not going to pull the trigger,” he said. “You’re not a killer.”
She flinched, hoping that was true. She’d fired the gun back at the complex. Had she hit anyone?
She shot back at him with a smart remark. “Guess that makes one of us.”
“Then why pull the gun on me if you don’t intend to use it?” he asked, his body pressed slightly against the barrel of her gun as if he were beginning to relax. Had he realized that she hadn’t gone crazy? That she was just determined?
“I don’t want to use it,” she admitted, “but I will if you don’t take me where I want to go.”
“It’s too dangerous,” he protested. “Since Charlotte gave up our safe house, she sure as hell gave up the place where she relocated you.”
“Why?” she asked.
“I told you—for money.”
She laughed again. “Do you have any idea who Charlotte Green is?”
He glanced at her with that look again, as if he thought she belonged in a place like Serenity House. “A former U.S. marshal.”
“Her father is king of a wealthy island country near Greece,” she shared. The last thing Charlotte needed was money. “She’s a princess.”
“What?” He definitely thought she was crazy now.
“She’s Princess Gabriella St. Pierre’s sister,” she explained. “They’re royal heiresses.” Of course Charlotte had spent most of her life unaware that she was royalty. Only upon her mother’s death had she learned the woman had been the king’s mistress and herself his illegitimate heir.
“So are you.”
She snorted over the miniscule amount of royal blood running in her veins. Her mother had been a descendent of European royalty, but she’d given up her title to marry Josie’s father. “Not anymore,” she reminded him. “I gave up that life.”
And she shouldn’t have risked coming back to it, not even to see her father, because her arrival had only put him in more danger. God, she hoped he was safe. She had asked Charlotte to check on him, to protect him. What if Brendan was actually right about her?
No, that wasn’t possible. Charlotte would never betray her.
“I have a new home,” she said. “And we’re going there. It might be the only safe place we have left to go.”
“Or it could be a trap,” he said. “They could be waiting for us there.”
“Charlotte wouldn’t have given us up,” she said. “She’s CJ’s godmother. My friend. She wouldn’t have given us up.”
She barked out directions, and he followed them. She suspected it wasn’t because of the gun she pressed into his side but because he had no place else to take her. He’d tried the O’Hannigan mansion and what had probably been some type of safe house. Why had no other tenants come out into the halls when the alarm had sounded? Why had it only been them and the gunmen?
“What if you’re wrong about her?” he asked. “What if she’s not really who you think she is?”
Then Charlotte wouldn’t be the only one she’d misjudged. Brendan O’Hannigan wasn’t who she’d thought he was, either. She had been wrong about him for so long. What if she was wrong about Charlotte, too? What if the marshal had been compromised?
She wouldn’t have sold out Josie for money, but she might have sold her out if there was a threat against someone she loved, such as her sister. Or Aaron.
The closer they got to her home, the more scared Josie became that Brendan might be right. They could be walking right into the killer’s trap.
Brendan could have taken the gun away from her at any time. He could have snapped it out of her hand more easily than he had taken the weapon off the faux orderly who’d grabbed him on the sixth floor. But he hadn’t wanted to hurt her. She had already been hurt enough. And if he was right, she was about to be hurt a hell of a lot more.
He intimately knew how painful it was to be betrayed by someone you loved. As a friend, as a lifeline to her old life, she had loved Charlotte Green. And he’d been fool enough to trust the woman with the truth about himself.
But he’d wanted her to convince Josie to trust him. Now Josie held a gun on him, forcing him to bring her back to a trap. Should he trust her?
Was she part of it? Was this all a ploy to take him down? If not for the boy, he might have suspected her involvement in a murder plot against him. But she loved her son. She wouldn’t knowingly endanger him.
As he drove north, light from the rising sun streamed through her window, washing her face devoid of all color. Her eyes were stark, wide with fear, in her pale face.
“Are you sure you want to risk it?” he asked.
“You’re trying to make me doubt myself,” she said. “Trying to make me doubt Charlotte.”
“Yes,” he admitted.
She looked at him, her eyes filling with sadness and pity. “You don’t trust anyone, do you?”
“I shouldn’t have,” he said. “But I trusted you.”
She pulled the gun slightly away from his side. “You gave me this gun.”
“The one you’re holding on me.”
“I wouldn’t really shoot you,” she assured him, and with a sigh, she dropped the gun back into her purse.
“I know.”
“Then why did you come here?” She sat up straighter as they passed a sign announcing the town limits of Sand Haven, Michigan. Another sign stood beyond that, a billboard prompting someone named Michael to rest in peace.
Josie flinched as she read the sign.
“Do you know Michael?” he asked.
She jerked her chin in a sharp nod.