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