Royal Rescue

by Lisa Childs

  Josie turned toward the backseat and offered their son a shaky smile. “Yes, sweetheart, he’s your daddy.”

  “I—I thought he was a bad man.”

  Josie shook her head. “No, sweetheart, he’s a good man. A hero. He keeps saving us from the bad men.”

  Was she saying that for the boy’s sake? To make CJ feel better? Safer? Or did she believe it? Had she finally really come to trust Brendan, even though he hadn’t told her the truth?

  “My daddy…” the little boy murmured, as if he were falling back to sleep. Given that his slumber kept getting violently interrupted, it was no wonder that the little boy was still tired.

  “Well, we know who I am,” Brendan said. A hero? Did she really see him that way? “What about who’s after us?”

  She kept staring into the backseat as if watching her son to make sure that the blood really wasn’t his. Or that the news of his parentage hadn’t affected him.

  “Whoever it is,” he said, “appears to want us both dead.”

  “They’re gone,” she murmured. Apparently she’d been watching the back window instead. “We’re safe now.”

  “We should have been safe where we were,” he replied. It was a damn safe house.

  “We need to go home,” she murmured, sounding as dazed as their son. But she wasn’t just tired; she was probably in shock. She’d fired her gun at people. If that had been the first time, she was probably having an emotional reaction. She was trembling and probably not just because the car had yet to warm up. “We need to go home,” she repeated.

  She wasn’t talking about his home. Neither the mansion where he’d grown up nor the apartment where he’d spent much of his adult life was safe. But she couldn’t be talking about her place, either.

  Maybe her father’s? But if the news reports were correct, he’d been attacked in the parking garage of his condominium complex.

  “We can’t,” he said. “It’s not safe at your dad’s, either.”

  “We have to go home,” she said, her voice rising slightly now, as if with hysteria. “To what CJ and I call home, where we’ve been living.”

  “Don’t you get it?” he asked. “The only one who could have tracked down where we were was your friend.”

  She leaned forward and peered into his face as if worried that the bullet had impaired his thinking. “Friend?”

  “The former marshal,” he said. “She must have traced the call to where we were staying. She sent those people.” It couldn’t have been anyone else. Damn! Why had he trusted the woman?

  Josie sucked in an audible breath of shock. “Charlotte? You think Charlotte is behind the attempts on my life?”

  “No.” He knew she considered the woman a friend, at one point maybe her only friend. And she had to be devastated. But she also had to know the truth. “But she must have sold out to whoever wants you dead.”

  Josie chuckled. Maybe she’d given over completely to hysteria and shock. “You think Charlotte Green sold out?”

  He nodded, and his head pounded again. “It had to be her. You can’t trust her.”

  “She told me to trust you,” she reminded him. “So now you’re saying that I shouldn’t?”

  “No, no,” he said. “You should trust me but not her. Remember what you told our son—I’m not a bad man. I’ve saved you.”

  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 wo
uldn’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.

  Chapter Twelve

  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. “I knew him.”

  “I’m sorry.” Had her recent loss explained why she’d been so desperate to see her father that she’d risked her safety and CJ’s?

  She hadn’t been in contact with her father, as he’d initially expected. The man, who’d looked so sad and old at her funeral, had believed she was dead just as Brendan had.

  “You hadn’t seen your dad until—” he glanced at the sun rising high in the sky “—last night?”

  “I didn’t see him last night, either,” she said.

  “But you were on the right floor,” he said, remembering the lie she’d told him.

  She bit her lip and blinked hard, as if fighting tears, before replying, “The assault brought on a heart attack. I didn’t want his seeing me to bring on another one.”

  “So he has no idea that you’re really alive?”

  She shook her head. “I thought it would be better if he didn’t know. I thought he’d be safer.”

  “You and your father were close,” he said. “It must have been hard to leave him.”

  “Harder to deceive him,” she said.

  But she’d had no problem deceiving him when she’d been trying to get her story. But then she hadn’t loved him.

  He drew in a deep breath and focused on the road. She’d given him directions right to her door. Giving her the gun had made her trust him. But she had placed her trust in someone she shouldn’t have.

  “Let me go in first,” he suggested as he drove past the small white bungalow where she lived now. “Let me make sure that it’s not a trap.”

  She shuddered as if she remembered the bomb set at his house. There had been very little left of the brick Tudor; it wouldn’t take a very big bomb to totally decimate her modest little home.

  He turned the corner and pulled the SUV over to the curb on the next street. After shifting into Park, he reached for the door handle, but she clutched his arm.

  Her voice cracking, she said, “I don’t want you to go alone.”

  “You can’t go with me,” he said. “You have to protect our son.”

  “If you can’t?” She shook her head. “It’s not a trap. It can’t be a trap.” She had been on her own so long that she was desperately hanging on to her trust for the one person who’d been there for her.

  He forced a reassuring smile for her sake. “Then I’ll be right back.”

  She stared at him, her eyes wide with uncertainty. She wanted to believe him as much as she wanted to believe that Charlotte hadn’t betrayed her.

  “I’ll be back.” He leaned across the console and clasped her face in his hands, tipping her mouth up for his kiss. He lingered over her lips, caressing them slowly and thoroughly. “Wait here for me.”

  She opened her mouth again, but she made no protest. He opened the driver’s door and then opened the backseat door. She turned and looked over the console as he leaned in and pressed a kiss against his son’s mussed red curls. The boy never stirred from his slumber.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for telling him that I’m his father.”

  “You told him.”

  “But you didn’t contradict me,” he said. “He would have believed what you told him over whatever I told him.” Because he loved and trusted his mother. Brendan was a stranger to him. And if he was right about the trap, he may forever remain a stranger to him.

  The little boy might grow up never knowing his father.

  *

  BRENDAN HAD BEEN gone too long. Longer than he needed to check out the house and make sure it was as safe as she was hoping it was.

  But what if it wasn’t?

  The keys dangled from the ignition. He hadn’t taken them this time, because he wasn’t sure he’d be coming back. Josie’s heart rate quickened, pounding faster with each second that passed.

  She needed to go to her house. Needed to check on him.

  Or perhaps she should call Charlotte for backup. But he wouldn’t need backup unless Charlotte had betrayed them. Panic and dread clutched her heart. Not Charlotte. Not her friend, her son’s godmother.

  Charlotte couldn’t have revealed Josie’s new location, not even to protect someone else. But maybe someone had found out anyway. Josie needed to learn the truth.

  She wriggled out of the passenger’s seat, over the console and behind the steering wheel. Then she turned the keys in the ignition.

  CJ murmured as the engine started. He was waking up. She couldn’t leave him in the car and she couldn’t bring him with her—in case Brendan was right about her house being a trap now.

  So she brought her son where she brought him every morning, where she would have brought him that morning if she hadn’t taken a leave from work. She drove him to day care. It was only a few blocks from her house, at the home of a retired elementary schoolteacher.

  Mrs. Mallory watched CJ and two other preschool children. The sixty-something woman opened the door as Josie carried him up the walk. And the smile on her face became tight with concern the closer Josie came.

  “Are you all right?” the older woman anxiously asked.

  How awful did she look?

  A glance in the mirror by the door revealed dark circles beneath her eyes, and her hair was tangled and mussed, looking as though she’d not pulled a comb through it in days. She probably hadn’t.

  “I’m fine,” Josie assured her. “I’m just in a hurry.”

  Mrs. Mallory reached out for the sleepy child. “I wasn’t even expecting you. I thought you were taking some time off.” As she cradled the boy in one arm, she squeezed Josie’s shoulder with her other hand. “You really should.
Let this whole tragic situation with Michael die down.”

  “So people are blaming me?”

  Mrs. Mallory bit her lip and nodded. “It’s not your fault, though, honey. That boy wanted to be a reporter since he wasn’t much older than CJ here.”

  “But I suggested the story….”

  “But you didn’t pull the trigger,” the older woman pointed out. “People are blaming the wrong person and they’ll realize that soon enough. Just give them some time. Or take some for yourself.”

  She had no time to lose—not if Brendan had walked into a trap. “Even though you weren’t planning on it, would you mind watching him for a little while?”

  “’Course not,” the older woman assured her, and she cuddled him close in her arms. She was wearing one of the velour tracksuits that CJ loved snuggling into. “I was just starting to miss him.”

  CJ lifted his head from Mrs. Mallory’s shoulder as if just realizing where he was. “Daddy? Where’s my daddy?”

  Mrs. Mallory’s eyes widened with shock. The boy had never mentioned him before. Of course, before last night he hadn’t even known he had a father. Or a grandfather.

  “You have to stay here with Mrs. M,” Josie told him, leaning forward to press a kiss against his freckled cheek, “and be a good boy, okay?”

  His bottom lip began to quiver and his eyes grew damp with tears he fought back with quick blinks. “What if the bad men come here?”

  “Bad men?” Mrs. Mallory asked, her brow wrinkling with confusion and uneasiness.

  Josie shrugged off the question. “He must have had a bad dream.”

  If only that had been all it was…

  Just a bad dream.

  The little boy vehemently shook his head. “The bad men were real and had guns. They were shootin’ at us and then there was a big bang!”

  Josie shook her head, too, trying to quiet the boy’s fears and Mrs. Mallory’s. “It must have been quite the dream,” she said, “and his imagination is so vivid.”