Royal Rescue (3 page)

With his free hand, he gestured toward CJ. “He gives me the right. I have a lot of rights you’ve apparently denied me.”

“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Why the hell would she have told the man who’d tried to kill her that she was pregnant with his baby? If his attempts had been successful, he would have killed them both.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about, Josie.”

CJ tugged on her hand and whispered loudly, “Mommy, why does the man keep calling you that?”

Now he supported her lie—too late. “I don’t know, honey,” she said. “He has me mixed up with someone else he must have known.”

“No,” Brendan said. “I never really knew Josie Jessup at all.”

No. He hadn’t. Or he would have realized that she was too smart to have ever really trusted him. If only she’d been too smart to fall for him...

But the man was as charming as he was powerful. And when he’d touched her, when he’d kissed her, she had been unable to resist that charm.

“Then it’s no wonder that you’ve mistaken me for her,” Josie said, “since you didn’t really know her very well.”

She furrowed her brow and acted as if a thought had just occurred to her. “Josie Jessup? Isn’t that the daughter of the media mogul? I thought she died several years ago.”

“That was obviously what she wanted everyone to believe—that she was dead,” he said. “Or was it just me?”

She shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”
You. Just you
. But unfortunately, for him to accept the lie, everyone else had had to believe it, too. “I am not her. She must really be gone.”

And if she’d had any sense, she would have stayed gone. Well away from her father and this man.

“Why are
you
here?” she asked. “Are you visiting someone?”

Or knowing all this time that she wasn’t really dead, had he set a trap for her? Was he the one who had attacked her father? According to the reports from all her father’s media outlets, there was no suspect yet in his assault. But she had one now.

She needed to call Charlotte. But the phone was in her purse, and she had locked her purse in her vehicle so that if anyone was to recognize her, they wouldn’t be able to find her new identity.

“It doesn’t matter why I’m here—just that I am,” he said, dodging her question as he had so many other questions she had asked him during the months they’d been together. “And so are you.”

“Not anymore. We’re leaving,” she said, as much to CJ as to Brendan. As if on cue, the elevator ground to a stop, and the doors slid open. She moved to step into the car, but her wrist was clutched so tightly she couldn’t move.

“That one’s going up,” Brendan pointed out.

“As I said, we got off on the wrong floor.” She tugged hard on her wrist, but his grip didn’t ease. She didn’t want to scream and alarm her already trembling son, so through gritted teeth she said, “Let go of me.”

But he stepped closer. He was so damn big, all broad muscles and tension. There were other bulges beneath the jacket of his dark tailored suit—weapons. He had always carried guns. He’d told her it was because of the dangerous people who resented his inheriting his father’s businesses.

But she’d wondered then if he’d been armed for protection or intimidation. She was intimidated, so intimidated that she cared less about scaring her son than she did about protecting him. So she screamed.

* * *

H
ER SCREAM STARTLED
Brendan and pierced the quiet of the hospital corridor. But he didn’t release her until her son—
their
son—launched himself at Brendan. His tiny feet kicked at Brendan’s shins and his tiny fists flailed, striking Brendan’s thighs and hips.

“Leggo my mommy! Leggo my mommy!”

The boy’s reaction and fear startled Brendan into stepping back. Josie’s wrist slipped from his grasp. She used her freed hand to catch their son’s flailing fists and tug him close to her.

Before Brandon could reach for her again, three men dressed in hospital scrubs rushed up from the room they’d been loitering near down the hall. Brendan had noted their presence but had been too distracted to realize that they were watching him.

Damn!
He had been trained to constantly be aware of his surroundings and everyone in them. Only Josie had ever made him forget his training to trust no one.

“What’s going on?” one of the men asked.

“This man accosted me and my son,” Josie replied, spewing more lies. “He tried to grab me.”

Brendan struggled to control his anger. The boy—his boy—was already frightened of him. He couldn’t add to that fear by telling the truth. So he stepped back again in order to appear nonthreatening, when all he wanted to do was threaten.

“We’ll escort you to your car, ma’am,” another of the men offered as he guided her and the child into the waiting elevator.

“Don’t let her leave,” Brendan advised. Because if she left, he had no doubt that he would never see her and his son again. This time she would stay gone. He moved forward, reaching for those elevator doors before they could shut on Josie and their son.

But strong hands closed around his arms, dragging him back, while another man joined Josie inside the elevator. Just as the doors slid shut, Brendan noticed the telltale bulge of a weapon beneath the man’s scrubs. He carried a gun at the small of his back.

Brendan shrugged off the grasp of the man who held him. Then he whirled around to face him. But now he faced down the barrel of his gun. Why were he and at least one of the other men armed? They weren’t hospital security, and he doubted like hell that they were orderlies.

Who were they? And more important, who had sent them?

The guy warned Brendan, “Don’t be a hero, man.”

He laughed incredulously at the idea of anyone considering
him
a hero. “Do you know who I am?”

“I don’t care who the hell you are,” the guy replied, as he cocked the gun, “and neither will this bullet.”

Four years ago Brendan’s father had learned that it didn’t matter who he was, either. When he’d been shot in the alley behind O’Hannigan’s early one morning, that bullet had made him just as dead as anyone else who got shot. Even knowing the dangerous life his father had led, his murder had surprised Brendan.

As the old man had believed himself invincible, so had Brendan. Or maybe he just remembered being fifteen, running away from the strong, ruthless man and never looking back.

But Dennis O’Hannigan’s death had brought Brendan back to Chicago and to the life he’d sworn he’d never live. Most people thought he’d come home to claim his inheritance. Even now he couldn’t imagine why the old man had left everything to him.

They hadn’t spoken in more than fifteen years, even though his father had known where Brendan was and what he’d been doing. No one had ever been able to hide from Dennis O’Hannigan—not his friends or his family and certainly not his enemies.

Which one had ended the old man’s life?

Brendan had really returned to claim justice. No matter how ruthless his father had been, he deserved to have his murder solved, his killer punished.

Some people thought Brendan had committed the murder—out of vengeance and greed. He had certainly had reasons for wanting revenge. His father had been as cruel a father and husband as he’d been a crime boss.

And as a crime boss, the man had acquired a fortune—a destiny and a legacy that he’d left to his only blood relative. Because, since his father’s death, Brendan was the only O’Hannigan left in the family. Or so he’d thought until he’d met his son tonight.

He couldn’t lose the boy before he even got to know him. No matter how many people thought of him as a villain, he would have to figure out a way to be the hero.

He had to save his son.

And Josie.

Four years ago she must have realized that she was in danger—that must have been why she’d staged her own death. Had she realized yet that those men in the elevator with her were not orderlies or interns but dangerous gunmen? Had she realized that she was in as much or more danger now than she’d been in before?

Chapter Three

Fear gripped Josie. She was more scared now than she’d been when Brendan wouldn’t let go of her. Maybe her pulse raced and her heart hammered just in reaction to his discovering her. Or maybe it was because she wasn’t entirely certain she had really gotten away from him...even as the doors slid closed between them.

“Thank you,” she told the men. “I really appreciate your helping me and my son to safety.”

“Was that man threatening you?” one of them asked.

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.

* * *

“
C
OME 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.