LITMIR.BIZ

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he crashed the SUV right through the gate.

      CJ cried, and Josie turned to him with concern. But his cry was actually a squeal as his teal-blue eyes twinkled with excitement. What had happened to her timid son?

      She leaned over the console between the seats. “Be careful.”

      “Are you all right?” he asked. “And CJ?”

      “We’re both fine. But is the car all right?” she asked. One of the headlamps wobbled, bouncing the beam of light around the street. “I need to be able to drive it home.”

      But first she had to get rid of Brendan.

      “You can’t go home,” he told her. “The gunman was coming up behind the vehicle. He could have gotten your plate and pulled up your registration online. He could already know where you live.”

      She didn’t know what would be worse: the gunman knowing where she lived or Brendan knowing. But she wouldn’t need to worry about either scenario. Charlotte had made certain of that. “The vehicle isn’t registered to me.”

      JJ Brandt was only one of the identities the U.S. marshal had set up for her. In case one of those identities was compromised, she could assume a new one. But for nearly four years, she had never come close to being recognized. Until tonight, when no one had been fooled by her new appearance or her new name.

      Thanks to Brendan’s interference, JJ Brandt hadn’t died tonight. Literally. But she would have to die figuratively since Brendan might have learned that name. And she would have to assume one of the other identities.

      But she couldn’t do anything until she figured out how to get rid of him. Maybe she needed to ask him how to do that. He was the one around whom people tended to disappear.

      First her.

      But according to the articles she’d read, there had been others. Some members of his “family” and some of his business rivals had disappeared over the past four years. No bodies had been found, so no charges had been brought against him. But the speculation was that he was responsible for those disappearances.

      She’d believed he was responsible for hers, too, blaming him for those attempts on her life that had driven her into hiding. Since he’d saved her on the roof and again in the garage, she wanted to believe she’d been wrong about him.

      But what if she’d been right? Then she’d gotten into a vehicle with a killer. Was she about to go away for good?

      THE FARTHER THEY traveled from the hospital, the quieter it was. No gunshots. No sirens. He’d made certain to drive away from the emergency entrance so that he wouldn’t cross paths with ambulances or, worse yet, police cars. It wasn’t quiet only outside, but it was eerily silent inside the vehicle, too.

      Brendan glanced at the rearview mirror, his gaze going first to his son. He still couldn’t believe he had a child; he was a father.

      The boy slept, his red curls matted against the side pad of his booster seat. Drool trickled from the corner of his slightly open mouth. How had he fallen asleep so easily after so much excitement?

      Adrenaline still coursed through Brendan’s veins, making his pulse race and his heart pound. But maybe it wasn’t just because of the gunfire and the discovery that Josie was alive and had given birth to his baby.

      Maybe it was because of her. She was so close to him that he could feel the warmth of her body. Or maybe that was just the heat of his own attraction to her. She didn’t look exactly the same, but she made him feel the same. Just as before, she made him feel when he didn’t want to feel anymore.

      She leaned over the console, her shoulder brushing against his as she studied the route he was taking. Did she recognize it? She’d taken it several times over those few months they had gone out. But then that was nearly four years ago.

      Four years in which she’d been living another life and apparently not alone. And not with only their son, either.

      “This isn’t your vehicle?” Brendan asked, unable to hold back the question any longer. It had been nagging at him since she’d said the plate wasn’t registered to her.

      “What?” she asked.

      “You borrowed it from someone else?” Or had she taken it from a driveway they shared? Was she living with someone? A boyfriend? A husband?

      And what would that man be to CJ? His uncle? Stepfather? Or did he just have CJ call him Daddy?

      Had another man claimed Brendan’s son as his?

      “Borrowed what?” she asked, her voice sounding distracted as if she were as weary as their son. Or maybe she was wary. Fearful of telling him too much about her new life for fear that he would track her down.

      “This vehicle. You borrowed it?” Maybe that was the real reason she had worried about him wrecking it—it would make someone else angry with her.

      “No,” she said. “It’s mine.”

      Had someone given it to her? Gifted her a vehicle? It might have seemed extravagant to the man. But to Stanley Jessup’s daughter? She was able to buy herself a fleet of luxury vehicles on her weekly allowance.

      “But it’s not registered to your name?” he asked. “To your address?”

      “No, it’s not,” she said. And her guard was back up.

      His jealousy was gone. The vehicle wasn’t a gift; it was registered under someone else’s name and address to protect her, to prevent someone running her plates and finding where she and her son were living.

      “You do usually have your guard up,” he observed. “You are very careful.”

      “Until tonight,” she murmured regretfully. “I never should have come here.”

      “No,” he agreed. “Not if you wanted to stay in hiding.”

      “I have to stay in hiding.”

      “Why?” he asked.

      She gasped. “I think, after tonight, it would be quite obvious why I had to …” Her voice cracked, but she cleared her throat and added, “Disappear.”

      Brendan nodded in sudden realization of where she had been for almost four years. “You’ve been in witness protection.”

      Her silence gave him the answer that he should have come to long ago. He was painfully familiar with witness protection. But he couldn’t tell her that. Her identity might have changed, but he suspected at heart she was still a reporter. He couldn’t tell her anything without the risk of it showing up in one of her father’s papers or on one of his news programs.

      So he kept asking the questions. “Why were you put in witness protection?”

      What had she seen? What did she know? Maybe she’d learned, in those few short months, more than he’d realized. More than he had learned in four years.

      “What did you witness?” he asked.

      She shrugged and her shoulder bumped against his. “Nothing that I was aware of. Nothing I could testify about.”

      “Then why would the marshals put you in witness protection?”

      Her breath shuddered out, caressing his cheek. “Because someone tried to kill me.”

      “Was it like tonight?” he asked.

      She snorted derisively. “You don’t know?”

      So she assumed he would know how someone had tried to kill her. But he didn’t. “You were shot at back then?”

      “No,” she said. “The attempts were more subtle than that. A cut brake line on my car.” She had driven a little sports car—too fast and too recklessly. He remembered the report of her accident. At the time he had figured her driving had caused it. She was lucky that the accident hadn’t

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