LITMIR.BIZ

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forgotten the amenities and conveniences of one.

      She shook her head. “But someone there might realize we were at this explosion …” The smell of smoke had permeated the car and probably her hair. “And they might call the police,” she said. “Or the media.”

      He nearly grinned at the irony of her wanting to avoid the press.

      “And it’s not necessary,” she said, dismissing his concerns. “I’m okay.”

      He glanced toward the backseat. CJ’s screams had subsided to hiccups and sniffles. Brendan’s heart ached with the boy’s pain and fear. “What about our son?”

      “He’s scared,” Josie explained. And from the way she kept trembling, the little boy wasn’t the only one.

      “It’s okay,” she assured the child, and perhaps she was assuring herself, too. “We’re getting far away from the fire.”

      Not so far that the glow of the fire wasn’t still visible in the rearview mirror, along with the billows of black smoke darkening the sky even more.

      “It won’t hurt us,” she said. “It won’t hurt us….”

      “We’re going someplace very safe,” Brendan said, “where no bad men can find us.”

      He shouldn’t have brought them back to the mansion. But the place was usually like a fortress, so he hadn’t thought any outside threats would be able to get to them. He hadn’t realized that the greatest danger was already inside those gates. Hell, inside those brick walls. Had one of his men—one of the O’Hannigan family—set the bomb?

      He’d been trying to convince her that he’d had nothing to do with the attempts on her life, years ago or recently. And personally, he hadn’t. But that didn’t mean he still wasn’t responsible … because of who he was.

      As if she’d been reading his mind, she softly remarked, “No place, with you, is going to be safe for us.”

      But he wasn’t only the head of a mob organization. He had another life, but, regrettably, that one was probably even more dangerous.

      “WHERE ARE WE?” she asked, pitching her voice to a low whisper—and not just because CJ slept peacefully now in his father’s arms, but also because the big brick building was eerily silent.

      There had been other vehicles inside the fenced and gated parking lot when they’d arrived. But few lights had glowed in the windows of what looked like an apartment complex. Of course everyone could have been sleeping. But when Brendan had entered a special code to open the doors, the lobby inside looked more commercial than residential.

      Was this an office building?

      He’d also needed a code to open the elevator doors and a key to turn it on. Fortunately, he’d retrieved his keys from the lock at the mansion … just before the house had exploded.

      Her ears had finally stopped ringing. Still, she heard nothing but their footsteps on the terrazzo as they walked down the hallway of the floor on which he’d stopped the elevator. He’d been doing everything with one hand, his arms wrapped tight around their sleeping son.

      At the hospital she’d suspected that Brendan had held their son so that she wouldn’t try to escape with him. Now he held him almost reverently, as if he was scared that he’d nearly lost him in the explosion.

      If he had parked closer to the house …

      She shuddered to think what could have happened to her son.

      “It’ll be warmer inside,” Brendan assured her, obviously misinterpreting her shudder as a shiver.

      She actually was cold. The building wasn’t especially well heated.

      “Inside what? Where are we?” she asked, repeating her earlier question. When he’d told her to grab her overnight bag, which she had slung over her shoulder along with her purse, she’d thought he was bringing them to a hotel. But this building was nothing like any hotel at which she’d ever stayed, as Josie Jessup or as JJ Brandt.

      “This is my apartment,” he said as he stopped outside a tall metal door.

      “Apartment? But you had the mansion …” And this building was farther from the city than the house had been, farther from the businesses rumored to be owned or run by the O’Hannigan family. But maybe that was why he’d wanted it—to be able to get away from all the responsibilities he’d inherited.

      “I already had this place before I inherited the house from my father,” he explained as he shoved the key into the lock.

      She wanted to grab her son and run. But she recognized she could just be having a panic attack, like the ones the nightmares brought on when they awakened her in a cold sweat. And those panic attacks, when she ran around checking the house for gas leaks, scared CJ so much that she would rather spare him having to deal with her hysteria tonight.

      So she just grabbed Brendan’s hand, stilling it before he could turn the key. “We can’t stay here!”

      Panic rushed up on her, and she dragged in a deep breath to control it and to check the air for that telltale odor. She smelled smoke on them, but it was undoubtedly from the earlier explosion. “Someone could remember you lived here and find us.”

      “No. It’s safe here,” he said. “There’s no bomb.”

      “Bu—”

      Rejecting her statement before he even heard it, he shook his head. “Nobody knows where I was living before I showed up at my father’s funeral.”

      Some had suspected he hadn’t even been alive; they’d thought that instead of running away, he might have been murdered, like they believed his mother was. Some had refused to believe that he was his father’s son, despite his having his father’s eyes. The same eyes that her son had.

      His stepmother had still demanded a DNA test before she had stopped fighting for control of her dead husband’s estate. She hadn’t stopped slinging the accusations though. She had obviously been the source of so many of the stories about him, such as the one that Brendan had killed his father for vengeance and money. She had even talked to Josie back then to warn her away from a dangerous man.

      Given the battle with his stepmother and the constant media attention, Josie could understand that Brendan would need a quiet place to get away from it all. And it might have occurred to someone else that he would need such a place.

      “But they can find out.” Somehow, someone had found out she was alive.

      “They didn’t,” he assured her. “It’s safe.” And despite her nails digging into the back of his hand, he turned the key.

      She held her breath, but nothing happened. Then he turned the knob. And still nothing happened, even as the door opened slightly. She expelled a shaky sigh, but she was still tense, still scared.

      Perhaps to reassure her even more, he added, “My name’s not on the lease.”

      Just as her name was not on the title of her vehicle or the deed to her house.

      Did Brendan O’Hannigan have other identities as well? But why? What was he hiding?

      All those years ago she had suspected plenty and she had dug deep, but had found nothing. She had never found this place. Back then she would have been elated if he’d brought her here, since he was more likely to keep his secrets in a clandestine location. But when he pushed the door all the way open and stepped back for her to enter, she hesitated.

      There was no gas. No bomb. No fire. Nothing to stop her from stepping inside but her own instincts.

      “You lost your can of mace,” he said. “You can’t spray me in the face like you intended.”

      She gasped in surprise that he’d realized her intentions back at the mansion. “Why didn’t you take it from me?”

      He

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