LITMIR.BIZ

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afraid of me, if you really wanted me gone from your life, you could have just let me blow up.”

      She glanced down at the child he held so tenderly in his arms. “I—I couldn’t do that.”

      No matter how much she might fear him, she didn’t hate him. She didn’t want him dead.

      “Why?” he asked, his eyes intense as he stared at her over the child in his arms.

      “I—I …”

      Her purse vibrated, the cell phone inside silently ringing.

      “You lost the mace but you didn’t lose your phone,” he remarked. “You can answer it.”

      She fumbled inside and pulled out the phone. That phone, so it had to be Charlotte. Earlier Josie had wanted desperately to talk to the former marshal. But now she hesitated, as she paused outside his secret place.

      “You need to talk to your handler,” Brendan advised. “Tell him—”

      “Her,” she automatically corrected him. But she didn’t add that technically she no longer had a handler. When the marshals had failed to find any evidence of his involvement in the attempts on her life, they’d determined they no longer needed to protect her. “Her name is Charlotte Green.” Despite neither of them really being associated with the marshals any longer, the woman continued to protect Josie—if only from afar.

      “Tell her that you’re safe,” he said. And as if to give her privacy, he carried their son across the threshold and inside the apartment.

      Josie followed him with her gaze but not her body. She hesitated just inside the doorway, but finally she clicked the talk button on the phone. “Charlotte?”

      “JJ, I’ve been so worried about you!” the other woman exclaimed.

      That made two of them. But Josie hadn’t been worried about just herself. She watched Brendan lay their child on a wide, low sofa. It was a darker shade of gray than the walls and cement floor. But the whole place was monochromatic, which was just different shades of drab to her.

      Despite what he’d said, the space didn’t look much like an apartment and nothing like a home. As if worried that the boy would roll off the couch and strike the floor, Brendan laid down pillows next to him. He might have just discovered that he was a father, but he had good paternal instincts. He was a natural protector.

      And no matter what she’d read or suspected about him, Josie had actually always felt safe with him. Protected. Despite thinking that she should have feared him or at least not trusted him, she’d struggled to come up with a specific reason why. She had no proof that he’d ever tried to hurt her.

      Or anyone else.

      Maybe all those stories about him had only been stories—told by a bitter woman who’d been disinherited by a heartless and unpitying man.

      “JJ?” the female voice emanated from her phone as Charlotte prodded her for a reply.

      “I’m okay,” she assured the former marshal and current friend.

      “And CJ?” Charlotte asked after the boy who’d been named for her.

      She had been in the delivery room, holding Josie’s hand, offering her support and encouragement. She hadn’t just relocated Josie and left her. Even after she’d left the U.S. Marshals, she had remained her friend.

      But the past six months Charlotte hadn’t called or emailed, hadn’t checked in with Josie at all, almost as if she’d forgotten about her.

      “Is CJ okay?” Charlotte asked again, her voice cracking with concern for her godson.

      “He had a scare,” Josie replied, “but he’s safe.” While she wasn’t entirely sure how safe she really was with him, she had no doubt that Brendan would protect his son.

      The other woman cursed. “They found you? That was part of the reason I haven’t been calling.”

      Betrayal struck Josie with all the force of one of the bullets fired at her that evening. “You knew someone was looking for me?”

      If Josie had had any idea, she wouldn’t have risked bringing CJ to meet his grandfather. Maybe Josie had trusted the wrong person all these years ….

      “I only just found that out a few weeks ago,” Charlotte explained. “Before that I had been unreachable for six months.”

      “Unreachable?” Her journalistic instincts told her there was more to the story, and Josie wanted to know all of it. “Why were you unreachable?”

      “Because I was kidnapped.”

      She gasped. “Kidnapped?”

      “Yes,” Charlotte replied, and the phone rattled as if she’d shuddered. “I was kidnapped and held in a place you know about. You mentioned it to Gabby.”

      “Serenity House?” It was the private psychiatric hospital where Josie’s former student had been killed pursuing the story she’d suggested to him. She had known there were suspicious things happening there. She just hadn’t imagined how dangerous a place it was. Guilt churned in her stomach; maybe Brendan had had a good reason for being so angry with her. Her stories, even the ones she hadn’t personally covered, always caused problems—sometimes even costing lives. “I’m fine now,” Charlotte assured her. “And so is Gabby.”

      “Was she there, too?” Princess Gabriella St. Pierre was Charlotte’s sister and Josie’s friend. Josie had gotten to know her over the years through emails and phone calls.

      “No, but she was in danger, too,” Charlotte replied.

      And Josie felt even guiltier for doubting her friend. “No wonder I haven’t heard from either of you.” They’d been busy, as she had just been, trying to stay alive.

      “We think we’ve found all the threats to our lives,” Charlotte said. “But in the process, we found a threat to yours. My former partner—”

      Josie shuddered as she remembered the creepy gray-haired guy who had called himself Trigger. Because Josie hadn’t felt safe around him, Charlotte had made certain that he wasn’t aware of where she had been relocated.

      “He was trying to find out where you are.”

      She hadn’t liked or trusted the older marshal, and apparently her instincts had been right. “Why?”

      Charlotte paused a moment before replying, “I think someone paid him to learn your whereabouts.”

      “Who? Did he tell you?”

      “No, Whit was forced to kill him to protect Aaron.”

      Whit and his friend Aaron had once protected Josie. They were the private bodyguards her father had hired after the accident caused by the cut brake lines. But then Whit had discovered the bomb and involved the marshals. He had helped Charlotte stage Josie’s death and relocate her. But no one had wanted to put Aaron in the position of lying to her grieving father, so he’d been left thinking he had failed a client. He and Whit had dissolved their security business and their friendship and had gone their separate ways until Charlotte had brought them back together to protect the king of St. Pierre.

      “I would have called and warned you immediately,” the former marshal said, “but I didn’t want to risk my phone being tapped and leading them right to you.”

      So something must have happened for her to risk it. “Why have you called now?”

      “I saw the news about your father,” Charlotte said, her voice soft with sympathy. She hadn’t understood how close Josie had been to her father, but she’d commiserated with her having to hurt him when she’d faked her death. “I wanted to warn you that it’s obviously a ploy to bring you out of hiding.”

      “Obviously,” Josie agreed.

      Charlotte gasped. “You went?”

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