LITMIR.BIZ

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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.

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