LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Seventeen

      Josie was reeling from all the answers she’d just received to questions she hadn’t even known to ask. Was it true? Was any of it true?

      Brendan had flashed the badge, but she hadn’t had a chance to read it. Was it his name on it? Was he really an FBI agent? And what about his mother being alive all these years in witness protection?

      It all seemed so unrealistic that it almost had to be real. And it explained so much.

      She heard the footsteps then. And so did Margaret. Before the woman could react and pull the trigger, Josie shoved her back and then dropped to the floor as shots rang out.

      The house exploded. There was no bomb, but the effects were the same. Glass shattered. Footsteps pounded. Voices shouted. And shots were fired.

      She wasn’t sure she would feel if any bullets struck her. She was numb with shock. She’d thought she had fooled and deceived Brendan four years ago. But she had been the fool. In her search for what she’d thought was the truth, she had fallen for the lies. This woman’s lies. The other news reports about him.

      He could have set her straight, but he had chosen instead to keep his secrets. And to let her go …

      A hand clutched her hair, pulling her head up as a barrel pressed again to her temple. How many times could a gun be held to her head before it was fired? Either on purpose or accidentally?

      Josie worried that her luck was about to run out.

      “Let her go!” Brendan shouted the order. And cocked his gun.

      Another shot rang out, along with a soft click, and Josie flinched, waiting for the pain to explode in her head. But then Margaret dropped to the floor beside her, blood spurting from her shoulder. Her eyes wide open with shock, she stared into Josie’s face. Then she began to curse, calling Josie every vulgar name as agents jerked her to her feet.

      Then there were hands on Josie’s arms, hands that shook a little as they helped her up. Her legs wobbled and she pitched slightly forward, falling into a broad chest. Strong arms closed around her, holding her steady.

      “Are you all right?” Brendan asked, his deep voice gruff with emotion.

      She wasn’t sure. “How—how did she not shoot me … when she got shot?”

      “She’d already fired all her bullets,” he replied.

      She realized the soft click she’d heard had been from the empty cartridge. “Did you know?”

      “I counted.”

      How? In the chaos of the raid, how had he kept track of it all? But then she remembered that he was a professional. She was the amateur, the one who hadn’t belonged in his world four years ago and certainly didn’t belong there now.

      She belonged with her son. She should have never left him.

      Exhausted, she laid her head on his chest. His heart beat as frantically as hers, both feeling the aftereffects of adrenaline and fear. At least Josie had been afraid.

      She wasn’t sure how Brendan felt about anything. She hadn’t even known who he really was.

      PARAMEDICS HAD PUT her in the back of an ambulance, but she had refused to lie down on the stretcher. She sat up on it, her legs dangling over the side. She wasn’t a small woman, yet there was something childlike about her now, Brendan thought. She looked … lost.

      “Is she okay?” he asked the paramedic who’d stepped out of the ambulance to talk quietly to him.

      “Except for some bruises, she’s physically all right,” the paramedic assured him. “But she does appear to be in shock.”

      Was that because she’d been held and threatened by a crazy woman? Or because she had finally learned the truth about him?

      “It looks like you were hit,” the paramedic remarked, reaching up toward Brendan’s head. He hadn’t been hit, but not for lack of trying on his stepmother’s part. As lousy a shot as she was, she must have been very close to his father to have killed him.

      Too close for his father to have seen how dangerous the woman really was. His father had been so smart and careful when it came to business. Why had he’d been so sloppy and careless when it had come to pleasure?

      Four years ago, when Brendan had found out his lover was really a reporter after a story, he’d thought he had been careless, too. And his carelessness had nearly gotten Josie killed.

      “I’m fine,” he told the paramedic. “That’s not even recent.” Two nights ago seemed like a lifetime ago. But then it had been a different life, one that Brendan didn’t need to live anymore. He’d found the justice for which he’d started searching four years ago.

      As he watched an agent load a bandaged and handcuffed Margaret into the back of a federal car, he knew he had justice. But he held up a hand to halt the car. Her wounded shoulder had already been treated, so she’d been medically cleared to be booked. But he didn’t want them booking her yet, not before he knew all the charges against her.

      “It’s not scabbed over yet,” the young woman persisted, as she continued to inspect the scratch on Brendan’s head.

      “I’m fine. But maybe you should double check the suspect,” he suggested. After the paramedic left, he turned back toward the ambulance and found Josie staring at him.

      She had lost that stunned look of shock. Her brow was furrowed, her eyes dark, and she looked mad. She had every right to be angry—furious, even. “I’m sorry,” he said.

      “Are you sorry that you saved my life?” she asked. “Or are you sorry that you lied to me?”

      “I never lied.”

      She nodded her head sharply in agreement. “You didn’t have to. You just let me make all my wrong assumptions and you never bothered to correct me. Is that why you’re sorry?”

      “I’m sorry,” he said, “because I never should have gotten involved with you—not when I had just started the most dangerous assignment of my career.” But he’d been sloppy and careless. He’d let his attraction to her overcome his common sense.

      Special Agent Martinez had urged him to go for it, that having a girlfriend gave Brendan a better cover and made him look more like his dad. That it might have roused suspicions if he’d turned down such a beautiful woman. But Brendan couldn’t blame Martinez. It hadn’t been an order, more so a suggestion. Brendan hadn’t had to listen to him.

      It was all his fault—everything Josie had been through, everything she’d lost. She hadn’t died, but she’d still lost her home, her family, her career. If only he’d stayed away from her.

      If only he’d resisted his attraction to her …

      But he’d never felt anything as powerful.

      “You thought I was going to blow your cover,” she said. “That’s why you didn’t tell me what was going on. You didn’t trust that I wouldn’t go public with the story.”

      “I know you, Josie. You can’t stop being a reporter,” he reminded her. “Even after they relocated

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