“You’re the one who’ll be going away forever,” Brendan warned her as he cocked his gun. But if he shot her, would the guy holding Josie surrender or kill her?
Chapter Sixteen
“Don’t kill her,” Josie implored Brendan. Maybe she had been right to be concerned that he would take matters into his own hands. But why had he taken so long to show up here? Where had he been?
Brendan narrowed his eyes as if he were still thinking about pulling the trigger, about taking a life. He could even excuse it as he had the others—that he’d done it to save another.
“Josie, I have to,” he said, as if he’d been given no choice.
She had been thrilled to see him, thrilled that he might protect her from this madwoman. But she didn’t want him becoming her—becoming a killer.
“You told me you wanted justice,” she reminded him. “Not vengeance.”
“He’s a killer,” Margaret said, spit flying from her mouth with disgust. “All O’Hannigans are killers. That’s why it’s best to get rid of the boy, too. Or he’ll grow up just like Brendan has.”
“Brendan isn’t a killer,” Josie told her—and him. “He came back for justice. He figured out you killed his father.”
“How?” the woman arrogantly scoffed. “No one else has figured it out in four years.”
“She did,” Brendan said. “And she has evidence.”
“What evidence?” Josie asked. He had to be bluffing or at least exaggerating the evidentiary value of what he’d found. She’d gone through those folders so many times but hadn’t figured out what he’d discerned so quickly.
Margaret snorted. “Evidence. It doesn’t matter. It’s never going to get to court. I will never be arrested.”
That was Josie’s concern, too. And then Brendan’s name would never be cleared.
“I already brought the evidence to the district attorney,” Brendan said, answering one of Josie’s questions.
Now she knew where he’d been. He had gone through the right channels for justice.
“The arrest warrant should have been issued by now,” Brendan continued. But he was looking at her henchman instead of Margaret, as if warning him. Or trying to use his bluff to scare him off. “Do you want to go to jail with her?”
“I had nothing to do with her killing your dad,” the man said. “I didn’t even work for her then.”
“But you’re working for her now,” Brendan said. “You’ve assaulted a woman and threatened the life of a child. I think those charges will put you away for a while, too, especially if you’re already on parole for other crimes.”
The man’s face flushed with color. He shook his head, but not in denial of his criminal record. Instead he pulled the gun away from Josie and murmured, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t let him get to you,” Margaret said. “He’s bluffing. He’s just bluffing.”
The man shook his head again, obviously unwilling to risk it. It wasn’t as if they were playing poker for money. They were playing for prison.
“Where are you going?” Margaret screamed after him as he headed for the door. “How dare you desert me!”
The man was lucky that she was having a standoff with Brendan or she probably would have fired a bullet into his back. She was that furious.
“You should just give it up,” Josie told her. “You have no help now.”
Margaret glared. “Neither does he.”
“He has me,” Josie said.
“Not for long,” Margaret said. “He’s going to lose you just like you’re going to lose that brat of yours.”
“You just shut the hell up,” Josie warned the woman, her temper fraying from the threats and insults directed at CJ. “Don’t ever talk about my son.”
Margaret chuckled, so Josie struck her. She’d hoped to knock the gun from the petite woman’s hand. But the older lady was surprisingly strong. She held on to her gun and swung it toward Josie, pressing it into her heart—which was exactly what her insults and threats had been hitting.
“You get involved with a killer, sooner or later you’re going to wind up dead,” the woman said. “Too bad for you it’s going to be sooner.”
Wasn’t it already later—since Margaret had first tried to kill her four years ago? But Josie kept that question to herself.
* * *
“
Y
OU’RE THE KILLER
,” Brendan corrected Margaret. So she would have no compunction pulling the trigger and killing Josie. It was what she’d intended to do from the moment she’d forced her inside the house. That was why she’d confessed to her—because she planned to make sure Josie could never testify against her.
“If you had really turned over proof to the district attorney, the police would be here already,” Margaret said. “You have nothing.”
“You confessed to Josie.”
“Just now,” she said. “And she’ll never live to testify against me.”
“No,” he said, “you confessed to her four years ago.”
Margaret laughed. “She doesn’t even know what evidence you had. I think she damn well would have known had I confessed to her.”
“You weren’t confessing,” Brendan admitted. “You were trying to convince her of my guilt. You told her that it must have been someone he trusted since my father had never pulled his gun.”
Josie gasped. “And all the other reports—except for the official police report—claimed he’d been killed with his own gun.”
Since Dennis O’Hannigan was legendary for turning a person’s weapon on them, it had been the height of irony that he’d had his own gun turned on him.
Brendan shook his head. “But all his guns were in their holsters.” He’d learned from his father to have more than one backup weapon. “Only the killer would know that he hadn’t pulled any of them, that he’d trusted his killer.”
Margaret snorted. “Trusted? Hell, no. Underestimated is what he’d done. He thought I was too weak and helpless to be a threat.”
“And he would have considered me a threat,” Brendan said, because his father had known what his son had become. What he really was.
So why had he left him the business?
“You underestimated me, too,” she accused Brendan. “You never considered me a threat, either.”
He hadn’t realized just how dangerous she was—until she’d turned her gun on the woman he loved. “It’s over, Margaret.”
“On that flimsy evidence?” she asked, nearly as incredulous as the district attorney had been.
“No, on the confession that the FBI has recorded.”
She glanced at Josie as if checking her for a wire.
“When your security system was hacked, the house was bugged. Every intercom in the place turned on like a mike.”
She glanced around at the intercom by the door and another on the desk behind her.
“You’re under arrest for the murder of Dennis O’Hannigan,” he said, “and the attempted murders of Josie Jessup and—”
The woman raised her eyebrows and scoffed. “You’re arresting me? On what authority?”
“FBI,” he said. “I’m an FBI agent.”
Josie’s eyes widened with surprise. He’d hoped that she might have figured it out, that she would have realized he was not a bad man.
“You are not,” Margaret said. “You’re bluffing again, treating me like a fool just like your father did.”
With his free hand he pulled out his credentials, which he hadn’t been able to carry for the past four years, and flashed his shield at her. “No. Game over.”
She stubbornly shook her head and threatened, “I am going to pull the trigger.”
“Then so will I,” he replied. And he was bluffing now.
“You won’t risk her life.” Margaret knowingly called him on his lie. “I saw how you were when she disappeared four years ago. You were as devastated as you were when your mother disappeared.”
He couldn’t deny the truth—not anymore.
“So you’re going to step back and let me leave with her,” Margaret said.
“And what do you think you’re going to do?” Brendan asked. “Talk her into taking you to our son?”
Margaret’s gaze darted between him and Josie. That had been her plan—all part of her deranged plan.
“She’ll never do that,” Brendan said. “You won’t be able to kill all the O’Hannigans. And even if you thought you did, you still wouldn’t be the last one.” He chuckled now at how incredibly flawed the woman’s plan was. “You’re actually not even a real O’Hannigan.”
Anger tightened her lips into a thin line. “I married your father.”
“But it wasn’t legal,” he informed her.
She glared at him. “I have the license to prove it, since you’re all about evidence.”
“It wasn’t legal because he was still married,” he explained.
“What?” she gasped.
“My mother isn’t dead.”
“Yes, she is,” Margaret frantically insisted. “Your father killed her. Everyone knows that.”
“He’d beaten her....” Which Brendan had witnessed; he’d been only eleven years old and helpless to protect her. “He sent her to the hospital, but she didn’t die. She went into witness protection.”
But still she wouldn’t testify against him. Not because she had still loved the man but because she’d loved Brendan. And to protect him, she had struck a bargain with the devil.
Maybe he would have to do the same to protect Josie.
“You’re lying,” Margaret said. She was distracted now, more focused on him than Josie.
He shook his head, keeping her attention on him while he tried to ignore Special Agent Martinez speaking through his earpiece. Brendan was calling the shots now. And he wouldn’t do that until Josie was out of the line of fire.
“Where do you think I ran away to when I was fifteen?” he asked. Thank God he hadn’t wound up living on the streets, which he’d been desperate enough to do. He’d found a place to go. A home.
“I didn’t think you really ran away,” Margaret said. “I know you tried, that you stole one of your father’s cars. But that car was returned that same night—without you. And you were never seen again.”
As he relived that night, his heart flipped with the fear he’d felt when his father’s men had driven him off the road and into the ditch. At fifteen he hadn’t had enough experience behind the wheel to be able to outmaneuver them. And when they’d jerked him from behind the wheel and left him alone with his father, he’d thought he was dead, that he’d be going to see his mother in heaven.
His father had sent him to her with a bus ticket and a slip of paper with an address on it. His mother had been relocated to New York, where she had built a life fostering runaway kids. And somehow, either using money or threats, Dennis had found out exactly what had happened to his wife and where she was. Brendan had used that bus ticket to reunite with her and become one of those kids. And in exchange for getting her son back, his mother had agreed to never testify against Dennis O’Hannigan.
“My mom will actually be here soon,” he said with a glance at Josie. “But the other agents will be here before her.”
That was the cue, sent through his headset, to make all hell break loose.
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.
* * *
P
ARAMEDICS 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.