Royal Rescue by Lisa Childs Read Free Book Online

life that the possibilities kept coming. Had the man from the sixth floor somehow joined them on the roof without Brendan noticing? Had he found the boy already?
    Another scenario played through his head, of Josie lying to him again. Still. Had she hidden the child and told him not to come out for Brendan? She’d hidden his son from him for three years—a few more minutes weren’t going to bother her.
    “Where is he?” he asked, shoving his hands in his pockets so that he wouldn’t reach for her again. He had already frightened her, which was probably why she’d hidden their son from him.
    She shook her head. “I don’t know.” The panic was in her voice, too.
    Brendan almost preferred to think that she was lying to him and knew where the boy was, having made certain he was safe.
    Her hand slapped against a metal pipe. “I thought he was behind here. CJ! CJ!”
    “Then why isn’t he coming out?” Brendan had stayed quiet and now kept his voice to a whisper despite the panic clutching at him.
    “No, it can’t be...” she murmured, her voice cracking with fear and dread.
    “What?” He demanded to know the thought that occurred to her, that had her trembling now with fear.
    “He’s at the edge of the roof,” she said. “He told me there was a short wall behind him. I—I told him not to go over it...”
    Because there would have been nothing but the ground, twenty stories below, on the other side. If the boy was still on the roof with them, he would answer his mother. Even if he heard Brendan, he would come out to protect her, as he did before.
    Oh, God!
    Had Brendan lost his son only moments after finally finding him?

Chapter Five
    Tears stung Josie’s eyes, blinding her even more than the darkness. And sobs clogged her throat, choking her. She had been trying to protect her son, but she’d put him in more danger. She clawed at the pipes, trying to force them apart, trying to force her way back to where her son had been last.
    “CJ! CJ!” she cried, her voice cracking with fear she could no longer contain.
    She hadn’t made sacrifices only to protect her father; she had made them to protect her baby, too. If she hadn’t learned she was pregnant, she wouldn’t have agreed to let her father hire bodyguards after the first attempt on her life—a cut brake line. And if she hadn’t realized that no one could keep them truly safe, she wouldn’t have agreed to fake her death and disappear.
    Everything she’d done, she’d done for her son. Maybe that was why she’d brought him to see her father—not just so the two could finally meet, but so that her father would understand why she’d hurt him so badly. As a parent himself, he would have to understand and forgive her.
    “CJ...” The tears overtook her now.
    “Shh,” a deep voice murmured, and a strong hand grasped her shoulder.
    But the man didn’t offer comfort.
    “Shh,” he said again, as a command. And his hand squeezed. “Listen.”
    Since Brendan was alive, she had just assumed that the men who’d wanted to kill her and CJ were not. But maybe he had just scared them off. And now they had returned. Or maybe that other gunman, the one he’d left near her father’s room, had joined them on the roof.
    She sucked in a breath, trying to calm herself. But if her child was truly gone, there would be no calming her—not even if the men had come back for them. They would need their guns—to defend themselves from her attack. This was their fault because they’d forced her to hide her son to protect him. But it wasn’t their fault that she hadn’t hidden him in a safe spot.
    That was all on her.
    “Shh,” Brendan said again.
    And she managed to control her sobs. But she heard their echo—coming softly from behind the metal pipes.
    “CJ?” He wasn’t gone. But why hadn’t he come out? “Are you hurt?”
    Perhaps there were more dangers behind the pipes than just that short wall separating him from a big fall. Maybe the pipes were