Special Deliveries Collection. Kate Hardy

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       Chapter Eleven

      While she’d held the gun when he’d handed it to her, the weight of it was still unfamiliar in her hands. Before tonight she hadn’t held one in years, let alone fired one. And when she had fired one, it had only been at targets—not people.

      Could she pull the trigger on a person?

      “Mommy, the ‘larm clock is too loud,” CJ protested with his tiny hands tightly pressed against his ears.

      Brendan scooped him up and headed toward the apartment door. “Grab your stuff,” he told her over his shoulder. He carried the boy with one arm while he clutched a gun in his other hand.

      “Sh-shouldn’t we stay here?” she asked. “And just lock the door?”

      His turquoise eyes intense, he shook his head. “We don’t know if the breach was someone getting inside or putting something inside.”

      A bomb.

      Josie gasped and hurried toward the door. But she slammed into Brendan’s back as he abruptly stopped.

      “We have to be very quiet,” he warned them.

      “CJ, you have to play statue,” she told their son. “No matter what happens, you have to be quiet.”

      “Like on the roof?”

      Not like that. She wouldn’t dare leave her little boy alone in the dark again. “Well …”

      “We’re all staying together,” Brendan said, “and we’re staying quiet.”

      She released a shaky sigh.

      “Mommy, shh,” the little boy warned her.

      A corner of Brendan’s mouth lifted in a slight grin. Then he slowly opened the door. He nodded at her before stepping into the hall. It was clear. He wouldn’t have brought their son into the line of fire.

      But they needed to get out of the building. Fast.

      She breathed deep, checking for the telltale odor of gas. But she smelled nothing but Brendan; the scent of his skin clung to hers. While they’d been making love, someone had gotten inside the building.

      What if that person had gotten inside the apartment? He or they could have grabbed CJ before his parents had had a chance to reach him.

      Her heart ached with a twinge of guilt more powerful than any she’d felt before. And she’d felt plenty guilty over the years.

      She followed after Brendan, watching as he juggled the boy and his gun. “If we’re taking the elevator …”

      He would need to give her the code to punch into the security panel. But he shook his head and pushed open the door to the stairwell.

      Of course they wouldn’t want to be in the elevator. If the building exploded, they would be trapped. But wouldn’t they be trapped inside the stairwell, too? If the gunmen were heading up, they would meet them on the way down—and CJ would be caught in the crossfire.

      Brendan didn’t hesitate though. He hurried down the first flight and then the second.

      “Brendan …”

      Over his father’s shoulder, their little boy pressed a finger to his lips, warning her again to be quiet.

      They had stopped, but their footsteps echoed. Then she realized it wasn’t their footsteps that were echoing. It was someone else’s—on their way up, as she’d feared. But Brendan continued to go down.

      “No,” she whispered frantically. “They’re coming!”

      He stopped on the next landing and pushed open the door to the hall. “Run,” he told her.

      “To the elevator?” They could take it now. The men wouldn’t have come inside if they’d set a bomb.

      “No,” he said. “Door at the end of the hall. Go through it.” He pushed her ahead of him and turned back as the door to the stairwell opened. But he kept his back toward that door, his body between their son and whoever might exit the stairwell. Before anyone emerged, he fired and kept firing as he ran behind Josie.

      She pushed through that door he’d pointed at and burst onto a landing with such force that she nearly careened over the railing of the fire escape. Brendan, CJ clutched tight against his chest, exited behind her.

      He momentarily holstered his gun, even though the men had to be right behind him, and he grabbed up a pipe that lay on the landing and slid it through the handle, jamming the door shut.

      How had he known the pipe was there? Had he planned such an escape before?

      The door rattled as another body struck it.

      “Go,” he told her. “Run!”