Special Deliveries Collection. Kate Hardy

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       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.

      “YOU’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, СКАЧАТЬ