Groom Under Fire

She sighed. “Enlisted me as part of the wedding party. I think she suspected there’d be a problem with Rochelle, and she and I have known each other since high school.”

“You did subdue her.” So much so that the woman sat quietly in a pew now, tears streaming down her flushed face. She seemed more distraught over the groom’s disappearance than the bride was.

“Please point that out to Logan,” Nikki beseeched him. Their eldest brother was on the other side of the heavy oak doors, talking on his cell phone in the vestibule. She shot him a glare through the windows at the back of the chapel. “He keeps me tied to a desk. He refuses to let me do an actual physical protection assignment.”

Cooper bit his tongue before he verbally agreed with Logan. Nikki was so petite and fragile looking—just like their mother with her copper-colored hair and big brown eyes. But she had handled herself remarkably well with the taller and heavier Chesterfield sister. He touched her scratched cheek, making her wince again.

“Hey, I didn’t want to hurt her,” Nikki explained. “Or I would have taken her down faster. She’s a friend, though...” Then she reached out and squeezed his arm. “I’m sorry about Stephen. Do you have any idea what happened?”

“We don’t know anything for certain. There’s a hell of a lot of blood in the groom’s quarters. But until the crime lab does a DNA test, we don’t even know for certain that it’s his.” Except if it wasn’t, where the hell was he, then? If there wasn’t all that blood, Cooper might have believed his friend had just gotten a case of cold feet. He might have believed that if Stephen was marrying any woman but Tanya.

“Mom confirmed he was the only one in the room,” Nikki said.

“Where was his best man?” Cooper asked.

Nikki lifted a reddish brow. “Where was he?” she asked, obviously referring to him.

“I told him I couldn’t do it,” Cooper reminded his little sister.

“Why not?”

“Why?” Cooper asked. “Why did he even ask me? We haven’t seen each other in years.”

“He showed up at the house to see you every time you were home on leave,” Nikki said. “He stayed in touch.”

But they’d both been busy. The letters few and far between and Cooper’s visits home even more infrequent. He shrugged. “I just thought it was weird that he didn’t have a closer friend he wanted to stand up there with him.”

And weirder that he wanted Cooper. They had been good friends in high school—so good that Stephen must have realized how Cooper had really felt about Tanya. Had he wanted to rub his face in the fact he’d gotten the girl Cooper had wanted? And if so, then they hadn’t really been that good of friends.

But Cooper still cared about him—still wanted him safe—which he probably would have been had Cooper actually been his best man. Then Stephen wouldn’t have been alone in the groom’s quarters.

“There are a couple of guys who were planning on standing up there with him,” Nikki said. “A friend from his office and a cousin, but I recruited them to help me find Rochelle. We’d been searching all the bars in River City.”

“How’d you know that’s where she was?” Maybe Logan was underestimating their sister’s potential as a security expert.

“She left me a drunk voice mail.”

Cooper glanced over at the crying woman and sighed. “So interrogating her would probably be a waste of time until Mom gets more coffee in her.”

“You don’t need to interrogate her,” Tanya said as she rejoined them with an ice pack pressed against the cheek her sister had viciously slapped.

Apparently his mother was prepared for every wedding emergency—even catfights between the bride and maid of honor. What was her plan to handle a missing groom?

“I can tell you whatever Rochelle can,” Tanya said.

But would she be truthful with him? “You’ll tell me why she thinks you’re just using Stephen to get your inheritance?”

Nikki nudged his arm. “Easy. She’s not a suspect.”

Maybe she should have been. As he’d already noted, she wasn’t nearly as upset as a madly in love bride should have been when her groom mysteriously and apparently violently disappeared. When Cooper had quietly, so she wouldn’t overhear him, questioned her reaction earlier, his mother and brother had insisted she was in shock.

But her green eyes were clear now and direct as she replied, “I’m not using Stephen.”

“What about the inheritance? Your grandfather died a decade ago—don’t you already have your money?” But if she did, why pick his mom’s place for her wedding? The chapel was small and the reception hall in the basement was hardly elegant enough for a billionaire bride.

She shook her head.

“Not yet,” another voice chimed in to answer for her. A burly gray-haired man joined them inside the church. With his muscular build and military haircut, he looked more like a cop, but Cooper recognized the lawyer, Arthur Gregory, who’d made countless house calls to the mausoleum. “Neither she nor Rochelle will inherit until they marry.”

If Rochelle was right and her sister was just after her inheritance, wouldn’t she have gotten married ten years ago? Wouldn’t Rochelle have?

“He’s trying to control us even after his death,” Rochelle murmured. “Mean son of a—”

“Miss Chesterfield,” the lawyer admonished her. “Your grandfather had only your best interests at heart.”

“He had no heart,” Rochelle retorted. “The only reason he wanted us married was because he didn’t think a female had enough brains to handle the kind of money he was leaving to us.” She uttered a derisive snort. “Like our father did such a great job. He blew through all that money Grandfather gave him to divorce Mom and take off.”

Cooper had never known what had happened to Tanya’s father. She had always avoided talking about him. He’d been sensitive to that since he’d never wanted to talk about how he had lost his dad either.

“Mr. Gregory, is there a way around the will?” Tanya asked the lawyer.

Her sister gasped. “We don’t even know what’s happened to Stephen and all you care about is the money?”

“I care about him,” Tanya said. “That’s why I need the money. In case this is a kidnapping, I’ll need it to pay the ransom to get him back.”

Arthur Gregory sighed. “There is no way to inherit that money unless you’re married, Miss Chesterfield. And as you know, you only have a few more days...”

Tanya flinched as if the lawyer had slapped her, too.

“Why only a few more days?” Cooper asked.

“If she doesn’t marry before she turns thirty, she forfeits her half of the inheritance,” Rochelle replied. “Then I’ll get it all when I marry.”

The young woman must have been too drunk yet to realize that she’d just announced her motive for getting rid of her sister’s groom. But if she was behind Stephen’s disappearance, why was she so distraught over it?

“I need that money,” Tanya repeated, “in case there’s a ransom demand...”

If Stephen was alive...

But if he wasn’t, why wouldn’t his body have been left in the room? Someone had taken him for a reason. And what better reason than money?

“The only way you can access your funds is to marry,” the lawyer insisted.

“Then she’ll have to marry,” Cooper’s mother said as she joined them inside the church. She carried a tray with cups on it—probably filled with coffee, judging by the rich aroma wafting from the tray.

Rochelle seemed to have already sobered up. But Cooper was tempted to reach for a cup. He suspected it was going to be a long night.

“But if Stephen’s been kidnapped, we won’t get him back until I’ve paid for his return,” Tanya pointed out.

“So you’ll marry someone else,” the wedding planner matter-of-factly replied as if it were easy to exchange one groom for another.

“Who?” Cooper asked.

His mother turned to him, her eyes wide with surprise that he hadn’t already figured it out. “You, of course.”

Cooper had had no intention of attending this wedding, let alone participating in it. He hadn’t wanted to be the best man...and he sure as hell wasn’t going to be the groom.

Chapter Three

Tanya’s heart stung with rejection. She hadn’t had to hear his words to know that Cooper had no intention of becoming her husband—for any reason. When his mother had suggested it, he had looked more horrified than he had when he’d seen the blood in the groom’s quarters.

But she could hear his words now. He didn’t know that, though. His family had gone into the bride’s room for a private discussion. Tanya hadn’t intended to invade their privacy, but she’d left her purse in that room along with her dress. And she really wanted to leave.

She couldn’t stay here any longer—not with that crime scene tape draped across the entrance to the groom’s quarters. Not with Stephen’s blood on her hands...

And not with Cooper’s words ringing in her ears.

“There is no way in hell that I am marrying Tanya Chesterfield!”

“Cooper!” his mother admonished him as if he were a little boy who’d cussed in church.

“Mom!” he retorted. “You’ve been pushing me to attend this wedding since you first talked to Tanya about planning it—either as a guest or the best man. You are not pushing me to the altar as her groom.”

She could have opened the door; it was the bride’s room, after all. But she was no longer going to be a bride. Her groom was missing and the only other man she would want to take his place had flat-out refused. Not that she really wanted Cooper as her groom or anything else...

She turned away from the door. Instead of revealing that she’d been eavesdropping, she would leave her purse and just walk home. Her apartment was on the third floor of a home in the same area of town as Mrs. Payne’s Little White Wedding Chapel, so it wasn’t far. And her landlord on the ground floor had a spare key to her place.

But as soon as she stepped outside the heavy oak doors, the night air chilled her blood and she shivered. Stephen was out here somewhere. With whoever had hurt him.

Why hurt Stephen? Why not just hurt her as the threats she’d been receiving for the past ten years had promised?

As she descended the steep stairs to the sidewalk, she shivered again and wished she would have agreed to ride along with Nikki and Rochelle. But she hadn’t wanted to be in the same room—let alone the same car—with her sister. Since Rochelle was six years younger than she was, they had never been particularly close, but they had gotten along well enough. Until Tanya had become officially engaged...

She should have asked someone else to be her maid of honor. But she’d thought that maybe including Rochelle would bring her around, would bring them closer.

Instead, they were more at odds than they had ever been. At least the cold air felt good on Tanya’s still-stinging cheek. She lifted her face to the breeze and let it caress her skin. Maybe walking home wouldn’t be so bad after all.

It was dark. But streetlamps, the ones not covered with overhanging branches, illuminated the sidewalk. Despite the light, she tripped over a crack and remembered the velvet runner. Stephen had been dragged down the aisle so that he couldn’t become her groom.

Cooper Payne would have to be dragged down the aisle in order to become her groom. It wasn’t going to happen. She was going to lose her inheritance, but far worse, she was going to lose her friend.

A car drove slowly past her, its windows tinted so she couldn’t see inside it. Whoever the driver was, he or she was traveling well below the speed limit—nearly at the speed with which Tanya was walking. She shivered again—this time with a sense of foreboding instead of from the cold.

And she remembered those threats—all those promises that she would lose her life before she would ever inherit her money. Had Stephen’s disappearance just been a diversion, a way to distract her from protecting herself?

Not only had she left her keys in her purse, but she’d left her cell phone, rape whistle, inhaler, EpiPen and pepper spray, too.

* * *

“COME ON,” COOPER urged his brother. “Tell her it’s a crazy idea.”

But Logan didn’t even glance at their mother. He just continued to stare at him, as if considering.

“It’s crazy,” Coop insisted.

His mother glared at him. “I thought the Marines would teach you some respect.”

“I didn’t call you crazy,” he pointed out. “Just your idea...” It was ridiculous. Tanya had obviously thought it so ridiculous that she hadn’t said a thing, as if she’d gone back into shock. So they’d just left her sitting there in the church—alone—as Stephen had been in that now-blood-spattered room. A frisson of unease trickled down his spine like a drop of ice water.

Tanya had been alone in this room earlier, but she’d been left unharmed. Probably so she could pay the ransom to recover her groom. She would be safe out there—especially as there had been an officer or two hanging around yet to finish processing the crime scene.

“But it’s not crazy,” Logan said. “It’s brilliant.”

“Br-brilliant?” Cooper choked on the word and coughed.

And his mother slapped his shoulder. “Of course it is.” But she seemed surprised, too, that her oldest would agree with her. She had always said that although Logan was a twin, he definitely had a mind of his own.

“Can’t you see that?” Logan asked with concern, as if Cooper was more dim-witted than he’d remembered.

So Cooper mentally stepped back, as he often had had to during his deployments, and he assessed the situation. “Stephen’s missing. Maybe he just got cold feet.” Even as he said it, he doubted his words. The Stephen he’d known had been an honorable guy; he wouldn’t have just run away—especially not from Tanya.

Cooper had been the only man he knew of who had run from her—back when they’d been kids and his new feelings for his friend had overwhelmed him and also because her grandfather had made him see that it would never work out between them. It didn’t matter that the old man was dead now; Benedict Bradford was still right.

“Then why all the blood?” Logan persisted.

Cooper visualized the crime scene that may not have been a crime scene at all. There was a small hammered-copper sink in the room with a mirror above it. He could have been shaving his neck and slipped with the blade, nicking his artery. “Maybe he accidentally hurt himself.”

But there had been no razor or anything else sharp left at the scene...

“If that was the case, he would have gotten help,” Logan pointed out. “Mom and Tanya and even Reverend James were all in the building, too.”

“But we didn’t hear anything,” his mother reminded him.

Desperate to believe that Stephen would return, Cooper persisted in his argument, “Maybe, when you guys didn’t hear him calling, he left and got help somewhere else.”

“His car is still in the lot,” his mother pointed out.

“He could have called a damn cab,” Cooper remarked.

“But then he would have showed up at an E.R. by now,” Logan argued. “Parker and a team of Payne employees are checking every emergency room and med station, and Stephen hasn’t shown up anywhere yet.”

Cooper begrudgingly admitted, “Maybe he has been abducted.”

“Why?” Logan fired the question at him even though the answer was obvious.

Conceding his loss of this argument, he groaned before replying, “For Tanya’s money.”

“Which she can’t access until she’s married,” his mother chimed in again. “She won’t be able to pay the ransom when the demands are made.”

His mother was right. Unfortunately.

But there was another possibility, one he hated to even voice, but he forced out the words, “He could be dead.”

Cooper’s guts tightened with guilt at the horrific thought. If only he’d agreed to be the damn best man, he would have been in that room with him, he could have protected him. Hell, if he hadn’t dragged his feet getting to the church...

As if he’d read his mind, Logan reassuringly gripped his shoulder. “You don’t know that...”

No, he didn’t know if Stephen was dead, but he knew that he could have helped—had he been at the church in time.

“Neither do you,” Cooper said, which probably infuriated Logan since his eldest brother thought he knew everything.

“Then where’s his body?” Logan asked. “Why would his killer take it with him? Why wouldn’t he have just left it in the room?”

Cooper wasn’t the one with the law enforcement background. “You were the cop.” A detective actually and a greatly decorated one, just as their father had been a police officer. “You know it’s harder to press murder charges, let alone convict, without a body.”

“The crime scene techs said that it looked like a lot of blood because of the spray, but there wasn’t enough for someone to have bled to death,” Logan reminded him.

“Yet.” But if he was injured and didn’t get help... “We should be out there looking for him, not wasting our time with this crazy discussion.”

“Parker and his team aren’t just checking hospitals and med centers. They’re looking for him everywhere,” Logan reminded him. “They’ve checked his place, his work—all of his usual hangouts.”

“And they haven’t found him,” Cooper said. “We need to search harder and even then we may not find him alive.” Or at all.

How many people had gone missing to never be seen again? He’d personally known a few—in Afghanistan.

“There’s still time to help him,” his mother insisted. Despite all she’d lost when her husband had died, she still remained an optimist. “But in case there is a ransom demand, Tanya will need her inheritance to pay it.”

“So someone needs to marry her,” Logan said.

His mother patted Cooper’s arm again but more gently this time. “It’s all right,” she said as if he were a child she was reassuring about going to the dentist. “If you don’t want to do it, Parker can.”

Parker, the playboy, marrying Tanya? His gut churned at the thought—it was even crazier than him marrying her. In fact, him marrying her actually made the most sense since they knew each other, since he had actually kissed the bride before. Besides, it was his fault that Stephen had disappeared. If only he’d been in the groom’s quarters before Stephen had been taken...

Rejecting his mother’s suggestion, he shook his head. “I’ll do it.”

His mother clapped her hands together. “Great. I will call a certain judge I know to rush a new marriage certificate, and we’ll proceed with the wedding tomorrow, just as we’d planned.”

He was getting married tomorrow? Panic gripped him, squeezing his chest so tightly that he couldn’t draw a deep breath.

“Maybe someone should tell the bride that,” Logan suggested with a slight grin.

His mother gestured toward a leather purse sitting on the floor beneath a hanging garment bag. “She wouldn’t have left without that, so she must still be here.”

But she wasn’t. As they had for Stephen, they searched the entire church. But they didn’t find her.

Only the blood...

It was dried. It was old. It wasn’t hers.

There was no fresh blood. No signs of a new struggle. No Tanya.

“Where could she have gone?” Cooper asked, and now he was panicking for another reason than getting married tomorrow. He was panicking that he might not be able to get married because the bride had disappeared like the original groom.

“Maybe she decided to walk home,” his mother suggested.

The police officer who had been watching the parking lot in case Stephen returned for his car had mentioned seeing her leave the church.

“You actually think she could walk to the estate?” Cooper asked, shaking his head. “No way.”

The mausoleum was on the other side of the very sprawling city. The distance between the church and the estate was more of a marathon than an evening stroll. But the officer hadn’t seen a cab.

“She lives just a couple of blocks over,” his mother said. “She rents a third-floor apartment.”

“An apartment?” he asked, even more confused. She was a billionaire’s granddaughter and she rented?

“She hasn’t inherited yet,” his mother reminded him, “and on her salary as a social worker, she can’t afford to buy her own house.”

So why hadn’t she married sooner? Why wait until within days of forfeiting her inheritance? Despite having known Tanya for years, he really had no idea who she was. Of course, he had been gone for most of those years.

Now he had no idea where she was...

He grabbed her purse from his mom and opened it up. Her cell phone was inside—along with an inhaler, an EpiPen, a can of pepper spray and a shiny whistle. Given some of the danger social workers confronted, she should have carried a gun, too. He flipped open her wallet to read the address on her driver’s license. The picture distracted him for a minute. Even on the tiny snapshot, she was beautiful—her blond hair shining like gold and her green eyes sparkling as she smiled brightly.

That was what had been so different about her tonight. The fear. The anxiety. She wasn’t the Tanya he remembered because she was a woman now, not a carefree teenager.

“Look at that,” Logan said with a slight grin. “Not even married yet and already carrying her purse.” That was the way their family had always handled strife and loss—with wisecracking.

But Cooper didn’t have time for it now, not with Tanya missing. He was going to follow her route from the church to her apartment and find her—hopefully alive.

“Shut up,” he said. “And keep an eye on Mom.”

She shouldn’t be alone in a building where someone had already been abducted, just as Tanya should have never been left alone. Once he was her husband, Cooper would make damn sure that she stayed safe. But now he wondered if she would even make it to the altar.

* * *

THE CAR WITH the darkly tinted windows circled the block again like a cat stalking a bird. Was the driver waiting for Tanya to step off the sidewalk? She needed to cross the street if she intended to head home.

But if she headed home, wouldn’t she be leading the driver right to her door? But given the threats she’d received through the mail, her stalker already knew where she lived. So if the driver was her stalker, he already knew where she was going.

She needed to turn back to the church. But if the others had left...

Mrs. Payne would have locked up, locking Tanya’s purse and phone inside the bride’s room. But she hadn’t been gone that long, surely someone might have stayed behind.

Cooper?

She wasn’t certain she wanted to see him, knowing how he felt about the thought of becoming her husband for just a few days—until she inherited. Once the money was hers, she could divorce him. Maybe he didn’t know that; maybe she should have explained. But she hadn’t wanted to force him to do something he clearly did not want to do.

They had once been friends. Good friends. Along with Stephen, they had been like the Three Musketeers—studying and hanging out together. But now Cooper acted like a stranger. Had his deployments overseas changed him that much?

Or was she the one who had changed? She used to want to have nothing to do with her grandfather’s money, but then she had nearly married to inherit it. Had gone so far as to plan a wedding to a man she loved but wasn’t in love with...

Tanya shivered at the cold wind and the eerie sensation that someone was hiding in the darkness, watching her. Coming for her. But then it wasn’t just a sensation. It was a certainty.

She blew out a ragged breath as the car circled again, driving even more slowly along the street. As long as she stayed on the sidewalk, maybe she would stay safe. But then the car tires squealed as the driver jerked the steering wheel. Sparks flew from beneath the front bumper as it scraped over concrete as the car jumped the curb and headed right for her.

She screamed, her legs burning as she ran.

But it didn’t matter how fast she ran or how loud she yelled, she couldn’t outrun a motor vehicle. She hadn’t been able to save Stephen, and now she wouldn’t be able to save herself.