Their Bride (Marriage Lottery Series Standalone)

by Stasia Black

  “We just came from the square,” Riordan explained. “They’re asking for all able-bodied men to help defend the perimeter. But we had to make sure Vanessa was safe.”

  Logan nodded even as Vanessa pulled out of his hands. “I’ll be fine. You go. The town’s more important—”

  “Shut up with that crap,” Logan snapped.

  Vanessa looked his way sharply, eyes wide with surprise and hurt at his tone. Shit. He was already fucking this up.

  He took her cheeks in his hands. “Baby, you’re the only important thing to me. To all of us. You won’t be alone. None of us would be any use to anyone out there if we were worrying about you.”

  He turned to the others. “I have to go, so who’ll go with Vanessa to the shelter? Two to stay with her, two to go defend the perimeter.”

  “I’ll stay,” Riordan said at the same time Ross said, “I’ll go.”

  The two looked at each other and without a word, gave a quick nod.

  All right, not the way Logan would have guessed that would play out, but okay.

  Logan looked toward Michael and Riordan. “Riordan, you know where the Glock is?” It was a rhetorical question since obviously Riordan had stolen it for his ill-fated hunting adventure.

  Still, Riordan gave a nod, and Logan could tell he was proud to be trusted with the gun. Logan’s trust only went so far, though. “Good, then go get it and give it to Vanessa. We all know she’s the most lethal one in this room.”

  He’d forced her to eat some of the jerky she’d been stockpiling after they’d made love earlier, so she should be in good shape.

  He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Stay safe.”

  She clutched his waist. “You too.”

  He had to force himself to pull away, otherwise he’d never leave.

  Outside, it was mayhem. People ran every which way by the light of the full moon, dragging suitcases, carts, anything and everything they could carry. Kids wailed as terrified looking parents carried them down Main Street toward the shelter. In case of emergencies like this, civilians were supposed to gather in the school. At least the damn siren had finally turned off. Everyone had gotten the message by this point.

  Logan spent the next few hours running himself ragged, prepping the town’s fortifications.

  They were working blind. Usually they had an infrared satellite feed—their system was one of the only, if not the only one besides Fort Worth that did.

  But the technology officer who’d taken over for the usual tech, Graham Hale, while Clan Hale was in Fort Worth—well, it turned out he was a spy for Colonel fucking Travis.

  And the bastard had taken a sledgehammer to the computers before they’d apprehended him.

  So yeah. They were fucking blind.

  They only had a few pairs of infrared binoculars and they weren’t showing shit. Right when the siren had been sounded, Travis’s troops were within visual contact. Not just soldiers, either. Tanks, too. Even one fucking Patriot missile launcher.

  By the time Logan got on scene, though, they’d all pulled back. There weren’t any heat signatures in sight of the binocular’s range, but that wasn’t saying much since they only had a range of a little over a quarter of a mile.

  Clouds started settling in, obscuring the light from the moon, and even when Logan sent scouts as far as a mile and a half out, they still reported no sign of troops.

  “Well where the hell did they go?” Logan shouted when he got the latest scout report. “Are they fucking ghosts?”

  He would have doubted they’d ever been there in the first place if there hadn’t been so many eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen them.

  Why had they shown themselves only to pull back? To scare the shit out of everyone in Jacob’s Well, that was clear.

  But why give away their position like that when they had the element of surprise? It didn’t make any sense.

  And where had they pulled back to?

  He was sending his scouts farther and farther out every hour and they still weren’t seeing them. Things like tanks and portable missile launching vehicles weren’t quiet. If the damn alarm hadn’t been going for so long, they might have heard the soldiers and had a clue which way they’d gone.

  As it was, they were both figuratively and literally in the fucking dark.

  Was Travis waiting for dawn to attack?

  That was the only thing that made sense, but something didn’t feel right. At all.

  “Sir!” Juan, one of Logan’s lieutenants, ran into the strategy room of the Squadron Headquarters. “We have movement! A huge column of troop busses headed our way from the north.”

  Logan frowned even as he jogged for the door. “North?”

  Travis Territory was southeast of them. And the earlier eyewitness reports hadn’t said anything about busses before. Travisville was only fourteen miles away, an easy enough distance to travel by foot if Travis had his spy hiding the satellite imagery.

  “I’m just reporting what I heard.”

  Logan shoved open the door to headquarters just in time to hear several people on the street shouting, “Look!” and pointing upwards.

  Logan’s head jerked upward. When he first saw the bright flare of light in the sky, his stomach dropped.

  Oh God, no. They’ve shot a missile.

  But then he saw a second light and, after a long pause, a third. Followed by a fourth and fifth in quick repetition.

  “Hold your fire,” Logan shouted, running toward one of the Security Squadron’s three trucks. “Hold your fire, send the command down the line. It’s Nix!”

  Cheers sounded all around Logan at the news as he and Juan hopped in the four-by-four and he shoved the keys in the ignition.

  They met Nix up near Jacob’s Well—the actual well the town was named for—right as dawn broke.

  “Goddamn is it good to see you,” Logan said, embracing his friend when Nix hopped down from a troop truck at the head of the line of armored busses.

  “That damn Travis spy busted our satellite phone,” Logan said. “Finn said he tried to get a mayday call off to y’all in Fort Worth, but he couldn’t hear anything on the other end so he didn’t think it had gone through.”

  “We got it,” Nix said, somber.

  “What the hell is all this?” Logan asked, laughing as he waved to the line of busses that trailed off as far as the eye could see.

  Nix wasn’t smiling though. “Goddard sent five thousand troops to take Travis out once and for all. Well, about three thousand here and another two following on foot.”

  “Great,” Logan said. “Let’s teach that fucker a lesson he won’t forget.”

  But Nix was already shaking his head. “Logan, Travis’s army is long gone. There’s no one here. Scouts on motorcycles have gone thirty minutes down the road. There’s nothing.”

  What? Wait… Oh shit, that meant—

  “We were a decoy,” Logan said. “A distraction. But from what?”

  “I don’t know. I was just about to call the Commander and see what the hell’s going on back at the Capitol. But brother,” Nix put a hand on Logan’s shoulder, “after I do, you and I need to talk.”

  From the grim expression on Nix’s face, it couldn’t be good. Not surprising considering the shit storm Travis was trying to stir up, but there was something about the way Nix was looking at him— It sent a cold spike shooting all the way down Logan’s spine.

  Nix let go and went to make his phone call and what they found out from the Commander was bad. Really fucking bad.

  Logan was right. Travis having troops show up at Jacob’s Well was a distraction. One they all fell for hook, line, and sinker.

  The five thousand troops Goddard had sent to help Jacob’s Well was only a tenth of his fighting force, but General Cruz was famously vigilant—him being absent from the capitol had meant it was more vulnerable than ever.

  Which was right when Travis struck.

  The President was dead.

  Assassinated.


  They didn’t have all the details yet. Travis had somehow framed the delegation from Jacob’s Well, but that barely mattered.

  Travis was trying to stage a coup and take the presidency for himself.

  And while the attack last night hadn’t been real, the first place that would have a giant target on its back after Travis finished taking Fort Worth?

  Central Texas South and Jacob’s Well had been a constant thorn in Travis’s side.

  He’d come for them.

  Anyone in leadership positions would be targeted first. And the women. None of the women were safe.

  There was no choice but to evacuate.

  Nix even had a place to go. It was just a matter of getting Vanessa and the rest of the clan packed up and then they could—

  “Wait,” Nix said as Logan grabbed his service weapon and moved toward the door of the strategy room.

  “No time. Gotta get my clan prepped—”

  “You need to hear this, brother.”

  It was the finality in Nix’s voice that stopped Logan in his tracks.

  “What the fuck, man?”

  Nix took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair. He had dark circles under his eyes. Damn, when had he last slept?

  “You look like shit, man. Come on, whatever it is, you can tell me on the way down to—”

  “Would you just shut up for one goddamned second?”

  Logan raised his eyebrows at Nix’s sharp tone, lifting his hands in a whatever-you-say gesture.

  “Shit,” Nix dragged a hand down his face. “I’m sorry. This day.” He shook his head but then steeled his jaw and looked over his shoulder.

  “Finn!” Nix snapped his fingers. “Bring over the pack we confiscated.”

  Finn was standing by the armored vehicle Nix had stepped out of and he nodded, jogging over with a large, overstuffed pack.

  “On our way south, we ran into some smugglers. We thought they might be Travis’s spies so we flushed them out and they started firing at us. I don’t think they had anything to do with Travis. We interrogated the one that was still breathing after the firefight was over. Especially when I found a certain item in his pack.”

  Ah. Logan knew just how persuasive Nix’s interrogation procedures could be. He’d witnessed them firsthand enough times.

  “Did he talk? What was it that had you so determined, anyway?”

  Nix took a deep breath and that icy feeling Logan had earlier came back twice fold. “He had medical supplies on him. Pills, packs of unopened syringes. That sort of thing. And this. I think he was using it as a sleeping mat.”

  Nix grabbed the pack from Finn and pulled out a rough, black cloth. “He said he stole the shit off a few groups between New Braunfels and the caves at the north of San Antonio. He died of his wounds before he could tell us any more.”

  Logan frowned. He wasn’t following. What did he care about some random fucking smuggler? They were at war. And why the fuck was Nix acting so weird?

  Nix held up the black cloth. Okay, there was a hood on it, so it must be some sort of cloak. Like Little Red Riding Hood’s, but black.

  “I don’t get it,” Logan said. “What’s with the cloak?”

  “It’s a Mexican widow’s cloak.”

  And? But fine, Logan would humor him. “How can you tell?”

  “The color mostly, and the size,” Nix answered. “My grandmother was from Mexico and she made one after my Grandpa died. I was looking at this pattern along the edge when I saw it.” Nix turned the cloak the other way around, then pulled back. “Maybe you should sit down first.”

  “Jesus Christ, just show me,” Logan said impatiently, grabbing for the fabric.

  Almost as soon as he did, his eyes landed on the linen label stitched into the inner seam.

  And Logan’s entire fucking world tilted upside down.

  Because as he looked back down at the garment in front of him, he read not only the letters that were still legible:

  J NY WA NG N

  but also the letters that were no longer there.

  Or…at least…could have once been there…

  JENNY WASHINGTON

  No. No, he refused to believe it.

  Jenny?

  After all this—?

  Could she actually be… alive?

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  ROSS

  Ross pushed through the people clogging the streets to get home.

  People had cheered when the President’s army battalion first rode down Main Street, but the truth of what was happening in the capitol quickly spread.

  President Goddard had been assassinated.

  Colonel Travis was staging a coup.

  The soldiers only moments before welcomed as liberators were suddenly a liability. Travis had always had beef with the Commander, everyone knew that. So that was bad enough. But if you added in the fact that Jacob’s Well was housing a whole battalion of thousands of troops who might stand against him?

  They might as well paint a target on their foreheads.

  The entire town had erupted in chaos.

  Just like back during the Death Riots.

  Ross had only been ten at the time. But he remembered. He remembered the sounds of the crowds outside. The noise of men shouting, pierced every so often by a shrill female scream.

  “I’ll be fine, Louise,” Dad said, putting a hand on Mom’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. I have to get more food for us. If we’re going to hunker down to ride this out, we have to have food. Now, you and the boys stay down in the basement and don’t you open the trapdoor for anyone, do you hear me?”

  Mom looked so afraid. Ross hated her looking like that. His stomach hurt and not just because he hadn’t eaten anything more than peanut butter and stale crackers for the last three days.

  “Don’t go, Dad!” Ross flung his arms around Dad’s waist.

  “Let us come with you, Dad,” Riordan said, standing beside them. “You taught me how to shoot last year. I could help—”

  “No,” Dad said sharply, peeling Ross’s arms off him and stepping back. “Now you boys have an important job. I need you to stay here and look after your mother.” He put a hand on each of their shoulders. “You’re the men of the house while I’m gone.”

  “But Dad—” Ross tried again to protest.

  “Enough.”

  Ross bit his lip, trying to fight back tears. He wouldn’t be the baby Riordan was always accusing him of being.

  He’d be what Dad said. an of the house. He’d be strong. Dad never cried. He knew how to do everything. You didn’t get to be the Head Scoutmaster for two counties without knowing your stuff.

  Ross wanted to be just like him when he grew up.

  So Dad would be fine, no matter what was out there.

  But Dad wasn’t fine.

  And he never came back.

  They only learned what happened a week later when his Uncle Chet came to get them. Dad had been part of a group of townspeople trying to restore order in the little East Texas town where they lived.

  He was trying to ration out the remaining food. But some maniac with a machine gun shot at the crowd and Dad was one of the people killed. He’d died a hero.

  Ross tried every day to live up to his Dad’s example.

  But the immediate danger was past and now his place was at Vanessa’s side.

  He jogged down the street the last block to the house, shoving the front door open. He needed to know she was safe.

  He wasn’t expecting to walk in on her crying, reaching out to Logan, who pulled away from her touch. Michael, Cam, and Riordan stood in the living room in various postures, but all of them were strained.

  What the hell?

  “I only came to say goodbye,” Logan said roughly.

  “What’s going on?” Ross demanded, throwing the door shut behind him.

  When Vanessa looked his direction, the devastation in her eyes had his stomach feeling as sour as it had the day his father left and never came ba
ck.

  “What?” he asked, but this time it only came out as a whisper.

  “Logan’s wife might be alive,” Michael said. “His first wife, I mean.”

  Ross’s head jerked Logan’s direction but the older man wasn’t giving anything away on his face. His eyes looked as remote as Ross had ever seen them.

  “What makes you think—?”

  “This,” Cam said, lifting a bundle of rough black fabric. “He thinks it belonged to her.”

  “Thinks?” Ross questioned.

  Ross was still shaking his head in confusion when Riordan grabbed the cloth out of Cam’s hands and stalked over to Ross with it.

  “See?” Riordan pointed down at a small label sewn into the hem of the hood. “These are the same letters as in her name.”

  Ross reached out and ran his hand across the scratchy fabric to read the handful of scattered letters.

  J NY WA NG N

  “But lots of names start with J,” Michael said. “You said it was a Mexican cloak. Juanita. Jacinta. Jimena.”

  “Was your wife Mexican?” Cam asked. “Why would she even have this?”

  “No, she wasn’t— Isn’t, I mean—” Logan broke off, pain straining his face before his jaw locked and he looked at the wall.

  “You can’t just go off on your own, Logan,” Vanessa said, her voice pleading.

  Ross’s eyes shot open wide. “What?” but Vanessa was already continuing.

  “You heard Nix. He said a bunch of the families are heading south to those caves. Natural Bridge Caverns. The smuggler said he stole the supplies off groups all between here and the caves. So we go and look for Jenny along the way. But we do it together.”

  Logan was already stubbornly shaking his head.

  And Ross was ten years old again.

  Watching the man he admired and respected most in the world preparing to walk out the door. For what might be forever.

  “No!” Ross shouted, moving to block the doorway. “I won’t let you. You don’t even know if it’s her! Come on, what are the chances that it’s Jenny?”

  “He has a point,” Riordan said, leaning over and pulling the cloak into his arms. He lifted it close to his eye. “What kind of fabric is this anyway? Where would she get something like this? You already said she didn’t have it back when you were together.”