Risk Everything

by Janie Crouch

  The woman shrank back a little at Noah’s tone. Tanner provided his most reassuring smile. “How about the kids? Are they here?”

  Had they misread Marilyn? Had she decided to make a run for it since it looked like Jared might have made progress in attempting to escape his monitor?

  “Yes, they’re both in bed asleep. Marilyn went back out to see Bree. Said something about how she wasn’t a marmot and that a good bottle of wine was a terrible thing to waste.”

  “That’s good.” Tanner smiled again, and the woman relaxed just a little bit. “It’s good for Bree to have someone hanging out with her the night before her wedding.”

  Francis nodded. “That’s what Marilyn and I thought too. Is everything okay?”

  Tanner nodded. Noah had already gone back to staring out at any possible shadows in the darkness. “Yes, everything’s fine. Just do me a favor. Call it prewedding jitters or whatever, but just don’t open the door to anyone you don’t know personally, okay?”

  Francis smiled. “Trust me, I never do. But I’ll make sure.”

  “I’ll see you at the wedding tomorrow.”

  The door closed and locked behind him as Tanner turned and walked back toward his SUV with Noah.

  “Maybe I’m looking for trouble that’s not there. Maybe—”

  The phone rang in his hand. “That’s probably Marshal Brickman now. Telling me that Sowers requests that I stop being such an overprotective jackass and let him do his job.”

  Tanner pressed the receive button. “Marshal. I’m sure I probably owe you an apol—”

  Brickman cut him off. “Dempsey, you were right. Ellis had someone holding Sowers’s wife and baby hostage. Ellis is gone.”

  Brickman kept talking, but Noah and Tanner were already sprinting for his car. Jared was out and no doubt wanted to get his hands on Marilyn. And Marilyn might have led him straight to Bree.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Bree opened her mouth to scream and warn Marilyn, but Jared was expecting that. She ducked as his fist flew at her face, missing most of the blow, but it still caught her and spun her around back onto the couch. A drop of blood dripped from her nose.

  Right onto her wedding dress.

  That bastard had just stained her wedding dress. Who cared if she didn’t like it—it was still her damn wedding dress.

  “You keep the hell quiet.” Jared stormed over to the door and yanked it open. Before Marilyn could do so much as give a terrified little shriek, he yanked her inside and shut the door behind her.

  Bree’s heart broke at the abject terror that carved itself into Marilyn’s features at the realization that she was once again in this madman’s power.

  “Well, I guess this solves the whole problem on how to get you over here,” Jared sneered. “Hello, wife.”

  Marilyn darted for the door, but Jared just snagged an arm around her waist, then flung her against the wall like she was a rag doll. “So predictable. You’re always so predictable and stupid, Marilyn. It’s why you’ll always belong to me. You should be happy I even want to keep you.”

  Marilyn seemed to almost collapse in on herself, wrapping her arms around the side of her head in a protective gesture. Bree didn’t know if it was physical or emotional protection or maybe both.

  Bree stood up. She wasn’t going to sit and watch him batter her friend.

  “You made me get a drop of blood on my wedding gown,” she announced with a calm she didn’t feel. “Do you know how hard it is to get blood out?”

  She had no idea what she was saying. She was just trying to buy time. But buy time for what to happen? Tanner had no idea Jared was in Risk Peak, and Marilyn obviously wasn’t going to be in any shape to provide assistance against her ex.

  Jared tilted his head to the side and directed the gun straight at her. “I think a spot of blood on your precious gown is the least of your problems. You’re not really needed anymore.”

  “Jared—” Marilyn pushed herself off the wall.

  He turned and pointed a finger at her. “You shut up. It’s your fault that we’re in this situation to begin with. Deciding to air all our dirty laundry with the cops. Every couple has an argument here and there. You didn’t need to bring the cops into it.”

  “Leave her alone and I’ll go with you.” Marilyn’s voice was soft, but not shaky.

  “Marilyn.” There was no way Bree was letting her leave with him willingly. “No.”

  Marilyn just ignored her, keeping her eyes trained on Jared.

  “You leave Bree alone and you don’t try to have any contact with the kids. That’s the deal.” Marilyn took another step toward Jared. “You want me to go with you, that’s what you have to do.”

  Jared’s cold eyes narrowed as he stared at Marilyn. He obviously wasn’t used to her putting up any sort of argument.

  “What’s to stop me from killing her right now and dragging you anywhere I want to go?”

  “Because if you’re going to start killing, I’m going to start screaming my head off. I may not be able to stop you from killing her, but I will damn well make sure you go down also.”

  Marilyn took another step. Now Bree studied her friend more closely. Marilyn wasn’t acting like Marilyn at all, and the truth became clear to Bree.

  Marilyn wasn’t going to wait for someone to rescue her. She was going to rescue herself.

  Jared gritted his teeth. “Look at you. You get away from me for a few months and all of a sudden you’re full of sass. Don’t worry, I have lots of ideas of how to modify that behavior.”

  Marilyn flinched but didn’t back down.

  Jared took a step toward Marilyn and quick as a flash swung his fist with the gun toward the tiny woman’s face. God, he was so quick.

  Marilyn was quicker.

  Tanner had been teaching Bree some self-defense moves, but it was nothing compared to what Noah had obviously taught Marilyn. She ducked under the punch aimed for her jaw. Jared obviously never expected any sort of countermove and had put all his weight behind the hit. It would’ve broken Marilyn’s jaw, without a doubt, if it had connected.

  Marilyn brought her knee up to his groin at the same time she reached up with both hands and clawed at his eyes. Jared let out a roar before stumbling back, tripping over Bree’s coffee table. She jumped out of the way as he fell back on top of her couch.

  Bree couldn’t care less about her wedding dress under the man. He’d just dropped his gun.

  Marilyn reached down and grabbed it, pointing it directly at Jared.

  “You bitch!” Jared was clutching at his bleeding face. “You stabbed me with those claws of yours.”

  “Congratulations, jerk,” Bree said. “You just graduated from assault and battery charges to attempted murder. You’re going away for a long, long time.”

  Bree glanced over at Marilyn. The woman was pale, but steady.

  Jared’s face turned purple with rage. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a switchblade, flicking it open with his wrist.

  “I don’t think you’re really going to shoot me, Marilyn.” He stood up. “I think if you had really wanted to get away from me, you could’ve done that. Couldn’t you have? I mean, how hard would it have been to leave for good? You stayed in the same state I was in. That’s how I knew you didn’t really want to get away from me. That you remembered how I rescued you when you needed it.”

  Marilyn’s hand with the gun began to shake.

  “Don’t listen to him,” Bree said. “You made the best decisions you could in the situation you were in. It doesn’t matter what happened then. It only matters what happens now.”

  Jared took a step toward Marilyn. Bree wanted to grab her phone and call Tanner but knew there was no way he could get here in time, and she might distract Marilyn.

  “If you take one more step, I’ll shoot you,” Marilyn said
. But her voice was shaky. So very shaky.

  “Come on now, sweetheart.” Jared took another step toward her. “We both know you used up all your bravery on that little self-defense move you pulled a minute ago. How about if our deal still stands? You leave with me now, and nobody gets hurt.”

  Marilyn widened her stance and shook her head, her arm with the gun becoming steadier. “How about if Bree calls the police and you are out of my life for good? You’ll never have me again, Jared. That teenage girl you rescued from the trailer park? I’m not that same person. I know my value. And I’m way too valuable for someone like you.”

  With a yell, Jared launched himself across the table, arm raised with the knife.

  Marilyn didn’t hesitate. She fired a double shot to the chest.

  Shock blanketed Jared’s features before he stumbled back and collapsed onto the couch.

  Not a half second later both her front and back doors burst open, Tanner coming through the front, Noah the rear.

  Bree just stared at him, the echo from the gunfire so close it caught her off guard. Processing seemed impossible.

  Almost from a daze she saw Tanner checking for a pulse from Jared on her couch.

  “He’s dead.”

  It was Noah who came up to Marilyn and helped take the gun from her shaking hand.

  Marilyn was staring at Noah with huge eyes. “You told me to attack at the beginning. That when he first saw me was my best chance for escape, but I froze. I froze.”

  Noah pulled her against his chest. “You didn’t get him at the start, but you got him at the end. And when it’s all said and done, that’s all that matters.”

  Bree was still staring at Jared’s body. Oh, God. He was on her wedding gown. Bleeding all over her wedding gown. She couldn’t even think about that now.

  Tanner was on his phone and soon all sorts of people were filing into her apartment. Ronnie, a paramedic, other people she didn’t know.

  Bree just stood there, almost numb.

  Finally, it was Tanner’s face right in front of hers that zapped her back into reality. “Freckles? You okay? Two dead bodies in one week is a lot for anybody to handle.”

  “I’m not sad he’s dead. After what he did to Marilyn? This is the only way we’d know for sure he’ll never hurt her again. He found a way around the ankle monitor. Something I missed.”

  Tanner shook his head. “He had Oscar Stobbart and Marius Nixon holding Adam Sowers, his wife and his baby hostage. That’s how he got out of the ankle monitor—not something you missed, something you never even considered, because you’re not a psycho like Jared. So Oscar will be going to jail for a long time too.”

  “Good.”

  She felt his fingers trail down her cheek. “Maybe we should get you checked out. You’re looking a little pale. And you haven’t taken your eyes off Jared since I got here. He can’t hurt anyone anymore.”

  “I know. It’s just that...he just bled out all over my wedding gown.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “They’re supposed to leave tomorrow late afternoon for their honeymoon. It would be nice for them to be married before that happened.”

  “Not to mention there’s no way we’re going to get the church again any Saturday soon. It was hard enough to get it this weekend when we booked it six months ago.”

  “Plus, Bree’s cousin Melissa and those sweet babies will be here only for this weekend.”

  Bree sat in a booth at the Sunrise Diner listening to the women talk around her, not even sure who was saying what. It was after midnight, her wedding dress was currently part of a crime scene and even if it was released, there was no way she was getting married in that thing.

  Marilyn was sitting across from her in the booth, sipping coffee. They’d both already given their statements to the police. The fact that Jared had been coming at her with a knife when she’d shot meant there’d be no criminal charges brought up against Marilyn. The woman had a lot she needed to process, but so far, she was holding up like a champ.

  Marilyn had been sitting across from Bree for the past thirty minutes as more and more of the women from Risk Peak heard about what had happened and filled the diner around them.

  “What’s your plan?” Marilyn finally asked softly as the talking continued. “You know we can make the wedding work later if you want to wait. Don’t worry about that.”

  But Bree didn’t want to wait. She was ready. Ready for her always to start. Ready to say the vows that had become so clear to her.

  Damn it. Ready to have sex with Tanner.

  But she didn’t want to do it without Marilyn up there with her. If she wanted to wait, Bree could wait too.

  “What about you? I want you standing beside me when I do this. You’ve kept me sane over the past few months with all the wedding planning. If you’re not up to it, then we’ll reschedule.”

  Marilyn shook her head. “I refuse to give that man even one more hour of my life. Please get married tomorrow, Bree Cheese. Give us even more reason to celebrate life.”

  Around them someone was talking about whether they needed to wake up the church secretary right now and see if there were any other possible weekends available.

  “No.” Bree stood. Enough. “The wedding is still on for tomorrow. As long as Tanner can be there, I’ll still be walking down the aisle in the morning.”

  “Tanner will be there,” Cassandra called out. “I already asked—since I’m the bossy little sister and allowed to ask questions like that. He says there’s nothing about this situation that will keep him from the church if that’s what you want.”

  But there would be no time to get another dress.

  “I’ll just wear a sundress or something,” she said.

  That was okay. The important thing was that she would get to marry Tanner tomorrow. She tried not to cringe at the thought of him in his tuxedo and her walking down the aisle in a sundress. But she didn’t own anything fancier, and there was no way to get to a wedding dress shop before the ceremony in the morning.

  “Oh, no you won’t.” Cheryl came and put her arm around Bree. How many times had she done that over the last year since Bree arrived in town? This woman had become a surrogate mother to her. Someone Bree treasured. “Leah and I have already been talking about that.”

  “You have?” Bree hadn’t even realized Tanner’s mother was here.

  “We have a plan. We’re going to make you a dress using sections of all of our own wedding dresses.”

  “But...I don’t understand. Using pieces of your own dresses? Won’t that ruin them?”

  Cheryl pulled Bree in for a hug. “You’re the only bride I know who’s concerned about our wedding dresses, not about what hers might look like when it’s all done.”

  Bree shrugged with one shoulder. “I can’t envision it, to be honest. And is this even possible? How will you do it?”

  “It won’t be as ornate and detailed as your dress. There’s no way we could make something like that probably ever, let alone in one night.”

  “Oh, well, that’s okay. Nobody could actually make a dress like that one. I would never expect it.”

  “And would never want it either,” Cheryl said with a smile. “Dan told me that as soon as he saw it. He admitted it was beautiful but said it wasn’t a Bree kind of beautiful. I just wrote him off, convinced he was a man who didn’t know anything about wedding dresses.”

  Bree couldn’t stand that she might be hurting Cheryl’s feelings after all the woman had done for her. “It is—was—a beautiful dress. Truly. I never would’ve picked out anything so beautiful without your help.”

  Cheryl smiled. “Oh, I know it was beautiful, but as painful as it is for me to say this, Dan was right. It’s beautiful, but not a Bree kind of beautiful.”

  “I don’t even know what Bree kind of beautiful is.”

&n
bsp; Cheryl reached in and kissed her on her cheek. “And that’s exactly why it’s such a unique beauty. Because you don’t see it in yourself. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a wedding dress creation to supervise. We’ll have you ready to walk down that aisle in the morning.”

  Bree squeezed her hand. “Okay. Thank you.”

  The older woman spun around and started announcing the plan. Everyone cheered, and within minutes they were running out into the darkness to grab their wedding dresses out of closets and mothballs and cedar trunks.

  Others were running off to grab sewing machines.

  Someone grabbed Bree and pulled her into the middle of the floor and began measuring her around her pajamas.

  Dan, the lone male voice in the whole place, yelled, “I’ll start the breakfast food. Y’all are going to need it.”

  “And coffee!” Cheryl yelled.

  “Of course coffee!” Dan returned with a grin. He winked at Bree as she held up her arms so someone could measure her bust. “It’s not my first day.”

  Bree just watched it all with a smile. What else could she do?

  The women came back, carrying their wedding dresses, laughing and joking and telling stories from their own wedding days. A few were telling interesting stories about the day they got divorced too.

  None of them uttered a word of complaint as pieces of their dresses—usually parts of the train or underskirt that wouldn’t ever be noticed, but sometimes more—were measured for the pattern they developed and cut.

  It was the bodice of Gayle Little’s dress that ended up fitting Bree perfectly. The woman had lost her husband of sixty years just a few months ago. Bree couldn’t even believe somebody Mrs. Little’s age would be here helping in the middle of the night. But she was, and she was more than happy to provide this part of her dress, even though it meant taking the dress apart.

  “I never had daughters. And it just wasn’t the right style for the women my boys married,” Mrs. Little said. “My Stanley would’ve been thrilled at the thought of you wearing it to marry Tanner. He always loved that boy.”