The Wedding Steal

by Layla Valentine

“What girls?” I asked. “Do you mean the bridesmaids?”

  “Yeah. Kate or Lizzie or whoever hired you. Give them a call, and they’ll explain everything. They’re nice girls. I’m sure they’ll understand your confusion and still pay you. Half, at least. What is the going rate for a kidnapping these days?”

  What was this woman talking about? Even if she was trying to trick me into believing she wasn’t my intended target, I couldn’t understand why she’d be so cavalier about the whole affair. She acted like we were old friends going for a drive. And had she mentioned something about it being a prank?

  “You’re the one who’s confused,” I said, shaking my head. “Maybe you’re in shock. Do you feel all right?”

  “I’m peachy, but between you and me, I’m still a little drunk,” she said, leaning forward to whisper. I could feel her breath on the back of my neck and a shiver moved down my spine. “The scare you gave me in the parking lot sure did a lot to sober me up, though.”

  This was exactly what I’d hoped for—a compliant victim. I didn’t want any screaming or fighting back, and that is exactly what I’d gotten. Except, I actually would have felt better if Jenna had freaked out. The blasé act was unsettling. She had no idea where I was taking her or why. Anyone with even the slightest instinct towards self-preservation would have been trying to gouge my eyes out.

  “You do understand what’s happening right now?” I asked. On one hand, I didn’t want to ruin a good thing. My captive was calm and agreeable. On the other hand, I felt guilty. Surely, if she understood what was going on, she’d be acting differently.

  “Sure, sure,” she said lazily, waving me away with one hand. I watched her cross her arms over her chest and slouch even further down into the backseat. “You’re ‘kidnapping’ me.”

  “What’s with the air quotes?”

  “Would you like me to pretend to be scared?” she asked. “I would, but it seems a little silly at this point. You picked up the wrong Kendrick and I’m sure the girls are telling Jenna about the hilarious mistake. Really, I should be thanking you. My family will be telling this story at family gatherings for years to come. I’ll be a legend.”

  The wrong Kendrick? Okay, something weird was happening, and I needed to figure out what.

  I slammed on the brakes and swerved towards the shoulder of the road. The woman in the backseat braced herself and sat up.

  “What are you doing now? Is this part of it?” she asked, sounding slightly concerned.

  Good. It meant she was aware enough to be a little wary.

  I turned on my hazards even though the road was deserted and turned in my seat to face her. “Give me your ID.”

  Her brow furrowed for a moment and then her eyes lit up. “Great idea. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”

  She reached into the top of her dress, pulling the neckline down even further, revealing more of her skin. My chest tightened, and I looked away for a second before looking right back. Even with all of the confusion and stress, part of me couldn’t help but pay attention to how gorgeous she was.

  She pulled her driver’s license and debit card out from where she’d had it stashed in her bra and held them out for me.

  I grabbed the cards from her, noting that they were warm from being pressed against her skin, and turned on the light underneath my rearview mirror. The light glared across the shiny surface of her cards, so I angled them back, craning my neck to see. The picture on her driver’s license was the prettiest driver’s license photo I’d ever seen. My pictures always came out terribly—I was either blinking or grimacing instead of a smile—but hers looked casual and effortless. Her brown hair was quite a bit shorter, but she had the same wide eyes and bright smile.

  “See?” she asked from the backseat.

  I didn’t see. Not yet, anyway. The picture had distracted me. I blinked and scanned my eyes over the small print on the card, searching for a name. Then, I saw it. Kendrick, Rachel. It wasn’t even an Ohio driver’s license. She was from Illinois.

  “Shit.”

  She laughed. “Sorry, dude.”

  I checked the debit card and saw the same thing: Rachel May Kendrick. My body sagged forward. I needed a nap. Actually, I needed to already be napping, so I could wake up and realize this entire day had been a dream. Every moment since Tony had walked into the boxing gym felt too bizarre to be real. This couldn’t be my life.

  “Are you two twins or something?”

  She shook her head. “Cousins, but you aren’t the first—nor probably the last—person to think we’re twins. We’ve looked alike our entire lives.”

  Panic began to rise up in my chest, my breathing growing more labored. What had I done? It was supposed to be an in-and-out operation. Once Jenna was in Tony’s custody, she wouldn’t rat us out to the police because it would jeopardize her dad’s reputation. His gambling debts were the reason she was being kidnapped in the first place.

  But Rachel Kendrick wouldn’t necessarily have those same loyalties. She may not feel responsible for the fate of her uncle. If I let her go, not only could she warn her cousin I was coming, but she might even call the police, and I hadn’t done anything to disguise my face or my car. If I let Rachel go, it could be the end of my life as I knew it.

  So, what did that mean? If I couldn’t let her go, was I supposed to hold her hostage forever? That clearly wasn’t a plausible idea. Kill her? Absolutely not. I’d been on the fence about kidnapping, so murder was definitely off the table. I ran a hand through my hair and squeezed my eyes shut. This had turned into an absolute disaster.

  “Don’t beat yourself up,” Rachel said, patting my shoulder. “This would have been a great prank if it had all worked out. Lizzie put you up to this, right?”

  I didn’t say anything. Mostly because I felt like if I opened my mouth, I might be sick. I should have listened to Rick. I should have pulled out of the mob life when I had the chance.

  “You know, you seem pretty beat up about this,” she said. “Maybe I should just get out and call a cab or something?” She stood up, crouching forward so she wouldn’t hit her head on the roof, and then moved as if she was going to crawl over the seat. She paused when she saw the glint of my gun in the center console. Then, she reached for it. “Wow. You even brought a fake gun. That’s commitment.”

  I realized what she was doing at the last second and lunged for the weapon, snatching it away and pulling it to my chest.

  Rachel’s hand jerked back, and she fell down into the backseat in surprise. I could hear her breathing hitch and then begin to ebb and flow like waves, growing more frequent. Soon, she was wheezing, air squeezing out of her lungs.

  “Is that…a real gun?”

  I dropped the gun into the cup-holder set into my door, and the harsh sound of it thudding against the plastic seemed to set her off.

  “This isn’t a prank. Oh my God. This is real.”

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” I said quietly. I’d only brought the gun for my own protection. In case things went wrong with the kidnapping, and I was chased down by some good Samaritans. And even then, I didn’t plan to shoot anyone. I didn’t even have the gun loaded. I just wanted to be able to wave it around and scare people away if I needed to.

  “You kidnapped me,” she said.

  “Yes, but I meant to kidnap Jenna.”

  I watched her in the rearview mirror, a mix of shame and embarrassment stopping me from turning around and looking her in the eyes. She pressed the heels of her palms into her temples and squeezed her eyes shut.

  “That doesn’t make me feel better.”

  “It should,” I said. “My boss doesn’t want you. He doesn’t even know who you are.”

  Rachel dropped her hands and met my eyes in the rearview mirror. I could tell she was still freaking out, but she seemed suddenly more lucid.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. Because I didn’t know. I had no idea what I was going to
do. Could I call Tony and tell him about the mix-up? If I did, he might understand. Or he might not. He might let Rachel go. Or he might not.

  “Why does your boss want me—or Jenna?”

  “It’s not my job to worry about those details.” I didn’t know how much Rachel knew about her cousin’s family, nor did I consider it my job to break the news about her uncle to her.

  She huffed. “Perhaps if you worried a bit more about the details, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “Excuse me for not realizing you lied about your name,” I snapped back defensively. “Maybe if you didn’t run around pretending to be someone you aren’t, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  Rachel crossed her arms over her chest and looked out the window, her mouth turned down in a frown. “Are you part of some crime ring or something? Or the mafia? Does Ohio even have a mafia?”

  I took a deep breath. I needed quiet. I needed to think. What was I going to tell Tony? What was I going to do with Rachel Kendrick?

  Rachel continued when I didn’t respond. “Whoever you are, Jenna is innocent. She doesn’t deserve this.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Because I know my cousin. She wouldn’t be involved in something like this, and she wouldn’t do anything illegal. You were sent after an innocent woman on the night of her bachelorette party. Does that make you feel good? Hunting women down while they’re out having fun with their friends? I may never go to another bar after this,” she said, her voice growing softer as she thought on what she’d said. Then, she cleared her throat. “If I get out of this.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” I snapped.

  Suddenly, I jolted forward, propelled from behind. I could tell by the punch of pressure in my lower back that Rachel had kicked the back of my seat.

  “Typical man, telling a woman who’s just been kidnapped not to be so dramatic! You’d be a little dramatic, too, if you were locked in the back of a stranger’s car, jackass.”

  I rolled my eyes and tried to think. How did she expect me to know what to do if she wouldn’t stop talking?

  “I could be crying hysterically, so you could thank me for holding it together at least a little bit,” she continued. “I think I’m being pretty strong, actually. But I can tell you’re the kind of man who will always think a woman is being too emotional. That’s probably why you became a kidnapper in the first place—because our society has taught you that women are worth less. Their emotions aren’t as important as yours, and they’re weaker than you in every way. Am I hitting the nail on the head or what?”

  I wanted to point out to her that I’d been very aware of how unemotional she was being for the first ten to fifteen minutes of the drive. In fact, her lack of emotion was what inspired me to pull the car over and discover her identity. I didn’t really appreciate her argument, but I was too busy freaking out about what to do next to argue.

  Then, my phone began to ring.

  “And another thing,” she went on, “the way you first approached me at the bar was alarming. You do know that, right? Was lunging towards me as I walked out of the bathroom your way of trying to blend in?”

  It was Tony.

  “That should have been a huge red flag, but I ignored it because you’re gorgeous. God, I’m so dumb.”

  “Be quiet,” I mumbled, staring at Tony’s name as it flashed across my screen. He’d seen my missed call and was calling me back to see how things were going. What was I going to tell him?

  “I usually carry around a Taser in my purse, so you’re lucky I didn’t bring it tonight. Otherwise, you would already be sitting in a jail cell somewhere.”

  I had to answer the call. If I didn’t, Tony would know something was wrong.

  “Be quiet,” I said more forcefully.

  Rachel inhaled. “Excuse me?”

  I spun around in my seat and looked at her, trying to impress upon her the importance of the next few minutes. Her upper lip was pulled back, but it relaxed when our eyes met, and the creases in her forehead smoothed out.

  “He will come after both of us if I don’t say all the right things,” I said, speaking as plainly as I could. “He could kill us both because of this mistake, so please, be quiet. Let me handle this, and then we’ll figure out what to do next.”

  I could see doubt clouding her features, but she nodded, and I was grateful. I turned around, took a deep breath, and pressed the phone to my ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Colton, my friend. How’s it going?”

  I could hear music in the background, the distant hum of voices. Tony was at a bar or a club while making a phone call to inquire about the woman he’d hired me to kidnap. I wondered what it must be like to have no conscience at all. To be so certain that everything you were doing was morally acceptable—or, at the very least, to not care that it wasn’t.

  “Great.” I just needed to keep everything short and sweet. No unnecessary information. I’d give Tony a better story later when I knew how I was going to handle my mistake.

  “So,” he said, drawing the word out long. “You got her?”

  “Yup.” He didn’t specify who “her” was, so I didn’t count it as a lie.

  “And you’re back on the road?”

  “On our way back to Jersey right now,” I said, immediately wishing I hadn’t mentioned Jersey on the phone. I didn’t know how much information I wanted Rachel to know just yet.

  Tony pulled away from the phone and let out a loud “whoop” that faded into the din of party noise around him. There was a small cheer after he shouted, and I wondered how many people there with him knew what he was shouting about. Most people who knew Tony recognized his family name. They knew the Gambinos were a mob family. But, like me, a lot of people thought gambling and small-time drug dealing was the extent of their crimes.

  “Thanks for doing this for me, Colton,” Tony said, sounding oddly sincere. “And thanks for keeping it quiet. If you can get her back here without anyone else finding out, I’ll be sure to add in a bonus.”

  A chill moved down my body, enveloping one body part at a time. Tony was going to give me a bonus for a job well done. Because I’d kidnapped an innocent woman. What would my parents think if they could see me now? What would the men in my SEAL platoon think? How had I found myself in this situation?

  Tony told me to call again when I was close, and I agreed. Then, I hung up the phone, shifted the car into drive, and yanked hard on the wheel. We pulled away from the shoulder of the road, crossed both lanes of traffic, and began heading back in the direction we’d just come from.

  Rachel sat up and looked around, glancing from me to the highway, as if there would be a sign on the edge of the road telling her where we were headed.

  “What did your boss say? Where are you taking me?”

  “He told me I did a great job,” I said.

  Rachel groaned. “Wow. Congratulations. Maybe they’ll promote you to assassin.”

  “I’m not taking you to Tony.”

  She sat up, her arm resting on the back of the passenger seat. “What about Jenna?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not taking her to Tony, either.”

  I could feel her eyes on me, and I gripped the wheel tighter. I had no idea if this was the smart thing to do, but it had to be the right thing. Handing over an innocent woman to Tony didn’t feel right, and now, because of my own mistake, I could be putting both Jenna and Rachel in danger. And for what? A little extra cash?

  “Are you taking me back to the bar?” she asked.

  I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but I knew immediately that was a bad idea.

  “He’ll come after you if I let you go. As soon as Tony realizes I’m not bringing you to him, he’ll hunt me down and find you anyway.”

  “Or Jenna,” Rachel said. “He might not make the same mistake you did. He’ll kidnap Jenna instead.”

  I nodded. “Probably.”

  It was Rachel’s turn to curse. “Shit.”
/>   “Listen, Tony knows I have you. Well, he thinks you’re Jenna, but you understand what I mean. He knows I have you, so he’ll come after the two of us once he realizes I’m not headed back to Jersey. I can protect you from him until this blows over.”

  I saw in the corner of my vision that she tilted her head to the side, and I didn’t need to see the expression on her face to know she had her doubts.

  I kept talking, trying to convince myself I could do this as much as I was convincing Rachel. “Tony doesn’t have the stamina to see a plan like this through if it falls apart. This order came from him, not his father, and he won’t have the resources at his disposal that he normally does. So, I can handle his goons. We’ll lay low for a few days, make sure your cousin knows to be on her guard, and then we can both go back to our normal lives and pretend this never happened.”

  The headlights of a car driving towards us illuminated the cab, and I caught a glimpse of Rachel’s face in the rearview mirror. She was biting the corner of her lower lip, her brows pulled together until she had a small crease between them.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  If I wanted her to trust me, I had to be honest. I couldn’t hide behind a fake name. So, after a slight hesitation, I told her. “Colton Long.”

  She nodded, still chewing on her lip. “Well, Colton Long, I guess we’re in for quite an adventure.”

  Our eyes met in the mirror, and she had a small smile now, but I could see the strain behind it. She was like a guitar string tuned too tight. At any moment, she could snap and go flying.

  I hated that I’d done that to her. That I had been the person to bring this chaos into her life. My decision to go into the military might not have stemmed from a deep desire to help people, but that was certainly an upside. I liked being someone people respected, someone people looked up to.

  No matter what it took, I would be that person for Rachel Kendrick. I would help her get out of this.

  Chapter 9

  Rachel

  If I wasn’t yelling or ranting at Colton Long, I didn’t know how to talk to him. Our relationship had gotten off to an unconventional start, to say the least, so conversation felt stilted and uncomfortable. I asked him where we were headed, and he told me he didn’t know. He asked me how long I’d lived in Ohio, and I told him I’d grown up there but had moved to Chicago a few years before.