My thoughts cycled around throughout the rest of the drive, following the path of my life, trying to understand how I’d sunk so low. By the time I was pulling into Pineville, Ohio in the mid-afternoon, the only thing I’d determined for sure was that something had to change. I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, what would make me happy, but it was obvious that working for the mob did not provide the satisfaction I was looking for. Kidnapping innocent women wasn’t going to bring me any sense of achievement. This would be my first and last secret job for Tony. I’d get my hands dirty, as Rick had said. I’d let Tony know I had no intention of going to the police and ratting him out, and then I’d bail. I’d take my money and start over doing something else. Anything else.
Pineville was tiny, resembling a movie set more than an actual town. Main Street was only six blocks long, and I didn’t see a single big box store or chain restaurant I recognized. It was like Pineville existed in its own universe entirely. On the bright side, this meant my task of finding Jenna Kendrick would be much easier; unless the microscopic town was also stuffed full of exceptionally beautiful young women, Jenna would stand out in a crowd.
I refilled my tank at the gas station—half-expecting someone in oil-stained blue coveralls to call me “sonny” and come out to pump my gas for me—and picked up a personal-sized pepperoni pizza from the warming rack next to the cash register. Then, I set out to find the address Tony had written down in the folder he’d handed me. There was no description or photograph of the place to help me out, and as soon as I saw Jenna Kendrick’s house, I understood why. It was hard to miss.
Most of the houses I’d passed on my short drive across town were well-maintained and tidy, but humble. One- or two-story homes with small gardens out front, perhaps a tire swing hanging from a large tree. Basic postcard stuff. Jenna’s house, by contrast, looked like it had come straight from the pages of an architecture magazine. Most of the structure was glass and steel with polished concrete and dark wood accents. Among the traditional homes surrounding it, her house looked like some kind of alien spacecraft.
It was immediately obvious that Jenna had money, so I worried briefly about a security system, but a quick glance around didn’t reveal any cameras or security company logos. So, I walked up to the front door and knocked. I didn’t see anyone else in the neighborhood outside despite the warm spring day, so my plan was to grab Jenna as soon as she answered the door and throw her in my car. Quick and easy. No muss, no fuss.
When she didn’t answer the door, I grew bold and turned the knob, pushing the large metal door inwards, revealing a marble-floored entrance hall with a set of suspended wooden stairs leading up to a second floor.
The house was dark and quiet as I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. The bowl next to the door, where I suspected she left her keys, and the hooks on the wall, where I assumed she left her purse and other belongings, were both empty. It certainly didn’t seem like she was home. But just to be sure, I did a quick walk-through of the house.
I had never been in a stranger’s home without permission before, but I didn’t feel as uncomfortable as I’d expected. In a way, despite the clear illegality of my actions, I thought about it like I would any mission I’d carried out in the military: I had an objective, and I would do what was necessary to complete it without any hesitations.
Jenna’s house was large and minimalistic with a square blue pool taking up most of the backyard, but there was no sign of her or anyone else inside. I leaned against the marble kitchen island and cursed. What was I going to do? Should I hide out in a closet somewhere, waiting for her to get home? I knew I was there to kidnap her and deliver her to a mobster, but lurking in her house all day felt exceptionally creepy—not to mention that whoever she shared the enormous house with might come back first, and that would only make things more complicated. At the same time, I didn’t want to leave and spend time wandering around the town unnecessarily. In a town this size, the presence of a stranger was bound to be noticed, and the less people who saw my face, the better.
After a few minutes of silently stewing, I got an idea. I pulled out my phone and looked Jenna up on social media. People liked to log their every move on the internet, tagging themselves at popular brunch spots and the gym, not realizing how dangerous it was. I could only pray that Jenna Kendrick did the same.
There were a surprising number of women named Jenna Kendrick on the internet, but it only took me a few seconds to pick the Jenna I was looking for out of the bunch. I focused in on her tags and check-ins around Pineville. The previous morning, she had taking a selfie of herself frowning as she stood in the elevator heading up to work, captioning it, Why isn’t it the weekend yet? Then, she’d tagged the Chinese takeout place where she ordered lunch, giving them two enthusiastic emoji thumbs-up, and took another picture of herself standing in front of a break-room cake, celebrating her coworker’s birthday. As far as I could tell, she had yet to update her followers today, and I found myself in the unusual position of being desperate for a social-media update.
I was moments away from closing the app and figuring out a new plan when, right before my eyes, a new status popped up. It had been posted only fifteen seconds before.
Pottery painting with my fave girls! Making Mr. and Mrs. coffee mugs for me and my boo thang #jennasbachelorette #hosswedding #futuremrshoss
My mouth fell open. She was at her bachelorette party? Jenna Kendrick was getting married? Either Tony didn’t know that fact, or he had left out a very important piece of information. I did not know I had been sent to kidnap a bride-to-be.
I could call Tony and ask him if he was sure he still wanted me to do this, but I didn’t want to give him any reason to doubt me. I could lie and tell him I couldn’t find her, but if I’d thought to check social media, surely Tony would have done the same, and again, my failure would be seen as a lack of commitment to the Gambinos. I stared at the status for a few minutes, trying to decide what to do and wishing Jenna hadn’t been such a prolific user of social media.
Finally, I locked my screen, shoved my phone in my pocket, and headed for the front door. Despite my growing sense of unease, I knew exactly where I was headed next.
Chapter 4
Rachel
My slinky black dress suddenly seemed beyond inappropriate. Not only was it the middle of the afternoon, but I was showing most of my thigh while a little boy at the table next to mine was painting a ceramic piggy bank to look like a pirate. But really, who chose pottery painting as a bachelorette-party activity? Jenna’s maid of honor, Lizzie, apparently. I blamed her for the stares I received from the little boy’s mom.
Elizabeth Dower, “Lizzie” for short, had been Jenna’s roommate at college, and the two had quickly become best friends. Lizzie bragged that it had been “friendship at first sight,” which was so cheesy it made me want to hack up a hairball every time she said it.
“I can’t believe our little Jenna is getting married,” Lizzie said, shimmying her shoulders and scrunching up her perfectly contoured nose. She had on enough makeup to make a circus clown blush.
A petite woman with a dark pixie haircut named Kate nodded and leaned forward to look at Jenna. “No offense, Jen, but I totally thought I’d be the next one to get married. Me and Brad have been together for three years!”
“You need to give that man an ultimatum,” Lizzie said, patting Kate on the shoulder with her wrist, since her fingers were covered in glaze. “Make him realize that he’s going to lose you if he doesn’t stop dragging his feet.”
“Or you could hold out on him,” Jenna said with a shrug. “It worked for me.”
The table erupted in giggles, earning yet another glare from the mom at the table next to us. Seriously, who thought pottery painting in the middle of the afternoon was a good place for a bachelorette party? I was uncomfortable talking about Jenna’s sex life in any capacity, let alone when a pre-pubescent boy was sitting less than five feet away.
“You mean, you didn’t give him any?” Kate asked, waggling her eyebrows as she said the last word.
“I’m not a saint, girls. I have my needs,” Jenna said, her eyes sparkling. “But I promised Evan I’d be ‘tired’ a lot less often once I had a big diamond on my finger.”
Lizzie bounced up and down in her seat and clapped her hands like a seal performing a trick. The table was so amused with Jenna’s story that I was half-tempted to ask her if I could borrow it for my act. Though, I didn’t think it would pair well with all of my jokes about being single in a big city and regularly having waiters bring you an extra bread basket because they feel bad for you for eating out alone again.
Remarkably, Lizzie was already married and had been for five years. I only say it’s remarkable because she had immediately struck me as the kind of woman who would rather date around and rage about how chivalry is dead than someone who would get married in college. Because she had taken a deep dive into her life story, I learned that she and her husband got married after their sophomore year, lived in a rinky-dink apartment on campus, and got pregnant with their daughter during their junior year. He finished his degree while Lizzie became a stay-at-home mom and never looked back.
“I think I went to school to become a stay-at-home mom,” Lizzie said. “I tell Mara that my degree is in being her mommy.”
“Did she want to know your GPA before giving you the job?” I quipped before I could think better it.
Jenna and one of the other girls, Jess, chuckled at my joke, but Lizzie, Kate, and Bridget all narrowed their eyes at me. I took the hint and decided to continue working on my masterpiece—a pen cup with a duck on the side for my rarely used desk at home. Clearly, my humor wasn’t appreciated here.
Throughout the conversation, I learned that Jess had been engaged for three years with no immediate plans to set a wedding date. “It’s just a piece of paper, after all. Right?”
Bridget, meanwhile, had married her high-school sweetheart and they had three children all under the age of three. “God’s little miracles,” she called them. Though, based on the way she groaned every time her phone rang, I guessed she was glad to be away from God’s little miracles for the day.
Kate decided she would definitely try the withholding method with Brad. “What’s that saying—why would he buy the cow if he’s getting the milk for free?”
And Lizzie—in a long rant that spanned several minutes and made me consider smashing my freshly painted pen cup in the center of the table just to get her to be quiet—discussed why organic cotton clothes are the only thing that should be touching the bodies of babies, and how having a nanny does not make her role as a stay-at-home parent any easier. “She doesn’t take care of any of the cleaning, and she’s only with Mara for five hours a day. The rest of the day, it is just me and Mara until my husband gets home.”
The only thing I could think while all of the women were talking was that somewhere in the stories of their lives—if juxtaposed in the right way with stories from my own—there had to be a few good jokes for my next stand-up routine. When Jenna pressed me to add something to the conversation, I mumbled that dating in Chicago was a mixed bag and then pretended to be working very diligently on the finishing touches of my ceramic cup to avoid talking about my most recent date. The last thing I wanted to admit to a table full of married and engaged women was that I hadn’t been on a good date in over a year and hadn’t even had a prospective boyfriend the entire time I’d been in Chicago. I couldn’t believe I drove five hours to endure such a mind-numbing afternoon. When had Jenna become so stuffy as to think this was a good time? We were supposed to be getting drunk and dancing on random men, not crafting and feeling depressed.
After two hours of pottery painting—Lizzie required the full two hours to perfect a ceramic plate which she decorated with an Italian landscape from her most recent family vacation to Tuscany—the sun was beginning to go down, and so was the conversation. The six of us were sitting around the table, sighing occasionally, and it was clear that everyone was thinking the same thing—what are we doing next?
“I could go for round two,” Lizzie said, holding up her plate. “That was fun.”
Correction: everyone except Lizzie was thinking the same thing.
Jenna smiled, but I could tell by the pained look in her eyes that she was ready for the next activity, too. I’d been wondering the entire time we were sitting around the table how the cousin I’d gone to parties with in high school had suddenly become the kind of person who thought “girls’ night out” meant mid-afternoon arts and crafts. And now, it was obvious that Jenna hadn’t become that person. She’d simply made the mistake of becoming friends with a person who was that person.
So, saint that I am, I decided to step in.
“I could go for a round of drinks,” I said, raising my eyebrows and looking around the table. “Anyone else?”
Jenna widened her eyes and gave me a quick, desperate nod that no one else saw.
“Cincinnati is less than an hour away,” I continued, leaning forward and whispering conspiratorially. “Let’s go to a club. We can drink and dance and give this soon-to-be wifey one last night of freedom.”
Everyone except Lizzie was practically vibrating with excitement. Jess was already waving her arm for the woman behind the desk to come collect our pottery pieces so they could be fired in the kiln, and Bridget pulled out her phone to call her husband and tell him he was going to have to put the kids to bed.
“We’re going to stop for drinks in—” Lizzie paused, pulling out her phone and scrolling through what I could only assume was a long and immaculately planned agenda for the evening. “Four hours.”
“I can’t wait that long,” Kate groaned before shooting an apologetic look to Lizzie. “Sorry, girl. I need a drink.”
“But manicures and pedicures,” Lizzie said in a pouty voice. “And mini golf.”
No. Absolutely not. Mini golf is an unforgivable bachelorette party activity. Plus, who wants to play mini golf right after a manicure? No one. Lizzie was officially the world’s worst party planner. I decided right then and there that I would be the unofficial head of the bachelorette party from that point on. I was, after all, the only woman in the group who was still a bachelorette, which meant I was the only one qualified to plan the activities.
“Sorry, Liz,” Jenna said, patting her maid of honor on the shoulder. “I think the girls are excited about drinks. We’ll do the rest of the stuff on your list another day. Just the two of us.”
A flame of jealousy licked across my chest for a moment when I realized how close Jenna and Lizzie were. Not close enough for Lizzie to have any idea what Jenna would find enjoyable, but close enough that Jenna wanted to protect her feelings and plan a hangout with her. Jenna and I hadn’t hung out together in years. We caught up at family holidays and texted occasionally, but hadn’t spent any quality time together in a long time. But that was my fault. I was the one who had moved away. There was a little consolation in the fact that I had saved her bachelorette party, though. The humdrum faces I’d seen inside the pottery painting studio had turned ecstatic by the time we were piling into the taxi minivan I’d ordered to take us to the city.
Our first stop was a cocktail bar in the business district. It was filled with suits stopping in for a drink after a long day at the office, so our group gathered quite a bit of attention. I was pleased to note that suddenly, I was the most appropriately dressed for the occasion. All the other women looked nice, but they all had on white or flowery dresses that settled around their knees and looked more appropriate for a garden party than a night out.
“Ditch the tiny sweater,” I said, nudging Jenna in the arm.
“It’s cold,” she whispered back.
I rolled my eyes. “You can show a little shoulder. I don’t think any of the men here will drop dead at the sight of it.”
“I know they won’t, because they’ve seen your entire chest,” she said, eyeing the low cut of
my neckline.
I opened my mouth to pretend I was offended, but quickly lost my composure and started laughing. This was more like it.
We settled into a round booth in the corner of the room, and Jenna slipped out of her sweater, giving me a pointed look as she did so that made me laugh again. Giddy from having saved the night, I decided to keep my saint-like streak going and order the first round of drinks for everyone. My bank account was in poor shape and was only going to get worse now that I’d taken a week off work to travel back to Ohio for the bachelorette party and a visit with family, but I had enough for a few rounds. Plus, I knew my parents would slip a couple hundred dollars into my suitcase, the way they did after every trip home. No matter how much I insisted I was fine on money, they would always float me some just in case. I’d long ago decided that parents must have some kind of sixth sense for when their kid is struggling.
Before our first drinks could even arrive at the table, a man with dark hair and a scruffy chin walked over to our table and placed his palms flat on the tabletop.
“You ladies seem like you’re having a good time.”
“We’ve only been here for a few minutes, but yeah, it’s fun,” I said, shouting a bit so he could hear me over the music.
“Is there room for one more at your table?” he asked, reaching down to undo the button of his suit jacket in preparation for sitting down.
Jenna shot me a panicked look, her eyes wide, and I couldn’t help but laugh. Another reason it was shocking she was getting married before me—or had a boyfriend before me—was because she had always been so shy around men. She never knew what to say and, whenever we were together, depended on me to take charge. I’d even had to break up with Bobby Wiles for her in seventh grade because she was too afraid to do it herself. It was especially awkward, because only two days prior, I’d also been the one to inform Bobby that Jenna had accepted his offer of being her boyfriend. I’m still not sure she ever actually spoke to Bobby in the two days they were going out.
The Wedding Steal - A SEAL Romance Page 3