Illegally Wedded

by Jennifer Griffith

  “Ah, social media. The revenge of the modern day.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “Garrett called me. I left him my card the other day when I came in for lunch. He was going to call me if you needed more diners for the day the Texas Star judges came. He told me Chad was here, and I came right down.”

  That was a sore subject Piper didn’t want to think about right now, not while Zach pressed a kiss to Piper’s head, and she finally felt her breathing resuming normal rates. She massaged her fingers. Eventually they’d be fine, too.

  Hearing Chad’s threat, and knowing how close she’d come to admitting the truth about her and Zach’s marriage, she realized how her resistance to him had endangered her case—possibly to the point of tanking it entirely.

  And what was the point? Now that Chad was officially out of the picture, and swearing wrath on her for her unfaithfulness, shouldn’t she just make good on all her promises, at least the right promises, the ones she’d made to God and to her legally wedded husband? In this moment, several things became clear—Zach loved her enough to come running the second she was in danger.

  This was a man she could fully devote herself to, body and soul.

  “Zach, I’m sorry for being so disagreeable last night. When you were trying to persuade me, I overreacted. I’ve…I’ve had guys try to ‘persuade’ me with overbearing force before, and I must have just been remembering that. Can you forgive me?”

  “Now that I see what you were up against in the past, of course.”

  Piper exhaled, grateful to the moon and back for this man who surprised her at every turn. She lifted her mouth to kiss him, a whisper nearly escaping her lips as she leaned toward his mouth: I love you. The words got overshadowed by the loud calling of a sunny voice.

  Birdie.

  “Love birds!” The elderly woman chuckled, and Piper pulled back from the kiss, disappointed at its unfulfilled promise. “Hey, sweets. Our plane’s awaiting. Come on. I’ve been sitting in the taxi out front for five minutes thinking you’d pop out. Oh,” she nodded to Zach, “I’m so glad she chose you and not that other one.” Birdie made a lemon-sucking face. “You’re much better.” Truer words… “You’ve got a lovelight in your eyes.”

  Lovelight! Really? Piper lifted her chin to inspect Zach’s eyes, but all she saw was a cloud of concern.

  “You’re going?” Zach slid his hand into hers, the unhurt hand. “But, I found something I need to tell you about.”

  “Can you text me, or call with it? I’ve really got to run.”

  “Come on, sugar pop. We’re going to miss Neil, and I’ve been waiting forty years!”

  ∞∞∞

  Zach watched the taxi leave, grateful now he hadn’t burdened Piper with the information he’d dug up, not after what she just went through with Chad. How could a guy be so brutal as to raise a hand to a woman like Piper? It boggled Zach’s mind, and he swore he’d never let that guy get anywhere near her again.

  After their disagreement last night, he’d worried more about her trip. Part of him wanted to pace his office until he dropped to sleep, but his better sense told him to prepare for tomorrow’s trial instead. There had to be something about Valentine he’d missed. There just had to.

  And then, at three o’clock this morning he’d decided to go to the proverbial mattresses and stalk her social media page. Something about it didn’t settle right with Zach, but he’d found an exchange there that might yield results: Hey, babe. Meet me for coffee at Grounds tomorrow morning at ten? We can prepare for Friday afternoon’s skewerment.

  Skewerment on Friday afternoon hit Zach like a Mack truck. Valentine couldn’t have more than one big thing planned for tomorrow afternoon. It had to be a reference to Piper’s hearing.

  Zach’s stomach had gurgled with anger. He looked, and the invitation had been posted by a man with a name that rang a bell, although Zach couldn’t pinpoint it, and the man’s page and picture were set to private.

  Maybe if Piper saw the guy’s face, she could tell Zach something. He planned to head to Du Jour to make a last-ditch effort to talk her out of going to that concert, and see if she would go check out the coffee shop, but Garrett had intercepted and changed his focus for going to the bistro.

  Now, Piper had left for the Pacific Coast irretrievably, so Zach headed over to the coffee shop himself.

  No sooner did Zach’s entrance jingle the bell on the shop’s door than he saw Agent Valentine at a bistro table, deep in conversation, almost forehead to forehead, with a stone-faced man in a dark blue uniform. A cop? An appropriately dressed (by comparison to her) ICE agent? Zach couldn’t tell.

  There was no sense skulking about. Zach strode toward the table, ready to confront Agent Nicole Valentine and whoever this skewerment collusion bloke was.

  However, before Zach could wedge his way through the tight column of customers lined up for their caffeine fixes, Agent Valentine had stood up and made a dash out the front door.

  Ah. An opening.

  Grabbing a copy of the newspaper, Zach gave his best impression of a casual saunter over to the table with Stone Face and sat down.

  “Crowded in here. Mind if I sit?”

  “Go ahead.” Stone Face’s chin jutted. “My girlfriend’s not coming back.”

  “Called in to work, eh. She was a looker. I couldn’t help but notice her.”

  “Yeah, I guess. But she’s nothing like my last girlfriend.”

  Huh. Zach wondered if Agent Valentine knew her man-friend here was stuck in the past—and not into her. He couldn’t imagine she’d take that well.

  “The one that got away.” Zach nodded, as if in full agreement. “We never really get over those, do we?”

  “At least not until we get revenge.”

  Revenge. Speaking of skewerment, the word pierced Zach right through. Using all his lawyer kung fu, he kept his face a mask, though, willing it not to register the shock as puzzle pieces jostled for position in his brain.

  “That’s one way of looking at it, I guess.” Zach gave a convivial chuckle. “Any suggestions, should I have a little vengeance of my own to take?”

  “Hoh-yeah.” At this, Stone Face’s whole countenance came to life, from stone to flesh in an instant—and not friendly flesh. “You got time for a yarn?”

  “All I’ve got is time.”

  “Settle in because this girl not only got me fired from my dream job with her false accusations, she stuck me at the deadest of dead-end jobs the federal government has to offer.”

  “Whoa. What’s that?”

  “TSA. Transportation Security Administration.”

  “You mean the people who search your luggage at the airport?”

  “Yes, and believe me, I’ve seen more than my lifetime quota of filthy, old-man underwear at this point.” Stone Face scowled. “Lo how the mighty are fallen. There I was riding high, an official Texas Ranger, just like Chuck Norris, and now this.” He pointed at the name embroidered on his uniform: TSA, Mike.

  Mike.

  That was the name of the guy who’d stalked Piper. Zach willed all the blood not to drain from his face, but he probably failed, as the top of his scalp tingled.

  “See? You get it, the horror of it. I can see it on your face, pal.” Mike sat back and folded his arms over his chest. “Which is why I had to get revenge, see?”

  “Totally.” It came out a croak. Zach cleared his throat. “And you’re going to do that, how? I mean, seems necessary, but it had better be equal to what she put you through.”

  “Oh, believe me. It’s going to be poetic justice.” He rubbed his hands together. “And to think, the whole thing just fell into my lap at work one day down at San Antonio International. Voila, this super-nerd couple traipses through my line, heading off to New Zealand, and I look at their documents. Boom! There’s my ex-girlfriend’s birth certificate stuck right in with their stuff. My eyes about bugged out of my head, so I started asking questions. Fools. They were too giddy about mov
ing off to some nerd colony to keep their information back. I learned they’d been here illegally for years—and I could have detained them, but I saw a bigger prize: their daughter. Because she was here illegally, too. I wasn’t too slow to put two and two together on that.”

  “Wow. The seed of a nefarious plan.”

  “You’ll see how nefarious, buddy. You’ll see.” Mike took a long draught of his coffee and then continued. “I couldn’t go after her on my own, just report her. That’d be too iffy. I needed a better guaranteed return on my investment.”

  “I see. And?”

  “And I took my time, planned my steps carefully. First I researched agents at INS, er, ICE. You know what that is, right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Imagine my luck that I found a superhot chick who wanted me bad, and who had a vendetta against all illegals, since her dad was shot by one when she was a kid.”

  Zach recalled the newspaper article he’d read. It all gelled, which made Zach even sicker about the fact this Mike yahoo was spilling the truth of his guts right here in the coffee shop. If Mike knew Zach was Piper’s husband, what would he do?

  “Started dating her?”

  “Yep, and when I told her about my ex, she was all about going after her. We made it into a kind of quest. You know, like a treasure hunt, but more like a bounty hunt. My hot agent was more than happy to play along.”

  “Good on ya for that.” Zach had to clear his throat again. This was hideous. As he’d suspected, the whole thing really was a witch-hunt against Piper—the threats, the accelerated timeline, the vitriol. “So you’re getting close to taking her down now?”

  “Thirty-six hours from now, I’m seeing her onto a plane out of San Antonio International to another hemisphere.” His eyes had a sharp glint. “Hopefully in chains.”

  Chains. Please. Zach knew that wouldn’t happen, but he felt sick nonetheless.

  “Hey, looks like the ordering line’s gone down.” Zach got up, leaving the newspaper askew on the table and Mike grinning like a grizzly bear who’d just bitten off a camper’s head. “Good luck with your revenge.”

  But I’ll do everything in my power to stop you.

  ∞∞∞

  Back at his office that afternoon, Zach should have been preparing for his interview in the morning for partner. That meeting would happen in the morning, hours before his hearing at ICE. However, all he could do was keep amassing information and formulating it into arguments for Piper’s case.

  He dug back into the stack of files and unorganized information, shoving from his mind the fact that Eisenhower, er Austin, or whoever, had his interview with Crockett going on right now.

  Becoming partner would hardly matter if Piper wasn’t at his side.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Far. We’ve been travelin’ far. Neil’s gravel-laden bass sent women into paroxysms of joy all around Piper in the cool night. Seattle weather mirrored heaven’s weather after the heat and mugginess of the San Antonio summer. Piper basked in its misty coolness. The drive into the mountains to reach the venue had been two-plus hours over winding roads and through what looked like a tropical rainforest. Birdie had talked nonstop about Neil, and Piper could have been more attentive, but too much had been on her mind. Now, she just appreciated the weather and the music and the respite from her worries. She didn’t have to worry about a single thing until tomorrow morning. She could just take in the music and the nice seats of the Chilliwack Cultural Center.

  “Isn’t he dreamy? This has been the best—the most perfect night of my life.” Birdie shouted into Piper’s ear between her squeals of love hurled at the singer. “I even brought an extra bra to throw onto the stage if I can get close enough.”

  Luckily, Piper and Birdie’s VIP seats were in the sky-box of the arena.

  “Uh, you should keep that instead. Neil’s in good shape and probably not needing a bra at this point.”

  Birdie just laughed and raised her arms up to sway to the Comin’ to America chorus.

  Those words pricked Piper’s conscience. The immigrants in that song sacrificed for their American dreams, left home and family, scraped, saved, went without, while Piper had cheated her way in. Not intentionally, of course; her parents brought her and lied to her. She didn’t knowingly break immigration laws, which made it the difference between manslaughter and premeditated murder.

  Still, guilt bubbled through her. Others had followed rules, while she had skirted them. Others left family; Piper’s family left her. Others fell in love and then got married. Piper got married and then fell in love.

  Love. She’d definitely arrived at that destination. Hard to put any other word to it. She loved how he treated her, how his mind worked, how he cared for his family in their bad times. He didn’t let jerks mess with him—like those people at his office who got married the same day as she and Zach had, or even with Piper—like the way he defended her against an understandably angry Chad.

  Zach protected her.

  Much as she hated to admit it, she definitely needed protecting at this point.

  She picked up her phone to text him, but remembered he was preparing for his interview. Instead, she checked the weather in San Antonio. Tornado warning. Great. That bode well. Not that Texans freaked out too much over the frequent weather prediction. They were like earthquakes to people from Southern California. Destructive at times, massively, but a fact of life.

  The concert wound down after three encores, and even Birdie let her applause wane.

  “I can’t scream any more. And my biceps won’t let me clap another round. Adrenaline draining. Guess we’d better head back to the airport. We’ve got the red-eye back to Texas.” Birdie laughed, but tiredness tainted it.

  They’d traveled all day, rented the car, then scrubbed up in a McDonald’s bathroom before hitting the concert venue in the mountains north of Seattle. Piper prayed silently for no turbulence on the flight back so she could sleep before she had to get back to cooking in less than nine hours—and face her fate in court in just a few more after that.

  Hours now. Only hours. Every beat of her heart ticked like a clock. There was a point when she couldn’t have said whether losing Du Jour or losing Zach would hurt more.

  Now it was Zach. Losing him would be like losing a limb. Restaurants could come and go—they did every day of the year. But guys like Zach Travis only came along once in a lifetime.

  In the car, Piper navigated through the exiting traffic and out onto the mountain road, following the stream of brake lights that looked like red Pac-Man dots waiting to be eaten.

  “Do you think they’ll ignore us at the border again? That was pure luck, don’t you think, getting waved through when we crossed to get to the concert? I flashed them my Neil Diamond t-shirt, and they just laughed and waved us through.”

  Piper choked on her chewing gum. “Border? What border?”

  “Uh, the U.S.-Canadian border?”

  Canadian border?

  “We’re in Washington, Birdie.” They’d flown into Seattle. Piper had seen the ticket. “We didn’t cross any borders.”

  If they had, there would have been checkpoints and passports, like she’d seen as a kid. The Quinn nomads had crossed the Rio Grande a couple of times in their VW bus—before the cartels and their kidnapping ruined Mexico for American tourism. Checkpoints were the name of the game.

  And Piper would have noticed them if they’d passed one this afternoon.

  “Don’t you remember? They waved us through last night. Guard looked tired in his booth.”

  Booth. Piper gulped. “I thought that was a weigh-station for truckers.”

  “It probably served as that too, and probably a brake check so truckers don’t have runaway problems on the mountain roads.”

  “Uh-huh,” Piper said absently, suddenly finding her fingernails to be a meal.

  “This is kind of a rural area,” Birdie went on, blithely ignorant of the butterfly and terror war in Piper’s gut. “Two birds, one stone
and all.” Birdie paused. “What’s the matter? You look nervous all of a sudden. Relax. Just get your Texas driver’s license out. You’ll be fine.”

  Piper’s mouth dried. Her Texas driver’s license originated from forged documents. The jeopardy of this situation careened into her like one of those runaway, brakes-afire trucks heading down a ten-percent grade.

  “You’re saying we’re…in Canada.”

  “Well, where did you think Chilliwack was?”

  “Um, Washington?” Traffic opened up at a T intersection, and Piper’s GPS took them west, out of the hills.

  “Is there a problem, sweetie?” Birdie’s words hung heavy with exhaustion. Piper couldn’t burden her with this worry—not on the best day of her life.

  “It’s fine. I just…got disoriented. Sorry. The twisting mountain road to the concert venue. We should be back at the airport in plenty of time for our midnight flight.” Worry gurgled in her. “You need to rest? It’s been quite a day.”

  “You can say that again.” Birdie grabbed a concert t-shirt and wadded it up to place under her head as a pillow. “Wake me at the airport. You’ve got this, right? You and the GPS disembodied voice?”

  Piper, through a closing throat, managed to say, “Thank you for taking me with you. It was an honor.”

  Birdie closed her eyes, and Piper pressed the accelerator, hurtling them toward the border, which hit all too soon, and with greater force.

  Seattle weather should have predicted the tornado.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but you’ll have to come with us.” The uniformed officer at the U.S. border had asked her to get out of the vehicle, and Piper had left it with Birdie, who stared at her in confusion, making Piper’s heart sink. How could she abandon her elderly friend in a faraway place like this?

  When the agent had pulled Piper out of the car, Birdie had sat slack-jawed, and she finally said, “So, we’re not getting ignored again at the border.”