Wanted Wed or Alive: Thyme's Wedding

by Melissa F. Miller

  I glance at Dave. This part’s about to get tricky. After all, he is an officer of the law. “Um, I think we should check out the fake Thyme’s house.”

  “By ‘check out,’ I take it you mean ‘break into’?” He raises both eyebrows and waits for my response.

  I straighten my shoulders and hold my head high, the way my mother taught me, and fix him with an impassive look. “No, by ‘check out,’ I mean ‘check out.’ We don’t know, the garage might be open or someone could be staying there—a relative or friend. Someone who can explain what’s going on. Because, Thyme and Victor are in a jam now.”

  Dave’s about to respond, but Roman beats him to it. “About that. Now, can you two tell us why we hightailed it away from town, and away from both the van and your sister and Victor? If they’re in trouble, shouldn’t we go help them?”

  It’s a fair question.

  Sage nods. “Someone—if I have to guess, probably the dentist—called the shopkeeper right as we were leaving. Whomever he was talking to said something about identity fraud, reporters, and police. The caller asked him if he’d seen any police detectives, and he said, no, then said he’d seen us. Then, he chased us, and you know the rest.”

  Dave scratches his left eyebrow.

  This means he’s analyzing information. If he tugs on his chin, he’s working out how to break bad news. Cracking his knuckles means he’s about to apologize. The man has an entire nonverbal language.

  “We don’t know that Thyme and Victor are in trouble. But it’s clear they’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest of some sort. So, at this point, it does make sense for the four of us to lie low and regroup, and the dead Thyme’s house is as good a spot to do that as any.”

  I check my watch. “Glad we’re in agreement. Now, let’s hurry up and get off the street—the First Friday Frenzy starts in ten minutes.”

  “First Friday Frenzy?” Roman repeats.

  Sage loops her arm through his. “Come on, we’ll explain inside.”

  We bunch up into a tight knot of bodies and speed walk toward a small, cottage-style house with buttery yellow curtains in the front window and a large bronze ’No. 24’ affixed to the creamy white front door.

  Dave rings the doorbell while Sage and Roman go around to the back. I creep through the garden bed to check the garage door. I’m lying flat on my stomach in the driveway, trying to pry up the automatic door with my fingernails, when Dave gives up on the doorbell and starts hammering on the door.

  The garage bay door is a lost cause. I brush myself off and head for the side yard, planning to walk around to the back to see if Sage and Roman are having better luck.

  I trip over a loose stone and crash into a pair of large, wheeled bins. One for trash, one for recycling. My stumble sets off a domino effect. I hit the trash bin, which knocks into the recycling bin, which smashes into the glass window of a side door with a thunderous bang. The glass in the door cracks, a network of spiderwebs spreading across the pane.

  Oops.

  I jerk around to the street to see if my noisy clumsiness has attracted any unwanted attention, but there’s not a soul out other than the four of us and the dog. I pause for a moment and eye the silent army of vehicles lining the street. Every home has a car parked on the street to the right of its driveway. At first, I’m puzzled, but then I remember the garage sale. The residents must move their cars out of their garages for the frenzy.

  I frown at the white Lexus parked in front of the fake Thyme’s house. Who moved it?

  Before I can work out a theory, Dave’s running toward me with Mona Lisa on his heels.

  “What happened? Are you hurt?”

  I shake my head and point to the side door and its broken window. “I’m fine, I just tripped over a rock. But, on the bright side, I think I found us a way in.”

  Sage and Roman appear on the side of a short hedge row.

  “The back’s locked up tight. What was that noise?”

  “Your sister,” Dave says, jerking a thumb in my direction.

  I give a sheepish wave.

  “I thought you were the klutzy Field?” Roman says to Sage.

  “So did I.” She giggles. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. But listen, we might as well take advantage of my cloddishness. It’s almost three.”

  Before anyone can object, I wrap the sleeve of my sweater around my fist and punch in the broken glass. I’m expecting a cascade of glass shards, but instead the whole pane slowly bends inward and falls to the floor inside the house in one piece.

  “Neat,” I breathe.

  “Safety glass,” Sage informs me. “Sure wish Linda Zaharee had that.”

  It takes me a minute to place the name. Oh, right, Linda Zaharee is the sports agent who tried to frame both Roman and his dad Chip for murder. At one point, she was holding Roman hostage, and Sage crashed a golf cart through her glassed-in porch.

  “Let’s do this inside,” Dave suggests.

  I feel around on the inside of the door until I locate the doorknob.

  “Oh.”

  Everyone looks at me.

  “It’s, um, not locked.” I ease my hand out of the now-paneless window and turn the doorknob from the outside. You know, like a normal human being.

  To their credit, neither my husband nor my sister and Roman say a word.

  I yank open the door and we step inside.

  Chapter 15

  Thyme

  I waste who knows how many precious seconds staring dumbfounded at the locked door. Finally, I shake myself out of my daze and turn to Victor.

  “Can you believe a dentist pulled a gun on us?”

  “No, I actually can’t. And now we’re—what?—hostages?”

  “Apparently. We’re being held against our will at a dentist’s office.”

  I consider banging my forehead against the table, but I can already feel a tension headache building. So I do the next best thing. I laugh. It starts out as a one-hundred-percent fake laugh, but it quickly turns into the real deal. Sure, it’s gallows humor, but it’s humor.

  Victor’s eyes go wide with worry. “Uh, Thyme? It’d be really helpful if you could keep it together.”

  Good thing I didn’t opt for the head-banging route.

  “Sorry, having a moment. I’m good now.” I take out my phone and swipe to unlock the screen. I can’t quite believe Dr. Pridemore didn’t confiscate our phones, but I figure she likely doesn’t have a ton of experience in hostage-taking.

  His eyes flit to the door. “Hurry.”

  I’m already thumbing out the text to my sisters:

  Being held hostage by armed and dangerous dentist. DO NOT call police. Not sure who we can trust. Help.

  I hit ‘Send,’ and then stare unblinkingly at the screen, willing Sage and Rosemary to respond.

  Victor clicks his tongue against his teeth, just loud enough for me to hear. I drag my eyes away from the phone long enough to see what he wants.

  “Help me move this.” He gestures toward the solid-looking credenza pushed up against the far wall.

  “What are you thinking—use it to block the door?”

  He nods. “If nothing else, it’ll buy us some time when she comes back.”

  I’m about to point out that I doubt the thing is bulletproof. But there’s no harm in dragging it across the room and jamming it in front of the door. It’s better than sitting here and waiting to be rescued … or killed.

  I place my phone down on the table and hurry over to the credenza. As I bend my knees and prepare to hoist my end of the credenza, I glance up and to my right, through the window. The conference room we’re trapped in is on the fourth floor on the back side of the building, so the window has a view of the HVAC system installed on a flat roof that covers the first three floors of the building.

  I raise the piece of furniture all of an inch, then I let it go. Victor, who’s lifted his side as well, isn’t prepared for the heavy credenza to drop back to the floor.

  “Ooof
.”

  I wince. “Sorry.”

  He waves off my apology. “It’s okay. But try to give me some warning next time.”

  “Mmm … right.”

  My focus is on the window, not our exchange. I press my forehead against the pane and stare down at the lower roof, calculating and devising.

  After a moment, he joins me at the window. “Uh-oh, wheels are turning. What’re you thinking?”

  I point down at the roof. “If we can get this window open, we can make the jump to that roof, easily.”

  He eyes the distance. “Only one of us is made of rubber, remember?”

  I arch an eyebrow. “If you’d commit to doing the stretches I gave you, you’d be more flexible. But, I don’t think you’ll need to be particularly bendy to drop, what, ten feet?”

  “Not a chance, Thyme. We could kill ourselves.”

  He’s right. We could. But if we stay here a bonkers dentist could do the job for us.

  “Besides, what do you plan to do once we’re on the roof? It’s got to be at least another thirty feet to the ground.”

  He’s got a point. Before I can counter it, my phone vibrates on the table. I snatch it up.

  “It’s Rosemary,” I tell him. “Here, read it over my shoulder.”

  He squeezes in close, and we peer down at the text:

  OMG. They’re looking for us. Hiding out at Fake Thyme’s house. On our way.

  “No,” Victor and I moan in unison.

  I twist my neck to meet his eyes. “They can’t come here. That’s playing into her hands.”

  “Call her.”

  I hesitate. “What if they hear me?”

  “They won’t if you keep your voice down. They’ll probably think you’re talking to me. Hurry.”

  I hit the telephone icon and place the call to Rosemary’s cell phone. My eyes are glued to the door as I listen to the ringing. While I wait for Rosemary to pick up, Victor starts pushing the credenza toward the door, inches at a time.

  “Thyme?” Rosemary’s voice is raw with fear.

  “Don’t come here. You all need to stay far away from here. Please, promise me,” I beg her.

  “Thyme—”

  I cut her off. “We don’t have time to argue, Rosie. I think we’ve figured out a way out of the office.”

  Victor turns to stare at me. He shakes his head from side to side. No, no, no.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I mouth. I have a new plan. It doesn’t involve jumping. At least, not exactly.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” Rosemary orders me.

  “We won’t. What did you mean when you wrote that people are looking for you? Who?”

  “I think that dentist is calling all over town asking people if they’ve seen us. Sage and I were in this weird kitchen store when she called the owner. Sage overheard his end of the conversation and we booked it out of there, but he chased us. The people in this town are weird. You should’ve seen the junk in that store.”

  I remember Dr. Pridemore’s bizarre bazaar display. “Tell me about it. This dentist has a prize shelf in her waiting room with essential oils and handbags and all sorts of stuff.”

  Rosemary doesn’t react to how strange this is. Instead, she asks, “Is she selling it?”

  I think back for a moment. “I don’t think so. I didn’t see any prices, just—”

  “—Let me guess, snowflake values.”

  “Wait, what are we doing? We can talk about this when I see you. Where are you anyway? Where is the fake Thyme’s house?“

  She rattles off an address and I type it into a text message to send to Victor so we’ll have it. Then she says, “We ran here, along some trail. So the van’s still in the lot.”

  “Too bad it’s useless to me. You know, since I don’t have the keys.”

  Imagine my surprise when she laughs. “Actually, if you can get to it, there’s a spare key in an old mints tin. It’s stuck to the right rear wheel well with a magnet.”

  For a moment, I can’t even breathe. I stand there, stunned into silence. Finally, I squeak, “Are you serious?”

  “Sure. When I cater events, I hire college kids to help. Sometimes they need to run back out to the truck to get supplies. I’m not giving a bunch of teenagers and twenty-somethings my keys; besides, I’m usually too busy to stop and deal with whatever they need. So I stick the spare key on the wheel well when I’m working an event, tell them where to find it if they need it, and then bring it inside with me when I get home.”

  “Okay, that’s a decent system … except, why is it still stuck on your van now? Were you planning to hire caterers in Vegas?”

  She huffs out an exasperated breath. “No, Thyme. I screwed up. I got home from working a corporate luncheon and started packing up for the trip right away. I forgot to remove it. But, hey, turns out to be lucky for you.”

  “Yeah. Lucky me.” The luck part will be convincing Victor to go along with my scheme, but I don’t tell her that.

  “So, get the heck out of there and come straight to this little neighborhood where your imposter lived.”

  I hear Sage’s voice in the background. A moment later, she’s on the phone.

  “Thyme? It’s Sage. Are you really okay?”

  “We’re really okay,” I assure her. But I know Sage well enough to know that a blanket statement won’t truly satisfy her, so I go on, “I’m terrified, but unharmed.”

  “Rosemary says you have a plan to get out of there?”

  “Yep,” I chirp with far more confidence than I have. “We’ll see you soon.”

  “Okay, Thyme, listen—be mindful.”

  I smile. I can’t help it. Sage may not even realize it, but she’s adopted one of our mother’s classic parenting strategies. MJ never told us to ‘be careful.’ She thought it would stifle our exploration of the world. Instead, she exhorted us to ‘be mindful’ of the situations we were in and to pay attention to what was going on around us.

  “I will,” I promise.

  “And make sure nobody follows you here. Oh, and one more thing, there’s some neighborhood fair or something about to start. People are going to be milling around. So, maybe park just outside the entrance gates to the development and walk in. You’ll blend in better on foot than you will driving a big catering truck.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Okay, I’m gonna go. I love you, and I’ll see you soon. Tell Rosemary I love her, too.”

  “I will. Love you, Thyme.”

  She ends the call, and I turn to face Victor.

  “We have a plan do we?”

  “We do. And, no, it doesn’t involve jumping to the roof and then to the ground.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  I inhale slowly, gathering my thoughts, and then start laying it out for him.

  Victor stares at me. “This scheme is worse than the original plan.”

  A bubble of irritation floats up from my chest. I release it, allowing it to float away, before I respond.

  “Our options are pretty limited. If we can’t call the authorities for help, we’re going to have to improvise.”

  He frowns and shifts his gaze away from my face. I’m right, he knows I’m right, but he doesn’t like it. That’s understandable. I don’t like it, either.

  After a long moment, he makes a grunting noise. “If we’re going to do this, let’s be smart about it. Lay it all out one more time.”

  A wave of relief washes over me. He’s onboard. And he has a far more analytical, detail-oriented mind than I do. He’ll be able to find my harebrained ideas’ weak spots, and maybe we can tighten them up before we execute.

  I clap my hands together like a coach rallying her team. “Okay. First, I’m going to call the main number from my cell phone and tell Mandy I desperately need to use the bathroom. Presumably, she’ll deal with us herself because Dr. Pridemore’s busy, you know, being a dentist.”

  “Okay. So far, so good.”

  “We’ll open the window, and then I’ll squeeze myself into the cre
denza.”

  “You really think you’ll fit?”

  I crouch and open the doors. The shelves are wide and mostly empty, save for five or six file boxes that I can easily stack up and push to one side. Satisfied by my inspection, I close the doors and crane my neck to look up at him.

  “Piece of cake,” I tell him as I pop to my feet. “It would be for you, too, if you actually did those flexibility stretches, you know.”

  “You do realize I have five inches and fifty pounds on you, right?”

  “Excuses.”

  He grins. “So when Mandy comes in, I’m going to tell her you panicked, went out the window, and jumped onto the roof where the HVAC system is.”

  “Right. Get her over to the window for a look. Then I’ll burst out of the credenza and—”

  The words die in my throat as footsteps approach in the hallway. The lock jiggles, and then the door swings open to reveal my least favorite dentist. She’s gripping the gun two-handed, and her mouth is set in a grim, determined line.

  “Thanks for your patience. I had to take care of Mr. Jones’ cleaning. Here’s a tip from me to you: your dental hygienist and dentist can always tell if the only time you floss is the morning of your appointment. Disgusting.”

  I knew it.

  She goes on, “Now, it seems your friends are running around town, sticking their noses into things that are none of their business. That’s rude.”

  I open my mouth to say—something, I don’t even know what—but Victor beats me to it. “Whatever’s going on here, you realize it’s going to come out, right? You can’t silence all of us.”

  “Right, right. And your editor’s going to wonder when you don’t file your story. I heard you the first time. Come on, Woodward and Bernstein, we’re going on a little field trip.” She gestures with the gun for us to walk toward her.

  I really wish she’d stop waving that thing around. I glance at Victor, who gives me a slight nod, which I take to mean we’ll have to improvise and come up with a new plan on the fly.

  I clear my throat. “Where are we going?”

  She answers in a put-upon voice. “The First Friday Frenzy. Well, I’m going. I guess I’ll have to stash the two of you somewhere until I’m done. Now, move. Nice and slow. You first, then the fiancé. I obviously don’t want to shoot either of you, but if you try to run, I won’t have any choice.”