At exactly seven o’clock, the vans would start ferrying wedding guests back to the boats for the short trip over to Maui. By eight o’clock, he and Annabelle would find themselves completely, totally, blissfully alone and the honeymoon would commence. He’d wear this tux for her today, but after that, no clothes for a month.
‘‘This ceremony can’t get here soon enough,’’ he muttered beneath his breath. He’d been on board with a formal wedding at first—clueless as to what it involved—thinking they’d get it done in a month.
Right.
In the beginning, even despite the no-sex declaration, he had thought Annabelle could use a distraction while they ferreted out the Fixers’ unknown stalker. Planning a wedding had been a distraction all right. Hell, if a villain had attempted to hold Annabelle at gunpoint while she and her mother debated bouquet flowers, he wondered whether she would have noticed.
Luckily, they hadn’t faced that situation. Three months into their engagement, Mark had identified the killer.
He glanced out at the lawn where the person in question sat with what remained of his team on the right side of the aisle, second seat, in the fifth row of chairs. ‘‘I wish we could have left one name off the guest list,’’ he muttered.
Chris followed the path of his gaze. ‘‘They are here?’’
‘‘Yep.’’ Mark had shared the entire story with the boy early on—only fair, since hanging with Mark could have proved dangerous. Chris got a real charge out of the knowledge that his father had tracked down the identity of a spy selling secrets to America’s enemies.
‘‘Which one is it?’’
‘‘See the man in the uniform? That’s Colonel Warren. Our villainess is seated next to him. His wife, Lala Warren.’’
‘‘Hmm . . . ,’’ Chris said. ‘‘Yeah, she has that Natasha look to her.’’
Luke glanced toward his nephew. ‘‘Natasha?’’
Chris flashed his uncle a grin. ‘‘Yeah. You know. Boris and Natasha? Bullwinkle?’’ Chris returned his gaze to the lawn. ‘‘Is she Russian?’’
‘‘Armenian,’’ Mark replied. ‘‘She was married to a scientist, a brilliant chemist who worked in Iraq for Saddam Hussein but didn’t want to be there. Getting the two of them out was one of the first missions the Fixers ever completed.’’
‘‘So she ditched the scientist for the colonel?’’
‘‘The scientist died and she married Colonel Warren after that.’’
‘‘Hmm.’’ Chris shook his head and whistled soundlessly. ‘‘Man, this is cold. Putting a hit on you, then coming to your wedding.’’
‘‘Maintaining the cover is the first rule of being a spy, Grasshopper,’’ Matt offered.
‘‘Still . . . how does Colonel Warren stand being around her? Talk about ice.’’
Mark grimaced at the memory of the meeting where he and Annabelle had told the colonel the bad news about his wife. ‘‘Colonel Warren is one of the strongest men I’ve ever known.’’
The break in the case had come when he and Annabelle decided to take another, more in-depth look at the Fixers’ missions throughout the years. The government had kept a close watch on the scientist and his wife following their arrival in the States, and eagle-eyed Annabelle had picked out Gallery Gal in one of those surveillance photos. After that, it was just a matter of tugging threads.
Wanting to break the news to their former boss privately, they’d invited him for a drink in their hotel suite at the Ritz—if Mark wasn’t going to get sex, at least he’d have a good bed—not far from the colonel’s home in Georgetown.
The three of them had sat at the dining table. Mark opened the file and showed the first picture of the woman taken by the surveillance camera in the Telluride, Colorado, gallery. ‘‘We identified her as one Nada Marić, an operative with ties to the bad guys in the Balkans and, through them, terrorist cells in Europe and the Middle East.’’
He took out the second photo of Marić during the meet with Lala Warren, glanced at Annabelle, and set it on the table. The colonel’s complexion drained of color. ‘‘She and your wife grew up together, sir. It appears that since she’s come to Washington, Lala has been engaged in espionage.’’
Following a long moment of silence, the colonel spoke in a deadly cold voice. ‘‘And you know this how?’’
Annabelle spoke. ‘‘Once we had Marić’s name, we were able to backtrack her movements. That led us to a computer in an apartment in Manhattan that provided answers to most of our questions.’’
‘‘E-mail? That’s stupid.’’
‘‘This wasn’t a sophisticated espionage ring, sir,’’ Mark said. ‘‘This was two childhood friends brokering information for cash. As so often happens, success made them greedy and that caused trouble for everyone.’’
‘‘Explain what happened.’’
Mark handed over a stack of printed e-mails. ‘‘Using these e-mails as a starting place, we pieced together the story of how the Fixers became targets. It appears that Nada made an enemy of a Slovenian gangster after she took his money and failed to deliver on something unrelated to your wife. The gangster wanted her taken down, but he didn’t want it traced back to him. He went to Dennis Nelson and offered to sell him the name of a traitor connected to the Fixers. But the Slovenian died before giving up the name.’’
‘‘Who killed the Slovenian?’’
‘‘We haven’t turned up definitive proof, but we suspect Marić did him. After the gangster’s death, Nelson decided to investigate on his own. His fatal mistake was to say too much when your wife answered the phone.’’
Colonel Warren didn’t speak, but wearily closed his eyes.
‘‘Lala sent Marić to kill Nelson.’’
Annabelle set out another sheet of paper. ‘‘If you’ll look at the timeline we constructed, before that happened, Nelson contacted Kurtz, probably fingered him as the traitor, which set his crazy wheels in motion.’’
‘‘The women didn’t know about Kurtz,’’ Mark pointed out. ‘‘Nelson made another costly mistake when he tried to bargain for his life by claiming to have already passed along information about Mrs. Warren—’’
‘‘Don’t call her that!’’ the colonel snapped.
‘‘—about Lala to someone else on the team. Marić didn’t bargain with Nelson. Instead, she decided to kill all the Fixers, just to be safe.’’
Mark paused at that point, allowing Colonel Warren to digest the information. A moment later, the grim former commander said, ‘‘They made a good start on it before Kurtz turned the tables on Marić. How many did they get?’’
‘‘Counting Nelson, six.’’
‘‘Half of you.’’ The colonel betrayed his inner agitation by giving his wedding band a twist. ‘‘What has Lala been up to since Kurtz killed her partner?’’
Mark replied, ‘‘Nothing that we can tell. She probably thinks she’s in the clear, since . . .’’
‘‘Since I told her that the Fixer survivors were clueless as to why they’d been hit.’’
Annabelle cleared her throat. ‘‘Sir, we believe that, without her partner, she has abandoned her efforts to kill us. She thinks she is in the clear.’’
‘‘She is wrong,’’ the colonel said, his tone low and mean. ‘‘She is very, very wrong.’’
He rose from his chair and walked to the window, staring out at the busy streets of the nation’s capital. Mark and Annabelle sat silently, allowing him time. When finally he spoke, he surprised them. ‘‘Let’s take this up the food chain. This offers an excellent, unexpected opportunity to feed misinformation to America’s enemies.’’
Which was why today Mark and Annabelle had a spy as a guest at their wedding.
‘‘Sleeping with the enemy,’’ Chris observed, then repeated, ‘‘Ice.’’
‘‘Ice,’’ his father agreed. Mark glanced at Luke and Matt. ‘‘No attempted breaches in security, I trust?’’
Not that he had any reason to suspect trouble. He just wa
nted everything perfect for Annabelle today. Well, for Annabelle and her mother.
‘‘Everything is quiet,’’ Luke replied. ‘‘Noah Kincannon had a concern about one of the captains ferrying wedding guests over from Maui, but he checked him out and gave us a green light. We’re good to go, Mark. Nothing is going to ruin your wedding.’’
‘‘Damn right, it’s not,’’ declared Branch as he shuffled in from the connecting bathroom. ‘‘So one of you yahoos help me with my tie. My fingers can’t seem to get it straight.’’
‘‘I’ll do it, Grumps,’’ Chris offered, using the bastardization of ‘‘Gramps’’ he’d affectionately leveled on the man shortly after meeting him.
Mark watched his brothers watch his son help their father with his bow tie, and his heart gave a sudden twist. While he would probably always nurture some lingering resentment toward his father, he had for the most part made peace with the past and forgiven him. Still, he couldn’t ignore the fact that the picture before him had one vital piece missing. ‘‘I miss John today.’’
‘‘Yeah,’’ Luke agreed, rubbing the back of his neck.
‘‘Me, too,’’ Matt added.
Branch cleared his throat. ‘‘I like to think that he and your blessed mama will be sitting on the front row in heaven looking down on the festivities today.’’
The door opened. ‘‘Okay, Callahans,’’ Tag said. ‘‘Time for you to head downstairs.’’
‘‘It’s about damned time,’’ Mark replied gruffly. Another minute of that and he’d have been bawling like a baby.
Outside, a string quartet played classical music and the heady scent of plumeria filled the air as the Callahan men took their positions. Lynn Monroe was responsible for the temporary raised wooden deck erected to provide an ‘‘altar’’ for the ceremony, but God himself had built the church.
Annabelle’s father had described the view as a panorama of paradise. Mark couldn’t disagree. A huge blue sky spread above them, and miles of turquoise sea stretched beyond. They stood on a thick carpet of lush green grass bordered by an explosion of fragrant tropical flowers in vibrant pinks, oranges, and yellows.
The guest list included most of Brazos Bend, Texas, and what looked like half of Kansas. Mark looked out at the rows of guests, his gaze lingering just a moment on Colonel Warren and his wife. He sent up a quick prayer for the Fixers no longer with them. Then all other thoughts were wiped from his mind as the music changed and Annabelle’s sisters walked up the aisle.
Then, suddenly, there she was.
Paradise.
Annabelle Monroe had never felt so girly in her life.
She wore a satin, strapless gown with an empire bodice and a sweetheart neckline and a chapel train in traditional white. She figured she’d earned the color over the past six months. She was Cinderella and there he was, her Prince Not-Always-So-Charming, but definitely drop-dead gorgeous in his tux. As their gazes met and held, his green eyes glittered with emotion so strong, so powerful, so intense that she halfway expected her aisle of satin sheeting to start smoking with signs of scorching.
‘‘I was gonna give you one last chance to back out,’’ said her father out of one corner of his mouth. ‘‘I do that with all you girls. But I think I’d be wasting my breath. Doesn’t look like Callahan will let you go.’’
Annabelle’s heart swelled. ‘‘Not again, Pop. Never again. And that’s just fine with me.’’
She smiled at Mark then, a smile happy and bright and filled with joy. Her father handed her over to Mark with best wishes and a warning, then stepped back to take a seat beside her teary-eyed mother. Poor Mom. She would need to fix her makeup for the pictures. Weddings did her in every time.
Mark took Annabelle’s hand and brought it to his lips. In a soft, intimate voice, he said, ‘‘You outshine paradise, Belle.’’
‘‘You look pretty good yourself, Callahan.’’
‘‘I know of a linen closet just inside the kitchen door. Why don’t we do this thing here, then make a break for it?’’
‘‘Hmm. That’s a thought. We would have to be fast or my mama would have a heart attack.’’
‘‘Darlin’, after six months, fast won’t be a problem.’’
‘‘Puh-lease, Dad.’’ Chris elbowed him in the side. ‘‘Get the wedding finalized before you get to the honeymoon, would you?’’
‘‘My thoughts exactly,’’ said the Methodist minister who had baptized Annabelle as a baby. ‘‘May I begin?’’
It was a traditional ceremony for a not-so-traditional bride and groom, and Annabelle didn’t think it could be any more perfect right down to their traditional-with-a-twist vows.
He held her hand and declared, ‘‘I, Mark, take thee, Annabelle, to be my wife, to have and to hold . . . ’’ He lowered his voice and added, ‘‘. . . in the linen closet five minutes from now . . .’’
‘‘Callahan!’’ she hissed.
He winked and continued. ‘‘. . . from this day forward. Annabelle, I give you my solemn vow to honor you, to treasure you, to be at your side in sorrow and in joy . . . and to be in your bed every damned night.’’
She heard his groomsmen brothers snicker and she rolled her eyes.
‘‘In the presence of God, our family, our friends, and the Fixers, here on this gorgeous day, in this beautiful place—and not in some tacky wedding chapel in Vegas—I promise to love you unconditionally and to cherish you always for all the days of my life.’’
The slack-jawed minister dragged his gaze away from Mark. ‘‘Annabelle?’’
Her heart full, she blinked back tears. ‘‘I, Annabelle, take you, Mark, to be my husband. To have and to hold, not only in hotel rooms all over the world, but in the home we will make together, from this day forward. I promise to honor you, to treasure you, to have fun with you, to stand at your side in sorrow and in joy. I vow to love your son as my own, and when the Hawaii Rainbows face the Jayhawks of Kansas in the College World Series next year, I’ll even root for Hawaii.’’
‘‘Ahh, Mom,’’ Chris said.
‘‘In the presence of God, our family, our friends, and the Fixers, I promise to love you unconditionally and to cherish you always for all the days of my life.’’
The minister asked for the rings and blessed them. Then Mark took Annabelle’s left hand. ‘‘With this ring, I thee wed. And I’ll never let you go again.’’
Annabelle slipped Mark’s ring onto his finger. ‘‘With this ring, I thee wed. And I’ll never let you go again, either.’’
He squeezed her hand and declared, ‘‘And now, finally, I get to kiss my bride.’’
He took his time with it. Gave her a real kiss, long and deep and wet, and Annabelle lost herself in the wonder of her husband.
Mark indulged himself in the wonder of his wife.
The clapping wasn’t unexpected. It took his brothers’ alarmed curses to yank him back to earth. The sight of a familiar figure standing at the end of the aisle had him reaching for the gun he hadn’t worn to his wedding.
Annabelle breathed, ‘‘Radovanovic.’’
‘‘You do make a beautiful bride, my Annabelle,’’ the bastard said in heavily accented English. ‘‘Because you are such a feast for the eyes, I will forgive you for overlooking my invitation to this most joyous event.’’
Mark stepped in front of her as he counted six men carrying automatic weapons stationed in a ring around the wedding guests. He watched Harrington, Kincannon, and that damned Italian Paulo Giambelli level guns on Radovanovic—thank God some people knew what to wear with their tuxedos—but Rad held up his hands, palms out. ‘‘Now now now. No need for that. I come in peace.’’
To Mark’s annoyance, Annabelle stepped out from behind him. ‘‘What is this about, Rad?’’
‘‘I had thought to arrive before you said your vows and give you one last chance to choose true happiness and run away with me, but unfortunately it took longer than I anticipated to climb up that bluff.’’
; ‘‘You climbed the cliff?’’ Mark said.
Radovanovic laughed and motioned toward the bluff that had given Mark access to this property well over a year ago. ‘‘I took a lesson from you, Callahan.’’
The wedding guests murmured worriedly as he strode up the aisle. ‘‘I have a wedding gift for the lucky bride and groom.’’
Beside Mark, Chris asked in a shaky whisper, ‘‘Suicide bomber?’’
‘‘No,’’ Annabelle reassured him. ‘‘Rad is definitely not the type.’’
The Croat stopped just beyond reach and pulled an envelope from his pocket, then waved it teasingly. Mark saw that two of his goons had followed him up the aisle. Rad held up a hand and snapped his fingers.
The crowd gasped as one man put a gun to Colonel Warren’s head. The other grabbed Lala Warren by the arm and yanked her to her feet.
Radovanovic smiled and said, ‘‘Unfortunately, we cannot stay for the reception, although I must say the aromas do tempt.’’
Mark heard the whop whop whop of an approaching helicopter as Lala Warren let out a stream of profanity when Rad’s man picked her up and threw her over his shoulder.
‘‘We will be taking one of your guests with us. She’s become a problem, but then, of course, you know that.’’ Radovanovic clicked his tongue. ‘‘That bad information she sent to Pakistan cost a number of lives. She has a quite lovely price on her head. I’m collecting it.’’
Mark met the colonel’s gaze. His former commander shrugged and stayed in his seat.
‘‘Now . . . there is just the small matter of my wedding gift. First, though, in keeping with tradition, I get to kiss the bride.’’
Mark growled and started to lunge for the man when he took Annabelle’s hand and pulled her toward him. His brothers and the sound of rounds being chambered in guns held him back.
Annabelle resisted. ‘‘Don’t you—’’
His kiss was hard but fast, and he moved back just before Annabelle’s knee would have connected with his balls.
Radovanovic laughed and said, ‘‘Ah, Annabelle. I do wish you had chosen me instead.’’
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