Hook, Line and Shotgun Bride

by Cassie Miles

  Firmly she closed the refrigerator door, went to her purse and took out her cell phone. Neil would be her husband—the man she would share her life with.

  She had to make this call.

  Chapter Nine

  After she’d gotten Benjy to bed, Angela opened a bottle of cabernet for her and Shane. Having a glass of wine at night was a simple ritual they’d started while she was struggling with the demands of being a new mother. While she was married to Tom, she’d never kept alcohol in the house, which was a huge sacrifice for a chef because wine was the perfect complement to so many foods. She didn’t consider herself to be a wine connoisseur, but she had an excellent palate.

  Sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table, they clinked glasses, and she offered a toast. “A votre santé.” To your health.

  “Cheers,” he responded.

  She took a sip of the full-bodied French wine, tasting a hint of mushroom and oak and enjoying the companionable moment. Spending time with Shane always seemed to put things into perspective.

  “I called Neil and told him we’d be staying at my house tonight,” she said. “He agreed to change the pre-nup. No problem. He’ll take out the adoption section and the pages that pertained to cause for divorce.”

  “Leaving only the part about dividing up property.”

  “That’s right.” Neil’s cooperation justified her trust in him. On the phone, he’d been apologetic. “He’s willing to bend over backward to make me happy.”

  “And get your signature.” Though Shane restrained himself from scoffing, his gaze radiated pure cynicism. “I don’t suppose he had an explanation for why he put in those clauses about being mentally or emotionally incapacitated.”

  “I didn’t ask. I’m sure it was just some kind of lawyer language.”

  At least, that was what she told herself. She had to believe that her fiancé had no sinister ulterior motives. If Neil truly was trying to take Benjy away from her, she couldn’t go through with the wedding. More than that, she had to run away from him—as far and as fast as she could.

  Staring into the ruby wine, she said, “Tomorrow night is the rehearsal dinner. Neil asked if you’d be bringing a date and I told him you would.”

  “Great,” he said with a grin. “I’ll bring Josh.”

  “What?”

  “It might be handy to have a negotiator on hand when you sign the pre-nup.”

  She hadn’t thought that far ahead, but she wouldn’t mind having backup when she faced Neil and his father. “That’s okay with me, but what about Josh? He’s already been incredibly helpful. I don’t want to take advantage of your new boss.”

  “He won’t mind,” Shane said. “People like the Reveres and Dr. Prentice are his typical clients. An invite to the dinner and the wedding provides him with new contacts for PRESS.”

  “Okay, Josh is in. But I also want you to have a date—a real-live female date.”

  “You’re talking about the French baker,” he said. “The way you’re pushing her worries me. What’s wrong with this woman?”

  “Absolutely nothing. Marie has a sexy accent, a beautiful smile and great big blue eyes. She’s tall and leggy and—”

  “How tall?” he asked suspiciously. “Over eight feet? Does she have robins nesting in her hair?”

  “Don’t be a jerk.”

  “Does she even have hair?”

  “Picky, picky, picky.”

  “Ha! I guessed it. You’re trying to fix me up with a blue-eyed, bald giantess who bakes croissants.”

  She rolled her eyes. “No wonder you’re still single.”

  “Nothing wrong with waiting for the right woman to come along.” He sipped his wine and leaned back in his chair. “This is nice. You and me. Sitting here and relaxing.”

  “Very nice.”

  “I hate to bring up the stalker,” he said.

  “Then don’t.” She didn’t want to face the possibility of a psycho stalker or the pre-nup or the endless details of her wedding. “Can’t we just be normal people who chat about movies or books?”

  “You’re not normal, Angela. Like it or not, you’re outstanding. Special.”

  His words tickled her memory. She was special. With all these other distractions, she’d almost forgotten about Dr. Prentice and his great big secret.

  “Shane, do you remember when Tom first started talking about the frozen embryos?”

  He arched an eyebrow. “What made you think of that?”

  “Something Prentice said.” Resting her elbows on the table, she leaned toward him. “I remember that Tom came home after a training session at the Army Medical Center, and he was all excited about having our embryos frozen.”

  “He’d heard a lecture from Prentice—something about biological warfare and the dangers of infection in the field. It scared the hell out of Tom. He was afraid he might come home sterile or put your future children in danger of some kind of genetic mutation.”

  “And he insisted on having the procedure done by Prentice even though the long trips to Aspen were inconvenient.”

  She’d been working as a sous-chef at an upscale French restaurant, and the head chef was a tyrant who complained about everything. Getting out from under his thumb wasn’t easy, but she’d enjoyed the trips to Aspen, especially since they’d always stopped off to visit with Shane in Clear Creek County. After Tom deployed, Shane had actually taken her to the last appointment with Prentice.

  “Anyway,” she said, “Prentice ran my DNA. It seems that I was part of a study he did on an Army base in New Mexico. Twenty-six years ago, Prentice did the IVF procedure on several couples. Their children were supposed to be monitored throughout their lives, but my family dropped out.”

  “The Prentice-Jantzen study,” Shane said. “You were one of those babies?”

  “How do you know about it?”

  “I ran a background check on Prentice while we were at PRESS. There was a recent murder related to the study, and some accusations of fraud. Prentice created embryos from high achievers. The babies were genetically engineered and didn’t share the DNA of the mother and father who raised them.” He drained the wine from his glass and poured more. “And you’re a part of that study. Jeez, Angela, you’re turning into some kind of trouble magnet.”

  “Neil thinks it makes me interesting,” she said. “Plus, I have genius DNA. Maybe that’s why Benjy is so bright.”

  “How does it make you feel? You weren’t genetically related to your mother and father.”

  She shrugged. She might have been more disturbed if her father hadn’t died when she was too young to know him. When her mother remarried, she had no genetic connection to her stepfather and hadn’t bonded with him at all. They exchanged Christmas cards, but she hadn’t seen him since her mother passed away eight years ago. When she wrote and told him she was getting married, he’d sent a congratulations card and fifty bucks. “My DNA doesn’t seem all that important.”

  “Prentice lied to you.” His voice deepened to a serious tone. Even though Shane was changing jobs, he had a lawman’s stern morality. Lying was always wrong. “He didn’t tell your parents that you weren’t their biological child. And he never told you. That’s fraud.”

  “It’s not so black and white.”

  “You’re defending him.”

  “I’m not saying what he did was right,” she explained. “But my mother and father couldn’t have a child, and Prentice made it possible. My mom carried me, gave birth to me and loved me as her only daughter. Who cares if our DNA didn’t match?”

  Though he sat motionless, she saw turmoil in his eyes as he tried to reconcile her opinion with the facts. In Shane’s book, Prentice had committed a criminal act and deserved to be punished.

  Usually, she trusted his opinion when it came to sorting out the good guys and bad guys. But how could she condemn Prentice? In a way, he was responsible for giving her Benjy.

  “All the same,” Shane said, “I’m keeping my eye on Prentice. I don
’t trust him.”

  “Once again, we’ll agree to disagree. I think Prentice is a kindly old gent, and you think he’s—”

  “Up to no good.” He pushed back from the table and stood. “Let’s get back to the more immediate problem—namely, the stalker.”

  She rose to face him. “We seem to be jumping from one unpleasant situation to another. At least we see eye to eye on the stalker. He’s definitely a bad guy.”

  “I can tell you that he’s a lot more clever than I initially thought. And he’s been here before.”

  A shiver trickled down her spine. “Watching me?”

  “I don’t want to speculate on what he’s doing. It’s easier if I show you.”

  The first stop was the guestroom where Shane would be sleeping tonight. He brought her inside and closed the door so their conversation wouldn’t wake her sleeping child.

  “First off,” he said, “you need to remember that all the windows and doors are equipped with motion sensors. If you open one from the inside or the outside, an alarm goes off.”

  She’d heard the screaming banshee alarm when he and Benjy were installing the security system. “How do I turn it off?”

  “There’s a remote panel mounted by the front door. The code is Benjy’s birthday.”

  “I can remember that.”

  “Over there is a monitor.” He pointed to the dresser where a rectangular box with a screen sat amid a tangle of wires. “Go ahead and take a look.”

  On the split screen were black-and-white videos—a view of the front of her house and another that showed the backyard. “You set up surveillance cameras.”

  “High-def cameras with infrared night vision that ensures we’ll be able to identify anybody sneaking around. The equipment Josh uses is about a hundred times better than the Clear Creek County traffic cams. Benjy thinks it’s pretty great.”

  “Me, too. It feels like I’m in a spy movie.”

  “It’s supposed to make you feel safe.”

  She turned and faced him. Her big, broad-shouldered friend was a formidable man. There wasn’t a stalker alive who’d want to mess with Shane. “The reason I feel safe is you.”

  “Aw, shucks, ma’am.”

  He grinned, and for a moment she felt a spark of attraction that was totally inappropriate for a woman who was about to be married to another. Quickly, she looked away. “What did you need to show me about the stalker?”

  “After I set up the alarm system, I swept your whole house for bugs. In here, I found something.”

  He opened the kneehole drawer on the small desk under the window, reached inside and took out a small disc. “This bug does more than listen. It allows for two-way transmissions.”

  The disc—no bigger than a nickel—looked harmless but the implication horrified her. The stalker had been monitoring her, invading the privacy of her home. “Shouldn’t we throw it away?”

  “I’ve already disabled the device,” he said. “It’s nothing high-tech. You could probably pick it up online. I’m guessing that the effective range for this bug is only about a hundred yards. Your stalker could have been parked on the street, listening.”

  “What was he trying to hear?”

  “He also planted one of these devices in your bedroom,” Shane said, “but not in the kitchen or the front room. That makes me think that he wanted to hear your nighttime routine. He’d wait until after you put Benjy down for the night, after you took a shower and turned off the television. He’d know when you went to bed.”

  The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. She’d had no idea. When she read stories to Benjy or sang in the shower, when she curled up in bed and sighed, when she whispered to herself, he’d been listening.

  Shane continued, “After you were asleep, he’d use the speaker function. He could make a loud noise from this room. Or he might use the speaker in your bedroom to talk to you.”

  “Why? What would he say?”

  “It doesn’t matter. The purpose was to keep you from getting a good night’s rest.”

  She sank down on the twin bed in the guestroom. Though she couldn’t exactly pinpoint the time when her edginess started, it was probably a couple of weeks ago when the wedding plans went into high gear. Being tired seemed normal; there was so much to do. But there were plenty of times she’d awakened in the night for no apparent reason. “I thought I was losing my mind.”

  “You were sleep-deprived. An effective torture technique.”

  “Shane, are you certain about this?”

  “Come with me.” He opened the door, and they tiptoed down the hallway to her bedroom where he again closed them in so Benjy wouldn’t be disturbed. “Lie down on the bed.”

  She did as he said, watching as he reached up to the frame above the door. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m operating this manually, but your stalker used a remote.”

  When he turned off the overhead light, she saw a flash from above the doorframe. Like a flashlight beam, it aimed at her head on the pillow. She bolted from the bed. “Turn it off.”

  He flicked the overhead light switch. “If the noises didn’t wake you up, he could activate this nasty little spotlight.”

  “And he could have timed it perfectly,” she said. “Waking me up at ten twenty-three. I’d look at the clock. Think of Tom. My God, no wonder I thought I was going crazy.”

  “Seems to me,” Shane said, “that the stalker’s motive in doing all this was to terrorize you. He took pleasure in watching you fall apart. The slashed wedding gown should have been the last straw—the final act that sent you over the edge.”

  If Shane hadn’t been with her when she saw that gown, she might have crashed and burned. She remembered the vertigo, the shortness of breath and the devastating fear that she’d destroyed the dress herself. “Who would do this to me? Why?”

  “I don’t have that answer,” he said, “but I have a solution. Now that you know what’s going on, you don’t have to doubt yourself. There’s not a damn thing wrong with you.”

  Except that a psycho stalker had targeted her. “What should I do?”

  “Tonight, you get a solid eight hours of sleep. Tomorrow, you act with your usual confidence. Your stalker can’t scare you anymore. He’s lost. You’ve won.”

  This moment didn’t feel like a victory. Someone hated her enough to rig up this elaborate scheme. He’d been lurking outside her house. Listening to her. Watching her stumble deeper into emotional distress.

  “What do you think he’ll do next? Am I in danger?” An even more terrible thought occurred to her. “Would he try to hurt Benjy?”

  “I’ll keep you safe. Both of you.” Shane rested his large, reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Tonight, your job is to sleep. Since you know what’s going on, you don’t need a sedative. Right?”

  She looked up at him. He hadn’t directly accused Neil, but she knew what he was thinking. Shane had insisted that her prescription be analyzed.

  “I won’t take a pill tonight,” she said. “But I want to be clear about one thing. Neil couldn’t have done this. He’s a busy man and wouldn’t have had time to sneak around outside my house. Besides, stalking isn’t the kind of thing he’d do.”

  “Because it’s low class,” Shane drawled. “Did you know that Jack the Ripper—a serial killer who disemboweled prostitutes on the streets of London—might have been related to the royal family? Evidence suggests he was a medical man.”

  “Seriously. You’re not really comparing Neil to Jack the Ripper?”

  “Until I know better, I suspect everybody,” he said. “That includes your fiancé, his father and the housekeeper who made that pitiful lunch.”

  “Is there a way to narrow down that list?”

  “With a stalker, it’s difficult. He could be somebody who you don’t even notice. Like a regular customer at Waffles or another shopkeeper or the guy who delivers packages. In his mind, he might have built up a fantasy relationship with you. An obsession.”


  “Why?”

  “Some guys get crazy ideas in their heads,” Shane said. “The important thing for you to know is that you didn’t do anything to cause this. It’s not your fault.”

  The idea of a stranger being obsessed with her was more frightening than if she knew who had set up this elaborate scheme. She was already regretting her promise not to take a sedative before bed. “How am I going to sleep?”

  “There’s nothing to be scared of,” he said. “I’m here, and I’ll keep you safe.”

  She believed him—believed in him.

  Chapter Ten

  The next day, all day, Shane acted as Angela’s bodyguard. He wore his gun in a shoulder holster that was unnoticeable under his blazer and hid the tension in his gaze behind a pair of dark sunglasses. Though he didn’t expect a straightforward attack from her stalker, he was prepared.

  Protecting her might have been easier if she hadn’t gotten a decent rest the night before. Angela was operating at full throttle, fielding dozens of phone calls and finalizing wedding arrangements. With Shane driving her van, they went from Waffles to the florist shop to the bakery where he finally met Marie Devereaux, who was as pretty as Angela had promised. Her black hair and blue eyes almost matched his coloring, and her smokey voice, lightly tinged with a French accent, was sexy and charming. He should have been attracted to her, but he felt nothing when he shook her hand. No spark.

  At four o’clock, they dropped Benjy off with the babysitter where he would spend the night, and they returned to her house so Angela could get ready for the rehearsal and the dinner at the private dining room in Neil’s country club. Shane’s preparations for the evening took only a couple of minutes. He changed from his plaid cotton shirt to a white one with a button-down collar and dusted off the toes of his boots. His jeans were okay for tonight; the dinner wasn’t supposed to be formal.

  Sitting in her living room, he waited. Josh LaMotta and the lovely Marie would meet them here, and they’d all drive north together.