Hook, Line and Shotgun Bride

by Cassie Miles

  Josh jogged over to the Land Rover and looked in the window. “It’s a damn good thing I like you because you’re turning into a major troublemaker.”

  Angela leaned over and said, “I’m so sorry for the inconvenience.”

  “Protecting you is good exercise.” Josh grinned. “To tell you the truth, these guys are happy to have something to do other than desk work.”

  The “guys” Josh referred to included four of his employees who left their vehicles and took positions on both sides of the SUV. All wore dark glasses. Two wore dark blazers, and the other two had on knit golf shirts, also black, that showed off chiseled biceps when they folded their arms across their chests. These were men of action who worked out regularly in the PRESS gym. Not even Carlson was dumb enough to mess with them.

  With obvious deference, he climbed out of the SUV and asked them to move their vehicles, please. When they didn’t respond, he stared down at his toes and shuffled nervously.

  Shane said to Josh, “I appreciate the backup.”

  “I aim to please.”

  “Give us fifteen minutes before you let him go.”

  “You got it.”

  Without warning, Angela flung open her door. Before Shane had a chance to object, she charged across the asphalt toward the silver SUV.

  As soon as Carlson saw her, he darted toward her and waved. “Over here, Angela. You’re supposed to come with me.”

  Carlson’s “guys” stepped up to intervene, but Angela halted them with an upraised palm. “I can handle this.”

  From the backseat, Benjy asked, “What’s Mommy doing?”

  “Taking care of business,” Shane said.

  He watched as she and Carlson faced off. They stood about fifteen feet away from him. His hand rested on the door handle, ready to leap out if she required assistance.

  “Hold out your hand,” she said to Carlson. “Palm up.”

  “If you get in the car,” he said, “we can still make it to the wedding on time. We can pretend this never hap—”

  “Your hand,” she snapped.

  He did as she said.

  She twisted the engagement ring off her finger and slapped it into his open palm. “Return this to Neil. I don’t want to ever see it again.”

  He stared at the glittering diamond as though it was a scorpion. When he looked at her, anger twisted his features. “You ungrateful bitch, you can’t treat Neil like this. Not after everything he’s done for you.”

  “I don’t owe him a thing.” Though she kept her voice low, Shane heard every word. “Not after his lies. And the drugs. And the stalking. He tried to make me think I was insane.”

  “Didn’t have to try too hard, did he?” Carlson sneered. “You’re crazy. You can’t call off the wedding.”

  “But I just did.”

  When she reached over and patted Carlson on the cheek, Shane swore he could see flames shooting from her eyes. Angela pivoted on the delicate heel of her white bridal shoe and stalked back to the car.

  Carlson yelled at her departing back. “Neil is never going to let you go. Never.”

  Shane took the threat seriously. Neil and his minions had gone to a lot of trouble arranging this setup, and they wouldn’t allow Angela to simply walk away.

  ANGELA’S ANGER KEPT HER strong and focused as they drove into the mountains west of Denver. Neil’s scheming had driven her to cancel her wedding moments before she was scheduled to say her vows. She was a runaway bride—the kind of low-class, ridiculous person who showed up on tawdry talk shows to jeer at the audience.

  What kind of woman walked out on her own wedding?

  She thought of the wilting floral decorations, the expensive invitations and the cake—Marie’s spectacular five-tiered cake with alternating layers of lemon-vanilla and mocha-chocolate. Not to mention the gourmet menu for the reception dinner. All that food would go to waste. How could I do this? I’m not this kind of person.

  She played by the rules, never cheated, tried to be kind and helpful. Everybody liked her, and she was glad for their approval. Not anymore. Imagining the faces of the wedding guests, she groaned inside. All those people must think the worst of her. Their sympathies would lie with Neil, of course. She’d be condemned as a heartless bitch who dumped her fiancé at the altar. Nobody would understand that she was the victim.

  She corrected herself. I’m not the victim. I escaped. And she had absolutely nothing to feel guilty about. She’d rescued her son.

  She glanced into the back, where Benjy had fallen asleep in his car seat. The late-afternoon sunlight warmed his face. His thick eyelashes formed perfect crescents on his cheeks. She would do anything and everything to protect him.

  Her gaze swept from the backseat to the front and came to rest on Shane. They’d hardly spoken since they left the PRESS building. After he slipped a Johnny Cash CD into the dashboard player, he’d been talking on his hands-free phone, making arrangements. Now, he was as quiet as the surrounding forests that descended from jagged peaks to the edge of the winding two-lane road.

  “I hope you know,” she said, “that I trust you implicitly.”

  He nodded. “I get that a lot.”

  “I can’t help noticing that we don’t seem to be headed toward your house in Silver Plume.”

  “Because that’s the first place Neil will look. Even that pea-brain Carlson would guess that location.”

  “Mind if I ask where we’re going?”

  “A little cabin that belongs to a guy I met a couple months ago. It’s six miles down a dirt road into a canyon, the nearest neighbors are half a mile away and—here’s the genius part—there’s a high-tech alarm system.”

  “And your friend is okay with having us stay there?”

  “I just talked to him. He’s in California for the month doing some kind of consulting work for a software company. He’s got some fancy computer equipment at the cabin. Benjy can probably figure out how it all works.”

  “Do you think these precautions are really necessary? Are we really in danger?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked back at Benjy to make sure he was asleep and wouldn’t overhear their conversation over the rumbling background music from Johnny Cash. “It’s hard to imagine that Neil would threaten us. Not physically, anyway. He’s a respected doctor.”

  “Who drugged you and arranged for a stalker and slashed your wedding gown.”

  Those were facts, indisputable. “How could I have been so wrong about him?”

  “You’re not to blame,” Shane said. “Neil took a long time setting this trap. He laid the groundwork when you were still married to Tom.”

  And after Tom’s death, Neil had really wanted her to have the IVF procedure. She remembered long, serious conversations with Neil holding her hand and telling her how much a baby would enrich her life. After Benjy was born, Neil had come to the hospital. He’d held the infant in his arms. “Maybe he thinks he has some kind of paternal connection to Benjy, that I never would have had the procedure if he hadn’t encouraged me.”

  He shot her a stern glare. “You just can’t help yourself, can you? You’ve got to see the best in everybody, even Neil.”

  “Am I that gullible?”

  “You’ve got to take off the rose-colored glasses and see things the way they are. Neil is an arrogant son of a bitch who set out to hurt you and Benjy.”

  “You’re right. I should forget about him and let it go. Getting married to Neil was a mistake that never happened.”

  “It won’t be that easy,” Shane warned. “There are too many unanswered questions.”

  She knew he was right. Neil wouldn’t simply vanish into the night. Carlson had said it: Neil would never let her go. She had to be ready to stand up for herself. And for her son.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The first thing Angela did when they reached the cabin was to change into comfortable jeans and a T-shirt. She dashed into the bedroom and yanked off the suit. As she plucked the bobby pins from
her hair, the super-hold hair spray she’d used to keep her up-do in place crackled and crunched. Too much in a hurry to look for a brush, she flipped her head upside down and dragged her fingers through the long strands until she had destroyed every trace of formality. She was free. Neil no longer controlled her life. No more pretending to enjoy dress-up receptions in borrowed jewels. Never again would she have to eat the swill prepared by his grumpy housekeeper.

  Her lovely white wedding suit puddled on the hardwood floor. Her first impulse was to burn the damn thing, but she was far too practical to destroy an outfit she hadn’t even worn once. She hung the suit in a closet that already held clothing belonging to Shane’s friend.

  While they stayed at the cabin, she and Benjy would be sharing the double bed in here. Since there was no other bedroom, Shane was stuck on the sofa.

  With her long hair tumbling around her shoulders, she stepped into the open living room of the small cabin. To the right of the front door was a fireplace with the hide-a-bed sofa and two chairs that were homey but had definitely seen better days. The huge coffee table was a darker wood than the paneling on the walls. The kitchen screamed bachelor pad with a two-burner stove that was smaller than the microwave on the counter.

  Shane’s friend wouldn’t win any housekeeping awards, but the cabin had a pleasantly rustic ambience—except for the office space to the left of the front door. An L-shaped desk held two computers and other high-tech equipment. The electronics didn’t stop there. When they entered, Shane showed her how to deactivate the keypad alarm system, similar to the one he’d installed at her house.

  While Shane put away the meager food supplies they’d picked up at a convenience store when he’d gassed up the Land Rover, Benjy charged toward her. He wrapped his arms around her legs and held on tight.

  She scooped him up in her arms and kissed his pudgy cheeks. “How do you like the cabin?”

  “Theodore Roosevelt did not live here.”

  “I don’t suppose he did.”

  “There’s no TV.” His eyes strayed to the computer equipment. “Can I play with that?”

  Now was as good a time as any to lay down some ground rules. The last thing she wanted was to ruin this valuable equipment. Inside the cabin, she ran through a list of things he could not touch without permission. Then, they stepped outside.

  The log cabin perched on a wide ledge halfway up a steep road in a canyon. A log retaining wall kept the gravelly dirt from crumbling away beneath their feet. The covered porch stretched all the way across the front of the house. A hammock swung at one end, and there were two wooden rocking chairs.

  Though many Colorado forests had been decimated by the pine beetles, the walls of this canyon above a trickling little creek were thick with Ponderosa pine and indigenous shrubs.

  Benjy pointed at a chipmunk that scampered on the edge of the retaining wall. “Look.”

  Shane came onto the porch behind them. “Lots of critters live up here. Raccoons and skunks and squirrels. Plenty of deer and elk.”

  Benjy wiggled to get down. As soon as his toes touched the boards of the porch, he hopped down from the two-step stoop and ran toward the retaining wall where he’d seen the chipmunk.

  “Be careful,” she called after him.

  There were dangers in the mountains. Her son could slip and tumble down the hillside. In addition to the friendly woodland creatures, she knew there were also bears and mountain lions. Even the plant life could be lethal. Though several species were edible, some of the brightest berries were poisonous.

  As Benjy peered over the edge, she restrained herself from grabbing him and pulling him back. Though she would have liked to keep Benjy wrapped in a giant bubble of safety, she knew he had to explore and take risks.

  “I have one rule,” she said. “You don’t go outside by yourself. One of us has to be with you.”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  The pristine front of his dress-up shirt was already smudged. “Let’s go into the bedroom and get you into some better clothes for exploring.”

  He dashed for the door and she followed. Their rushed departure from her house meant that all Benjy’s clothes had been flung into a black garbage bag. After a bit of digging, she found a long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of jeans.

  “You go now, Mommy. I can get dressed by myself.”

  She knew he could manage on his own, but she longed for the days when he needed her to help him with snaps and buttons. Her little boy was growing up so fast.

  As she left the room, she grabbed her shoulder bag. Then she joined Shane on the porch. “This place is terrific.”

  “The best part is that nobody knows about it. The guy who lives here keeps to himself. I’m probably the only visitor he’s had since he moved up here.”

  Holding up her cell phone, she asked, “Can I turn it on?”

  He warned, “There are ways of tracking the signal.”

  “But Neil is a doctor, not a superspy. Unless he hires somebody like PRESS to track me down, I don’t think anybody will be triangulating my phone signal.”

  “You laid down the rules for Benjy,” he said. “I’m going to do the same for you. No phone.”

  She clutched it to her breast. “Can I just check my messages?”

  “Just this once. Then give it to me.”

  There were several calls from Neil which she skipped. She played back the message from Yvonne that was a simple, “You go, girl. Everything here is fine.”

  An unfamiliar number spiked her curiosity, and she played back the message. It was from Dr. Prentice.

  “It’s been a most unpleasant afternoon,” he said solemnly, “filled with anger and speculation. I’m sure you believe you’re doing the right thing, and I admire your fortitude. But I would very much like to talk. I might be able to give you some context for the present situation.”

  He suggested that they meet in person.

  She turned off the phone and handed it to Shane. “Prentice wants to meet.”

  “Why?”

  “He said something about giving context. Meeting him isn’t a bad idea. He might have an explanation.”

  “Or he could be setting a trap.”

  Though she had no reason to suspect that Prentice had known about the plot to drive her crazy, the old doctor was clearly in Neil’s camp. She couldn’t trust him, but she desperately wanted answers. “I need to know why Neil did this. He didn’t propose marriage because he loved me. That’s for sure. But why? And why does he want custody of Benjy?”

  “Tomorrow,” Shane said. “We’ll start investigating tomorrow.”

  She was anxious to get everything solved and neatly sorted out, but she trusted Shane. He’d been right about Neil. He was probably right about Prentice setting a trap.

  Tomorrow would be soon enough.

  THE NEXT DAY WAS TOO PERFECT. Angela had forgotten how much she loved being in the mountains. In the summer, the temperature was usually ten degrees cooler than in Denver. The air tasted fresh, and pure sunlight cleansed her senses. As she and Benjy strolled down the road to the creek running through the bottom of the canyon, the gravel crunched beneath her sneakers. She listened to the breeze as it ruffled the leaves of shrubs and whisked through pine needles. So peaceful. So beautiful. In the midst of all this natural beauty, she could almost forget that her life was in turmoil.

  At the edge of the creek, Benjy got busy, throwing rocks into the cool, rippling water and poking into the dirt with a tangled stick. This was better than previous trips to the mountains; Benjy was the right age to enjoy the outdoors.

  Her only complaint about the cabin was a lack of food supplies, and Shane had agreed. About an hour ago, he headed into town to shop. He’d told her to stay close to the cabin. If they heard a car coming, they should disappear.

  Predictably, Benjy slipped on a rock and fell into the shallow creek. His whoops of laughter tickled her. Seeing him act like a regular kid gave her too much pleasure to scold him for not being careful. Kids we
re supposed to explore and get dirty.

  As they climbed the road back to the cabin, Shane returned with the groceries. She’d given him a list of basics, but it was difficult to guess what they’d need. She didn’t know whether they’d be staying here for a day or a week or a month.

  He carried two huge cloth grocery bags into the kitchen and checked his wristwatch. “In eight minutes, I need to figure out how that computer works.”

  “Why eight minutes?”

  “There’s a satellite connection coming through.”

  “I’ll help,” Benjy said.

  She took her son by the shoulders and pointed him toward the bedroom. “You need to change your clothes.”

  “Mom, I’m not cold.”

  “But you’re wet. Go.”

  Grumbling, he dragged his feet as he left the room.

  She stood behind Shane at the computer. “What’s up?”

  “I stopped by headquarters in the courthouse and did some research,” he said as he followed a written list for various steps on the computer. “I wanted more information on how Prentice was involved in the murder of Dr. Raymond Jantzen.”

  She immediately remembered the study that dictated the circumstances of her birth. “Raymond Jantzen? Of the Prentice-Jantzen study?”

  As he typed information into the computer, the screen showed various menus. “I’ve set up a face-to-face talk with someone who was involved in the investigation. She was also one of the IVF babies in the study. Her name is Eve Weathers-Jantzen.”

  “Her name is Jantzen, too? What’s her relationship to the man who was murdered?”

  “Eve married Dr. Jantzen’s son,” Shane said. “He’s stationed overseas, and she’s accompanying him. Which is why you couldn’t meet in person.”

  “Do we need the computer hookup? Can’t you just tell me what she said?”

  With a few more adjustments, he brought up a picture on the screen. The pixilated image showed a blue-eyed blonde woman wearing a green T-shirt that said, Geeks Rock.

  Shane adjusted the audio. “Eve? Can you hear me?”