Mystery Bride

by Daniels, B. J.

“Can I watch TV in my room?” he asked, leaving some pizza uneaten.

  “Sure,” Will said, and ruffled the boy’s hair as he passed.

  Zack tossed a smile at him over his shoulder as he went into the other room, jumped on the bed a few times, then settled down to watch whatever was on the tube.

  “You’re good with him,” she commented.

  Will laughed. “Believe me, I’m just winging it. I know nothing about kids.”

  “But you’ve always wanted some of your own.”

  Subtle, real subtle.

  He looked away. “Oh, yeah. Someday.”

  A heavy silence fell between them. She wondered what she’d said wrong. “Well, you’re a natural. You should have a half-dozen.”

  He began to clean up the pizza mess. She watched him, wondering about his sudden evasiveness. There was so much to wonder about Will. He’d saved her life. But she felt a lot more than gratitude. Not good. Will wasn’t the kind of man who’d ever let himself fall for a P.I.

  And that’s what she was, wasn’t she? She reached for her purse and dug out her cell phone. When the dispatcher at the police department answered, she asked for her father.

  “Where are you?” he demanded, obviously trying to keep his voice down.

  She heard him shut his office door.

  “I’ve been worried sick about you,” he said in a more normal voice.

  “Why, what’s happened?” she asked innocently.

  “A man was murdered tonight in your office.”

  Someone had called the police. “You’re kidding.”

  “Where are you, Sam?” her father asked again.

  “On my way to Seattle. Is Andy—”

  “He’s fine. He wasn’t there at the time, fortunately, and he says he doesn’t know anything.”

  “Who called it in?” she asked, ignoring her father’s skepticism.

  “Anonymous caller.”

  Big surprise. “Any idea who the dead man is?”

  “Al Knutson, better known as Al the Ox, a former professional wrestler turned small-time crook. I assume you didn’t know him?”

  “No.”

  “He’s from the Seattle area. But we didn’t find any vehicle around your office. Pretty odd, since no one in his right mind would walk around in that neighborhood at night. Sam?”

  She braced herself. “Yes, Dad?”

  “You’re sure you don’t know anything about this?”

  “It’s a mystery to me,” she said truthfully. She hated not being more honest with him, but she couldn’t put him in a position where he’d have to keep anything from his chief, and she wasn’t going to turn Zack over to the cops. Not yet. Especially now that she feared Cassie was involved.

  “But I’ll keep in touch, Dad. I should be back in a few days.” What were a few days, anyway? Then she’d tell him everything. He wouldn’t be happy about it, but soon she’d have some answers. At least, more than she did now. “I’m sure Andy can handle anything that comes up.”

  She hung up and looked at Will. He was waiting expectantly. “Someone called the cops. They know about Al.” She took a breath. “Can you drive?”

  “Seattle?”

  She nodded. “It’s the last place Lucas was seen.”

  And Lucas was the key to this mess. “But first we need a different vehicle. We’ll borrow my cousin Tommy’s pickup.”

  THEY WERE OUTSIDE Missoula, the wind howling, snow turning to rain and splattering on the windshield, when her cell phone rang.

  She shot a look at Will. He frowned. Almost afraid, she answered it before it could ring again and wake up Zack.

  “Hello?”

  Silence. “Sam? Oh, thank God, you’re all right,” Cassie cried. “I was so scared when I saw the police cars and heard there had been a murder.”

  Samantha looked at Will and mouthed Cassie. “I missed you at the mall,” she said into the phone, unable to keep the accusation from her voice.

  “I was there at eight,” Cassie said quickly. “When you didn’t show up by eight-fifteen, I got scared and left. Is Zack all right?”

  “He’s fine. Where are you now?” she asked tersely.

  “You don’t think I had anything to do with what happened at your office?” Cassie sounded flabbergasted by even the notion.

  “You admitted you were there tonight.”

  “No—I mean, yes, I went by there.”

  “Alone?” Sam asked.

  “What are you getting at?”

  “I went to my office because you said you’d check there if you missed me at the mall. I found a man dead behind my desk.” She didn’t mention the letters Al had written in his own blood. “Someone attacked me. The attackers were a man and a woman. A woman with blond hair.”

  “It wasn’t me.” Cassie sounded scared.

  “Why do you suddenly want to see Zack so badly?” Sam demanded, checking first to make sure the boy was still sound asleep between her and Will.

  “I told you. I need to see my son.”

  “I don’t believe you. I think you’d better level with me, or I’m going to go to the police with what I do know, which is that you were at my office tonight.”

  “I told you—”

  “It doesn’t matter what you told me,” Sam snapped. “Maybe the police can get the truth out of you.”

  Silence. For a moment, she thought Cassie might have hung up.

  “I’m scared, Sam.” All the bravado was gone from Cassie’s voice. “I’m afraid someone is after me.”

  “After you?” Sam said, not buying this. “Why would someone be after you?”

  “Because of what Lucas did.”

  Sam’s heart thudded. “I’m listening,” she said, and glanced over at Will. In the faint dash light, he looked worried.

  “Lucas called me a few weeks ago. He said he’d done something stupid. He owed some people money and had promised them his latest project. But he said he couldn’t go through with it. He sounded desperate. He said he was working on something big—so big that he thought they might try to kill him for it.”

  Outside the pickup, large wet drops of rain smacked the windshield, spiraling out of the darkness like comets. “You have to be kidding.”

  “No. He told me he’d taken precautions to protect his design.”

  “What kind of precautions?”

  Again Sam thought she heard hesitation in Cassie’s voice. “He planned to divide the game into pieces.”

  “And do what with them?”

  “Hide them, I guess, until he was free of the men who were after him,” Cassie said. “I thought he was just being paranoid. Then Zack was kidnapped—and I got one of the pieces of the game in the mail. And a note.”

  Sam caught her breath, her heart pounding. “A note?”

  “It says, ‘In case something should happen to me, and you receive this package, take the CD to the police and tell them it is one of five pieces. They will understand why the game is so important once they put the pieces together. For your own safety, do not keep this piece of the game.’”

  Sam swore under her breath. If it wasn’t for Zack’s kidnapping, she’d think this was just a publicity stunt for the new game.

  “Don’t you see, Sam, if this game is as big as Lucas said it was, then anyone who gets a copy is in danger.”

  “Not if you turn it over to the police as Lucas instructed,” Sam pointed out.

  Silence.

  Sam took a breath and held it, a terrible feeling pushing against her chest with the force of an elephant. “That is what you did with it, right?” she asked.

  “No,” Cassie said in a small voice. “I can’t. I heard from the men who have Lucas. They are demanding all the pieces of the game. Or they will kill him.”

  “Kill him over a computer game?” Sam cried in disbelief.

  “Obviously you don’t know anything about the computer game business,” Cassie said. “If this game is as big as Lucas thought it was, then it could be worth millions.”
<
br />   Millions for a game? She guessed she didn’t know anything about computer games. But Cassie sure seemed to know a lot about not only computer games but Lucas, a man she’d dumped five years before.

  Sam closed her eyes, her head aching. She didn’t know what to believe. Why would Lucas send a piece of the game to his first ex-wife? And how would the men who had Lucas even know about Cassie?

  “I think these men were behind Zack’s kidnapping,” Cassie was saying. “I think they planned to use Zack to get the game pieces but now that you have Zack—”

  That bad feeling had settled deep in her chest and refused to budge. “Who else did Lucas send pieces of the game to?” Sam interrupted.

  “That’s just it,” Cassie said, “I don’t know.”

  Sam thought of her ransacked house. Was it possible the person who broke into her home had been looking for a piece of the game? But she’d already checked with Andy. No letters or packages had come from Lucas.

  “This message,” Sam asked, “the one from the men who have Lucas, do you still have it?”

  “Yes,” Cassie said. “It is type-written and arrived in the same mail as the CD and Lucas’s note.”

  It was raining hard now, water pinging off the hood and cab.

  “You have to find those other pieces of the game,” Cassie pleaded. “To save Lucas.”

  To save Lucas? Suddenly, Sam saw things a lot clearer. “You knew I’d drop everything to come to Zack’s rescue. And you made it so easy for me, predicting that Zack had been taken to the rest home in Wolf Point. That was a nice touch, letting me think that Lucas might have staged the kidnapping, that he might be planning to pick up Zack there. And I played right into your hands.”

  “No,” Cassie protested. “You’re wrong, I—”

  “You used me,” Sam interrupted. “And now you think you can use the way I once felt about Lucas to force me to find the pieces of the game for you.”

  “It’s true,” Cassie said quietly. “I called you because I knew you were the one person who would care enough to find my son. And, yes, to save Lucas.”

  Sam tried to contain her anger, at Cassie, at herself. She had dropped everything just as Cassie knew she would.

  “You still don’t believe me, do you?” Cassie said, sounding hurt. “Don’t you see that I was just trying to protect my son and his father?”

  “Why the interest now, after all these years?”

  Chilly animosity filled the line. “I love my son, no matter what you think.”

  “Right. You know, I thought I knew what you were capable of after what happened in college with Lucas. You proved back then that you would do anything to get what you wanted. Just like you got Lucas. But this time we’re talking murder. They still hang killers in Montana. And you think I’m going to let you use me again?”

  Will had been right. This was a trap. Just not the kind of trap he’d feared. She looked over at him, her emotions close to the edge now.

  All the anger she’d kept bottled up all these years at Cassie poured out like the rain streaming down on them from the darkness overhead.

  “It was you tonight at my office, Cassie. What had you planned to do with me? Not kill me like you did Al—because you still need me, right? Where’s Ralph? Or is he who you’re working with?”

  “Sam, you have to believe me. It wasn’t me. It was whoever has Lucas. If you don’t help him—”

  “You expect me to believe you?” Sam demanded. “Especially after what happened tonight? Did I mention that the kidnapper left the name of his killer in blood?” She waited for Cassie’s reaction, but heard nothing on the other end of the line. “He wrote the letters ‘CA,’ CA as in Cassie.”

  She finally got a reaction.

  Cassie let out a startled cry. “Not Cassie. Catastrophe. He was writing the name of Lucas’s game.”

  Lightning splintered the sky in front of the pickup, a jagged edge of blinding white. The line went dead. Sam stared at the phone in her hands for a moment, then clicked off, her hand trembling, her heart a sledge inside her chest.

  “You were right,” she said to Will. “I did walk into a trap.” She told him about her telephone conversation and Cassie’s claim that she’d received a note from the men holding Lucas. “She was betting that I would help Zack and Lucas.” Cassie knew her so well. That was the problem with once-best friends. They could use that knowledge against you and become your worse enemy.

  Will didn’t seem all that surprised. “What are you going to do now?”

  “Try to find Lucas,” she said without hesitation. “He is the missing piece.”

  “You’re afraid Cassie might be telling the truth,” Will said.

  Cassie tell the truth? It seemed inconceivable. And yet, if she was—

  “Yeah,” Sam said after a moment. “I guess I am.”

  Will swore and shook his head, his gaze taking in the sleeping little boy between them. “All this over a stupid computer game?”

  Sam watched the night rush by for a moment, unable to shake the feeling that there was a lot more at stake than a computer game.

  WILL DROVE through the night. The rain followed him all the way to Seattle, an unrelenting downpour that made the highway slick and the night seem darker and colder.

  But he knew the chill inside him had nothing to do with the weather. His suspicions had been true. The kidnapping had been a ploy to get Samantha involved. And it had worked. He felt scared. For Zack. For Samantha. Her former roommate had used Sam’s love for Lucas against her. Just as she had years ago. Now Zack and Samantha were pawns in some game.

  He felt overwhelmed with anger and a rush of protectiveness. If Zack or Samantha were hurt because of this…

  But he knew it was too late. They had already been hurt.

  He looked down at the boy. Sam kept Zack snuggled asleep against her, her arm around him. She held on to the boy as if her love alone could keep him safe.

  And she did love Zack. That was plain to see. But did she still love the boy’s father, as well? Will was just thankful that he’d come on this trip to Seattle with her, he thought protectively. She and Zack needed him.

  He concentrated on his driving, feeling a lot more than protective of the woman. Sam hadn’t said much since the phone call. He figured she was probably still in shock after what had happened to her. What had happened to Al. It definitely had Will stunned and scared. Then Cassie’s revelation about Lucas. And the kidnapping. Samantha’s head must be spinning. He knew his was.

  Someone had upped the ante from kidnapping to murder. Any thoughts Will had of heading home when they reached Seattle went out the window. He was sticking this out. Just to make sure Samantha and Zack were safe. To make sure Samantha didn’t do anything stupid. Like get mixed up with Lucas O’Brien any more than she already had. Or Cassie. Had the woman holding the other end of the laundry bag with Sam inside been Cassie?

  He had a sick feeling he’d be seeing the duo again, and not under the best of circumstances. Only now, he suspected that the murderer wanted more than Zack and his backpack. He feared the killer wanted Sam, as well. According to Sam, Cassie hadn’t been the only one to call her for help. Lucas himself had left a message.

  Will was now part of it. The realization should have upset him more than it did. He had no idea what he was doing, just that he was doing it and it felt right. He was determined not to examine things too closely.

  As he listened to the steady clack of wipers and swish of tires splashing through the rain-puddled highway, he thought about the little boy sitting between them and where this had all begun. How far back did it go? College? What bothered him was this relationship between Samantha, Lucas and Cassie. And now Zack. Sam had been hurt badly before, but he feared this time, now that she’d gotten to know Zack, she was primed for heartbreak. Not to mention what effect Lucas was going to have on her, whether he was dead or alive.

  He glanced over at Sam, afraid for her. In the dim glow of the dash lights, the rain streak
ing the window behind her, he saw her gazing out at the darkness with an intensity that worried him. He was sure she was still scared. A brush with death did that to you—made you realize just how fickle life was. But if anything, she seemed more determined, stronger in some way.

  He didn’t want to be drawn to that. Any more than he wanted to be drawn to her. It was one thing to want to protect her and Zack. It was a whole other thing to feel this woman’s strengths; to be attracted to her sheer determination and her need for justice. Strong stuff, justice. Getting close to Samantha Murphy was more dangerous than he ever could have imagined. Even if she had fit his blueprint for a wife, she still had feelings for another man and that man’s child. How much more wrong for him could Sam be?

  He chuckled silently to himself, half amazed that faced with all that wonderful logic he still wanted to stop the pickup and take her in his arms and kiss her until the sun came up.

  The early morning darkness felt suffocating, the rain unending, all of his senses alert and honed in on the woman sitting across the seat from him. He drove into Seattle—hardly any traffic out this early—waiting for Sam to tell him where to go next.

  SAM LOOKED OUT the window as the sleeping city passed by in a wet, dark gray blur. Seattle. She cracked her window and let a blast of cold air in, then rolled it back up. Tired. And yet wired. Still disbelieving. She’d been able to think of nothing but getting here and getting to the truth before whoever was after Zack made another move.

  Well, she was in Seattle. And so was Will. For her, it was only the beginning. For him, it was the end of the line.

  “Now that you’ve seen Seattle—”

  “I’m staying until I know you and Zack are safe,” he said, cutting her off.

  “That could take a while.”

  “I have a while.”

  She nodded, filled with a surge of joy that made her heart pound harder. Somehow it was easier facing all of this knowing that he was here with her.

  Take it easy, girl. He’ll be leaving once this is over.

  Yeah, but he’s here now. And I’m glad. So there.

  She took a breath and let it out slowly. “Then we need to catch the ferry to Vashon Island,” she told him. “I think it’s time we took a look at those computer games in Zack’s backpack and I know just the place.”