by Paula Graves
“And you think someone’s kidnapped Evie?”
“I hope to hell not.” He wanted to believe that any second now Evie would call him on the phone and make him feel like an idiot. A relieved idiot. But he couldn’t risk staying put. “I need you to cover the church until I get back.”
“Do you want anyone else to back you up?”
“No time for that. Just cover the church in case I’m wrong.”
“On my way,” Isabel said.
Jesse pulled onto the road, keeping a careful distance from the truck. If the driver and his comrade were indeed mercenaries, they’d know how to spot a tail. So he had to be better at tailing than they were at spotting.
He glanced at his cell phone, willing it to ring. He’d love nothing more than to be wrong about his hunch.
But the phone remained stubbornly silent.
* * *
THE RUSH OF SECURITY toward the bride’s room must have been part of a diversion, Evie thought, pushing hard against the confines of her makeshift coffin. Her eyes still burned, and she was breathing with a distinct wheeze, but enough of the pain had subsided for her to shove it aside and concentrate on the bigger problem.
The box was almost as wide as it was long, which made moving around inside easier than it might have been, but it wasn’t quite long enough for her to straighten out completely. If she had to stay in this position much longer, her limbs would start to cramp up.
The sensation of movement and the engine noise rumbling in her ears confirmed she was on the move. Probably in the back of a truck. So her kidnappers didn’t want her dead.
At least, not yet.
SSU, she thought. Has to be SSU. Since joining Cooper Security a few months earlier, she’d learned a lot about the former Special Services Unit of MacLear Security. For over a year, Jesse and the rest of the Coopers had been involved in several run-ins with the ruthless group of guns for hire who’d survived to reunite after MacLear had collapsed under the weight of scandal. Evie wasn’t sure what they called themselves now, but thanks to the Coopers, she did know their activities were funded by a limited-liability company called AfterAssets.
And she knew they were after her father’s secrets. They must be planning to use her as leverage against her father.
Oh, Jesse, she thought. You were right. They did crash the wedding.
She had to find a way out. But from the inside of a box, there wasn’t a lot she could do to free herself. The borrowed robe confined her movements, especially with a piece of the hem stuck between the hinged pieces of the case. She tried tugging it free but it was firmly wedged, so she wriggled out of the robe, giving herself more mobility.
Think, Evie. What does the box look like on the outside?
It had to have latches, didn’t it? She could see almost nothing inside the closed box, but by running her hands along the walls of the box, she discovered what felt like the inner workings of hinge hardware on one side, which meant there were probably latches on the other side. If she could find something to slide between the body of the box and the lid, she might be able to nudge the hasps open.
Panicked laughter bubbled in her throat. If only she’d followed Megan Cooper’s suggestion to keep a knife in her bra at all times! But she wasn’t a Cooper, and cloak-and-dagger shenanigans didn’t come naturally to her. She had been a Cooper Security employee for just four months now, barely long enough to get through her orientation training and learn the ropes of working for a high-octane security company.
She made herself focus. No knife in her bra, but did she have something else she could use to slide through the narrow slit between the box and the lid? Maybe her earrings? They were made of copper, long and dangly, but flat and thin as well, as thin as the blade of a knife. She wasn’t sure they were substantial enough to give her the leverage she needed, but it was worth a shot, wasn’t it?
She took off one of her earrings, found the narrow crack between the lid and the box, and slid the copper bangle carefully into the space, moving it along until it hit resistance. Repositioning the earring, she pushed and felt something give.
Excitement bubbling in her chest, she pushed on the top of the box, testing its give. Was it her imagination or did it actually shift upward?
She wriggled down the box, probing with the earring until she met another point of resistance around the middle of the box. She repeated her earlier action, cursing when the copper earring snapped into two pieces, one remaining in her hand while the other slid through the crack and disappeared.
Sending up a prayer, she pulled the other earring from her ear and slipped it through the crack. This time, the obstruction gave way. She tested the box again. Definitely more give—through the blurry tears still burning her eyes, she saw gloomy half-light filter through the widening crack.
She had to completely shift positions to get to the final latch, wriggling until her head ended up where her feet had been. After a brief pause to catch her breath, she took care as she probed the third latch, acutely aware that if the earring broke this time, she was out of tools. The copper earring found the obstruction and she pushed against it cautiously. It gave, finally, and she laid her head back, shaking from nerves and the burning pain of pepper spray still stinging her eyes and skin.
If she’d indeed opened the final latch, the top of the box should swing open fully. All she had to do was make it happen.
Her heart pounding like a timpani in her ears, she reached up and gave the top of the box a sharp push. It opened more quickly than she anticipated, the lid swinging back and banging hard against the floor of the truck.
She froze in place, wondering if her captors had heard the noise. But the engine sound didn’t change. They were still moving.
She sat up slowly, peering through the film of tears streaming from her eyes. She could make out just enough to see that the interior of the truck was nearly as dark as the interior of the box had been. With shaking hands, she pushed herself up to her feet, alarmed by the violent trembling in her legs. The truck hit a bump and she fell out of the box, landing so hard on her side that she couldn’t breathe for a few seconds.
Finally able to suck air into her burning lungs, she pushed herself to her hands and knees and crawled around the truck, trying to get an idea of how large her moving prison was. She seemed to be in a vehicle about the size of a small moving truck—large enough to haul furniture or other large items but considerably smaller than a big rig. At the back was a pair of double doors, the narrow space between them delineated by a faint strip of light. On the right side of the truck, there was the outline of another door.
She felt along the flat surface of the door, her heart sinking. There was no handle on this side of the door. She checked the other door and found no handle there either. And even if there had been, she realized, her captors would have firmly latched the door on the outside to keep her from escaping.
There was no way out.
Chapter Two
About a hundred yards ahead, the Audiovisual Assets truck pulled off the road into a gas station and parked in front of one of the pumps. In his ear, Jesse heard Evie’s cell phone ring once before a deep voice came on the line. “Cooper?”
Great. Evie’s father, General Baxter Marsh. Not one of Jesse’s biggest fans. “Yes, sir. I was hoping Evie had turned up.” He slowed near the gas station, watching the truck’s driver and passenger disembark from the cab and walk into the food mart. Jesse parked on the other side of the gas pump.
“No sign of her.” Marsh sounded worried. “What’s going on, Cooper?”
“I told you the wedding was targeted.”
“I hired security.”
“Sir, I have to go. I’ll call back.” He hung up, aware his abrupt goodbye would hardly endear him to the general, and stepped out of the car. The truck blocked his view of the food mart, which meant it also hid him from view of anyone inside.
This might be his only chance to look inside that truck.
He eyed the ca
b, making sure there wasn’t anyone else inside before he shifted his attention to the trailer part of the truck. On the passenger side facing him was a door set into the side of the trailer box. No padlock, just a sliding latch with a metal screw threaded through the latch to prevent it from being opened from the inside.
Interesting.
He pulled his SIG SAUER P220 from his hip holster and darted a quick look around the cab of the truck, trying to catch a glimpse of the truck’s passengers inside the store. But the plate-glass windows were a mirror, bouncing his own reflection back at him. He scooted behind the cover of the truck again and took a deep breath as he eased the screw from the latch.
He swung the door open, wincing as it made a creaking noise. He listened for sound from inside, but anything he might have heard was masked by the traffic noise behind him. He was going to have to risk taking a look. Edging closer, he stuck his head inside the truck.
Out of the darkness, a foot slammed against his forehead, knocking him backward into the gas pump. As he struggled to keep his feet, a small, half-naked figure leaped from the truck and tried to dart away.
He caught a slender bare arm and held his assailant in place, despite her fierce struggle. She was small, curvy and deliciously hot, and for a second, all sensible thought leaked out of his head as his body reacted to finding her soft body pressed so intimately to his.
The flailing, red-faced creature was Evie Marsh. Her eyes were swollen nearly shut, but that didn’t keep her from pounding him with her fists and feet as she tried to escape his grasp.
He shook her. “Evie, it’s Jesse.”
She froze, her body flattening against his, sending his head reeling again. “Jesse?” Her voice was a painful rasp.
He stared at her streaming eyes and dragged his mind out of his jeans. “What did they do to you?”
“Pepper spray,” she growled. “Get me out of here now!”
He darted another quick look around the cab of the truck. The door to the food mart was open, the two men from the truck emerging with large cups of coffee. The driver locked eyes with Jesse and went instantly on alert.
“Go!” Jesse half carried Evie across the gas-pump island to his car and shoved her into the passenger seat. Driven by the sound of pounding footsteps racing across the gas station lot toward him, he slid across the hood and half dived behind the steering wheel.
So much for a clean getaway.
He jammed the key into the ignition, bracing himself for gunshots that didn’t come. Leaving the gas station in a hurry, he turned in front of an oncoming car, barely escaping a collision in a flurry of squealing brakes and a few choice gestures from the other driver.
In the rearview mirror, he spotted the truck fifty yards back, barreling toward them. He slammed the accelerator to the floor.
“Are they behind us?” Evie turned in the passenger seat, squinting.
“No way can that truck catch us.” The extra weight of the truck would give Jesse the advantage, but if he didn’t keep other vehicles between him and the truck, a high-powered rifle could quickly even the playing field.
He also had the advantage of knowing the back roads of Chickasaw County better than their pursuers, whipping the Ford Taurus down a pothole-pocked blacktop road. The road cut past Mill Pond, where he’d caught one of the biggest bluegills he’d ever seen, and twisted up the southern face of Gossamer Mountain. Over the hill lay Gossamer Lake and home.
He checked the rearview mirror frequently. No sign of the truck.
“Do you have any water?” Evie tried to stifle a cough.
Jesse reached into the backseat to retrieve the bag of supplies he’d packed for his stakeout. He handed Evie a bottle of water from the bag, and she flushed her face and eyes. “Someone grabbed me at the church. Sprayed me right in the face with pepper spray. I couldn’t even catch my breath long enough to yell for help.”
“How about now? You breathing okay?”
“Mostly.” She coughed again. “I’m better.”
He pulled out his phone and dialed his brother Rick’s cell number.
Rick answered on the first ring. “Where are you?”
Jesse caught his brother up on what had happened. “I’ve got Evie, but I’m not sure I should take her back to the church. Can you call Evie’s cell number? Someone will answer and you can tell them Evie’s safe.”
“I’m not ruining Rita’s wedding!” Evie protested.
Jesse slanted a quick look at her. “That can’t be a consideration, Evie. You know that.”
“Am I your prisoner?” she shot back, her glare lethal even through swollen eyelids.
“You think putting yourself and the rest of your family at greater risk is going to make her happier?” Jesse argued.
“Take me back to the church, Jesse.”
“Take her to the church,” Rick said. “We’ll meet you there.”
Jesse pressed his lips into a thin line, every instinct telling him to stash Evie in the nearest safe house. But was he letting his affection for Rita’s kid sister get in the way of his good sense? He needed Baxter Marsh’s cooperation now more than ever. Spiriting his daughter away without even consulting him was hardly going to win him over.
“Okay,” he said aloud, ignoring the twisting sensation in his gut. “We’ll go back to the church.”
* * *
“YOU CAN’T POSTPONE the wedding.” Evie looked at her sister in dismay. “All that money going to waste? It’s ridiculous.”
Rita’s lips curved in a faint smile. “Trust you to look at it from an accounting perspective.”
“Rita, please. If you postpone it now, we let those creeps win.”
“You can’t walk down the aisle when you can barely see, Evie.” Rita winced as she looked at Evie’s face. “And I know you were looking forward to being my maid of honor.”
“I was looking forward to your getting married to a man who makes you happy,” Evie answered, even though her sister was right. She had been looking forward to being her sister’s maid of honor.
Their relationship over the years hadn’t always been close, especially during the teenage years when Rita had resented her younger sister’s constant tagging along, and Evie had been jealous of Rita’s being first to do everything. But they’d forged a strong bond over the past few years, and being her sister’s chosen attendant had been a big deal to Evie.
“Oh, Evie,” Rita murmured, her eyes filling with tears.
“I want you to marry Andrew and be disgustingly happy for the rest of your life. That’s all that matters.”
Rita’s gaze slanted to her left, where Jesse Cooper stood near the wall of the bride’s room, a silent sentinel. Evie wondered what her sister was thinking about her ex’s presence. She had tried to warn Jesse that coming into the bride’s room with her might not be the best idea, but he’d refused to let her out of his sight. Apparently he’d assigned himself to be her personal bodyguard, and he took the job very seriously.
“I should thank him,” Rita said, reluctance thick in her voice.
“It’s not necessary. He lives for this kind of thing.”
Rita’s lips curled upward again. “I know.”
Evie supposed she did. Jesse Cooper hadn’t changed much in the past ten years, despite his change of careers. The same strong sense of honor, duty and ethics he’d learned in the Marine Corps had traveled with him to his new job as head of Cooper Security.
“I’m glad he came.” Rita kept her voice low so that it wouldn’t carry to where Jesse stood watch. Evie suspected it was a futile effort; knowing Jesse, he could probably read lips.
“Why’s that?” she asked Rita.
“Because it helped me be absolutely sure I’m over him.”
“You didn’t know that before you said yes to Andrew?” Evie tried to arch an eyebrow, but the stinging pain of her swollen eyes wouldn’t allow it.
“I thought I knew. I was pretty sure I knew.” Rita smiled. “But now I know for certain.”
>
Evie darted a quick look at Jesse, wondering if he was over Rita, as well. Their courtship had been intense and passionate, their breakup equally explosive. Even now, Jesse couldn’t hide his reaction whenever Rita’s name came up in conversation.
“Are you sure, Evie? About our going ahead with the wedding?”
“Positive,” she answered. “And who knows? I have an hour to recover. If I’m feeling better, I can put a little extra makeup on to cover the redness and swelling. Besides, everyone will be looking at you anyway.”
Rita took a deep breath before she spoke. “Okay, then. We’ll go ahead with the wedding. Try putting cold compresses on your eyes. I want you up there with me.” She gave Evie a quick, fierce hug.
As Rita followed their mother back to the private chamber to finish her preparations for the wedding, Evie dropped wearily on the nearby bench, pressing her hands to her throbbing forehead. The stinging burn of the pepper spray had mostly subsided, and her vision had cleared up considerably, but those irritations had been replaced by the beginning of a brain-pounding headache. She hoped it would ease off soon because she was going to do everything she could to stand at the altar as her sister’s maid of honor, headache or not.
“You okay?”
She looked up at Jesse’s gravel-voiced query. “Yeah. Just working on a headache. All the stress, I guess.”
Evie’s father crossed to her side, subtly positioning himself between her and Jesse. “Do you need ibuprofen?”
“That would be great.”
Her father pulled a small pillbox from his pocket and fished out a couple of pain relievers. He slanted a pointed look at Jesse. “There’s a water fountain in the hall with a paper-cup dispenser.”
Jesse frowned, clearly not happy about leaving Evie alone, even with her father, but he’d been a Marine long enough to balk at disobeying an order from a general. He disappeared through the door.
“We need to call the police,” her father said. “They should be looking for the truck.”
“Jesse thinks the local police aren’t equipped to handle the men who kidnapped me.”