The White Knight & Black Valentine (Book 0): The Best Man

by Brand, Kristen

  “No bars,” Harris said, feeling like he’d just swallowed his own stomach. He tried to call Dave anyway, but it failed.

  Lady Nightmare pulled her own phone from her cleavage. “Same.”

  Harris turned on his phone’s flashlight app and gave the door a second look. There was still no handle. He cast the light around the rest of the freezer, revealing cardboard boxes of ice cream and frozen vegetables but no other way out. The cold pierced right through the thin fabric of his summer-weight tuxedo, and his ears were so frigid that they stung.

  He banged against the door. “Hey! Anybody out there? We need help!”

  “I don’t sense anyone nearby,” Lady Nightmare said.

  Harris spun around. “Can you call for help telepathically?”

  “I just said I don’t sense anyone,” she growled. “There’s no one close enough to call.”

  Harris tried dialing Dave again, his fingers stiff and swelling. The call didn’t go through this time, either. He set the phone on one of the shelves, letting the flashlight app act as a lantern.

  “They’re going to notice we’re missing,” he said in a hopeful voice. “And the kitchen staff has to come and start lunch at some point.”

  “Before we’ve lost appendages to frostbite?” Lady Nightmare asked with a sneer. “Before we pass out and die from exposure?” She rubbed her bare arms, her shoulders hunched.

  Reluctantly, Harris shrugged off his jacket and held it out to her. “Here.”

  “I don’t need your chivalry.”

  “Hey, it’s plain old self-preservation, not chivalry. I’m not the telepath. You need to stay warm and conscious so you can call for help if someone comes close.”

  She snatched the jacket from his hand and shoved her arms into it. The two of them stood in silence, but Harris couldn’t focus on any awkwardness between them because he was too busy worrying about the freezing temperature. He swore the cold had made it through his skin and muscle and was now chilling his bones. He shivered violently.

  “Right,” he said aloud, and started doing jumping jacks.

  Lady Nightmare just looked at him. “And this is the last thing I’m going to see before I die.”

  “It’ll warm me up. Get the blood flowing, you know?”

  “You’d be better off conserving your strength.” She sat in front of the door, hugging her knees and looking altogether tiny. Her feet were bare from when she’d kicked off her heels earlier, and he didn’t envy her pale, icy toes.

  Harris kept jumping. “Try to stay optimistic. Slippery Jim will probably go after Dave next, and he’ll knock the bastard into next week. Then that sister of yours can read his mind and find out where we are.”

  “Okay, first off, he’s not after White Knight.” Her bluing lips spat out the name. “He’s here to get revenge on Val for her backstabbing him or something. Second, he wasn’t planning on attacking her head on. He’s not that dumb.”

  “Then what was his plan?”

  “Arsenic in the champagne.”

  Harris stopped jumping. Would Slippery Jim still go forward with that plan? Or had Harris and Lady Nightmare spooked him off? Harris needed to get out of here and warn someone. Except—

  “That won’t work anymore,” he said. “Nobody’s going to make a toast with the best man and maid of honor missing. They’ll put off the ceremony until they find us.”

  Lady Nightmare made a noise of agreement, and some of the tension in Harris loosened. Dave and his bride-to-be were safe for now. There was still the small matter of Harris freezing to death in some of the worst company imaginable, but hey, at least Dave was all right.

  “It’s funny.” Lady Nightmare leaned her head against the door and looked up at the ceiling. “I didn’t want this wedding to happen. I wouldn’t have chosen to freeze to death to stop it, though.”

  Harris tucked his fingers under his armpits, trying to warm them up. “Not a fan of marriage, huh?”

  “I didn’t say that.” She looked at him sharply. “I’ve been happily married for six years.”

  “Congrats. What’s the problem, then?”

  “I don’t like him.”

  It took Harris a few seconds to realize who she was talking about. “Dave? How can you not like Dave? He’s the most likeable guy ever.”

  She snorted.

  “It’s true,” Harris said. “Did you know he sends out actual birthday cards to people? Not a Facebook message or a text, but a real card with a handwritten message inside. And he always picks up the bar tab even though he barely drinks anything. And if you’re ever moving, give him a call, because the man will single-handedly get all your furniture into the truck, and all he wants in return is pizza.”

  “He’s boring.”

  “Dude can punch a hole in a car. He’s not boring.”

  “Feh.” Her sneer wasn’t as effective now that her teeth were chattering. She pulled his suit jacket more tightly around herself. “So what’s your problem?”

  “Immaturity and a flippant attitude used to hide deep emotional wounds,” Harris answered promptly.

  Lady Nightmare rolled her eyes. “I mean with the wedding.”

  Harris tried to keep his expression neutral, but he’d lost feeling in his face, so it was hard to tell if it worked. “I don’t have a problem with the wedding.”

  “Telepathic, remember? I can feel your bad vibes.”

  Then she should be able to read his mind and save him the bother of answering. Harris shivered so hard that his joints hurt. He wiggled his toes, trying to work some feeling back into them, but it didn’t happen. He would trade everything he owned for a winter coat and a pair of wooly socks. Reluctantly, he sat next to Lady Nightmare, thinking they could share what little body heat they had left. When his side touched hers, he expected her to pull away and throw an insult at him, but she didn’t move. She must have been as desperate for warmth as he was.

  “I don’t have anything against this wedding, just weddings in general,” Harris said eventually. “I mean, why bother? You spend a ton of money and set up all these impossible expectations, and statistically, you’re gonna end up divorced, anyway. But society still expects us all to pair up into neat little sets and stay that way forever and always.”

  Lady Nightmare was silent for a long while, probably thinking of a particularly vicious barb. Harris didn’t try to stop her. He didn’t even have the energy to shiver anymore. The cold had leeched away all his strength.

  “You ever been married?” she asked.

  “Once.”

  “Let me guess. She was a bitch.”

  “No.” Harris stared at the wall. “It wasn’t her fault. Wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was the job.” He sighed, his breath rising in a puff of steam. “I was gone all the time, and I couldn’t talk to her about it—sometimes because she wouldn’t understand, and sometimes because the mission was top secret and I legally couldn’t say anything. It was hard, you know. For both of us.”

  Lady Nightmare shifted beside him. “I can get that,” she said finally. “Sara and I have the same problem sometimes.”

  “I used to think dating somebody with the same job was the key, but Dave did that with Moreen—you might not know her, she’s a DSA agent—and they didn’t work out, either. Then I find out he has a thing with your sister.” Harris wanted to throw back his head and laugh, but all he could manage was a weak chuckle. “It blew me away. I mean, don’t get offended, but man, your sister. The Black Valentine is all leather and lipstick and dominatrix undertones, and Dave, he’s just so… so…”

  “Boring.”

  “Heh. I was gonna say ‘straight-laced.’”

  “Same thing.” She smiled weakly.

  They sat in silence for a while, and Harris found his eyelids drooping. The painful cold should have kept him awake, but he felt numb more than anything.

  “On the bright side,” Lady Nightmare said in a trembling voice, “when they find our corpses, they’ll probably cancel the wedding.”
>
  “Yeah.” Harris’s voice came out equally feeble. “We’re doing them a favor, really.”

  “They’ll have to thank— Sara.”

  “Huh?”

  Lady Nightmare jumped to her feet and started banging on the door. Harris pushed himself up—and fell forward to his knees, his legs too stiff and weak to hold his weight. Lady Nightmare kept pounding. A metal clunk reached his ears as someone unlocked the door, and he shot to his feet, hope jumpstarting his muscles.

  “Oh my God.” A woman in a purple dress flung open the door. “Oh my God.”

  Lady Nightmare embraced the woman, and Harris edged around the couple, throwing himself into the warmth of the kitchen. He recognized the curly hair, olive complexion, and long eyelashes of their rescuer; he’d hit on her at the rehearsal dinner.

  “S-Slippery Jim.” Lady Nightmare was still shivering. Harris could sympathize. He could feel the warmer air, but it hadn’t thawed him out yet. “Any sign of him?” she asked.

  “Who? No. Nothing’s happened.” Sara rubbed Lady Nightmare’s arms to bring warmth to them. “Everybody’s been trying to figure out where you two went.”

  “Good. There’s still time to warn them, then.” Lady Nightmare shrugged off Harris’s jacket and tossed it at him. “Come on.”

  She strode off, her bare feet padding across the floor as her wife’s heels clicked after her. Harris just stood there, his hand still extended where he’d caught his jacket.

  “Let’s move, Speedy,” Lady Nightmare called.

  It took Harris a moment to find his voice. “No. We can’t tell them.”

  Lady Nightmare stopped, Sara nearly slamming into her. “What?”

  “It’ll ruin their big day. ‘Hey, Dave, Val. I know you’re ready to declare your love in front of all your friends and family, but we gotta pause for a second and beat up this teleporting crook.’ Then the cops will show up, and hell, they might have to reschedule the whole damn thing. And I don’t know about Val, but Dave’s nervous enough. I’m supposed to be bringing him antacids.”

  “Val was pacing when I left her.” Sara bit her lower lip and glanced at Lady Nightmare.

  “So?” Lady Nightmare put her hands on her hips. “Then they’ll reschedule it. Maybe it’ll give the two of them time to have second thoughts.”

  “Bianca,” Sara chided, and it took Harris a second to remember that was Lady Nightmare’s name.

  “What?” Lady Nightmare gave her wife’s pout a flat stare. “You know how I feel about it. You both do.”

  Sara’s pout turned into a glower.

  “Look.” Harris rubbed the back of his neck, his hand still cold. “They make each other happy, right?”

  A heavy silence filled the air. Lady Nightmare looked away from his eyes, which left her facing Sara. The supervillain couldn’t win against both of them. She huffed. “Fine. We’ll handle it ourselves. But what do you suggest we do? Taste-test the champagne?”

  “I’m not sure he’ll stick to the champagne plan now that we know he’s here,” Harris said. “You were in his head. Did he have a backup plan?”

  “Wait for the ceremony, then take a headshot from a safe distance.”

  Harris shivered. Bullets wouldn’t hurt Dave, but Val…

  “Okay.” He tugged on his suit jacket. “The ceremony’s on the beach. There’s only so many places he can get a clear shot from. Let’s check all the rooms with ocean views. Sara, whatever you do, keep Val in her room, okay?”

  “We’re supposed to be starting soon,” Sara said. “What do I tell her?”

  “Tell her…” Harris smoothed out his jacket, feeling the ring box in his pocket. “Tell her I lost the rings and we’re looking for them.”

  “That’s so cliché.” Lady Nightmare scowled. “Nobody’s going to buy that.”

  “Everybody thinks I’m an idiot,” Harris said. “They’ll buy it.”

  Lady Nightmare gave him a piercing look. Then Sara interrupted by kissing her on the cheek.

  “Good luck,” Sara said. “I’ll keep Val inside.”

  “Shield your thoughts,” Lady Nightmare called as Sara hurried off. “But don’t make it obvious or Val will get suspicious.”

  Sara waved in acknowledgment and disappeared through the door, leaving Harris alone with a surly Lady Nightmare.

  He grinned at her. “Ready?”

  They started on the ground floor, Lady Nightmare walking slowly down the hallway with her eyes closed as she telepathically searched the rooms for Slippery Jim. Harris’s job was to make sure she didn’t walk face-first into a wall. He drummed his fingers impatiently against his leg as he plodded along beside her. He thought other people walked slowly in general, but her pace was extra sluggish as she concentrated.

  They cleared the first floor and dashed up the stairs to the second. The brief burst of speed made Harris feel as if he was accomplishing something, but then they slowed back to a crawl, and his jitters returned. How were things with Sara going? Had she managed to convince Val to wait in her room? And what about Dave? What would he think about Harris not only failing to bring antacids but the wedding rings, too? Harris winced. He hated the idea of letting Dave down—even if he was just making Dave think he’d let him down in order to help him.

  “Nothing yet,” Lady Nightmare murmured.

  “We still have another dozen doors on this floor,” Harris said. “If we don’t find him here, we’ll go to the third.”

  “Third floor’s too high for a good shot.” Lady Nightmare kept her eyes closed. “He has a handgun, not a sniper rifle.”

  Harris didn’t answer. Did he have this all wrong? What if Slippery Jim had poisoned the champagne, after all? Was he on his way to Val’s room right now?

  “Wait.” Lady Nightmare’s eyes shot open. “I’ve got him. Room 219.”

  “Can you whammy him?”

  She smirked. “Sure can.”

  A second later, screaming came muffled from within the room. Lady Nightmare stopped in front of the door, gazing at it with a pleased expression. “I vote we just leave him like this.”

  “Tempting,” Harris said. “But we should probably take his gun. Just in case.”

  “Eh, I guess.” She reached into her cleavage again, this time pulling out a lock-pick kit the size of a credit card. Harris glanced up and down the hallway, checking for witnesses as she bent down and picked the lock.

  “Nice,” he said as the door opened with a click.

  “Basic job skill.” She slipped cautiously through the doorway.

  Furniture crashed from within the suite, making Harris flinch. He followed Lady Nightmare inside, and it wasn’t hard to find Slippery Jim. He flailed about in the living room, an open balcony door behind him showing a sunny backdrop of sparkling ocean. Slippery Jim clutched his head and spun to face them like a cornered animal, spittle flying from his mouth.

  The room began to warp.

  “Oh, no you don’t.”

  Harris sprinted forward and grabbed Slippery Jim’s arm. He brought up his knee to drive into the man’s gut, when suddenly his stomach dropped like he was on a rollercoaster. Everything twisted and bent—the world, his body, everything. He was falling, corkscrewing, getting pushed and pulled in twenty different directions. Nausea hit him, and he didn’t know up from down. His vision blurred and spun. He couldn’t make sense of anything, couldn’t tell where his hands and feet were. He felt like a rubber band getting yanked on, growing longer and thinner and tearing along the edges. He was going to break.

  Then it stopped. He jerked to a halt like a car that crashed into a concrete wall. And he did crash into something, though he didn’t know what. Everything hurt. People screamed, and the light was blindingly bright. He vomited and decided it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Light and sound assailed him, but it was far off. He drifted away from it all.

  “Speedy!”

  He’d been doing something important, hadn’t he? Wedding. Something about a wedding…

  He sa
w her: Benita, his ex-wife. She wore her wedding dress, those puffy white sleeves that had kept slipping down her shoulders during the reception. Her platinum blonde hair was curled and pinned, and she smiled brilliantly, saying something to him that he couldn’t quite make out. That had been before, back when everything was happy and hopeful, a whole life in front of them with no limits, just possibilities. Soon enough, those feelings had withered and dried up, and there were no more brilliant smiles.

  “He’s getting away! Get up!”

  He shouldn’t have asked her to marry him. If they’d just dated, lived together in sin, maybe it wouldn’t have hurt so much when they split up. People went their separate ways all the time, right? Those damn rings were what made it feel like such a failure.

  “Supersonic!”

  And yet… He couldn’t have known it wouldn’t work out. The end had been tears and cold shoulders, but the beginning—the smiles and movie marathons and nights at the waterfront… That had been nice. It was a risk, putting on those rings, but you never knew until you tried. You had to try.

  “Harris!”

  Harris’s eyes snapped open, and he looked around. He was outside. How the hell had he gotten outside? He staggered up, shoving away a lounge chair that had toppled over. Somehow, he’d ended up at the outdoor pool behind the hotel, and people in swimsuits surrounded him, looking concerned.

  “Hey!”

  Lady Nightmare stood on a second-floor balcony over the pool. Had Harris fallen off the balcony? No. Slippery Jim. Harris had grabbed him and must have gotten teleported alongside him somehow. Christ, that had hurt. But where…?

  “That way!” Lady Nightmare jabbed a finger to her left, and Harris spotted a figure in a familiar windbreaker sprinting away across the beach. Harris took off, scattering the sweaty, sunbathing tourists that had crowded around him. The gate to the pool area hung open, and Harris burst through it, tottering slightly when his feet hit the sand.

  He ran, leaving a spray of sand in his wake. The strip of beach behind the hotel was private and empty. In the center, a dozen or so feet from the water, stood two rows of chairs and an arch covered in flowers. The site of the wedding. Slippery Jim ran for the public part of the beach, where scattered people lay on towels beneath colorful umbrellas. Innocent bystanders, and Slippery Jim had a gun. Harris poured on the speed.