The only people who were in the house were the immediate family. No stranger could have crept past without somebody noticing.
“The kitchen staff!” Chloe whispered out loud. It had to be one of them. Someone who had purposely hired on to be at the Romano mansion the same weekend the diamonds were. “Oh, hurry, Liam!”
She got up to pace the floor and was suddenly jerked backward when a black bag was thrown over her head like a noose, blinding her in utter darkness.
Chapter 21
Her scream was cut off when Chloe’s mouth was suddenly crammed with a thick gag. She tried to suck down a breath, but her air supply was severely cut.
When she breathed in, she only managed to slurp some of the gag into her mouth. It was made from some sort of satin material that sucked straight down her throat. Were they trying to make her pass out?
Desperate not to fall unconscious, Chloe’s FBI training kicked in. Jerking her feet and flailing her elbows to sucker punch her assailant, she only managed to bang her hip against the corner of Uncle Max’s desk.
Remembering that she’d left her tool kit on top of the desk’s surface, she quickly fumbled to retrieve it—just before her attacker hauled her across the office floor.
Despite her attempt to fight back, whoever had her was strong, holding her in a backward lock, one arm around her neck. Her attacker was taller than she was, too, and much bulkier, so she knew one fact—he was male. The man breathed heavily, but had yet to speak a single word. Which was a little strange.
But only strange if he was afraid she’d recognize his voice.
Chloe tried to breathe through her nose when the office door was kicked open and her kidnapper dragged her through the sitting room. She felt the softness of Aunt Aurelia’s carpet under her bare feet.
At the opening to the foyer, the attacker paused as if assessing who might be close by. Satisfied that the house was empty, he turned right and headed to the back of the house, walking with purpose, as if he knew where he was going.
Through the black bag, Chloe could hear the faint sound of laughter while Mercedes and Mark cut the cake. Which meant that her attacker wasn’t Mark Westerfield. Even while she was grateful that her cousin’s new husband wasn’t a criminal, Chloe was terrified for herself.
Could the man who was dragging her through the house be Mark’s brother, Gary? That didn’t seem possible, because Gary was such a quiet, unassuming man—and he had twin girls, for heaven’s sake! But appearances could be deceiving.
Brett was long gone to the airport, and her own brother seemed impossible. Who did that leave? Her father, Uncle Max? The idea made her nauseous.
Her uncle certainly had access to his own safe.
“Please don’t hurt me,” she whimpered, but the words were garbled with the cloth stuffed into her mouth. Her throat was scratchy, her eyes leaking tears. When her assailant turned into another room, her foot caught on the door and she twisted her ankle, but he held on tight, pulling her roughly through, despite her effort to grab onto the doorjamb.
The faint smell of chocolate alerted Chloe to where they were. The kitchen. Would somebody hear her if she tried to scream again? Chloe attempted it, but she sounded like a weak kitten, unable to get any sound past the gag that was choking off the little oxygen she could gulp down.
The kitchen was locked up tight on the opposite side of the house from where the reception was taking place. Nobody would hear her even if she didn’t have a gag in her mouth.
Once more she tried yanking on the man’s arm, but he had her in a headlock and all she could do was try to avoid banging into doors and counters while he dragged her across the tile floor, one arm around her neck, the other holding her wrists behind her.
His strength and ability to keep her from using her self-defense tactics raised the hair on the back of her neck.
Dear Lord, her kidnapper wasn’t Liam, was it? Had he been playing her all along? Had the man turned from a good agent into a dirty one? After all, he was the one who had set her up with this assignment. He was the only one who knew the details.
She tried to choke out his name to get some kind of reaction, but all she could do was gasp for breath. A sudden grunt sounded when the guy halted. A door banged against the wall.
Had they left the kitchen? She tried to remember what other rooms were on this side of the house? The dining room that adjoined the kitchen? The breakfast nook? A hall closet?
Not a speck of light came through the black bag. She was getting more disoriented with every passing moment.
After nearly drowning last night, it was hard not to panic at the lack of air. All at once, she began to cough, but before she could beg for air, the attacker shoved her forward and Chloe felt herself falling into empty space.
She crashed to the floor, banging her knees and elbows. It didn’t take long to figure it out that he’d thrown her into the broom closet. The smell of a moldy mop and the dust from a bristly broom assailed her nose.
“Don’t leave me,” she choked out, certain he was going to lock her in the closet.
All of a sudden, someone was breathing next to her and chills raced down her neck at the sheer creepiness of his close, silent presence.
Before she could kick out at him, the man was sitting on top of her and tying her wrists together.
“No!” she shrieked, but the word was garbled and only wasted air.
In response, he grunted again and she grabbed at his arm, touching the material of his sleeve, the softness of the hair on his arm along his wrists.
“Please,” she pleaded. Despite her choked words, she knew he understood her, but he gave no response at all. Merely shoved her legs inside the cramped closet and locked the door. His footsteps retreated and then disappeared. The man was in a hurry.
Chloe’s head fell against her knees. Think, she told herself. What was her FBI training for escaping bonds and a locked door? The door wasn’t so much an issue, she could take it off its hinges, but getting out of the knots was harder.
Closing her eyes and taking a few slow, shallow breaths so she could focus, Chloe flexed her fingers and began to work at the knots. Her attacker had tied her up so quickly they weren’t complicated knots, and she’d been trained in how to undo a variety of knots.
It shouldn’t take more than half an hour of painstaking work, although by that time he’d be long gone. All he’d needed was to get rid of her so he could get the rest of the diamonds and escape.
Shaking out her hands so her fingers would loosen up, Chloe let her mind relax so she could think more clearly. Something kept nagging at her.
Her fall into the swimming pool still bothered her. Thinking about it made her cough again. If she vomited, she’d choke with this gag in her mouth. Now that she wasn’t being dragged around the house, Chloe tried to spit it out, but it was so tight her mouth and jaw were aching.
Last night, she and Brett had been dancing and spinning. Twirling and laughing like goofy teenagers. When he’d spun her out that last time, the lights were cut at the exact same moment—literally—and she’d slipped and fallen directly into the very deepest end of the swimming pool.
Brett should have been the first one to dive in and save her. Not Liam, who was across the patio. Or her brother, who had been talking with their parents at a distant table. Obviously, being so close, Brett would have heard the loud splash despite the DJ’s music. He would have felt her fingers slip from his.
Chloe shivered, playing back those moments, almost erased from her memory when she went unconscious at the bottom of the pool. Followed by the trauma of being revived and rushed to the hospital.
After tests and sleeping pills, her mind had become muddled. Now it was confirmed that the lights to the house had been purposely cut. Cut at a precise moment. Timed to the second.
“Oh, dear God in heaven,” she whispered, her body turning cold.
Her fingers hadn’t slipped from Brett’s hand—Brett had purposely opened his hand and let go of
her the very moment the lights were slashed.
She hadn’t stood a chance of maintaining her balance, especially on those stiletto heels.
Chloe had also told Liam that she was certain that somebody was in the pool with her that first minute before Carter and Liam found her at the bottom of the pool. Somebody had pushed her back down just as she was trying to swim to the surface.
Under cover of darkness, Brett must have slipped down the side of the pool, the sound of his movements covered by the confusion of the blackout and her own loud splash.
Later, after she was being given CPR, Brett had said that he’d also jumped in to save her. Which explained why he was soaking wet.
“Instead, he tried to make sure I drowned,” Chloe said hoarsely. “So that nobody would know the diamonds were ever swapped.”
She was the only one who’d been given training to detect the fake stones. Only she had the key to the office door and the combination.
At the very least, he’d put her out of commission for twelve hours so he’d have time to figure out how to get into the safe. But it wasn’t long enough to make the swap when Liam ended up sleeping inside the office.
How Brett had managed to get into the safe late this afternoon was another question altogether. He had to have had an accomplice. Someone who could take the combination code he’d figured out and do the swap in two minutes or less.
Or his co-conspirator had gotten into the safe while she was out on her date with Brett.
Perhaps Mercedes had never worn the real diamonds at all.
Chloe’s head ached with it all while she continued working at the knots around her wrists. Her skin was rubbed raw, growing more tender as the rope slowly loosened, her fingers doing calisthenics to get under the crisscrossed knots.
Holding the one end of the rope that was now free, Chloe tucked it under her chin the best she could to keep it from tightening up again while she worked at the last knot.
Two minutes later, she let out a burst of relief, tears of emotion close to the surface. Scrabbling out of the rope, she tossed it aside and tugged at the knot holding the black sack over her head.
Panting, Chloe finally managed to loosen the bag and yank it off. Fresh air never tasted so good. Yanking the silk scarf out of her mouth, she breathed in big gulps of blessed air.
Slits of faint light came through the cracks around the perimeter of the pantry door. And with it, the acrid smell of smoke.
“What in the world—” Chloe spit out.
That particular burnt smell was much too familiar. And terrifying. There was a fire in the kitchen just beyond the door she was locked behind.
Whipping out her tool kit, she shook the bag’s contents into the lap of her bridesmaid dress, seeing each tool by only the touch of her hands, including the various screwdrivers and pliers included by Jim Greene. Just in case she needed to delicately take out one of the diamond stones to look at it more carefully.
Taking off a door wasn’t something she’d originally learned in her FBI training, although they’d practiced doing it. As a kid, she’d helped her father change out a few doors in the house when he was on a painting kick, long before his success as a politician.
She knelt at the bottom of the door and rammed the screwdriver up along the bolt that held the door on its hinges.
The air inside the pantry grew thick with bitter smoke.
Chloe let out a cry of frustration. The entire wedding party was blissfully unaware that the house was on fire. She prayed it wouldn’t spread beyond the kitchen to the rest of the house.
“Come on, door!” she choked out, wiping her sweating face with the back of her hand. Her eyes were burning now, painful tears leaking out.
Finally, the first bolt was out and she rose to her feet, banging her head on a shelf that was invisible in the dark. The top bolt was easier, looser, but the last few minutes in a smoke-filled room could be deadly. She was coughing in earnest now.
One hand on the doorknob and the other grasping the bottom of the door, she jiggled it loose from the hinges. “Come on, come on,” she urged. “Blast you, door!”
All at once, the door fell off the hinges and crashed forward, taking Chloe down with it. She landed straight on the kitchen tile, dazed and wondering if she’d broken anything when she slammed down so hard. Every bone in her body ached.
A moment later, footsteps approached.
The outer door to the hallway banged open. “Chloe!” a male voice shouted. “Chloe, are you in here?”
It was Liam.
“Here,” she croaked out, trying to see past the billowing smoke.
“Chloe, what the—” Liam spewed out a few curse words as he raced forward to kneel beside her. “Are you alive? Chloe, talk to me.”
“I—I can’t breathe.”
“Someone started a grease fire on the stove and in the oven both,” Liam grunted. “And it’s getting worse.”
He jumped up, grabbing the fire extinguisher from the wall. He pulled the pin and began foaming the room. But the small extinguisher wasn’t enough to stop all the flames. He tossed the empty can to the floor and was at Chloe’s side again.
“Do you have the strength to put your arms around my neck?” he asked, placing his arms underneath her. “Don’t pass out. So help me, Chloe Romano, I refuse to allow you to die for a second time in two days.”
Tears were streaming down her face from the bitter smoke, and Chloe swore she’d swallowed most of it.
“One more burst of strength, and we’re out of here,” Liam said close to her ear.
Pushing with her feet, Chloe rose halfway up, her legs trembling like a newborn kitten. Orange flames were now licking the ceiling. Gripping her, Liam staggered out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind him to contain the smoke.
“Fire!” he yelled. “Anybody in the house?”
There was no answer, but a haze of sharp, acerbic black smoke was climbing up the stairs and filling the twenty-foot ceiling of the foyer.
Liam carried Chloe out to the porch, but despite the clean fresh night air, she wanted to claw her throat out from her mouth, it hurt so badly.
Setting her down on the steps of the porch, Liam said, “I’m going back inside to make sure nobody is upstairs in the bedrooms.”
“No—you’ll get hurt—” Chloe said, clenching at his shirt.
“What if Granny Zaida went to bed already? I have to make sure. I want you to get down to the bottom of the yard. Down by the trees and the river. I called the police when you texted me that the diamonds were fake.”
“Oh no!” Chloe whimpered. The thought of her grandmother passed out in her room from the smoke that was filling the house was enough to rip her heart out from her chest.
When she turned to tell Liam to be careful, he was already gone. Long, slow seconds passed while Chloe’s chest heaved. Somewhere in all the commotion of the last hour, she’d misplaced her cell phone. It must have been left in Uncle Max’s office when she was attacked.
Staggering to her feet, she clung to the porch railing. “Liam Esposito, you are an idiot!”
The sound of sirens pierced the air. The police. Hopefully a fire truck, too.
Chloe was sure she was going to vomit or pass out any minute, but she kept walking down the porch and back toward the reception, staggering on her feet, every single inch of her body in pain.
It had to be after midnight by now. Many guests had departed because the road and driveway were emptying of vehicles, but a group of dancers were still going, and her family was milling about under the tree lights.
Carter spotted her first, coming over to stare into her face. “Chloe, what happened to you? Your dress is torn. You have black smudges all over you.”
“Fire,” she choked out. “In the house.”
“What!” Carter stared up at the house, then back at her. “Don’t pass out or I’ll never forgive you,” he said bluntly, and then he turned to cup his hands around his mouth and shout above the noise of t
he dance music. “Fire!”
Carter must have run off and grabbed the band’s microphone, because his voice got louder as he shouted, instructing everyone to get away from the house.
The sound of sirens grew closer, and when Chloe glanced up, three police cars and two fire trucks roared down the road and pulled through the mansion gates.
There was nothing more she could do except put one foot in front of the other. The grass was cool under her bare feet. Had her high heels come off during her struggle with her attacker?
She couldn’t even remember now. No, she’d taken them off before going into the house. But she was more convinced than ever that the diamond culprit was Brett Sorenson.
He’d flirted with her. Pretended to woo her, to distract her so she wouldn’t suspect him. That’s why he took the red-eye flight. To be long gone when all heck broke loose.
He must have started the fire, too. To keep her from escaping the pantry closet when she went unconscious from the smoke. Once again, he’d tried to kill her, or at least gravely incapacitate her.
Walking with slow but steady steps around the driveway back to the front of the house, Chloe glanced over her shoulder. Only a few guests were following her while several others had gone down toward the Potomac.
The rest of her family had hurried around the other side of the house and were standing on the front lawns, out of the way of the fire trucks.
Firefighters were already in action, moving quickly with hoses and gear.
Poor Uncle Max and Aunt Aurelia. The diamonds were gone and possibly their house, too. And poor Mercedes’s wedding reception was ruined.
The more pressing question was her grandmother. Had Liam gotten to her in time? She strained her burning eyes to see across the yard, but couldn’t see Granny Zaida.
Carter appeared out of the blue, touching her shoulder. “Are you okay, Chloe? You’re walking like you’re drunk.”
“Do you know where Granny Zaida is? Did Li—Stan get her out of the house?”
The Undercover Bridesmaid Page 17