GROOM UNDER FIRE

by Lisa Childs

  Because believing the worst of Stephen had made it easier for Cooper to act on his feelings for Tanya.

  “Do you have some water in the car?” he asked Logan.

  His oldest brother nodded. “I’ll get it and the first-aid kit.”

  “And I’ll wave down the ambulance,” Parker said, before following his twin out of the warehouse—leaving Cooper alone with his old best friend.

  “You’re going to be okay,” he assured him. The wound on Stephen’s head still oozed blood. He must have been hit hard—hard enough to spray his blood across the wall of the groom’s quarters. “Did you see who hit you?”

  It wasn’t Tanya, as his brothers had suspected. He was done doubting his friends.

  “No…” Stephen moaned as if the sound of his own voice reverberated inside his injured head. How had he handled the sound of his own pounding echoing inside the crate?

  “You don’t know who did this to you?”

  “I know…”

  Hope quickened Cooper’s pulse. “You know? But you said you didn’t see him…” Nobody could press charges on suspicions and doubts; the police and prosecutors needed evidence, like eyewitness testimony.

  Stephen tried to speak again, but his voice cracked. His throat was probably as dry as his peeling lips. Cooper’s heart wrenched with emotion over how badly Stephen had been hurt. And then he’d been nailed up in a box and left to die.

  Footsteps pounded on the concrete as someone hurriedly approached. Cooper glanced up, hoping it was the medics. But it was Logan, carrying a bottle of water. “They’re only a few minutes out.”

  He hoped Stephen had those minutes left…after days of his wound being untreated and being dehydrated. Cooper took the water bottle from Logan, uncapped it and held it to Stephen’s lips. He trickled only a little bit into his mouth.

  Stephen coughed and sputtered.

  Cooper cursed and hoped he hadn’t done more damage to his battered friend. What if he aspirated?

  But Stephen caught his breath and his voice was clearer when he spoke, “More…”

  Cooper trickled more water into his open mouth.

  He coughed again but not as violently.

  “The ambulance will be here soon,” Cooper assured him. “The docs will make you well again.”

  “Safe…” Stephen murmured.

  “You’re safe,” he promised. “Nobody’s going to get to you again.” If Cooper would have agreed to be his best man, nobody would have gotten to Stephen the first time. Guilt gnawed at him more than the pain in his ribs and back.

  Logan, ever the detective, asked, “Do you know who did this to you?”

  Wanting Stephen to save his strength, Cooper answered for him, “He didn’t see him.”

  “At the church,” Stephen murmured. “I didn’t see him at the church…”

  Logan cursed in frustration.

  “But I saw him,” Stephen said, “when he opened the trunk. I saw him…”

  “Who?” Cooper asked. “Who did this to you?”

  “Arthur Gregory…”

  “Tanya’s grandfather’s lawyer?” Cooper asked.

  Logan cursed again.

  “What?” Cooper asked his brother. “I thought you barely knew the guy.”

  “That’s not it.” A muscle twitched along Logan’s tightly clenched jaw.

  And Cooper’s heart lurched in his chest as the horrible realization dawned on him. “Tanya’s with him?”

  “Candace just reported in that the lawyer showed up at the mausoleum.”

  “Did she stop him from going inside with Tanya?”

  Logan shook her head. “I—I advised her not to.”

  Cooper cursed him.

  “I didn’t think the man was a threat,” Logan said. “What’s his motive?”

  “Money,” Stephen murmured. “I think he took the money…”

  And his embezzlement would have gone undetected if neither Chesterfield heir married before she turned thirty. “Tell Candace to get inside—to protect Tanya!”

  His cell already in his hand, Logan nodded. But the phone rang and rang. “She’s not picking up…”

  “Go,” Stephen told him. “You go…to her.”

  Parker wove through the crates, shoving some aside to make room for the stretcher the EMTs carried. “They’re here!”

  “Go,” Stephen urged him again. “Go to Tanya…”

  His heart was already pulling him away—toward the door, toward Tanya. But he told his brothers, “Make sure they take care of him.”

  “I’m going with you,” Logan said. “Parker will ride along to the hospital with Stephen.”

  Cooper didn’t care who did what as long as Mr. Gregory wasn’t hurting Tanya. But the mausoleum was on the other side of town. His odds of getting there in time to protect her were pretty damn slim.

  He’d been a fool to let her out of his sight—because he might never see her again. Alive.

  *

  DUST FILLED HER lungs, making it hard to draw air into them. Her nose tickled and throat burned, but she couldn’t sneeze. She couldn’t cough. She couldn’t even breathe hard for fear that he might find where she was hiding.

  She had crawled into a tall cabinet in the butler’s pantry. With her knees pressed against her chest and the back of her head pressed against the top of the cabinet, the hard wood was unrelenting against her skull.

  The cabinet’s door wasn’t that thick, so she could hear through it. A door creaked open—maybe the kitchen door—since it was loud enough to reach her ears. And a female voice—maybe Candace—called out her name. “Tanya?”

  Something hard and metallic dropped, and it clanged against the kitchen tiles. Then something heavier struck the ground, too, with a dull thump.

  She wanted to call back. But she doubted Candace could hear her now. Had Mr. Gregory killed her?

  Tears stung her eyes and burned the back of her throat. But she struggled to contain them. She couldn’t give away her hiding place.

  “It’s useless to try to hide from me,” he yelled, his voice alarmingly close.

  She sucked in her breath and held it—until her lungs ached.

  “I will find you.”

  He knew she had figured it out because she’d run. She shouldn’t have run from him. But she’d only ever been able to hide her feelings from one person—Cooper. Everyone else was able to tell what she was thinking; they could see through her lies.

  But what was the point of killing her? Then Cooper, as her husband, would gain her inheritance. Unless he intended to kill Cooper, too.

  If only she could get to a weapon…

  Maybe the metallic thing that had fallen was Candace’s gun. If she could sneak past Mr. Gregory…

  “Where the hell are you?” the man shouted, but his voice was fainter as he moved farther away from her. Then she heard footsteps pounding across that marble foyer and then up the marble stairs. Those footsteps moved overhead.

  She drew in a breath and pushed open that cupboard door. Her leg muscles twinged as she unfolded them and crawled out of the small space. They nearly gave as she dropped onto the counter and then the floor below that.

  She moved on tiptoe across the butler’s pantry toward the kitchen, not wanting her own footsteps echoing throughout the empty mansion. Candace had crumpled onto the kitchen floor, a wound on her head oozing blood onto the dingy white tiles. Tanya pressed her fingers to the woman’s neck, feeling for a pulse. When she felt the telltale flutter, she breathed a sigh of relief.

  But then she glanced around her. If Candace had had a gun, it was gone. Mr. Gregory must have taken it.

  Candace was too statuesque for Tanya to move her; she couldn’t carry the woman outside and she couldn’t leave her here—at Mr. Gregory’s mercy.

  “Candace?” she whispered. “Wake up…”

  The woman shifted, but she didn’t regain consciousness. She had moved enough that her pant leg slid up. Metal glinted off a gun strapped to her ankle.


  Her fingers trembling, Tanya reached for it but fumbled with the holster clasp.

  Footsteps echoed off the marble again. He was coming.

  She grabbed at the gun and whirled around with it clutched in her hands.

  “At least this time you have the safety on,” Cooper remarked. “So you won’t blow my head off.”

  “She won’t, but I will,” Mr. Gregory said.

  Cooper turned toward the man who’d sneaked up behind him. His back was to Tanya now, but for that split second before he’d turned, she’d seen his face. He hadn’t seemed very surprised that Mr. Gregory had just threatened to kill him.

  He’d figured out what she had.

  “Nobody needs to get shot here,” he said. He glanced down at the floor. “You didn’t shoot Candace?”

  “He must have hit her over the head,” Tanya said. If only she had warned Candace…

  “Like he did Stephen.”

  “You found Stephen?” she asked. “Is he…?”

  “He’s still alive,” Cooper replied, but he spoke to Mr. Gregory now. “And soon he’ll be well enough to testify against you.”

  The lawyer shrugged. “I will be long gone before I’ll be arrested.”

  “Then just leave,” Cooper suggested. “Just walk away right now.”

  “You’d like that,” Mr. Gregory said. “You’ve been messing up my plans since you got back in the country.”

  “Your plan was to kill Tanya?”

  “That only became necessary when you decided to become her white knight,” Mr. Gregory said.

  Cooper was acting as her white knight now because he had positioned his body between her and the deranged lawyer and his gun. The barrel was pointed at Cooper’s chest now.

  “All I wanted to do was stop her from marrying,” Mr. Gregory explained, “Stephen Wochholz or anyone else.”

  Tanya shuddered.

  “You didn’t want her to inherit the money,” Cooper said.

  “What money?” Mr. Gregory asked with a chuckle. “The money’s gone.”

  Tanya gasped in surprise. He had embezzled all of it.

  “Then it’s over,” Cooper said. “Just leave. Take whatever you’ve got left and leave the country.”

  “I will leave,” Mr. Gregory assured them, “as soon as I get rid of you.”

  Fear overwhelming her, she gasped again. “No!”

  “Why are you acting like you care now?” Mr. Gregory taunted her. “You were so desperate a little while ago to get your annulment that you were willing to give up your inheritance to end your marriage.”

  Cooper tensed. Was he offended? Hurt?

  “You hurt Stephen and you kept trying to hurt Cooper,” she said, trying to explain why she’d done what she had. To keep him safe…

  “Kept trying?” the lawyer scoffed. “I tried to push a car on him.”

  “But all the gunshots,” she said, “at Stephen’s condo and at his brother, who you must have mistaken for Cooper…”

  “I fired into your apartment but that was to hit you—after he stopped me from running you over.” The lawyer snarled. “He kept stopping me…when he saved you from the asthma attack and the peanut allergy. Your sister helped with that. Maybe I should take care of her, too, before I leave the country.

  “Nobody else needs to get hurt,” Cooper said. “Stephen’s going to make it. You haven’t killed anyone. So there’ll be no murder charges.”

  “Just attempted murder,” the lawyer said. “And embezzlement. I might as well commit murder, too. And for all the times you’ve messed up my plan, I really, really want to kill you, Cooper Payne.”

  “No!” Tanya shouted.

  But the gun was already raised. Mr. Gregory squeezed the trigger. And a shot rang out.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Tanya’s scream rang in Cooper’s ears. The terror in it chilled his blood. But it wasn’t his blood that was spilled across the white tile floor. Mr. Gregory lay lifelessly in front of him—a bullet in his head.

  “Everybody okay?” Logan asked from behind him. Cooper had distracted the man so his brother could get in place to take the shot—if he needed to. Since the lawyer had been squeezing the trigger, Cooper was fortunate that Logan was a damn good shot. Or he might have an actual hole in his heart instead of just a figurative one.

  “Yeah, thanks,” Cooper said.

  “You could sound a little more grateful,” Logan teased as he dropped to his knees and took Candace’s pulse. Their family usually handled every emotion with humor; otherwise they would have never survived the loss of their father. Maybe Logan had gotten so good at coping that he didn’t betray any other emotions. Or he kept everything inside. “Her pulse is strong.”

  “I’m strong,” Candace murmured as she regained consciousness. “I can beat you arm wrestling.”

  He chuckled. “Good thing he hit you in the head—since it’s so hard.”

  Cooper hoped her heart was hard, too. Because it was obvious that Logan didn’t return the feelings she had for her boss. His big brother couldn’t have gotten that good at hiding his emotions. Because if Cooper had found Tanya lying on the floor like that, he wouldn’t have been able to tease. His hands would have been shaking too badly to take the shot that Logan had. His heart clutched with sympathy for Candace because he knew how badly it hurt when someone didn’t love you the way you loved them.

  Tanya wanted a divorce so desperately that she’d been willing to give up her inheritance.

  Her hands clutched his shoulder. “Cooper, are you all right?” she asked.

  He shrugged off her touch. “Fine.” And because he cared so much, he turned and reached out to her. But he didn’t pull her into his arms as he longed to do. Instead, he just touched her hair, brushing cobwebs and dust from the silken strands. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah…” She expelled a shaky sigh. “When I realized everything…I ran and hid.”

  “What were you thinking to meet him here?” he asked. “Alone?” But he knew. She was thinking she wanted to get rid of her husband. And she hadn’t cared how much it would cost her. Even her life?

  “I didn’t know he was the one…behind everything…”

  “But you shouldn’t have gone off alone,” he reminded her. His guts clenched with dread. He hated to think of what could have happened to her—of how she could have been the one lying on the floor—either with a wound on her head or a bullet in it. “It’s hard to protect someone who won’t let you.”

  “It’s over now,” she said. “I don’t need your protection anymore.”

  “No,” he agreed. She obviously didn’t need him anymore.

  “Is it over?” Logan asked the question now. “Gregory said he only fired those shots at your apartment. He admitted to everything else, so why would he lie about those other times? Parker got shot at outside Stephen’s place.”

  “And you got shot at, too,” Cooper remarked as his head began to pound again.

  “But I was posing as you,” Logan said.

  Despite the pounding, Cooper shook his head. “You and Parker can pass as each other. I’m not so sure anyone would have really been fooled into thinking you were me.” Then maybe those shots outside Stephen’s had really been meant for Parker and hadn’t been just because he’d gone out the door first.

  “Do you think there’s someone else?” Tanya asked with a shudder. “That Mr. Gregory was working with someone else?”

  Candace had managed to sit up and lean against the wall behind her. “It’s more likely that the someone else has nothing to do with you.”

  Tanya turned to Cooper, her eyes wide with concern. “Someone else is trying to kill you?”

  “Not me,” he assured her. “I just got back into the country.” And his enemies wouldn’t have been able to follow him here. “This is about something else…” Logan. “It doesn’t concern you.”

  A twinge of disappointment squeezed her heart. He had just reminded her that she wasn’t really part of his family. They�
�d only been married a couple of days before she’d decided to end it.

  Sirens wailed outside the mausoleum. “As soon as the police are done taking our report, I’ll bring you to the hospital to see Stephen.”

  “Uh, Stephen, of course.” She lifted trembling fingers to her face and brushed away another cobweb. “Is he really going to be all right?”

  “He’s strong to have survived the head wound and all those days of being nailed inside a crate,” he said.

  She moved her hand to her mouth, as if to hold in another scream.

  “And I’m sure he’ll be even better once we get our divorce and you can marry him.”

  She loved Stephen, but she didn’t want to marry him. She wanted to stay married to her husband because she was in love with him. Cooper obviously didn’t return those feelings. He hadn’t even come with her to the hospital. He’d sent her in the ambulance with Candace.

  After Candace had been taken for a CT scan, Tanya had found Stephen’s hospital room. The minute she stepped inside, she reached out and clutched his hand.

  “Don’t!” Rochelle yelled at her from where she sat on the other side of Stephen’s bed.

  He cried out, and Tanya pulled back. Seeing how raw his fingers were, he must have been digging at something. The crate Cooper said he’d found him nailed inside…

  She shuddered over the horrors her dear friend had been forced to endure—because of her. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…”

  “You should be sorry,” Rochelle snapped at her. “You did all this for nothing—for money that was already gone.”

  Nikki must have called and filled in her friend about Mr. Gregory. It had been him acting alone in the attempts on her life and Stephen’s. Cooper had lifted the lawyer’s sleeves to reveal her scratches on his arms. And they’d found evidence that the tear-gas container had been inside his briefcase.

  Tears of regret stung Tanya’s eyes.

  “It’s not your fault,” Stephen said. “It was my plan that we get married.”

  Rochelle gasped. “It was?”

  “Your sister didn’t want the money, but I pointed out everything she could do with it—all the people she could help.”

  Rochelle’s lips curved into the first genuine smile Tanya had seen on her face since she was a child. “Of course it was your plan. You are such a sweet man.”