“You go left, I’ll go right.”
She straightened up and fixed me with an incredulous look. “That’s it? You couldn’t come up with something better?” The woman yelled at us, interrupting our quiet, but tense conversation, and we edged back a little more, stalling for more time while we still could.
“Um… then run. Run really, really fast.” When unarmed, outnumbered, or utterly unable to fight back, and/or wearing a really fabulous dress, sometimes running is simply the best policy.
“Can’t you ninja-kick them? Then we could tie them up.”
“Are you kidding me? All of them? Despite there being five of them and me, with only two legs, I am not a ninja!”
“Fine,” agreed Lily, reluctantly, “We’ll run.”
“On three. One, t… Lily!” I yelled just as Lily ran left and a bullet exploded, hitting the container behind the gang. Someone yelled, “Police! You’re surrounded!”
Raising his weapon, our captor returned fire. There was nothing else to do, but run for it, so I grabbed my skirts and ran to the right. Behind us, the shouting started, then the bullets, flying to my left and right until I was around the corner. The shooting continued, but as I pressed against the sides of the container, I realized they were no longer being fired at us. I edged quickly away as a stream of SWAT moved past me, their weapons raised. One waved at me. I waved back, simply because it was polite and I didn’t want to be rude, even under pressure. Plus, from what I could see of his jaw, I was pretty sure we dated briefly. Terrific kisser. The things he could do with a… where was I? Oh yeah. Time to run!
“Police! Put your weapons down!”
I plastered my hands to my sides. The SWAT team rushed forwards, and suddenly, I was alone again in the dark and cold. I knew I should have grabbed the faux fur stole when I had the chance. As the last man passed, I paused briefly to think about my options. There was no way on this earth that I would go backwards, amidst the gunfire that seemed to be subsiding against shouts of “Get down!” and “Throw down your weapons!” No, I did not want to attend that show. I didn’t even care that much anymore who came to save us. All I wanted to do was find Lily, get in my car, and go home. I longed to make a hot chocolate and hide under my covers, pretending none of this ever happened.
My plan set, I edged along the container, letting my fingers trail across the corrugated surface. “Lily?” I whispered. “Lily?” I continued my progress, weaving around the container and onto the next, then the next, and the next. There was no sign of Lily. With my heart falling, and the moonlight slipping behind the clouds, I had to concede defeat. I could search all night and not find her in this maze. If I were really lucky, I might even manage not to fall into the docks.
Another thought occurred to me. What if I couldn’t find Lily because she was hurt? What if she were bleeding somewhere in her beautiful white gown? What if she thought I abandoned her?
“Liiiiily!” I wailed as I turned around and edged my way backwards. “Lily? Lily? Can you hear me? Lily?” I crashed into something hard. I tried to skirt around it, but the something hard placed two massive hands around my waist. I screamed and one of the hands landed on my mouth.
“Lexi?” said the oversized object. “Lexi! Stop screaming!”
“Umfugalumph!”
“What?”
“Umfugal…” The hand dropped from my mouth. I squinted upwards, but couldn’t make out much more than a mouth and the whites of eyes. Not that I needed any visual. I knew that voice. “Maddox? What are you doing here?”
“Came to save you, of course.”
“How dare you! I don’t need saving!”
“Um…” Maddox paused, at a loss. “You seemed lost.”
“Did not!”
“Where are you?”
“In a shipping yard.”
“Can you narrow it down?”
“To?”
“To exactly where you are?” Maddox asked, a hint of amusement rising in his voice.
There was a long pause during which, I’m sure, we both wondered how I was going to regain my wounded pride. Eventually, I said, “Maddox, are you lost?”
Maddox tutted before grabbing me by the hand. “This way.”
“If you insist.”
“I know you’re lost…”
“Let’s not dwell on it. What are you doing here? How did you find me?”
“Funny story,” said Maddox. A beam flashed onto the floor and whirled a couple of times. Our footsteps followed in its wake as Maddox guided me forwards. “The burglary squad was looking into a series of thefts from bridal stores and have been watching other local stores in hope of catching the thieves. They got really interested after they noticed a car consistently outside another bridal store. So they started watching it. Can you guess who that car belongs to?”
I had an uncomfortable feeling that I could, but I hated to ruin Maddox’s fun story. “Go on,” I whispered into the dark as we turned a corner.
“It was a turquoise blue Mini owned by none other than Lily Shuler!” Maddox announced like I just won a prize on a game show. “Anyway, some of my colleagues noticed the driver in a VW, the same night that store got hit. The VW, with two female occupants, took off after the van and ended up here.”
“They followed us?”
“Lucky, huh?”
“They shot at us!”
“There was only the two of them. They waited for backup!”
“Were you guys on a donut break or something? They wanted to throw our bodies in the docks.”
“The SWAT team would never have let that happen. They had money on you getting out of it before they got here anyway.”
“Really? Awww.” Warmth hit me, dead center, in the chest. It was nice someone believed in us. “How come you’re here?” I asked. For him to have arrived so quickly, he had to have been here before I even sent that text.
“I tagged along for funsies the moment I knew you were involved after your plate was called in. When I got your text, I figured you’d be pleased to see me.”
I punched him lightly in the chest. Yes, I was pleased to see him. We were quiet for a few moments, simply following the flashlight’s beam, while I thought back to all the things that Maddox called fun. To be honest, tagging along after Lily and me, in the hope of a shootout, wasn’t too far off base. It was exactly the sort of thing Maddox liked to do.
“Did you find Lily?”
“Yeah, she’s fine. She said you were responsible for the two of you getting out of there.”
I smiled. “Kind of.”
“You were.” Maddox gave my hand a squeeze and I squeezed it back. His palm was warm, dry, and very comforting in the dark.
“You know we had nothing to do with the robbery, right? I took Perfect Brides on as a case and Lily was doing our surveillance,” I added, just in case the burglary team wanted to look at Lily and me a little more closely. Come to think of it, now that Jord was interested in a job on their squad, maybe we could put in a good word? Or maybe it was better if we didn’t interfere at all.
“Figured that out already.”
“Oh.”
“Lily wearing a wedding dress wasn’t much of a clue,” Maddox continued. “It was actually a little incriminating, but she won’t take it off. It’s pretty. Good job Jord isn’t here. Bad luck, you know.”
“You call him seeing her in the dress bad luck after everything we’ve been through tonight?”
“Yep.” The flashlight’s beam scanned over me. “Are you wearing a wedding dress too?”
“No!” I exclaimed, following with a mumbled, “it’s my bridesmaid dress.”
“I can’t really see, but it looks cute.”
“I was hoping for sexy.”
“That too.”
“Thank you for coming to find me.”
Maddox squeezed my hand again. “Anytime,” he said. “So… holding hands in the dark, huh? Lots different from the last time.”
Last time we held hands in the dark, it was on a da
te and I remembered what a beautiful evening it was. I wondered if he wanted me to remember that, how happy we were while dating, or if he was just trying to distract me. “I wish things were different,” he said with a sigh.
I didn’t reply to that, because what could I say? If I agreed and wished things were different, I wouldn’t have Solomon. If I wished things had remained exactly as they were, did that mean I never cared for Maddox enough? I was left with the revelation that “what ifs” didn’t exist. My time with Maddox was ruined and that was that. So, when Maddox stopped and turned towards me, letting his hand alight on my cheek while his thumb stroked its way across my jaw, I knew the right thing to do.
“You are absolutely in my heart, Adam, you have to know that, but I’m not going to act on anything. I saw a future with you once, and now… now, I don’t. I hate saying it, but it’s true.” I choked the words out before I lost my nerve, even though I knew I was hurting him, which was the last thing I wanted to do. “But I don’t mind one bit saying I see a future with Solomon,” I finished.
“You know, that’s okay.” Maddox’s thumb brushed my cheekbone. “We’re still friends, Lexi. Always. In some ways, what you just said makes everything easier.”
I stepped away, breaking the closeness between us. “How’d that interview go? The one you were all dressed up for?” I asked, just to be conversational as we stepped around a container and into the light.
“Tell you later,” Maddox answered as we looked around the same clearing I escaped from only minutes before. The thieves were all on their knees, their hands behind their backs and judging by their stiff shoulders, all were handcuffed. SWAT surrounded them, but that didn’t stop Lily from getting in the middle of them, walking in short strides in front of their faces. As I got closer, I could hear her lecturing them on how mean they were to steal wedding dresses and destroy people’s dreams. One of the gang was weeping silently, but the others looked bored.
Maddox dropped my hand. I turned to ask Maddox what he wanted to tell me, but he was already walking away. When I called his name, he turned, smiled, waved, and continued walking. A little part of me knew whatever was between Adam Maddox and me was irretrievably lost. That was something for me to think about later. I couldn’t dwell on it, or my sudden melancholy again, when I had to make absolutely sure Lily was okay.
“Lily?” I called as I moved towards my best friend.
She wheeled around and threw out her arms. “Lexi, I was so worried about you! I couldn’t find you. Then Bryce said he saw you—” She waved at a SWAT guy - how she could tell them apart, I had no clue — and he waved back “—and then Maddox got here and then… You’re okay!” She stepped closer and reached out to me. I held my arms up to hug her, but instead of hugging me, she dived at my dress, smoothing out the pleats. “Oh, thank God! It would have been hell to camouflage bullet holes in this sheer material. See what you could have done?” she yelled, turning on one heel to face the burglars again. She pointed to my dress. “Bad people! Bad! Selfish!” She turned back to me. “Let’s get it dry cleaned anyway.”
“What’s going on here?” I asked, turning in half circles to look at all the people gathered nearby us. There were local police and SWAT surrounding the gang, who remained on their knees, the focus of it all.
“It’s utterly amazeballs! We cracked an international crime syndicate!” Lily pointed at the open shipping container. “There are hundreds of dresses in that one alone. They think there’re lots more containers with dresses from all over the state. The dresses were being shipped somewhere in Europe, then sold on the black market. They would have made a fortune and we stopped them! Cool, huh?”
“Very. You know what’s an even cooler idea?”
“Taking on another case? Opening our own agency? Happy hour at my bar?”
“Going home.”
Lily nodded as if I just said something incredibly wise. She gathered her skirt in her hands and I hooked my arm through hers. “Let’s vamoose.”
We didn’t go home right away. Instead, I called Sharon and asked to meet her at the wedding boutique. As it turned out, she was already there, talking to a police officer who was taking her statement. By the time we arrived, he was gone and Sharon was sitting on her cashier’s chair in the middle of the debris.
“I don’t have the heart to clear it,” she said, when we entered. It probably didn’t help matters that we gingerly came through the open front door and crunched over the broken glass left behind from a shattered display case. She didn’t even ask why we still wore our dresses over our clothes.
“We have something to tell you that will make you feel better,” said Lily.
“There’s nothing that could make me feel better right now,” replied Sharon. “I’ve lost everything. The insurance money will never come through in time to get my brides their… what are you wearing?” Sharon peered more closely at us. She got up and stepped nearer, her mouth dropping open. “Is that your wedding dress?”
“Yep,” said Lily, breaking into a smile.
“But… how?”
“When you asked us to investigate, you were right. The same gang of thieves were targeting the other local wedding stores. Tonight, they did this,” Lily waved her hand around, and grinned “and we were here at the right time, ready to follow them.”
“You got my dresses back?” Sharon looked from Lily to me for confirmation and we both nodded proudly.
“Yes, we got all of them,” I told her. “The police caught them before they could transfer all your dresses. There’re a few missing, but almost everything they stole from here will be easy to identify. I can make some calls and try and speed up the process.”
“I don’t know what to say. How can I ever thank you?"
"Don't thank me, thank Lily," I told her. "She did all the work. I just caught the grand finale."
"I thought everything was gone, everything except…” Sharon stopped and gasped, her hand flying to her mouth as she looked at Lily. “I know exactly how to say thank you. Come with me.” She barely seemed to care as we crunched over the glass, tracking some of it into the fitting room. We followed her through the curtains, into the storage area beyond, and then to a door. She unlocked it, ushering us into a small room. We stepped inside and Sharon flicked on the lights, illuminating a stunning dress on the dressmaker’s model. I recognized it immediately as the dress Lily had turned away because it was too expensive. Sneaking a look at Lily, I knew she recognized it too.
“I saw a little tear in the lace so I brought it back here to repair earlier today. That’s why I couldn’t do the last alterations on yours until tomorrow.” Sharon pointed to an area on the lace, and I saw nothing but perfection. “I remembered you liked this one more than the dress you chose. Please, take it. I’ll refund you for the dress you already bought.”
“I couldn’t,” Lily breathed. “It’s too much. It’s…”
“Yours,” said Sharon. “Free. Take it as my thank you.”
“No, no, I really can’t,” Lily insisted. “Thank you, but I can’t. Lexi investigated really and I just…”
“I barely did anything. It was Lily,” I told Sharon. Sure, I asked a few questions and undertook some surveillance, but Lily bore the brunt of the workload. It would be unfair of me to take any credit. “I just got shot at a couple of times after pissing people off.”
“That’s true,” agreed Lily.
“Please take the dress. I want you to have it,” Sharon insisted. “You’ve earned it.”
Lily nearly bowled Sharon over when she threw her arms around her. “Thank you, thank you,” she whispered over and again. “I love it.”
My cell phone rang as Lily shimmied out of the dress she liberated from the thieves so I excused myself. I walked from the little dressmaking room where dreams came true into the fitting room. The number was unregistered, but that wasn’t new for me. My number got around in my daily business. Speaking of which, I had two messages from Solomon still to listen to and a
lot of explaining to do.
“Hello?”
“Lexi? It’s Marnie. Marnie Vasquez.”
“Marnie! Hi! How are you feeling?” I asked, pleased that she sounded so strong.
“A lot better. The doctor says I was really lucky. I was poisoned, you know.”
“I know. We think it was in the coconut water you drank.”
“Yeah, I guessed as much. It was the only thing I drank at my mom’s house and it got me thinking. There’s not a lot you can do in the hospital, you know.”
“Tell me about it.” I didn’t mean that literally, but Marnie continued. “I'm sorry to call so late. I was thinking a lot about my mom and I remembered she gave me something when she visited me last month. She said I should hold onto it, just in case something ever happened to her. I asked her what she meant at the time, but she didn’t want to talk about it; and then we got busy doing other things, and I didn’t really think about it again. Recently, I remembered it and now I believe this must have been what she meant. In case anyone hurt her.”
“What did she give you?”
“A DVD.”
“Have you watched it?”
“No, but I have it here with me at the hospital. My uncle brought my bag and some clean clothes and it’s in there. I have my laptop here too, but I wanted to tell you first. I thought if I watched it, and didn’t like it, maybe I wouldn’t want to tell anyone about it, and Mom always brought me up to be honest.”
“You did the right thing. Does anyone else know about it? Your uncle?”
“No. No one.”
“Okay,” I said, the wheels in my mind spinning. Whatever was on that DVD was important enough for Lorena to hide it. Perhaps she meant to use it as insurance since we already agreed she knew her life was in danger. It could be the key to everything. If the killer even suspected Marnie had it, however, her life could be in danger again. It was imperative that I immediately went to her to discover together what the DVD revealed. “Don’t say a word to anyone. I’m on my way.”
Chapter Twenty
I asked Solomon to meet me at the hospital, promising to explain everything when I got there. If he were pissed that I’d gotten into danger — again — and ignored his calls, it didn’t show once we were finished watching the DVD.
Weapons of Mass Distraction Page 26
