“Like mother, like daughter,” Kellen said.
“I’m torn between wild amusement and worry. Will he be able to perform his duties?” Max asked with a nod to Rae.
“I’m sure he’s staggering to his feet as we speak,” Kellen said.
“Probably. I’d hate to admit a seven-year-old had brought me low, especially one I was supposed to be guarding.” He slid his arm around Kellen’s waist and brought her close. “You are so fabulous.”
Rae interrupted impatiently. “I know I am. Daddy, wait until you see my dress. I get to have stars on my sash and on my hair thingie!”
“That’s great, honey. Does that make you happy?” He was half listening to Rae, half wanting to kiss Kellen.
Verona appeared behind them. “Max! I am at the end of my rope. You’re not supposed to be seeing Kellen, much less speaking to her. It’s bad luck.”
“I thought you weren’t superstitious,” Kellen said.
Verona gave Kellen the kind of look that reminded Kellen she had been an elementary school teacher and must have put the fear of God into her students. “Go get your stupid treacherous friend and take that pagan godless head and put it somewhere no one will see it! Now!” She pointed down the stairs.
“Mom, remember what I told you. Nils Brooks is going to keep an eye on Rae, just to make sure she’s okay today.”
“Yes, yes. I don’t know why you’re worried, but he can stand guard if you want him to.” Verona shook her finger at Max. “But he’d better remember to show respect to me and my family!”
“I’m sure between you and Rae, he knows that now.” Keeping close to the wall, Max slid around them, but he and Kellen never broke their gazes.
Verona gave Kellen a push between the shoulder blades. “Up the stairs.”
“Wait.” Kellen stepped close to Max again. “Did you put that special package in my room?” Her stash of emergency weapons: her smallest pistol, her most discreet knife and the weapons Birdie had brought.
“In the safe in the closet. You know the code to open it.”
“My usual code?”
He nodded and leaned in to kiss her.
Verona gripped Kellen’s upper arm and yanked her away. “Come on! Let your friend Birdie dress you. I’ll get Rae ready.”
Kellen had quickly figured out her official part in the wedding was wear the dress, speak the words, smile. Everything else was part of the Di Luca family steamroller. “You can bring Rae to my room to dress.”
“Absolutely not!” Verona was still angry about Nils putting the moves on her. Or Max seeing her. Or...whatever. “My mother always told me the challenge to getting a child ready was whether to dress yourself first, then dress them and ruin your outfit in the process, or dress them first, then dress yourself and discover while you were busy they had made a mess of themselves.”
Kellen glanced down at Rae, who was looking up at her. “Which of us do you think will make ourselves a mess, Rae or me?”
“I never know. You are both trouble.”
Verona led Kellen up the stairs to the third floor. “Your room is here.” She indicated door 345, then pointed at the far end of the corridor. “Rae will go to room 323 and wait for me there. Or she had better.”
“Yes, Grandma.” Rae scurried down the hall.
Kellen went back to the stairwell and yelled, “Nils will be hanging around out here, too, to keep an extra eye on Rae.”
A groan from below answered her and, “I’m on my feet now.”
“What an awful man! I don’t know why we need him. I’ll dress Rae and meet you at this spot—” Verona pointed at the flowered carpet at her feet “—in forty minutes. We’ll go down to the tasting room, out the door and down the aisle at exactly six o’clock. Then you will be married.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Kellen risked a grin. “I’m looking forward to that.”
“As am I. Why do I think something will go wrong?” Verona flung open the door to Kellen’s suite and gestured her inside. If Verona knew about the weapons in the safe, and the reason for them, her current worry would escalate to a frenzy. Better that Kellen keep that information to herself.
She reached for her best diplomacy. “Max wants Nils to make sure Rae doesn’t disappear again, so let’s cooperate, okay?”
Reminded of all that had occurred the last time Rae disappeared, Verona took a forbearing breath and nodded.
Birdie was waiting, clothed in her bridesmaid’s dress, dark eyes shining with joy and excitement. She gestured at the clothes spread out on the bed. “I never thought to see this day, Captain.”
“No. But then I never expected to discover I have a seven-year-old, either.” They both laughed, Kellen put her forehead against Birdie’s, and they smiled at each other, two women who had survived war, survived grief and loss and now had found joy in the changes life had brought them.
“Anyone tried to kill you today?” Birdie had been thoroughly briefed on her role as bridesmaid and bodyguard, and intended to take both duties seriously.
“Not yet.”
Birdie pushed Kellen away. “Good. With everything else we’ve got to do, we don’t have time for any merry mayhem. We’ve got to get you dressed because your mother-in-law has given me strict instructions about the schedule and where you have to be when.”
“I got that, too.” Kellen headed into the bathroom. “Let me shower. Then you can shove me into all that underwear.” She glanced at the bed and halted. “Tell me that’s not a corset!”
Birdie put on her cockney accent. “Can’t do that, luv. Zio Federico gave me explicit instructions on how to lace you in.”
“I am not going to let you lace me in.”
“I don’t think he realizes how slender you are.”
Kellen took another step and stopped again. “Pantyhose? Are those pantyhose?”
Birdie gave her a shove. “Go on, take your shower and be glad we don’t have to contend with a hairdresser and makeup artist.”
“I refused!”
“So I heard. Go on.”
Kellen hadn’t been in the Army for six years without learning how to take an efficiency shower. She was in and out in less than five minutes, shampooed and every inch of her skin scrubbed. She knew how to do efficiency hair, too: spray with texturizer, which she figured was a fancy term for hair spray, blow-dry, fluff and spray again. Makeup took a little longer than normal; she was great with foundation, concealer, blush, but add eyeliner and exotic eye shadows, and by the time she was done, Birdie was banging on the door shouting, “Come on! Come on! Come on!”
Kellen slipped into her lacy white panties and push-up bra—Max was going to greatly enjoy removing them, and she was going to enjoy his enjoyment—wrapped a towel around herself, jerked open the door and stepped out of the bathroom. “They can’t start without me.”
Birdie paused, her fist raised, ready for the next door-knocking. “I forgot. You clean up well.”
“Thank you.” Kellen thought she’d managed to make herself look good, and with only one terrible mascara blunder. “Is the hair okay?”
Birdie was suddenly all business. “We’ll worry about that after we get you into that dress. With that corset and those petticoats, it ain’t gonna be easy.”
Birdie wasn’t kidding.
The pantyhose had to go on first, then the corset, then the deceptively simple dress—heavy crepe with a formfitting bodice, natural waist wrapped by a fabric belt, and full skirt—which created its shape with boning and three weighty petticoats. The skirt had pockets hidden in the side seams, deep pockets for Kellen to hide her phone, her tissues, her lipstick. The final touch was the elastic lace garter that wrapped around Kellen’s thigh so tightly she complained it was cutting off the circulation to her foot.
“Wait until you put on these shoes. You won’t even notice the garter.” Birdie put the
stiletto heels on the floor and Kellen pushed her left foot into one.
“Damn Zio Federico. I wasn’t going to wear them, then during that last fitting, he laid it on with the flattery, saying I was absolutely right about what I should wear, he agreed that I didn’t need an expert to do my makeup because I’m beautiful enough without it, that my hair was perfect as it is and indicated to the discerning man that a tigress lived within my soul...” She took a breath, put her weight on the foot with the shoe, lifted herself and slid the right foot in. “He said that I had a great sense of personal style, that I was the most beautiful bride he’d ever dressed...”
“Are you saying Zio Federico flattered you into wearing heels?” Birdie laughed hard enough that Kellen was disgusted with herself.
“Yes.” The pointed toes pinched and the heels threw her forward until she figured out how to lean her shoulders back and her hips forward. Her whole body was a counterbalance obeying the command of those damned heels. “All Italian women wear these. They climb mountains in them. What I want to know is how?”
“I don’t know. I’m not wearing them. I didn’t fall for the flattery.”
Slowly, painfully, Kellen stepped toward the full-length mirror.
“But looking at you, I’m not so sure I made the right decision.” Birdie adjusted Kellen’s skirt.
Kellen gazed into the mirror. The movement of the crepe was fluid, flowing, rippling into a short train that looked like a pale silk stream. Zio Federico’s cap sleeves and her own sculpted arms and shoulders made her appear... “Wow. I look like one of Rae’s dolls with all the princess clothes on.”
Birdie grinned. “You do.”
“Like ThunderFlash.”
Birdie smiled affectionately. “That, too.”
Kellen noticed Birdie standing beside her, tall, thin and uniquely beautiful. “You’re pretty fine yourself.”
“Thank you. Zio Federico told me in Italy, with my facial structure, I could be a model.”
Kellen scrutinized her friend. “You really could. Carson knows it, too.”
Birdie waggled her head. “Carson wants to marry me.”
“Will you?”
“No. I don’t know. Maybe. He’s a lot older, he’s been married three times, I was widowed less than a year ago. We’ve got a good relationship as it is.”
“All good reasons to put the brakes on.” Kellen played the wise adviser.
“But sometimes when he looks at me...” Birdie pressed her hand to her chest. “I can hardly breathe for the joy of being with him.”
“I know. I know what you mean. Max makes me feel as if...”
“As if you were in love?”
Together they laughed and hugged. They had faced battle, treachery, trucks that wouldn’t start and ammunitions that blew too soon, death and joy. Through it all, their friendship had endured and grown.
The closer Kellen got to the wedding, the more her heart tugged and tore at the thought of having a daughter, a family, a home. The knowledge that someone had tried to kill her weighed on her more and more, and not for noble reasons. Not because Max might be hurt, or Rae or Verona, but because Kellen wanted time with these people who had come to mean everything to her. She wanted to be where they were, love them with all the fervency of someone who had died and was now coming back to life. She wanted that for herself...and in every way, that seemed impossible.
“Don’t look so sad,” Birdie said.
“I’m not. I’m just—”
At a knock, they separated.
“Is it time?” Kellen asked.
Birdie looked at the clock. “Not quite.” She walked toward the door.
“It’s probably Max again,” Kellen said. “He was not happy about the can’t-see-the-bride rule.”
Before Birdie got there, the door slammed opened. Verona stormed in and waved a crumpled paper at Kellen. “Your child is pushing my buttons.”
Kellen didn’t grin, but she wanted to. “My child, huh?”
“I told her to stay in the room. I said I’d be back in ten minutes. I warned her not to do anything to mess up her dress.”
“You left a seven-year-old alone in a hotel room dressed and ready for a wedding?” Birdie put her hand over her heart as if to contain its beating.
Verona swung on her. “Yes! Yes! I’m a bad grandmother! But Rae saw Max sneaking down the corridor toward your room. She yelled at him and I chased him back to his room. The man has no respect for tradition.” She emphasized the word tradition. Kellen’s comment about superstition must have stung.
“Surely that didn’t take ten minutes,” Birdie said.
Exactly what Kellen had been thinking, and unease curled through her belly.
“You weren’t really gone ten whole minutes?” Birdie prepared to abandon her role as bridesmaid and take up her duties as bodyguard.
“Maybe a little longer. It’s his fault!” Verona continued to rant, “As soon as I turned my back, he was out again. I caught him and marched him right down to the kitchen where all the good old-fashioned Italian relatives were and told them to keep an eye on him!”
“So where’s Rae?” Kellen demanded.
“I don’t know!” Verona was clearly furious. “I got back to the room and she was nowhere to be found.”
53
Birdie pulled out her phone. “I’m calling Temo and Adrian. Giving them a heads-up we have a possible abduction.”
Kellen gestured slightly, wanting Birdie to be silent. Verona didn’t know about the ongoing threats to Kellen, and Rae could so easily be led astray...by someone familiar. Someone she trusted. And that someone, whoever he was (or maybe she), could use Rae as bait to catch and kill Kellen.
What would happen to Rae then?
She would be killed, too, eliminated as a witness.
“Abduction?” Verona looked between Birdie and Kellen in alarm and then dismissal. “Don’t be silly. Anyone who abducted Rae would bring her back fast enough.”
“Temo’s phone is going to voice mail.” Birdie dialed again. “So’s Adrian’s. This cannot be good!”
“Where’s Nils Brooks?” Kellen asked Verona.
“I don’t know. He was hanging around outside our room, looking pained. I gave him a glass of water and a couple of aspirin. Now he’s disappeared. Rae left a drawing on the desk.” Verona snapped the paper at Kellen.
Kellen took it.
Birdie tapped at her phone. “Brooks isn’t answering. They’ve all gone missing.”
“I think it’s supposed to tell us what she’s doing. There’s something about Mommy and the head. But her handwriting is disgraceful. The schools simply don’t emphasize penmanship anymore. I’ve worked with her, but she has no interest in learning how to... I love her. She’s my granddaughter. But she needs two parents and—”
Maybe Kellen made a noise. Maybe Verona saw something in her face. Her tone changed from irritation to horror. “What’s wrong?”
Kellen stared at the drawing, stared so hard her eyeballs hurt. Rae had drawn herself—LightningBug—going to find the Triple Goddess. Kellen knew it was the Triple Goddess because it was a floating head with yellow lightning bolts for eyes. A man walked behind her; the crude drawing gave no hint of his identity, but Rae had drawn a bulbous five-fingered hand on one side, and that hand held a black crook that was pointed at Rae.
A gun. Kellen was almost positive it was a pistol.
The crayon writing was sloppier than normal, as if she’d been in a hurry. Or scared. Brave little Rae...had she been scared?
“Rae didn’t leave on her own,” Kellen said. “Someone forced her to.”
“But she wrote the note!” Verona didn’t want to believe.
“That someone forced her to write the note.” Kellen looked again at the note part of the drawing. “She wrote to me. ‘Dear Mommy.’ ‘Hed.
’ ‘Back.’”
Verona grabbed Kellen’s arm. “What does that mean?”
“Something about the goddess head and—she has my back, and I have hers.” Kellen headed toward the closet and the safe. She used her usual code, 3252.
The safe didn’t open.
She took a breath, slowly punched in the number, 3,2,5,2.
The safe didn’t open.
“No!” She slammed the flat of her hand on the safe. “Why? Why now?”
“Let me.” Verona gave Kellen a gentle shove. “Do you know how many guests forget their own code? Of course everyone of responsibility at the winery has to know how to open a safe.” She typed in a special code.
The safe sang a little song, the door swung open—“There’s nothing here,” Verona said.
“No,” Kellen said hoarsely. “No!” She swept the lighted interior with her arm, as if she was a magician with an empty hat. “Max was supposed to put my bag in here. My bag packed with arms and ammunition. Why didn’t he? What happened?” Stricken, she looked at Verona. “Does Max know I changed rooms?”
Verona shook her head. “No, he doesn’t know. The groom needs to stay far away from your bedroom. What do you mean, arms? What do you mean, ammunition?”
“He must have put my backpack in the bridal suite. How could such a thing happen?” Kellen answered herself, “Well, easily enough, with everything that’s going on today. I should have carried my sidearm with me, but I was thinking of...corsets and ruffles and stiletto heels, and it never occurred to me—”
Verona got it at last. “There are guns in the suite with Aurora’s grandchildren?” Her voice squeaked in horror.
“The safe is locked,” Kellen assured her.
Verona dived for the phone and called the winery switchboard. She held out the phone as if begging Kellen to hear. “The line is busy. I have to leave a message!”
“Then leave the message in your sternest teacher voice,” Kellen said. “You know whoever hears it will immediately do as you say.”
“Right. They will.” Kellen’s trust in her abilities seemed to calm Verona, and Verona spoke into the phone, asking that someone be sent to the wedding suite to open the safe, secure the bag inside and bring it to room 345. She hung up and in despair said, “But today they’re so busy. Who knows when they’ll listen?”
What Doesn't Kill Her Page 29
