The Wrong Bride: A Christmas Mail Order Bride Romance (Brides and Twins Book 3)

by Natalie Dean

  “We need rest,” he finally said, which surprised her. “You need rest. I’ll drive us there. Take a nap. I’ll wake you up when we get to his house.”

  “But don’t you need me awake? Directions?”

  “I’ll use my phone.”

  She hesitated. “Are you sure?”

  He stroked her cheek. “Babe, you won’t be any use to Ellie exhausted. Get a nap. Don’t worry- I’ll get you up when I need you.”

  She wanted to say no, to nobly deny the nap and stay up to keep him awake. But then again, what he said was true… she needed sleep. She could already feel her brain starting to shut down. And they still had to track down Alex…and then find Jacob…and then rescue Ellie…and here she was, so tired she could hardly keep her eyes open.

  She snuggled up in the seat. It felt like heaven.

  “Sleep well,” David said.

  She was out in a minute flat.

  Chapter 7

  Adrianna’s dreams were understandably awful.

  She’d never been capable of sleeping in cars. Even back when she was a kid riding to soccer games on the bus, she’d never been able to fall asleep. She did, once. When she’d woken up, the other girls had drawn a mustache on her. That was the last time she’d slept on any sort of public transportation.

  However, she broke that trend in the car that day. As if the motion and sounds weren’t enough, she was incredibly stressed. Her dreams weren’t anything in particular. She couldn’t quite make out anything. The only thing defined about the dream was the feeling of being chased, of fear. She was running away from or towards someone. After a little while, her brain decided that it was the huge man from the mall- Jacob Jackson. To her dream mind, he wasn’t really a man.

  He lumbered and slobbered like a great wolf. He didn’t breathe. He panted- loud, slobbery pants as though he was a fearsome bear instead of a human man. Sometimes he was in front of her, and she was on his tail, and other times he was snapping at her heels as she ran, terrified.

  Finally, David woke her up by shaking her shoulder. “Hey, we’re here.”

  She blinked exhaustion out of her eyes. It was still dark outside, but her tired brain didn’t even think to look at the clock. “How long was I asleep?”

  “A few hours.”

  A few hours? He’d been driving for a few hours? She glanced at the clock. Yes.

  His eyes were tired, and his mannerisms were just a tad slow. He was exhausted. She was amazed he hadn’t fallen asleep, especially with her snoozing right next to him.

  Alexander Washington’s house was about as she had expected. It was broken down and bent over like a stooped old man leaning on a cane. All manner of random stuff littered his front yard, from tire rims to an inflatable pool. And there, in his driveway, was his truck. Nothing was hiding it. He hadn’t even backed in to keep the license plate out of sight. It was out for everyone to see.

  “Oh, he’s a smart one,” Adrianna said dryly. “Seriously, we’d better be careful, or he might outwit us.”

  Together, the two of them got their guns, pulled the car up beside his truck, and went up towards his house. Adrianna could practically hear her own heart pounding. She had no idea what she was walking into. He might have heard them pull up and was waiting on the inside, gun trained on the shoddy door. Or he could be sleeping. Or he could inside and not aware of them. Then again, nobody could be home.

  She situated the gun in her hand the way the FBI had trained her and fired up her phone flashlight. It was still dark outside. Inside, it would be nearly impossible to see without a light. She nodded once to David, who reared back a foot and kicked the door right around the handle. The door busted open with a loud crack.

  With one smooth motion, Adrianna stepped into the doorway. She kept her gun in front of her, waiting to see movement. If she saw someone with a gun or really anything that flashed, she was going to put a hole in them.

  Luckily, nobody was waiting inside, so Adrianna didn’t have to get violent. There was, however, a curse from another part of the house and a loud crash. Someone was running.

  She charged into the house. “Stop! FBI!”

  Technically, that was true. Adrianna was still an agent, even if Stone had commanded her to stay away from this particular case. Yeah, well… the detectives assigned to the case hadn’t even figured out Alex Washington’s identity yet.

  Adrianna hated to sweep houses. She’d had to do it a couple times, and each time she dreaded it just a little bit more. It was about eight hundred times worse doing it in the dark. She kept seeing what she thought were flashes of movement, so she’d whip her phone light towards it only to discover it was a curtain or just her imagination.

  “Look out!” she heard David yell.

  Automatically, she dropped flat on her stomach, behind a couch. If the FBI had taught her anything, it was that getting shot sucked. As it turned out, her move was just on time. She heard a loud bang. It took her a second to realize that someone had shot at her. If she’d stayed up, she’d have a hole in her chest.

  She fired back once. The thought occurred to her right then that she might be shooting at an innocent. Even though they knew Washington owned the house, someone might be there that wasn’t involved with the situation at hand. The last thing she wanted to do was get into a fight with some poor, uninvolved chap that thought they were getting attacked by a home intruder instead of an FBI agent with good intentions.

  She whipped up her phone’s light. The man shouted something and fired off a pot shot, which actually clipped her phone and sent it spiraling out of her hand. Adrianna wasn’t quite sure what happened, but one second she was shining a light in his general direction, and then next second her phone was gone, and the man was shooting at her.

  He was yelling insults at her, calling her “pig” and “copper” and a whole wealth of incredibly offensive insults. She was amazed at the number of derogatory words he’d apparently had stored up.

  She caught just the briefest sign of movement as who she could only assume to be David sprinted across the room in the pitch blackness and tackled the shooter. The gun went off once into the ceiling.

  When Adrianna found her phone and illuminated the spot where the shooter had been, she discovered David standing over an unconscious Alexander Washington.

  “What did you do?” She hurried over to the motionless man. “Did you kill him?” She couldn’t see any wounds, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

  He prodded Washington’s unconscious body. “Nope, still breathing. I just hit him. They don’t call me Ole’ Left Hook for nothing.”

  “Nobody calls you that.”

  “Well, they should.”

  It took forever for the guy to wake up. He was out cold from David’s punch. Although nobody called David Ole’ Left Hook, he was a fearsome fighter, and he had knocked out quite a few professionals. Some regular dude didn’t stand much of a chance.

  Adrianna found some rope while trying to discover some clues before the police arrived to investigate the shots, so they tied the guy up and went for a drive. When the police arrived, they wouldn’t find a thing.

  Luckily, David had always been fond of tinted windows, so when the guy woke up a couple hours later, nobody could see him tied up. Adrianna had driven them out in the middle of nowhere and parked the car while David grabbed some sleep.

  Washington’s eyes blinked open slowly, then he abruptly realized he was not in his house anymore and that he was bound. Upon that realization, he started yelling as loud as he could. David jolted awake, but Adrianna didn’t do anything. They were in the middle of nowhere, way outside the city. She had only seen one or two cars on the road the entire time they’d been driving.

  “You done?” she asked him when he finally stopped screaming. “Nobody can hear you.”

  “Let me go!” he snarled, trying to rip free of the bonds. He’d have to have super strength to bust through the ropes. “I don’t know who you freaks are, but-“

&n
bsp; “Ellie,” she said. At her name, his eyes widened, and he faltered for just half a second.

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  She searched out with her sixth sense. Now that he was awake, she could read him. He stunk. “Suuuure you don’t.”

  He leaned back with a snarl. “You don’t have anything on me.”

  “Don’t need to. You shot at an FBI agent.”

  His snarl turned into a smile. Smug jerk. “You’re a pretty little thing,” he told her. “I’m sure you’re popular around the station.” He spit in David’s car. “And oh, I’m so scared. And who the hell are you? Her boyfriend?”

  “This is David. David is Ellie’s father. David would do anything to find his baby girl.”

  “You can’t do anything to me. I’ve got rights. I’ve got protections. You touch me, and you go straight to jail.”

  Adrianna forced a cheery smile on her lips. “He sure would go to jail eventually, but I might not stop him for a while.”

  His lip twitched. He stared both of them down, trying to decide if they were telling the truth. Adrianna was being honest with him. She couldn’t let David kill him, but the guy was the only one that knew anything about where Ellie was.

  “Fine,” he said at last.

  “Where’s my girl?” David asked. The vein in the side of his head was throbbing. He was absolutely furious to see his daughter’s kidnapper in the flesh. She could tell it was taking everything in his power to not strangle the guy right then in the car.

  “I don't know.”

  “I’d start remembering if I were you,” Adrianna warned. Truth be told, if David went off the deep end, Adrianna wasn’t sure what she’d do. She couldn’t really stop him. He was bigger and stronger than her and way more motivated. His motivation would be revenge. Hers would be an oath she took to become an agent. A little different.

  “Jacob’s got her,” he said. “Took her off into the country somewhere.”

  “Was she hurt?”

  “When I saw her last she was okay.”

  “Where in the country?”

  He sat back, trying to look unintimidated. “A little cabin out in the middle of the woods, somewhere out east of Calidad.”

  “Where exactly?”

  “You expect me to know? I’ve never been there.”

  Adrianna groaned. Of course. Of course Ellie and her kidnapper were way out in the middle of nowhere. She believed the guy. Just for a second, she could sense the light in his soul flicker. She’d learned that meant people weren’t lying. It wasn’t foolproof, but when it flickered like that, it usually meant that someone was telling the truth.

  “What did he want your help for?”

  “He needed a getaway driver,” he said. “I don’t know anything about whatever he’s doing. Said he had to kidnap some kid named Ellie. I swear that’s all I know.”

  David looked at Adrianna. He knew that she could read the guy. “Is he telling the truth?”

  She sighed. She had really been hoping he’d know more. “Yes.” She had an idea. “Call Jacob.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “He ain’t got service out there.”

  Okay, well that narrowed it down slightly. Jacob wasn’t anywhere near the city if he didn’t get service. “He got TV?”

  Adrianna could tell neither man had any idea what she was thinking, but slowly, the guy nodded. “Yeah… he watches some games up there every now and then.”

  “How long ago did he get it?”

  He felt looser talking about the cabin. To him (and probably to David, who was looking at Adrianna like he was trying to piece together what she was thinking) the cabin was useless information. “He got it when he got out of prison. A year? Two years ago? What does that have to do with anything?”

  She nodded thoughtfully. She had an idea that could give them a good head start on him. She still couldn’t track him. She needed to get closer to him to have a better idea of where he was. And the best way to do that was to get an idea of what sort of services was out there. She’d lived east of the city in the rural area for a long while, and there was only one service provider out there: Muzzy Communications.

  “I need to talk to you outside the car,” Adrianna said to David.

  He frowned and slowly clambered out of the car. As soon as they were out of earshot from Washington, she held out her phone. “Here. I need your phone.”

  He fished it out and gave it over. “Why? And why were you asking so many questions about the dude’s TV?”

  She unlocked David’s phone and searched for Muzzy Communications.

  “Going to sign up for some cable?” David asked dryly. He hadn’t quite caught on yet.

  She gave him the evil eye and called the company. After a few rings, a woman answered.

  “Muzzy Communications. This is Eve. How may I help you?”

  Adrianna pulled the phone away so the person on the line couldn’t hear. “Listen and learn.”

  Chapter 8

  “Muzzy Communications,” repeated the lady. “This is Eve. How may I help you?”

  “Hi,” Adrianna said into the phone. “I think my boyfriend signed up with you a year or two ago, and now the darn fool’s moving to a different state. He asked me to go ahead and cancel his subscription.”

  “Okay…” she could hear typing from the other side. “What’s his name?”

  “Jacob Jackson.”

  By this time, David had figured it out. He was looking at her, amazed. She felt proud despite herself that she had figured out a way to get in.

  “O-kay…what’s the address?”

  “Oh,” she said, faking surprise. “I don’t remember. Some cabin outside the city? We hang out there all the time. I don’t know the address.”

  There was a pause. “Ma’am, I can’t cancel a subscription based on a name. Do you have a password? The number on the card?”

  This wasn’t good. Adrianna had no idea what Jacob’s password or card numbers were, and the odds of guessing them were next to nothing. There was only one thing she could resort to- embarrassment. If she could embarrass the girl into telling her the address, they were golden.

  So Adrianna started her ruse. “Can you tell me the address? I’m really embarrassed I can’t remember it.”

  “I shouldn’t really tell any information to you. If you can’t produce any information about Jacob’s account, I can’t-“

  She had to pull out the big guns. She turned towards David and yelled, “Shut up, Jacob!”

  “Is Mr. Jackson there with you?”

  “He’s making fun of me for not remembering his address.” She put extra emotion into her voice. Soon enough, the girl would start feeling bad for Adrianna when she staged a meltdown on the phone. Too much, and the girl would just hang up. Too little, and the girl wouldn’t buy it. She started sniffing dramatically.

  “Are…are you crying?”

  “Shut up Jacob!” she got back on the phone. “Wait, please…can you just tell me the address? I don’t need to cancel the subscription. He can do that himself.”

  She heard a loud groan from the other side. Right about then the uncomfortableness would be settling in. “Can you please hand the phone to Mr. Jackson? If he gives you permission, I can divulge information to you.”

  She handed the phone over to David, who had been able to hear the whole conversation. He froze up. “Oh, um… hey. This is Jacob. I give you permission to divulge information or whatever.”

  “I’ll need some proof of your identity. What’s your date of birth, Mr. Jackson?”

  Adrianna mentally punched herself in the face. There was no way that David knew that. But to her surprise, he immediately listed one. The lady on the line seemed just as shocked. “That…that’s correct sir. So I may divulge information to your lady friend?”

  “Sure.” He was grinning broadly at her as she took the phone from him, rather stunned. How did you know that? She mouthed to him as she br
ought the phone up to her ear. “Hello?”

  “Okay, your boyfriend’s address is 124 Nueces Street. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  “124 Nueces?”

  “Yes ma’am. Do you still want to cancel?”

  “Um….no thanks.”

  With that, she hung up.

  “How did you know that date?” she asked.

  “I saw his birthday back at the agency and memorized it. I’ve always been good with numbers.”

  “Well, I’m impressed.”

  She wrote down the address before she forgot. Honestly, she was utterly exhausted. She could see the first bit of the light of morning coming over the mountains, trickling through the pine trees. It was morning. It had already been late when they had discovered Ellie’s absence, and then they’d gone to the agency to find the owner of the car, and then they’d tracked Alexander Washington down, and then they’d had to wait until he woke up to question him.

  They’d been on their feet for hours, and they’d spent most of that time running around. They hadn’t just sat around doing nothing. Adrianna felt like she might just take one step and fall flat on her face. Most of her body was numb, and she was already starting to have trouble remembering the address. That’s why she had written it down immediately. It took her a second to even remember where she’d written it down.

  “You look like you’re about to pass out,” David told her. “You need to rest.”

  “You don’t look any better…”

  He looked himself up and down. “Okay, that’s true. I really can’t argue with that.” He looked back towards the car. “Problem is…we have a guy tied up in our car. We can’t really stop by a motel.”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s false imprisonment, that’s why. You’re the FBI agent. You should know that.”

  “Oh. Yeah. I knew that.” It took her a second to remember, but eventually her brain fought through being exhausted enough to remember that little fact. “Well, we can drop him off at the nearest station.”