BRIDAL JEOPARDY

by Rebecca York

  He tried to remember what he knew about wedding ceremonies, which wasn’t much. Probably they wanted a big bouquet of flowers on either side of the open space in front of the bushes, because presumably that was where the ceremony was being held.

  Someone came hurrying out of the house. He turned, hoping against hope to see Stephanie.

  Instead it was a dark-haired woman that he recognized immediately. She was Stephanie’s assistant, the one he’d met at the dress shop a lifetime ago.

  He forced himself to stand in a relaxed posture with his hands at his sides as she gave him a long look. As he faced her, he furiously sent her the message. You do not know me. You never saw me before in your life.

  She tipped her head to the side. “Do I know you?”

  He kept projecting the silent message as he lowered his voice an octave. “No. Are you the bride?”

  She laughed. “No, I’m Mr. Reynard’s assistant.”

  Mr. Reynard’s assistant. Last time he’d seen her, she’d been Stephanie’s assistant. It seemed she’d come up in the world, or maybe she’d been working for Reynard all along.

  “Let me give you the bride’s bouquet,” he said, leading her back to where he’d left the van. “And then you can show me where you want the flowers placed.”

  “You do have the centerpieces, right?”

  “Of course,” he answered quickly. Yeah, there would be flowers on the tables.

  He led her to where he’d parked the van, then opened the back door and got out the box with the flowers the bride was to carry, feeling a pang as he handed them to her. A wedding bouquet for the woman he loved, only it wasn’t their wedding.

  She gave the flowers a brief inspection. “Very nice.”

  “Thank you,” he answered, thinking, from her expression and the tone of her voice, that she wished they were hers. Too bad Reynard couldn’t have picked a bride who wanted to marry him, but probably he was too obsessed with the prestige of marrying into an old New Orleans family, and with thinking Stephanie had heard him discussing murder.

  As soon as she took the flowers away, he dragged in a breath and let it out. This might be the best time to contact Stephanie. She’d be alone. At least, he didn’t think Reynard would be with her.

  He sent his mind out to her. Stephanie.

  He felt her jolt of recognition when she heard him.

  Craig?

  Yes.

  Thank God. Oh, thank God.

  I just saw Claire. She came down to get the flowers.

  Yes, she was apparently working for John all along.

  I think she’s on her way back to you—with your bouquet. But I have to tell you some stuff while we have a chance. I’m the guy delivering the flowers.

  Apparently his previous words had registered.

  Did you say she saw you?

  Yes, but she didn’t recognize me. I have on a few shirts to bulk me up. And I’m the bald guy with the splotchy tan and the dark eyebrows.

  She caught her breath.

  Yeah, I look like hell, but so far the disguise is working.

  What are we going to do?

  You’ve been manipulating his mind, right?

  Yes. Like when I got him drunk last night so he couldn’t... Her silent voice trailed off.

  We’re going to do it again. And I’ve got something else planned.

  When he told her what he’d brought with him, she sucked in a sharp breath. Claire’s back.

  I’ll see you in a little while.

  Light classical music had begun to play as he carried the large vases of flowers to the spot where the bride and groom would stand and fluffed up the arrangements, then began taking the smaller arrangements to the tables, setting one in the center of each. The effect was quite nice. Too bad it was going to be screwed up when the guests stampeded.

  And here they were. As he worked, he saw well-dressed men and women arriving and gathering in an area at the side of the pool where a bar had been set up. One of them was Stephanie’s father, who was holding a glass of clear liquid.

  Water? He remembered that the old guy drank too much. Maybe he was trying to be on his best behavior today.

  Craig saw Reynard at the edge of the crowd and sent him a message. Go get yourself a nice big drink.

  He was elated when the man approached the bar and got a glass of whiskey. But instead of drinking, he looked at it for a long moment and left it on the bar.

  Craig felt his stomach muscles tighten. Apparently Reynard didn’t want to repeat last night’s nonperformance.

  He was focused on Reynard and his guests when he felt a tingling at the back of his neck.

  Turning, he saw one of Reynard’s guards stoop to pick up the knapsack he’d left at the edge of the patio. When the man started to open it, Craig strode over.

  “That’s mine,” he said aloud. Silently he added, There’s nothing you have to worry about in there.

  “What’s in it?”

  “I’m from the florist. That’s extra stuff I might need.”

  Nothing to worry about.

  “I’ll just take a look.”

  Too bad the mental push wasn’t working on this guy.

  “We should step around the corner so we don’t disturb the guests,” Craig said.

  The man looked toward the crowd at the bar where Reynard was chatting to a group of men and women. “Yeah.”

  They rounded the corner of the house.

  When the guy bent to look inside the knapsack, Craig chopped him on the back of the neck, and he went down. But now what?

  He pulled the guy into the bushes and opened the knapsack, where he’d stowed some duct tape. He used it to tape the guy’s mouth and secure his hands and feet. Then he hit him on the back of the head with the butt of the SIG, hoping that would keep him quiet.

  His heart was thumping inside his chest as he rushed back to the pool area.

  Men in uniform moved through the crowd, apparently telling the guests to take their seats because they began to find chairs.

  When everyone was seated, a rotund gray-haired man clad in black walked to the front area and stood between the tall vases Craig had placed there.

  Then the music switched to the traditional wedding march.

  As all eyes turned to the patio door, Craig’s breath caught. Stephanie was standing just inside the entrance in a long white dress, gripping her father’s arm. She looked achingly beautiful, and also pale and breathless. Her father looked like a cat that had finished a saucer of cream.

  From the corner of his eye, Craig saw Reynard take his place at the front of the assembly and look back toward his bride, his expression a mixture of relief and satisfaction.

  Stephanie and her father were about halfway down the aisle when one of Reynard’s guards came running toward his boss. He shouted, “Intruder alert. Intruder alert.”

  Reynard looked up as the man scanned the crowd, then pointed to Craig. Oh, Lord, maybe they’d caught the incident with the other guy and the knapsack on a security camera.

  It wasn’t time for the diversion he’d planned, but he had no choice now.

  Reaching into his knapsack, he pulled out some of the fireworks he’d bought in town, touched a lighter to the fuse of one and tossed it beside the pool. He did the same with several more.

  They began shooting off sparks and smoke, sending panicked screams through the crowd as they mowed down chairs in their haste to get to safety.

  Craig could hear chairs crashing to the ground. One of the fleeing guests bumped into a table and tipped it over. And at least one splashed into the pool.

  As he’d planned, people were creating chaos as they tried to get away before they got burned.

  Over here. I’m over here, Craig shouted in his mind. T
here was as much smoke as sparks now, and it was hard to see, but he also knew that he could bring Stephanie toward him by using their mind-to-mind contact.

  He drew his gun, hoping he didn’t have to start shooting, because innocent bystanders would get hurt.

  To his relief, Stephanie came stumbling out of the smoke, and she was also holding a pistol.

  Where did you get that?

  I asked one of the guards, and he gave it to me—to protect myself.

  Stupid of him, given the circumstances. But then, Reynard still thinks I’m dead.

  As he spoke, he was leading her around the pool toward the side of the house where he’d left the van.

  He ached to pull her into his arms, but there was no time for that.

  This way.

  He directed her toward the waiting delivery van, praying that they could get out before Reynard realized where they’d gone.

  Stephanie jumped into the passenger seat, and he saw her clawing at the white dress. She tore a rip down the front and wiggled out, throwing the dress into the back of the van. Underneath she was wearing a pair of shorts and a halter top.

  He had started the engine and was headed for the gate when a group of men came running out of the woods, shooting at the van.

  Lord, who were they? Not Reynard’s security men.

  Stephanie gasped.

  I see one of the men who kidnapped us, Stephanie shouted in his mind. They’re here, and there are more guys with them.

  He tried to cope with that, tried to reason how they had gotten here. They must still be after Stephanie, and they must have seen him lead her toward the van.

  The invasion force ran toward the van shooting, and behind the vehicle, Reynard’s men were also charging forward and also shooting, and Reynard was with them, firing along with the rest.

  “Duck down,” Craig shouted as he plowed forward, turning left and driving in a zigzag pattern, hoping he could keep himself and Stephanie alive long enough to escape.

  Intruder alert. Intruder alert, Stephanie shouted beside him. Shoot at the invaders. Shoot at the invaders, not the van.

  He took up the chant, adding his voice to hers. Some of Reynard’s men got the message and began firing at the men who had poured onto the property. The newcomers returned fire. But others kept aiming at the van.

  And then another voice, louder and stronger, added force to the order.

  Shoot at each other, not the van.

  Who’s that? Stephanie asked.

  No idea. Could it be the woman who put us in communication?

  Maybe.

  For a heart-stopping moment, nothing seemed to change. Then Reynard’s men began blasting in earnest at the others, and the invaders blasted back.

  Craig looked behind them and saw Reynard still coming, determined not to let his bride escape.

  He knew Stephanie caught the thought because she gasped as she followed his line of sight.

  Craig kept aiming for the gate. And for long moments he thought they would get away. Then, to his horror, the van began to sputter, and he knew the engine had been hit. Finally it coughed and stopped.

  Chapter Twenty

  “We have to make a run for it, but wait until I throw more fireworks,” Craig shouted, opening the driver’s door and ducking behind it as he set off two more cones and lobbed them behind him.

  Reynard leaped out of the smoke, murder in his eyes as he raised his gun at Craig.

  Before he could fire, Craig heard the crack of a pistol.

  Reynard’s eyes took on a look of shock as he went down. When Craig turned his head, he saw Stephanie had shot the man.

  She gasped as she stared at her former fiancé.

  “I had to do it.”

  “Thanks for saving my life.”

  They both crouched low, running forward as the gun battle raged behind them, but there was still a guard at the gate.

  “Halt or I’ll shoot.”

  “I’m trying to get Miss Stephanie out of the line of fire,” Craig shouted back.

  “The hell you are.” He gestured toward the uproar in back of them. “I think you caused whatever’s going on back there.”

  “No,” Craig denied, but the man advanced on them, gun drawn.

  “Drop your weapons.”

  With no choice, Craig and Stephanie dropped their guns. They had gotten this far, but they were still inside the compound.

  The man held the pistol on them, using his walkie-talkie to call the other stations.

  “What’s going on back there?” he asked.

  Static crackled on the line.

  “Intruder came in to kidnap the bride. Fox is down. Repeat, Fox is down.”

  Fox must be the code name for Reynard, Craig thought.

  Be ready to drop, he said to Stephanie. He knew she had picked up on what he was doing and was getting ready to send him power, but she stayed on her feet.

  Craig had dropped his gun, but he still had the lighter in his hand. While the guard was distracted by the walkie-talkie message, Craig flicked the lighter on, using his mind to shoot out a tongue of flame toward the guard. When the man screamed and jumped back, Craig ducked low and rushed him, plowing his head into the guy’s middle and bringing him down.

  As they grappled for the weapon, Stephanie rushed in and kicked the guy in the head, stunning him.

  Craig grabbed the gun and slammed it into the guard’s face. As he and Stephanie started for the gate, he saw two figures had emerged from the wood, a man and a woman, advancing slowly.

  Hurry, the woman shouted inside his head.

  He and Stephanie picked up speed, but he heard running feet behind them. Guards who had escaped the gun battle were closing in.

  As they pelted toward freedom, a bullet whizzed past his head, apparently shot from too far away for accuracy.

  The woman raised her hand, lightning crackling at her fingertips. She sent it flying toward the cameras at the guard post. They sizzled and exploded, hopefully wiping out a visual of what had happened at the gate.

  Power, give me power, the woman shouted inside his head.

  Craig wasn’t sure what he was doing, but both he and Stephanie tried their best to send her additional energy, just as they had done with each other.

  When he heard roaring, crackling noises, he turned his head and saw a wall of flame erupt, creating a barrier between them and the advancing guards.

  Shouts of fear and curses of anger reached him, but none of the bullets were getting through.

  You can’t keep that up forever. Let’s get the hell out of here. This time it was the man speaking.

  As the fire burned behind them, the man grabbed the woman’s arm and pulled her away. Craig and Stephanie followed.

  The four of them raced into the woods, then into a clearing where a four-wheel-drive SUV sat. The man and woman climbed in front, with the man behind the wheel. Craig and Stephanie climbed in the back.

  Before they’d clicked their seat belts, he took off, jouncing along a dirt road. The ride smoothed out as they came out onto a two-lane highway.

  In the backseat, Craig pulled Stephanie close and slung his arm around her shoulder, still trying to process everything that had happened.

  “You’re like us,” he breathed, speaking to the people in the front seat.

  “Yeah,” the man answered.

  “Thanks for showing up.”

  “We couldn’t leave you in danger,” the woman said as she turned around. “We haven’t officially met. I’m Rachel Harper, and this is my husband, Jake.”

  “Again, thanks,” Stephanie said.

  “Who was after you?” Rachel asked. “I mean besides John Reynard’s men.”

  “I don’t know, exactly,”
Craig said. “But I think it had something to do with the Solomon Clinic, since they apparently knew to show up in Houma.”

  Jake Harper cursed and glanced at his wife. “I thought we were done with that.”

  “Why?” Stephanie asked.

  “Dr. Solomon is dead. And so is Bill Wellington, who funded the project through a Washington think tank. That should have laid the past to rest. But it appears that someone is still hunting us.”

  “It looks like it,” she murmured.

  “Why are they doing it? What do they want?” Stephanie asked.

  “The Howell Institute fronted the money for a lot of pie-in-the-sky projects for the Defense Department and other agencies. Solomon convinced them he could create superintelligent children by manipulating fertilized eggs.”

  “So his clinic was a source of the eggs.”

  “Exactly. And when the kids turned out to have normal intelligence, Wellington shut the project down.”

  “Why isn’t that the end of it?”

  “Because of what we are,” Jake answered. “We’ve got powers they don’t understand. Which makes us a threat, or maybe an asset that someone can exploit.”

  Stephanie shuddered.

  “One good thing about the situation—whoever was stalking you sent an invasion force to the wedding.”

  “Why is that good?” Craig asked.

  “Because they took out a lot of the guards, and the guests saw the battle. They know the invaders are responsible for anything bad that happened.”

  “Like Reynard’s death,” Stephanie murmured.

  “Exactly,” Craig said.

  “But that’s the only upside. Until we figure out who is after us this time, I think it’s best if you stay at the Lafayette plantation.”

  “You have a plantation?” Stephanie asked.

  “It actually belongs to Gabriella Bordeaux. She and Luke Buckley are also products of the clinic. They were on the run, too. And hooked up with us.”

  As they drove west, Stephanie slumped against Craig.