can’t do this...”
Not the wedding. Not even the damn rehearsal. She crossed the room and jerked open the door to the vestibule and nearly ran into Cooper Payne’s mother. Petite and slender with coppery-red hair and warm brown eyes, Mrs. Payne was exactly the opposite of her tall, dark, muscular sons. Only the youngest—her daughter—looked like her.
“What’s the matter, honey?” the older woman asked as she gripped Tanya’s trembling arms. “Are you all right?”
Tanya shook her head. “No, nothing’s right...”
“I know the rest of the wedding party hasn’t shown up yet, but there’s no rush,” Mrs. Payne assured her, her voice as full of warmth and comfort as her eyes. “Reverend James and I—”
She didn’t care about the rest of the wedding party. “Stephen—is Stephen here?”
Mrs. Payne nodded. “I showed him to the groom’s quarters a while ago, so that he could stow his tux there for tomorrow, like you’ve stowed your dress. Then you’ll have less to worry about for the ceremony.”
There was not going to be a ceremony. But Tanya couldn’t tell anyone that until she’d told Stephen. He’d concocted this crazy scheme in the first place because he was her friend, because he’d always been there for her. But she couldn’t take advantage of that friendship, of him.
“Where are the groom’s quarters?” she asked.
“You need to wait until the others show,” Mrs. Payne said. “So that the rehearsal can proceed just as the ceremony will tomorrow.”
“No, I—I need to talk to Stephen,” she insisted. “Now.” Before the farce went any further.
Mrs. Payne’s brown eyes widened. But after having worked with so many happy couples over the years, she must have realized something was off with them—that Tanya was hardly an ecstatic bride. “The groom’s quarters are behind the altar.”
Tanya crossed the vestibule and opened the heavy oak doors to the church. Since night had already fallen, the stained-glass windows were dark. The only light came from the sconces on the walls, casting shadows from the pews into the aisle. So she didn’t notice that the red velvet runner was tangled. She tripped over it, catching herself before she dropped to her knees. That was weird—usually Mrs. Payne never missed a thing. No detail escaped her attention.
The wedding planner had worked so hard that guilt tugged at Tanya. She hated to disappoint the woman. But she couldn’t go through with a lie.
Stephen would understand that. It wasn’t as if he thought of her as anything other than a friend either, so he wouldn’t be hurt.
The door to the room behind the altar stood ajar. She pushed it open to darkness. “Stephen?”
Had he changed his mind, too? She didn’t blame him, but she doubted that he would have just left without talking to her first. She fumbled along the wall, feeling for the switch, when her fingers smeared across something wet. That wasn’t something Mrs. Payne would have missed either. The chapel was spotless.
Tanya flipped on the switch, bathing the room in light—and discovered it had already been bathed in blood. It was spattered across the floor, the couch and the wall. Panic and fear rose up at the horror, choking her, so that she could barely utter the scream burning her throat.
* * *
COOPER HEARD IT. Even though the scream wasn’t loud, the sheer terror of it pierced his heart. He ran past his mother, who was already halfway down the aisle of the church—and toward the danger. Years had passed since he’d heard it, but he had instinctively recognized Tanya’s voice.
“Stay here,” he ordered his mother as he reached beneath his leather jacket and pulled his weapon from the arm holster.
She pointed behind the altar, to the room from which light spilled. And Tanya. She backed out of the doorway, her hand pressed across her mouth as if to hold in another scream. As he rushed up behind her, she collided with Cooper. Then she pulled her hand away and screamed again.
He spun her around to face him. “It’s okay,” he assured her. “It’s me.”
Her green eyes, damp with tears, widened, and then she clutched at him, pressing against his chest. “Cooper! Thank God it’s you!”
Her slight body trembled in his arms that automatically closed around her, pulling her even closer. She fit perfectly against him. But he was just comforting her, just making sure she was all right.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head, and her silky blond hair brushed against his throat. “No, no...”
He peered over her head into the room, and then he saw it. All the blood...
So much blood.
Despite his order to stay put, his mother joined them. “What’s wrong—” she started to ask but gasped when she saw it, too.
“Call 911,” Cooper said, thrusting his phone at her.
Then he stepped inside the room to look for the body. With that much blood, there had to be a body...
A dead one.
“There is no body...”
Cooper’s words drifted to Tanya through a thick haze of shock. He wasn’t speaking to her, though; he hadn’t since he’d asked if she was hurt. Of course he had been busy—searching the church and the surrounding grounds as well as talking to his family and the police officers who had arrived to investigate the scene of the crime.
The police had spoken to her. A somber-faced male officer had asked countless questions and not one of them had been if she was okay. Mrs. Payne had shooed off the man a while ago when she’d brought Tanya the cup of tea that was cooling in her hands. What the older woman had told the officer was right—Tanya had no idea what had happened. She’d only turned on the light to find the blood. All that blood...
The smear she’d found on the wall stained her hands. That was why she hadn’t lifted the cup. It was why the heat of the tea would never warm her. She had blood on her hands...
“So we don’t know,” Cooper continued, his dark head bent close to his brother’s, “if we’re looking at a homicide or abduction.”
Was it Logan or Parker to whom he spoke? They were identical twins. Whichever one it was asked, “Why would it be either?”
Cooper shrugged shoulders so broad that they tested the seams of his black leather jacket. Despite the blood and the fear, during that moment she’d clung to him, she’d felt safe—with his arms around her. Just as he hadn’t talked to her, he hadn’t touched her since then either. Maybe that was why she felt so cold that she trembled.
“This is Stephen we’re talking about,” Cooper’s brother persisted. “He was everyone’s friend in high school. Did he change that much?”
