Twelve
Prologue
The bomb was set, so he carefully closed the door. When it opened again, the timer would activate—giving the victim mere minutes before the explosion. He exited the back door and breathed a sigh of relief that he was out of danger.
No. He wasn’t out of danger yet—not until the bomb claimed its intended victim. He didn’t enjoy killing, but he’d done it—more than once—out of necessity. He’d had to do it to protect himself.
That was all he was doing now—making sure that no one was left alive to link him to his crimes. Then, after all these years, he might finally have peace.
Chapter One
The sun shone brightly, setting the white bricks of the church aglow. It was a great day for a wedding. But Logan Payne couldn’t forget that a funeral was also taking place today. He’d thought it might finally bring him some peace that his father’s killer was dead. But it seemed more like an injustice that the man had lived for only fifteen years of his already too short sentence.
Maybe it was that sense of injustice that had made Logan uneasy. Or maybe it was the recent attempts on his life.
But he pushed aside that uneasiness and focused instead on the bride and groom. He lifted his hand, with birdseed stuck to his palm, and waved off his younger brother and his new bride. Nobody deserved happiness more than the two of them—especially after the hell they had endured to be together.
His sister, Nikki, glanced up at him through the tears glistening in her warm brown eyes. “Getting emotional, big bro?” she teased. Their family relentlessly teased each other.
The tears were all hers, but he played along. “Birdseed got in my eye,” he said with an exaggerated blink. But then he squinted at a random glare and glanced toward the street where his brother’s decorated SUV sat on the curb. Nikki had written Just Married across the back window and tied strings of pop cans to the rear bumper. A car slowly passed it, and as it did, a barrel protruded out of the dark tinted driver’s window.
The SUV shielded the bride and groom, but Logan and his sister and his twin were exposed on the steps of the church. As the shots rang out, he knocked Nikki down and lunged at Parker, knocking him over the railing.
The shots weren’t meant for any of his siblings. He knew that. But he had been standing too close to Nikki. And his twin was identical—same black hair, same blue eyes, same features. Today they were even both wearing black tuxedos. Logan covered Nikki’s petite frame, shielding her with his body. And he tensed, waiting for the bullets to find their target in his flesh.
Tires squealed as the car rounded the corner and drove off. After a glance over his shoulder to make certain the shooter was gone, Logan helped his sister to her feet. She trembled with fear in his arms, but she was unhurt. Miraculously, Logan hadn’t been hit, either.
The bride, Tanya, turned away from the SUV and ran back to the church. The groom, Cooper, was right beside her, yelling the name of his missing brother. “Parker!”
A hand rose above the shrubs on the side of the church’s wide front steps. Cooper clasped it and pulled Parker from the branches and foliage.
“You okay?” Cooper asked him.
“Yeah, yeah,” Parker replied as he brushed off his tux. “Logan knocked me over and pushed down Nikki.” He waited—probably for Logan to make some smart-aleck comeback. That was the way the Paynes handled stuff—emotional stuff, dangerous stuff...with gallows humor.
But Logan couldn’t find any humor in this situation. The grudge he’d been carrying, and how he’d acted on that grudge, was what had nearly killed his family. And these weren’t the first attempts made on his life and Parker’s, who must have been mistaken for him then, too.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
His new sister-in-law’s voice trembled with concern as she said, “I thought it was over. Mr. Gregory is dead.”
Logan had been the one who’d taken the shot that had ended the life of her grandfather’s lawyer. The man had been trying to kill her so that no one would discover that he’d embezzled her inheritance.
“This isn’t about you,” Logan assured the beautiful blonde bride. Guilt twisted his guts into knots. He hated that this shooting—that his problem—had marred what had finally been the perfect wedding for Tanya and Cooper. “This is about me. And revenge...”
Cooper’s eyes, which were the same blue as his and Parker’s, narrowed with suspicion, and he accused him, “You know who it is.”
Anger, more intense and overwhelming than his guilt, surged through Logan. He knew who was behind all these cowardly shootings. He knew and he was damn well going to put a stop to it.
* * *
FOR THE FIRST time in fifteen years, Stacy Kozminski didn’t have to go through prison security to see her father. All she had to do was walk up the aisle of the dimly lit church to where he lay in a casket before the altar. But that walk was the most difficult she had ever taken. Her knees trembled with each step she took, shaking more the closer she got to the altar.
To the casket...
The lid was open, but she needed to take a few more steps to see past the flower arrangements. Her knees shook even harder, threatening to give out beneath her. Maybe she would have crumpled right there, but a strong arm wrapped around her waist in support.
She uttered a sigh of relief that at least one of her brothers had showed up...because she had been the first and only family member to arrive at the church. With a smile on her lips, she turned her head, but the smile froze when her gaze collided with Logan Payne’s.
His blue eyes icy hard with anger, he stared down at her.
He was mad at her? She was the one who should be angry—furious even because he had no right to show up at her father’s funeral at all—let
