Paula Graves - Fugitive Bride

A kid, no more than ten or eleven. He froze there, his face framed by the bright red hood of his rain slicker. A second later, a second face appeared next to the boy’s, smaller. More feminine. She had big, dark eyes and frizzy curls framing her face beneath her pink rain hood.

Owen took a step toward them. “Hello—”

The boy opened his mouth and screamed, triggering an answering shriek in the girl. They sped off into the rainy woods, their terrified wails turning to hysterical giggles of pure adrenaline rush before they faded from earshot.

Owen felt Tara’s forehead press hard against his back. “Kids?”

“That could have been us twenty years ago.” Owen turned to look at her. “Sneaking around Old Man Ridley’s cabin, trying to catch him red-handed at murder.”

Tension seeped slowly out of her expression, a faint smile taking its place. “Remember that summer he almost caught us?”

“One of the top ten most terrifying moments of my life.” He laughed softly.

“Do you think those kids will come back with grown-ups next time?”

He shook his head. “Are you kidding? They’d probably be grounded for life just for sneaking around this old cabin.” He pulled out the lighter and relit the candle he’d extinguished. “Come on, let’s see what kind of shelter we can make of this place.”

The place was grimy and drafty, but the tin roof seemed to have weathered the years without springing leaks, which had kept the interior dry and mostly free of mildew. The cot mattresses were a disaster, but Owen uncovered an old military footlocker half hidden by the remains of one of the cots. Inside, he found a couple of camp blankets kept well preserved within the airtight trunk. They smelled of the cedar blocks someone had placed inside the trunk to ward off moths.

“Here, wrap up in this.” He unfolded the top blanket and wrapped it around Tara’s shoulders, not missing the shivers rattling through her. “I wish we could risk starting a fire in that fireplace,” he said with a nod toward the river stone fireplace against the near wall. “But the chimney’s probably blocked by now, and besides, we don’t want to risk smoke alerting anyone to where we are. Not yet.”

She stepped closer to him, curling into him like a kitten seeking heat. “Just hold me for a minute, okay? They say body heat is the best heat.”

Owen quelled the instant reaction of his body to hers, a talent he’d honed since their early teens, when Tara’s femininity blossomed in time for his hormones to rev up to high gear. She’d put deliberate boundaries between them, first unspoken ones and then, later, when he’d wanted to push those barriers out of the way, spoken ones.

“I’ve never had a friend like you, Owen,” she’d told him that night after the high school football game when he tried to kiss her in the car after he’d driven her home. “I need you to be Owen. My best friend. We can’t risk changing that. Do you understand? Boyfriends are complicated. Relationships are volatile. I have enough of that in my life.”

He couldn’t argue with that. Motherless since just before they’d met, Tara had struggled to connect with her rough-edged, emotionally conservative father, who’d had to give up the military life he’d loved to take care of his daughter. Tara had felt as if he resented her for the end of his Marine Corps career, which had added to the existing friction between them right up until his death.

Owen had swallowed his desire and given Tara what she needed, as much as it had cost him to do so. But the desire had never gone away, married as it was to his enduring love for his best friend.

And at times like these, with her slender body pressed so intimately to his, what was left of her clothing clinging to her body and leaving little to his imagination, tamping down that desire was a Herculean task.

“Maybe the rain will stop soon,” she mumbled against his collarbone, her breath hot against his neck.

“Maybe,” he agreed. “Those children must live nearby, which is promising, because when this was a Boy Scout camp years ago, there were no houses in easy walking distance at all.”

She burrowed deeper in his embrace. “I wonder how I’m going to explain walking around in the woods wearing a slip, half a wedding dress and my ruined silk pumps.”

“Very carefully,” he answered, making her chuckle. The sound rippled through him, sparking a shudder of pure male need.

“I don’t think the rain is supposed to end before morning,” she said with a soft sigh that heated his throat again. “We’re going to need to find somewhere to sleep tonight. And I have to say, I’m not thrilled about sharing a cot where a possum was probably nesting.”

“The blankets from that chest are pretty clean. We could cover the mattresses with those.”

“Mattress,” she corrected.

“Mattress?”

She looked up at him, her expression serious. “It’s too cold in here for us to sleep apart. Right?”

He stared at her, his heart rattling in his chest like a snare drum. He swallowed hard and forced the words from his lips. “Right. Body heat is the best heat.”

He was in so much trouble.

* * *

BAGLEY COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT investigator Archer Trask walked slowly around the small groom’s room, taking in all the details of the crime scene. There was less blood than one might expect, to begin with. The victim had taken two bullets to the base of his skull—double tap, the big-city cops would call it. A sign of a professional hit.

But who the hell would target a groom on his wedding day?

“Vic’s name is Robert Mallory. The third.” The responding deputy flipped a page in his notepad. “Mallory Senior works in the Lexington DA’s office, and he’s already screaming for us to turn this over to the Kentucky State Police.”

“Any witnesses?”

“No, but the bride is missing. So’s her man of honor.”

Trask slanted a look at the deputy. “You’re kidding.”

“Nobody’s seen either of them since about an hour before the wedding.”

“Bride’s name?”

“Tara Bentley.”

Didn’t sound familiar. Neither did the groom’s name. “Have you talked to the bride’s parents?”

“She’s an orphan, it seems.” The deputy grimaced. “Her side of the aisle is a little sparse.”

Trask rubbed his forehead, where a headache was starting to form. Why didn’t he ever get a cut-and-dried case these days? “I want the groom’s parents kept apart so I can question them separately. And any of the wedding party who might have seen anything. Do we have an estimated time of death yet?”

“Last time anyone saw him was around three, about an hour before the ceremony was supposed to start. Last time anyone saw the bride was round the same time.”

Trask frowned. Missing bride, dead groom, professional-looking hit—nothing seemed to fit. “You said man of honor.”

The deputy flipped back a page or two in his notepad. “Owen Stiles. Apparently the bride’s best friend from childhood.”

Stiles. The name sounded familiar. “What do we know about Stiles?”

“Not much. His mother is here for the wedding. She’s the one who told us she couldn’t find him. By the way, according to the man of honor’s mother, their cars are still in the church parking lot.”

Trask looked up at the deputy’s words. “You’re telling me the bride and her best friend took a flyer and left their cars behind?”

“Looks like. We’ve already checked the tags and they’re registered to our missing persons.”

Well, now, Archer thought. That was a surprising twist. “Let’s get an APB out on both of them. Persons of interest in a murder for now. We need to check if either of them have another vehicle, too.”