Lisa Childs: Groom Under Fire

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.

Chapter Two

“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?”

“No,” Tanya replied. “He’s still everyone’s friend.” Her best friend. Where was he? And what had happened to him?

“Then maybe this isn’t what it looks like,” the twin replied.

“It looks like a crime scene,” Cooper said. Yellow tape cordoned off the groom’s quarters that police techs had photographed and processed for prints and whatever other evidence they’d found. “There’s a lot of blood. The signs of a struggle. It’s obvious somebody was dragged down the aisle.”

That was why the runner had been bunched. Like the walls of the groom’s quarters, it had also been stained with blood. While she’d been in the bride’s room, someone had attacked her groom and dragged him from the church. How hadn’t she or Mrs. Payne heard any of the struggle?

Tanya had been in the bride’s room, deciding that she did not want to be a bride. Mrs. Payne had been downstairs in her office talking with the reverend. Unable to have a rehearsal without a groom, the minister had left after talking to the police.

“What the hell did you do?” the maid of honor, Tanya’s sister, shouted. She ran down the aisle toward the front of the church where Tanya sat in the pew near where the Payne brothers stood. But Rochelle didn’t make it very far before she tripped over the rumpled runner.

Tanya’s only other bridesmaid, who was also Cooper’s sister, rushed up behind her and helped her to her unsteady feet. “Rochelle, let me get you some more coffee...”

“I don’t need coffee!” Tanya’s little sister shouted, her words only slightly slurred. “I need to know what she did with Stephen!”

“What I did with him?” Tanya asked. She set the teacup on the pew and rose up to meet her sister as Rochelle finally made it down the aisle.

“You don’t care about him at all,” Rochelle accused. “You’ve just been using him to get Grandfather’s money. That’s all you care about!” She vaulted herself at Tanya, knocking her to the ground.

The shock finally wore off—leaving Tanya able to register the pain. She felt the hardness of the floor beneath her back and the weight of her sister, who, despite the fact she was younger, was quite a bit taller and heavier. She could barely breathe with her on top of her. And she felt the sharp sting of her sister’s slap. She had no right to fight back—not when everything Rochelle said was probably true.

But this was not the time or the place for Rochelle to throw one of her temper tantrums. Tanya had been trying to hold herself together for so long that she finally snapped under the emotional and physical pressure. “Grow up, you brat,” she yelled. Using probably more strength than necessary, she shoved her sister back.

Rochelle didn’t stay off. As Tanya stood up, her sister launched herself at her again. But this time strong hands caught Tanya before she hit the ground. With an arm wrapped around her waist, Cooper lifted her nearly off her feet.

The other bridesmaid, Nikki Payne, caught Rochelle, and tried to control her swinging hands and flailing feet. For her efforts, she took a hit to her face.

“Whatever happened to Stephen is your fault,” Rochelle accused. “It’s all your fault!”

Another stinging blow connected, bringing tears to Tanya’s eyes. But the tears weren’t from physical pain. Rochelle’s verbal assault had hit her harder than her slap. Because she was right.

Whatever had happened to Stephen was all Tanya’s fault. She literally had his blood on her hands.

“Aren’t you glad you had brothers?” Cooper asked his sister as she rubbed her fingertips along the scratch on her cheek and winced. Nikki had somehow subdued her friend while Cooper had carried Tanya out of her reach. When Rochelle had been swinging, Tanya had barely defended herself from her younger sister’s attack. Maybe she was in shock over having found Stephen’s blood in the groom’s quarters.

“Yeah,” Nikki agreed. “You guys just punched each other. It was more civilized.”

“We never punched you,” he said.

“No,” she agreed with a heavy sigh, almost as if she was disappointed that they hadn’t. As the youngest and the only girl with three older brothers, she had often been left out of their roughhousing because they hadn’t wanted to hurt her.