Eve’s Wedding Knight

gone for coffee about half an hour ago. Not that Jake would have heeded Birdie’s advice in a situation like this anyway. This was strictly his call.

Something was about to fall into his lap-he could feel it. And Jake wasn’t one to let such an opportunity pass him by.

He peeled off his headset and dropped it beside the bank of monitors, then rose to his feet and moved stealthily to the back door of the van. For a moment or two he listened to the ambiguously furtive sounds coming from the other side of the door. Then he took hold of the inside handle and gave it a turn.

He heard a little grunt of surprise and an exclamation of satisfaction as the door flew outward, and then had to dodge backward as the bride came lurching through the opening. An instant later, though, she froze, poised half-in and half-out of the van, resembling nothing so much, in her voluminous white skirts, as a large, extremely agitated swan.

“Yikes!” she exclaimed under her breath, and then, as her eyes traveled upward from the scuffed tips of Jake’s cap-toe oxfords, along the nonexistent creases of his charcoal-gray cotton coveralls, added a chagrinned and breathy “Busted.”

To his surprise, Jake found his customary dour demeanor being tested as it had not been in a very long time. Even maintaining a standard Bureau deadpan took every ounce of his will, as he responded with mild sarcasm, “Not at all. Would you like to come in? Do you need a hand?”

But she was already inside the van, straightening up and looking around-and he got a good clear look at her for the first time. My God, he thought, jolted in a way he’d no longer believed himself capable of. My God. What the hell was going on here?

Her face was scraped across one cheekbone and down the side of her face all the way to the jaw; she had a cut over one eye and another smaller one on the bridge of her nose; and either a very lopsided mouth or one helluva fat lip. He was about to say something, ask her what had happened to her, when he noticed the champagne bottle tucked under one arm. That and the bleary way she was looking around her seemed to him to offer one explanation-maybe even an obvious one-but somehow he didn’t think it was the right one. Somehow it didn’t fit.

She moved slowly past him, her mouth opening in silent awe as she took in the video monitors, the computer, the whole array of state-of-the-art electronic surveillance equipment. Then she rounded on him and exclaimed, “This is a surveillance van!” She leaned forward, eyes narrowed accusingly. “Who are you surveill-llin-watching? Hmm?” And she waited for his answer, breasts heaving and eyes shooting dark fire.

Even given her battered condition it was a potent combination, and possibly one reason why it took Jake a beat longer than it should have to become aware of the particular… aura she’d brought into the van with her. Once noticed, though, it was hard to ignore the unmistakable aroma of ripening garbage. And he saw now a few other things he’d missed in his preoccupation with the condition of her face: blood spatters, as well as a good many unidentifiable stains and smears on the white satin wedding dress, and something in her hair that looked very much like coffee grounds.

Though completely mystified as to what could possibly have happened that would explain the woman’s condition, still he began to feel deep within himself the stirrings of a strange excitement. Treading carefully, he ventured, “Ma‘am, would you like to…sit down? I think you’ve had quite a bit to drink-”

“I’ve had a whole bottle of champagne to drink,” she readily acknowledged, looking mysteriously pleased with herself, and the almost feline satisfaction in her smile sparked unexpected responses in the bottom of Jake’s belly. Then, before he could even wonder about that, she was stern and serious again. “However, I am drunk, not unconscious. This is-these are-video monitors. I’m a TV producer. You think I don’t know a video monitor when I see one? Listen, buster-”

She gave a soft gasp, then, and crouched down for a closer look at the monitor in question, which at the moment was displaying a fairly wide-angle shot of the front of the church, where a number of people were just emerging through the high-arched, ornately carved double door entrance. Jake reached past her to the remote controls. The grim little knot of men surrounding Sonny Cisneros grew larger. Jake zoomed in tighter still, until Sonny’s face all but filled the screen, until he seemed to be looking right into the camera, right into the eyes of the woman who watched on the monitor screen with the frozen fascination of a bird in the thrall of a snake.

Without taking her eyes from the screen, she took a step backward, then another. Which was as far as she could go before her back was smack up against Jake’s chest. He could feel the moist heat of her body, hear the rapid, rhythmic whisper of her breathing. Her blond hair, short and tousled as a small boy’s, was just about on a level with his lips, and even through the overriding stench of champagne and garbage he caught a mouth-watering whiff of strawberries. He didn’t think about putting his hands on her shoulders-didn’t even know he had until he felt the crusty texture of lace and pearls beneath his palms. He snatched them away just as she turned, her face chalk-white behind her scrapes and bruises, her eyes enormous and the dark slate-blue of rain clouds.

“Why’re you spying on my wedding?” she demanded in a slurred, airless voice. Her hand clutched at the front of Jake’s uniform, gathering in a handful of it. “Who are you? Who’re you watching-Sonny? Are you? Tell me, damn you!” Her breath caught and her hand tightened, twisting in the cotton fabric. “Who- arc-you? It’s important-I need…to know!”

She was close to losing it. Jake held up his hand-one finger-in front of her taut, battered face, with that simple gesture capturing her attention and pulling her eyes to his. Once he had them, he held them with the sheer force of his will and-tricks he’d learned in interrogation training-focused all his energy into bringing her into his plane…his sphere… his calm.

Only when her breathing had slowed and quieted, unconsciously timing itself to his rhythms, did he answer her.

“FBI, ma‘am. Special Agent Jake Redfield-”

He hadn’t expected her to burst into tears.

Although it was hard to be sure that’s what she was doing, at first. She kept sobbing, “Thank God, thank God.”

And then she got the hiccups.

Mirabella was pacing furiously on the white runner down the center aisle of the church sanctuary, where the entire Waskowitz family had gathered in stunned indecision.

“I can’t believe she did this,” she kept muttering, while fear jumped and fluttered beneath her rib cage. “I can not believe it. This is too much-even for Eve. Just too much. This time she’s gone too far.”

“I can’t believe it, either,” Summer retorted from the front pew, where she was attempting to console the disappointed flower girl, her five-year-old daughter Helen. “That’s the whole point. She wouldn’t do this. She wouldn’t.”

“Oh, yeah, right,” Mirabella snorted, hoping to convince herself as much as anyone. “Have you forgotten about high school graduation?”

“That was different! We all knew she thought the whole thing was pointless and stupid! But this was her wedding. She was happy about it. Excited. Why would she-” She choked off something that sounded dangerously like a sob, which prompted her nine-year-old son, David, standing in the pew behind her, to throw his arms around her neck in mute and helpless sympathy.

“Why? Why does Eve do anything?” Mirabella raged, waving her arms. She was gently corralled by her husband, Jimmy Joe, probably the only person there who understood that the angrier she sounded, the more frightened it meant she was.

“Something’s happened to her,” Pop Waskowitz rumbled. “Had to.” Beside him, his wife, Ginger, silently squeezed his hand.

Across the aisle, Charly cleared her throat and said in her dry Alabama drawl, “Anybody thinkin’ about callin’ the police?”

Her husband, Troy, leaning against the end of the pew at her elbow, shook his head. “That’s probably a little premature. What’re you gonna tell ‘em? I doubt she’s the first bride who ever got cold feet and decided not to show up for her own wedding.”

“Sonny and his friends are out looking for her,” Ginger Waskowitz offered in a hopeful tone. “Maybe we should wait and see…” Her voice trailed off.