Keeper of the Bride

He made his turn. Not too fast — a casual change of direction to make it seem as if he’d just decided on a different route.

The other car made the turn as well.

Sam turned again, back onto Congress Street. They were headed east now, going back the way they’d come. The pair of headlights was still behind them. At 10:30 on a Sunday, traffic was light and it was easy to spot their pursuer.

“There’s Gillis,” Sam stated. “Right on schedule.” He nodded at the blue Toyota idling near the curb. They drove past it.

A moment later, the Toyota pulled into traffic, right behind the Jeep.

“Perp sandwich,” said Sam with a note of triumph. They were coming on a traffic light, just turning yellow. Purposely he slowed down, to keep the other two cars on his tail.

Without warning, the Cherokee suddenly screeched around them and sped straight through the intersection just as the light turned red.

Sam uttered an oath and hit the accelerator. They, too, lurched through the intersection just as a pickup truck barreled in from a side street. Sam swerved around it and took off after the sedan.

A block ahead, the Cherokee screeched around a corner.

“This guy’s smart,” muttered Sam. “He knew we were moving in on him.”

“Watch out!” cried Nina as a car pulled out of a parking space, right in front of them.

Sam leaned on his horn and shot past.

This is crazy, she thought. I’m riding with a maniac cop at the wheel.

They spun around the corner into an alley. Nina, clutching the dashboard, caught a dizzying view of trash cans and Dumpsters as they raced through.

At the other end of the alley, Sam screeched to a halt.

There was no sign of the Cherokee. In either direction.

Gillis’s Toyota squealed to a stop just behind them. “Which way?” they heard Gillis call.

“I don’t know!” Sam yelled back. “I’ll head east.”

He turned right. Nina glanced back and saw Gillis turn left, in the other direction. A two-pronged search. Surely one of them would spot the quarry.

Four blocks later, there was still no sign of the Cherokee. Sam reached for the car phone and dialed Gillis.

“No luck here,” he said. “How about you?” At the answer, he gave a grunt of disappointment. “Okay. At least you got the license number. I’ll check back with you later.” He hung up.

“So he did catch the number?” Nina asked.

“Massachusetts plate. APB’s going out now. With any luck, they’ll pick him up.” He glanced at Nina. “I’m not so sure you should go back to your father’s house.”

Their gazes locked. What she saw, in his eyes, confirmed her fears.

“You think he was following me,” she said softly.

“What I want to know is, why? There’s something weird going on here, something that involves both you and Robert. You must have some idea what it is.”

She shook her head. “It’s a mistake,” she whispered. “It must be.”

“Someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to ensure your deaths. I don’t think he — or she — would mistake the target.”

“She? Do you really think…”

“As I said before, murder needn’t be done in person. It can be bought and paid for. And that could be what we’re dealing with. I’m more and more certain of it. A professional.”

Nina was shaking now, unable to answer him. Unable to argue. The man next to her was talking so matter-of-factly. His life didn’t hang in the balance.

“I know it’s hard to accept any of this yet,” he added. “But in your case, denial could be fatal. So let me lay it out for you. The brutal facts. Robert’s already dead. And you could be next.”

But I’m not worth killing! she thought. I’m no threat to anyone.

“We can’t pin the blame on Jimmy Brogan,” said Sam.

“I think he’s the innocent in all this. He saw something he shouldn’t have, so he was disposed of. And then his death was set up to look like a suicide, to throw us off the track. Deflect our bomb investigation. Our killer’s very clever. And very specific about his targets.” He glanced at her, and she heard, in his voice, pure, passionless logic. “There’s something else I learned today,” he told her. “The morning of your wedding, a gift was delivered to the church. Jimmy Brogan may have seen the man who left it. We think Brogan put the parcel somewhere near the front pews. Right near the blast center. The gift was addressed specifically to you and Robert.” He paused, as though daring her to argue that away.

She couldn’t. The information was coming too fast, and she was having trouble dealing with the terrifying implications.

“Help me out, Nina,” he urged. “Give me a name. A motive.”

“I told you,” she said, her voice breaking to a sob. “I don’t know!”

“Robert admitted there was another woman. Do you know who that might be?”

She was hugging herself, huddling into a self-protective ball against the seat. “No.”

“Did it ever seem to you that Daniella and Robert were particularly close?”

Nina went still. Daniella? Her father’s wife? She thought back over the past six months. Remembered the evenings she and Robert had spent at her father’s house. All the invitations, the dinners. She’d been pleased that her fiance had been so quickly accepted by her father and Daniella, pleased that, for once, harmony had been achieved in the Cormier family. Daniella, who’d never been particularly warm toward her stepdaughter, had suddenly started including Nina and Robert in every social function.

Daniella and Robert.

“That’s another reason,” he said, “why I don’t think you should go back to your father’s house tonight.”

She turned to him. “You think Daniella…”

“We’ll be questioning her again.”

“But why would she kill Robert? If she loved him?”

“Jealousy? If she couldn’t have him, no one could?”

“But he’d already broken off our engagement! It was over between us!”

“Was it really?”

Though the question was asked softly, she sensed at once an underlying tension in his voice.

She said, “You were there, Sam. You heard our argument. He didn’t love me. Sometimes I think he never did.” Her head dropped. “For him it was definitely over.”

“And for you?”

Tears pricked her eyes. All evening she’d managed not to cry, not to fall apart. During those endless hours in the hospital waiting room, she’d withdrawn so completely into numbness that when they’d told her Robert was dead, she’d registered that fact in some distant corner of her mind, but she hadn’t felt it. Not the shock, nor the grief. She knew she should be grieving. No matter how much Robert had hurt her, how bitterly their affair had ended, he was still the man with whom she’d spent the last year of her life.

Now it all seemed like a different life. Not hers. Not Robert’s. Just a dream, with no basis in reality.

She began to cry. Softly. Wearily. Not tears of grief, but tears of exhaustion.

Sam said nothing. He just kept driving while the woman beside him shed soundless tears. There was plenty he wanted to say. He wanted to point out that Robert Bledsoe had been a first-class rat, that he was scarcely worth grieving over. But women in love weren’t creatures you could deal with on a logical level. And he was sure she did love Bledsoe; it was the obvious explanation for those tears.

He tightened his grip on the steering wheel as frustration surged through him. Frustration at his own inability to comfort her, to assuage her grief. The Roberts of the world didn’t deserve any woman’s tears. Yet they were the men whom women always seemed to cry over. The golden boys. He glanced at Nina, huddled against