Eve’s Wedding Knight

Chapter 3

Jake could not believe his eyes. What was this? What in the hell was going on?

First, Cisneros and a couple of his goons come running around the corner from the back alley, looking like kids with their pockets full of money and they’d just missed the ice cream truck. They look around all over the place for a while, up and down the street, then back they go.

A few minutes later, one of ‘em takes up a position at the front door, and tuxedo or no, the guy looks more like a bouncer at a biker bar than an usher at a wedding. Now here comes the bride herself, creeping up and down the street, hiding behind parked cars, looking in all the windows, like, if he didn’t know how crazy it was, he’d swear she’s looking to boost one.

Then the minute Cisneros’s goon turns his back, she’s hotfooting it across the street, looking like she’s got every intention of climbing into his van! What the hell was going on?

And what in the hell was he going to do about the woman out there right now, tugging and rattling his door handle? This wasn’t exactly a situation covered in the procedure manuals-not that Jake normally paid much attention to things like that-and there wasn’t anybody he could consult, as his partner, Burdell “Birdie” Poole, had 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.

“When’s the last time anybody saw her?” Troy’s eyes went from person to person, asking each one the question.

Summer met Mirabella’s eyes and opened her mouth, then snapped it shut again at her sharp sound of warning.

Which, of course, Jimmy Joe didn’t miss. “Marybell?” he prompted gently, as all eyes turned her way.

Mirabella fought it for a second or two, drew a reluctant breath and muttered, “Okay, this is really embarrassing. The last I saw her, she had a bottle of champagne and a couple of glasses and was going to the rectory to find Sonny.”

“But,” Summer quickly put in, “according to him, she never got there. He hasn’t seen her, either.”

That revelation was met with stunned silence, except for the rhythmic sound of footsteps. All heads turned to follow the elegant figure coming toward them down the long center aisle.

“One of Sonny’s men found this on the walk beside the rectory,” Summer’s husband, Riley, said quietly, showing them what he held, nested in the folds of a pristine white handkerchief. Shards of broken crystal. “Could be champagne glasses.”

Someone-Ginger-uttered a small, stricken cry. Her husband, who had once been a chief of police, rose slowly to his feet as Riley carefully rewrapped the glass shards, then put a hand on Summer’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“I’ve put in a call to Jake Redfield,” Riley said in a low voice, meant for his wife’s ears. “He wasn’t there-out on assignment, they said. I left my beeper number.” Summer swallowed, nodded gratefully and put her hand over his.

“Jake Redfield?” Mirabella said sharply. “Where have I heard that? I know I‘ve-who’s Jake Redfield?”

Summer and her husband exchanged a look. “Someone we know,” she said in a shaken voice, “with the FBI.”

“Oh, God,” her mother whispered.

Jake was on the phone to his Bureau office, which happened to be located only a few blocks away from the church in downtown Savannah. He, however, was going in the opposite direction, heading southwest on Abercorn as fast as he could go without risking official attention, a course of action he knew was not apt to make either his partner or his superiors happy. He was, in fact, at that very moment holding the phone some distance from his ear in an attempt to lessen the impact of the irate voice on the other end. But Jake had a considerable amount of experience in getting yelled at and had a pretty good ear for when he was nearing the limits of someone’s patience. Right now he was confident he was nowhere near the red zone.

“Get her in here,” the distant voice of his supervisor, Don Coffee, was bellowing in tinny impotence. “Right now! You hear me, Agent Redfield? Now.”

Jake waited for a break, then calmly drawled, “That’s… not a good idea, Don. At the moment she’s in no shape to talk to anybody. I’m gonna need to get her cleaned up and-” he flicked a glance in his rearview mirror and wryly offered “-calmed down,” as a euphemism for “sobered up.” “I’ll bring her in as soon as she’s up to it. Hey-do me a favor, would you? When you hear from Birdie, tell him I’m sorry I had to leave him stranded. Tell him something came up. Tell him-” Then he had to hold the instrument away from his ear again.

“Redfield! Where are you taking her? Dammit, Red-”

“Someplace safe,” Jake growled, and broke the connection. In the ensuing quiet he heard a distinct hiccup from the interior of the van, and then a musical little ripple of sound he realized must be laughter.

“Someplace… safe,” his passenger murmured with mocking solemnity as her head with its tousled cap of sun-shot hair pushed past his shoulder and into his line of vision. She gave that delightful giggle again, followed by another hiccup.

“Hey!” Jake barked as he threw out his arm just in time to bar her way to the front passenger seat, “where do you think you’re going? Get back inside and keep down out of sight.”

At that order she sort of reared back in surprise, and he watched in the mirror as she stuck out her lopsided lower lip, then winced and gave it an exploratory poke with her finger, while a frown darkened her eyes. But only briefly-so briefly, it was like the shadow of a bird flying between him and the sun. The pout became a quirky, fat-lip smile, and she muttered,…, “Okeydokey,” and sank to the floor of the van right where she was, all but disappearing into the billowy cloud of her skirts.

“Oh, Lord,” Jake sighed under his breath. But his mind retained the image of her lower lip, and he felt a sensation at the back of his jaws like the feeling he got walking past a bakery on a cool early morning.

A sharp hiccup and some exasperated swearing brought him back to the here and now.

“I can’t… stop hiccuping,” she said in a disgruntled voice. “An’ you know why? I can’t… get a deep breath. This dress is… too tight, that’s why. I really, really wish I could get out of this…stoo-oopid dress. Hey!” Jake felt a tug on his arm and glanced down at fingers tipped with virginal pink nail polish, several of the nails chipped and broken now. “How’m I gonna get out of this… dress, hmm? It has a million little buttons down the back. Who’s gonna help me unbutton ’em-you?”

“If necessary,” he grunted, keeping his eyes on the road.

“Ha,” she said, and then was silent for a moment. Thinking about it? he wondered. That mouth-watering feeling was back-with a vengeance.

But when her voice came again it was low and whispery with regret, and it appeared she’d stopped hiccuping. “Boy, I sure messed up, didn’t I? Messed up my dress, too. Damn thing cost a fortune. And you know what? It’s all wasted. Whssht-down the drain. But-” she heaved a little sigh “-I guess it’s a good thing I found out… when I did. Otherwise, I’d be married to a mobster right now…”

A shiver rippled down Jake’s spine. The stirring of excitement he’d felt before became a stiff breeze. “And what was it you found out?” he asked softly.

But the only answer he got was a murmur and some rustling sounds. Casting a quick glance over his shoulder, he discovered that the battered bride had curled herself down in the nest of her skirts and was softly snoring-passed out with her head uncomfortably pillowed on her pearl-encrusted arms.

Patience, he told himself, willing his heart to resume its normal rhythm. Patience… She’s here, she’s safe and she’s yours. Whatever it is, you’ll find out in due time.

But it was hard-damned hard. How many months had it been since he’d allowed himself to believe that victory might actually be within his grasp? How many nights since he’d slept without having nightmares about the goal that had already cost him five years out of his life, a good bit of his professional reputation and the wife he’d adored?

Not since last summer when he’d watched Hal Robey’s body being pulled from that hurricane-swollen river near Charleston had he felt this close to the end. So close. But now…now.

He had that sensation at the back of his jaws again, but it wasn’t craving for food or hunger for a beautiful woman that made his mouth water. It was the blood lust of the hunter, closing in for the kill…

Once he’d made sure he wasn’t being followed, Jake headed straight out to Abercorn. The traffic near the mall on a Saturday afternoon was brutal, but once past that he could turn off onto the back road that skirted the outer boundaries of the hospital parking lots, and from there it was a matter of minutes before he was pulling into his own driveway.

The town house apartment he’d rented when he’d transferred-temporarily, he devoutly hoped-to Savannah was in a neighborhood of brick Colonial-style apartment buildings arranged along wooded, curving dead-end streets. On weekdays it was peaceful enough, with the children in school and most of their parents at work, but at that hour on a beautiful October Saturday it was a hive of suburban activity. Children slalomed through the streets on skateboards, in-line skates and bicycles; minivans zipped in and out, disgorging noisy teenagers, pizza deliverers, housewives bearing armloads of grocery bags and armies of children wearing soccer uniforms. Stereo speakers thumped, dogs barked and engines revved at the whim of men happily up to their elbows in car parts and motor oil.

And how, Jake wondered, was he going to sneak an unconscious bride past all that?

It was, in fact, easier than he’d expected. The fact that the van he was driving bore the insignia of a utility company helped; no one would think twice about such a van backing in between the buildings, so as to have easy access to the rear of the apartment. And Jake’s was on the end, so he was able to park close to the door.

After glancing at his still-unconscious passenger, he felt reasonably safe in leaving the van unlocked while he let himself into the apartment. There he gave the ground floor a habitual and cursory once-over, then went upstairs and into the only one of the two bedrooms that had furniture in it. He was trying to decide which would be the least conspicuous method of transporting a body: rolling it into a rug, zipping it into a garment bag or just draping a sheet over it, when he heard something that made alarm impulses go whistling through his nerves, lifting the fine hairs on his arms and the back of his neck.

Stealthy movements… swishing noises.

One hand on his weapon, he crept down the carpeted stairs, bending nearly double in order to peek around the corner into the living room while still out of the intruder’s range of vision. An instant later he hissed out an exasperated breath and proceeded down the remaining steps at a more sedate pace while his heart banged without apology against his ribs.

The “intruder” was standing in the middle of the room, looking around her with a small, confused frown on her face, the champagne bottle clasped to her bosom.

When she saw Jake, she said, “Oh, hi…” in a vague, breathy voice. Then, as the frown deepened into distress, “Would you mind if I used your rest room?”

Jake muttered, “Upstairs,” as he dodged past her to the door she’d left standing wide open.

After satisfying himself with a quick look around that his mystery guest’s arrival had gone unnoticed in the neighborhood in spite of his dangerous lapse, he went out to the van to button down and lock up. Though that only took him a few minutes, by the time he got back inside, the bride had vanished. The apartment seemed empty and silent. Way too silent. There wasn’t a sound-no footsteps, no running water… nothing.

Jake took the stairs two at a time, swearing under his breath. Too late. As he’d feared, the bride in all her bloodstained finery, still reeking of garbage, still cradling the champagne bottle, lay sprawled facedown across his bed, the black-grimed soles of her lace-stockinged feet peeking out of the froth of her skirts like the tar baby’s footprints.

Muttering a disgusted “Aw, man…” he went over to her and gingerly touched her shoulder. He really had hoped to get the woman cleaned up a little bit before she conked out in his bed. “Hey-Miss Waskowitz…Eve…ma‘am?” But the only answer he got was a determined snore. “Come on now, ma’am,” he said firmly, “at least let’s get you out of those clothes. Upsy-daisy…”

No dice.

With an exhalation that was more groan than sigh, he sat down on the bed beside her. Damn… All those buttons. She was right; they went all the way down her back. All the way.

Given a choice between peeling an unconscious women out of her wedding dress and having that smell all over his bed, plus the remains of whatever it was she’d been wallowing in, Jake had no trouble coming up with the answer to that question.

“O-kay,” he muttered, “if that’s the way it’s gonna be…” He leaned across her and gently eased the champagne bottle out from under her arm. When he got a good look at the label he did a double take, then whistled softly. No wonder she’d been cradling the thing like it was the crown jewels. Probably cost almost as much. He set the bottle carefully on the floor and went back to the problem of the buttons. No sweat, he thought. Just start at the top and work your way down…

It was nowhere near that easy. The neckline began high on the back of her neck, then looped across her shoulders and breasts in a series of scallops designed to show off a triple-strand pearl choker of what sure did look to Jake like the real deal. He decided to leave the pearls where they were and just concentrate on the buttons-concentrate being the operative word. It was hard, damned hard not to think about the intimacy of what he was doing. Hard not to let his fingertips feel the cool, wet kiss of her sweat-damp hair… Hard to avoid the velvety warm brush of her skin. Hard to hold himself aloof from the beckoning warmth of her body, and to keep his head clear with her sweet woman’s scent enveloping him like an opium cloud…

By the time he’d gotten as far as her waist, he’d worked up a good sweat. The problem was, he couldn’t seem to convince himself that what he was doing was just a routine procedure for a highly trained federal law-enforcement agent. In his Special Forces training he’d learned how to kill a man with his bare hands inside three seconds and in total silence, and was confident he could do so with ice water in his veins. As a hostage negotiator he’d talked down men wired with enough explosives to demolish a high-rise, without breaking a sweat. So why couldn’t he undress a woman without his heart pounding like a runaway freight train?

It didn’t help that she had the most beautiful back he’d ever seen. And so far, he’d gotten the dress apart almost to her waist, and that was all he’d uncovered-lots and lots of that smooth-as-satin skin, sweet little bumps and ripples of spine, muscles delicately hinted at rather than bluntly defined. What was she wearing under that dress? Nothing?

He was relieved when he encountered lace a couple of buttons farther on. Well, he was. After all, he reminded himself, he was going to want to interrogate the lady. It would be nice if he could look her in the eye while he was doing it.

Once he had the buttons dealt with, he rolled her carefully onto her back. He was breathing easier now, figuring the worst was over. There were a few more buttons on each sleeve at the wrists, but once those were taken care of, all he had to do was peel the top over her shoulders and ease it on down… down her arms, carefully over her breasts… And all the while she went on sleeping soundly as a child, lips slightly parted, a fine dew of moisture clumping the hair on her forehead-

He avoided looking at her battered face, concentrating instead on getting the tight sleeves over her limp hands. And then it was easy to pull the dress past her hips and-

His heart stopped. He felt like a Chinese gong, and he’d just been rung.

What the hell was she wearing? He wasn’t much of an expert on feminine undergarments, so he wasn’t absolutely certain that what he was looking at was a teddy. Whatever it was, it seemed to consist entirely of some kind of stretchy lace that hugged her body like a second skin, only to end abruptly at the top of the curve of her hips. Below that, elastic garters snaked down over a tiny lace triangle, arrowed the length of smooth golden thighs to connect with the tops of the lacy white stockings.

All Jake could think, when his mind started working again, was, All this for a creep like Cisneros? What a waste.

He’d peeled back the covers and was just about to roll her between the sheets when he remembered those grimy black feet. So instead of tucking her in, he went to the closet and got the blanket he’d taken off his bed and stowed there, being a warm-blooded sleeper himself. When he got back with it, he found that his sleeping beauty had rolled away from him onto her side and pulled her knees up, the way little kids do when they sleep. Except she sure didn’t look anything like a kid, especially from where he was standing. He got that blanket over her just as fast as he could.

Once he’d done that, the cop part of him was able to resume functioning. He stood there looking down at the woman asleep on his bed, snoring softly with her ungrazed cheek pillowed on one hand like a child. Eve Waskowitz…who by this time should have been married to the man Jake hated most in this world.

Lady, he thought, what happened to you in that church garden today? What in the hell happened?

He sat down on the edge of the bed and carefully lifted the bottom edge of the blanket, then put his hand under one slender, lace-stockinged ankle and tilted the bottom of her foot toward the light. The stocking was torn and worn through, almost nonexistent in places. And under all the dirt and grime, he could see that the ball of her foot and the delicate pads of her toes were scraped and bruised.

And he thought, Lady, where in the world have you been? What happened to make you run in fear for your life from the man you were about to pledge to love, honor and obey until death do you part? What happened to your face? Did he do that to you?

His belly burned at the thought. But the lady’s only response was an inarticulate murmur, and Jake knew that was all the answer he was going to get, for a while, anyway. With a silent sigh, willing himself to patience, willing the triphammer beat of his heart to resume its normal rhythms, he lowered the foot into place beside its mate and tucked the blanket around them both.

He rose and walked out of his bedroom, and was about to start down the stairs when he changed his mind. Instead, he went across the hall to the bathroom, took his bathrobe from its hook behind the door, carried it into the bedroom and laid it across the foot of the bed.

Then he went downstairs, poured himself a cup of cold coffee and settled down to wait.