LITMIR.BIZ

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voice cracked on the last syllable the moment she uttered it.

      A sense of horror dropped over the gathering like an old-fashioned, heavy theater curtain made of asbestos.

      “A murder?” someone near the front of the church cried. “What do you mean, a murder? Like with a dead person?”

      A man two pews over spoke up. “No, she’s kidding. Right? This is what they call black humor or something, right? She’s doing this because Celia’s not ready.”

      “Is that what you’re doing? Stalling until the bride’s ready?” a third person, a woman near the rear of the church challenged. “’Cause I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m getting real hungry just sitting here, waitin’.”

      As the questions and retorts continued to fly fast and furious at her, Zoe gave serious thought to a full-on retreat. The wedding guests who had previously risen to greet the bride were still on their feet and more than a few were coming toward her, as if shortening the distance between them and her could somehow make what she was saying clearer to them—or better yet, transparent.

      Zoe fumbled for the doorknob behind her, thinking to hold on to it and possibly swing the door open again in case she had to execute a very hasty retreat and create a temporary barrier between herself and the wedding guests who were quickly growing more annoyed by the second.

      With her hand behind her back, Zoe wasn’t able to secure the doorknob, but she suddenly felt the door opening behind her. She knew she hadn’t managed to do that.

      Was there someone behind her?

      The next moment, her suspicions were confirmed as she heard Sam’s deep voice addressing the agitated wedding guests.

      “No one’s stalling,” he informed them in a voice that was not to be argued with. “There’s been a murder and you all need to take your seats again.” It wasn’t a request, it was an order. “Someone from the police department is going to be coming to each and every one of you to take down all of your statements,” Sam briskly told the wedding guests in his no nonsense voice.

      “All our statements?” one of the guests questioned in disbelief.

      Both rows of pews were filled to capacity, which in turn translated to a great many statements that needed to be taken. It could literally take hours before anyone was allowed to leave.

      “All of them,” Sam replied in a cool, concise tone of voice.

      Someone closer to the rear of the church was definitely not satisfied with so little information. “Sam, what’s going on here? We came here to see you get married. Who was murdered?”

      Zoe made a judgment call. Sam didn’t look as if he was willing to answer that question just yet, but she didn’t think it was right to withhold the information. These people were supposedly Celia’s friends. Still struggling to come to terms with what had happened practically under her nose, Zoe took the initiative and answered for Sam.

      “Someone shot Celia.”

      Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sam fire her a look that would have definitely kept her silent had she seen it first.

      Her immediate reaction to it was to offer Sam an apology for having overstepped her bounds.

      But any words to that effect never made it past her lips as anger uncharacteristically took over, vanquishing her tendency to just meekly accept whatever was happening rather than protesting it.

      The first volley in that particular battle had been fired when she’d held her ground against her sister, wanting Celia to confess to Sam that she had engineered the lie about being pregnant just to trick him into marrying her.

      Having spoken up then, she couldn’t just quietly hold her peace now, especially when doing so—just because it was expected of her—made absolutely no sense to her. It was just cruel.

      After all, this wasn’t the kind of secret that someone was going to take to their grave. On the contrary, everyone was going to know who was murdered in a matter of hours, most likely in a manner of minutes.

      What was the point of holding back?

      It made no sense to her. Right now, she desperately needed to find something that made sense so she could hang on to it and rebuild her world which was, at this moment, completely decimated into charred, gray ashes.

      Another disjointed chorus of voices was shouting out stunned reactions to the bombshell that Zoe had just dropped.

      “Celia?”

      “Oh my God, Celia’s been shot?”

      “Celia’s really dead?”

      “This is a joke—right?”

      “Who did it?”

      Sam had remained standing next to Zoe. He raised his hands now and gestured for the guests to lower their voices and in essence, cease asking questions altogether. Any further questions were all going to be coming from him, starting now.

      From him and from the rest of the officers he had just called in to act as his backup.

      “That’s what we’re going to be trying to find out,” Sam informed the sea of faces that were turned toward him. “Now, this’ll go a lot faster if you all just get back into your seats and wait until someone comes by to take down your statements.”

      “But we were all in here,” one of the older women protested helplessly. “We didn’t see anything.”

      “And if that’s the case, it’ll go even faster,” Sam replied. His tone of voice, neither friendly nor accusatory, gave nothing away.

      The church was now filled with several more patrol officers from Granite Gulch in addition to the detectives and officers who had been invited to the actual wedding ceremony. The latter group also included Sam’s older sister, Annabel, who was a police officer on the same force.

      The incoming officers joined forces with the law enforcement agents who were already there to make the process of questioning the temporarily captive wedding guests as painless as possible.

      Growing just the slightest bit calmer, Zoe looked at Sam after he had finished briefing the newly arrived police officers.

      “Who do you want me to give my statement to?” she asked.

      Mindful of what Ethan had said to him earlier about the shock she was dealing with, he looked at Zoe with what he felt might very well be remotely associated with concern. After all, Zoe had been through a lot, and Celia was—or had been, he corrected himself—her sister. Moreover, though he didn’t have any proof at the moment, his gut told him that Zoe had nothing to do with Celia’s tragically dramatic end.

      “Are you sure you’re up to this now?” he asked Zoe, scrutinizing her closely. He was a fairly good judge of what a person on the fringe looked like. He’d sent enough of them there during interrogations.

      Zoe curled her fingers into her hands and dug her nails into her palms, as if registering that pain could somehow help her maintain control over the grief running rampant all through her.

      “Yes,” she answered in a small, but firm voice. “I am—but thank you for asking.”

      He hardly took note of the last part. Glancing around the church, he took in the scene.

      A handful of law enforcement agents from the small precinct had scattered throughout the pews, singling out wedding guests the way cowboys cut out cattle from a herd for branding. Every available police officer and detective currently there was clearly busy and would remain so for the next foreseeable several hours, if not more.

      That essentially made up Sam’s mind for him, although, in all honesty, it had pretty much been made up the moment he had found Zoe in the same room as Celia’s body.

      “You can give your statement to me,” he told Zoe crisply.

      Glancing

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