LITMIR.BIZ

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he didn’t know if Stephen was dead, but he knew that he could have helped—had he been at the church in time.

      “Neither do you,” Cooper said, which probably infuriated Logan since his eldest brother thought he knew everything.

      “Then where’s his body?” Logan asked. “Why would his killer take it with him? Why wouldn’t he have just left it in the room?”

      Cooper wasn’t the one with the law enforcement background. “You were the cop.” A detective actually and a greatly decorated one, just as their father had been a police officer. “You know it’s harder to press murder charges, let alone convict, without a body.”

      “The crime scene techs said that it looked like a lot of blood because of the spray, but there wasn’t enough for someone to have bled to death,” Logan reminded him.

      “Yet.” But if he was injured and didn’t get help... “We should be out there looking for him, not wasting our time with this crazy discussion.”

      “Parker and his team aren’t just checking hospitals and med centers. They’re looking for him everywhere,” Logan reminded him. “They’ve checked his place, his work—all of his usual hangouts.”

      “And they haven’t found him,” Cooper said. “We need to search harder and even then we may not find him alive.” Or at all.

      How many people had gone missing to never be seen again? He’d personally known a few—in Afghanistan.

      “There’s still time to help him,” his mother insisted. Despite all she’d lost when her husband had died, she still remained an optimist. “But in case there is a ransom demand, Tanya will need her inheritance to pay it.”

      “So someone needs to marry her,” Logan said.

      His mother patted Cooper’s arm again but more gently this time. “It’s all right,” she said as if he were a child she was reassuring about going to the dentist. “If you don’t want to do it, Parker can.”

      Parker, the playboy, marrying Tanya? His gut churned at the thought—it was even crazier than him marrying her. In fact, him marrying her actually made the most sense since they knew each other, since he had actually kissed the bride before. Besides, it was his fault that Stephen had disappeared. If only he’d been in the groom’s quarters before Stephen had been taken...

      Rejecting his mother’s suggestion, he shook his head. “I’ll do it.”

      His mother clapped her hands together. “Great. I will call a certain judge I know to rush a new marriage certificate, and we’ll proceed with the wedding tomorrow, just as we’d planned.”

      He was getting married tomorrow? Panic gripped him, squeezing his chest so tightly that he couldn’t draw a deep breath.

      “Maybe someone should tell the bride that,” Logan suggested with a slight grin.

      His mother gestured toward a leather purse sitting on the floor beneath a hanging garment bag. “She wouldn’t have left without that, so she must still be here.”

      But she wasn’t. As they had for Stephen, they searched the entire church. But they didn’t find her.

      Only the blood...

      It was dried. It was old. It wasn’t hers.

      There was no fresh blood. No signs of a new struggle. No Tanya.

      “Where could she have gone?” Cooper asked, and now he was panicking for another reason than getting married tomorrow. He was panicking that he might not be able to get married because the bride had disappeared like the original groom.

      “Maybe she decided to walk home,” his mother suggested.

      The police officer who had been watching the parking lot in case Stephen returned for his car had mentioned seeing her leave the church.

      “You actually think she could walk to the estate?” Cooper asked, shaking his head. “No way.”

      The mausoleum was on the other side of the very sprawling city. The distance between the church and the estate was more of a marathon than an evening stroll. But the officer hadn’t seen a cab.

      “She lives just a couple of blocks over,” his mother said. “She rents a third-floor apartment.”

      “An apartment?” he asked, even more confused. She was a billionaire’s granddaughter and she rented?

      “She hasn’t inherited yet,” his mother reminded him, “and on her salary as a social worker, she can’t afford to buy her own house.”

      So why hadn’t she married sooner? Why wait until within days of forfeiting her inheritance? Despite having known Tanya for years, he really had no idea who she was. Of course, he had been gone for most of those years.

      Now he had no idea where she was...

      He grabbed her purse from his mom and opened it up. Her cell phone was inside—along with an inhaler, an EpiPen, a can of pepper spray and a shiny whistle. Given some of the danger social workers confronted, she should have carried a gun, too. He flipped open her wallet to read the address on her driver’s license. The picture distracted him for a minute. Even on the tiny snapshot, she was beautiful—her blond hair shining like gold and her green eyes sparkling as she smiled brightly.

      That was what had been so different about her tonight. The fear. The anxiety. She wasn’t the Tanya he remembered because she was a woman now, not a carefree teenager.

      “Look at that,” Logan said with a slight grin. “Not even married yet and already carrying her purse.” That was the way their family had always handled strife and loss—with wisecracking.

      But Cooper didn’t have time for it now, not with Tanya missing. He was going to follow her route from the church to her apartment and find her—hopefully alive.

      “Shut up,” he said. “And keep an eye on Mom.”

      She shouldn’t be alone in a building where someone had already been abducted, just as Tanya should have never been left alone. Once he was her husband, Cooper would make damn sure that she stayed safe. But now he wondered if she would even make it to the altar.

      * * *

      THE CAR WITH the darkly tinted windows circled the block again like a cat stalking a bird. Was the driver waiting for Tanya to step off the sidewalk? She needed to cross the street if she intended to head home.

      But if she headed home, wouldn’t she be leading the driver right to her door? But given the threats she’d received through the mail, her stalker already knew where she lived. So if the driver was her stalker, he already knew where she was going.

      She needed to turn back to the church. But if the others had left...

      Mrs. Payne would have locked up, locking Tanya’s purse and phone inside the bride’s room. But she hadn’t been gone that long, surely someone might have stayed behind.

      Cooper?

      She wasn’t certain she wanted to see him, knowing how he felt about the thought of becoming her husband for just a few days—until she inherited. Once the money was hers, she could divorce him. Maybe he didn’t know that; maybe she should have explained. But she hadn’t wanted to force him to do something he clearly did not want to do.

      They had once been friends. Good friends. Along with Stephen, they had been like the Three Musketeers—studying and hanging out together. But now Cooper acted like a stranger. Had his deployments overseas changed him that much?

      Or was she the one who had changed? She used to want to have nothing to do with her grandfather’s money, but then she had nearly married to inherit it. Had gone so far as to plan a wedding to a man she loved but wasn’t in love with...

      Tanya shivered at the cold wind and the eerie sensation that someone was hiding in the darkness, watching her. Coming for her. But

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