Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
People assumed Wren would want to postpone the wedding after her ‘accident.’
They were wrong. If anything, she doubled her efforts to finish all the preparations in time.
Life was short. When good things came into your life you had to grab them and hang on tight. The wedding was the next good thing coming up and she wasn’t about to let go of it. Because then she’d have to let go of the next good thing after that, which was a honeymoon to Hawaii. Besides, Barbie would be super-pissed that her wedding gift went to waste.
Even if she said she wouldn’t be, under the circumstances.
“It’s not a big deal, Wren. People return wedding gifts all the time,” Barbie said. “Like when you get two of something.”
“Believe it or not, I did not receive two honeymoons to Hawaii. And even if I did, you know I’d return the other one and keep yours, right?”
“You’d better keep mine instead or we aren’t friends anymore,” she answered as she poured aqua-blue M&Ms into another organza bag. Wren never understood why people did Jordan almonds at weddings. They didn’t taste that great and they broke teeth. But chocolate M&Ms tasted better and didn’t break teeth so she, Barbie, Ellie, and Rochelle were now sitting around Ellie’s table filling little mesh bags for the reception tables.
Well, at least Wren and Barbie were filling them. Ellie and Rochelle kept stopping because they were laughing too hard every time Barbie or Wren opened their mouths. Now, however, Barbie was getting all serious, which annoyed Wren.
“I promise. I’m fine.” She looked at Ellie and Rochelle. “Tell her for the hundredth time that I am fine, please?”
“She really is,” Rochelle said as she reached for another bag. “Ellie and I have subjected her to non-stop cooked meals, flowers, and homemade talk-therapy and she survived it just fine.”
“Yes. The talk-therapy,” Wren said. “I’m being serious when I say it really did help, especially coming from you guys.”
“Voices of experience,” Ellie said. She set the big bag of M&Ms down as the color drained out of her face.
Wren reached across the table and grabbed Ellie’s hand. “Oh, Ellie, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”
Ellie pulled her hand away quickly and stood up. “No, it’s not that.” Then she dashed down the back hall and they heard a door slam. The other three women looked at each other, confused.
“I upset her, I totally upset her.”
Barbie shook her head. “She said it’s not that, Wrenbird.”
“No, it is. She’s too sweet to admit it, that’s all. I need to go apologize to her again.”
Wren pushed her chair back and stood. She hoped Ellie wouldn’t tell her to go away.
The door at the end of the hall opened and Ellie came back down the hall.
“Sorry,” she said, still looking pale. “Almost didn’t make it to the bathroom that time.”
“Stomach bug?” Wren walked around the table to get to Ellie. “I can run get some ginger ale. We have it stockpiled for the wedding.”
“There’s already some in the fridge. Bear stockpiled it, too, because I’m gonna need it.”
“Are you unwell? Oh no, not something serious, please.”
Ellie gave her a sheepish smile. “Well, serious for nine months or so.”
“Oh my God, I’m an idiot. You’re pregnant!” Wren pulled her into a hug as Barbie and Rochelle clapped and cheered.
“We wanted to wait until after the wedding to say anything. Didn’t want to steal the show.”
Wren pulled back and looked into her friend’s eyes. “It’s not stealing the show, it’s one more good thing adding to the joy.”
Wren couldn’t help but sing along with every song that came on the radio on the way home from Ellie’s. Her friend absolutely glowed once she started talking about all the plans she and Bear were making. He was even building her a rocking chair and a cradle for the baby. Ellie had caught him quietly singing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” to himself in his woodworking shop.
Such a softie under all the grump .
Wren sighed. She’d had her own grump for most of the week. No, that wasn’t fair, not at all. Elias hadn’t acted grumpy, especially toward her. He let her win all the laugh points. She couldn’t even finish a knock-knock joke without him already laughing and saying, ‘Another point for you.’
Totally fake.
Because when he’d thought no one was watching, he didn’t sing cute nursery rhymes. He brooded.
Of course it was related to what happened with Weisser. She knew the story, what he’d done to find and save her, because the police told her when she gave her statement. But it took three days before Wren could get Elias to tell her in his own words what happened.
They were lying in bed, after he’d given her a near-seizure-inducing orgasm. He thought she was asleep—those toe-curlers tended to knock her out—so he sighed and sat up at the edge of the bed, feet on the floor, head in hands.
“Are you upset because you killed someone?”
He lifted his head slowly. “Thought you were asleep, Scrubs.”
She scootched over to his side, laid her head on his pillow, breathing in his good scent, and wrapped her arms around his waist. He dropped his hand into her hair and gently ran his fingers down the strands, bringing on the tingles.
“So, are you?”
“No, babe. I’m not. He was going to kill you. He knew he was going to prison and made a break for it. If he had just disappeared,” Elias shrugged, “but he didn’t. He took you as a hostage. He could have grabbed anyone, but he took you. Because he wanted to be free and he wanted you dead.”
“You stopped him.”
He turned his head and studied her face in the moonlight. “Are you sure you want to talk about this? You already know what happened.”
“I want you to talk about it.”
“I don’t want to upset you.”
“Babe, I’m good. I’m alive, I’m getting married in less than two weeks to an incredible man, then I’m going with him to Hawaii where I will chain-drink Mai Tais on the beach and stuff my face with mahi-mahi at every meal.”
He grinned. “Even breakfast?”
“Yup. Mahi-mahi omelets. Mahi-mahi bacon. Mahi-mahi sausage.”
“I don’t think mahi-mahi bacon and sausage are a thing.”
“Well if they are, I’m filling my breakfast plate.” She shifted and sat up next to him. He wrapped his arm around her. “But first, I think you’re hanging on to what happened, and we only have a two-suitcase limit, so we are not bringing along that baggage. Talk to me, Elias. Get it out.”
He kissed her temple.
“We knew you had to be close by and that we had a better shot of finding you if the drone saw you. I just needed the numeric code to get into your phone. I know you’re a romantic, so the first number I tried was the date of our wedding.”
She smirked. “And it failed.”
“Yup it failed, and my heart stopped dead. And then I tried a second number.”
“The date we met.”
Elias grinned. “Yeah. And I was in. From there it went quick. The last frame of the last video the drone recorded was still on the screen. I scrolled back until the drone was hovering over the yard. We watched him take you.”
Elias paused, his jaw clenched, and Wren knew she’d done the right thing by making him talk it out or it would have festered.
“Bear called in to Ben right then. He knew about the logging road at the back edge of the property, so he and T-Wolf followed it on a hunch. They found an abandoned Beemer. Totally sketch. Not exactly something you go off-roading in.” Elias’ smile held no warmth at his joke.
“But thanks to the drone, we also saw where Weisser carried you into the woods— away from the car. If we hadn’t seen that, we would have assumed he was hiding somewhere in between the house and the logging trail, trying to get back to it.”
“Instead of the SUV he’d stolen and parked on a different logging road.”
He nodded.
“We put Willow on to your scent with the launch pad, then I looked for where Weisser entered the forest. I found it and I tracked him. Then at one point, Willow decided she wanted to go in a different direction from where I was tracking Weisser. She was insistent.”
“But you knew better.” Wren brushed a stray lock of hair off his forehead.
“It was a gamble. I gambled with your life.”
“No you didn’t.” She kissed his cheek. “You knew.”
“Shane, Bear, and Gabe let Willow take the lead off the other direction. They made noise, just enough to let Weisser know he was safely hidden. Waylon and I kept following his trail. Until we found you.” He grabbed his hair. “You were less than fifty feet from the SUV. He was so close to escaping with you.”
“But you saved me, Elias.”
He was quiet.
“Mission accomplished. So what are you carrying?”
“He never should have gotten near you.”
“And somehow you’re to blame?”
He nodded.
“Why?”
“He couldn’t get to Barbie or Kyla. He knew Kit Larson had dropped the story so he wasn’t interested in her. That left finding you. Well, finding Brooke Greene.”
Wren covered her face. “And I was stupid enough to think I could publish the photo essay and let Kyla interview me. He recognized my voice.” She shook her head. “I did the interview because I rationalized that he had ankle jewelry and was heading for prison. I didn’t think he even had much in the way of internet access. Stupid.”
Elias lowered her hand. “Not stupid, Wren. Weisser never should have been under house arrest. All it took was a two-dollar roll of tin foil to build a damn Faraday cage for the bracelet and block the real telecom signal. A spoofing service online pinged the police with fake messages telling them he was at home. The law failed you.”
“Yes, it did. So, why are you carrying their failure?”
Elias tensed. “After his arrest, he became fixated on you, thought you’d been watching him for years, waiting to destroy him. It’s all in his last journal.”
She tsked. “Gotta love a narcissist.”
“Wren.” Elias shook his head. “I never should have let you put yourself into danger like that.”
“Pfffth. You couldn’t have stopped me.”
“Wren—”
“No, Elias, listen. If you had told me I couldn’t, I would have ignored you and done it anyway. Then, you would’ve been mad and we’d have broken up. But nothing would have changed with Weisser. Except for the ending. He would’ve still found me and kidnapped me. But I’d be dead now. Or worse, I’d be with him on the run.”
She gently clasped his chin and turned his head so he was looking her in the eye. “But you respected my decision. You supported me. You saved me. And bonus, Weisser won’t be stealing money from sick people anymore. Now it’s Mai Tais and mahi-mahi time for me and you, baby.” She smiled at him.
“One thing you got wrong though, Scrubs.”
“What’s that?”
“I never would have broken up with you. Never.”
Wren pulled up in front of her home. Chuck and Penny were looking out the window, tails wagging. She jogged to the door and let herself in. Elias was at the stove, and something smelled amazing.
“Guess what? Ellie and Bear are pregnant!” She did a little dance in place.
Elias smiled. “Little Bear cub.”
“Little Bear and Ellie cub, mister. She’s doing the heavy lifting.” Wren crossed the kitchen and wrapped her arms around Elias from behind.
“Looks like you’re excited about it, Scrubs.”
“How could you tell? I’d better be the first person they call for babysitting. Of course, if they’re smart, they won’t because I’ll spoil the little cubby rotten.”
“You’re good with kids,” Elias said.
“Why, thank you.”
“You like them.”
“Uh, kinda goes along with being good with them.”
“How about your own?” Elias said softly.
“My…own?”
“Well. Ours. But you’d be doing the heavy lifting.”
Wren’s heart lit up. “You saying you want kids? Little Lion cubs of our own?”
“Yeah. That’s what I’m saying.”
“I do, too.”
After that, Elias stopped brooding completely.
“No, you can’t make me.”
“Wren, come on.”
“I am not going in there. I value my life too much.”
“Wren.”
“Barbie.”
Wren watched her bestie roll her eyes. So did the receptionist—sorry, the concierge—in the fancy new building. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Barbie from the moment they walked through the door.
More like from the moment Barbie pushed Wren practically kicking and screaming through the door.
“I already spoke with him, Wren. He’s going to apologize profusely, and then Serge will be giving you free acupuncture sessions for the rest of your life.”
“The rest of my life? So I’ll get half a session then.”
“Stop it. We’ll go together and he can work on both of us.”
“Wow, I had no idea you were into murder-suicide.”
“Nothing’s going to happen. The fire was a freak accident in an old building.” Barbie spread her arms and took in the three-story atrium, the huge windows, the ugly, expensive art on the walls. This place is so nice .”
“Serge is ready for you now,” the concierge said. “I’ll take you to his studio.”
“Thank you,” Barbie told him, much to the man’s pleasure.
They followed him down a hall filled with ambient light. The sound of windchimes and rain came from some unknown source.
“This looks like the tunnel to the afterlife.”
Barbie ignored her.
“I smell smoke. Do you smell smoke?”
Barbie slapped her arm. “Stop it. Behave.”
The concierge stopped at one of the closed doors, gave them a little bow, and returned to the lobby.
Barbie turned to Wren. “You’re hilarious when you’re anxious.”
“I know. I swear, you put me in anxiety-inducing situations just to get new material.”
“I won’t deny that. After everything you’ve just been through, I can’t believe this is freaking you out.”
The door opened and a very repentant-looking Serge invited them in.
An hour later, Wren practically floated out into the hallway. Her body felt incredible.
“Did I not tell you?” Barbie said. “Little darts of love.”
“You did.”
“It was very sweet of you to invite him to the wedding tomorrow.”
“Are you kidding? He’s coming with us on the honeymoon.”
The next morning, the morning of her wedding, Wren stood in Ellie’s bedroom and listened to the murmur of people gathered outside while Ellie flitted around her, smoothing out her dress here and securing her updo with another bobby pin there.
“Beautiful,” Ellie declared when she finally stepped back and looked her up and down. “Are you ready?”
Wren looked at herself in the full-length mirror. Yes, the dress was gorgeous, her hair looked great, makeup was perfect. But it was her eyes that drew her attention. They looked calm. Not the least bit anxious.
No joke .
She watched herself nod. “I’m ready.” She turned and looked at Ellie, so pretty in her bridesmaid dress. “Let’s go.”
The other bridesmaids—Rochelle, April, Wren’s college roommate Mary, and Barbie—were waiting in the front room with Wren’s mom and stepmom, who both burst into happy tears the second they saw her.
Someone knocked on the door and Barbie opened it. Ben stepped inside.
“Excuse me. It’s almost time. May I escort you to your seats?” he asked the moms, who were more than happy to each take one of his massive, muscular arms and let him lead them out the door.
Music drifted in through the window a few minutes later.
“That’s our cue,” Ellie said. “Everybody line up.” Wren stepped back out of the way of her bridesmaids. Ellie opened the door, and one by one, they paired off with one of Elias’ groomsmen waiting on the front porch, until Wren was left alone inside. The music changed to the Bridal March. Her dad and stepdad smiled at her, both ready to walk her down the aisle.
All the guests stood and turned to watch Wren. She only had eyes for one man standing up front, smiling at her and waiting patiently.
And that’s when she knew.
This good thing was going to last a lifetime.