The Wedding Audition (20 page)

Hiding.

To a certain extent, that was a good thing. He’d kept a low profile to stay alive because his testimony was crucial. But with two weeks before the trial, maybe he owed Antony Marks better than just sitting around waiting for his day in court. He could be preparing his statement. Studying the evidence. Moving to a safe house in Miami sooner than the Dimitri family expected so he’d be harder to track…

Setting aside the cat, he pulled another untraceable phone from the bin under the desk and called his contact.

Annamae was right. They couldn’t put their head in the sand and hope for the best. There was a time to plan and regroup, yes. But there was also a time to act. And when Annamae had realized that time had come for her, he’d… sure been an ass about it.

When his contact answered, Wynn cleared his throat.

“I’m ready to come in.”

An awkward silence followed.

“Already?” his contact said carefully. “You know the code?”

Wynn reeled off the message that assured he wasn’t under duress. Impatient now that he’d made up his mind, he went upstairs and started to put some clothes in a bag. It felt strange thinking about leaving this place where he’d spent so much time. Invested a lot of hard work.

“I’d like the case files sent to the safe house so I can begin my review.” He would make sure Antony’s voice was heard.

“Sure. Of course. And we’ll get you back on the payroll as soon as you’re in the city limits.” His contact went through a few other details—routine meetings he’d need to attend, Human Resources hoops he’d have to jump through.

He listened with half an ear, his focus on the case. He’d worry about returning to work once he got justice for Antony. Doing right by that kid felt like the most important thing he’d ever done in his career.

Reaching for the alarm clock on the nightstand, he knocked over the book on grafting trees—the one Annamae had been reading. She’d figured out how to coax new life out of dried-up old things faster than him. He shouldn’t have held that against her.

“How soon can I expect an escort?” Wynn asked finally, tossing the book in his overnight bag.

“I can have someone there in an hour if that works for you.”

An hour? That seemed quick. Maybe his contact was wary about the attention Annamae had stirred up and had placed an escort on standby, just in case.

Could he gather up his life in that amount of time?

Peering around the sparse bedroom, he realized he was already packed. He’d just need to figure out what to do with an army of cats. They’d lived on mice before he arrived, but that hardly seemed fair to consign them to now that they’d known the high life that was Meow Mix.

He’d pay Roofus or Gus or someone to come out to the farm and feed the felines. Check up on them until he figured out what to do with this place.

“An hour works for me.” He went still, hearing something outside.

Annamae? It wouldn’t be her or the alarm would have gone off.

“Affirmative.” His contact disconnected the call.

Wynn went to the window overlooking the carriage house. He didn’t see anything. But the hair on the back of his neck rose, an undeniable sense something was off.

He stepped lightly into the hallway. Listened.

A gunshot sounded. Glass shattered somewhere downstairs. Wynn hit the floor.

*

Did growing a
backbone require a broken heart?

Annamae felt like hers were closely intertwined as she drove toward the Beulah town line, passing azalea bushes in bloom along a white fence with a sign announcing dates for baseball tryouts at a local park. A lazy day in Beulah, not many people out other than some motorcyclist they’d passed a few miles back.

What she wouldn’t have given to take a scenic ride on the back of a bike with her arms around Wynn’s waist. To just soak up the sun and the scents of Beulah. Soak up more time with him.

She wished she could have seen more of the town with him while she’d been here. Then again, she wouldn’t have minded holing up on the farm with him for weeks on end either. It had taken all her courage to leave a place where she felt genuinely happy.

But was it the place, or was it the man?
a little voice in her head asked.

Both, if she was honest. But far more than the man. After all the weeks of questioning herself about Boone and if she loved him enough to marry him, it seemed ironic that she didn’t question what she felt for Wynn. Questioned if it was crazy, maybe. But she didn’t question if it was real. It was the first real thing in her life in years. And here she was, driving away from him.

She’d fallen for him hard.

“Grandma?” She clutched the steering wheel harder as she slowed for a parade of kids on bicycles, waving homemade flags and dragging stuffed animals in wagons and backpacks.

“Hmm?” Hazel Mae waved to a little boy at the end of the pack. He waved back so hard he forgot to pedal and an annoyed older girl had to yell at him to get moving.

“Do you believe in love at first sight?”

“Thinking about Mr. Lambert without his shirt, aren’t you?” her grandmother teased as Annamae continued to head east.

“I just feel bad that I didn’t love a guy like Boone who seemed so perfect for me. And yet my surly apple farmer is all kinds of wrong, and yet I felt something strong for him right away.”

“First of all, honey, you loved your baseball player. Just not enough to marry him. That’s why you worried about that marriage. You knew you hadn’t really reached your full potential for caring about someone. They say when it’s right, you know. And now you understand what that means, don’t you?”

“Did you ever love someone that way?” She glanced sideways. She’d never heard anything about Hazel being married. “Don’t answer that if it’s too personal.”

“I don’t mind answering.” Her grandmother kept Bagel on her lap for the ride, stroking his ears. “Your grandfather was the love of my life. A fiddle player in a country band who became a big deal in the music business.”

“Seriously? My friend Lindsey—the girl whose wedding we’re going to attend—her family is in the country music business. Maybe granddad will be at the wedding.”

Hazel laughed. “Water under the bridge now! He probably had a girl in every town. But I was his Alabama sweetheart, that’s the truth. We both knew when it was time to move on, but I could tell he didn’t feel about me the way I did about him. I envied your mother that—my son was as crazy about her as she was about him—but your mama wanted more than love.”

“She needed security.” Annamae could understand that—kind of.

“You had the option of security, but you didn’t take it. You were looking for that big, make-your-heart-beat faster love.” Hazel nuzzled the top of Bagel’s head. “What I wonder is, did you find it?”

Had she?

Wynn didn’t seem like he’d ever been interested in a future with her beyond his trial. But maybe he needed to get through that point in his life as desperately as she needed to set things right back home.

“There’s the Sleep Tight Motor Lodge.” She pointed out the gas station where Gus Fields worked and she had an idea. “Do you mind if we stop for a minute?”

“Of course not, sweetie. Although don’t think I didn’t notice how neatly you avoided my question about your feelings for a certain apple farmer.” She sent her a knowing look.

Pulling into the gas station lot, she noticed a moped pulling away from the pump, turning onto the street and whizzing away. Just a little bike, but it made her think of the motorcycle she’d passed on the road earlier, her vision blurred then by held-back tears. “There’s a parking spot there, dear,” Hazel was saying, but Annamae kept staring where the moped puttered down on the county route she’d just turned off. And she scrounged harder through her mind about that motorcycle from earlier. Why did it bother her?

Perhaps because it had been dark, like her mood? Sort of ninja looking, like something out of a movie car chase scene and not what you’d see tooling around a small town at this hour.

Or at all.

And then it hit her. The biker had a backpack with the long handles of a pair of pruning shear sticking out, glinting in the morning sunlight. She’d assumed he was just a local doing some landscaping work … but now.

“Oh my God.” Recognition hit. “That’s the guy.”

“What guy?” Hazel sat up straighter. “Is he cute?”

Heart racing, Annamae jammed the Beetle into a spot. “A guy who’s been watching Wynn. I mean, Heath. That is, I think he wants to hurt him.”

She hadn’t seen his face, but she knew in her gut that the man on that motorcycle was the one who’d followed her that first day she’d arrived in town. The one who’d been pruning outside Wynn’s fence at the orchard. Someone who wanted to silence Wynn before he could testify against a prominent killer. She didn’t even stop to wonder why he hadn’t made a move sooner or how she was so sure.

She dug in her purse for her cell phone, not caring about locators or tracking. In fact, she needed the world to know her whereabouts this instant. If she were wrong, Wynn would say she was impulsive and rash. If she was right, Wynn could be dead.

“Who are you talking about, Annamae?” Her grandmother sounded lost.

Annamae’s brain sped so fast she couldn’t act quickly enough to do all the things that needed doing. Fear blasted in her veins. So much adrenaline shot through her she thought she might faint. She felt dizzy. Scared.

But oh God, she needed to save Wynn.

And that thought was enough to steady her thoughts. To spring her into action.

He didn’t pick up her call though. She’d memorized the number for one of the pre-paids, but he might not even have it turned on. She’d left without any sure way to get in touch with him.

“Please, Grandma. Take Bagel inside. I need to get help for my apple farmer. I just saw a man who wants to kill him.”

And, proving they were absolutely cut from the same cloth, Hazel Mae moved faster than Annamae had ever seen her. She had Bagel in her arms and hurried into the station near the Sleep Tight Motor Lodge just a few steps behind Annamae.

“Mr. Fields!” Annamae waved to Gus where he sat behind the counter with his feet up, watching old Western movies on his iPad. “Please. I need help. Send the police to Heath’s farm. There’s someone after him, someone who wants him dead. And call the media. Tell them the same thing. Tell them Annamae Jessup said so.”

The older man frowned, searching her face. “You sure?”

“Please.” Tears burned her eyes. She needed to leave now. “Grandma, call Mom. Tell her to get the story out.
Right
now
.”

She tossed the last of her prepaid phones onto the lodge’s checkout desk for her grandmother to use. Then, not wasting another precious second, she shoved out the motel doors and raced back to the Beetle.

She would never catch up with that motorcycle. She knew that even as she floored the gas and tore through town. She prayed a cop would chase her and follow her right to the farm, but no one did. When she got to the gate at the back entrance of the farm, the chicken wire and barbed wire had been cut, the barrier drooping open. Alarms were blaring like crazy.

No. No. No.

She could not lose the man she loved this way. She was setting everything to right in her life, not screwing up anymore. Leaving Boone had hurt him and her family. But what if leaving Wynn had cost him his life?

She saw the motorcycle parked in the bushes close to the farmhouse, but all the rest of the farm remained eerily silent. Terrifyingly so. Jamming the Beetle into park, she prayed the cops would come soon. Or a fleet of paparazzi who would document every moment of this showdown.

Assuming she wasn’t too late…

Gut cramping, she sprinted out of the car and filched the pruning shears off the back of the motorcycle as she sprinted past toward Wynn’s house.

Should she be running in a zig zag? That’s what you did if someone was shooting at you. She knew that from TV, but that was all she knew about bad guys.

That and that they drove ninja motorcycles in the daytime.

Yes, she was hysterical. She had to bite her lip to swallow a crazed laugh as she crept into the house and listened…

Grunts and snarled breathing sounded somewhere in the back of the house.

She fast-walked over broken glass as silently as she could. A cat meowed at her as she passed the kitchen and stepped into the living room.

Wynn was grappling with the intruder on the floor, their hands locked on each other’s throats. Their faces red from lack of air and smeared blood—she couldn’t tell whose.

Fear and doubt vanished. Certainty gave her strength. Purpose. Clarity.

She hauled back the pruning shears and landed a blow to the biker guy’s back. Collapsing him into a heap on the carpet beside Wynn.

“Are you okay?” She tossed aside the garden tool. Shoved at the biker dude’s black leather jacket to free Wynn. “Please say you’re okay.”

His eyes tracked her as she moved. That had to be a good thing. But he didn’t sit up yet.

“Better than okay.” His voice was hoarse. “I’m one hundred percent good because you’re here. Except why are you here?”