Third Time's the Bride! (13 page)

Before Dawn’s startled father could recover from that faint praise, the doorbell rang again. Brian had his game face on when he greeted Joe Russo and Carlo di Lorenzo, but he’d shared too many tense hours with these men—and too much of the produce from Carlo’s family vineyard—to pull off a smiling facade.

After a pointed exchange of glances, Carlo and Joe maneuvered Brian to a quiet corner. A jerk of Carlo’s chin brought Travis over to join them. Sequestered from the crowd, Joe cut right to the point.

“All right, Ellis. What’s going on?”

Brian didn’t even try to dissemble. “Dawn left to run an errand a little past eleven this morning. We haven’t heard from her since.” His Adam’s apple worked. “I’m worried she may have been in an accident. Can you have your people run a check of every hospital in the area, Joe?”

Russo had already whipped out his cell phone. “Consider it done. I’ll also have them check with the police.”

Mere seconds later, he connected to his command center and relayed the basics. “Dawn McGill. We ran a background check on her a few weeks ago. Right,” he said after a few moments. “Red hair. Green eyes. Five foot seven. One-fifteen or thereabouts. No tattoos. Other distinguishing marks or characteristics...”

He looked to Brian, brows raised.

“A small, round birthmark on her inner thigh. And different-colored polish on her toenails. Hey,” he said in response to three surprised looks, “I think it’s distinguishing.”

Brows still elevated, Joe barked out another question. “What was she driving?”

“Her red Mustang.”

“Year?”

“2013.”

The terse reply came from Kate, who’d drifted over to infiltrate the all-male enclave.

“Dawn bought it used,” she informed the men, “but she’d wipe off every bit of bird poop or rain spot the moment they hit.”

Joe relayed the information, then told the person on the line to hold. “Where was she headed when she left the house?”

“To the pet store at the mall.”

His scarred face went blank. “A pet store?”

“Long story,” Brian said impatiently, “and not important.”

Joe conceded the point with a look that said they’d come back to it later if necessary and turned to Kate. “What mall was she going to?”

“The closest one, I assume.”

“Never assume anything.”

The security expert looked grim enough under normal circumstances. When his mouth tightened and the scar running from his cheek to his chin thinned to a red, angry line, he could make anyone back up a pace or two.

“Which mall?” he asked again.

“I... Uh...” Gulping, Kate managed to stand her ground. Barely. “I don’t know.”

“Does Callie?”

“I don’t think so...” She stopped, her cheeks flushing. “She might.”

Spinning, she caught her friend’s attention and hooked a finger. Callie murmured polite excuses to the minister and joined their small group. At her questioning glance, Joe held up his phone.

“I’ve got the head of my domestic investigations division on the line. He’s going to track Dawn. Do you know which mall she was going to?”

“She didn’t say.”

“What was she wearing when she left the house?”

“Jeans and... Oh, God!”

Like a digital portrait suddenly washed of all color, Callie’s face went dead white. She reached out, took Kate’s hand in a bone-crushing grip and turned an agonized look on Brian.

“You think she’s been in an accident?”

“That’s what we’re trying to rule out,” he answered evenly. “Can you remember what she was wearing?”

Callie’s stomach must have been churning with the same fear now pumping acid into Brian’s, but he had to admire the way she pulled herself together. She dragged in a steadying breath and locked her eyes on Joe.

“She was wearing jeans. A long-sleeved black top. A bulky, cream-colored cardigan with oversize brown buttons.”

Joe flashed her an approving glance and relayed the information. “Right,” he said after a brief pause. “All the hospitals. DC, Virginia and Maryland. Get back to me ASAP.”

When he cut the connection, a vicious onslaught of memories hit Brian. Ambulances. Emergency rooms. The oncologists who’d pored over Caroline’s scans. The nurses who’d administered ever increasing dosages of morphine. The physical therapists who’d showed him how to turn his wife to prevent bedsores, how to exercise her arms and legs when she’d lost the ability to move them herself.

His gut twisting, he shoved the memories out of his head. This was about Dawn. Only Dawn. He started to ask Joe what else they could do, but Carlo beat him to the punch.

“Joe will find her,” the prince assured Kate and Callie. “He is the best, yes? Travis and I learned this firsthand, when we and our crews flew in to rescue the newsmen captured by Boko Haram.” The prince screwed up his face, his lips thin under his mustache. “Our military intel completely underestimated the rebels’ strength. If not for the flash update Joe’s people sent, we would not have gotten off the ground before the bastards overran the airstrip.”

Kate had heard a brief recount of the near-fatal disaster in Italy. The retelling tripled her relief that her husband, at least, wouldn’t be flying in and out of dirt airstrips under a hail of enemy fire.

“While your people are doing their thing,” she said to Joe, “what can
we
do?”

He looked over her shoulder. “You can head them off at the pass.”

Kate turned and groaned when she saw the McGill clan bearing down on them like avenging angels. She moved to intercept them, but Maureen dodged around her.

Her voice was sharp and brittle as she quizzed Joe. “We saw you on the phone. Was that Dawn you were speaking to? Where is she? Has she pulled another disappearing act?”

“No, that wasn’t Dawn. And no, I don’t know where she is. But I assure you she hasn’t pulled a disappearing act.”

“How do you
know
?”

Her fierce demand rang through the room. Brian glanced at his son, saw Tommy’s face begin to pucker and forced a calm he was far from feeling.

“Let me ask you this, Mrs. McGill. Did Dawn just ‘disappear’ before? Or did she tell you that she’d changed her mind?”

“She told us, but...”

“All of you? Including her fiancés?”

“Of course! My husband...” She caught herself and made a quick correction. “My ex-husband and I may have had our differences over the years...”

“
May
have had?”

Kate’s disbelieving snort brought Dawn’s dad forward to take the flack.

“It’s true. We provided the worst possible example for our kids.” Sadness and regret rippled across his lined face as he reached out and gripped his former wife’s hand. Startled, Maureen glanced down, but made only a feeble attempt to pull away.

“If Dawn learned nothing else from our years of fighting,” he continued, “it was to admit her mistakes. She, at least, had the courage to face the two men she thought she was in love with, tell them the truth and get on with her life.”

His glance shifted from Brian to Tommy. A smile creased his worn cheeks. “Dawn told me this time is for real. No doubts, no worries, no last-minute realization that she’d misjudged her heart. She loves you, son. You and your dad. You two are all she wants in this...”

The shrill buzz of a phone cut him off. Brian snatched up the house phone, glanced at caller ID and felt his bones freeze.

“It’s the police.”

None of the assembled guests made a sound as he hit Talk.

“Ellis.”

He gripped the phone, his fist tight, as every muscle in his body went taut.

“Talk slower! I can’t understand...
What?
”

The silence in the room was thunderous. No one breathed, no one uttered a word as Brian shot Joe Russo a quick look.

“Yeah, he’s here.”

Stunned, he dropped his hand and stared at the phone in disbelief for a few second before handing it to Russo. “It’s Dawn. She’s in jail. She wants to talk to you.”

Chapter Thirteen

B
rian was just handing Joe his phone when a short, sharp buzz cut through the stunned silence. Russo checked his own cell and took all of three seconds to skim a text before putting Brian’s phone to his ear.

The listeners crowded around him heard only one side of the conversation that followed. As always, Joe’s method of communication was succinct to the point of being in code.

“Russo...Right...Right...Put him on.”

After a brief pause, he identified himself again.

“It’s Joe...Yeah. Long time. What’s the charge?” His gray eyes shuttered, he listened for several moments before terminating the call with a clipped, “On my way.”

He handed back the phone and swept the small crowd with a quick glance. He knew half the people present. Brian, Travis and Carlo from Italy, along with Callie, Kate and Brian’s son, Tom. Several others he’d met at the dinner last night. The rest were strangers. As far as Joe was concerned, only one of them had any business hearing what he had to report.

“Where can we talk?” he asked Brian.

“My study.”

When the two men wheeled and started for the door, an instant chorus of protests erupted.

“Wait!”

“Why’s my daughter in jail?”

“What’s going on?”

Brian swung back and cut them off. “I’ll tell you when
I
know what’s going on.”

He closed the study door behind him, swept by an overwhelming sense of relief. Dawn wasn’t dead, she wasn’t in the hospital, and from the little he’d been able to gather from her first few jumbled sentences, she hadn’t skipped out on their wedding. With the big three not in play, he could handle anything else.

“Okay, tell me.”

“My folks tracked her to the Bethesda District Police Station on Wisconsin Avenue. They talked to the detective working her case, got him to let her make a call.”

“What case? What do they think she’s done?”

“They’re holding her on a possible charge of kidnapping.”

“What?”
Brian’s jaw sagged, snapped back. “Who’s she supposed to have kidnapped?”

“A four-year-old child.”

“No way!” The counter was flat, fast and unequivocal. “Anyone who thinks Dawn would snatch a child has their head up their ass.”

“Chico—the detective I just talked to—is an old buddy,” Joe said mildly. “We used to carry the same badge.”

“You were a cop?”

As much time as Brian and Travis and Carlo had spent with Joe in Italy, they knew little about him. Only that he was a hired gun who’d gone into places the conventional forces couldn’t, and now headed one of the world’s top private security services.

“A military cop,” Russo clarified. “For a while. Chico’s a good man. He’ll sort through the conflicting stories.”

“Whose conflicting stories?”

“I didn’t get all the details. Only that Dawn claims to have found the little girl wandering by herself and wanted to help her. The mother, who’s evidently still pretty hysterical, claims Dawn lured the girl away with candy, intending to take her.”

He paused, eyed Brian carefully. “Doesn’t help that when the responding officers got all parties involved to the precinct and discovered Dawn has an arrest record.”

The news sent Brian back a step. A dozen wild possibilities rocketed through his head. None of them tracked to the woman he knew.

“My folks should have turned up the arrest when they ran the background check for you,” Joe said, clearly not happy. “I’ll talk to them about that. In the meantime, I need you to tell me what got her arrested. Cops, especially tough cops like Chico, tend to take a less than sympathetic view of perps with records.”

“I don’t know anything about it.”

“Who does?”

“Kate,” Brian answered instantly, “and Callie.”

“Better get them in here.”

Separating the two women from the rest of the herd proved impossible. Brian was forced to return with them plus Travis, Carlo and Dawn’s brother, mother and father.

Joe didn’t waste time protesting. “Okay, fill in the blanks and do it quick. Dawn left the house at...?”

“Eleven fifteen,” Kate supplied, recalling his previous admonition to stick to facts and not suppositions. “I saw her car going around the corner when I drove up and glanced at the clock, wondering where she was going.”

“Which was...?”

“To the pet store in the mall,” Callie answered. “To buy a brush for the dog?”

Joe’s brows snapped together. “What dog?”

“We got Tommy a puppy,” Brian explained. “It’s a wedding present from Dawn and me. Our neighbors are keeping it until we can spring it on him.”

“Okay, so that tracks. Chico—the detective working her case—confirms she was picked up at the mall.”

“Why?” Maureen snapped. “What did my daughter do?”

Joe shot Brian a glance, got his reluctant nod and relayed the bare bones of the situation. As expected, protests and exclamations and denials pelted him from all sides. He cut them off with a brusque chop of one hand.

“We all know the charge is bogus. Problem is the police have a hysterical mother who says otherwise. They’ve also dug up Dawn’s previous record. Someone tell me, and tell me quick, what she was arrested for.”

The McGills’ thunderstruck expressions told Joe they had no idea. Same with the blank looks on Travis’s and Carlo’s faces. He didn’t miss the quick glance Callie and Kate exchanged, however.

“Talk to me, dammit!”

The barked command brought Kate’s chin up. Even Callie’s eyes frosted.

“What did she do,” he fired at them, “and when?”

“What she did,” Kate bit out, “was agree to reimburse her last fiancé for all expenses related to the extravagant wedding
he’d
insisted on. The nonrefundable catering deposits, the tuxedo rentals, the airline tickets and even the cancellation fees for the thousand-dollar-a night, over-water bungalow he’d reserved for a surprise honeymoon in Tahiti. Some surprise! It took her more than a year to pay off all the sunk costs.”

“But that wasn’t good enough for the bastard,” Callie interjected with uncharacteristic ferocity. “He wanted revenge. Complete humiliation.”

“So he filed a complaint in small-claims court alleging Dawn had run up all those thousands of dollars on his American Express card without his permission,” Kate continued savagely. “She didn’t even know about the complaint! Some clerk supposedly sent a notice directing her to appear and respond to the charge. If so, Dawn didn’t get it. Her first clue about the whole mess was when two police officers showed up at her door with a bench warrant for her ‘failure to appear’ and hauled her off in handcuffs.”

Still breathing fire, Callie picked up the saga again. “It cost her big bucks in attorney’s fees, but her lawyer was able to produce credit card receipts and contract signatures that proved Dawn had never charged
anything
to that jerk’s American Express. The judge dismissed the complaint. The arrest should have been amended to show that.”

“
Should
being the operative word,” Joe said. “Give me the name of the attorney and the date this all happened, and I’ll get my people on it.”

He texted the information as Kate and Callie supplied it, then nodded to Brian. “Okay, let’s get down there and see what we can do to straighten out this obvious misunderstanding.”

“I’ll go with you.” Callie spun on her heel and joined the two men as they made for the door. When Joe started to protest, she cut him off with an icy stare. “I’ve spent more hours with hysterical parents and officials from Child Protective Services than I can count. I’m coming with you.”

“Me, too.” Kate was right beside her. “Don’t even
try
to stop me. Dawn’s always been there when Callie or I needed her. Always!”

When the McGills started for the door as well, Brian stopped the stampede with a terse command.

“Hold it right there, folks. Joe and I and Callie are going down to the precinct. Maureen, you and Aaron and Phil can help my folks keep an eye on Tommy. Kate, I need you and Travis and Carlo to keep the other guests entertained. Stuff ’em to their ears with shrimp and champagne if you have to, but hold them here. This is one wedding that’s
not
being called off.”

He said essentially the same thing in much milder terms to the small crowd milling in the den.

“The good news is Dawn’s gotten mixed up in what sounds like a complete misunderstanding,” he told them. “No one’s been injured, no one’s run off. The bad news is it may take an hour or two to straighten it out. If you can, please stay until we get back. The show will be a little late, but it’ll go on.”

Although impatience bit at him like fire ants on the march, Brian took another few moments to reassure his obviously worried son.

“We’ll only be a little while, bud. Why don’t you and Cindy challenge Addy to a battle of Garden Zombies?”

“Okay.” Tommy’s chin quivered above the neon-bright dinosaur tie. “Dawn’s coming back, isn’t she?”

“You bet.”

“How...?” His voice wobbled. “How do you know?”

“Because she and I have a very special present for you. No way she’s going to miss being here when you open it.”

“Really? What is it?”

“You’ll find out when we get back. I gotta go. Be good.”

* * *

Dawn felt as if she was reliving her worst nightmare.

Calling off her first wedding had been rough enough. The second still ranked as a natural disaster of epic proportions. But Brian... Tommy...

She paced the small interview room like a caged cat. The gray, windowless room smelled of old sweat and desperation. She’d contributed to the tang these past hours but barely noticed the less than subtle scent that now clung to her. All she could think of, all that mattered was the hurt and embarrassment she was putting Brian and Tommy through. Just because she’d let her mother play on her skittering nerves and drive her out of the house.

No!

She stopped pacing and grabbed the back of the gray metal chair that sat facing two others across a scarred table.

She couldn’t blame those jumpy nerves on her mother.
She
was the one who’d dived into two previous engagements.
She’d
wiggled out of them, wounding two unsuspecting men in the process. And
she’d
been so damned determined not to do the same to Brian and Tommy that she’d worked herself into a state of near panic. Furious with herself, she banged a clenched fist on the top of the chair.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

The door to the interview room opened midway through her verbal self-flagellation. The tall, square-shouldered Latino detective who’d been questioning her for what now felt like days lifted one inky eyebrow.

“You referring to me?”

“To myself. I can’t believe I...” She caught sight of the man behind him and let out a squeal. “Joe! Thank God! Will you
please
tell Detective Ramirez I’m not a child molester or kidnapper?”

“Already have.”

Her glance locked on the curly-haired detective. “You believe him, right? And me?”

“I’m getting there.”

That wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “Oh, for...! Joe, you have to convince him I’m not a felon. Okay, I was arrested, but the charges were...”

“Bogus. He knows.”

“I know now,” Ramirez drawled, scraping a palm across his thickening five o’clock shadow. “Needed confirmation, though.”

“Took you long enough,” Dawn retorted.

He shrugged off the sarcasm. “It was your word against the little girl’s mother. She claimed her ex had hired someone else to try and snatch his daughter. We had to run her statements against yours. It didn’t help that you had an arrest record. Or that she kept changing her story.”

“With good reason,” Joe said before Dawn could fire up again. “Per Callie’s suggestion, Chico—Detective Ramirez—contacted the child advocate assigned to protect the little girl’s interests during her parents’ divorce hearing.”

Callie! Bless you, girlfriend!

Dawn sent the fervent benediction winging through the air as Ramirez picked up the thread.

“What took so long,” he said with a mocking smile, “was that the advocate had to get permission to discuss the case with me.”

Okay, Dawn would give him that one. Callie rarely talked about her work. Those damned emails being a case in point. The little she had shared, though, underscored her absolute commitment to protecting the privacy of her young clients.

Still, Dawn would be a long time forgetting her hours in this stuffy, windowless room. “Go on,” she instructed Ramirez with something less than graciousness.

“The advocate pretty well confirmed that the mother is the problem, not the father. Turns out she’s been reported for leaving her daughter in a car with the engine running. Also for failing to pick the girl up at the babysitter’s for three days running.”

“And she still retains custody?” Dawn asked incredulously.

“Not for long, I suspect. Especially after your friend, Ms. Langston, suggested the mother may have brought these wild accusations against you to divert attention from the fact that she let her daughter wander off.”

He scraped his chin again, looking as disgusted by the situation as Dawn felt.

“We posed that theory to the mother a few moments ago. She ranted and raved and got all hysterical again but finally admitted she’d been flirting with a shoe salesman. She never even thought about her daughter until she walked out of the store and saw the girl with you. Then she just...”

“Panicked,” Dawn finished.

Sighing, she felt her rancor seep away. She couldn’t help feeling a grudging kinship with the little girl’s mom. They’d both given in to an irrational impulse.

Dawn’s didn’t carry the same serious consequences as an accusation of kidnapping. All she’d wanted was a brief escape. A chance to catch her breath and calm her jittery nerves. Yet that dash to the mall had destroyed the joy she’d planned to share with Brian and Tommy, her friends, her family.

Suddenly achingly tired, she drew in a ragged breath. All she wanted now was out of this airless room. “Can I go now?”

“You can,” Ramirez confirmed. “We’ve got your address and telephone number. We’ll contact you if we need any further details.”