“We don’t know what the hell this is...”
And looking around Stephen’s place didn’t reveal any more clues. There was no blood here. No signs of a scuffle at all.
There was a suitcase open on Stephen’s bed. But he hadn’t packed it as Tanya had hers—for their honeymoon. Had he changed his mind? Had he gotten cold feet?
There were no pictures of his fiancée in Stephen’s bedroom. The only photo of her anywhere was in the second bedroom that he must have used as an office. It wasn’t even the engagement photo of the two of them. It was a photo of the three of them—Stephen, Tanya and him—at their high school graduation, clad in their caps and gowns. He and Stephen had worn maroon and Tanya was in white, standing in the middle of the men, like a candle in the dark.
Had she come between them literally? Maybe it was simple jealousy that had brought on Cooper’s doubts...
“Nice picture,” Parker said. “I noticed it earlier.”
“It’s old.” And staring at it made Cooper feel old. “Where are the recent photos of them? Of Tanya?”
“Maybe on his phone?” Parker mused. “I take them with mine and never bother printing them off.”
Cooper nodded. He did the same when he cared enough about something to take photos, like of his squad. Or some of the Afghani children. Or the countryside that had actually been quite beautiful...
“Nobody found his phone,” Cooper recalled.
“It must be with him.”
Or with his body.
“Nikki’s been trying to track the GPS on it. But she hasn’t been able to pick up anything. Maybe the battery’s been removed.”
“Or the phone destroyed...”
“You don’t think he’s been kidnapped,” Parker said.
He shrugged. “I don’t know what to think.” Or maybe he was afraid to think it. But a lot of years had passed since that graduation picture. He wasn’t the same person he’d been back then. Probably neither was Tanya or Stephen...
“You’re not going to find any answers here,” Parker said, tucking the laptop under his arm. “We need to get you to that safe house before Logan loses it.” His cell phone started to play music. “Speak of the devil...”
Cooper laughed since Parker’s ringtone for his twin was ‟Sympathy for the Devil.” He pulled the door closed and followed Parker down the hall to the elevator.
“We’ll be there in a little while,” he assured his twin. “We stopped back at Stephen’s. No, we didn’t really think he’d show up there...” He rolled his eyes at Cooper as the argument continued.
Apparently, the years hadn’t changed Logan or Parker, they still fought like the teenage girls Cooper had once accused them of being. He was still grinning over that memory when they stepped off the elevator and crossed the foyer to the outside doors.
A strange sensation chased up and down Cooper’s spine and he hesitated before pushing open the doors. But Parker, perhaps distracted with his call, didn’t notice Cooper’s hesitation, and he continued through them into the dimly lit parking lot.
Cooper had learned long ago to heed his instincts, so he reached for his gun. But before he could draw it from its holster, shots rang out.
Tanya jerked awake to darkness. But she was not alone. She heard a voice—a deep voice murmuring quietly as the speaker was probably trying not to wake her.
But then the voice rose to a panicked shout. “What the hell’s happening? Parker? Cooper?”
She jumped up from the bed and scrambled toward the voice. But she couldn’t find the door. She slid her palms along the wall until finally she found the doorknob and turned it.
“What’s going on?” she asked as she burst into the hotel suite’s sitting room where Logan Payne paced and shouted his brothers’ names into his cell phone.
He turned to her in surprise, as if he’d forgotten she had been sleeping in one of the bedrooms of the suite. His eyes were wild with fear and frustration. His brothers needed him, but he had been stuck protecting her. She saw all that on his face—his handsome face that was so like Cooper’s.
“What’s going on!” she demanded.
He lifted his broad shoulders in a tense shrug. “I don’t know.” And it was obviously killing him.
“Why are you so worried about them?”
He hesitated, his jaw clenched the way Cooper so often clenched his, before he finally answered her, “I heard gunshots.”
Again. Someone had been shooting at Cooper again. “I thought you sent them to a safe house, too.” Apparently that house hadn’t been as safe as the one to which Logan had brought her.
“They didn’t make it there yet,” Logan said. “They stopped at Stephen’s condo.”
If Stephen had gone back home, he would have called her before now. Even if he had changed his mind about marrying her, he would have called her. Wherever Stephen was, he didn’t have access to a phone.
“Why did they go there?” she asked.
“Cooper wanted to search it himself for clues...” Anger flashed in Logan’s eyes. “On the job one day and thinks he’s a detective...”
“We need to make sure they’re all right,” she said. And she was grateful now that she’d slept in her clothes instead of changing into something from her suitcase. She actually hadn’t meant to, but she’d been too exhausted to change when Logan had brought her to this strange “safe house,” which was actually a very small hotel suite in a very obscure hotel.
Logan shook his head. “Not we. You’re staying here.”
“Cooper’s getting shot at because of me,” she reminded his eldest brother.
“You don’t know that.”
“He’s only been home a couple of days after years of being gone,” she said. “There’s no reason for anyone else to be shooting at him.”
“We don’t know that the shots I overheard were being fired at them.”
“Stephen’s condo isn’t exactly in the bad part of town,” she argued. “It’s safe there.” Safer than where she lived and definitely more affluent.
“We don’t know what happened,” Logan said. “So you’re going to stay here while I find out.”
“You’re leaving me alone?” she asked, doubting that either his mother or Cooper would approve of that.
“I know you’re afraid,” Logan said.
She was afraid. For Cooper and Parker—far more than herself.
“So take me with you,” she said, desperate to find out if Cooper was okay. She wasn’t about to lose another prospective groom.
“No.” Logan shook his head. “You’re staying here. And you’re staying safe.” He lifted his gun from the holster under his arm and held it out to her.
She stared at the weapon and shook her head. “You’re going to need that.”
“I have another one in the car,” he said. “But by the time I get to Stephen’s complex, I’m sure the shooting will be all over.”
Cooper could be all over. After more than a decade away from his family, he could have been killed days after returning home. Pain clutched her heart at the loss—the tragic loss—that would