Page 30 of George’s Big Day

Finally, for the first time in my life, I had actually let another person all the way in. I had allowed Hannah to be close to me, but I never let her see everything. That might scare her off. It had many others in the past.

The difference with Kurt was that at some point in the last two years, I had come to think of him as my other half. It was both exciting and terrifying. I couldn’t have anything happen to him, and he certainly couldn’t leave me because I had allowed our wedding to be ruined by someone out to kill one of our guests.

People always asked me when the bullets started flying and we were not in the middle of a combat zone, how could I know that I myself was not the target? But that was easy. I was nameless, faceless, utterly lost in the crowd unless we were friends. No one knew who I was, unlike Dante Cerreto or Jared Colter or Darius Hawthorne or even my mentor, Chris.

“So,” Chris prodded Dante, “will you be conducting an interrogation anytime soon? We’re burnin’ daylight here.”

I liked that he tapped his watch for emphasis.

“If this guy is a sicario for one of the cartels, you think he’d cop to it?”

“Why not?” Chris shrugged.

“Fine. Ask him, then,” Dante suggested.

Chris squatted beside the man, looking him dead in the eyes as he removed his gag. “Who are you here to kill?”

“Are you Christopher Mancuso?”

“I told you,” Dante said with an aha! tone.

“I am,” Chris answered, ignoring his friend.

“You need to stay out of our way, or you’ll be sent video of your wife choking on her own blood.”

It was a disgusting threat, made even more so by the fact that I knew what a gentle soul Jill Mancuso was. She rescued dogs and cats, was kind to strangers, and for Chris to even imagine losing his wife, his soul mate, the linchpin of his entire family, would be too much to bear.

As soon as the words were out of the guy’s mouth, he flinched, and the color drained from his face. I understood why. I’d been a witness to the same reaction when I was in the field with Chris. Because when he looked at enemy combatants we’d secured, when they started spewing threats, it was all fine until someone stupidly mentioned his family. Chris was terrible at hiding his feelings.

Each and every time, his eyes did this thing that I always likened to a shark. They deadened, all trace of humanity replaced with absolute coldness. Chris never got angry; instead he ceased to care, which, ultimately, was far worse. The man had seconds to live.

But something occurred to me, and I took hold of Chris’s shoulder as I spoke to the man. “You said Mancuso needed to stay out of your way.”

“Weren’t you listening?” he spat at me.

I was actually, and neither Dante nor Chris seemed to have noticed the wording. Dante had no excuse, but the guy putting Jill into the mix was what had shorted out Chris’s brain. “Hey.”

Chris looked up at me.

“He’s warning you to stay outta the fuckin’ way.”

At first, he glared at me, but then, suddenly, his eyes widened with understanding.

“Yeah, exactly.”

“Shit,” Chris muttered, exhaling as he stood up beside me. “You’re saying I need to steer clear of you guys or my wife will suffer the consequences as a warning to me.”

“That’s what I just said,” he growled. “What the fuck?”

Both Chris and I turned to Dante then.

It took him a second to notice. “What?”

Chris gestured at the guy who was sitting between them looking back and forth. He was probably wondering how Dante even got the drop on him with how obtuse he was being now. “This is about you.”

“I have no idea what’s happening right now.”

“These guys want me to stand down so they can get to you.”