Page 109 of Captured By the Pakhan

Los Angeles, 4:10 PM

We get married on a Saturday in October with forty-one people present, and about two-thirds of them are armed.

That isn't a joke, and nobody involved treats it as one. Andrei ran the guest list like an operational plan for six weeks, and there was a genuine argument in September about whether the Cierros could bring their own men, which was resolved by Chloe telephoning me directly and saying, "Tell him yes, and tell him I said he's right to ask."

It's on the terrace above the water because there was never any question of a church.

I get ready in a room with the door open, Maya Severese sitting at the end of the bed, eating the good chocolates.

"So," she says.

"Don't."

"I'm not going to say anything."

"You are absolutely going to say something; you flew six hours to say something."

"I flew six hours because you asked me to," Maya says, "and I'm going to say the thing anyway, because you'd say it to me." She puts the box down. "Miami. Two years ago. You sat across a table from me in a diner, and you asked me one question."

"Maya—"

"You said: why is a Don keeping a federal agent alive?" She's not smiling now. "And I gave you an answer, and you didn't believe a word of it, and you told me you'd give it four months and then you'd be pulling me out of a house in Coral Gables whether I liked it or not."

I look at myself in the mirror.

"Yeah," I say. "I remember."

"Do you have an answer yet?"

"No."

"Good," Maya says, and picks the chocolates back up. "The ones who have an answer are the ones I worry about."

Logan walks me down the aisle.

I asked him in August, on the telephone, badly, and there was a pause on the line long enough that I thought I'd made a serious mistake, and then he said, "Yeah, all right," in a voice which'd gone somewhere.

He's four weeks off his suspension. Thirty days, unpaid, for the handcuff key — which his representative called a travesty and which Logan describes as "the cheapest thing I've ever bought."

He offers me his arm at the top of the steps.

"You're shaking," I say.

"You're shaking."

"I'm allowed. It's my wedding."

"It's my first wedding," Logan says. "Nobody's ever asked me to do the walking part. I've watched eleven videos. There's a whole thing about the pace."

"Logan."

"There's a pace, Raven."

He does it perfectly, obviously.

And about four steps in, he leans over and murmurs, without moving his face at all:

"He's looking at you like you're the last helicopter out."