She wanted Darius Williams to bust through those doors.
Eve mentally sighed.
How dramatic would that have been? she thought. Seeing Darius bust through those doors yelling “I object!”
It would make everything seem like a movie and earn Eve a chance to escape the problem that she had, in part, created.
Darius, however, didn’t burst through the doors, and she turned around to listen to the officiant. The part where someone could object came and went without a peep. The vows came next, and Mitchell—not one given to public speaking like his brother—struggled through his.
Eve kept smiling through it all, even though the hope that Darius would show up was starting to fade.
Had she been too nostalgic? Had the request been too outrageous? Had their past stayed firmly rooted in the past?
Despite herself, Eve started to think about what happened next.
The honeymoon.
For completely different reasons, it made her blood run cold.
She resisted the urge to look over Mitchell’s shoulder. His brother would also still be, no doubt, smiling too.
Neither one of them meant it.
“Now, Evelyn, it’s time to read your vows.” The officiant’s voice sliced through her thoughts like a machete through butter. While there were many things that affected others, Eve had always had a way of going with the flow. Sadness, fear, anger…they rolled off her shoulders like water, and she just kept going.
But now, there was a coldness in her stomach that was starting to spread.
She shouldn’t have let it get this far. She shouldn’t have—
A loud bang sounded through the main room. Mitchell jumped, while a flurry of gasps and mutterings sprang from the guests. Eve, though, whipped her head around to look at the double doors.
The coldness in her warmed in an instant.
The doors were closing and standing in front of them was the little boy who owed her a favor.
Darius.
He’d come, and just in time too.
Eve was wondering how he would play the next part when the door opened again.
It was a man she didn’t recognize. The star-shaped badge at his hip, however, was easy to see even from her spot at the altar.
The sheriff of McCoy County had a tight smile.
Darius wasn’t smiling at all.
“WHENISAIDstop the wedding at all costs, this isn’t what I had in mind.”
Eve’s voice was small, but there was no shake or tremor to it. All things considered, it was impressive. Not many could see a dead body and manage some humor.
They were standing next to the mouth of a small hallway that fed from the old library’s main lobby and into the area that used to house offices and the break room. The wedding party was spread between those rooms now. Mitchell Keys was in the break room with his brother.
A man wearing a gray suit was dead on the bench seat next to the closed double doors a few feet from them.
Eve cut her gaze away from the man and back to Darius. Again, he felt impressed at her composure. Then again, maybe it wasn’t all that surprising. This was Evelyn Myers, after all. Even as a kid she’d had a habit of not blanching.
“His name is Gary Whittaker,” she said, voice back to a normal volume. “He’s the Keyses’ family lawyer. Or was, I guess.”
