A Marriage of True Minds: A Sasha McCandless Novella (7 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

Leo’s jaw ached. Warm blood from his
split lip dribbled into his mouth, where it was pooling in a thick puddle of
metallic liquid. Soon he’d need to either swallow it or spit it on the floor.
He hated to spit, but the circumstances didn’t allow for much in the way of social
niceties.

He’d been in the
hallway when the lights had gone out—en route to the dressing room to find
Sasha, tell her about Bricker, and promise her that lunatic wouldn’t disrupt
their wedding. But as he stood in the hall, blinking and waiting for his eyes
to adjust to the sudden darkness, two armed
banditos
had thundered
toward him and jumped him.

His bruised and
swollen knuckles were a reminder that at least he’d gotten a few good shots in
during the attack. But he was outnumbered, unarmed, and taken off guard. It
hadn’t taken them long to overpower him and drag him back into the kitchen.

To his surprise,
it was empty. He hoped that meant that Hank, the other football watchers, and
the staff had headed out the back door and through the organic herb garden. His
best guess was that Hank and Manny would have charged through the open-air
patio and stormed the ballroom. He assumed that they had both ignored Sasha’s
ban on firearms and wished like hell that he’d done the same.

If Hank and the
others were in the ballroom, that just left Sasha and her bridesmaids
unaccounted for
,
Leo told himself, while the men tied him to a metal chair, pulling the kitchen
twine tight around his wrists and ankles.

While the fat
man admired their handiwork, his taller, thinner friend had pulled out a beat
up cell phone and placed a call that Leo’s rusty college Spanish did little to
help decipher. All he could tell from the obsequious tone was that the man
seemed to be speaking to a superior.

But his brain
refused to focus on the situation in the kitchen. It kept circling back to
Sasha, fixated and worried. He kept telling himself she’d be okay. She had to
be.

A third man
entered the kitchen. It was clear he was in charge. He squatted in front of the
chair and peered into Leo’s face. His eyes were hard and flinty, sunken into
his skull and surrounded by deeply tanned, wrinkled skin.

The man had
coughed out a humorous laugh and then snapped a close-up of Leo using the thin
guy’s phone.

Leo was still
blinking from the flash when he heard a scream that unmistakably belonged to
Naya coming from the corridor. If Naya was out there, Sasha was almost
certainly with her. His throat closed around a hard lump.

The two goons
had gone to investigate. And they hadn’t returned.

As the minutes
ticked by, the leader became more agitated. And Leo became increasingly
hopeful. If
anyone
could outsmart the armed bandits who had besieged
their wedding rehearsal for no evident reason, it was his bride-to-be.

Finally, the
leader turned his back to Leo and placed a call on a his battered cell phone.

Leo kept his
eyes focused on the floor and strained to hear the leader’s furious, whispered
Spanish.

Leo translated
silently, wishing Manny were in the kitchen with him. Leo had relied on Manny’s
language skills as they’d drunk their way through a small Mexican town during a
training exercise. He could certainly use the help, now.

Amid the flurry
of rapid Spanish, an English word—“
Capitán
Bricker”—registered. Leo
involuntarily sucked in his breath. He tried to ball his hands into fists,
forgetting that he’d been bound tight to the chair with a length of cord. He
leaned forward and spat a glob of saliva and blood on the floor.

Bricker was
behind this. It wasn’t a surprise, exactly. But he’d been allowing himself to
pretend this was a run-of-the mill kidnapping. Not ideal, by any means, but not
exactly unheard of for this part of the world. He’d hoped a decent-sized stack
of American currency would ultimately resolve the situation to everyone’s
satisfaction.

The fact that
they were dealing, not with desperate bandits seeking money, but mercenaries
hired by a madman meant that the only way out would be ugly and bloody. And
possibly, deadly.

Not exactly the
wedding of his dreams.

He heard a loud
knocking sound from the hallway. The man on the phone reacted quickly. As he
ended his call and raced toward the kitchen doors, they swung inward.

Leo lifted his
head. What he saw made him feel immeasurably better and, somehow, exceedingly
worse.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~

Sasha and Aroostine burst through the
kitchen door like two of Charlie’s angels. Only instead of guns, they were
wielding machetes.

Sasha was
wearing a gorgeous wedding gown. Or, what had once been a gorgeous wedding
gown. The skirt appeared to be in tatters and blood dotted the bodice. He hoped
it wasn’t her blood.

She flashed him
a sheepish smile and then turned to the leader as he pulled his machete from
its sheath.

Leo rubbed his
wrists against the back of the chair, hoping to feel some slack. The ropes held
tight. He’d never felt more useless. Or frightened. His bride-to-be and a
government lawyer were about to swordfight a mercenary.

The leader
grabbed Aroostine by her long, dark hair.

She immediately
brought her spiked high heel down on his instep and threw an elbow to his chin.
He released her and stumbled, slashing wildly through the air with the machete.

Leo exhaled in
relief. Aroostine clearly had some sort of self-defense training, possibly one
of those one-time personal safety classes for women. She was no Sasha, but she
hadn’t hesitated.

Beside her,
Sasha spun and kicked out. She hit her target squarely with a roundhouse kick
and crushed the man’s right knee.

He hobbled
backward.

She planted
herself and took aim at the left knee. The man bobbed to the right to the best
of his ability, but he was hampered by his injury, and Sasha’s foot caught the
edge of his knee. She snapped back and took a second shot.

He cried out and
crumpled to the hard tile floor, face-down with his hands outstretched as if he
were swimming. His machete clattered to the ground.

She grabbed it
and headed toward Leo.

Behind her, the
leader rolled over and pulled himself up, grimacing in pain and hobbling toward
Sasha.

Leo called out a
warning, his voice cracking in his dry throat.

Aroostine
pounced on the man from behind. She seized his hair in her left hand and forced
his head up. She pushed him one-handed toward the wall, spun him around, and
pointed her machete at his throat. Her brown eyes dared him to move.

Sasha glanced
over her shoulder. Satisfied that Aroostine had the situation well in hand, she
knelt by Leo and hacked at his wrist restraints with the machete.

“Hi,” she said
in a soft voice, her eyes searching his.

“Hi, yourself.
Now, please watch what you’re doing.” He was no stranger to her somewhat
deficient knife skills.

She rolled her
green eyes and slashed the ropes that bound his ankles with exaggerated care.

As the ropes
fell away, he stood and pulled her tight against his chest. He smoothed her
hair and then tilted her face up and hungrily kissed her.

“You’re going to
hurt your busted lip,” she murmured against his mouth.

“I don’t care.”

Aroostine
cleared her throat.

“So, what do you
want me to do with this cockroach?”

“Don’t kill him.
I think Bricker hired him. We need information.”

Aroostine huffed
out an exasperated, but not surprised, sigh.

Sasha shook her
head. “I knew it.”

He swallowed
around the lump in his throat. Sasha’s sad acceptance that a deranged murderer
had sent a band of machete-wielding incompetents to crash their wedding—and, in
all likelihood, to slaughter them and their guests—stirred twin storms of rage
and tenderness in his chest. Bricker would pay for this.

“Just tie him
up. We need to go check on the guests,” he told Aroostine.

“There’s two
guys in the supply closet,” Aroostine said as she walked over with a length of
kitchen twine.

“And one in the
dressing room,” Sasha added.

Leo cocked his
head and stared at the two women. “Are they ... alive?”

Sasha looked
offended and rubbed her forehead. “Connelly, really? Of course, they’re alive.
They’re just—”

“Incapacitated,”
Aroostine offered. “As far as we know, at least. I mean, Sasha’s mom might have
busted out another hairpin.”

Sasha choked
back something that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Sasha entered the ballroom with her
machete drawn, afraid of what she might find. Connelly and Aroostine had left
their borrowed blades sheathed but pushed the leader of the kidnappers through
the doors ahead of them.

As she entered
the room, she blinked. The ballroom had light. A noisy generator sat near the
wall.

When her eyes
adjusted, the first thing she saw was Naya, nestling her head against her
boyfriend Carl’s chest.

A quick scan of
the room confirmed that the rest of the bridesmaids were there, too.  Her
sisters-in-law and brothers formed a tight cluster around her parents. Every
adult McCandless was holding at least one child or baby. Her father balanced
two of her nephews on his lap, and her niece Daniella had her arms thrown
around Valentina’s neck.

She met her
father’s eyes.

“We’re all
okay,” he mouthed.

She let out a
breath she hadn’t realized she was holding

Hank rushed to
them. “Are you three unharmed?”

“We’re fine,”
Connelly said. He jerked a thumb toward the leader. “This guy seems to be in
charge. And he’s working for Bricker.”

Anger lit Hank’s
eyes, and he shifted his gaze to Aroostine. “Do you feel comfortable
interrogating him with me? My Spanish is pretty good, but I’d sure like to have
a Justice Department lawyer present to cover my ass.”

Aroostine bit
her lower lip. “I don’t know whether U.S. law will apply, but I guess it’s
better to try to follow procedure.”

She grabbed one
of the leader’s elbows. Hank passed his gun to Connelly butt first and took
hold of the man’s other arm. They hustled him out of the room, while he
protested in a pain-filled voice, limping and shuffling on his damaged legs.

Sasha let her
gaze sweep across the overturned tables, smashed glasses, and half-eaten
dinners that littered the ballroom. Despite the mess, all of her guests seemed
to be fine—shaken, yes, but not hurt.

The same could
not be said for their would-be captors.  To a man, they were battered and
bloodied. Some worse than others. The young boy who’d guarded them in the
dressing room sat upright and pale, gripping the arms of a chair while Bodhi
worked a needle and thread through a long, angry gash in his face.

“I’ll be right
back. I want to check in with Bodhi,” she said to Connelly, stretching onto her
toes to kiss the side of his neck.

“Okay. I’m going
to talk to Manny. We need to coordinate with the local authorities to get these
guys out of here,” he answered. “But hurry back. I miss you already.”

Ordinarily, she
would roll her eyes at the sappy line, but, at this moment, she knew exactly
what Connelly was feeling.

After everything
that had happened, she wanted nothing more than to maintain constant physical
contact with him. Preferably, curled up in bed under a fluffy white comforter
listening to the waves crash against the beach while his heart beat out a soft
rhythm under her cheek.

How many more
nightmares do we have to live through together before we can enjoy a perfectly
ordinarily life?

Before she
realized what she was doing, she’d flung herself at him and wrapped her arms
around his neck, smothering his mouth in a kiss.

“Hold this,” he
mumbled to Manny, who had just walked over, and thrust Hank’s gun in his hands.

Then he lifted
Sasha in his arms, dipped his head, and kissed her back, hard, until she had to
pull back to catch her breath.

She pressed her
hands against his chest and craned her neck to look up into his eyes.

“I love you.”