“Can you get Dan?” I said.
“Calling it off are we?”
I nodded. G checked his watch. “Damn. An hour ago and I would have hit pay dirt. I think Sinkler’s gold, though. He had you bagging out right before it started.”
It was encouraging to know someone had profited from my misfortune. I waited in the foyer for Dan, nervously twisting and untwisting the folds of my dress.
He burst in from the double doors.
“What is it now? Last-minute jitters?” His hands were on his hips. He was wearing a very nice, very expensive tux with a red rose in his lapel.
“I think you know,” I said, resolving not to fold. “I can’t go through with this.”
“Back. Forth. Back. Forth. Ding. Dong. Ding. Dong,” he mocked me. “Just say okay, and we’ll start.”
“No. I can’t say okay. This is it, Dan. I’ll suffer whatever consequence I have to. I’m not getting married. You paid off Dr. Caswell to write up that bogus report on me. You threatened to take Jane. You have pulled every trick possible and I’m through playing your games.”
He took stock of me. Whatever could be said about Dan, no one disputed his courtroom abilities. His strengths were being able to recognize defeat and calculating his next move to his next win. “All right. So you’re not gonna marry me. Not today.”
“Not ever.”
“I’d think about it if I were you. This could get ugly.”
I inhaled deeply. “You mean about custody over Jane.”
“I mean what I mean. Just know you’ve had fair warning.” He shot his cuffs, flashing his diamond cuff links. “You’re in for the fight of your life, toots. You’ll lose everything you’ve got.”
I knew he was right. Dan was just that weirdly obsessive and vengeful.
“The thing is, Dan, I don’t have anything except Jane and my house. I don’t even have a job. Can’t get blood from a stone.”
He smirked. “Christ. You have no idea, do you?”
“Idea about what?”
Behind us the organ played “Morning Has Broken” once more. I could hear rustling in the pews and murmuring. Guests were getting restless.
Dan regarded me, calculating, always calculating, his next move. “You’ll find out soon enough, so I might as well tell you—”
The door opened and G peeked out. “You gotta say something, man. Folks are talking. Everyone wants to know how they made out in the pool.”
“Bye, Dan,” I said. “I’ll leave this to you.”
Dan hesitated. “We’ll talk.”
“Sure,” I said, though I was thinking,
No way.
With one last, longing look, Dan turned and followed G inside.
It was over. I didn’t have to marry Dan. I was free.
I breathed in and out, opened the heavy wooden doors to the new world awaiting me. Snow blanketed Lehigh’s campus, covering the large oak trees and sloping lawns with a new white coating. The air was fresh and clean.
I walked slowly down the stone steps. With each step, I thought,
I am free. I am free. I am free.
The driver of the limo stepped out of the car and rushed around the front. I was about to tell him he didn’t need to open the rear door for me when I noticed there was something small and gray in his hand. Keys?
Then I watched as if in slow motion as he lifted his hand and pointed the gray thing straight at me. For some reason, I couldn’t move. I was mesmerized, wondering what he’d do next. And then I saw the yellow flash, right before I heard the clap of a gunshot and felt the searing heat, followed by the unfathomable sensation of overwhelming pain.
I’d been shot.
Chapter Thirty-nine
“S
he’sdown!”
His voice came from right by my ear, so loud it hurt. My face was hard against the stone, my lips tasting snow and salt, my body racked with the force of being thrown onto rock-hard slate. I’d like to know what it was with men shoving me to the ground lately. Must have been repressed hostility toward blond hairdressers or something.
Nearby, a tire screeched, spraying snow and grime over both of us.
I thought,
This is a ruined dress and Mama probably hasn’t even paid for it yet.
I could see the headline now:
Runaway Bride Shot in Stolen Dress: Mother Pleads Poor Eyesight.
“He’s gone,” Stiletto said. He happened to be lying on me, shielding me with his body. “Are you okay?”
That, I decided, was the kind of stupid question people asked when they had nothing else to say. I mean, I was eating gravel—literally—and snowy gravel at that. Plus, I’d just been shot.
“I think I’ve been hit,” I said. “Right below my shoulder.”
Stiletto touched my arm and I could feel warm stickiness. I knew without looking that it was blood.
“Let’s get you inside.” He called over to someone named Barry and told him to have the church evacuated except for “the family” because “they’ll need protection, too.”
The family? But why would my family need protection and from whom? It was as if I’d suddenly stepped into a
Godfather
movie, what with all the shooting and talk about protecting the family. It wouldn’t have shocked me to see Al Pacino walk by in a shiny suit.
There was lots of commotion, lots of people running out of the chapel and shouting. Everyone was quickly ushered past me. This was going to take a lot of explaining back at the House of Beauty, how I ended up underneath another man—Stiletto, no less—in plain daylight two seconds after I was supposed to marry Dan. I wasn’t sure the blue hairs would buy the old I’d-been-shot-at excuse, seeing as it had been used by every scared bride in Lehigh before.
A man with very short hair and black Ray-Bans knelt beside me. I recognized him right off as the Iraq war vet who’d saved me at the Christmas-tree lot, the anti-Christmas lobby conspiracy theorist. But why would he be at my wedding? Maybe I’d suffered a head wound as well. Nothing made sense.
“All clear,” he said to Stiletto. Then, nodding to me, he said, “It’s an honor to serve you again, your—”
“Not yet, Barry.” Stiletto rolled off me. “We need to get her inside first. Don’t know how many others there are.”
“Good point. I’ll cover.”
Barry and Stiletto helped me up. As soon as I stood, my arm started throbbing. It was killing me. Seeing my wound, Stiletto slid out of his jacket and pulled off his black T-shirt. I curiously noted that when I saw his bronzed chest bared in the cold December air my pain temporarily subsided. Perhaps this was a medical technique hospitals could use instead of dosing patients with Advil: parading men with six-pack abs past women in, well,
need
.
Holding one end of his shirt in his teeth, Stiletto tore it in two. He took one half and wrapped it tightly around my wound. The other half he used as a tourniquet.
“Here,” he said, taking my arm and laying it across his broad, naked shoulder. “You’ll need to keep it elevated.”
Wasn’t going to argue with that.
He grasped me firmly about the waist, pulling me tightly to his warm body, and led me into the church. Barry kept his hand on the gun hidden beneath his coat as he scanned the perimeter with expert eyes.
Barry might have been an Iraq war vet. I’d buy that. But I had doubts that he made a living selling Christmas trees. Most Christmas-tree salesmen didn’t have FBI badges on their belts.
I said, “FBI?”
Barry shrugged. “It’ll all be clear soon enough.” Once we were inside the chapel foyer, Barry slammed shut and bolted the door. It seemed absurdly festive in the chapel in contrast to the violence that had broken out minutes before. The pews were still adorned with white bows and clusters of white roses. The altar was draped in white and there were flowers everywhere. With Dan’s money, Mama had heeded no expense. I’d never seen—or smelled—so many irises, sweet peas, peonies, orchids and, my favorite, lilies of the valley, all in white.
Frosted glass Christmas balls hung from a large, full green pine, which was also decorated with silver ribbons and the teeniest white lights. The church was aglow with lights and dozens of lit white candles. With the white runner up the aisle, the dark chapel had transformed into a romantic winter fairy land. It was magical.
Mama and Jane were in the front row, gaping at me. Jane screamed, “Mom!”
“I’m okay, honey. Nothing but a graze.” I eyed the two men in suits at either end of the pews, guns holstered across their buttoned-down white shirts. They each had white things stuck in their ears like they worked for the Secret Service.
Dan was nowhere to be found.
Okay, this was weird. What the hell was going on? It was as if we were in a militarized zone.
“All secure there, Butch?” Genevieve appeared out of nowhere in a crazily flowered dress holding not a musket, but what I was pretty sure was one of those Russian AK-47s. Now that was what you called a mistake. “I’ve got the perimeter deloused except for the windows. Tiny Nuts is still at large.”
“Who’s Tiny Nuts?” I asked. “And where’d you get that gun?”
Genevieve looked not to Stiletto or me, but to Barry. “Has the unit been apprised?”
“Not yet,” Stiletto said, grinning. “Tiny Nuts. That code name still cracks me up, Genevieve.”
“Call ’em as I see ’em.”
Stiletto escorted me to the altar steps. I sat down next to him and faced Mama and Jane. Mama was also in a flowered dress with a black plastic purse in her lap. I could spy the tops of her knee-highs below her hem. I was slightly insulted that for my wedding she hadn’t sprung for the fancy whole-leg kind of stockings, though maybe they didn’t make them in her size—square.
“This is it, Bubbles,” she said, sniffling. “The day I’ve waited my whole life for.”
“I’m not getting married, Mama. Didn’t you hear?” With this, she burst into tears. Jane took her hand, giving it a little pat.
“Do you know what this is about?” I asked her.
Jane said, “Kind of. It’s not bad. Well, it might be bad now, but it could be good. It could be really cool if, uh, you survive.”
Teenagers.
I turned to Stiletto. “Do you know?”
“I’ve known for quite some time.”
“You wanna tell me?”
Stiletto looked up at Barry. “Do I finally have the goddamn authorization?”
“Go ahead. I’ll back you up if Washington bitches,” Barry said.
“Washington!” I screeched. “What’s Washington got to do with my wedding? Or the Debbie Shatsky homicide or whatever’s going on?”
Stiletto slowly took my arm from around his shoulder. “The guys in Santa Claus disguises who’ve been shooting you have nothing to do with Debbie Shatsky or your wedding or any newspaper article you’ve ever written, Bubbles.”
Mama’s whole body was heaving with tears. Genevieve, meanwhile, was slinking from window to window with the ease of a trained assassin.
“Does this have something to do with the stolen dress at Loehmann’s? Because I might be able to scrounge up enough money to at least pay half. They don’t have to shoot me.”
Stiletto smiled. “This has nothing to do with Loehmann’s. The men who’ve been shooting at you are from the Lithuanian Liberty Union.”
At first I thought he was talking about my high school, Liberty. “I don’t remember many Lithuanians there. At least not anyone who was organized.”
“Kazys Grimzakas,” Mama said. “He is the most evil, the most ruthless bastard on Earth. Heads the Lithuanian Liberty Union.” Then she made a gesture otherwise known as “flipping the bird,” but when I was growing up, we’d call it the “Polish Hello.”
“Kazys Grimzakas is based in Lithuania,” Stiletto said patiently. “And the Lithuanian Liberty Union is an extreme-right-wing, superviolent organization, which, among other outrageous things, claims the Holocaust never existed.”
“Creeps,” Jane said, folding her arms.
“Oh, it existed, all right,” I said. “I saw
Schindler’s List
on cable. There was original footage. How could you not believe it existed?”
“Because they’re fascist, Mom.”
“Okay, so they have a fetish. But what does that have to do with me?”
Stiletto and Jane exchanged glances of disbelief. Then he said, “Even more than Jews or democracy or fairness, there’s something else Kazys Grimzakas and his band of criminals in the LLU hate.”
A greasy black head popped up in the window to our right. Dan was hopping up and down outside, trying to peek in the chapel. “Dan!” I exclaimed.
“Tiny Nuts!” Genevieve sited her gun. “Jump higher so I can get you where it counts. Those are awful small targets.” She was about to pull the trigger when Barry ambushed her from behind, not an easy feat when you considered Barry weighed half of what she did and Genevieve had an awful hankering to blow away something with that machine gun.
After the commotion settled down, Stiletto continued.“What Kazys Grimzakas fears is the rise of the Lithuanian aristocracy. There’s nothing the Lithuanian people love and revere more than their King Mindaugas.Even though he reigned as far back as the thirteenth century, for them he is their leader of mythical proportions. Almost like their King Arthur. And if a person could claim to be a direct descendant of King Mindaugas, he’d be put on a throne today.
“Kazys Grimzakas will go to any length to make sure that doesn’t happen. He has publicly vowed to assassinate anyone with legitimate claims to the throne.”
“So?”
“So, Bubbles,” Mama said, “your father was related to King Mindaugas. So am I.”
I swallowed hard. This was my worst nightmare come true. “You mean I’m . . . inbred?”
Jane said, “Isn’t it evident?”
“No, you’re not inbred. Not much, anyway.” Mama moved forward in her seat. “Listen, Bubbles, let me cut to the bone. You know how you get down on yourself, how you think you’re a bad mother, how you figured you’d never be anything more than a high school dropout, a graduate of Two Guys Community College and a hairdresser at a small salon. Remember that?”