Page 133 of What Doesn't Kill Her

Birdie met her. “Whoever got Brooks cleaned him out of weapons.” She offered the rattail comb.

“That’s okay.” Kellen picked two sharpened colored pencils off the floor. They weren’t worth a damn at a distance, but they were deadly in close quarters.

Kellen and Birdie stalked down the corridor, two women gowned in wedding finery.

“Look.” Kellen pointed to a star at the top of the stairs. “That’s off Rae’s sash.”

“Hansel and Gretel. She knows her fairy tales.” Birdie was impressed.

“She knows her superhero tales better.” Kellen moved with deliberate haste down the stairs. “She’s LightningBug, I’m ThunderFlash, and between us, we’re going to make someone sorry.”

54

Verona rushed into the kitchen where Max was pouring wine for the guests and laughing at wedding jokes, and signaled him to come with her.

“It looks as if I might be in trouble again.” He put the bottle on the counter. “Help yourselves, and no fighting!”

He and Verona left on a wave of wine-fueled good humor, and as soon as they set foot onto the empty porch, his mother grabbed his sleeve. “Rae is missing!”

“Again?”

“Max, she’s really missing. A man took her.”

“What?” All his joy in the day fell away. “When?”

“A few minutes ago. Kellen said you knew who it was.”

Of course. On his wedding day, like a fool, he had put all the safeguards in place and believed he could take a moment to be happy. He should have known. He should have learned from the past. He should have been more vigilant. “Kellen knows Rae is gone?”

“She sent me.”

“Why didn’t you call?” He should have never smiled. He should have been the man who understood there was no place for joy, not today, not ever.

“We tried. You didn’t answer your phone!”

He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “My God.” Four attempts to reach him.

“I was running here, and I kept calling you. I kept hoping you’d pick up.”

His mother put him on a rack, broke his bones and his heart.

“Kellen’s searching for Rae right now,” Verona said. “She said for you to get the bag out of the gun safe in her closet. The code is—”

“I know what the code is. Stay here and keep watch.” He sprinted around the house to avoid the mob in the kitchen, slipped in the utility room and up the stairs to Kellen’s room and was back in less than three minutes, holding the bag and with a pistol tucked into his pocket. He found his mother telling Bisnonna Benedetta to return to the house. “Did you see anything?”

“No. The poor dear gets confused and—Max, why don’t we tell everyone to search for Rae?”

“Because this person, whoever he is, is a killer. What good does it do us to find Rae and find her dead and the guests with her?”

Verona staggered. “A mass shooting.”

Max caught her by the shoulders and steadied her. “Kellen said that I knew who had taken Rae?”

“It’s Nils Brooks, right?”

“No. Not him. Do you have your scheduler on you?”

“Of course. Why? Who...?”

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