Liberty or Death (2 page)

 

 

 

Chapter 1

 

Just wedding-day jitters, I thought, that was why I couldn't catch my breath. I stood in the window, looking down at the lawn, watching Andre's three brothers, and my brother Michael, escorting people to their seats. Lots of people. Lots of seats. Women wobbling unsteadily as their heels sank into the grass. Men running fingers around their collars in anticipation of being too hot. All coming to watch the Thea and Andre show. After seven years in the consulting business, I'm pretty comfortable with public speaking, but being the main event at something like this made me weak in the knees. I've never been able to wrap my mind around the idea that such a personal and private thing as a declaration of enduring commitment should be a public spectacle.

Little bits of pre-wedding piano music floated in my open window. I checked my watch. Zero minus fifteen. Over by the transplanted piano, Andre's boss, Lt. Jack Leonard, stood talking to the minister. With three brothers to chose among, all of them sensitive and given to jealousy, Jack had been a diplomatic choice for best man. Like me, he was checking his watch. I looked in the mirror again. The bride was anxious. Her mother was waiting for her downstairs. The photographer was waiting. There were pictures to take. Soon we would be lining up and my bridesmaids would begin the slow march down the steps and out across the lawn. I would take my father's arm and go forth to marry Andre. There would be a moment when Dad would remember marrying my mother and I would remember marrying David. Perhaps Andre would remember his first wife. I hoped not. He never thought of her without bitterness. Then we would all pull ourselves forward into the business of this day.

I straightened my dress, arranged my veil, and cast one last look out the window. So many people I recognized, from every stage of my life. Witnesses to my commitment. Over the commotion of voices, I heard the phone ring. Saw a trooper cross the patio and set off across the grass, too purposeful for the occasion, straight for Jack Leonard.
Oh no,
I thought. Something to do with the Pelletier case? He was going to be our best man. Jack couldn't be called away now. There had to be someone else who could handle it. I watched as the trooper reached Jack, saw their heads come together. Saw Jack's eyes looking up at my window. Felt, across the distance, their cool blue chill.

I am not given to premonitions or moments of ESP, but it didn't take a psychic to figure this one out. Something was wrong. Something that involved Jack. He bent and spoke to the minister, then hurried back toward the house, the trooper coming swiftly behind him. The noise of conversation floated up to me, and then, with a flourish, the piano began to play some numbingly familiar bit of music. The voices didn't dim, and the whole blended together in a pleasingly distant cacophony I could barely hear over the pounding of my heart. I had to go downstairs and find out what was happening. I didn't want to leave the safety of my room.

I took another look in the mirror, took a breath as deep as the dress would allow, and turned resolutely toward the door. I had told my mother I'd be down in a minute five or six minutes ago. Maybe more. Most likely the pictures would have to wait until after the ceremony now, which was fine with me. I hated having my picture taken. Probably Andre was down there being driven crazy, too. Odd that my mother hadn't come pounding up to get me. She has little patience with those who defy her wishes. It was time to go down and rescue him. Almost time for that long walk down the aisle. Toward a future bright with promise, away from a past that had brought more than its share of pain. I hesitated while I moved the diamond from my left hand to my right, readying my finger for the gleaming intertwined bands of gold Andre had chosen. Then I crossed the room and opened the door.

A man was coming up the stairs. Not Andre and not my dad. Not Jack Leonard, but someone moving slowly, as though in no hurry to reach me with his news. He raised his head and I saw that it was Dom Florio. My second favorite cop. One of my best friends. Behind him, moving more slowly, but that was because she had trouble walking and particular trouble with stairs, was his wife, Rosie.

"Rosie, you don't have to come up," I called. "I'm on my way down."

She looked up at me. Instead of the happiness I'd expected to find there, knowing how much she liked both me and Andre, I saw something like panic. And Rosie, warm-hearted, cool-headed Rosie, didn't panic. She was not hiking up these stairs to give me a good-luck hug.

Dom spoke first. "Thea, I think we should..."

But I was still looking at her pale and solemn face. "Rosie, what's wrong? Something's wrong, isn't it?"

They had reached me now, one on either side of me as we stood at the top of the staircase, Rosie with one hand on the banister I had slid down hours earlier in one last atavistic moment here in my parents' house. As if in anticipation of their words, a cloud crossed the sun and suddenly the hall was dark and chilly. Dom put a hand under my elbow. "Thea... something has happened..."

"Wait!" Rosie commanded. "Let's go back in your room, Thea. You should be sitting down when..." She didn't finish and I didn't ask. Numbly, I let them turn me around and steer me back into my room. Rosie sat down on the bed and pulled me down beside her.

I sat, feeling absurdly like a marshmallow as my dress billowed out around me, longing to put my hands over my ears, as a child might, to shut out what she was going to say. I wanted time to stop. If we never went forward from this moment, I would never have to hear what I was afraid I was going to hear. She tucked an arm around my waist, hugging me firmly against her. She smelled of roses. "Now, Dom," she said.

I had never seen Dominic Florio at a loss for words before. Florio is a detective with the Anson Police Department. I met him when my friend Eve Paris's mother was killed. I went to comfort Eve and Florio latched onto me as his liaison with the family. Much in the way that I began with Andre, Dom and I squabbled our way into a good relationship, with me being edgy, stubborn, and suspicious, and Dom being alternately pushy and surprisingly truthful and open for a cop. While I have a lot of trouble getting along with my own family, I seem to have no trouble attracting alternative families, and Dom and Rosie have become a pair of substitute parents. They can tell me that I'm off the wall without rousing a lifetime's worth of complicated feelings. And they don't hesitate to do so.

Dom looked out the window at the lawn filled with people, at the rose and ribbon-decked arbor my dad had built, and then around my room before finally looking at me. He was so miserable that I wanted to comfort him even though, as yet, I had no idea what the source of his misery was. Finally, fists knotted, he blurted out, "I don't know why the hell they sent me to do this when I haven't got a shred of finesse... I'm just no good at..." He shook his head, then dropped down on the bed beside me, making the springs groan, and put his arm around me, too, so that I was the filling in a Florio sandwich. I knew they were trying to cushion me with love from what was coming. I wanted to scream at them to stop hesitating and tell me, but I couldn't speak. "Thea... Andre's been... Andre's not... Oh, hell! Rosie?"

My heart stopped as the world fell silent. I forgot to breathe. He was dead, Andre was dead. That's what they couldn't tell me. What else could be so bad Dom couldn't say it? He was a cop. He delivered bad news all the time. A flat tire or a fender-bender wouldn't reduce him to stammering, not even on a wedding day. A comet had fallen out of the sky and crushed him. There had been another car crash like the one that killed David. Andre had stopped to help a fellow officer and been shot. It was always to be my fate. No man was allowed to love me. I would fall in love, let my heart go, and he would die.

It was Rosie, and not Dom the tough police officer, who told me. "Andre's been kidnapped," she said, "...by some militia group. They found his car on the side of the road with an American flag tied to the antenna, and a note on the driver's seat, saying that he was a political prisoner of the Katahdin Constitutional Militia. Oh, Thea, I am so sorry..."

"The Katahdin Constitutional Militia? Is this some kind of a joke?"

Dom shook his head. "This is no joke, Thea. It's domestic terrorism. They want to trade Andre for some guy who's in jail awaiting trial for assault."

"But why Andre? How did they even know he was a cop?"

"I think it was simply opportunity, that they grabbed someone at random," Dom said. "They say... they don't think... that he was specifically targeted."

"But how..." I began. Did they think I was born yesterday? It was no random act. This was all about Gary Pelletier. Pelletier had gone to check out a rumor about a militia group and ended up dead. Andre must have gotten too close to something. I'd been involved with cops too long to believe in coincidence. Why were they lying to me? But I wasn't ready to explore that right now. I was overwhelmed. I closed my eyes against the tears, clenched my teeth against the cries that rose in my throat. Gripped the delicate fabric of my dress in two tight fists.

It was so unfair! Nothing ever went right for me, did it? I was doomed to endure one sorry event after another. Life was a rotten, miserable thing and it really had it in for me. Here I'd let myself be talked into doing this ridiculous charade of a wedding, just to please my mother. I get all dressed up in this gaudily gorgeous dress, with the tent and the caterer, bridesmaids and a band, and look what happens. Other people got to have nice summer weddings and go off into the sunset with their beloveds. Other people got to have normal lives without death and catastrophe. Goddamn Andre! Why did he have to go and get himself kidnapped today of all days? And what was my mother going to say? She'd been waiting thirty-one years for this moment.

I realized that I was going to tear the dress, so I relaxed my grip and took their hands. I tried to take a deep breath but my iron-maiden dress wouldn't let me. It was far too ladylike. It allowed little bits of air, little bits of food, little bits of emotion. My job today was to look beautiful and be happy. Only a lunatic, knowing her waistline was going to be expanding, would have chosen a fitted dress like this. But all the hoo-ha leading up to this day had made me a lunatic; this wedding, plus the surprise of impending motherhood, was something I was still struggling to get used to. My whole life felt out of control.

I checked out the lawn. It seemed like everyone was now staring up at my window and looking at their watches. The bride was late. What were we going to do with all these people? Send them home? Feed them lunch and cake and champagne and then send them home? Did I have to go downstairs and apologize to them all?

I looked at Rosie's face, at her beautiful, wise dark eyes. "Oh, Rosie," I said. "How could this happen to me?"

She shook her head, frowning. "Thea, it's happening to
him
."

On my dresser was a picture of Andre, in climbing gear, smiling and gorgeous, dangling off a rock face so steep it gave me vertigo just looking at it. I picked it up and stared at him, thought of the bonds that held us together, the invisible bungee cord that connected us, that would always bring us back together. Lord knows we'd tested it. Our courtship had been no picnic. In my head, memory repeated the solemn words from the Bible that would have been read over us today. "Love beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth." Rosie was right. This wasn't about me.

I dropped their hands and got up, pacing the room, my own hands now clenched as Dom's had been. This was no time for self-pity. I might be embarrassed but I was perfectly safe, while Andre was in terrible danger. In terrible danger and in a state even more emotionally wrenching than mine. If I closed my eyes, I could imagine his face. Not a frightened one, but the face of fury. Andre has a big temper. He doesn't lose it often but when he loses it, he's explosive. Right now, wherever he was, he was exploding with rage and frustration at whoever was keeping him from being here. If anything, he wanted this more than I did.

"Oh, God, Andre. Be careful."

I didn't know I'd said it aloud until Dom answered. "He will be. He may be mad as hell, Thea, but he's not stupid..."

"All men are a little bit stupid when they're mad." Rosie bit her lip and shook her head. "That's not what we ought to be thinking about right now. We have to—"

"...figure out how to get him back," I said.

Dom stared meaningfully at my abdomen. "You are not going to get involved in this."

I crossed my hands protectively over little Claudine, unless it was Mason or Oliver. Our lucky accident. The catalyst which had stopped our dithering, changed the course of two fiercely independent people, and brought us to this day. What if Andre never—no! I shut my mind against the question. Love a cop and you learn to live with danger, learn to suppress it so you can go on breathing. "I'm already involved in this."

"You know what I mean."

"And you know what I mean."