Since the lock showed no sign of tampering, he felt satisfied that the area was secure.
Back on the second floor, he paused by the banister and looked down into the entryway where the two women were talking. Emily paced in an agitated dance. Her blond curls bounced in rhythm with her high-pitched voice as she waved her cell phone and ranted, “I can’t believe Jeremy suggested that we have the wedding somewhere else. Or that we postpone. Getting everybody’s schedule lined up was impossible.” Her tone shot up to a screech. “Impossible.”
Blake took a step back so he couldn’t be seen. Confronting that blonde maelstrom was akin to a suicide mission.
“Calm down,” Sarah said in her soothing alto. “Jeremy was just worried about you.”
“This was exactly the wedding I wanted. And so did Jeremy. We never planned on a three-hundred-person fancy ceremony where we didn’t know half the guests. Just family, just a nice cake and a few flowers on Valentine’s Day, that’s all I wanted.”
“And that’s what you’ll have,” Sarah promised. She’d changed out of her pajamas and parka to a pair of well-worn jeans and an oversize olive-green sweater with drooping sleeves that she’d pushed up on her slender wrists. She raked her fingers through her shining hair. Those vivid blond curls with the red highlights were the first thing Blake had noticed when they met. Then he’d been captivated by the intensity in her eyes with irises so dark that they were almost black.
“We should have eloped,” Emily wailed. “Run off to Vegas and gotten married.”
“You could still do that.”
“I’m not going to take my vows in front of a fake Elvis.” Emily stamped her little foot. “What does Blake say? It’d make a difference if he said we should do the ceremony here. Please talk to him, Sarah.”
“Why would that make a difference?”
“Please.”
Through the front windows, he saw the flashing lights of a police cruiser. Kovak had made good time in getting here. With any luck, he and the deputy could track down the men from the drilling site. Blake rushed down the staircase and opened the door. Two other officers accompanied Kovak. At a glance, Blake could tell that these were the kind of men he was accustomed to working with. They all wore Kevlar vests and police utility belts.
As soon as they entered, a truck pulled up and parked. Two husky young men bounded onto the porch—the Reuben twins. In their jeans, boots and parkas, they were a perfectly matched set with shaggy brown hair, stubble and toothy grins. Though the boys were doing their best to act cool, they quivered with excitement when they saw the bulletproof vests. Sarah pulled them aside to explain the situation.
Blake turned to Kovak. “Were you able to trace the license plate on the van?”
“The vehicle belongs to Tyler Farley.” He spoke with a slow Western drawl. “Farley and his pals are known hell-raisers but I wouldn’t have pegged them as assassins.”
“Why not?”
“Too many beers. Too few brains.”
As Blake had thought, Farley and his friends weren’t pros. They hadn’t even been clever enough to disguise their license plate. “Do they live nearby?”
“They’ve got a cabin about twenty minutes from here,” Kovak said. “I already sent one of my men to keep an eye on the place. And I’ve alerted the local hospitals and emergency clinics. They’ll call me if anybody shows up with a gunshot wound.”
“Contact your man. See if he’s close.”
While Kovak made his call, Blake considered the possibilities. Farley must have been hired to pull off that stunt at the drill site. If they arrested him and his pals, Blake was sure he could convince these backwoods bad guys to give up the name of the person they were working for. The dangerous complication came from their possession of a semiautomatic assault rifle that probably had an illegal magazine capacity under Colorado’s current gun laws.
Kovak held up his cell phone. “My man is there. The van is parked out front, and all the lights in the cabin are on.”
“Tell him not to engage until we get there,” Blake said. “If they leave, he should follow.”
“Yes, sir,” Kovak said. “I’m thinking we can bring these boys in without firing a single shot.”
Blake was glad to hear they were on the same page. As soon as Kovak finished his call, he said, “Let’s move. You take your car, and I’ll follow.”
A flash of strawberry-blond hair zoomed up beside him. “I’ll ride with you.”
Though she had a rifle in her hand, he wasn’t about to let Sarah ride shotgun. “We had an agreement,” he reminded her. “You stay safe, and I—”
“I promise not to get in the way.” She looked toward Kovak. “Do you care if I tag along?”
“Always glad to have your help, Sarah.”
Blake tried one more time to dissuade her. “You can’t leave Emily here alone.”
“I trust the twins to keep her safe. They’re spending the night.”
She dangled Blake’s car keys from her fingers. “Should I drive?”
Without a word, Blake took the keys and headed for the door. He could think of only one reason Sarah would leave her beloved B and B to go after the bad guys: she wanted to talk to him about the wedding. Cake orders and flower arrangements were the last thing on his mind.
When he pulled away from the house, she fastened her seat belt and asked, “Have you talked to Jeremy yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Good, because when you do I hope you’ll tell him that the wedding plans shouldn’t be changed. Emily has her heart set on this ceremony.”
“My decision about where the wedding should be held will be based on risk assessment,” he said coldly. “Protecting the general is my number one priority.”
“But you’re also the best man,” she said. “That means it’s your job to make sure the bride and groom are both happy.”
“Don’t tell me my job.”
“For the bachelor party, are you planning to have a stripper? There’s a tavern in Carbondale where they have a lot of stag parties, and you might want to check with them.”
This was one relentlessly bossy female. He muttered, “I can find my own stripper.”
“I bet you can. And I wonder what’s your favorite type, the French maid or the naughty schoolgirl? Wait, I know. You’re a dominatrix man.”
“Are you volunteering?”
“I have my very own riding crop.”
If she was trying to distract him, she’d succeeded. Though he kept his focus on Kovak’s taillights, Blake’s mind had wandered far away, visualizing long legs in fishnet stockings and a tight leather vest crisscrossing Sarah’s breasts. His vision was an act of pure imagination. He hadn’t seen enough of her body to know what she’d look like naked.
He yanked his thoughts back to the present situation. They were driving toward a potentially dangerous confrontation. He needed to have his wits about him. “Jumping in the car with me was a mistake, Sarah. A big mistake. I’d call it a third strike.”
“What do you mean?”
“You disobeyed my order to drive into town. That was strike one. You followed me into the B and B, that’s two. Then you sashayed out the door and into that passenger seat.”
“I never sashay,” she said.
According to his imagined version of her, the sashay was only one of her moves. He cleared his throat. “I need your cooperation. When