.

the crime scene.

      “But it’s not crazy,” Logan said. “It’s brilliant.”

      “Br-brilliant?” Cooper choked on the word and coughed.

      And his mother slapped his shoulder. “Of course it is.” But she seemed surprised, too, that her oldest would agree with her. She had always said that although Logan was a twin, he definitely had a mind of his own.

      “Can’t you see that?” Logan asked with concern, as if Cooper was more dim-witted than he’d remembered.

      So Cooper mentally stepped back, as he often had had to during his deployments, and he assessed the situation. “Stephen’s missing. Maybe he just got cold feet.” Even as he said it, he doubted his words. The Stephen he’d known had been an honorable guy; he wouldn’t have just run away—especially not from Tanya.

      Cooper had been the only man he knew of who had run from her—back when they’d been kids and his new feelings for his friend had overwhelmed him and also because her grandfather had made him see that it would never work out between them. It didn’t matter that the old man was dead now; Benedict Bradford was still right.

      “Then why all the blood?” Logan persisted.

      Cooper visualized the crime scene that may not have been a crime scene at all. There was a small hammered-copper sink in the room with a mirror above it. He could have been shaving his neck and slipped with the blade, nicking his artery. “Maybe he accidentally hurt himself.”

      But there had been no razor or anything else sharp left at the scene...

      “If that was the case, he would have gotten help,” Logan pointed out. “Mom and Tanya and even Reverend James were all in the building, too.”

      “But we didn’t hear anything,” his mother reminded him.

      Desperate to believe that Stephen would return, Cooper persisted in his argument, “Maybe, when you guys didn’t hear him calling, he left and got help somewhere else.”

      “His car is still in the lot,” his mother pointed out.

      “He could have called a damn cab,” Cooper remarked.

      “But then he would have showed up at an E.R. by now,” Logan argued. “Parker and a team of Payne employees are checking every emergency room and med station, and Stephen hasn’t shown up anywhere yet.”

      Cooper begrudgingly admitted, “Maybe he has been abducted.”

      “Why?” Logan fired the question at him even though the answer was obvious.

      Conceding his loss of this argument, he groaned before replying, “For Tanya’s money.”

      “Which she can’t access until she’s married,” his mother chimed in again. “She won’t be able to pay the ransom when the demands are made.”

      His mother was right. Unfortunately.

      But there was another possibility, one he hated to even voice, but he forced out the words, “He could be dead.”

      Cooper’s guts tightened with guilt at the horrific thought. If only he’d agreed to be the damn best man, he would have been in that room with him, he could have protected him. Hell, if he hadn’t dragged his feet getting to the church...

      As if he’d read his mind, Logan reassuringly gripped his shoulder. “You don’t know that...”

      No, he didn’t know if Stephen was dead, but he knew that he could have helped—had he been at the church in time.

      “Neither do you,” Cooper said, which probably infuriated Logan since his eldest brother thought he knew everything.

      “Then where’s his body?” Logan asked. “Why would his killer take it with him? Why wouldn’t he have just left it in the room?”

      Cooper wasn’t the one with the law enforcement background. “You were the cop.” A detective actually and a greatly decorated one, just as their father had been a police officer. “You know it’s harder to press murder charges, let alone convict, without a body.”

      “The crime scene techs said that it looked like a lot of blood because of the spray, but there wasn’t enough for someone to have bled to death,” Logan reminded him.

      “Yet.” But if he was injured and didn’t get help... “We should be out there looking for him, not wasting our time with this crazy discussion.”

      “Parker and his team aren’t just checking hospitals and med centers. They’re looking for him everywhere,” Logan reminded him. “They’ve checked his place, his work—all of his usual hangouts.”

      “And they haven’t found him,” Cooper said. “We need to search harder and even then we may not find him alive.” Or at all.

      How many people had gone missing to never be seen again? He’d personally known a few—in Afghanistan.

      “There’s still time to help him,” his mother insisted. Despite all she’d lost when her husband had died, she still remained an optimist. “But in case there is a ransom demand, Tanya will need her inheritance to pay it.”

      “So someone needs to marry her,” Logan said.

      His mother patted Cooper’s arm again but more gently this time. “It’s all right,” she said as if he were a child she was reassuring about going to the dentist. “If you don’t want to do it, Parker can.”

      Parker, the playboy, marrying Tanya? His gut churned at the thought—it was even crazier than him marrying her. In fact, him marrying her actually made the most sense since they knew each other, since he had actually kissed the bride before. Besides, it was his fault that Stephen had disappeared. If only he’d been in the groom’s quarters before Stephen had been taken...

      Rejecting his mother’s suggestion, he shook his head. “I’ll do it.”

      His mother clapped her hands together. “Great. I will call a certain judge I know to rush a new marriage certificate, and we’ll proceed with the wedding tomorrow, just as we’d planned.”

      He was getting married tomorrow? Panic gripped him, squeezing his chest so tightly that he couldn’t draw a deep breath.

      “Maybe someone should tell the bride that,” Logan suggested with a slight grin.

      His mother gestured toward a leather purse sitting on the floor beneath a hanging garment bag. “She wouldn’t have left without that, so she must still be here.”

      But she wasn’t. As they had for Stephen, they searched the entire church. But they didn’t find her.

      Only the blood...

      It was dried. It was old. It wasn’t hers.

      There was no fresh blood. No signs of a new struggle. No Tanya.

      “Where could she have gone?” Cooper asked, and now he was panicking for another reason than getting married tomorrow. He was panicking that he might not be able to get married because the bride had disappeared like the original groom.

      “Maybe she decided to walk home,” his mother suggested.

      The police officer who had been watching the parking lot in case Stephen returned for his car had mentioned seeing her leave the church.

      “You actually think she could walk to the estate?” Cooper asked, shaking his head. “No way.”

      The mausoleum was on the other side of the very sprawling city. The distance between the church and the estate was more of a marathon than an evening stroll. But the officer hadn’t seen a cab.

      “She lives just a couple of blocks over,” his mother said. “She rents a third-floor apartment.”

      “An apartment?” he asked, even more confused. She was a billionaire’s granddaughter and she rented?

      “She