They crossed the reception floor in a straight line, cutting between tables, sidestepping a waiter carrying a tray of champagne flutes. Guests laughed. Danced. Clinked glasses. The wedding continued around them, oblivious and warm.
They pushed through the garden gate. The gravel path to the parking lot stretched ahead, lit by a single lamp at the far end. The music dropped to a murmur behind them. Ahead, the parking lot was a grid of dark shapes under scattered lights.
They walked fast. Then faster as they searched for the two men. Ben's dress shoes scraped against the gravel. Kelly's heels clicked beside him, a rapid staccato that matched his heartbeat.
Ethan was a man who had questions. For Rob.
He was a man who had loved a girl. Who had lost her. Who had spent eleven years not knowing why.
They reached the edge of the gravel. The parking lot opened before them, dim and quiet. Ben squinted against the darkness, searching for movement. For voices. For anything.
He found it.
At the far edge of the parking lot, under a single floodlight mounted on a metal pole, two men stood facing each other. The light was harsh and white, and the two figures stood out in stark contrast.
Ethan had a gun.
It was a small handgun, dark metal, held in a grip that was steady enough to be terrifying. His arm was extended straight, the barrel pointed at Rob's chest from maybe eight feet away. Close enough that even a bad shot wouldn't miss.
Rob's hands were up. Not all the way up, not the dramatic surrender of a movie. Halfway. Palms out. The hands of a man who had never had a weapon pointed at him in his life and was discovering in real time that his opinions about everything didn't include a protocol for this.
Ben stopped abruptly, and the gravel crunched under his shoe. The sound seemed impossibly loud in the quiet lot. He didn’t want to spook either of the men, not wanting any spontaneous and ill-aimed gunfire. There were far too many people milling about, and this was a recipe for a fucking disaster.
His heart hammered against his ribs, blood slamming through his veins so hard he could feel it in his temples.
Think. Don't feel. Think.
He grabbed Kelly's arm and pulled her behind him in one motion. She stumbled, caught herself, and started to speak.
"Stay here," he said. Low. Firm. The voice he didn't recognize as his own was his father’s, the one Seth Reilly used when the situation was serious, and there was no time for discussion. He’d only heard it a few times, but it had been ingrained deeply in his psyche.
“That's my brother."
"I know. Stay here. We don’t want anyone shot here tonight. Your sister would be furious.”
He tried to diffuse the situation with a bit of light humor, but she wasn’t having any of it.
She grabbed his sleeve. He could feel her fingers digging into the fabric.
"Please," she whispered.
He looked at her. Her face was white. Her eyes were fixed on the two figures under the floodlight.
“Should I call 911?” she asked.
“You can, but we probably don’t have time for them to get here.”
Ethan was waving the gun around, his tone angry, but the words garbled as if the man was choking back sobs.
As emotional as Ethan was, Ben couldn’t predict what the man would do. He had to somehow disarm him without getting himself or anyone else killed.
Uh, Dad? If you have any ideas, I’m listening.
Except Seth Reilly wasn’t there. Ben was going to have to do this on his own. He’d sharpened his negotiating skills in some of the most shark-infested boardrooms on Wall Street. Hopefully, he’d learned a thing or two.
Quietly, he moved toward them, swinging out to the right so that he would come up behind Ethan, grabbing the gun away ifhe needed to. He still had hope, however, that the man could be reasoned with.
He could hear them now. Voices carrying in the night air, thin and strained. Ethan's words came first, broken and raw.
