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She unlocked the Jag and got in, then took a deep breath as she mentally checked off the tasks that had been completed during the long day. They were over the hump. Three weddings down, three to go. Her mother and Peach were probably wrapping up the Pink wedding about now, too. When she got home she’d call to see if everything had gone well with the Family Drama rehearsal as well as the Pink wedding, but there hadn’t been any phone calls tonight so she knew there hadn’t been any real disasters. Glitches, maybe; disasters, no. That was something.
The big wedding on Sunday would be an all-day affair for Premier, but at least it was the only thing they had. After that was over, they’d have a breather, a few precious days to rest and regroup. She might even take Monday off. Since she and Madelyn had started Premier she’d never just not gone in to work. She’d taken one weeklong vacation—three years ago—and she’d stayed home sick a couple of times when she wasn’t needed, but other than that sh
e’d always been there. After the week she’d had, she deserved a little break.
She started the engine and put the transmission in gear, but kept her foot on the brake as she looked over her shoulder to check for oncoming traffic.
Good thing she did, because a car pulled away from the curb behind her, back close to the intersection, and barreled down the street, wobbling a bit between the lanes. Jaclyn automatically tensed, keeping an eye on the speeding car as she waited for it to pass. The way the car was jerkily swerving, the driver was probably drunk. She hoped the drunk driver hadn’t come from the reception; there had been some drinkers, of course, but none of them had made asses of themselves. No one else had been walking ahead of her and the couple who had crossed the street with her, but the driver could have come out earlier and been sitting in the car for a few minutes, maybe hoping to sober up a little, maybe fumbling for keys.
Thank God she hadn’t pulled out into the street yet; if the idiot could just get past without sideswiping her, she’d be good to go. But as she watched the car in her rearview mirror, sideswiping began to seem increasingly possible. The other car seemed to be aiming right for her. The distance was covered in just a couple of seconds but the time seemed to stretch painfully long. She gripped the steering wheel to brace herself, closed her eyes, and prayed.
The car pulled alongside; it didn’t come to a complete stop, simply slowed with a jerk that barked the tires a little. Jaclyn opened her eyes and jerked her head around, but even with the streetlights shining the driver was kind of a dark blob. What she did see was the light reflecting off something metallic that was pointing toward her. There was a split second of incredulity before she recognized the metallic thing for what it was: a gun.
There was a loud crack and the window beside her head literally exploded, sending kernels of shattered safety glass raining over her. A concussion of hot air seemed to slap her in the face. Instinctively she ducked and threw herself to the side, across the center console. Another shot boomed, the sound much louder now with the window broken out. Again she felt hot air slapping at her, and she pressed her face hard into the smooth leather of the seat as if that would keep a bullet from hitting her. She could hear screams, and dimly realized that she was the one screaming.
Oh God, she was a sitting duck here! But if she tried to scramble out of the car she’d have to lift her head and give the shooter a target—and what if the shooter was even now getting out of the car and walking to the blasted-out window? She was caught; there was nothing she could do, nowhere she could go. She was going to die in some senseless drive-by shooting. A nauseating tide of regret swamped her, because she’d never get to tell Eric—
“Jaclyn!” That was Diedra’s voice screaming her name, the sound rising high and sharp above her own screams. There were other sounds, too, a man shouting, a door slamming—then, instead of the third shot that she expected, she heard the squealing of tires as the would-be killer peeled out and sped away.
Time slowed to the speed of cold molasses. Jaclyn heard the rasp of air in her throat, felt every beat of her heart thumping in her body. The smell of leather filled her nose, mixed with the sweetness of flowers and the sharp scent of gunpowder.
Slowly, as if she had aged seventy years in the space of a few seconds, she levered herself upright and looked around. To her surprise, the shooter’s car was still fishtailing in the street in front of the church as the tires fought for traction. What felt like minutes had actually been no more than a few seconds. Feeling numb and oddly detached, she thought about getting the car’s license number, or at least a partial, but it didn’t have a tag. Then the driver finally got the car under control and it shot forward, tires squealing again as it reached the corner, took a right, and disappeared from view.
Diedra was sprinting across the street, still screaming her name while she punched a number into her cell phone. A couple who hadn’t pulled out of the church parking lot yet was several feet behind her. The couple that had walked across the street in front of Jaclyn had already begun driving away, but when they heard shots they’d stopped and the man had pulled the car back to the curb. He and his wife were now both hurrying toward her. Lights were coming on up and down the block, doors were opening, people were spilling out into the night.
“Are you all right?” the man yelled, which struck her as odd, because if she hadn’t been how could she have answered?
Her lips were numb, but laboriously she shoved the car door open and got out. Every move felt as if she were underwater, pushing against a strong current. Shock made chills roughen her skin. Oh, God, that had been so close.
Atlanta was a big city. The shooting could have been random, or she might have been mistaken for someone else, though the Jag made that kind of unlikely. She could have been the victim of a vicious prank, or a gang initiation.
But she didn’t think so. Whoever had been in that car had been gunning for her, specifically, and she had no idea why.
Eric’s heart was still hammering when he arrived on the scene. When he’d gotten the call he’d jumped naked out of bed and already had his keys in one hand and his weapon in the other and was heading out the door before he realized he didn’t have any clothes on. Cursing, he pivoted and returned to his bedroom to get dressed—in the first clothes that came to hand, which happened to be the pants he’d worn the day before and a dark gray T-shirt he wore when he was working out. Underwear hadn’t figured into the scheme of things, so he was commando and sock-less, but at least he had a belt he could clip his badge to, and he’d grabbed his shoulder holster as well.
During the hair-raising drive into Atlanta, he’d called a buddy of his with the Atlanta P.D. and talked to him. They knew he was on the way, and he knew Jaclyn was all right, which were the two most important things. For one thing, he slowed down to a fairly reasonable speed. The second thing, the Atlanta cops weren’t alarmed by the arrival of a half-dressed man who was apparently crazed and armed. A lot of the guys who’d been around awhile knew him from when he’d been on the Atlanta P.D., but they knew him with his hair combed and all his clothes on. The newer guys might well have shot him if they hadn’t been looking for him.
He turned on his blue light, just to be on the safe side. By the time he arrived on the scene, it was the zoo he’d expected to find. When he got out of the car, he looked around until he spotted Jaclyn in the church parking lot, surrounded by her mother and friends, civilians he didn’t know, and several cops, both uniformed and not. Even from a distance he could tell they were all talking at once. Madelyn had a supportive hand on her daughter’s shoulder, and the other two stood close, offering moral and physical support. Spotting her car was easy; it was parked at the far curb in the center of a cluster of cops, the driver’s side window shattered.
Of the four women, Jaclyn was the calmest as she talked to the Atlanta cops, but even from this distance he could tell how pale she was. He began threading his way through the tangle of hastily parked cars toward her. He had to remind himself not to run. She hadn’t been shot. She was fine.
As he neared, her head snapped around in his direction, as if she had some built-in radar where he was concerned. “What are you doing here?” she said with open hostility.
“Hello to you, too. I hear you’ve had a little trouble.”
“How did you hear?” she asked suspiciously. She narrowed her eyes at the detective she’d been talking to. “Did you call him? How would you even know to—”
Peach sighed. “I called him,” she confessed. “I was worried out of my mind, so it seemed like the right thing to do.”
“Why would you think that?” Madelyn demanded in a mixture of bewilderment and indignation.
“Well, why would anyone try to shoot Jaclyn? It had to be the same person who killed Carrie; it’s just too much of a stretch to think the two incidents aren’t related.”
She was right. Eric already had his money on the gray-haired man, who probably thought Jaclyn could identify him.
“How did you even know his number?” Madelyn’s voice was getting louder as she tried to make sense of what she obviously considered nonsense.
Peach threw Eric a beseeching, step-in-here-any-time look. “His card was in my purse, and—”
