The Defender

Sadie barely caught the words above the ragged sounds of his breathing. “Juliana…Paulo…Carlucci.”

Juliana and Paulo Carlucci? No, that simply couldn’t be. The bad blood between the Oliver and Carlucci families went back generations, and the fact that Oliver Enterprises and Carlucci Ltd. were currently competing over a lucrative land deal involving a strip of Orange County coastline had brought that blood to the boiling point.

If her baby sister had indeed planned a secret wedding to Paulo Carlucci and the news had leaked out… Fear knotted hard in her stomach. It had leaked out, hadn’t it? Roman had certainly gotten wind of it. And there’d been that man he’d been chasing. And those gunshots from inside the church.

Another possibility had her blood going cold. Had her father found out about the wedding plans, too? Mario Oliver had a reputation for knowing everything. And who knows what he would have done to prevent his youngest daughter from marrying his enemy’s son.

“…Wanted…to stop it…”

She could all too easily imagine that Roman would have wanted to stop the wedding. They knew from watching their father that marriage was not an easy path, even in the best of circumstances. Their mother had died shortly after Juliana’s birth; Mario Oliver was on his third marriage. Sadie had a suspicion that Deanna Mancuso Oliver would not be his last. And Juliana was barely eighteen, Paulo perhaps a year or two older. They were babies. She squeezed her brother’s hand. “Don’t try to talk.”

“Shot…Paulo.”

Sadie’s stomach sank. Roman had shot Paulo? Had he come here to stop the wedding and…? No. Violence was not Roman’s way. He didn’t have their father’s ruthlessness. She couldn’t have heard him right. She lowered her head so that his lips were nearly brushing her ear.

“Make sure…Juliana’s…safe.” Roman tightened his grip on her fingers. “Trust…no one…go…to…Kit.” He paused to let out a breath. Panic threatened to swamp her. Not his last breath. Please. His fingers went lax in hers. No. Please.

Fear knifed through her as she checked his pulse again. It was still there, and the rise and fall of his chest told her he was breathing.

For a second, she sat there, her mind numb. Think, she told herself. Do something. She pressed her fingers to her temples. Roman had said to trust no one. To go to Kit. Taking her cell from her purse, she scrolled to Kit Angelis’s number and pressed it in. Kit and Roman had been best friends since college. Maybe he could…

She heard the sound of a siren just as Kit’s answering machine picked up. Leaving her name and number, she dropped her phone back in her purse and struggled to gather her thoughts again. A new fear had her jumping to her feet. Roman had also said to make sure Juliana was safe. She recalled that shot she’d heard from the choir loft. What if Juliana…?

Sadie hit the stairs at a run, stumbling and coming down hard on the third rung. Pushing herself to her feet, she raced up the rest of the steps. One glance told her the choir loft was empty, but there was an open door directly in front of her. Heart pounding, she stepped into a small, windowless room. There was enough light for her to see that it, too, was empty. Her relief was short-lived as she took in dark stains on two walls. Blood? Then she saw the bouquet of white flowers lying on the floor.

Sadie drew in a deep breath and fought back the terror that had been dominating her actions so far. A good attorney never let emotions rule. She looked at the facts. And the fact she was staring at right now was a wedding bouquet.

Evidence of a secret wedding? Her sister and Paulo Carlucci’s? Sadie was still trying to get her mind around that. Roman’s words came back to her. “…Wanted to stop it…shot Paulo.” She stared again at the dark stains on the wall. Who had shot Paulo? Roman? This time, she ruthlessly shoved the rising hysteria down. Roman would not have shot Paulo. Yes, he would have been upset to learn about the wedding plans. Yes, he would have tried to talk Juliana out of it. So would she if she’d gotten here in time.

But she’d heard those two gunshots when she’d first entered the church, hadn’t she? She’d seen the gun in Roman’s hand. He could have fired them.

The siren was drawing closer and Sadie could hear more in the distance. Turning, she stepped back into the choir loft and hurried to a window in time to see a red convertible with a flashing blue light on its hood careen around a corner and pull into the parking lot at the back of the church. After sending up a prayer that one of the other sirens belonged to an ambulance, Sadie reminded herself to think. The church was an old-fashioned one where the choir loft extended along both sides, as well as the back. She shifted her gaze to the exit signs marking the far ends of the loft and forced her mind back over the facts.

She’d heard Roman call out, “Juliana, are you all right?”

And she’d heard someone answer, “Yes.”

Then the fight had broken out and she’d heard running footsteps. So while Roman was fighting with someone—the man in the black T-shirt with the gun—whoever was in that small room could have run along the side of the choir loft and exited through the back of the church.

The siren was close now and when she shifted her gaze to the street, she saw a police car slow as it crossed the intersection near the front of the church, passing a dark van. She was turning, intending to go back down the stairs and back to Roman, when suddenly, she blinked and leaned closer to the window. If she hadn’t been standing right there peering through the glass at that particular minute, she would have missed it.

Two blocks down, a taxi had stopped at the curb and three people had crowded around its open passenger door.

One of them was Juliana. Even at this distance, Sadie was sure of it. Her sister’s long, straight, dark hair was unmistakable. A second woman, a petite blonde carrying a dress bag and a tote, climbed into the taxi. A moment later, the taxi pulled away from the curb, leaving Juliana and the man standing on the curb. Sadie got a look at him in profile before he took Juliana’s arm and disappeared around the corner. Paulo Carlucci. She also saw the dark stain on his upper arm. Blood?

Below her, the church doors opened and she hurried to the loft railing in time to see two policemen kneeling over Roman.

“The pulse is steady,” one man said. “Blood on the back of his head.”

“Look’s like he fell,” the other said. “Be careful not to move him until the EMTs get here.”

Sadie hesitated, torn between her desire to go down the stairs to be with her brother and her fear for her sister’s safety. Roman was in safe hands now, she told herself. It was Juliana who needed her.

With that one thought in mind, she rushed quietly along the side of the choir loft and hurried down the stairs. The room at the bottom was small. At its center stood a marble fountain in the middle of a shallow rectangular pool where baptisms would be performed. Sadie skirted it and raced for the exit. Once out on the street, she sprinted toward the corner where she’d last seen Juliana.

An ambulance rushed past, but she paid it no heed. The police on the scene would make sure the medics took care of Roman. She had to get to Juliana, make sure she was safe. She was half a block away from the corner when she saw the dark van pull through the intersection. She might not have paid it any heed if the driver’s window hadn’t been open. But it was—she recognized the driver and the van as the one that had been blocking the parking lot entrance when she’d first arrived.

Possibilities raced through her mind and she didn’t like any of them. She thought of the man Roman had chased into the choir loft, the one who’d left through the front door with blood running down his arm. Had the man in the van been waiting for him? Were they, too, looking for Juliana?

Heart pounding, she put all her energy into reaching the corner. But when she turned it, there was no sign of Juliana or Paulo.

And no sign of the dark van.

3

BY THE TIME SADIE MADE it back to St. Peter’s Church, there were four squad cars blocking off both Skylar Avenue and Bellevue. She’d run a few blocks trying to catch sight of Paulo and Juliana, but she hadn’t even glimpsed them and she hadn’t seen the van again, either. A glance at her watch told her that it was 7:30, roughly fifteen minutes since she’d heard those first shots and seen Roman fall over that railing.

A shudder moved through her as the image filled her mind. She couldn’t let herself dwell on it. She had to hold it together. Roman was depending on her.

Two ambulances were now parked in front of the church, and uniformed policemen were stationed at intervals by the tape that had been strung along the sidewalks to keep the curious at a distance. She would have to get past them to get back into the vestibule and check on Roman.

As she made her way through the small crowd that had gathered on the sidewalk across from the church, someone tugged on her arm. Turning, she glanced down to find a tiny woman with bright blue eyes and a mass of curly white hair smiling excitedly up at her. The thought that popped into her mind was that this was what little orphan Annie might look like at seventy.

“Did you hear the shots, dear?”

“No, I didn’t,” Sadie lied, looking for an opening in the police barricade.

“I heard the shots. I live in the house right next to the rectory. At first I wasn’t sure. I thought it might be a car backfiring. But altogether I counted six of them. Way too many for a car. Figured they had to be gunshots.”

Six, Sadie thought. That roughly tallied with the number she’d heard. Two when she’d first come in, three from inside the church, then one overhead. “Did you see anything?”

The woman shook her head. “Not while the shooting was going on. I’d looked through the window earlier and I knew that a wedding was happening the minute that catering truck pulled into the rectory parking lot. Father Mike is hitching up a lot of couples lately. He has a way with young people and St. Peter’s is turning out to be the in place for weddings. He’s brought new life to the neighborhood.”

There was pride in her voice.

“But there was something odd about this one,” the woman continued.

“What?” Sadie asked.

“Very few guests. Usually, the cars fill that little parking lot behind the church, guests hang out on the front steps before the ceremony and they cover the front steps with a long white cloth—to protect the bride’s dress, I guess—and the bride arrives in one of those big stretch limousines. But not tonight. I saw her come in a taxi with a little blond woman and I think the wedding dress was in the bag the blond was carrying.”

Juliana had arrived in a taxi with a blond woman. The woman she’d seen get into the taxi had been carrying a dress bag. Sadie felt a little stab of guilt. She had no idea who the woman was, no idea who any of her sister’s friends were.

“A young man had arrived a bit before that with a big bruiser of a fellow. Figured one of them had to be the groom until the other man arrived. Handsome as sin, that one. I was thinking the bride was one lucky gal if she was tying the knot with him. He looked a bit familiar, too, but I couldn’t place him. I will, though. It will come to me when I’m not expecting it. After the handsome one went inside, I went downstairs to catch Wheel of Fortune.”

As “Annie” continued to talk, Sadie glanced at the front of the church. Nothing was happening. She started forward again.

“Figured it must be one of those hush-hush affairs,” Annie was saying. “Maybe a pair of celebrities or something like that. Whatever it was, someone got wind of it and put a stop to it. I just hope that it wasn’t Father Mike who got killed. Of course, I wouldn’t want it to be the bride or the groom, either.”