The P.I.

She should have gone with him.

Ari whined and placed a heavy paw on her shoulder. When she turned to look at him, she saw that he had the end of his leash in his mouth. He whined again.

“What?” But even as she spoke the question, she realized that he was probably asking to go out.

“Now?” she asked, recalling that Kit had made her promise to stay in the car.

Ari whined again, and she was sure she heard a note of desperation in the tone.

“Okay. Okay.” She tucked the car keys into her pocket and pressed the button on the door that released all the locks. No sooner had she climbed out than Ari bounded to the pavement beside her. She’d never seen him move that fast, and she barely caught the end of the leash before he shot down the street.

Drew dug in her heels, but that barely slowed down their forward momentum. “Stop. We can’t…whoa!”

What in the world had happened to the indolent animal who’d seemed permanently attached to the floor of Kit’s office?

“Ari…please, stop!”

The dog ignored her, plummeting forward. When he reached the crime-scene tape that had been used to barricade the side street, he slipped right under it, forcing Drew to duck beneath it and follow. He halted when they arrived at the first of the parked squad cars. Luckily, the uniformed officers who belonged to it had moved to where a tall, distinguished-looking gentleman stood talking to the press by the limousine that had arrived earlier. Another man, younger but equally well dressed, stood next to him.

“We were supposed to stay by Kit’s car,” she blustered to the dog. “Correction. We were supposed to stay in the car.” Then she watched in horror as Ari moved directly into a pool of light that fell from a streetlamp, lifted his leg and took aim at the front tire of the squad car.

“Stop. Please. There’s a perfectly good hydrant right next to Kit’s car. You can’t…”

Ari ignored her and continued his business.

She shot an apprehensive glance at the two uniforms, but they were still at the limo. A moment later, one of the officers escorted both men up the steps of the church. The news crews filmed the procession. At any minute the uniformed men could return to their car.

“Hurry,” she urged Ari.

Seconds ticked away, and Drew felt like she was standing in a spotlight. Which she was. In her mind, she imagined the redheaded reporter Kit had chatted with rushing toward her, mike in hand.

When the dog finally lowered his leg, she let out a sigh of relief. “C’mon,” she said, and tugged on the leash.

Once again Ari ignored her. Instead of moving back to the car, he stretched out on the pavement.

“Ari, please,” she begged. “This is not the place for a nap.” Out of the corner of her eye, Drew saw one of the policemen glance in her direction. When he started toward her, she squatted down and bent over, wrapping her arms around Ari so that the front of her suit was well-hidden. Her mind raced as she tried to think of an appropriate bribe for a dog. “When we get back to the car, I’ll turn on the air-conditioning.”

Ari didn’t budge.

“Ma’am?”

Keeping a firm grip on the dog, she managed a smile for the cop. “Hi.”

“I have to ask you to step back outside the tape. And take the dog with you.”

“Working on it.” Tightening her hold on Ari, she tried to heave him up off the pavement. It was like trying to move a boulder. “C’mon, boy.”

In one surprisingly quick move, Ari rose, throwing her off balance. They both tumbled back and she ended up sitting on the pavement with Ari spread across her lap. Pleased with himself, the dog licked her face.

“I’m thinking of an obedience-training course,” she said to the cop.

“Here, let me give you a hand.” The officer started to bend over.

This was it. The knots in her stomach tightened. Once he pulled the dog off of her, there was no way to hide the bloodstains. She’d be in handcuffs, dragged away to jail.

“Food,” she said.

The cop looked at her as if she were several cards short of a full deck. “Food?”

She shot him a smile. “He’ll do anything for food. Tell me you’ve got some in your car. Doughnuts?”

He considered that for a minute.

“Please. I know you can probably handle him, but I don’t want him to get hurt.” That was such a lie that she wondered why her nose didn’t grow as long as Pinocchio’s. Truth be told, she wanted to strangle Ari.

He whined and licked her face.

The cop glanced at the dog, then at her. “I might have a doughnut. Just don’t move until I get back.”

There wasn’t much chance of that, Drew thought as she watched the cop open the door of the squad car. Maybe if she weren’t pinned to the ground by a large dog, she might have made a run for it. If Kit had any psychic powers at all, she prayed that they would kick in. Soon.

KIT STOOD in the doorway of the small room at one end of the choir loft. The loft was one of those that ran across both sides of the church as well as the back. The old storeroom was about eight by nine. One wall was lined with shelves where hymnals were stacked. They accounted for the musty smell that Drew had recalled. On the floor lay a wedding bouquet. The cops working the scene had already bagged it. There was no window. Without illumination from the overhead light, the room would have been very dark indeed. This was the room that Drew had recalled, all right.

A room where the bride and her companion had waited for the wedding ceremony to begin?

Kit glanced around again. Shots had definitely been fired in here. There was a bloodstain in one corner, and more on the wall near the door. There might well have been more than one victim. Recalling the details of Drew’s sole memory, he imagined her standing in the corner to his right, pictured the door opening and a large figure moving into the room.

At that kind of close range, there was very little likelihood that she’d miss. So she hadn’t shot Roman. But she’d shot someone. He saw the man entering the room, being hit by the bullet and then stumbling back against the wall. The scene worked.

The other bloodstain was on an outside wall, directly across from the door. If the man coming through the door had fired in that direction, he’d have hit his mark, too.

Had the man shot the bride? Or the groom? In his mind, Kit tested the scenario that Nik had suggested. Following the argument in the sacristy, Paulo Carlucci ran up here to protect his bride. Roman followed, rushed in the door. And shot someone? Not his sister. Would he have shot Paulo? And if he was shot, how would Paulo have been able to overpower Roman and send him tumbling over the railing?

And who was the man Drew shot? Not Roman because he hadn’t taken a bullet and Drew was certain she’d hit her target. So there must have been another man up here in this room. Unless Drew had shot the groom. Was she in on whatever had gone on here?

If he thought that, he would turn her over to Nik right now. But he didn’t. He no more believed that Drew had come here to kill Paulo than he believed that Roman had. There had to have been another shooter involved. Someone who’d chased up here after Paulo. He considered Sadie in that role, then dismissed the thought. Drew had been sure she’d shot a man. So it had to be someone else, someone that Roman had come up here to deal with.

Kit ran through the scene again. The bad guy came into the room, fired a bullet at the bride or the groom and Drew shot the bad guy, who stumbled back into the wall and then out of the room. Roman struggled with the guy and took a header over the railing.

Kit liked that scene much better than the one Nik had described where Roman chased Paulo and possibly shot him. But so far he didn’t have even a decent theory about why Drew had been packing a gun, let alone who the man she shot might have been. And what was Sadie Oliver doing during all of this? And how in hell did the money fit in?

Okay—he let his mind entertain Drew’s theory that she was a hit woman. Then why come to see him with the money and the gun? And who had given her his card?

With a frown, Kit rubbed the back of his neck. Tingling sensation aside, a scenario with Drew as a hit woman just didn’t ring true to him. She’d arrived with the bride. Perhaps she was the maid of honor. Maybe she’d used the gun to protect the bride.

Yeah, he liked that scenario a great deal more. And what part had Roman played in all of this? Roman had definitely been up here. He’d struggled with someone who’d pushed him down the stairs. And where in hell were the bride and groom now?

There was way too much he didn’t know or couldn’t explain.

One thing was for sure—his friend Roman was currently in big trouble. Drew wasn’t out of the woods yet, either. And considering the explosive nature of the crime and the possibility that some members of the Carlucci and Oliver families might take the law into their own hands, the police were going to want to close the case fast.

The sound of footsteps climbing the staircase to the loft brought Kit’s speculation to a dead stop. As quietly as he could, he left the room and strode toward the door at the far end of the loft. Slipping through it, he made his way quietly down the stairs and let himself into a small, dimly lit room that wasn’t much bigger than a closet.

A woman let out a frightened yelp.

“Sorry.” Kit turned in the direction of the noise and then simply stared. Handcuffed to the radiator she was presently perched on was a petite redhead in black pants, a neat white shirt and a black bow tie. A black ribbon had once probably held the tumble of red curls back from her face, but quite a number of them had escaped. Under other circumstances he might have described the face as pretty. Right now, it was furious.