Anyone But Rich (Anyone But..., #1)(72)

Someone knocked at the door a few minutes after Miranda called the Uber. The three of us were all bunched together in the crowded space between the stairs and the door. We exchanged confused looks before Iris opened the door a crack to look out. “Yes?” she said.

“I’m your driver. You called a cab, right?”

“Uber, actually,” Iris said. “But how did—”

I heard the man outside laugh. “Right. I used to drive for a cab company, so I always say it wrong. Yeah, I’m your Uber driver.”

Miranda moved to Iris’s side. “Since when do you guys come up to the house? And why did it say you were going to be driving a Ford Explorer? That’s not even an SUV.”

The guy glanced over his shoulder as if he needed to verify what she’d just said. He laughed and made a show of knocking himself on the head and rolling his eyes. “I’m always forgetting to update it when I take my wife’s car. And coming to the door is just a courtesy thing. Don’t forget to review me. Helps me out loads.”

“Uh, just a second,” Miranda said with a tight smile. She slammed the door in his face and showed me her phone. “That’s not our Uber driver.”

“What? How do you know?” I asked.

“Because our Uber driver is still fifteen miles away and apparently parked at a gas station.”

“Who the hell is that guy, then?”

Miranda threw her arms up. “A serial killer, probably?”

“A serial killer with a car,” Iris said. “If we don’t go, we’re going to be helping you file for divorce papers instead of stopping a wedding.”

I frowned. “You’re not suggesting we actually get in a car with someone we know is shady.”

To my surprise, Miranda looked to Iris like she was waiting for a final judgment call.

Iris smirked. “What would be the point of having a cop friend if you couldn’t flirt with danger every now and then?”

“Point taken,” I said, “but isn’t this more like letting danger put a roofie in your drink and watching?”

“Do you want to royally crash this wedding or not?”

That was when I knew I really had fallen deep for Rich, because the hundreds of rational, logical reasons I should’ve run for the hills remained unspoken. I nodded and said a silent prayer that I would actually be alive to regret this later.

“Right on,” Miranda said. She took a deep breath and opened the door with a big smile. “Well, we’re ready, Mr. Uber Driver.”

The man looked a little confused but seemed eager enough to get us moving that he didn’t care.

“Wow. On our way to a wedding, are we?” the man asked when he noticed my dress. He was squat and maybe in his forties.

My friends and I all shared another round of nervous glances but got in the car.

I settled in and reminded myself that Iris was a cop, and even though she didn’t have her trusty nightstick with her this time, I knew she had pepper spray in her purse. She’d complained for weeks about having to get sprayed with it to get her certification and claimed she’d never leave home without it after that experience.

“The wedding is at an old property in the hills,” I said. I scribbled the address down on a piece of paper and handed it to him.

“He already has it. From the app,” Miranda said. “Right?”

I shot her a look. We already knew the guy was full of it, but she didn’t need to provoke him.

“I know where it is,” the driver confirmed.

I sank back in my seat and tried to clear my mind, despite the obvious ringing alarms that we were doing something very stupid because we were in such a rush to get to the wedding. I hadn’t done much thinking about what it was actually going to be like walking out in front of so many people and shocking them. I was about as far from the confrontational type as you could get, and it didn’t get much more confrontational than this.

My heart rate spiked, and for a few seconds, I thought I might actually have a panic attack.

Calm down, Kira. Only Rich’s parents would be pissed. To everyone else, it would probably be a really fun story they could tell their friends. And Stella knew what was happening, so it wasn’t like I was about to break some poor woman’s heart in the process. It was going to be okay. As long as this creepy driver got us there on time.

When he peeked up at us in the rearview for about the tenth time in two minutes, I started regretting how I’d ignored my instincts and said it was okay to take a ride with this guy.

Iris ducked her head and started typing something on her phone after a few minutes. She tapped send and my phone buzzed.

Iris: He’s taking us the opposite direction. Don’t worry. You two sit back and watch. Countless hours of highly sophisticated police training have turned me into a human weapon. I got this.

I stared at her in disbelief. Before I had time to type back a reply, we’d stopped at a red light, and Iris, the human weapon, had leaped into action.





Chapter 28





RICH


I stood at the altar. I’d gone over the plan a dozen times with everyone we had working on our side of the scheme. Stella had been getting prepped in a wedding dress and makeup all morning so no one would be suspicious, but the plan was when everyone stood for the bride and her father, Kira would be the one to walk down the aisle.