The Worst Best Man(16)
She spotted Chip ahead, looking around as if he was lost. He was standing on the sidewalk ahead of the cab line weaving like a man who’d ingested nothing but rum for an entire weekend.
She raised her hand to hail him. But before she could call out to him, a dirty white van roared up to the sidewalk, the rear door sliding open before it stopped. Chip leaned in, and that’s when Frankie saw the hands reach out. They dragged him into the van.
“Hey! Chip!” She started running. The driver, a red cap pulled low, looked her way. “Stop! That’s my friend!” Frankie yelled.
“Hey, Mami,” the driver said, tossing her a wave as he floored the accelerator. Tires squealing, the door slammed shut with Chip inside, and the van sped away from the curb.
The groom had just been kidnapped.
Chapter Nine
Aiden was under a full head of steam as he stormed his way through the fish festival crowd. When he found Frankie, he was going to explain that she was being an idiot. Which would probably go over well. Aiden liked having the edge, the advantage in negotiations. And Frankie’s weakness was when she let her emotions off the leash. Mad, turned on, that’s when she was vulnerable to suggestion.
It was callous, calculating. But he was a Kilbourn. It’s what they did.
He spotted her on the sidewalk, and his calculations disappeared as if they’d never been when he saw the fear on her face. She was hailing a cab.
“Franchesca!” he pushed his way to her just as a rusty ZR van clunked to a stop in front of her. There were a half dozen people already on it.
“Aiden!” She grabbed his arm. “Get in!”
Instinctively, he followed her onto the torn-up vinyl of a bench seat.
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Where you going?” the driver demanded.
“Follow that car,” Frankie announced, pointing at taillights ahead.
The ZR lurched to a start, and Aiden braced his hand on the seat in front of him. “What in the hell is going on?” he demanded.
“They took Chip.” Her breath was coming in heaves as she peered over the front seat…
“What? Who took Chip?”
“I don’t know. One second he was standing on the sidewalk, and the next, someone was dragging him into a minivan.”
Aiden yanked his phone out. And dialed Chip’s number. There was no answer.
A bell rang and the ZR jerked to a stop in front of a sports bar.
“Why are we stopping?” Frankie asked. “They’re getting away!”
“Lady, this is a Zed-R. We stop for everyone.”
A man dressed in all white with a hand carved cane climbed out of the back and over Frankie to the door. The van sat as he shuffled his way across the street toward the bar.
Aiden reached for his money clip. “How much for no more stops?” he demanded, handing twenties to the remaining passengers.
“I can be late,” a woman with a sleeping toddler in her lap said with a smile stuffing the twenty into her bra.
“WooHoo!” A man in an orange and black Hawaiian shirt with a peeling sunburn on his nose and forehead triumphantly held up his twenty. “I love this country! I’m getting’ paid to take public transportation.”
“Whatever you say, mister,” the driver said, accepting his bill and flooring it.
The minivan was well out of sight and Franchesca was practically vibrating beside him. Aiden slid an arm around her shoulder, anchoring her to his side.
The ZR shuffled forward slowly building speed like a freight train. The driver cranked up the volume of a reggae song and merrily swerved around a trio of potholes. Aiden dialed Chip again. Still nothing.
He swore quietly, his brain turning over the problem. Who would take Chip the night before his wedding, and why?
“Franchesca, tell me everything you remember,” he said, squeezing her shoulder.
“Everything I remember? Our friend was just dragged off the sidewalk into a fucking van!” Conversation in the ZR shut down as everyone leaned in to listen.
“I got that part already. Now, walk me through everything that you saw.”
She went over it again and then once more as the van careened north. Her body shifting against his around turns.
“The driver—he looked at me when I called for Chip—he had a gold tooth and a dirty red cap. But he had it pulled low over his face. That’s all I saw. I didn’t see who grabbed Chip, but the drunk dumbass stuck his head right in the van. He made it easy for them.”
They careened around a sharp turn, slipping into a traffic circle six inches in front of a city bus. The driver tooted the horn in either a friendly thank you or a fuck off. Aiden couldn’t tell.
Frankie’s hands were white knuckled on the seatback in front of her.
“Are you sure he didn’t get in willingly?” Aiden asked squeezing her arm.
She shook her head. “I didn’t hear him scream or anything, but he didn’t climb into that van by himself. Everyone he knows here is back at the fish stand. Who would do this?”
It was a question Aiden had been asking himself. Chip Rudolph was squeaky clean. No gambling debts, no secret second lives. Just a trust fund kid amiably enjoying his very privileged world. Aiden scrolled through everything he and Chip had discussed in the past few weeks. Had his friend mentioned any issues? Any squabbles in the family? At work?