GROOM UNDER FIRE by LISA CHILDS Page B

caps and gowns. He and Stephen had worn maroon and Tanya was in white, standing in the middle of the men, like a candle in the dark.
    Had she come between them literally? Maybe it was simple jealousy that had brought on Cooper’s doubts...
    “Nice picture,” Parker said. “I noticed it earlier.”
    “It’s old.” And staring at it made Cooper feel old. “Where are the recent photos of them? Of Tanya?”
    “Maybe on his phone?” Parker mused. “I take them with mine and never bother printing them off.”
    Cooper nodded. He did the same when he cared enough about something to take photos, like of his squad. Or some of the Afghani children. Or the countryside that had actually been quite beautiful...
    “Nobody found his phone,” Cooper recalled.
    “It must be with him.”
    Or with his body.
    “Nikki’s been trying to track the GPS on it. But she hasn’t been able to pick up anything. Maybe the battery’s been removed.”
    “Or the phone destroyed...”
    “You don’t think he’s been kidnapped,” Parker said.
    He shrugged. “I don’t know what to think.” Or maybe he was afraid to think it. But a lot of years had passed since that graduation picture. He wasn’t the same person he’d been back then. Probably neither was Tanya or Stephen...
    “You’re not going to find any answers here,” Parker said, tucking the laptop under his arm. “We need to get you to that safe house before Logan loses it.” His cell phone started to play music. “Speak of the devil...”
    Cooper laughed since Parker’s ringtone for his twin was ‟Sympathy for the Devil.” He pulled the door closed and followed Parker down the hall to the elevator.
    “We’ll be there in a little while,” he assured his twin. “We stopped back at Stephen’s. No, we didn’t really think he’d show up there...” He rolled his eyes at Cooper as the argument continued.
    Apparently, the years hadn’t changed Logan or Parker, they still fought like the teenage girls Cooper had once accused them of being. He was still grinning over that memory when they stepped off the elevator and crossed the foyer to the outside doors.
    A strange sensation chased up and down Cooper’s spine and he hesitated before pushing open the doors. But Parker, perhaps distracted with his call, didn’t notice Cooper’s hesitation, and he continued through them into the dimly lit parking lot.
    Cooper had learned long ago to heed his instincts, so he reached for his gun. But before he could draw it from its holster, shots rang out.

Chapter Six
    Tanya jerked awake to darkness. But she was not alone. She heard a voice—a deep voice murmuring quietly as the speaker was probably trying not to wake her.
    But then the voice rose to a panicked shout. “What the hell’s happening? Parker? Cooper?”
    She jumped up from the bed and scrambled toward the voice. But she couldn’t find the door. She slid her palms along the wall until finally she found the doorknob and turned it.
    “What’s going on?” she asked as she burst into the hotel suite’s sitting room where Logan Payne paced and shouted his brothers’ names into his cell phone.
    He turned to her in surprise, as if he’d forgotten she had been sleeping in one of the bedrooms of the suite. His eyes were wild with fear and frustration. His brothers needed him, but he had been stuck protecting her. She saw all that on his face—his handsome face that was so like Cooper’s.
    “What’s going on!” she demanded.
    He lifted his broad shoulders in a tense shrug. “I don’t know.” And it was obviously killing him.
    “Why are you so worried about them?”
    He hesitated, his jaw clenched the way Cooper so often clenched his, before he finally answered her, “I heard gunshots.”
    Again. Someone had been shooting at Cooper again. “I thought you sent them to a safe house, too.” Apparently that house hadn’t been as safe as the one to which Logan had brought her.
    “They didn’t make it there yet,”