Free 19 Headed for Trouble by Suzanne Brockmann

Point and before Into the Storm .
    “Why,” Sam bitched into his cell phone on Tuesday night, “did Tom have to send
me
out here?”
    His wife, Alyssa, didn’t answer, because she wasn’t on the other end. She was out handling a real case—an
important
case—so he was just leaving voice mail.
    A known sex offender had gone missing. The man’s sister had hired Troubleshooters Incorporated to find him before he hurt anyone else. Alyssa had taken the assignment and was in Richmond, Virginia, tracking him down.
    Meanwhile Sam sat here, halfway around the world, the newest poster child for Murphy’s Law.
Whatever can go wrong
, will
go wrong
.
    And oh, how it had.
    And you there, trying to glass-half-full this disaster? It’s obviously not painful enough for you, so let Mr. Murphy supersize it, ’kay?
    No doubt about it, Murphy had been riding Sam’s ass from the moment he’d kissed Alyssa goodbye far too many weeks ago. This so-called easy assignment setting up security at a corporate honcho’s big fat Italian wedding had turned into a nightmare. Four days had turned into a week, and then that week had turned into an unbelievable three.
    Yeah sure, the little coastal town was beautiful—all blue sky and ocean, gorgeous beaches, bright sunshine. Yeah sure, Sam was making a fortune for Tom Paoletti’s security company—and yeah, all right, he’d earned himself one hell of a bonus for his trouble, too—but come
on
.
    The inefficiency of the honcho’s staff was mind-numbing. Sam could have made bricks by hand and constructed a wall around the wedding chapel himself in the time it took them just to make the decision to set up a temporary chain-link fence and then hide it with a decorative one.
    First the ceremony was going to be held indoors. Then out. Then in. Then on the beach. Each time the location shifted, Sam reworked the details that would keep the VIPs safe and the paparazzi at bay. He hadn’t written this many reports since college.
    And then—God please help him—there were the bridesmaids from hell. Four spoiled daughters of either the bride or the groom—this was a third or fourth marriage for the client, Sam had lost count—they all had far too much time on their hands. Ashley, Heather, Sabrina, and Chloe.
    Ashley and Chloe were the worst. They followed Sam constantly, refusing to let him be. He’d flashed his wedding ring and mentioned his wife when they were first introduced. When they hadn’t seemed to get the hint, he’d flat-out told them that he loved Alyssa more than life itself. He’d even showed them a photo of her, but they just did not let up.
    Which led to tonight’s phone call and Sam’s desperate plea for Alyssa to hurry up and find the man she was looking for, get her butt on a plane, and join him.
    “It’s like trying to work in the middle of a
Girls Gone Wild
video,” he complained, and of course, again, she said nothing because she wasn’t there.
    “I miss you, Lys,” he whispered, which was, in fact,his biggest problem. He could handle an entire army of Ashleys and Chloes. He could rewrite a report for the hundredth time if he had to. He could attend dozens more meetings that redefined
boring
.
    What he couldn’t do was survive too many more mornings waking up thousands of miles away from the woman that he loved. And it wasn’t just that he missed her in his bed. He missed her smile, her voice, her very presence in his life.
    “Please come and save me,” he begged and cut the connection.

    Wednesday brought more perfect weather—and another teeth-gritting delay in the impending nuptials. Chloe informed him over breakfast that the wedding had now been moved to Sunday—just a day later than Saturday, but still.
    She also told him that her father would be out of touch until Thursday morning—which left Sam with just enough time to
not
be able to squeeze in a round-trip to Richmond.
    Of course, if he’d been told about this yesterday morning, he could have made it