Love is Murder by Sandra Brown Page B

joy.
    But all Claire could sense was darkness. Dark energy. Filling the room. Hovering over the fairy-tale setting.
    Why?
    Not because of the marriage. This time Kim had gotten it right. Her first marriage had been a disaster. She and Ted Benton had met in college, fallen wildly in love and eloped to Vegas when Kim was a sophomore.
    Huge mistake. Kim was wealthy, accustomed to the finer things in life, and not about to give them up. She was also bright, ambitious and—within three years—a junior VP at the major advertising firm on Madison Avenue where she worked. Ted was a middle-class, nine-to-five kind of guy. Wanting a traditional life. Pissed off when he didn’t get it. And how did he react? By slacking off at work. Spending his time watching football and drinking beer.
    Kim’s pregnancy was unplanned. But Sam had arrived, healthy, happy and all boy. Ted was terrific with his son. Then again, it was easy to be good with a child when you were still one yourself. He and Kim had tried to make it work. It hadn’t. They’d called it quits last year, when Sam was two. Things had plummeted downhill after that. An acrimonious divorce. Full custody for Kim when Ted drank his way to the unemployment line. And limited visitation rights after he started showing up late, drunk or not at all.
    This marriage was different.
    James Coleman was an ideal match. A wealthy investment banker, he loved Kim and respected her for who she was—a materialistic workaholic, just like him. They were both committed to their professional futures, and gladly accepted the personal sacrifices those futures entailed. It had taken an exhaustive amount of juggling to find two weeks they both could make this wedding and honeymoon happen.
    And now here they were, tying the knot in a beautiful wedding chapel nestled in the gardens of Maui’s most elegant luxury resort hotel, the Punahou Lani.
    So why couldn’t Claire shake the dark energy that seemed to surround them?
    The beautiful strains of Pachelbel’s Canon began, filling the walls of the elegant chapel. The guests all turned, craning their necks to see the bridal gown that Kim Hewitt had chosen to begin her second, far more suitable, marriage.
    Smoothing the folds of her custom-made ivory silk dress, Kim linked her arm through her father’s and made her grand entrance. Her gaze flickered over the guests to James—who was grinning broadly—to Sam, who had successfully made it down the aisle, stern in his all-important job of ring bearer. Other than wriggling around with his pent-up three-year-old energy level, he was being a trouper.
    Claire, Kim’s longtime friend and maid of honor, stood beside Sam, fondly ruffling his hair and keeping him rooted to one spot. The bridesmaids clustered on the other side of the dais, watching Kim glide her way to her future.
    The bride was only feet away from the groom and a new life when it happened.
    The outside chapel door burst open. A man wearing a ski mask and gripping a handgun exploded into the sanctuary. He locked the heavy door behind him, simultaneously holding up his weapon, and aiming it straight at the dais.
    Everyone screamed.
    The gunman ignored it.
    Keeping his sights on the crowd, he strode over to the inside chapel door—the one Kim had just entered through that connected the chapel with the ballroom wing—and locked that one, as well. He turned in a slow panoramic sweep of the room, the pistol tracking each person.
    “Everyone—get down,” he ordered in a rough, gravelly voice that pierced the shrieks of fright. “Throw all your purses and cell phones on the floor and push them away from you. Then put your hands in front of you where I can see them. Anyone who plays hero, dies.”
    Immediately, everyone sprang into panicked action, the women struggling over their formal dresses and high heels, the men groping in their pockets. Kim’s father pushed his daughter to the ground and shimmied his cell phone out of the pants pocket of his