Chapter 18: Biscuit

“Brandt, I am in the middle of a fitting,” I said, holding the front of the dress with both hands.

“I know, Miss Hale, and I am sorry, but I need you to change and come out the back door in two minutes,” Brandt said, and for the first time since I had met him, his deep voice sounded rushed.

“Why the back door?” Zola asked, stepping in front of me like a small, furious wall.

“Because a man in a gray cap has been standing across the street since you walked in, he has not bought a coffee, he has not looked at a phone, he has only watched this window,” Brandt said.

My stomach dropped. “Kade just texted me, he said he told one person about the Harbor Hotel, and the photographers are there now, and that person was you.”

“Yes, ma’am, he told me, and I did not tell a soul, I have not spoken to anyone since this morning except you and Miss Zola,” Brandt said.

“That is exactly what a person who told somebody would say,” Zola said.

“Zola is right, I have to ask, and I need you not to be offended,” I said.

“Ask, Miss Hale, I would rather be offended than sorry,” Brandt said.

“Did you tell anyone about the hotel?” I asked.

“No, ma’am, I swear on my daughter’s life, I have carried Kade’s secrets for six years, and I would walk into the ocean before I sold one,” Brandt said, and his voice broke on the last word.

I looked at his big, tired face, and at the little gold ring on his hand, and I remembered what Kade had said, no windows, no closets, tell the same hour.

“Zola, give me my phone,” I said.

I called Kade with my thumb shaking over the screen, and he answered on the first ring. “Mina, where are you, I am coming.”

“Brandt is here, he says a man in a gray cap is watching the shop, he wants me to go out the back, and he says he did not tell anyone about the hotel, do I trust him?” I said, all in one breath.

“Put me on speaker,” Kade said.

I held the phone out, and Kade’s voice filled the little room. “Brandt, tell me the name of the dog you had when we met.”

“Sir?” Brandt said.

“Do it,” Kade said.

“Biscuit, sir, a brown bulldog, he ate your tie in my kitchen four years ago, and you told me it was fine, and then you bought me a new rug,” Brandt said, and the corner of his mouth shook.

“Take her out of there, and do not stop until you reach me, Mina, go,” Kade said.

“That was the strangest security check I have ever heard,” Zola said.

“It was a good one, only Brandt would know about the rug,” I said, and I almost laughed.

“Miss Hale, there is a coat on the hook,” the shop owner said, appearing with a long gray wool coat over her arm, her silver hair coming loose. “Put it over the dress, I will keep the front door locked, and Zola, there are flat shoes under the table.”

“I cannot wear a wedding dress into an alley, it is bad luck, it is a hundred kinds of bad luck,” I said.

“It is a dress, my dear, luck is whatever you decide to carry out of the building,” the owner said, and she buttoned the coat over my shoulders with quick, gentle fingers.

“Thank you, I do not even know your name,” I said.

“Marguerite, and you will come back and finish the fitting when this is over, I am not done with you,” she said.

Brandt led us through a storeroom full of tulle and mannequins, and he opened a steel door, and the afternoon glare hit my eyes.

“Stay behind me,” Brandt said.

The alley smelled like wet cardboard, and our shoes echoed against the brick, and Zola was holding the end of my train off the ground with both hands.

“I have never run in a wedding dress, it is basically a parachute,” I said.

“If you jump, I will catch you, or at least I will fall under you, that is a promise,” Zola said.

“Brandt, how far is the car?” I asked.

“Forty feet, at the end of the alley, the engine is running, ma’am,” Brandt said.

I put one hand on my stomach and whispered, “Hold on, little grape, just hold on,” and I did not even realize I had said it out loud until Zola squeezed my elbow.

We were twenty feet from the car when a figure stepped into the mouth of the alley.

He was a thin man in a gray cap pulled low, with his hands in his jacket pockets, and he did not move, and he did not speak.

Brandt stopped in front of us like a wall. “Step aside, sir.”

The man in the cap tilted his head, and then he took a phone from his pocket and lifted it, and I saw the little camera lens turn toward me.

“Do not let him take the picture, Brandt,” Zola said.

“Ladies, run to the car,” Brandt said, and he moved faster than any man that size should have, and he slapped the phone out of the man’s hand.

The phone skittered over the pavement, and the man in the cap spun and ran.

“Go, go, go!” Brandt shouted.

Zola and I hit the back seat in a heap of gray wool and cream tulle, and Brandt scooped the phone off the ground and slid behind the wheel in one motion.

“Is the man chasing us?” I asked, twisting around.

“No, ma’am, he ran the other way, he is faster than he looks,” Brandt said, and he pulled out of the alley with the tires squealing.

My hands began to shake then, all at once, and I could not stop them, and I curled over my knees and started to cry.

“Mina, breathe, you are safe, we are in the car, we are moving,” Zola said, and she wrapped both arms around me.

“I am scared, Zola, I am so scared, what if he had hurt her, what if the baby,” I said, and the words disappeared into her shoulder.

“Nothing happened, nothing is going to happen, I would bite him, you know I would, I have very strong teeth,” Zola said, crying too.

“I am a chief executive, I run a company, and I just ran down an alley in a wedding dress,” I said, and I laughed, and the laugh turned into a hiccup.

“You looked magnificent, honestly, there should have been music,” Zola said.

Brandt held up the broken phone in the rearview mirror. “He did not drop it for nothing, Miss Hale, the last photo is still on the screen.”

“Show me,” I said, and he passed it back with one big hand.

The screen was cracked, but the picture was clear, a photograph of the front of Marguerite’s boutique, taken from across the street, with a time stamp from an hour ago, and underneath it a message already typed and unsent.

Bride is inside. She is wearing it now.

“Whoever he works for was going to send that to someone, the moment I stepped out of the door,” I said.

“They wanted a photo of the dress, they wanted the world to see it before the wedding,” Zola said.

“No, I think they wanted someone to know exactly where I was,” I said, and my skin went cold.

Kade was waiting in the lobby of his building with his tie off and his hair a mess, and the second the car door opened, he crossed the marble floor in four strides and pulled me out into his arms.

“You are safe, you are safe,” Kade said, into my hair, and I could feel his heart slamming through his shirt.

“I ran in a wedding dress, I was very brave, I want that on the record,” I said.

“It is on the record, I will have it engraved,” Kade said, and he pulled back and looked down at the coat, and at the cream fabric underneath. “Is that the dress?”

“Do not look, it is bad luck,” I said.

“I am looking, Mina, I am looking, and I do not believe in luck,” Kade said, and his voice went rough.

“Sir, I have something,” Brandt said, holding up the cracked phone. “The man in the cap, I did not catch him, but I caught his phone, and I caught his face on the camera when he turned.”

Kade took it, and he swiped the screen, and he looked at a photograph, and I watched the color leave his face.

“Kade?” I asked.

“I know this man,” Kade said, in a voice I had never heard from him before, very small and very flat.

“Who is he?” Zola asked.

“His name is Teddy,” Kade said, handing the phone to me with fingers that were not steady, “and he has been my mother’s driver for fifteen years.”