“Oh my god, her face.”
“She’s alive!”
Carter froze. The gold pen slipped from his trembling fingers, clattering loudly against the mahogany table. He stared down the aisle, his perfectly tanned face draining of blood until it turned the color of wet ash. His mouth opened and closed silently, like a dying fish.
Sienna stood up in the front pew, a strangled scream dying in her throat as she gripped the wooden backrest so hard her knuckles turned white.
I reached the front of the altar, stopping just five feet from my husband. The silence in the cathedral was absolute, suffocating.
“A-Audrey?” Carter stammered, his voice cracking, completely devoid of its usual smooth baritone. His knees physically buckled slightly. “You’re… you’re dead. I saw you…”
I smiled. It was a cold, terrifying expression that pulled tightly against my fresh stitches.
“I survive cold climates, Carter,” my voice rang out, clear and echoing off the vaulted stone ceiling, slicing through his pathetic illusion. “Especially when my husband is the one who pushed me.”
Pandemonium erupted in the pews, but Carter couldn’t look away from my eyes. He realized in that split second that the money, the freedom, the perfect murder—it was all dust. He scrambled backward, bumping into the mahogany table, looking desperately for an exit.
But as he retreated, the dozen “mourners” sitting in the back rows of the cathedral simultaneously stood up. They didn’t wear sorrowful expressions. They wore tactical vests beneath their winter coats, pulling gold FBI badges from their pockets.
Arthur Harrison raised his hand, his booming voice cutting through the rising chaos like a thunderclap.
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