Page 24 of The Worst Best Man

They heard wild laughter and some yelling.

“Hellooooooo!” Pruitt sang into the phone.

“Pruitt, it’s Aiden,” he said.

“Aiden! I knew you and Frankie would fall madly in love! I totally knew it! I even told Chip so. Chip? Chip!”

Frankie covered her face with her hands. “She thinks her fiancé is going to come running.”

“Pruitt, do you need Frankie or me for the rest of the night?” Aiden asked.

“Ooooh la la! No!”

Aiden glanced at Frankie. “Good, then I’ll keep her to myself a little longer. Get some sleep tonight,” he ordered.

“Yes, sir! I hope you two don’t get any sleep if you know what I mean,” Pruitt yelled.

The entire bus knew what Pru meant even without the help of speakerphone. “Great. Thanks a lot, Aide. Now she thinks we’re banging on a beach somewhere.” Frankie shoved the phone back in her impractical clutch.

“It’s better than knowing the truth at this point.”

“At this point?” Frankie screeched. “At whatpointdo we call the cops? At whatpointdo we have to sit Pru down and tell her the wedding isn’t happening.”

“Calm down.”

“Oh yeah, because saying that to a person who’s freaking outalwayshelps.”

“Franchesca.” He gripped her chin and made her look at him. “I will fix this. I will find Chip, but I need your help. We’re in a foreign country. Yes, quite possibly the friendliest foreign country in the hemisphere, but it’s still different from the United States. How many drunken tourists do you think stumble off and disappear for a few hours? How many men fight with their wives and jump in a cab to go someplace else?”

“But that’s not what happened,” Frankie argued.

“You and I both know that. But a local cop is going to tell you to sit and wait for him to show up.”

The hell she’d do that.

Half an hour and what felt like sixty-four bus stops later, they were back at Oistins. The crowds were thinner now nearing midnight and even more inebriated than when they’d left before. But the cab line was busy. Frankie suggested they split up to cover more ground, but Aiden wasn’t having it. He stuck by her side like a shadow as she quizzed the first two cab drivers. Had they seen this man? She showed them a picture of Chip taken earlier that day. No, they hadn’t. How about a van driver with a gold tooth? No.

It went like that for an hour. No, no, no. No one had seen anything or anyone. There was, of course, the helpful cab driver who announced that all drunk tourists look the same to him, which drew laughter from his friends. But it didn’t help.

Frankie was losing hope fast. Every minute felt like Chip was getting farther and farther away from them. He could be anywhere on the island by this point.

She saw the cop whistling on the corner and remembered Aiden’s warning. “Fuck it,” she whispered, ducking away from Aiden as he quizzed a couple of local fish fryers near the sidewalk.

“Excuse me, officer?”

He tore his eyes away from the in-progress argument that was happening over a parking space. “Yes, ma’am.”

“My friend is missing.”

“Um-hm.” His gaze was back on the two women and the parking space. He clearly wasn’t impressed by her story.

“I saw him get taken by someone in a van. He was kidnapped right here about an hour ago.”

The cop sighed. He lifted the brim of his hat and wiped his brow. “Miss, just because someone gets into a van doesn’t mean they’ve been kidnapped. They’re called ZRs, and they’re public transportation. Maybe your friend just went back to the hotel early.”

“No, you don’t understand. He’s getting married tomorrow, and he wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t leave his fiancée and not tell her where he was going.”

The shouting at the parking space got louder. Horns were honking in the street as the argument spilled into traffic. The yelling turned to shrieking as one woman grabbed a fistful of braids and yanked.