“Which I am.”

“Which you definitely are.”

“Uh-oh. Here comes the bride,” Stoke said suddenly, gazing at the winking sunlight on the windshields of a small parade of automobiles now making its way slowly through the tall grass. The narrow, winding, and muddy road leading eventually to the church. “We’d better hustle up and get inside. Bad luck if you see the bride before the ceremony, that right, boss?”

“Absolutely, let’s go. Miss Spooner, you’ve got the ring to give to Alexei when it’s his time?”

“I do, sir. Mr. Brock is kindly holding two seats for us in the last pew of the church right on the center aisle. Alexei and I will wait until everyone is seated before we enter so we don’t cause a fuss. When it’s time for the ring, I’ll make sure to send him on his way to you.”

Stoke had asked Hawke weeks ago if the child could be the ring bearer during the ceremony and Hawke had readily agreed. So he had his team on the field. He’d also asked his buddy, CIA field agent Harry Brock; his sole employee, Luis Gonzales-Gonzales, the one-armed Cuban known as Sharkey; and finally Fast Eddie Falco, the aged security man at his condo in Miami, to be his ushers. He looked at his watch. Shouldn’t they be here by now?

The Right Reverend Josiah Jefferson Fletcher, J.J., better known as Fletch when he played defense for the New York Jets, weighed about three hundred pounds and had to use a walker to get around. He and the groom had been rookies together back in the day. After a serious knee injury, Fletch left football, came down here to South Florida, and started Grace Baptist Church—right here in the little Indian town of Seminole. A few years later, he’d been ordained. He’d been preaching the gospel ever since.

Fletch was the man Stoke called late at night when the wolves and the heebie-jeebies and the devil himself was at the door.

Fletch had a small office up on the second floor in the “rectory,” right next to the room where they kept all the choir robes, candles, and hymnals. The three big men could barely fit inside, so Hawke remained standing in the doorway and Stoke took the chair opposite the preacher at his battle-weary desk. Fletch leaned back in his chair and smiled. For a man who’d seen so much human suffering and anguish, the preacher had the biggest, whitest grin Hawke had ever seen on a human being.

“Mighty pleased to meet you, Mr. Hawke,” he said, settling in. “Stokely here tells me you’re a lord,” he said, looking directly at Hawke. “That right?”

Hawke nodded.

“A lord, you say.”

“Hmm.”

Then the reverend stretched his meaty forearms over the desk toward Stoke and said in a stage whisper:

“Ain’t that something, Stoke?”

“What’s that?”

“Him being a lord and all. And here all this time I been thinking there was only just the one.”

Hawke burst out laughing, as much over Fletch’s small joke as at Stoke’s doubled-over laughing fit, Fletch repeatedly slamming his ham-sized fist on the old wooden desk almost hard enough to split it in two.

“Good one, Fletch!” Stoke managed to blurt out.

When they’d all stopped chuckling, Fletch directed his strong gaze at Hawke once more.

“You don’t think our boy Stoke’s going to try and bolt on us, do you? Groom looks a little nervous to me,” the preacher said. “Little green around the gills.”

“That’s why I’m standing here in the doorway.”

The preacher grinned. “Next thing he’ll say he has to use the lavatory up the stairs there. The facilities. But don’t you worry none, Mr. Hawke, I got the window in there nailed shut.”

“Good thinking.” Hawke said.

“Only had one bride left standing at the altar in twentysome odd years. Believe me, it’s not an experience I want to repeat.”

“What happened?” Stoke asked.

“Groom said he had to pee, locked the bathroom door, went out the bathroom window, down the drainpipe, jumped in his car, and left here on two wheels, that’s what happened. Best man had to go out in front of the whole congregation and tell them all to go home. No groom, no wedding. Bride’s father came up out of his pew like a fullback on third and goal, leaped over the rail, and coldcocked that poor boy, a shot straight from the shoulder that slung his jaw loose. Knocked him out cold as I recall it.”

Stoke said, “Fletch, that’s reason enough for me not to bolt on you. I’d hate to see what happened if Fancha’s daddy took a shot at my friend Mr. Hawke here.”

“Your personal lord over there does look like he can take care of himself, Stoke.”

“First-class badass, Rev, even though he looks like such a gent in that fancy white suit.”

“You a religious man these days, Stokely?

“I go to church when I can, Rev.”

“What’s it take to keep you from going?”

“I go when I can.”

“A light rain?”

“I go when I can.”

Fletch said, “Well, well, well. I know you got a big old Christian heart and that’s good enough for me. You boys ready? I think it’s time we go out there and give these folks waiting out there a show. Crowd’s getting restless, choir got them all fired up.”

“Damn! I got to pee,” Stoke said, raising himself up out of his chair.

“Really?” Hawke said. “That’s too bad, Stoke. You’re just going to have to hold it, brother. I’m sure Reverend Fletcher will be ever mindful of your needs and keep things moving smartly along at the altar.”

“Let us pray,” the preacher said with a wink at Hawke, each man bowing his head. Stokely pressed his pink palms together, his temple of strong fingers like carved mahogany.

Fletch’s voice was soft thunder.

“Oh God our help in ages past,

Our hope in years to come.

Bless and keep your servant Stokely Jones,

And give him strength and happiness

Throughout the years of his blessed union.

Amen.”

Ten

Nell Spooner sat with little Alexei in her lap, reasonably cool under the spreading boughs of the old oak tree. Alexei was content, now fixated on a miniature fire engine’s ladder. A long parade of automobiles was winding through the tall grass, parking helter-skelter in the churchyard, well-turned-out people climbing out of their mud-spattered cars and trucks. The whole Grace congregation was arriving to see their homegrown celebrity get married.

The press had arrived too. A TV transmitter van from Univision, the Miami-based Latino network, and also Channel 5, a local Fox affiliate. Fancha, a stunning beauty, had recently been nominated for a Latin Grammy award for her new hit song, “Love the Way You Lie,” a duet with Enrique Iglesias. The local girl made good was a star, and not just in Seminole anymore. She’d gone worldwide.

When the last wedding guest had entered the church, Nell gathered up her young charge and made her way to the steps of the church. Mr. Brock, a bit of a flirt, showed them to the seats he’d held for them on the aisle of the very last pew.

Holding the small boy’s hand as they entered the pew, she bent and whispered, “Remember, Alexei, first, I give you the ring, then you walk all the way to the front and hand it to your daddy. You do remember?”

“I do remember, Spooner. I go give Daddy the ring. Where all the flowers are.”

“There’s a good boy. Now, we’ll sit right here and be very, very quiet. This is God’s house and God doesn’t like noisy little boys unless they’re singing his praises.”

“Quiet as a church mouse?” he whispered, recalling the phrase she’d used at breakfast.

She smiled, delighted at his precocious mind and very keen anticipation about the music and the ceremony. Her new job had taken her a long way from the streets of Paddington in London. An opportunity to attend an old-fashioned southern wedding in a tiny town in the middle of the exotic Florida Everglades would have been unthinkable just two months ago. Too fascinating for words, really.