My husband’s voice died in his throat. The microphone slipped from his hand, hitting the stage with a deafening, screeching feedback howl that echoed through the entire ballroom. His face drained of all color, turning a sickly, ghostly white. He stumbled backward, knocking into his fiancée, his eyes bulging out of his head.
“V-Valerie?” he choked out, his knees visibly shaking.
The pregnant woman gasped, clutching her stomach, while a collective, horrified murmur swept through the crowd of hundreds of guests.
I turned my head slowly to look at my mother-in-law.
The older woman’s glass slipped from her fingers, shattering on the marble floor, splashing champagne across her expensive gown. She looked at me as if she were looking at a demon dragged straight from hell. She opened her mouth to speak, but only a strangled wheeze came out.
“Hello, Eleanor. Hello, Andrew,” I said, my voice projecting perfectly across the now-silent room. “Did you really think a little turbulence could keep me away from my own memorial?”
Before either of them could utter a word, the heavy double doors at the back of the ballroom burst open.
A dozen federal agents in tactical gear, flanked by local police officers and forensic investigators, flooded into the room, their weapons drawn.
But they weren’t looking at me.
The lead agent marched straight past me, climbing the steps of the stage, and pulled out a pair of steel handcuffs, pointing them directly at my husband.
But as the handcuffs clicked into place, my husband didn’t look at the police. He looked past them, his eyes locked onto the projection screen behind the stage, which had suddenly flickered to life, replacing my memorial slideshow with something that made everyone in the room scream in horror.
