“Dani!” Maria and Elaina appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Elaina doubled over, breathing hard, bracing one hand on the table to hold herself up. “Someone screamed my name. I thought it was someone from the agency. Or FBI. I didn’t know. We had to run—”
Dani held up a restraining hand. “Please, the bird?”
“I needed it. I plan on winning this year!” Ms. Pinal puffed up and straightened her back.
“Win?” Dani asked.
“The contest.” She blinked again and looked pointedly at each of them. “The cake contest...” she said, as though explaining the obvious.
“Cake contest?” Maria echoed.
“Yes,” the woman said. “This year, I am entering my greatest creation.” She swept one hand across the air, as though leaving space for a grand title. “Wings of Love.” She wrapped her arms around herself and sighed. “So romantic. Like something out of a book—”
“THERE!” someone screamed, and a horde of people ran at the little group, not stopping for the table. Hands came in to upend it, scattering lanyards in all directions. Marcus thrust Dani back out of harm’s way as Ms. Pinal shrieked and ran out of the back of the booth. Two people vaulted the remains of the table and ran after her while chaos erupted at the other tables, people scrambling to protect their possessions or, in some cases, themselves as the world exploded around them. Three policemen followed, and Dani ducked as a sheaf of brochures cascaded around her. From behind Marcus’ back she heard screams and the sounds of a fight. Occasionally someone would scream “ELAINA!”
“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT?” Elaina yelled back.
Not about to be deterred by a little paper Dani came up in a fighting stance, only she had no idea who the enemy was, and Ms. Pinal was long gone. Realizing that the crowd had already swarmed past in pursuit of the missing baker, Dani dropped her arms and straightened, feeling kind of silly now—somewhat peeved that after all this, Marcus was still trying to protect her as if she were a child.
“I never was in any danger,” she informed him haughtily. With a sigh, she started after the crowd as the vendors around her came out from under their tables and looked around at the destruction that moments ago had been a reasonably calm venue.
“DANI!” She spun. That voice she knew.
“LUKE!” She flung herself into his arms, and where he would have held her she grabbed his shirt with both fists. She pulled him down to her level and hissed, “It’s on a cake. There’s a contest, it’s on a cake!”
“I am telling you,” the round little man was waving his clipboard in front of William and someone who was walking with him, “this is NOT acceptable! This is a family-friendly exposition! I cannot have people running through here screaming ‘Elaina’, or any other profanity!”
Elaina sighed and hung her head.
Dani grabbed the clipboard from him and handed it to Marcus.
“HEY!” The organizer made a lunge to get it back, but he was restrained by the very policeman who had been attempting to reassure him.
Marcus scanned the page that gave a layout diagram, and pointed to the huge cloth that stretched the width of the far wall directly below the television.
“Behind the curtain!”
His cry electrified the newcomers. While actual patrons screamed and fought to get out of the way, a good part of the crowd tore through the curtain, shredding it and found hundreds upon hundreds of cakes. Apparently, Wings of Love was a very popular motif this year. Each last one had some sort of bird on it, in every variety and shape and size.
“What kind of bird was it?” Marcus asked Luke, never looking away from the collection in front of them. There was a hint of awe in his voice.
Police and men in suits gathered. Thankfully the police were already shepherding out anyone who didn’t belong. Or at least removed anyone who actually had any connection to weddings whatsoever.
Dani breathed a sigh of relief as the civilians disappeared out the exits. Thank God. Fewer potential casualties.
These guys on the other hand... Dani’s eyes narrowed. She found she was clutching Luke’s hand hard. He squeezed back, a silent signal of solidarity. Either that, or he didn’t want to lose her in the melee.
“I can’t remember,” Luke said so quietly it was barely audible.
As one, every eye moved to study him.
“I’m sorry.” He shrugged. The collective representatives from several intelligence agencies rolled their eyes.
Luke looked at Dani. She put her fingers upon his lips, stilling whatever excuses he might have had. “It’s okay. We’ll find it.”
A shout rose up from the crowd that remained. The numbers had swelled to easily a hundred agents, the greatest collection of intelligence agencies the world had ever seen come together in one place. A handful of policemen fell back, holding a perimeter that they didn’t understand.
As one they threw themselves forward, hands outstretched.
“ELAINA!”
Chapter Fifteen
It became a pastry slaughter of epic proportions.
Cake and icing flew in every direction. The floor was awash in sugar, as anything with a wing was grabbed off cakes and hurled to the floor. There was little enough time to search through the rubble of ceramic and plastic birds for anything resembling a USB stick, and the wholesale destruction simply continued.
In a bid to be the first one to locate the stick, shoving turned to fights. Men and woman punched, kicked, and even bit to reach the next bird, the next attempt at the stick. The losers of the ad-hoc battles were thrown into the cakes that had been stripped, and occasionally into cakes that had no bird statues and had avoided the original devastation.
It was a confectionary food fight, only out for blood. Not content with wading through battles, men began leaping through the air, pouncing on tables and cakes, and occasionally sliding over the frosting, a ceramic bird clutched in a death grip.
Luke lost Dani entirely, in the mess of bodies and pastries. It became a rolling mess. It had its humorous elements, when the people running the convention attempted to halt the destruction. The fact that they attacked trained professionals should have been a horrifying, one-ended bloodbath, but with the slick footing of sugar and the debris scattered over the concrete floor, they actually had better odds than he would have given them credit for.
Not that Luke wasn’t trying. His own fingers scrambled for the prize as much as anyone else’s until his hands were coated in cake crumbs, held together by what he feverishly hoped was raspberry filling. Shaking off the remains of what had been a six-tiered masterpiece complete with working fountains, Luke took a moment to reassess. He found William fast enough. He stood at the back, observing, Thomas at his side. Someone in police blues, with enough medals across his uniform to qualify him as a fairly high muckety-muck, stood next to them, arms crossed, scowling face letting the world know that he in no way approved of this rampant destruction.