Agent to the Rescue (Special Agents At The Alter Book 3) (15 page)

Chapter Twenty

Fear gripped Elizabeth. Fear for Dalton. How badly was he hurt? Would he survive his gunshot wound?

She also felt fear for Agent Jared Bell. Where had he gone? He had just disappeared. But she knew better than to risk going outside to search for him. She had no gun. No weapon that would defend her and little Lizzie from a gun or a killer.

Somewhere she had a business card for Special Agent Blaine Campbell. She could call him for help. If only she could find his card...

She fumbled around in the drawers of the desk in the office on the first floor. The white-paneled room was next to the dining room—where Dalton had struggled so recently with the intruder.

Where
was
Jared Bell? She had heard no sounds of a struggle. She’d only heard the creak of the front door opening and closing. And footsteps on the porch.

Wood creaked and groaned as someone stepped onto the porch again. Her pulse quickened with fear. But maybe it was just Jared returning. Maybe he’d gone down the driveway to talk to the guards by the road—to warn them that someone could be coming for her.

Not could be. Was.

She knew it. That was why Dalton had been shot. Because of her.

Guilt joined her fear. If only Dalton hadn’t been so intent on keeping the promises he’d made to her. If only he hadn’t been so good at protecting her...

Then maybe someone wouldn’t have been so intent on getting him out of the way. She had to get to the hospital. If that was Jared Bell on the porch, she would convince him to take her to Dalton. She had to tell him she loved him.

More boards creaked as the person crossed the porch. Then the doorbell pealed. And she remembered locking the door. She had locked out the agent. Her breath shuddered out with relief, and she rushed to the door. But when she pulled it open, it wasn’t Agent Bell standing on the front porch.

Tom Wilson stood in front of her, his face flushed, his hair mussed. Alcohol emanated from him as if he’d soaked himself in it.

“Eliz...a...beth...” He sounded as if he was trying to sing but was just slurring. Tom Wilson didn’t sing—not even in the shower.

“What are you doing here?”

She thought he had left town and returned to Chicago after she’d given him back his ring. But apparently he had gone to a bar instead and had been there ever since. She could never remember him having more than a glass of wine with dinner and champagne on New Year’s. When had he started drinking?

He stumbled across the threshold into the foyer. “I have to talk to you, Elizabeth.”

She couldn’t deal with Tom right now—not when she was so worried about Dalton. And about Agent Bell.

“We have nothing more to say to each other,” she insisted. They had been over a long time ago; she shouldn’t have been wearing his ring anymore. She actually never should have accepted it.

“That’s not true, Elizabeth.”

They were done—whether or not his pride could accept it.

“You’ll want to hear what I have to tell you,” he insisted with an aggression she had never seen in him before. And suddenly his words weren’t so slurred.

Had he faked the drunkenness so that she would think him harmless and let him inside the house? But how had he gotten past the guards at the end of the driveway? She was certain that Dalton had given orders that Tom Wilson never be allowed up to the house again.

“How did you get up here?” she asked.

“I walked.”

“Nobody stopped you at the street?”

He shook his head. “Nobody was there—just a police car blocked the end of the driveway.”

“There was no trooper or agent by the car?” she asked. And if not, where had he gone? Had he disappeared with Agent Bell?

“No.” He glanced around the room, as if checking now to see if she was alone. “Isn’t
he
here?”

“Who?” But she knew who he was referring to and it wasn’t Agent Bell.

“That FBI agent you’re in love with,” he said. “He’s gone already.” And a smug smile crossed a face she’d once considered so handsome.

Fear chilled her, lifting goose bumps on her skin. And she asked, “What did you do to him?”

“Me?” he asked, his blue eyes widening in shock. “You think I did something to him?”

“He was shot.”

His brow furrowed with confusion. “Have you ever known me to shoot a gun?”

She shook her head. But she wasn’t sure that she had ever really known him at all. She already knew Dalton Reyes so much better than she’d ever known the man to whom she’d been engaged for two years.

“I haven’t,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t know how to shoot—that you don’t own a gun.”

He furrowed his brow, as if trying to figure out what she was saying. But she didn’t believe that he was actually drunk anymore.

“We’ve dated for years,” she said. “But we never actually spent that much time together. We never lived together. I don’t know what you own. I don’t know what you know.”

“Are you sure that your memory is back?” he asked. “Because you’re not making any sense. But then, you’ve not been making much sense since Kenneth and Patricia died.”

She cocked her head, trying to understand what he meant. “Because I’m determined to keep my promise to them and raise little Lizzie?” she asked. Like Dalton Reyes, she kept the promises she made—or she would as long as she was alive. “I’m not giving her up.”

“You would rather give me up instead?” And he was all wounded male pride again. “It’s that easy for you to just give me back my ring and walk away from all the years we’ve known each other.”

“We don’t know each other at all,” she said, “if you expect me to give up my goddaughter.”

“It’s not just her you’re being unreasonable about,” he said. “You’re being unreasonable about their deaths. Why can’t you just accept that it was a murder-suicide? Why do you have to keep going to authorities—keep pushing them to reopen the investigation?”

She shivered now as fear chilled her. “Why do you care?” she asked.

“Because you’re making a fool of yourself.”

“Is that the real reason?” she wondered. “Or is there another reason you don’t want the investigation into their deaths reopened?”

His flushed face drained of all color. “What the hell reason could I have?”

“Because you were involved,” she suggested. “Because you wanted Patricia for yourself.”

He laughed. “I didn’t even like Patricia.”

That surprised her more than anything else. Everyone who had met her had loved Patricia; she had been that special. Elizabeth was certain that she and Dalton would have become fast friends. “Why not?”

“Because she didn’t like me,” he said. “Because she didn’t think I was good enough for her best friend. I didn’t want Patricia in my life at all. And I didn’t want her in yours.”

“Is that why you did it?” she asked. “Is that why you killed them?”

“You’re crazy!” he said as color rushed back into his face.

She was crazy to have let him inside the house. And she was crazy with fear.

“Is that why you want to kill me?” she asked. “Because I keep pushing to have that investigation reopened?”

He lurched forward, reaching for her. Before she could turn and run, he caught her. His hands gripping her shoulders, he shook her.

She needed to fight him. But that shaking left her head reeling with dizziness and nausea. Her memory had returned, but she wasn’t completely recovered from the concussion. Summoning her strength, she wriggled and twisted, trying to break free of his hold. And then suddenly his hands slipped away as he dropped to the floor in front of her.

She looked up—expecting to see Agent Bell or even Dalton standing where Tom had stood. But it was Kenneth’s brother, Gregory Cunningham, wielding a gun. He must have struck Tom with the butt of it.

“Oh, my God,” she said with a shaky breath of relief. “I thought he was going to kill me. Thank you...”

But her gratitude turned to nerves as he stared at her with a strange expression, with no expression on a face that had always reminded her so much of Kenneth’s—until now. Now he looked nothing like his brother in appearance or demeanor. And, for some reason, he wore an ill-fitting uniform. A trooper’s uniform. From the badge on the pocket, she realized it was Trooper Littlefield’s uniform. Gregory turned the barrel of the gun toward her.

“What—what are you doing?” she asked.

A phone vibrated. He reached into his pocket for it, but his grip didn’t loosen on the gun. “Agent Campbell keeps calling...”

“That’s Agent Bell’s phone,” she realized. “What did you do to him?”

He shrugged. “I’m not sure if he’s dead or just extremely unconscious.”

She cursed him.

“Agent Campbell must be calling to report to him about Reyes’s condition,” he mused. “Now
him
—I’m sure
he’s
dead.”

She gasped as pain stabbed her heart. “No...”

“I had to get him out of the way,” he explained. “He kept messing up my plans for you.”

“Why?” she asked. “Why do you want to kill me?”

“I don’t
want
to,” he assured her. “I’ve always liked you, Elizabeth. I’ve always admired your drive and spunk. I even admire your loyalty.”

She edged backward—toward that office. If she could get inside and lock the doors...

“Then why have you been trying to kill me?” she asked. He was really the crazy one. Had he always been? Was that why Patricia and Kenneth had left her their daughter instead of him? She had always wondered.

“It’s really Kenneth’s fault,” Gregory said. “I thought my brother would leave me custody of Lizzie.”

She gasped again, with another jab of pain. “You killed them.”

“That was Kenneth’s fault, too,” he said. “He cut me off. Stopped giving me money. And without money, I’d lose Miranda.”

She flinched because she had advised Kenneth to stop giving his brother money that he’d lost anyway. Gregory had used Kenneth’s loans for risky investments—in get-rich-quick schemes to finance his wife’s lavish lifestyle. If he didn’t keep buying her the expensive clothes and cars she craved, his wife had threatened to leave him.

Elizabeth remembered Patricia’s disgust that her sister-in-law cared more about the money than she had about her husband. Patricia had believed in her vows—in sickness and health, in until death do we part...

Tears stung Elizabeth’s eyes as she realized that death had parted her friends. No. She had to believe they were still together—that they would always be together. If Gregory killed her, as he had Dalton, would she reunite with him?

But she wasn’t about to give up her life without a fight. She slid a little closer to the doors of the den that she had left open. “So you killed them because you thought you would get their money,” she continued. “You don’t care about Lizzie.”

“I’ll take care of her,” he promised.

She didn’t trust his promises the way she had Dalton’s. She wouldn’t put it past him to get rid of the little girl, too—once he was awarded custody.

“Kenneth and Patricia wanted me to take care of her,” she said. She’d assumed it was because they hadn’t liked Gregory’s mercenary wife. Now she realized that they might have known there was something wrong with him—that his desperation had driven him to madness.

“Kenneth and Patricia always got everything they wanted,” he said. “The degrees. The jobs. The house. The kid. Their lives were perfect.”

And he had obviously envied them that perfection.

He glanced down at where Tom lay unconscious on the floor, and she edged into the doorway of the den. “I should thank Wilson for showing up like he did,” Gregory said. “He’s making this easy for me.”

“You’re going to do to us what you did with Kenneth and Patricia,” she said, feeling nausea all over again at his sick plan. “You’re going to make it look like a murder-suicide.”

“It worked the first time,” he said.

She shook her head. “Dalton reopened the investigation.”

He shrugged. “Reyes is gone.”

“Agent Bell—”

“Gone, too,” he said.

She shuddered at his callousness. “Agent Campbell will look into everything, then,” she said. The men were too close to not look out for each other—even if some of them were gone.

“And he’ll blame Tom Wilson for it all,” Gregory assured her. And as he glanced down at the man again, she stepped back and slammed the office doors between them. She twirled the dead bolts even though she doubted they would keep him out very long.

Already he pounded on the doors. And as he pounded, a cry rang out from above as the noise woke little Lizzie.

She crossed the den to the exterior wall and pulled up a window. The opening was big. She could climb out onto the porch and disappear into the darkness of the acreage surrounding the house.

But then the pounding stopped.

“I’ll go get her,” Gregory shouted through the locked doors.

Elizabeth froze with fear—just inches from saving herself. She couldn’t do it. She stepped away from the open window and walked back to the door.

His shaky sigh emanated through the doors before he added, “I probably should have killed her with them—then I would have inherited the money straightaway. I wouldn’t have had to go after you. It would have been simpler.”

“But you care about her,” she reminded him. “She’s an innocent child.”

“She loved her parents, Elizabeth,” he said. “Isn’t it kinder to reunite her with them?”

She quickly twisted the dead bolts and pulled open the doors. “No,” she said. “Please don’t hurt her.”

She had promised Kenneth and Patricia that she would take care of Lizzie as if she was her own. She would gladly die for the child.

* * *

“Y
OU
’
RE
GOING
TO
bleed to death,” Blaine warned him with a curse.

Blood saturated Dalton’s sleeve. But it was only a trickle from the wound now. He didn’t care about that, though.

“And you shouldn’t be driving,” Blaine added, gripping the armrest and the dash as Dalton careened around a curve.

He hadn’t trusted anyone else to drive as fast as he could—as he had to in order to get to Elizabeth and the little girl. But no matter how fast he drove, he worried he wouldn’t get to them in time.