Agent to the Rescue (Special Agents At The Alter Book 3) (10 page)

He didn’t have to play the voice-mail messages to know what they said.

She’s supposed to be dead
.

I paid you well to kill her
.

Sure, he’d been paid well, but not enough to risk his freedom again. This was supposed to have been an easy hit. Thanks to Agent Dalton Reyes, it had been anything but.

He could have walked away. He would probably eventually wish that he had. But he had been hired to do a job. It wasn’t personal to him, but it was very personal to the person who’d hired him.

To save his own reputation, he had to kill the woman. But he was going to kill the agent, too. Because that had become personal to him.

Chapter Twelve

The man had come out of the conference room alone. She hadn’t seen Dalton again. Maybe he was done with her now that her fiancé was found. Obviously he trusted the man. If he hadn’t, he would have arrested him. Or he at least wouldn’t let him be alone with her.

Agent Bell stepped inside the room where Dalton had questioned her fiancé, and he closed the door. Except for a couple troopers standing behind a glassed wall, she was essentially alone with a stranger.

“How are you doing?” the man asked. “Should you be out of the hospital yet?”

“The doctor released me,” she said.

“But you don’t remember anything...”

She shrugged. “Amnesia can’t kill me.” But maybe it could—if she trusted the wrong person. She wanted to go to Dalton—to have his support and protection.

But she couldn’t count on him being around her always. He had other cases. She was just one.

“But the concussion...”

She lifted her hair and flashed him the small bandage. “A few stitches.” Or so. “And I’m fine. Really.”

He nodded. But she couldn’t tell if he was relieved or disappointed.

“Are
we
fine?” she asked.

He nodded again. “Yes, of course we are.”

But he hadn’t ever tried to reach for her—to embrace her—as Dalton had so many times. Despite the man’s good looks, she had no desire for him to touch her. She had no desire for him at all.

“Then why didn’t you report me missing?” she asked.

Tom Wilson pushed a hand through his hair, tousling the golden strands. It was pretty hair, but it was the kind that was already thinning. It wasn’t thick and soft like Dalton’s hair.

“Like I just told the agent, we’re busy people,” he said as if already weary of repeating himself. She wasn’t going to get the answers she needed from him. “I was at a conference in Miami.”

So he wasn’t the one who had tried to kill her.

“And you were busy,” he continued. “You’re always busy.”

She heard the resentment in his voice. “I am?”

He sighed. “I’m sorry, Elizabeth. I know that you’re busy. But we have drifted apart since the baby.”

She gasped as shock gripped her. “Baby? We have a baby?” She shook her head. “No, no, no, there’s no way I would forget having a baby.” She couldn’t be that horrible a mother.

“Biologically she isn’t yours,” he said. “You became her guardian after her parents died.”

Her heart clenched with intense pain—a pain she remembered feeling. It was the first real emotion she had recalled. “Her parents?”

“Kenneth and Patricia Cunningham,” he said. “You roomed with them in college and during law school. They were your best friends.”

Shouldn’t he have been her best friend? How the hell had they become engaged?

Laughter tinkled inside her head—a woman’s laughter. Then a woman’s pain-filled cry as she gripped Elizabeth’s hand and the hand of a man. A baby’s cry echoed the woman’s...

Elizabeth’s head began to pound as the memories rushed through her mind like a movie in fast-forward. Panic pressing on her lungs, she struggled to breathe.

“Are you okay?” Tom asked. Instead of stepping forward, though, he looked toward the door of the closed conference room—as if he wanted Dalton to step in and take over for him.

She wanted that, too.

But the memories kept coming...of Kenneth and Patricia and little Lizzie. They had named her Elizabeth.

Tears stung her eyes, burning them. And a sob choked her as pain overwhelmed her. It was like losing them all over again. “Lizzie’s alone,” she said.

Tom shook his head. “She has a nanny. She’s fine.”

Elizabeth’s gut churned with guilt and fear. “No, a nanny isn’t fine. I promised Kenneth and Patricia that if anything happened to them I would take care of her like she was my own.”

“You remember?” he asked with shock. “Your memory returned?”

“I remember Kenneth and Patricia.” Mostly she remembered the pain of losing them. “I remember my promise to them. I need to honor that promise.” To honor her friends.

“You have,” Tom assured her. “But you have a job, too. I think you were going back to Chicago to handle something for your office.”

He thought? Did he have amnesia, too? Or hadn’t he cared where she was or what she was doing?

She must not have cared, either, because she couldn’t summon any memories of him. All that filled her mind now was images of a curly-haired baby—giggling and then crying as if her heart was broken.

And it had been broken when her parents died—just as Elizabeth’s had broken. All they had now was each other.

“You have to bring me to her,” she insisted.

Tom glanced toward that door again.

She could have pounded on the door. Or she could have called out for Dalton. But he didn’t know where baby Lizzie was. She knew her friends’ home was somewhere near here—somewhere in Michigan. She could envision the house that Patricia had decorated like that little honeymoon cottage Elizabeth had stayed in the night before with Dalton. But she couldn’t recall the road or the roads she would need to take to drive there.

Tom had been there. They had been together too long for him not to know. And they had been together too long for him to be a danger to her.

As he’d said, he had been in Miami when the man had tried to kill her. The attacker wasn’t him. It couldn’t have been him.

“You have to take me to her,” she demanded. “I have to see her now.”

* * *

“S
HE
’
S
SAFE
,” J
ARED
B
ELL
assured Dalton as the profiler joined him in the conference room where just moments before Tom Wilson had sat across the table from him. “They’re talking in the reception area. He’s not going to try anything in the middle of a state police post.”

The guy was smart enough not to try to hurt her physically. But emotionally, she was vulnerable. With her memory gone, she could believe whatever the man told her. And he could lie to her about their relationship—claim that they were closer than they had obviously been.

He hadn’t even noticed her missing.

Dalton couldn’t imagine having a woman like Elizabeth Schroeder and not wanting to see her every day or at least talk to her. Tom Wilson might not be a killer, but he was a fool.

“He’s not the perp. He’s got an ironclad alibi.” Dalton sighed. “I’m not sure it’s such a good idea letting them talk, though. If he overwhelms her with information...”

“She’s a tough lady,” Jared said. He carried a thick file under his arm. That was the kind of agent he was—all cerebral, with his research and paperwork.

Dalton followed his gut and instincts and that voice in his head that sounded so much like his grandmother’s. His grandma would have loved Elizabeth Schroeder.

“Yeah, she is,” Dalton agreed. “She’s tough and maybe a little too brave for her own safety.”

“You regret her going back to the hospital yesterday to see Trooper Littlefield.”

“I regret nearly getting run off the road,” he said, “and I regret the reporters ambushing her.”

Jared Bell grimaced at the mention of reporters as he dropped onto the chair across from Dalton. “Yeah, but they probably were a necessary evil. We found out who she is. You kept one of your promises to her.”

“I’ll keep the other,” Dalton said. “I’ll find out who’s trying to kill her—even if I have to turn the case over to you.” Maybe that would be for the best—for Elizabeth—if he stepped back entirely. Then she could regain her old memories and her old life without him being a distraction.

Jared arched a dark brow. “What? Why?”

“I thought you’d be happy,” Dalton said. “You’ve been trying to hijack this case from me the minute I found her in that trunk.”

Jared shrugged but didn’t deny his intentions. “The bridal gown...it seemed connected.”

“There are no coincidences,” Dalton agreed. And if her fiancé wasn’t a viable suspect, then it was even more likely that Jared’s serial killer was involved.

But Jared Bell shrugged. “Maybe not accidentally.”

“You think someone was trying to copycat the Bride Butcher?”

The profiler nodded. “He would make a good scapegoat.”

“But it could really be him,” Dalton pointed out. “It hasn’t been that long since he killed last. He could have started killing again.”

“But why Elizabeth Schroeder?” Jared asked. “Since you gave me her name, I’ve checked her out.” He passed Dalton that thick file across the conference room table.

“She’s engaged,” Dalton reminded him. He needed no reminders himself. Even last night he hadn’t been able to forget that there was someone else out there, someone with a closer tie to Elizabeth than he had.

“But they haven’t set a date for their wedding,” Jared said.

“How do you know that?”

“Checked out their social media,” Jared said. “They’ve been asked when the big day is and both say they’re in no hurry to get to the altar. That they’re way too busy to plan a wedding anytime soon.”

That fit with what Tom Wilson had told him—about why he hadn’t noticed she was even missing yet. He’d been at a conference and she was always busy.

Dalton shrugged. “So...”

“So if there’s no date set, she wouldn’t have been getting fitted for a wedding dress,” Jared pointed out.

“The dress wasn’t hers,” he agreed. “A bridal shop had reported it stolen the day before I found her in the trunk.” Unfortunately they’d had no cameras and had no idea who’d taken the gown.

“Your guy is quite the professional thief,” Jared Bell mused. “Cars. Bridal gowns.”

“Yeah, he’s a pro.” Realization struck him like a blow. “He’s a hired killer.” So it didn’t matter that Tom Wilson had an alibi—that oh-so-perfect and prepared alibi. Dalton cursed. “He could have hired someone to kill his fiancée.”

“Seems like kind of an extreme way to break an engagement,” Jared said.

So extreme that it probably didn’t matter that he was inside a state police post. Dalton jumped up, knocking his chair over, and jerked open the door of the conference room.

But he was too late.

The lobby was empty. They were gone.

* * *

H
E
WASN
’
T
GOING
BACK
. It was a damn state police post. He’d probably killed that trooper, so it was the last place he should be hanging around. But after listening to all those voice mails left for him, he’d gone back.

He had a job to do. And no matter how damn hard it got, he was going to finish it.

When they stepped out of those glass doors, he grinned. This was perfect.

Well, it would be better if she had been leaving with Agent Reyes. But Reyes would have protected her.

This man wouldn’t protect her.

He finally had his perfect opportunity. He waited until they got into the rental vehicle and turned out of the parking lot onto the road. Then he pulled out of the gas station from which he’d been watching them. And he began to follow the car. He didn’t wait long—the way he had with Agent Reyes, following them for miles.

He waited only until the rental sedan turned off onto a road that wound around an inland lake. The first hairpin turn he sped forward and struck the rear bumper of the sedan. It swerved off the road, hit the deep ditch and rolled.

It was so easy...

He braked. Then he grabbed his gun from the passenger’s seat. This time he would make damn certain that Elizabeth Schroeder was really dead.

Chapter Thirteen

Dalton cursed—mostly himself—for taking his gaze off her, even for a few minutes. He shouldn’t have trusted anyone else to protect her.

“She must have remembered him,” Jared Bell said from the passenger seat of the SUV. “Or else why would she have left with him?”

“Because he forced her,” Dalton suggested. “Maybe at gunpoint.”

“He wasn’t armed,” Jared said. “I searched him before you two got to the post.”

Dalton sped up. According to the troopers at the post, Elizabeth and the man had left only seconds before he had rushed out of the conference room.

“He could have coerced her another way,” he said. “Or tricked her. But where the hell did he take her?” He slowed as he approached a winding road. It reminded him of the one on which he’d found her.

“Down there,” Jared shouted. “I see a car parked off on the shoulder of the road.” Then he sighed. “But that’s not the rental Wilson was driving.”

Dalton saw the car, too. It was another luxury vehicle—a two-seater sports model that would have been much faster than the rental; it would have easily overcome the rental. Dalton jerked the wheel and took the turn nearly on two wheels.

Jared gripped the dash and cursed. “I heard about your driving.”

Like his gang days, it was part of his notoriety in the Bureau. Until he had saved Elizabeth with those skills, he hadn’t taken much pride in them. Now he hoped he could use them to save her again.

“There’s the rental,” Jared said.

It lay in the ditch just in front of the parked vehicle. He slammed the SUV into Park and jumped out the driver’s door. A shot rang out, followed by the sound of tinkling glass.

He was too late. Too damn late...

He pulled his gun from his holster and hurried around the front of the SUV. Another shot rang out—this one shattering the side window of the SUV.

“Bell?” he yelled, worried that the profiler had been hit.

“I’m okay,” Jared yelled back.

Another shot rang out, striking the hood dangerously close to where Dalton stood. The bullet dented and then ricocheted off the metal. He returned fire, shooting at the dark-clothed figure crouched in the ditch beside the turned-over sedan.

Bullets ricocheted off the undercarriage of the car. The man fired back—so many shots that Dalton had to duck low or he would be hit for certain. More shots pinged off the hood and the bumper of the SUV—too close to where he crouched. When he dared to raise his head and look into the ditch again, the man was gone—probably into the woods on the other side of the road.

Dalton hurried down the steep drop-off from the shoulder of the road and approached the car. Heat emanated from the exhaust yet; it hadn’t rolled over long ago. And it was still running.

He crouched down, but he couldn’t see through the windshield. It had shattered—either from the crash or from the bullet that had bored a hole on the passenger’s side. His heart pounded hard and fast against his ribs. He edged around the car to the passenger’s side. The window was down and red hair spilled out into the weeds and dirt.

He sucked in a sharp breath—as if someone had slugged him in the gut. “No...” he murmured. “No...”

A few of the tresses moved. Maybe it was just the motion of the wind.

But he called out to her, “Elizabeth? Elizabeth, are you okay?”

Her hair moved, and a hand replaced the red strands—a pale-skinned hand. “Dalton?” Her voice cracked with fear and hope. “Dalton?”

“Yes, I’m here,” he said.

“Is he gone?” she asked.

“Yes.” He’d gotten away again—which made Dalton feel almost physically ill. But not as ill as he’d been at the thought that he had lost her—really lost her. “Are you okay? Did you get hurt in the crash? Or shot?”

The window eased down more, opening a bigger space. She reached both arms out.

“Are you hurt?” Dalton asked again—before he moved her.

“No,” she said. “He missed me. I don’t know how...there were so many shots...”

Dalton shuddered. There had been so many shots, but maybe most of those had been at him—since he saw only that one shot through the windshield of the rental sedan. He gently grasped her arms and eased her out the window. Then he lifted her up and held her tightly in his arms.

“Are you okay?” she asked him. “Was he shooting at you, too? Because he turned away and was firing up at the road...”

Agent Bell answered for him as he helped Tom Wilson out the driver’s side of the car. “I can’t believe Dalton didn’t get hit—so many shots came so close.”

She shuddered in his arms. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

If he had been hit, he might not have noticed it—his adrenaline had been that high because he’d been so worried about her. He almost patted himself down to check for bullet wounds, but her hands were there, trailing over his chest, back and arms. Memories of the night before—of her caressing him—rushed over him. And his heart started pounding madly again.

“I’m okay,” he said as he caught her hands and held them in his. At least he would be okay once she stopped touching him. “What about him?” he asked Jared as he held up a shaky Tom Wilson.

“Not a scratch on him,” Jared replied with a pointed glance.

He could have set it up—could have had his hired hit man waiting for an opportunity to kill Elizabeth and still make him look innocent.

Anger coursed through Dalton. Through gritted teeth, he murmured, “Yet.”

He led Elizabeth around the car, but he took one hand from her to shove Wilson back. “What the hell were you up to?” he demanded to know.

The man blinked and stared up at him as if Dalton had clocked him. “What? What do you mean?”

“I said you could talk to her—not take her out of the police post,” he reminded him. “She’s in danger—if you damn well haven’t figured that out. She could have been killed.”

“I could have been killed, too,” Wilson pettishly added. And he was still shaking—maybe with shock, maybe with fear.

Dalton was the person he needed to fear. “Doesn’t look like you were really in any danger—the shot was fired at her. The killer was trying to get to her.” He stepped forward and shoved the man again. “Is that how you planned it?”

“What?” Wilson asked. “Planned what? Are you...”

“Crazy?” The guy didn’t have the guts to utter the word. But Dalton had no such problem. He felt a little crazy—with anger at the moment. “I should have known your alibi was too convenient. You hired this guy to do your dirty work for you, and you tricked her into leaving with you to give him the opportunity.”

Wilson shook his head. “It wasn’t my idea to leave. She insisted.”

Dalton felt again as if he’d been sucker punched. He turned to her. “Really?”

“It was my idea to leave,” she admitted.

Why? Had she remembered her fiancé and been too embarrassed to face Dalton again?

“Did either of you see the man who ran you off the road?” Agent Bell asked the question that Dalton should have asked—had he not been so damn angry over nearly losing her.

“I didn’t see him,” Tom replied. “I must have hit my head when we crashed and blacked out for a minute.” He turned toward Elizabeth. “Did you see him?”

She shuddered. “He had a hood pulled over his head, but when he walked up to the car to shoot...” She shuddered again. “I saw his face.”

“Did you recognize him?” Tom anxiously asked her.

“I don’t recognize
you
,” she reminded him. “How would I recognize him?”

“But you remembered Kenneth and Patricia,” he said, and that pettiness was in his voice again, along with resentment.

“Who are Kenneth and Patricia?” Dalton asked.

“My friends,” she said, and her voice cracked. “My best friends. That’s why I had to leave. I have to go to their house.”

He understood. They were the only people she actually remembered from her past, so of course she would want to see them immediately. But he needed to see them, too—because they were the only people who could answer all the questions that Jared Bell’s thick file couldn’t. They were the only people who could tell him all about Elizabeth Schroeder.

* * *

“T
HANK
YOU
FOR
bringing me here,” she told Dalton Reyes. He’d insisted on bringing her to the ER first, but the doctor had confirmed what she’d told him. She was fine. Or she would be once she saw Lizzie. Tom Wilson had had to give him the address because she hadn’t been able to, but she recognized the house as he drove the battered SUV up the long driveway to the two-story Victorian farmhouse with the wraparound porch.

A Chicago girl like her, Patricia had always dreamed of raising her family in a house in the country with a wraparound porch. Kenneth had given her that dream. He’d had the house built to look old while being modern and safe for his girls.

Dalton shut off the SUV and turned toward her. “You shouldn’t have left with Tom Wilson. You should have asked me to drive you.”

Her face flamed with embarrassment over how impulsive she had been. “I know,” she said. “I know how much danger I’m in.” And if her stalker hadn’t driven Wilson off the road as quickly as he had, then he would have followed them right to this house that Kenneth Cunningham had thought so safe. “I’m sorry.”

He touched her face, his fingertips skimming her cheek, and her skin heated even more—with desire. She had met her forgotten fiancé, but Dalton was still the only man she wanted.

“I am not going to let you out of my sight again,” he warned her.

Reassured rather than forewarned, she smiled, but then—remembering how close she’d come to getting killed again—her smile slid away. And she released a shaky sigh.

“Thank you,” she said, “for saving my life yet again.”

“I understand why you were in such a hurry to get here—to talk to people that you actually remember,” he said.

“Oh...” He didn’t know that Kenneth and Patricia were gone. She would explain that later. Now that she was here, she didn’t want to wait another minute before going inside. “There’s someone else that I needed to see here,” she said as she shoved open the passenger’s door and jumped out.

Despite the fact that she was running to the house, Dalton stayed with her every step—ever vigilant of her safety. She was so glad that he was here. That he would protect her and little Lizzie.

She had barely opened the door when the toddler ran to her, squealing and crying with delight. Elizabeth swung the baby up into her arms and clutched her close. “There’s my little girl,” she murmured. “There you are...”

“Mommmmmma,” the child stammered. “Mommmma...”

“Momma?” Dalton repeated the word—his handsome face draining of color with his utter shock.

He thought the child was hers. But since Kenneth’s and Patricia’s deaths, baby Lizzie had become hers—because she had promised them she would love her goddaughter like her own.

Her eyes stinging with tears, she nodded. “She’s my little baby girl!” She pressed kisses against the little girl’s pudgy cheeks.

A man stepped into the foyer. Like the little girl, he had curly dark hair. A pang struck her heart over how much he looked like Kenneth. But, along with Patricia, Kenneth was gone.

She was actually relieved that for a few days she had been able to forget the devastating loss of her best friends. But guilt struck her that she had forgotten Lizzie, too.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured to the little girl.

“Was that you on the news?” the man asked. “Were you the one found in the trunk of a car? What the hell’s going on, Elizabeth?”

“Yeah,” Dalton Reyes murmured. “What the hell’s going on, Elizabeth?”

* * *

H
E
PANTED
FOR
BREATH
, his lungs still burning from his run through the woods. He’d had to do that too many times over the past few days. And for a man whose only exercise had been in a small prison yard for years, the physical exertion was too much.

It didn’t help that Agent Reyes was as good a shot as he was a driver. His arm burned, blood oozing yet from the bullet hole in his shoulder. The bullet had gone straight through, but the wound kept bleeding. His shirt was saturated.

Hopefully, nobody had noticed him bleeding. And if that pain wasn’t bad enough, he had another voice mail from his employer. Another diatribe about how badly he’d messed up.

It wasn’t his fault. It was all Agent Dalton Reyes’s fault.

But the worst part of that message was that the person wanted to meet with him. He took his gun from his jacket pocket and clutched it close to him. He knew he would need it—not just to kill the woman and the agent.

But to kill the person who had hired him...because he had no doubt that person intended to kill him. This person was more ruthless than anyone he had ever met—in or out of prison.

The only thing he knew for certain was that somebody was going to die tonight.

He hoped like hell it wasn’t him.