Agent to the Rescue (Special Agents At The Alter Book 3) (14 page)

It hurt like hell, though. And he had to watch that the wound didn’t get infected.

He wanted Elizabeth dead. Yet. Still. But he wanted Dalton Reyes dead even more.

Chapter Eighteen

The first thing he noticed when she stepped inside the nursery was that the ring was gone. Nothing sparkled on her hand—nothing taunted him that she belonged to someone else.

But it didn’t matter that the ring was gone. She didn’t belong to him, either.

“He left?”

She nodded.

“Did he ask for his ring back?” he asked, although he doubted it.

Tom Wilson hadn’t looked like an idiot. But then the man had been so stupid that he hadn’t even realized she was missing. Or maybe he had hoped that she was missing.

Forever.

“I gave it back to him,” she said.

“Why?” he asked. And he held his breath as he waited for her admission. Was it because of him? Because she had feelings for him, too?

“He suggested that I sign over custody of Lizzie to her uncle.”

He tightened his arm around the little girl. “I should have hit him harder.”

Her lips curved into a slight smile. “If it makes you feel better, I slapped him—right on his swollen jaw.”

It made him feel better. And it made him feel more—love for her. “You yelled at me for hitting him.”

“I didn’t yell at you,” she protested. “I thought it was unnecessary.”

His hand that wasn’t holding the child fisted. “It was very necessary. He was all over you.”

“He was trying to make me remember him.”

“Did it work?”

“I remember him,” she replied. “I remember that I intended to give that ring back months ago, but I hadn’t wanted to hurt him.”

“You don’t care so much now?” he asked. Hopefully. If she hadn’t wanted to hurt him, she must have had feelings for him at some point. Hell, she’d accepted his ring, so she must have loved him once.

“I don’t care at all now,” she said. And her gaze met his, as if she was trying to tell him something. That she cared about someone else instead.

Or was he only wistfully imagining that?

“That’s good,” he said. And he returned her stare. But he could only give her a look.

He couldn’t give her anything else—not until he’d kept all of the promises he had made to her. To find out who she was. To keep her safe. To find out who was trying to kill her. And now he had promised to find out the truth about her friends’ deaths.

He couldn’t make any more promises until he’d kept those. And if he couldn’t keep those...

“How was Trooper Littlefield?” she asked.

He closed his eyes to break their connection. He couldn’t look at her and keep from her the information the trooper had given him. That it might have been Patricia—her best friend since they were kids—who had been the killer...

She wouldn’t be able to handle that; she was already devastated from having to relive their loss as if it had just happened all over again.

“Is he going to be okay?” she asked.

“Yes,” he assured her. “He will recover from the head injury.”

“And he’s had no loss of memory?” she asked.

“No.” In fact, he had remembered everything very well.

She sighed. “He still doesn’t believe me that someone else...” She trailed off, as if not wanting to discuss the baby’s parents’ deaths in front of little Lizzie.

He laid the sleeping child back down in her crib. Maybe she would stay there tonight—as long as no one else broke into her home. Dalton would make damn sure no one else broke into her home.

He followed Elizabeth out into the hall, but she didn’t stop there—she continued to the master bedroom. And she held open the door for him and closed it once he stepped inside with her. His gaze went automatically to the bed, where they had made love the night before. The sheets were still tangled. She hadn’t made it.

Her gaze followed his, and her face flushed with embarrassment. “I didn’t have time to make the bed. After what happened last night, I didn’t want Marta to come back here. Not until we know it’s safe.”

“There are guards outside,” he said. “As long as you don’t authorize them to let someone come up to the house, you’ll be safe.”

“But the man last night...” She shuddered.

Was still out there.

He pulled her into his arms, offering comfort for her fears.

She linked her arms around his neck and clung to him. “I’m overreacting,” she said. “He’s dead now.”

“No, he’s not,” he corrected her.

She eased away from him and peered up into his face. “But you showed me his picture...”

“That man is dead,” he said. “The ex-con is dead. But he was already dead when someone broke into the house. Someone else broke in here last night.”

She tensed in his arms. “Someone else broke in.”

“We suspected that there was someone else,” he reminded her. “Someone that hired the ex-con.”

“Someone I know,” she murmured. “Someone I trust.” She trembled in his arms as her fears returned.

He pulled her closer, enfolding her in his embrace. “That’s why you can’t let anyone in here,” he said. “You were right to tell Marta to stay away.”

“Marta would never hurt anyone,” she protested. And she tried to pull back, but he held her tightly.

“You can’t trust anyone,” he said.

“What about you?” she asked. “Can I trust you?”

“I’m the only one you can trust,” he said. “I would never hurt you.”

Her lips curved into a slight, sad smile. “Don’t lie to me.”

“Elizabeth...” But before he could say anything else, she rose on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his. He hadn’t intended to make love to her tonight. He hadn’t wanted to risk being distracted in case someone tried to break in again.

But there were guards blocking the driveway and watching the house. Nobody would get past them without him at least being forewarned. Even if the guards weren’t there, he wasn’t sure that he would have been able to resist her.

She undressed him—as he had undressed before for her. She removed his holster and gun and put them on the table beside the bed. Then she slowly, teasingly, undid the buttons on his shirt. Her fingertips skimmed over the muscles of his chest, teasing him as her hand traveled down to his belt.

He resisted the urge to take over—to hurry. He understood that she needed to be in control. She was a strong woman whose life was currently beyond her control. So he let her drive him crazy.

She made love to him with her mouth and her body. And finally she collapsed on his chest. Tears trailed from her face onto his neck as she snuggled into him.

He wasn’t sure why she was crying. Because of her friends. Because she was in danger. She had so many reasons. So he just stroked her back until her cries subsided and she finally slept. He couldn’t sleep, though—not even knowing there were guards outside. He had to stay vigilant.

His phone, which sat next to the holstered gun, vibrated against the table. He grabbed it quickly—dreading that this would be a warning from those guards.

But he didn’t recognize the number calling him. “Hello?”

“Agent Reyes?”

Keeping his voice low so he didn’t awaken Elizabeth, he asked, “Yes, who is this?”

“I—I got your number from a state trooper,” the raspy voice replied. “I—I have some information you need.”

“What information is that?”

“I—I think I know where a guy is—a guy that you might have shot...”

He tensed. And Elizabeth murmured. He carefully rolled her over to the other side of the bed. Then he hurried out into the hall. “Where?”

“I think he’s here at Pinebrook Stables,” the voice replied in a raspy whisper. “The vet treated him for a wound that looked an awful lot like a gunshot wound.”

It was the guy—from last night. “What’s the address for the stables?” Dalton asked. “And how badly is he hurt?”

“Bad,” the raspy voice replied.

Then it hadn’t been Tom Wilson with whom he’d tangled in the dining room the night before. The extent of that man’s injuries was the swollen jaw Dalton had just given him. He hadn’t had a gunshot wound, or he wouldn’t have been able to manhandle Elizabeth the way he had.

“The vet wanted to call an ambulance,” the informant continued, “but no matter how much pain the guy is in, he refused. He’s gotta be in trouble...”

He would be once Dalton got ahold of him. He couldn’t wait to end this, to keep another of his promises to Elizabeth—so that he would be able to make more.

* * *

E
LIZABETH
AWAKENED
TO
an empty bed again. But the house was quiet. No crashing sounds. No gunshots. But the eerie silence was just as unsettling. She pulled on her robe and stepped into the hall.

A faint cry drifted from the nursery, so she hurried into little Lizzie’s room. A shadow stood over her crib. It could have been Dalton. But the child sounded distressed.

So she flipped on the lights and gasped as she realized the dark-haired man wasn’t Dalton. He wasn’t as muscular or as tall, and his eyes weren’t as dark. Agent Jared Bell held the little girl—but he held her awkwardly and as far away from his body as his arms would reach, as if she might detonate if she got too close.

She reached for her daughter and caught her close. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Agent Reyes asked me to take over,” he said.

Her heart shifted in her chest, pain squeezing it. What had happened? Had she scared him off?

“Why would he ask you to take over the case?” she asked. “He doesn’t believe it’s that serial killer who’s after me.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Agent Bell agreed. “And neither do I anymore. He only asked me to take over protection duty for the rest of the night.”

“Protection duty,” she said as she soothed the disgruntled child. “Not babysitting. You didn’t have to try to pick her up.” It was a miracle he hadn’t dropped her with the way he’d been holding her.

“That was a mistake,” he admitted with a shudder of unease as she changed the child’s diaper. “I didn’t think it would be that hard—not when Blaine Campbell, and even Reyes, make it look easy.”

Dalton was good with little Lizzie. And with Elizabeth, too.

“Some people are probably naturals,” she said. “I wasn’t one. It took time and practice for me to get used to being around a little one.” But, even before her death, Patricia had made certain to train her, as if she knew that someday Elizabeth would be taking over her mothering duties.

“I don’t need any practice,” Agent Bell said. “It’s not like I ever intend to have kids.”

“You don’t?”

He shook his head. “Working for the Bureau is all-consuming. I don’t have time for relationships, let alone a family.”

She already knew Dalton felt the same way, but her heart grew heavy with disappointment. “But Agent Campbell has both. And Agent Stryker just got married.”

He shrugged. “They’re at different points in their careers than Reyes and I are,” he said. “They can step back and do more training than fieldwork. We can’t.”

And she suspected that wasn’t just because of where they were in their careers but because of their personalities. They lived for fieldwork. They were fearless. But being fearless tended to get people killed—because they didn’t recognize and respect the danger.

“Where did Dalton go?” she asked with a terrifying sense of foreboding that he had put himself in danger again.

“He’s following a lead,” Agent Bell replied.

She dimly remembered his phone vibrating on the bedside table and then the deep rumble of his voice. “He got a call earlier.”

He nodded. “That was the lead.”

“He didn’t go off alone, did he?” she asked.

“He didn’t want any backup,” Agent Bell admitted. “He didn’t think he needed it.”

Her pulse quickened with fear for his life. “He thinks he’s invincible.”

“From everything I’ve heard about him and witnessed myself,” Agent Bell said, “I kind of think he is, too.”

She wasn’t convinced—not after everything she’d recently gone through. Even the person hired to kill her had died. Nobody was invincible. “You should have gone with him.”

“He wanted me here—to protect you,” he said. “That was more important to him.”

Her heart warmed with hope that he seemed to care about her—really care about her—as more than just a case. But her fear for him overwhelmed that hope. “Than his own safety?”

Jared Bell shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry about him.” He obviously wasn’t. “He survived the street gang he grew up in and then turned on—”

“Because of his grandmother,” she said defensively, in case Agent Bell thought Dalton had betrayed his gang members. They had betrayed him first. “He turned on them because they killed her—the woman who’d raised him.”

Jared’s caramel-colored eyes widened in surprise and he sucked in a sharp breath. “I didn’t know that.”

She suspected it was a story that Dalton had told few people. Why had he told her? Why was he letting her so deeply into his life if he didn’t intend to stay around once he apprehended whoever was trying to kill her?

But he wouldn’t be able to share her life if he lost his while trying to apprehend that killer. He shouldn’t have gone off alone.

* * *

H
E
WAITED
IN
the dark, following the beacon of the SUV’s headlamp beams traveling up the circular driveway to the deserted horse ranch. There was only one vehicle coming up that road. And, using the night-vision scope on his rifle, he could spy only one shadow inside the vehicle, behind the steering wheel.

A smile spread across his face. This had been easier than he had even anticipated it could be. He waited until the SUV got a little closer—until that shadow behind the wheel was directly in his scope—then he squeezed the trigger.

Chapter Nineteen

Elizabeth couldn’t get back to sleep. Maybe it was because she missed the warmth and comfort of Dalton’s strong arms holding her and the reassuring rise and fall of his muscular chest beneath her cheek. Or maybe she couldn’t sleep because that terrifying sense of foreboding continued to grip her.

Hours must have passed since he had gotten that call. But he wasn’t back. And she worried that he wouldn’t be able to come back.

Jared Bell had faith in him. And so did she. But whoever was trying to kill her was determined to finish the job, and like her, he must have realized that Dalton wouldn’t let that happen.

While he was alive.

He wouldn’t break that promise he’d made her. While he was alive.

But if he were dead...

No. She wouldn’t consider that possibility. She would believe—as he and Agent Bell believed—that he was invincible. Nothing could happen to Dalton.

She hadn’t even told him she loved him. She should have told him. She had tried showing him tonight—when she’d made love to him with all her heart and soul. She hoped he had understood that hadn’t been gratitude. She felt so much more than gratitude for him.

While she wasn’t sleeping, she lay alone in the tangled sheets of the bed she’d shared with Dalton such a short time ago. If she stepped outside the door, she would have to talk to Jared—have to listen to his empty assurances. He didn’t make promises the way Dalton did.

But while she lay in the dark, she heard that strange sound again—that vibration of the silent ring of a cell phone. And she realized it was coming through the baby monitor. Jared must have gone back into the nursery. For a man so uncomfortable and awkward with children, he was strangely drawn to little Lizzie. But then, the precious girl was as magnetic and magical as her mother had been.

Elizabeth had already lost her best friends. She couldn’t lose the love of her life, too.

“Agent Bell.” The words came clearly through the monitor as Jared answered his call.

She couldn’t hear his caller, though. So she had to wait, with an unbearable pressure on her chest, while Agent Bell listened. His response was a heartfelt curse.

And her heart plummeted.

“How badly is he hurt?” he asked.

“No!” The protest burst from her lips even though she knew the injured man was Dalton. She’d known that he wasn’t invincible. She jumped out of bed and hurried down the hall to the nursery.

Jared opened the door and stepped into the hall to join her. But his cell phone was still pressed to his ear as he listened to whoever had called him.

It wasn’t Dalton. Because he’d asked how badly
he
was hurt. And she knew
he
was Dalton.

“What happened?” she asked—too anxious to wait until his call was done. “How is he?”

Not dead. He couldn’t be dead.

Jared shook his head, and her heart stopped beating for one beat before resuming at a frantic pace, hammering away in her chest.

“No!”

“I’ll check back soon,” he said into the phone before quickly clicking it off. Then he reached for her.

She hadn’t even realized that her legs were shaking so badly that they had nearly buckled beneath her. But she couldn’t feel—not even his hands on her shoulders holding her up—since fear paralyzed her.

“Is he dead?” she asked. “Is Dalton dead?”

Jared shook his head again. “No, he’s not.”

“But he’s hurt,” she said. “I heard you over the baby monitor. He’s hurt.”

“He was shot,” Jared replied.

She felt a sharp jab to her heart and sucked in a breath of pain. “Oh, no! How bad is it?”

“I don’t know yet,” he admitted. “He’s en route to the hospital right now.”

“We need to go,” she said. “We need to meet him there.” She had to see him—had to see how badly he was wounded. She had to hold his hand, the way he had held hers when she’d been hurt.

But Agent Bell shook his head again. “No, it’s too dangerous.”

“How?”

“We could be driven off the road or attacked as we leave the house,” he pointed out. “We can’t leave here.”

“You may not care about your fellow agent,” she accused him, “but I do.” She didn’t just care; she loved him. So much. “I want to be there for him.”

“I will be there for him,” he said. “By keeping you here. Your safety is his priority and my responsibility now. I won’t let him down by putting you in danger.”

Panic was making it hard for her to draw a deep breath into her lungs. She had to be with Dalton. “You don’t know that we’ll be in danger if we go to the hospital.”

He gestured toward the closed door of the nursery. “It won’t be just your life you’re risking,” he pointed out, “if we put her in the car with us and it gets run off the road.”

“You don’t know that’ll happen,” she insisted.

“I’m a profiler,” he reminded her. “I’m not Dalton Reyes. I don’t drive like he does.”

“Then have someone else bring me to the hospital,” she suggested. “One of the troopers outside. And you can stay with Lizzie.” She cared more about the child than herself; she’d rather have him keeping Lizzie safe.

Panic flashed across his face now, leaving it stark. “No. Absolutely not.”

“But—”

“Keeping you safe is my responsibility,” he reiterated. “We’re staying here.”

“What makes you think we’re safe here?” she asked. “Don’t you think that Dalton was shot to get him out of the way? And now that he’s out of the way, that person is going to try to get to me again. It doesn’t matter if we’re at the hospital or if we’re here.”

“There are guards outside the house,” he said. “And I’m inside with you. You’re safe here.”

She shivered as that foreboding rushed over her again. And she shook her head. “No. I won’t be safe anywhere.” Especially not now with Dalton wounded.

How badly was he hurt?

Would he make it back to her?

Ever?

* * *

H
E
WAS
GLAD
THAT
, when he’d cleared out Hoover’s motel room, he had saved the uniform the ex-con had taken off Trooper Littlefield. Without it, he wouldn’t have made it past the deputy blocking the end of the driveway. The poor man had had no idea what had hit him...

Just like whoever was guarding Elizabeth would have no idea what had hit him, either. Leaving the squad car blocking the end of the driveway, he headed up toward the house.

The radio he’d taken off the deputy squawked. “This is Agent Bell,” the caller announced. “Is everything clear outside?”

He hesitated answering but finally pressed the button. “I’ve noticed a light shining in the trees at the back of the house. It could be someone walking around with a flashlight. Should I go check it out?”

“Yes,” the agent replied. “But be careful. I’m pretty sure the suspect is going to make his move tonight.”

He was right. The suspect was making his move right now...onto the front porch. But the beauty was that nobody suspected
him
. He would get away with murder.

Again.

A shadow darkened the glass of the front door. Had Agent Bell heard him step onto the porch? He moved quickly, backing against the side of the house so that he wouldn’t be seen.

Yet.

But the front door creaked open.

God, he was making this easy for him.

Agent Bell stepped out, gun drawn.

He waited in those shadows—just waited, his breath held, until the man stepped close enough. Then he struck, lashing out with the butt of the gun he’d taken off the deputy. Just like the deputy, Agent Bell never saw him.

He dropped to the porch with a heavy thud. He was either unconscious or dead. It didn’t matter which. He wouldn’t regain consciousness in time to save Elizabeth.

No one could save her now.

The front door creaked again. “Agent Bell?” a female voice called out. “Are you out here?”

The agent didn’t even groan. He couldn’t hear her.

“Jared?” she called out with obvious apprehension now. “Jared, where are you?”

Maybe she would step out, too, and make it all so easy for him. But instead, she pulled the door shut. The lock clicked as she turned the dead bolt.

Still in the shadows, he grinned. It didn’t matter that she’d locked the door. He had a key. He would get to her. She was as good as already dead.

* * *

P
AIN
RADIATED
THROUGHOUT
Dalton’s chest. It wasn’t just the bullet. The vest had taken most of the impact of that. And it had only grazed his arm before hitting the vest. His pain was actually panic—the panic that he had left Elizabeth and the little girl in danger.

“Get the doctor in here,” he told Blaine Campbell. “I need to get out of here.”

“You need stitches in that arm,” Blaine said.

Dalton glanced down at the blood-soaked bandage. “It’s fine.”

“You lost a lot of blood.”

He shrugged. “Not like you did.”

Blaine had taken a bullet in the neck months before and was lucky to be alive. But then, Blaine Campbell was a lucky man. Dalton had a horrible feeling that his luck was running out.

“This is nothing.” He swung his legs over the gurney and stood up, but his legs weren’t quite as steady as he’d counted on and he stumbled forward.

Blaine caught one of his arms while another man grabbed his other. “Hey,” Trooper Littlefield said. “You need to wait for the doctor.”

“I’m fine,” he said. “It’s Elizabeth I’m worried about.”

“Jared Bell is with Elizabeth,” Blaine reminded him. Blaine had been with him—crouched down in the backseat. He had insisted on coming along even though Dalton had thought he could handle the situation alone.

He cursed himself. “I knew it was an ambush...” But he’d still walked right into it. “And the only reason someone would want to take me out is to get to Elizabeth.”

“From what I understand, a lot of people would like to take you out,” Blaine reminded him.

“In Chicago,” he agreed. “Not here. I barely know anybody here.”

“Somebody could have followed you,” Blaine pointed out. He had been followed—on that case that had nearly claimed his life.

It wasn’t just pride that had him shaking his head. He was certain. “This isn’t about me. It’s about Elizabeth.”

Trooper Littlefield uttered a regretful and agitated sigh. “Maybe it’s about her friends,” he said. “The more I think about that crime scene...”

“You think she’s right? It was no murder-suicide?” Blaine asked.

Dalton had already determined as much.

“The gun was in Kenneth Cunningham’s hand,” Littlefield said. “But he died first. He couldn’t have killed her after he died.”

“Someone staged the scene,” Blaine agreed. “Why? And what does that have to do with Elizabeth?”

“Whoever did it wants to shut her up,” Dalton said. “She won’t stop fighting for justice for her friends and for their daughter.”

“She won’t stop,” Trooper Littlefield agreed. “She was adamant that her friends were so in love that they would have never hurt each other.”

Dalton nodded. “She really believes that.”

“She’s biased,” Blaine pointed out.

“She’s not the only one,” Trooper Littlefield said. “Pretty much everyone that knew the Cunninghams or had ever met them agrees with her.”

Pretty much everyone...

The doctor stepped into the room. “What are you doing out of bed?” he asked Dalton.

“I have to leave,” he replied. He had to get the hell out of there. Now.

“You have to get stitches,” the doctor said—just as Blaine had moments before.

“I have to get back to Elizabeth,” he insisted—because he had figured it out.

“Jared is with Elizabeth,” Blaine reiterated. “He’ll keep her safe. You don’t need to worry.”

But he was worried. Because someone had tried to take him out for a reason, and he believed that reason was to get to Elizabeth.

He held up a hand—holding the doctor and his suture kit back. “Let me call him.”

Blaine cursed as he fumbled his cell phone out of his jeans pocket. “I promised I’d call him back, but I haven’t yet.”

Dalton held out his hand for Blaine’s cell, which the other agent handed over with a sigh. He pushed the redial button. The phone rang once, twice, three times and then four and five before going to voice mail.

“Special Agent Jared Bell. I am currently unavailable, but leave me your name and number, and I will return your call.”

“What the hell’s going on?” Dalton shouted into the phone, but also at his friends. “If he’s waiting for your call, why did it go to voice mail?”

But he knew. And from their faces, so did they. Something had happened to Jared that had, at the least, incapacitated him. And now Elizabeth was alone and unprotected. He headed for the door, and this time nobody tried to stop him. Instead, they hurried along with him.

No matter how fast he drove, he probably wouldn’t get to her in time. He had broken one of his promises to Elizabeth. He hadn’t protected her.