Agent to the Rescue
Lisa Childs
A bride on the run…and a killer on the prowl…When FBI special agent Dalton Reyes discovers an amnesiatic injured bride in the trunk of a car, his protective instincts kick into high gear. Who is this mysterious redhead? And why is someone going to such great lengths to kill her? When a man claiming to be her fiancé steps forward, Dalton can't ignore his jealously…and his fear that that her betrothed isn't who he seems. But as Elizabeth–his beautiful charge–faces the dark truth of her past, Dalton must keep her and her two-year-old adopted daughter safe from the evil forces determined to reclaim them both…
Agent to the Rescue
Lisa Childs
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
LISA CHILDS writes paranormal and contemporary romance for Mills & Boon. She lives on thirty acres in Michigan with her two daughters, a talkative Siamese and a long-haired Chihuahua who thinks she’s a rottweiler. Lisa loves hearing from readers, who can contact her through her website, www.lisachilds.com (https://www.lisachilds.com), or snail-mail address, PO Box 139, Marne, MI 49435, USA.
With great pride and appreciation for my daughters, Ashley & Chloe Theeuwes—for being such strong, smart young women!
Contents
Cover (#uabf9ef92-c4f6-5439-abe7-cab98e41a800)
Title Page (#u118afeff-4303-55e8-88e0-bb25121bf3c4)
About the Author (#u896a04c3-b2b0-5c3d-8f2b-76dafd52b4cc)
Dedication (#u6bff279c-27db-52f6-9333-a69d60e59015)
Chapter One (#u2bf13672-3c21-5366-ad56-342502abdd22)
Chapter Two (#uca529533-66eb-5760-b5dc-d2a4d1c8e1f6)
Chapter Three (#ub7f9ecd6-706d-5589-b402-d0237fbb2a03)
Chapter Four (#u7e8ee997-d116-577a-875a-06861ba5481e)
Chapter Five (#u61a5a8c0-2d51-510c-809c-990c023feb69)
Chapter Six (#u50c924bb-fcb4-5244-ab2c-33c9b6793cec)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ulink_cc5035bb-dee8-58b9-8409-0cde6de5dbdd)
The noose tightening around his neck, Dalton Reyes struggled to swallow even his own saliva. His mouth was dry, though, because fear and nerves overwhelmed him. He tugged at the too-tight bow tie and thanked God he wasn’t the one getting married right now.
He couldn’t imagine promising to love one woman for the rest of his life and then to spend the rest of his life trying to make that one woman happy. Even though he didn’t want that for himself, Dalton stood at Ash Stryker’s side as the FBI special agent vowed just that to Claire Molenski.
Ash turned and looked at him, his blue eyes narrowed in a warning glare. Realizing he’d missed his cue, Dalton hurriedly reached into his pocket for the ring. Why the hell had he wanted to be the best man? Wearing the monkey suit was bad enough, but having to keep track of the damn ring, too...
It was too much. He would rather have mobsters shooting at him than this pressure of the whole church watching him. At least the church was small. But it was hot and stuffy, too. Sweat beaded on his lip, but then his fingers encountered the band. And he pulled out the delicate gold ring. It was tiny—just like the bride.
The first time he had met Claire Molenski, he’d thought the little blonde was hot. But she looked like something else in that white gown—like an angel. Dalton had always preferred bad girls, the ones who wore too much makeup and too-little leather skirts.
As soon as the ceremony was over, he rushed outside and gulped some air.
“You’d think you were the groom,” a man teased him from the shadows of a huge oak. “With as much as you were sweating up there...”
“That’ll never happen,” Dalton replied with the confidence of a man who had never been in love and never intended to take that fall. “I won’t ever be anyone’s groom.”
Finally the man stepped from the shadows. He’d beaten Dalton outside, so he must have been there before the ceremony had even ended. Apparently, though, he had been inside the church long enough to see Dalton sweating at the altar. Since he’d left early, he didn’t seem to like weddings any more than Dalton did.
Then Dalton recognized him and realized why. “You’re Jared Bell...”
The man was a legendary FBI profiler. Recruited out of college into the Bureau, he already had a long and illustrious career for his young age. But he was almost more legendary for the serial killer he hadn’t caught than for all those that he had. The sick bastard who’d eluded him had had a thing for killing brides...
It probably hadn’t been easy for him to see Claire in that white dress and not imagine all those other brides who hadn’t lived long enough to wed their grooms. All those victims...
Jared Bell extended his hand to Dalton. “And you’re Agent Reyes.”
He should have been flattered that the profiler knew him. But then Dalton Reyes wasn’t so much legendary as notorious—for growing up in a gang but then leaving the streets to become a cop and then an FBI special agent assigned to the organized crime division.
“Nice to meet you,” he said. With a glance back at the church, he asked, “I take it you know Ash...”
The grinning groom stood on the stairs of the stuffy little chapel with his smiling bride clasped tightly against his side. Ash Stryker couldn’t take his hands off the petite blonde, but Dalton didn’t blame him.
Bell nodded. “Yes, I know Ash. Not as well as you do, apparently, since you were his best man.”
Reyes grinned at the surprise in the other man’s voice. “You thought it would be Blaine Campbell?”
Bell nodded again. “Stryker and Campbell were marines together.”
The two marines had known each other longer than Dalton had known either of them. So he was pretty sure that Blaine Campbell had been Ash’s first choice, but somehow he had wound up with the honor. Ash and Claire had told him it was because they probably wouldn’t have made it to the altar without him. A lot of people had recently been trying really hard to kill them. He had helped out, but he’d only been doing his job.
A job he loved. He still couldn’t believe that Ash was cutting back—no longer going undercover. Dalton shook his head and sighed. He had wanted to stand up as best man for Ash, but he didn’t agree with him.
His cell rang, saving him from making a reply to Jared Bell. He fished his phone from the pocket of his black tuxedo jacket.
“Good thing it didn’t ring in the church,” Bell remarked drily.
Dalton nodded in agreement. He probably would have been fired on the spot from his position as best man. He glanced at the screen of the cell phone. Why would the local police-post Dispatch be calling him?
“I have to take this,” he said “But I hope we get a chance to talk some more at the reception.”
Bell sighed. He probably thought Dalton wanted to talk about what everybody always wanted to talk about—that case that had never been solved.
Dalton clicked on his phone. “Agent Reyes here.”
“This is Michigan state trooper Littlefield,” a male voice identified himself. “I heard you might be in my area for a wedding.”
Littlefield had helped Campbell, Ash and Reyes apprehend some bank robbery suspects at a cottage in a wooded area nearby this chapel. It was how Ash had heard about the wedding venue. And Littlefield must have heard about the wedding because he’d been invited.
“I’m in your neck of the woods,” Dalton admitted. “Why aren’t you at the wedding?”
“I’m working,” Littlefield said. “I couldn’t get off duty. I had Dispatch patch me through to your cell. Are you working?”
Harder than he’d thought he would have to as best man. “Not at the moment...”
“What I mean is,” the trooper clarified, “are you still working that car theft ring?”
It seemed as if he was always working a car theft ring. He would no sooner shut down one operation before another would spring up. Sometimes he went undercover himself; sometimes he used informants, but he hadn’t failed yet to solve a case. This case was giving him trouble, though—probably because the operation was a lot more widespread than he’d originally anticipated.
“Yeah, I’m still working it.” He had recently put out a bulletin to state police departments and sheriffs’ offices to keep an eye out for any suspicious vehicles.
“I just passed a strange Mercedes heading down a dirt road,” Littlefield shared, his voice full of suspicion. “It looked vintage.”
A vintage Mercedes on a dirt road? It was unlikely that the car owner would have risked the paint or the suspension of the luxury vehicle.
“Where are you?” Reyes asked. “And how do I get there?”
“Aren’t you at a wedding?”
Ash would understand. Maybe.
Dalton had been chasing these car thieves for a while. But he hadn’t caught them—probably because their chop shop was off some dirt road in some obscure wooded area.
Like here...
He tugged his bow tie loose as he headed for his SUV. With its power-charged engine, he should be able to catch up to that Mercedes in no time.
* * *
THE BRONZE-COLORED MERCEDES fishtailed along the gravel road, kicking up a cloud of dust, as Dalton pursued it. He had caught up to it in less time than he’d anticipated. Now his anticipation grew. If he could follow it back to the chop shop...
But the driver must have spotted Littlefield’s patrol car following at a discreet distance. And the Mercedes had sped up to lose the trooper. The Bureau SUV was more powerful, though, and had easily passed the patrol car. Dalton had caught sight of the Mercedes, but had the driver caught sight of him yet?
Could he see the black SUV through the cloud of dust flying up behind his spinning tires?
Even if he hadn’t seen him, the driver wasn’t likely to go back to the chop shop now. He was more likely to try to dump the car since a trooper had seen it. Littlefield hadn’t gotten close enough to read the plate, though.
Dalton was getting close enough, but too much dirt obscured the numbers and letters. Actually, he couldn’t even tell if there was a plate on the car at all. Then the Mercedes accelerated again. The driver must have seen him.
Dalton pressed on his gas pedal, revving the engine. But his tires slid on the loose gravel. The road wasn’t driven that often, so it wasn’t well maintained. There were deep ruts, and the shoulders of the road had washed out into water-filled gullies on either side. If he lost control, he might wind up in one of those gullies. So he eased off the gas slightly and regained control.
A city kid born and raised, Dalton wasn’t used to driving on dirt roads. The driver of the Mercedes had no such problem. Maybe he had grown up around this area, because the car disappeared around a sharp curve in the road.
Dalton cursed. He had been so close. He couldn’t lose him now. He sped up and fishtailed around the curve, nearly losing control. The SUV took the corner on two wheels. Worried that he was going to roll the vehicle, he cursed some more. Then the tires dropped back down and the SUV skidded across the road—toward one of those gullies.
He braked hard and gritted his teeth to hold in more curses as the SUV continued its skid. He grasped the wheel hard and steered away from the ditch. Finally he regained control only to fight for it again, around the next curve. He skidded and nearly collided with the rear bumper of the Mercedes; it was the only part of the luxury vehicle that wasn’t in the ditch.
Maybe its driver hadn’t been as familiar with the roads as Dalton had thought—since he’d gone off in the gully himself. The tires of the SUV squealed as he braked hard again. He shoved the gearshift into Park and hopped out of the driver’s side. His weapon drawn from beneath his tuxedo jacket, he slowly approached the vintage Mercedes.
Its engine was still running, smoke trailing up from beneath its crumpled hood. The water in the gully sizzled from the heat of it. The Mercedes wasn’t going anywhere now. But the driver was gone—probably out the open passenger’s window.
Dalton lifted his gun toward the woods on that side of the road. The driver had disappeared into them. But he could be close, just hiding behind a tree. Or he could be following a trail through those woods to that chop shop Dalton was determined to find. Since he was a city kid, he would probably get lost. But he started down toward the ditch, anyway, to follow the driver into those woods.
Then the smooth soles of his once-shiny black dress shoes slipped on the loose gravel and the muddy bank. He started sliding toward the water—which he wouldn’t have minded falling into if the damn tux wasn’t an expensive rental. To steady himself, he grabbed at the Mercedes and braced his hand on the trunk. But then his hand slid the way his shoes had. He glanced down and figured out why when he saw the blood on his palm. It was also smeared beneath the dust across the trunk lid.
Dread tightened his stomach into a tight knot. Growing up where he had and working in the division he worked, he had already found more than his share of bodies in car trunks. But he suspected he was about to find another.
He had nothing on him to pry open the lid or to break the lock. So he took the easy way and kicked in the driver’s window, which started an alarm blaring. Then he reached inside for the trunk-lid release button. Fortunately the car wasn’t so vintage that it hadn’t come equipped with some more up-to-date features. The button clicked, and the trunk lid flew up, waving like a flag in the woods.
It wasn’t a surrender flag, though, because the driver had fled into the woods and apparently for a damn good reason, too. Even if the car wasn’t stolen, he would have had some trouble explaining the body in the trunk.
Sun shone through the trees of the thick woods and glinted off that trunk lid. It was such a beautiful day for a wedding. Dalton should have stayed at the stuffy little church and celebrated with his deservedly happy friends. Instead, he had nearly wiped out on some back roads and probably stumbled upon a murder victim.
He drew in a deep breath of fresh air to brace himself for what he would find in the trunk. Then he walked around to the rear of the Mercedes.
White lace, stained with blood, spilled over the bumper. He forced himself to look inside the trunk. The woman’s face was so pale but for the blood smeared on it. And her long hair, tangled around her head, was nearly as red as her blood.
He recognized the dress, since he had just seen a gown eerily similar to it. But that bride had been alive and happy. This bride was dead. He reached into the trunk to confirm it, his fingers sliding over her throat where her pulse would have been—had she had one any longer.
Something moved beneath his fingertips—in a faint and weak rhythm. He looked down again just as her eyelids fluttered open. Her eyes were a pale, almost silvery, gray, and they were wide with confusion and then fear.
She screamed and struck out, hitting and kicking at him, as she fought him for her life.
* * *
THE SCREAM STOPPED him cold, abruptly halting his headlong escape through the forest. He had heard that scream before—seconds before he’d thought he had killed the woman. Hell, he’d been certain he’d killed her.
How could she be alive?
It wasn’t possible...
More important, it wasn’t acceptable.
He had let the state trooper distract him. With his heart pounding in his chest with fear and nerves, he hadn’t known how to react to that police car behind him. At first he’d driven normally, hoping that the trooper wouldn’t notice the missing plate—hoping that he would give up following him for some more interesting radio call.
But the trooper must have called in someone else—some other agency—because then he’d noticed the black SUV. And his every instinct had screamed at him to drive as fast as he could—to outrun that vehicle.
Instead, he had let it run him off the road—into that damn ditch. He’d barely escaped the vehicle before the guy had run up to it.
In a tux...
What kind of government agent wore a tuxedo?
The kind that had happened into the wrong situation at the wrong time.
He had to go back. He couldn’t leave the woman alive. And if he had to, he would kill the man along with her. And this time, he would make damn certain that she was really dead.
Chapter Two (#ulink_249def37-1397-5e00-aac1-874bfe1a215f)
“It’s okay...” The man uttered the claim in a deep voice. “You’re safe.” But he held a gun in one hand while he grasped her wrists with the other.
His hands were so big that he easily clasped both her wrists in one, restraining her. So she kicked. Or at least she tried. But heavy fabric tangled around her legs, holding her down...inside the trunk of a car.
Fear overwhelmed her as she realized that she had been locked inside that trunk—until this man had opened the lid. She needed to get out; she needed to run. But her head throbbed. A blaring alarm intensified the pain, and her vision blurred as unconsciousness threatened to overwhelm her again. She could barely focus on the man.
He was so big and muscular that he towered over her. Thick dark hair framed a tanned face. And dark eyes stared down at her. He looked as shocked as she felt.
She struggled again, tugging on her wrists to free them from his grasp. But his hand held her. She fought to move her legs, but they were trapped under the weight of whatever she was wearing.
She glanced down, and all the white nearly blinded her. White lace. White silk. Except for the red spots, which dropped onto the fabric like rain. She was bleeding. Not only had she been locked inside the trunk of a car, she had been wounded.
How badly?
Panic pressed on her, constricting her lungs. But she gathered her strength, opened her mouth and screamed again. Her voice was weak, too, though, and only a soft cry emerged from her throat this time.
“You have no reason to be afraid anymore,” the man told her. “You’re safe now. You’re safe.”
Her vision cleared enough that she could see him more clearly. He wore a black jacket with a dark red rose pinned to one of the shiny silk lapels. His shirt was whiter than the dress she was wearing. A black bow tie hung loose around the collar of that shirt.
He was wearing a tuxedo and she was dressed in what had to be a wedding gown. What sick scenario did he have planned for her? Or had it already taken place?
She couldn’t remember what had happened and how she had ended up in the trunk of a car. Since she couldn’t change what had already happened, she concentrated instead on the present—on what was happening now and where she was. She peered around him—to the forest surrounding the vehicle that was upended in a ditch. He had brought her to the middle of nowhere.
And she could think of only one reason for that. To dispose of her body...
Because no one would ever find her out here. She had no idea where she was. There were so many trees overhead that she could barely see the sky through the canopy of thick branches. She had no idea which direction was which—even if she was strong enough to escape him. She already knew he was strong from his grip on her wrists; he was so tall and broad shouldered, too.
“Please,” she murmured. “Please, don’t hurt me...”
She shouldn’t have wasted her breath. Uttering those words had cost her so much of what little was left of her strength, and she had no hope of appealing to his sense of humanity. She doubted he had one. He must have been the person who had put her in the trunk, who had hurt her.
He was standing over her, restraining her...and he had the gun. He had to be the one who’d...
But she couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember what had happened. The pounding in her head increased as she struggled to summon memories.
But her mind was blank. Completely blank.
She didn’t even know who she was...
* * *
THE MAN WAS totally focused on the woman—so much so that he would be easily overpowered. And the blaring car alarm would drown out the sound of his approach. Ready to attack, he moved forward, but then sunlight seeped through the thick branches of the trees overhanging the road and glinted off the metal of the weapon the man held.
Just as he’d suspected, this guy wasn’t just some Good Samaritan who had happened along to rescue the woman. Despite the tuxedo he was wearing, he had to be some type of lawman. An armed lawman.
Frustration ate at him—joining the bitterness he had always felt for law enforcement. The gun would complicate things. But it wouldn’t stop him.
He would enjoy killing the man, too—now that he knew he was in law enforcement. But he would have to act quickly, before any reinforcements arrived.
He had to act now. He had to make sure that the woman really died and the lawman died along with her.
* * *
THE PANIC ON the young woman’s face struck Dalton like a blow. Those already enormous silvery-gray eyes had widened more with fear while her face had grown even paler.
Aware that he was scaring her, that he was intimidating her, he stepped back. But he was afraid that if he completely released her, she might injure herself as she tried to get away from him. So he continued to hold her wrists.
“Don’t move,” he cautioned her. As wounded as she was, she shouldn’t risk causing more damage to her battered body.
But she ignored his advice and struggled even harder, thrashing about inside the trunk. Maybe she couldn’t hear him over the blare of that damn car alarm. But like her, it was growing weaker—probably either as the battery ran down or was damaged from the water flooding the engine, which had already died.
Now he just had to make sure that the bride didn’t.
“You’re hurt,” he told her—in case she hadn’t noticed the blood that had stained her dress and made her long hair wet and sticky.
She had lost so much blood that some had even pooled in the trunk beneath her. She needed medical attention as soon as possible. Or he wasn’t sure that she would survive.
“You need to hold still,” he advised her, “until I get help for you.”
But to get help, he would have to put away his gun and take out his cell. He glanced around to see if the driver of the Mercedes had returned. The towering trees cast shadows throughout the woods and onto the gravel road—making the time of day appear closer to night than midafternoon.
The driver could have circled back around—could even now be sneaking up behind them. Dalton peered around—over his shoulder and into the woods, checking for any movement. Sunlight glinted within the trees.
Off a gun?
Or maybe it was a beer can that some teenagers or a hunter had tossed into the woods.
Dalton had spent his life on the streets; he knew what dangers he would face there. He had no idea what lurked out here—where it was so remote. He couldn’t see anyone, yet the skin tingled between his shoulder blades. He felt as though he was being watched. Maybe being out of his element was what made him so uneasy—made him reluctant to put away his weapon.
But Dalton had no choice. He had to get help for the battered bride. She had already lost so much blood—maybe too much to survive.
“You’re going to be okay.” Because he had told so many over the years, lies came easily to him now. But maybe he wasn’t lying; he wasn’t a doctor. He had no way of knowing how gravely she was injured, so maybe she would be okay. “But you need to calm down. You need to trust me.”
Because of all those lies he’d told and all those old friends from the gang that he had betrayed and arrested, few people trusted him anymore. Certainly no one who knew him.
But he was a stranger to her. Maybe that was why she stopped struggling. Or maybe she was just too weak from all that blood loss.
So he released her wrists, then holstered his weapon and pulled out his cell. But the phone screen blinked out a warning: no signal.
He cursed. He couldn’t leave her here while he drove around until his phone had a signal again. She might not survive until he returned. Either her injury might claim her life or the man who’d put her in the trunk might return for her.
Dare Dalton try to move her? To carry her to his SUV and drive her to a hospital? Hell, he didn’t even know where a hospital was in this area.
Maybe she wasn’t as weak as he’d thought, though, because she drew in an unsteady breath and then tried again to climb out of the trunk. He put a hand on her shoulder to hold her still, though he probably hadn’t had to bother. The weight of the blood-soaked dress was already holding down her body.
“You have to take it easy,” he warned her. “You have a head injury.” At least that looked to be where her blood was coming from. Had she been shot?
In his experience, most of the people he had found in trunks had been shot, execution-style, in the base of the skull. But all of those people had died. If she had a bullet in her head, and he moved her...
She would probably die, too. But if he didn’t move her, she still might die. There was too much blood.
She lifted one of her hands and touched her head. Her beautiful face contorted with pain and she jerked her hand back. Staring down at her fingers, which were stained with her own blood, she gasped.
“Do you know what happened?” he asked. Maybe she could tell him if she’d been shot.
But from the dazed and glassy look in her pale gray eyes, she appeared to be in shock. Or maybe it was the injury that had her so groggy and weak.
“Noooo...” she murmured.
Wouldn’t she remember being shot? He remembered every time that he had been shot.
“Maybe you were struck over the head,” he suggested.
She could have a concussion—some blunt-force trauma that was making her bleed so much. Dalton had seen that kind of injury a lot, too, over the years.
Or she could have been shot from behind, so that she hadn’t realized what was happening to her—until it was too late. Until the bullet had been fired into her head.
Gravel scattered across the road, small stones skittering past him and into the water in the gully. Then metal clicked as a gun cocked. And Dalton realized that the same thing had just happened to him. Someone had sneaked up behind him to take him by surprise.
The damn driver must have circled back around—returning to reclaim his victim. To make sure that she was dead and couldn’t identify him.
Her eyes widened with shock and fear. Either she could see the man over his shoulder, or she must have heard the gun cocking, too.
Dalton shifted his body slightly, so that he stood between her and the danger. If the man wanted to kill her, he would have to kill Dalton first.
He reached for his holster again—for his gun. But he wouldn’t be able to draw it fast enough to save himself from getting shot. But maybe he could get off a shot himself and save her.
Chapter Three (#ulink_23ae19fb-1c12-5465-8316-df7428abd190)
The man had drawn his gun again. But she wasn’t afraid of him this time. She was afraid for him. A shadow had fallen across the road behind him. And that soft click of metal must have been another gun, already cocking...
The bullet would hit the man first—before it hit her. He had positioned himself so that it would. He had positioned himself to protect her.
Maybe he wasn’t who or what she’d thought he was. Maybe he wasn’t the person who had hurt her. Maybe he wasn’t a monster. But how had he found her?
“Who are you?” she whispered. But she wasn’t asking for just his name.
“FBI,” he identified himself—not to her but to whoever had come up behind him. “Put down your weapon...”
A man uttered a ragged sigh of relief. “Agent Reyes, I couldn’t tell if that was you or not...from behind...and in a tux...but of course you were at the wedding...” The man’s sigh became a gasp as he peered around the FBI agent and saw her in the trunk. “Is that the bride?”
“No,” the agent replied. “Not the bride from the wedding I was at anyway. I don’t know who she is. I found her in the car we were pursuing.”
Unlike the agent who wore a tuxedo, this man was wearing a vaguely familiar-looking uniform. It was tan and drab like the dust coating the car, but he had a badge pinned to his chest. He was also a law enforcement officer.
She breathed a slight sigh of relief. Maybe she had been rescued—if only she remembered from what...
“Where’s the driver?” the state trooper asked. He was shorter and heavier than the agent—with no hair discernible beneath the cap of his hat.
The FBI agent gestured toward the woods. “He ran off before I could even get a look at him. And then I found her in the trunk. She needs medical help.”
She heard the urgency in his voice and knew her situation was as critical as she feared it was.
“Does your phone or radio work?” the agent asked the officer. “I can’t get a signal.”
The other man grabbed at the collar of his shirt and pressed a button on the device attached to it. “We need an ambulance.”
They didn’t need the ambulance. She did. She had been badly injured. All the blood was hers. No wonder she felt so weak—too weak to even pull herself out of the trunk. Too weak to fight anymore.
“Help’s coming,” the man called Agent Reyes assured her.
He had already helped her—when he had stopped whoever had been driving the car and opened the trunk for her. She wanted to thank him, but she struggled for the words—for the strength to even move her lips.
“Shh,” he said, as if he sensed her struggle. “You’re going to get medical attention soon. The ambulance is on its way.”
But she was afraid that it would be too late.
“Hang in there,” he urged her.
She shook her head and dizziness overwhelmed her, making her stomach pitch and pain reverberate in her head like a chime clanging against the insides of a bell.
“You’re strong,” he said. Instead of clasping her wrists, he took her hand and squeezed it reassuringly. “You must be strong, or you wouldn’t still be alive. You’re a fighter. You can hang in there.”
She had suspected he was lying to her earlier—when he’d told her she would be okay and especially when he had urged her to trust him. Now she was certain that he was lying. She had never felt weaker than she did right now. At least she didn’t think she had...
Memories still eluded her.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
She blinked, trying to focus on his face again. He really was quite handsome—with that tanned skin, those dark eyes so heavily lashed and his thick, black hair. It was a little long—longer than she would have thought a government agent would be able to wear his hair.
“What’s your name?” he asked again. Moments ago he’d shushed her when she’d tried to talk. Now he was getting insistent, as if he needed her name in case she didn’t survive until the ambulance arrived.
She gathered the last of her strength and admitted in a raspy whisper, “I don’t know...”
Her memories weren’t just eluding her. They were completely gone, as if they had seeped out with her blood—leaving her mind entirely blank.
“I don’t know...” she murmured again...just as oblivion returned to claim her.
* * *
“WHERE’S THAT DAMN AMBULANCE?” Dalton demanded to know. Maybe the trooper had called only minutes ago for help, but it felt like hours—with the young woman lying unconscious in the trunk of the car.
Dalton had pressed her veil onto the wound on the back of her head, trying to stem the bleeding. But the fabric was flimsy.
Trooper Littlefield pointed down the gravel road where he must have abandoned his squad car, since he’d come up behind Reyes on foot. “I can hear them coming now.”
The faint whine of sirens reached his ears, too. And in the distance a cloud of dust rose up into the trees.
“Help’s coming,” he told the woman, hoping that she could hear him even though she was unconscious. “Stay with me. Help’s coming.”
Then he turned back toward Littlefield. The trooper was older than him—shorter and heavier. And he was sweating so badly that it streaked from his bald head down his neck to stain the collar of his tan shirt. He probably hadn’t chosen to walk the rest of the way down the gravel road. Had he crashed? Or had the car just overheated from the chase?
“Can they get around your car?” he asked.
He nodded. “I parked it off to the side—” he gestured toward the FBI SUV “—like you did.”
Dalton hadn’t exactly parked there; he had just been fortunate enough to have ended up there instead of in the ditch like the Mercedes had.
“Why did you abandon your car?” Dalton asked.
The trooper pointed toward the Mercedes. “I heard the cars stop. I wasn’t sure what the situation was...” He glanced at the woman in the trunk. “I didn’t think it would be this, though.”
Despite all those bodies Dalton had found in car trunks over the years, this wasn’t the situation he had expected, either. It was just too ironic and coincidental since he’d just been at a wedding himself that he would find a bride locked inside a trunk. Then he remembered that conversation he’d had outside the church—the one with profiler Special Agent Jared Bell.
Could this bride have been the next intended victim of Bell’s serial killer?
As far as he knew, the guy hadn’t killed another woman for a couple of years. He wouldn’t claim this victim, either—if Dalton could do anything about it.
Finally the sirens grew louder and lights flashed as the ambulance approached. “Help’s here,” he told her. “You’re going to be okay.”
Her lashes fluttered, and she peered at him through her barely opened lids. “Don’t lie to me.”
“Help really is here.” And as he said it, paramedics rushed up to the car. He released the blood-soaked veil to one of them and then he tried to release her hand—that he hadn’t even realized he still held—and step back out of their way.
But she clasped his hand tightly in hers. She was stronger than she thought—stronger even than he had thought. “Don’t leave me,” she implored him.
Recently another agent had nearly lost a witness at the hospital when bank robbery suspects had tried to abduct her right out of the ER. Dalton wasn’t about to take that risk. This woman had already been through too much.
“I need to ride along,” he told the paramedics. Then he told her, “I won’t leave you.”
Her eyes closed again. Somehow she trusted him—when she had no reason to trust him or anyone else after what had happened to her. What exactly had happened to her?
“Was she shot?” he asked the paramedic who eased the veil away from her head wound.
The young man shrugged. “I don’t know. They’ll get a CT scan in the ER. So we need to get her to the hospital ASAP.” He and another man snapped a collar around her neck and then lifted her onto a board that they carried up to the gurney they’d left on the road.
Dalton had to run along beside the stretcher they rolled along the gravel road to the ambulance. He hurried inside the rig just as they closed the doors and sped away. From their urgency, it was clear that her condition was every bit as critical as Dalton had feared it was.
“How far from the hospital are we?” he asked.
“Twenty minutes out,” the driver replied.
He would bet every one of those minutes counted in her situation. The paramedic in the back had administered an IV and an oxygen mask. It was more than he had been able to offer her. But it wasn’t enough. Not if there was a bullet in her head.
“What is her name?” the paramedic asked.
“She doesn’t know,” Dalton replied. “Could she have amnesia?”
“It’s possible if she has a concussion,” the paramedic replied. “But what is her name?”
“She couldn’t tell me,” he pointed out, “so I don’t know.”
“You’re not her groom?”
A strange shiver rushed over him. “Of course not. I’m an FBI agent. I found her in the trunk of that car.”
The paramedic glanced down at Dalton’s tux and nodded, as if humoring him.
“I just came from a wedding,” he explained his attire. “It wasn’t mine.”
It would never be his.
“I don’t know who she is,” he repeated. But maybe something had been left in the trunk of the car that would have revealed her identity. A purse. A wallet. A receipt. Or the registration for the car that might have been hers.
He should have stayed behind at the scene. He could have done more for her there than by playing nursemaid in the back of the ambulance. And why would the man who’d put her in that trunk risk showing up at the hospital?
If the guy was smart, he was still running.
“What the hell...” the driver murmured from the front seat.
Dalton glanced up and peered out the windshield—at the police car barreling down the road toward them with lights flashing and sirens blaring.
“Does he want me to pull over?” the driver asked as he reached for the radio on the dash. “Why doesn’t he tell me what he wants?”
Another shiver rushed over Dalton, this one so deep that it chilled his blood. They hadn’t passed the trooper’s abandoned vehicle. He had a bad feeling that it was that vehicle heading straight toward them now.
But it was not Trooper Littlefield driving it. It wasn’t the bald man behind the vehicle. This person had a hat pulled low over his face. But that wasn’t the reason he was driving straight toward them. He wanted to run them off the road; he wanted to reclaim the victim who had nearly escaped him.
The ambulance driver jerked the wheel and veered toward one of those deep ditches. At the last moment, he jerked the wheel back and kept the rig on the road, riding along the steep shoulder. “What the hell’s that trooper doing?”
“It’s not the trooper.” It had to be the man who’d run from the Mercedes. He must have circled back around and found the trooper’s abandoned vehicle. “And don’t pull over...”
“But he’s going to kill us!” the other paramedic exclaimed. “He’s heading straight toward us!”
But the man couldn’t have expected that an FBI agent was riding along in the rig. So Dalton had the element of surprise. He pulled his gun from his holster, leaned forward over the passenger’s seat and pointed the barrel out the open passenger’s window.
Maybe the man saw the gun, because he sped up as if trying to run them off the road before Dalton could fire a shot. Dust billowed up behind the trooper’s car, forming a cloud thicker than fog. Dalton could barely see through it, but he fired his weapon. Again and again.
He couldn’t tell if he struck the car, though—let alone the driver. And the vehicle kept coming toward them. Faster and faster.
The ambulance driver cursed.
“Keep going straight,” Dalton advised him. The road was too narrow; the ditches too deep and the gravel too loose. “Don’t swerve.”
But his warning came too late.
The ambulance driver didn’t have the nerves for the dangerous game of chicken. Cursing, he jerked the wheel, and the rig teetered on two wheels.
The paramedic in the back shouted in fear.
The driver couldn’t regain control of the van and it flipped—over and over—hurtling Dalton over the seat and toward the windshield. If he went through it—if he lost consciousness—he risked losing the bride...
But then the accident would probably be enough to finish her off. She was already critically wounded. He held his breath and tried to brace himself.
But it was too late.
* * *
THE AMBULANCE LAY crumpled on its side in the ditch, but its lights flashed and sirens blared yet. With a gloved hand, he turned off the lights and sirens inside the state police cruiser. But he could hear an echo of the ambulance’s sirens in the distance.
More emergency vehicles were on their way to the scene. Maybe the trooper had called for more help. Maybe the agent had managed to get a call out before the ambulance had crashed. The agent was inside that crashed vehicle. He’d seen him climb into the ambulance with the woman—determined to protect her.
The agent had even shot at him; the windshield of the police cruiser bore holes too close to where his head had been. He shuddered at how close those shots had come to hitting him. Even with both vehicles moving, the agent had nearly struck him. He was a damn good shot. A dangerous man.
Maybe that was why he hesitated before approaching that crumpled ambulance. He didn’t know what he would find inside: dead bodies or a still-armed government agent.
The ambulance sirens grew weaker, while those sirens in the distance grew louder as those vehicles approached. He could hesitate no longer. He had to hurry. Before the other emergency personnel arrived, he had to make certain that both the woman and the lawman were dead.
* * *
HER HEART AND her head pounded with fear and pain. Strapped to the gurney, she had actually taken little impact from the crash. Since the gurney was anchored to the floor, she hadn’t been thrown around like the others.
The blond-haired paramedic who’d been in the back with her had bounced around like a rag doll and then crumpled against the side of the ambulance where it had come to rest in the deep ditch next to the road.
She couldn’t tell if the man was just unconscious.
Or...
A cry burned her throat, but she held it in—refusing to panic. Yet.
Strapped down and hanging on her side, she could only twist her neck to peer around the vehicle—to see what had happened to the others. To the FBI agent.
The driver was pinned beneath the steering wheel, so he remained in his seat. Like the other paramedic, he wasn’t moving. How badly was he hurt?
They had come to help her. But now they needed help. Because of her?
Guilt struck her with all the force that the ambulance had struck the ditch. Could this be her fault?
Could she have done something to cause this destruction—this pain? How much destruction?
She craned her neck, but she couldn’t see the agent. Had he catapulted out of the windshield? The glass was broken. But then, he might have shot it out. He had been shooting—trying to stop the other vehicle from running them off the road. According to the paramedics’ comments, the other vehicle had been a police car.
The trooper’s uniform had looked vaguely familiar to her. Had she seen him before? Was he the one who’d put her in the trunk?
Was there anyone she could trust? Special Agent Reyes had done his best to save her. But where was he now? Pinned beneath the vehicle when it had rolled?
She shuddered as she imagined the worst. And her head throbbed more with dull pain. The pounding wasn’t just inside her head, though.
Someone was hammering on the back doors of the ambulance—trying to open them. She struggled against the straps, but they held her fast to the gurney. She couldn’t move—she couldn’t escape. She could only wait for whoever had run them off the road to finish her off.
Chapter Four (#ulink_662a9866-f751-53da-bdd0-a2794363d4e5)
Water seeped through the tuxedo, chilling Dalton’s skin. He awoke with a jerk—then grunted as his head slammed against metal. Stars danced behind his eyes as oblivion threatened to reclaim him. But then he heard the hammering and felt the force of it rocking the ambulance.
Fortunately he wasn’t beneath the vehicle. Instead of going through the windshield, he had grabbed hold of the dash and had somehow wound up wedged beneath it—between the passenger’s seat and the door. Water surged through that door from where the van lay on its side in the ditch. If he hadn’t awakened, he may have drowned.
But now, as the doors creaked and finally gave, he still could die because he had no intention of letting anyone hurt the injured woman more than she had already been hurt. He fumbled around on the wet floor, looking for his gun. Finally his fingers grazed metal. He closed his hand around it, but the barrel was stuck—wedged between the seat and the crumpled passenger door.
As he tugged on the Glock, he lifted his head to assess the situation. The bride, strapped to the gurney, was suspended on her side. Her silvery-gray eyes were open and wide with fear. She knew she was trapped. Then she noticed him.
And he saw hope brighten her face, infusing her pallid skin with a hint of color. Of life...
She was okay now.
But he wasn’t sure how much hope he offered her—when he couldn’t get his damn gun loose. So he turned away from her to focus on those opening doors. And he released his breath in a ragged sigh of relief.
* * *
WHEN THOSE AMBULANCE doors jerked open, Dalton had been relieved to see—along with his friends Blaine and Ash—Jared Bell. Now he was worried rather than relieved. While the FBI profiler hadn’t said much of anything in the hour since he had arrived at the accident scene, Dalton was pretty sure the man was going to try to snag his case and his witness.
As Dalton rushed into the hospital emergency room, he realized he was more concerned about losing the witness than the case. That concern worried him more. She was easy to find in the small rural hospital; two troopers stood outside the curtain where she was, while the blond FBI agent stood guard next to her bed.
“Is she okay?” he asked Blaine.
Dalton had managed to talk Ash into returning to his wedding, but that hadn’t eased much of his guilt over disrupting the reception. Unfortunately, the other agents had heard the trooper’s call for an ambulance and thought Dalton was the one needing medical attention. That was why they had all showed up when they had—at the perfect moment.
But none of them had caught the man who had driven the ambulance off the road. He had escaped them just as easily as he had escaped Dalton. And just like Dalton, no one had even gotten a glimpse of him.
In response to Dalton’s question, Blaine shook his head. Dread had Dalton’s stomach plummeting.
“Is she...?” He turned toward the bed where she was lying, her wedding gown replaced with a hospital gown. The blood washed away from her face, it was devoid of all color now. But her red hair was vibrant against the pillow and sheets. She couldn’t be gone.
Wouldn’t they have covered her face, her beautiful face, if she were dead?
“God, no, she’s not,” Blaine hastened to assure him. “But the doctors are concerned about her head injury.”
“Why isn’t she in surgery, then?” he asked.
He shouldn’t have stayed behind at the accident scene with Agent Bell. He should have ridden in the second ambulance, which had arrived to replace the crashed one, with the victim and the injured paramedics. But because he had stayed behind, he had been able to point out things to Bell that the man might not have noticed on his own—like how both the Mercedes and the trooper’s car had been hot-wired.
Had Bell’s serial killer known how to do that?
But then, Dalton’s car thieves had never taken a hostage before.
Whose case was this?
Her heavy lashes fluttered against her cheeks as she lifted her lids and stared at him. “You’re back...” Her breath shuddered out with relief.
Relief eased the tightness in his chest. She wasn’t dead...
“Where are these doctors?” he asked Blaine. But he didn’t look around for the ER physicians; he couldn’t pull his gaze from hers.
“She doesn’t need surgery,” Blaine said.
“But the head wound...” If her head was bandaged, it must have been beneath her hair, because he couldn’t see any gauze or tape. “It isn’t a GSW?”
Blaine replied, “She wasn’t shot.”
Dalton uttered a sigh of relief—which Bell echoed. Until now, the profiler had barely paid any attention to the victim. Of course, as a profiler, he was all about the perp. Did he intend to link this case—and her—to his serial killer?
“I have a concussion,” she said. “The neuro specialist said that’s probably why I can’t remember...”
“You can’t remember?” Bell asked. “Anything...?”
She glanced at him but turned back to Dalton, as if seeking assurance that she could trust the stranger. Earlier he had convinced her that she could trust Blaine. Hell, Blaine Campbell was well-known for his protectiveness. Dalton wouldn’t have trusted her safety to anyone else—not with a man out there determined to kill her.
Dalton hesitated only a moment before nodding that she could trust Bell, too. The guy was legendary for his intelligence and determination. Only one killer had escaped him in all the years he’d been a profiler.
“I don’t remember anything,” she said. “But him...” She lifted her hand toward Dalton. “I just remember him lifting the trunk lid...”
“Nothing else?” Bell asked. “You don’t remember anything that happened before that?”
She closed her eyes as if searching her mind for memories. Or maybe she was just exhausted.
“She’s in no condition for an interrogation right now,” he admonished Bell.
“The doctors said her concussion is serious,” Blaine added. “She lost a lot of blood from the head wound, too, so she’s really physically weak.”
Her eyes opened again. “I am not weak.”
“She’s not,” Dalton agreed. Just as he had told her earlier, he repeated, “She’s very strong.” She had survived two attempts on her life.
“I could handle an interrogation,” she said. “I would love to answer your questions—all of your questions—if I had any answers. But I can’t tell you anything about how I wound up in that trunk. I can’t even tell you my name.”
Tears glistened in her eyes, but she blinked furiously, fighting them back. He suspected they were tears of frustration. He couldn’t imagine losing all of his memories—to the extent that he didn’t even know his name. As he had when she’d been bleeding in the trunk, he reached out and clasped her hand. At that time he had been urging her to hold on to life; now he wanted her to hold on to him.
She clutched at his hand and squeezed. “Since you can’t interrogate me, I’m going to interrogate all of you. I need answers. I need to know who I am and what happened to me.”
He had been right about her. She was strong—hopefully strong enough to handle the truth, whatever it was.
“Does she have any other injuries?” he asked Blaine.
“I remember what the doctor told me,” she informed him. “I just don’t remember anything before you opened that trunk.”
He didn’t want to upset her by asking her how else she might have been injured, but it was important to know what kind of attacker they were dealing with. A sexual predator? Anger coursed through him. He wanted to find this guy. And he wanted to hurt him for hurting her.
“What are your other injuries?” Jared Bell asked the question now, no doubt because he was trying to profile her attacker.
She shivered even though a few blankets covered her hospital gown. He squeezed her hand, offering comfort and reassurance, and she offered him a smile. God, she was beautiful—so beautiful that his breath stuck in his lungs for a moment.
“What you’re thinking,” she said, “it didn’t happen.” She shuddered now—in revulsion at the thought and in relief. “I have some bumps, bruises and scrapes—”
“In addition to the head injury and amnesia,” Blaine finished for her.
“Amnesia,” she bitterly repeated. “I need to know who I am. You’re all in the FBI. You must know something about me.”
“Contrary to public opinion,” Blaine said, “we don’t have files on everyone. So we don’t know your identity. We don’t know anything yet.”
“We checked the missing person’s report in the area,” Agent Bell said. “No one’s reported a bride missing.”
She glanced at Blaine and then Jared Bell before focusing on him again. “None of you have any answers,” she said with a ragged sigh of resignation and weariness. “You don’t know who I am or why I was in the trunk of that car, either.”
“We don’t,” Dalton admitted.
“So what do I call myself?” she asked. And now her voice sounded weak, thready, as exhaustion threatened to claim her.
“Jane Doe,” Blaine suggested.
She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “That makes it sound like I didn’t survive. Like I’m a dead body.”
Dalton had another suggestion. But he didn’t want to upset her. “We’ll find out your real name,” he said. “And how you wound up in that trunk. I promise you that we will find out.” He squeezed her hand again.
While she wasn’t weak, she was exhausted, and her eyes closed again as sleep claimed her.
“You shouldn’t have made her any promises,” Jared Bell admonished him.
“Why not?” Because the profiler intended to steal the case from him?
“It isn’t like you,” Blaine agreed. “You always swear you’re not going to make anyone any promises. You’re never getting married.”
“I’m not marrying anyone,” Dalton anxiously corrected him. That was a promise he’d made himself long ago. “I’m just going to find out who she is and how she wound up in that trunk.”
“But if nobody reports her missing and she doesn’t have DNA on file, there might not be any way to find out who she is,” Bell cautioned him. “You can’t risk putting her picture out there. You can’t risk a news report about her.”
“I wouldn’t risk it,” Dalton assured him. He couldn’t risk kooks coming out of the woodwork trying to claim they knew her or cared about her—not in her vulnerable state.
“Why not?” Blaine asked. “Her attacker obviously knows she’s still alive, or he wouldn’t have tried running the ambulance off the road.”
Jared Bell shook his head. “The last thing her attacker needs is any publicity...”
Dalton wasn’t worried about her attacker; he was worried about her.
“But it might be the only way,” Blaine said, “since the doctors said she might never regain her memory.”
Even while his heart sank for her, Dalton shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I will still find out who she is and what happened to her.” And he would find out without putting her in even more danger.
* * *
SHE MIGHT NEVER regain her memory.
She had only closed her eyes to hold back more tears—not to sleep. So she’d heard what the agent had said.
She had already heard the doctor say it, too, though, so the pronouncement wasn’t a shock. But hearing it again made it more real. She might never remember her life before the moment that Special Agent Dalton Reyes had opened the car trunk and rescued her.
Her oldest memory was of him—standing over her looking all handsome in his black tuxedo with his bow tie lying loose around his neck. If not for the trunk and the concussion and the blood, it might not have been such a bad memory. He was such an attractive man. But he wasn’t just a man. To her, he had become a hero.
The FBI agents must not have realized that she wasn’t sleeping, because they spoke freely over her—as if she wasn’t there. Since she didn’t remember who she was, it was almost as if she didn’t really exist.
She had no name. No history.
“You didn’t find anything at the crime scene to reveal her identity?” It must have been the blond man—Agent Campbell—who’d asked, since he had been the one assigned to protect her in the second ambulance. Fortunately, the paramedics from the first ambulance had had only minor injuries from the crash. They’d ridden along with her, too, to the hospital.
“No,” Dalton replied. “The glove box was empty, and there was no license plate on the car. I’ll have to run the vehicle identification number to find out whose name it was titled in last.”
Hers?
She hadn’t even seen the vehicle. She had no idea in what kind of trunk she had been found.
“The car was hot-wired, though—like Trooper Littlefield’s patrol car had been,” he continued. “This guy’s a pro.”
“So you think he’s part of that ring of car thieves you’ve been tracking?” Agent Campbell asked.
“Definitely.”
“Have your car thieves taken a hostage before?” the other man asked. Back at the crash site Dalton had introduced him as Agent Bell. She could remember all of their names; it was her own she couldn’t recall.
Dalton said nothing in reply to Agent Bell’s question before the man asked another. “And would they risk returning to the scene to reclaim that hostage?”
Now Dalton cursed. “I know what you’re up to,” he said, as if he was accusing the other agent of something nefarious. “You’re going to try to make this your case.”
She almost opened her eyes then so that she could protest. She wanted Special Agent Reyes on her case—and not just because he’d promised to find out who she was and what had happened.
Maybe it was because her oldest memory was of him—maybe it was because he had saved her life—that she felt so connected to him. Even dependent on him...
She had no sense of herself. Her only sense was of him. But the only thing she actually knew about him was that he was an FBI special agent. She knew nothing of his life. She’d heard him say he was never getting married, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t involved with someone. That he didn’t have kids.
“I hope it’s not my case, Reyes,” the other man replied with grave brevity. “I don’t want to think that he’s back—that he’s killing again...”
“She’s not dead,” Dalton said.
“She would have been—if you hadn’t stopped him,” Agent Bell said. “But you didn’t really stop him. He came back and hot-wired the trooper’s car. He tried again.”
“But he didn’t kill her,” Dalton said. “It’s not him—it’s not your serial killer. Or she would be dead. Some of his victims may not have been found, but nobody’s ever escaped him. It’s not the Bride Butcher.”
Bride Butcher...
The words chilled her, but she suppressed a shiver and a shudder of horror and recognition. The name sounded vaguely but frighteningly familiar to her.
But why would the killer be after her? She was no bride. Then she realized there was a slight weight on her left hand, something hard and metallic encircling her ring finger. Was she engaged? Married?
“I hope it’s not him,” Agent Bell said again, “because if it is, he’ll keep trying until he kills her.”
So she might not have lost only her memory. She could still lose her life...
* * *
BY THE TIME he had made it to the hospital where she’d been taken, the place was crawling with FBI agents and state troopers—just as the crash site had been.
He had just about had those crumpled doors of the ambulance open when those other vehicles had arrived on the scene. He’d slipped back into the woods just as two men dressed in tuxedos, like the dark-haired agent, and another dressed in a suit had rushed to the aid and protection of the crash victims.
He had moved too quickly into the concealment of the dense forest for them to see him. And they had been too preoccupied with rescuing the others to notice him watching them.
The way he was watching them now—at the small hospital near the Lake Michigan shoreline. There were so many of them: agents and state troopers and even some county deputies for added security. So he would have to be careful—because he was damn well not going to get caught.
So he would have to bide his time until the perfect opportunity presented itself. And, eventually, it would. He wasn’t going to give up; he wouldn’t stop until he had finished this.
Until he had finished her...
But now she wasn’t the only one he wanted dead. He had to kill the FBI special agent, too. He would probably even need to kill him first—since the man had assigned himself the woman’s hero.
In order for him to get to her again, the agent would probably have to be eliminated first. But the order didn’t particularly matter to him. All that mattered was that he had to make certain that both the woman and her hero died.
Chapter Five (#ulink_3b15669c-903d-5626-990a-016a3f33070f)
He watched her from the doorway. She was awake now. But she didn’t see him. Instead, she was staring down at her hand, studying the diamond on it. Either she was admiring the big square stone or she was trying to remember where the hell it had come from.
Her memory was really gone. He had spoken with the doctors, too, and had confirmed everything that Blaine Campbell had told him yesterday. Now if only Dalton could confirm what Jared Bell had told him.
If she really had been abducted by the Bride Butcher serial killer, then Dalton should turn the case over to the profiler. Jared Bell knew the case best.
But Jared Bell hadn’t caught the killer when he’d had the chance before. And he had made no promises that he would catch him now.
Dalton was the one who had made her the promises. Dalton and probably whoever had put that ring on her finger. She had been wearing a bridal gown. Was she married? Or was she only engaged? Who was the man in her life and why hadn’t he filed a missing persons report for her?
Dalton had checked, but he had found no report for anyone matching her description. Midtwenties, five foot seven or eight inches tall, red haired, breathtakingly beautiful...
If he was the man who had put the ring on her finger, he wouldn’t have just reported her missing; he would have been out looking for her—desperate to find her.
But maybe the man who had put the ring on her finger had also put her in the trunk. Dalton had a name now—for the owner of the vehicle. He also had an address. But to follow up the lead, he would have to leave her to someone else’s protection.
Blaine’s? Or Agent Bell’s? Or Trooper Littlefield’s? The guy hadn’t left his keys in his patrol car; he hadn’t done anything wrong. He deserved a chance to prove himself, but not at any risk to her...
“Do you have bad news for me?” she asked. “Is that why you’re reluctant to come into my room?”
A grin tugged at his lips. The woman kept surprising him—with her strength and with her intuitiveness. He hadn’t thought she’d even noticed him watching her. However, she apparently didn’t miss much. But her memories.
He stepped inside the hospital room and walked closer to her bed. She was sitting up, and thanks to the IV in her arm, she had more color. She looked healthier. Stronger...
“I have no news for you,” he said.
She sighed. “Well, that is bad, then.”
“How about you?” he asked. “Any memories?”
Had staring at that diamond brought anything rushing back to her? Any feeling of love for whoever had given her the engagement ring?
She shook her head and then flinched at the motion.
Concern gripped him. “Still in pain?”
“Not so much thanks to the painkillers they’ve been giving me,” she said. “It’s just a dull ache now unless I make any sharp movements.”
“You are tough,” he mused.
The doctor had said that someone had given her quite a blow—probably with a pipe or a golf club. It had lacerated her skin and fractured her skull. But the fracture had probably actually saved her life since it had relieved the pressure and released the blood of what could have been a dangerous subdural hematoma. That was why there had been so much blood. But transfusions had replaced what she’d lost. According to the doctor, she was doing extremely well.
“I am tough,” she said. “So you can tell me about this no news. What do you mean?”
Hopefully, she was tough enough to deal with the facts, because he wasn’t going to keep anything from her. There was already too much that she didn’t know—that she couldn’t remember.
So he replied, “Nobody has filed a missing persons report for anyone matching your description.”
She flinched again, but she hadn’t even moved her head. This pain was emotional. “So no one is missing me.”
“I doubt that’s the case,” he said—because he would have missed her, had he not known where she was, and he barely knew her. “I’m sure there’s another explanation.”
“Like what?” she challenged him.
And because he believed she was strong, he told her the truth. “Your groom could have been the one who put you in the trunk of that car.”
“You think I’m married?” she asked as she glanced down at that ring again.
“I don’t know.” But part of him hoped she wasn’t—the part that had his heart racing over how beautiful she was. Her red hair was so vibrant and her silvery-gray eyes so sharp with intelligence and strength.
“Because this looks like just a solitaire engagement ring,” she said. “There’s no wedding band soldered to it. So I don’t think I’m married.”
“She’s right,” a female voice agreed.
Even if Dalton hadn’t recognized the voice, he wouldn’t have been too worried about someone slipping past Security and getting to her room. He had a guard stationed near the elevators, so no one would get onto the floor without getting checked out.
The only one who was in danger from this woman was him—for disrupting her wedding the day before. He braced himself, for her understandable and justified anger, before turning toward the doorway.
Their arms wound around each other, the bride stood next to her groom. But unlike Dalton, they had changed out of their wedding clothes. Claire wore a bright blue sundress, while Ash wore jeans and a T-shirt. Of course, more than a day had passed since the ceremony.
Dalton really needed to return the damn tuxedo. And shower...
“Aren’t you two supposed to be on your honeymoon?” he asked. He hoped he hadn’t disrupted that, too.
“We’re on our way to the airport,” Ash assured him. From how tightly he held her, he looked as if he couldn’t wait to get his bride alone again. “But Claire wanted to stop by and check on you.”
“I’m fine,” he said.
She clicked her tongue against her teeth, admonishing his dismissiveness. “You were in an accident.”
“It was no accident.” The man driving the trooper’s vehicle had intended to run them off the road.
“That’s even worse,” she said.
“I’m fine,” he said again.
Color rushed to the blonde’s pale-skinned face. “Good. Now I feel a little less guilty for threatening your life when I realized you ditched our wedding to chase down a stolen car.”
He didn’t blame her for being angry with him and could just imagine the words she had probably silently mouthed about him. “I’m sorry, Claire.”
She pulled away from her husband, rushed forward and hugged Dalton. “I’m so glad that you did.” Then she turned toward the bed and smiled at the patient.
“I’m glad, too,” the red-haired woman said, “since he saved my life.”
“He does that,” Claire said. “Saving lives is kind of his thing.” She moved closer to the bed and extended her hand. “I’m Claire Stryker.”
Ash chuckled. “She keeps introducing herself to everyone—even her dad.”
The redhead took Claire’s hand in hers. “I wish I could tell you my name, but...”
“You really don’t remember anything?” Claire asked.
“No.”
“We will find out who you are.” Dalton reiterated the promise that, according to Jared Bell, he’d had no business making. “But in the meantime, we need to call you something.” Besides redhead...
“Special Agent Campbell suggested Jane Doe,” she reminded him. “I guess that is what unidentified females are called...” But she hadn’t liked it because Jane Doe usually referred to unidentified dead bodies.
But he’d thought she was dead when he had first opened that trunk. He resisted the urge to shudder at the thought of her being dead.
“We could call you Mercedes,” he suggested. He had hesitated to bring it up the day before, but it was better than Jane Doe.
“Mercedes?” she and Claire asked in unison.
“It’s the kind of car he found her in,” Ash explained. “Of course Reyes would go with the name of a car.”
He whistled in appreciation of the vintage Mercedes. “She was a beautiful car...” Before she’d been put in the ditch. And now he knew who owned her. The car. He hoped that there was no guy out there who thought he owned the woman. But she had been put in the trunk like so much baggage...
Claire’s blond brows drew together as she considered the choices. “Jane or Mercedes?”
The redhead shrugged as if she didn’t care what they called her. “It doesn’t matter.”
“We need to find out your real name,” Claire said.
“We will,” Dalton said, but he felt a frisson of unease over how easily he was tossing out these promises. He had never been that guy—like Blaine or Ash. He wasn’t the marine. He wasn’t the hero. He was just the guy who worked hard because his job was his life. It was all he had. It was all he wanted, though.
“I’m really good with computers,” Claire said, which was a gross understatement of her world-renowned hacking skills. “Maybe I could do some digging—”
“I already have a team on it,” Dalton said. “They’re using facial recognition to try to link her to online media pictures. It’s being handled, and you two have a plane to catch.”
“You sure you don’t want our help?” Ash asked. His offer sounded sincere, but Dalton wouldn’t blame him if it wasn’t.
Selfishly, he would love their help. Claire was a genius and Ash was a legendary agent and former marine. But there was no way that Dalton would mess up any more of the Strykers’ plans. They had been through hell to earn their much-deserved happiness.
“I doubt this has anything to do with terrorism or national security,” Dalton said—since that was Ash Stryker’s specialty with the Bureau.
“Then maybe Jared Bell is who you need,” Ash suggested.
The redhead shook her head again despite the fact that the motion had her wincing in pain. Then she turned toward Claire. “You agreed with me,” she said. “You agreed that I’m not married. So if I’m not a bride, I couldn’t be a victim of the Bride Butcher.”
She had heard them yesterday. He’d thought she was sleeping, but she had heard everything he and Blaine and Jared Bell had said in her room. Now he flinched—with regret. He didn’t want to keep anything from her, but there were some things she hadn’t had to hear...like anything about the sadistic serial killer.
If that was who had abducted her, it was probably better that she never remembered what had happened to her. She would never recover from the nightmare of confronting such a monster.
* * *
PANIC OVERWHELMED HER, stealing away her breath. But she was actually less afraid of having a serial killer after her than she was afraid of losing Agent Reyes. He couldn’t pass off her case to someone else.
“The victims of the Bride Butcher aren’t married yet,” Agent Stryker said. “He abducts the women at their last fitting for their wedding dress.”
She shook her head—not in denial of what he claimed but in denial that she could have been at a fitting for a wedding dress. “No...”
“Do you remember something?” Claire Stryker asked. “Something that makes you think you’re not really engaged?”
“I can’t remember anything...” She stared at the newly married couple. Their love was palpable—like another presence in the hospital room. “But if I was married or engaged, wouldn’t I remember...him?”
“Maybe you don’t want to remember,” Dalton suggested. He apparently suspected that was who had hurt her.
Was she such a horrible judge of character that she would have fallen in love with a monster?
The petite blonde stepped closer to the bed and reached for her hand. She twisted the ring on her finger.
“What are you thinking?” she asked. Such intelligence shone in Claire’s eyes that she wanted to hear her opinion.
“It looks like this ring has been on your finger for a while,” the other woman replied.
Her stomach pitched. And yet the person who’d put that ring on her hand hadn’t even filed a missing persons report for her? What kind of man was her fiancé? The monster Dalton Reyes apparently suspected he was?
Agent Stryker glanced at his watch and said, “If we’re going to make our flight, we should get going...”
“We should stay,” Claire told her husband. “We could help...”
“You could,” Dalton agreed. “But you’re not. You’re going to leave for your honeymoon and have a wonderful time.”
Claire hesitated.
Even her husband looked uncertain. “Let’s talk in the hall a moment...”
Her stomach sank again as the two men stepped out of the room. She was certain that Agent Stryker was going to try to talk Dalton into handing her case over to Agent Bell.
“Don’t worry,” Claire told her. “We only offered to help because we owe him—not because we don’t think he’s capable of solving the case on his own. Dalton is a very good agent.”
She nodded in agreement. “I know. I wouldn’t be alive if he wasn’t.”
“He’s not like Ash and Blaine Campbell, though,” Claire continued. “They were marines—they grew up knowing what was right and what was wrong.”
Anger surged through her, and she opened her mouth to defend him. The special agent obviously knew what was right and wrong.
But before she could speak, Claire continued, “Dalton grew up on the streets—in a gang. He had to figure out for himself what was right and wrong. I think that’s even more impressive.”
“So do I,” she said. But everything about Dalton Reyes impressed her. She couldn’t help wondering about herself. What kind of person was she? Was she an honorable person? Did she know right from wrong?
“This must be so hard for you,” Claire said, “not having your memories. Not knowing how you grew up—who your family is or your friends...”
She wondered if she had any—since nobody had filed a report about her missing. Dalton and Agent Stryker stepped back into the room, and like the love between the Strykers, there was love between the men—a strong bond of friendship.
Her heart ached with an overwhelming sense of loss. But she hadn’t just lost her friends; she had lost herself, as well.
Dalton uttered a long-suffering sigh, even while his dark eyes twinkled with merriment. “I had to give this guy some advice for the honeymoon.” He turned toward Claire. “You’re welcome.”
The new bride laughed. “Like you have any experience with honeymoons or will ever have any experience...”
Apparently, as well as growing up on the streets, Dalton had grown up determined to remain single. She hadn’t been surprised when she’d overheard him telling Blaine Campbell that he wasn’t marrying anyone. Ever. She faintly remembered him saying something in the ambulance when the paramedic had mistaken her for his bride. She’d been in and out of consciousness, so she hadn’t picked up on his words but on his tone. He had been appalled that someone had mistaken him for a groom.
At the moment she could relate as she glanced down at her hand again. She wanted to take off the ring. She couldn’t believe she was engaged. It didn’t feel right.
“If you two don’t get going, you won’t have any honeymoon experience, either,” Dalton warned them.
Claire glanced at her. “But I could help...”
“I have help,” Dalton said. He wrapped his arm around the young bride and steered her toward the doorway. “I know you two can’t stand spending time together, but you’re going to have to suck it up for the next fifty or sixty years.”
The newlyweds chuckled—confident in their love and their relationship.
She glanced down at her ring again. Why would she be wearing this when she obviously hadn’t felt that way about whoever had put the ring on her finger? But then, a love like the Strykers’ was rare and special.
“It was nice meeting you,” Claire called back to her.
She had met Claire. She wasn’t sure if they’d met her—because she wasn’t sure who she was, except not Jane or Mercedes. But maybe she would need to start thinking of herself as one of those names since she was unlikely to ever remember her own. She waved at them. “Enjoy your honeymoon.”
The Strykers both hugged Dalton before leaving. He stared after them a moment, as if tempted to call them back, before he turned back to her.
“Who is your help?” she asked. While it would have been selfish to keep them from their honeymoon, she would have trusted the Strykers to help her.
“Trooper Littlefield is going to stand guard in your room,” he told her, “while I go to Chicago to follow up a lead.”
“Littlefield?” she asked.
Was that the trooper whose car had been stolen? Because of that and because something about him or his uniform was vaguely, unsettlingly familiar to her, she wouldn’t feel particularly safe with him. But then, she didn’t feel particularly safe with anyone but Dalton.
“He’s a good officer,” Dalton assured her. “He’s the one who called me when he noticed the vintage Mercedes. He knew something wasn’t right about it.”
Her in the trunk—that was what hadn’t been right about it. What if he hadn’t seen the car? What if Dalton hadn’t stopped it?
She would be dead. She was certain of it. She shuddered with the realization that someone out there wanted her dead. What kind of person was she that someone could hate her enough to try to kill her more than once...?
“Are you okay?” Dalton asked, his voice even deeper with concern. “Claire didn’t upset you, did she?”
She shook her head. Claire hadn’t upset her, but meeting the other woman had. “I just wish...”
“What?” he asked.
“I wish I knew what kind of person I am,” she said. “If I’m like her...” Or if she was someone who’d earned another person’s hatred? “I just wish I knew who I am...”
“You may not know your name,” Dalton said, “but you know who are you are—you’re strong and smart and brave.”
But she felt like none of those things. She was terrified—terrified of the person determined to kill her, terrified to be away from Dalton Reyes and terrified to find out who she really was.
* * *
ALL HE’D HAD to do was bide his time. Eventually the dark-haired agent had left—along with the other federal agents. They weren’t bodyguards; they were investigators.
He wasn’t worried about what they would find. He’d been careful so that nothing could be traced back to him. Not even her...
But still she had to die.
And it would be easier for him to kill her now that the agent was gone. He’d left behind the bald-headed trooper for her protection.
All he’d had to do was wait him out. With the amount of coffee the man drank, it was inevitable that he would leave her to use the restroom. He was waiting for him there—hiding inside a stall.
He waited until the trooper was preoccupied at the urinal before he stepped out. The trooper didn’t have a chance to pull his gun—to catch more than a shadowy movement in the mirrored wall—before he struck him. Hard. Harder than he’d even struck her.
As the trooper dropped to the tile floor, he dropped the bloodied pipe next to him. He was wearing gloves, so it couldn’t be traced back to him. He was careful to leave no evidence behind. Anywhere.
He reached for the buttons on the trooper’s uniform. Dressed like the trooper, he would have no trouble getting into her room and finishing the job he’d started. He looked quite official in uniform—every bit the lawman he’d always hated. He grinned at his reflection in the mirrored wall.
The woman was going to be dead soon.
Very soon...
Chapter Six (#ulink_339a167b-3a3f-5cb0-b195-17a38da8e031)
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Dalton asked. He glanced over at the passenger’s seat to check on her. He expected to find her eyes closed as she rested or passed out from exhaustion. She had been through so much—had lost so much blood.
But the doctor had assured him that it would be all right to take her out of the hospital. And she had insisted that she was strong enough to be released.
Maybe she was right. She wasn’t sleeping or passed out. She leaned forward, straining against her seat belt, as she stared through the windshield. She had studied every street and building between the rural area of lower western Michigan and the urban skyline of Chicago as if trying to recognize it or hoping something might jog her memory.
The bridge rattled beneath the tires of the SUV as Dalton drove over the Chicago Skyway into the city. “Anything familiar?”
She groaned.
“I thought this would be too much for you,” he said. “You should have stayed at the hospital with Trooper Littlefield protecting you.” The local lawman had been offended when Dalton had asked him to protect an empty room. He thought that Dalton didn’t trust him anymore.
That hadn’t been the case at all, though.
He was pretty certain that the killer was watching her and waiting for another opportunity to get to her. So Dalton had wanted him to think that she was still at the hospital—still protected.
Instead of alone with just him for protection. But Blaine was on standby. Dalton could call him in or several other agents for backup...if he needed it. But nobody had followed him. He had taken a circuitous route and had kept a vigilant watch on the SUV’s rearview mirror. So he was certain they had no tail. But her attacker was the least of his concerns at the moment.
“Are you all right?” he asked. Her skin had grown pale again, making her red hair look even brighter and more vibrant. She had exchanged her hospital gown for clothes that Dalton had bought and sneaked into her room. She wore tan pants and a pale yellow blouse. There were other clothes in a small bag in the backseat, too. It had bothered her that she hadn’t been able to buy them herself. But along with her identity, her money and credit cards had been lost, too.
With obvious reluctance, she admitted, “My head is starting to hurt again.”
“Should I take you to a hospital?” he asked with alarm, even as he mentally clocked the distance to the closest one.
“No, the headache is my fault,” she said. “I think I’m trying too hard to remember—to find something familiar.”
His tension eased somewhat. Maybe she wasn’t medically in danger. But how about emotionally?
“Have you found anything familiar?” he asked.
“It’s Chicago,” she said. “Doesn’t everyone know what Chicago looks like—just like they know what New York looks like? It doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ve ever lived there or even been there. Maybe they just saw it on TV so many times or in movies or described in books that it feels familiar.”
“So it does feel familiar to you,” he deduced.
She uttered a small groan of frustration. “I just don’t know...”
“Close your eyes for a few minutes,” he suggested. “Relax.” He didn’t want her hurting herself.
She must have been exhausted, because she took his advice, but her rest didn’t last long. When he pulled into the downtown parking garage, she opened her eyes. “We’re here?”
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