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

by Lisa Childs

  “He will,” she agreed. She had already accepted that. But she would enjoy whatever time she had with Dalton—because she loved him. She loved him the way Kenneth and Patricia had loved each other...if only Dalton loved her back.

  Tom hesitated at the door. “What we had was good, Elizabeth. We were comfortable. I’ll keep the ring. You’ll want to wear it again.”

  She shook her head at his stubbornness and his arrogance. Why had she never noticed it before? She wouldn’t be going back to Tom Wilson. Ever. She wanted more out of life than comfortable.

  She wanted passion. She wanted love. She wanted Dalton Reyes.

  * * *

  HE WANTED DALTON REYES. Dead.

  The FBI agent had a damn hero complex. He had to keep riding in to rescue the damsel in distress. He understood now why Hoover had failed in the job he had hired him to do.

  Dalton Reyes was the reason. The FBI agent had shot the ex-con. And he’d shot him.

  He winced as he wrapped another bandage around his waist. The bullet had gone through his side without hitting anything vital. But he had probably needed surgery or at least stitches to close the wound. Instead, he had taped and bandaged it. And he hoped that nobody noticed it.

  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.

  * * *

  ELIZABETH 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.

  * * *

  HE 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.