by Lisa Childs
It wasn’t Dalton. Because he’d asked how badly he was hurt. And she knew he was Dalton.
“What happened?” she asked—too anxious to wait until his call was done. “How is he?”
Not dead. He couldn’t be dead.
Jared shook his head, and her heart stopped beating for one beat before resuming at a frantic pace, hammering away in her chest.
“No!”
“I’ll check back soon,” he said into the phone before quickly clicking it off. Then he reached for her.
She hadn’t even realized that her legs were shaking so badly that they had nearly buckled beneath her. But she couldn’t feel—not even his hands on her shoulders holding her up—since fear paralyzed her.
“Is he dead?” she asked. “Is Dalton dead?”
Jared shook his head again. “No, he’s not.”
“But he’s hurt,” she said. “I heard you over the baby monitor. He’s hurt.”
“He was shot,” Jared replied.
She felt a sharp jab to her heart and sucked in a breath of pain. “Oh, no! How bad is it?”
“I don’t know yet,” he admitted. “He’s en route to the hospital right now.”
“We need to go,” she said. “We need to meet him there.” She had to see him—had to see how badly he was wounded. She had to hold his hand, the way he had held hers when she’d been hurt.
But Agent Bell shook his head again. “No, it’s too dangerous.”
“How?”
“We could be driven off the road or attacked as we leave the house,” he pointed out. “We can’t leave here.”
“You may not care about your fellow agent,” she accused him, “but I do.” She didn’t just care; she loved him. So much. “I want to be there for him.”
“I will be there for him,” he said. “By keeping you here. Your safety is his priority and my responsibility now. I won’t let him down by putting you in danger.”
Panic was making it hard for her to draw a deep breath into her lungs. She had to be with Dalton. “You don’t know that we’ll be in danger if we go to the hospital.”
He gestured toward the closed door of the nursery. “It won’t be just your life you’re risking,” he pointed out, “if we put her in the car with us and it gets run off the road.”
“You don’t know that’ll happen,” she insisted.
“I’m a profiler,” he reminded her. “I’m not Dalton Reyes. I don’t drive like he does.”
“Then have someone else bring me to the hospital,” she suggested. “One of the troopers outside. And you can stay with Lizzie.” She cared more about the child than herself; she’d rather have him keeping Lizzie safe.
Panic flashed across his face now, leaving it stark. “No. Absolutely not.”
“But—”
“Keeping you safe is my responsibility,” he reiterated. “We’re staying here.”
“What makes you think we’re safe here?” she asked. “Don’t you think that Dalton was shot to get him out of the way? And now that he’s out of the way, that person is going to try to get to me again. It doesn’t matter if we’re at the hospital or if we’re here.”
“There are guards outside the house,” he said. “And I’m inside with you. You’re safe here.”
She shivered as that foreboding rushed over her again. And she shook her head. “No. I won’t be safe anywhere.” Especially not now with Dalton wounded.
How badly was he hurt?
Would he make it back to her?
Ever?
* * *
HE WAS GLAD THAT, when he’d cleared out Hoover’s motel room, he had saved the uniform the ex-con had taken off Trooper Littlefield. Without it, he wouldn’t have made it past the deputy blocking the end of the driveway. The poor man had had no idea what had hit him...
Just like whoever was guarding Elizabeth would have no idea what had hit him, either. Leaving the squad car blocking the end of the driveway, he headed up toward the house.
The radio he’d taken off the deputy squawked. “This is Agent Bell,” the caller announced. “Is everything clear outside?”
He hesitated answering but finally pressed the button. “I’ve noticed a light shining in the trees at the back of the house. It could be someone walking around with a flashlight. Should I go check it out?”
“Yes,” the agent replied. “But be careful. I’m pretty sure the suspect is going to make his move tonight.”
He was right. The suspect was making his move right now...onto the front porch. But the beauty was that nobody suspected him. He would get away with murder.
Again.
A shadow darkened the glass of the front door. Had Agent Bell heard him step onto the porch? He moved quickly, backing against the side of the house so that he wouldn’t be seen.
Yet.
But the front door creaked open.
God, he was making this easy for him.
Agent Bell stepped out, gun drawn.
He waited in those shadows—just waited, his breath held, until the man stepped close enough. Then he struck, lashing out with the butt of the gun he’d taken off the deputy. Just like the deputy, Agent Bell never saw him.
He dropped to the porch with a heavy thud. He was either unconscious or dead. It didn’t matter which. He wouldn’t regain consciousness in time to save Elizabeth.
No one could save her now.
The front door creaked again. “Agent Bell?” a female voice called out. “Are you out here?”
The agent didn’t even groan. He couldn’t hear her.
“Jared?” she called out with obvious apprehension now. “Jared, where are you?”
Maybe she would step out, too, and make it all so easy for him. But instead, she pulled the door shut. The lock clicked as she turned the dead bolt.
Still in the shadows, he grinned. It didn’t matter that she’d locked the door. He had a key. He would get to her. She was as good as already dead.
* * *
PAIN RADIATED THROUGHOUT Dalton’s chest. It wasn’t just the bullet. The vest had taken most of the impact of that. And it had only grazed his arm before hitting the vest. His pain was actually panic—the panic that he had left Elizabeth and the little girl in danger.
“Get the doctor in here,” he told Blaine Campbell. “I need to get out of here.”
“You need stitches in that arm,” Blaine said.
Dalton glanced down at the blood-soaked bandage. “It’s fine.”
“You lost a lot of blood.”
He shrugged. “Not like you did.”
Blaine had taken a bullet in the neck months before and was lucky to be alive. But then, Blaine Campbell was a lucky man. Dalton had a horrible feeling that his luck was running out.
“This is nothing.” He swung his legs over the gurney and stood up, but his legs weren’t quite as steady as he’d counted on and he stumbled forward.
Blaine caught one of his arms while another man grabbed his other. “Hey,” Trooper Littlefield said. “You need to wait for the doctor.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “It’s Elizabeth I’m worried about.”
“Jared Bell is with Elizabeth,” Blaine reminded him. Blaine had been with him—crouched down in the backseat. He had insisted on coming along even though Dalton had thought he could handle the situation alone.
He cursed himself. “I knew it was an ambush...” But he’d still walked right into it. “And the only reason someone would want to take me out is to get to Elizabeth.”
“From what I understand, a lot of people would like to take you out,” Blaine reminded him.
“In Chicago,” he agreed. “Not here. I barely know anybody here.”
“Somebody could have followed you,” Blaine pointed out. He had been followed—on that case that had nearly claimed his life.
It wasn’t just pride that had him shaking his head. He was certain. “This isn’t about me. It’s about Elizabeth.”
Trooper Littlefield uttered a regretful and agitated
sigh. “Maybe it’s about her friends,” he said. “The more I think about that crime scene...”
“You think she’s right? It was no murder-suicide?” Blaine asked.
Dalton had already determined as much.
“The gun was in Kenneth Cunningham’s hand,” Littlefield said. “But he died first. He couldn’t have killed her after he died.”
“Someone staged the scene,” Blaine agreed. “Why? And what does that have to do with Elizabeth?”
“Whoever did it wants to shut her up,” Dalton said. “She won’t stop fighting for justice for her friends and for their daughter.”
“She won’t stop,” Trooper Littlefield agreed. “She was adamant that her friends were so in love that they would have never hurt each other.”
Dalton nodded. “She really believes that.”
“She’s biased,” Blaine pointed out.
“She’s not the only one,” Trooper Littlefield said. “Pretty much everyone that knew the Cunninghams or had ever met them agrees with her.”
Pretty much everyone...
The doctor stepped into the room. “What are you doing out of bed?” he asked Dalton.
“I have to leave,” he replied. He had to get the hell out of there. Now.
“You have to get stitches,” the doctor said—just as Blaine had moments before.
“I have to get back to Elizabeth,” he insisted—because he had figured it out.
“Jared is with Elizabeth,” Blaine reiterated. “He’ll keep her safe. You don’t need to worry.”
But he was worried. Because someone had tried to take him out for a reason, and he believed that reason was to get to Elizabeth.
He held up a hand—holding the doctor and his suture kit back. “Let me call him.”
Blaine cursed as he fumbled his cell phone out of his jeans pocket. “I promised I’d call him back, but I haven’t yet.”
Dalton held out his hand for Blaine’s cell, which the other agent handed over with a sigh. He pushed the redial button. The phone rang once, twice, three times and then four and five before going to voice mail.
“Special Agent Jared Bell. I am currently unavailable, but leave me your name and number, and I will return your call.”
“What the hell’s going on?” Dalton shouted into the phone, but also at his friends. “If he’s waiting for your call, why did it go to voice mail?”
But he knew. And from their faces, so did they. Something had happened to Jared that had, at the least, incapacitated him. And now Elizabeth was alone and unprotected. He headed for the door, and this time nobody tried to stop him. Instead, they hurried along with him.
No matter how fast he drove, he probably wouldn’t get to her in time. He had broken one of his promises to Elizabeth. He hadn’t protected her.
Chapter Twenty
Fear gripped Elizabeth. Fear for Dalton. How badly was he hurt? Would he survive his gunshot wound?
She also felt fear for Agent Jared Bell. Where had he gone? He had just disappeared. But she knew better than to risk going outside to search for him. She had no gun. No weapon that would defend her and little Lizzie from a gun or a killer.
Somewhere she had a business card for Special Agent Blaine Campbell. She could call him for help. If only she could find his card...
She fumbled around in the drawers of the desk in the office on the first floor. The white-paneled room was next to the dining room—where Dalton had struggled so recently with the intruder.
Where was Jared Bell? She had heard no sounds of a struggle. She’d only heard the creak of the front door opening and closing. And footsteps on the porch.
Wood creaked and groaned as someone stepped onto the porch again. Her pulse quickened with fear. But maybe it was just Jared returning. Maybe he’d gone down the driveway to talk to the guards by the road—to warn them that someone could be coming for her.
Not could be. Was.
She knew it. That was why Dalton had been shot. Because of her.
Guilt joined her fear. If only Dalton hadn’t been so intent on keeping the promises he’d made to her. If only he hadn’t been so good at protecting her...
Then maybe someone wouldn’t have been so intent on getting him out of the way. She had to get to the hospital. If that was Jared Bell on the porch, she would convince him to take her to Dalton. She had to tell him she loved him.
More boards creaked as the person crossed the porch. Then the doorbell pealed. And she remembered locking the door. She had locked out the agent. Her breath shuddered out with relief, and she rushed to the door. But when she pulled it open, it wasn’t Agent Bell standing on the front porch.
Tom Wilson stood in front of her, his face flushed, his hair mussed. Alcohol emanated from him as if he’d soaked himself in it.
“Eliz...a...beth...” He sounded as if he was trying to sing but was just slurring. Tom Wilson didn’t sing—not even in the shower.
“What are you doing here?”
She thought he had left town and returned to Chicago after she’d given him back his ring. But apparently he had gone to a bar instead and had been there ever since. She could never remember him having more than a glass of wine with dinner and champagne on New Year’s. When had he started drinking?
He stumbled across the threshold into the foyer. “I have to talk to you, Elizabeth.”
She couldn’t deal with Tom right now—not when she was so worried about Dalton. And about Agent Bell.
“We have nothing more to say to each other,” she insisted. They had been over a long time ago; she shouldn’t have been wearing his ring anymore. She actually never should have accepted it.
“That’s not true, Elizabeth.”
They were done—whether or not his pride could accept it.
“You’ll want to hear what I have to tell you,” he insisted with an aggression she had never seen in him before. And suddenly his words weren’t so slurred.
Had he faked the drunkenness so that she would think him harmless and let him inside the house? But how had he gotten past the guards at the end of the driveway? She was certain that Dalton had given orders that Tom Wilson never be allowed up to the house again.
“How did you get up here?” she asked.
“I walked.”
“Nobody stopped you at the street?”
He shook his head. “Nobody was there—just a police car blocked the end of the driveway.”
“There was no trooper or agent by the car?” she asked. And if not, where had he gone? Had he disappeared with Agent Bell?
“No.” He glanced around the room, as if checking now to see if she was alone. “Isn’t he here?”
“Who?” But she knew who he was referring to and it wasn’t Agent Bell.
“That FBI agent you’re in love with,” he said. “He’s gone already.” And a smug smile crossed a face she’d once considered so handsome.
Fear chilled her, lifting goose bumps on her skin. And she asked, “What did you do to him?”
“Me?” he asked, his blue eyes widening in shock. “You think I did something to him?”
“He was shot.”
His brow furrowed with confusion. “Have you ever known me to shoot a gun?”
She shook her head. But she wasn’t sure that she had ever really known him at all. She already knew Dalton Reyes so much better than she’d ever known the man to whom she’d been engaged for two years.
“I haven’t,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t know how to shoot—that you don’t own a gun.”
He furrowed his brow, as if trying to figure out what she was saying. But she didn’t believe that he was actually drunk anymore.
“We’ve dated for years,” she said. “But we never actually spent that much time together. We never lived together. I don’t know what you own. I don’t know what you know.”
“Are you sure that your memory is back?” he asked. “Because you’re not making any sense. But then, you’ve not been making much sense since K
enneth and Patricia died.”
She cocked her head, trying to understand what he meant. “Because I’m determined to keep my promise to them and raise little Lizzie?” she asked. Like Dalton Reyes, she kept the promises she made—or she would as long as she was alive. “I’m not giving her up.”
“You would rather give me up instead?” And he was all wounded male pride again. “It’s that easy for you to just give me back my ring and walk away from all the years we’ve known each other.”
“We don’t know each other at all,” she said, “if you expect me to give up my goddaughter.”
“It’s not just her you’re being unreasonable about,” he said. “You’re being unreasonable about their deaths. Why can’t you just accept that it was a murder-suicide? Why do you have to keep going to authorities—keep pushing them to reopen the investigation?”
She shivered now as fear chilled her. “Why do you care?” she asked.
“Because you’re making a fool of yourself.”
“Is that the real reason?” she wondered. “Or is there another reason you don’t want the investigation into their deaths reopened?”
His flushed face drained of all color. “What the hell reason could I have?”
“Because you were involved,” she suggested. “Because you wanted Patricia for yourself.”
He laughed. “I didn’t even like Patricia.”
That surprised her more than anything else. Everyone who had met her had loved Patricia; she had been that special. Elizabeth was certain that she and Dalton would have become fast friends. “Why not?”
“Because she didn’t like me,” he said. “Because she didn’t think I was good enough for her best friend. I didn’t want Patricia in my life at all. And I didn’t want her in yours.”
“Is that why you did it?” she asked. “Is that why you killed them?”
“You’re crazy!” he said as color rushed back into his face.
She was crazy to have let him inside the house. And she was crazy with fear.
“Is that why you want to kill me?” she asked. “Because I keep pushing to have that investigation reopened?”
He lurched forward, reaching for her. Before she could turn and run, he caught her. His hands gripping her shoulders, he shook her.