by Lisa Childs
“So why’d you pick him?” Nicholas Rus asked as he joined them in the groom’s room. “I didn’t even know you two knew each other.”
“He got his brains scrambled protecting my fiancée—” Dalton’s voice cracked with emotion “—my bride—and her daughter. So I figured I owed him.”
Jared snorted in amusement. That was why he hadn’t been able to say no to Reyes. He’d never had a friend like him. Usually, his friends were as serious and no-nonsense as he was—like Nicholas Rus.
While Reyes made Jared feel like he’d finally gotten invited to eat at the cool kids’ table, he appreciated Nicholas’s seriousness. Especially now.
“Are you sure this chapel is safe?” Jared asked him.
Nick grinned. “Absolutely safe. All of the guests are FBI agents.”
Not all of the guests. Becca was out there—along with Alex. Fortunately, Alex had insisted on sitting with his new best friend—Chief Lynch. While Lynch hadn’t been in the field for a while, Jared had no doubt the man could still handle himself—and an inquisitive little boy.
“And bodyguards are protecting the perimeter,” Rus added.
Jared and Reyes shared a glance; apparently they’d both noticed the same thing about those guards.
“How come they all look like you?” Reyes asked. “Did River City have you cloned?”
A muscle twitched along Rus’s jaw. “I reconnected with some family.”
“I didn’t know you had siblings,” Jared said. And they’d lived together for a few years in Chicago.
“Neither did I,” Rus replied.
Knuckles rapped against the door of the groom’s dressing room. “Is Reyes ready?” a deep voice called through the door. Special Agent Ash Stryker probably should have been Reyes’s best man because Reyes had been his. “Or did he go out the window?”
“There is no window,” Jared called back.
“As I understand it, a groom has disappeared from this room before,” Rus said.
“I’m here.” Dalton chuckled and opened the door to Ash. “I was more nervous at your wedding. I have no doubts about marrying my bride.”
He was nervous, though. Moments later, Jared, standing next to him at the front of the church, noticed the tension in the other man. He stood stiffly, barely breathing, until a vision in white appeared at the back of the church. Then he released the breath he’d been holding.
And Jared released the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, too. He’d been so worried that the Butcher would try for Elizabeth—just to prove that she wouldn’t have been able to get away from him.
But the fitting for her wedding dress—at this very chapel—had passed without incident. Maybe the bodyguards and agents had proved too daunting for the Butcher. He hadn’t dared try for Elizabeth because the risk of getting caught had been too great. Or he was focused on another target...
Becca.
Despite all the guests, Jared easily found her in the church. She, Alex and the chief sat a few rows back on the groom’s side of the aisle. Sunlight shone through the stained-glass windows, making her blond hair shimmer like crystals. Even after being attacked in the dressing room at the boutique, she had bought a dress for the wedding.
She’d wanted to attend. But he never should have asked her. He should have locked her away in some safe house just as he’d threatened. But she was right; she couldn’t hide until he caught the killer.
He had no new leads. No evidence tied Kyle Smith or Harris Mowery to any of the murders. That didn’t mean that it didn’t exist, just that he hadn’t found it yet. He needed to find it. He needed to put this killer away.
Or he could never ask Becca to be his bride. He imagined her standing in front of him—a vision in white—her hands in his as they said their vows. But until the Butcher was caught, marrying her was just a daydream.
If he even asked her to marry him, she would definitely be attacked, and the killer wouldn’t let her get away from him again. The Butcher would make certain she died before she could ever marry him.
* * *
REBECCA HAD NEVER felt so safe—with all the federal agents and bodyguards in and around the Little White Wedding Chapel. She’d also never felt as envious. As she waited in the receiving line in the foyer, she watched the bride and groom. While they hugged or shook hands with guests, they leaned against each other—constantly touching, always aware of each other. And so in love that it radiated from them like the sun shining through the stained-glass windows.
She probably looked at Jared the way the bride was looking at her groom; her gaze full of adoration. From the moment Jared had stepped out of the groom’s dressing room, looking so damn handsome and debonair in that black tuxedo, Becca had been staring at him with love and attraction and adulation. But she doubted Jared had ever looked at her the way Dalton Reyes looked at his bride. His mouth curved into a wide grin, he stared at her as if unable to look away.
She was beautiful—with her vibrant red hair and creamy skin. She lifted the flower girl, who wore a lacy white dress, into her arms. With curly dark hair, the little girl looked nothing like her mother. But she was definitely hers—even though, as Jared had shared, Elizabeth hadn’t given birth to the child. And Dalton looked at the little girl with as much love as he looked at her mother. They were a very happy family.
The family Rebecca wished she could give Alex. While she studied the bride and groom, she felt someone studying her. She shivered with apprehension as that warning ran through her mind again. Someone is watching you...
But when she glanced around, the person whose gaze she found on her was Jared. He peered around the guest shaking his hand, as if unable to take his gaze off her. She doubted it was because he loved her—like Dalton Reyes loved his bride. She suspected it was just because he wanted to keep her safe.
But still her skin tingled and heated from just the touch of his gaze. Would she ever not react to him? To his closeness? To his handsomeness? To his intelligence?
The line moved forward, probably because Alex had grown impatient with standing still and pushed ahead. His hand on Chief Lynch’s, he dragged the older man along with him. The poor chief was filling the grandfather void Rebecca’s father had left in the little boy’s life.
Alex was as much a reminder of Lexi as Rebecca—maybe more—so her parents wanted nothing to do with him. That was their loss more than his, though. Alex had eased that unbearable ache she’d had after losing Lexi.
Jared hadn’t ever talked much about his parents. Would they like being grandparents? Would they love the little boy? Had Jared even told them yet that he had a son?
She moved forward in the line, too, close enough that she heard what the man standing by Jared asked him. But that man and the chief were such tall, broad men that Jared wouldn’t be able to see her anymore. There was no one else behind them; they were the end of the line. “So are you next?”
“Next?” Jared asked.
“First it was Blaine, then me, now Reyes,” the dark-haired man said. She’d met him earlier; he was another FBI special agent—Ash Stryker. “So you’re next, right?”
Reyes took his attention from his bride for a moment to smack Jared’s shoulder. “Ash is right. And it seems like whoever’s stood up as best man at the last wedding becomes the next groom. So you’re definitely next.”
Jared shook his head. “No way.”
And pain stabbed Rebecca’s heart at how adamant he sounded. She’d already suspected he didn’t return her feelings, but she’d thought he cared about her at least a little. How else had he forgiven her for keeping his son from him? Or hadn’t he forgiven her?
“Was Kyle Smith wrong?” Agent Stryker asked. “Isn’t that little boy yours?”
Maybe Jared didn’t believe Alex was his son. He’d never had a DNA test to prove it. He only had her word for it and his name on the little boy’s birth certificate.
“He’s mine,” Jared said with a glance toward where Alex hung from the chief�
�s arm.
“I figured you for an old-fashioned guy,” Agent Stryker said. “After I saw that broadcast, I thought you would beat Reyes to the altar.”
“Not a chance,” Reyes said. “Nobody was going to beat me to the altar.” He leaned back toward his bride and dropped a kiss on the top of her head.
She smiled up at him, her gray eyes shining with love.
And Rebecca’s envy returned.
Stryker grinned at the newly married couple. Then he turned back to Jared. “Well, you can still get married next.”
Jared shook his head again. “No. I can’t.”
She sucked in a breath that burned in her lungs. He had no intention of ever marrying her. While they’d been sharing his bed since she and Alex had moved in with him, it was all he intended to share with her. Not his heart...
But then he continued, “I can’t put her in that kind of danger.”
“You think marriage to you would be that rough?” Reyes teased.
“I think the Butcher wouldn’t care how many FBI agents and bodyguards were around,” Jared said. “He would go after Becca for certain. He already has, and we’re not even engaged.”
The chief, thankfully, covered her little boy’s ears, as the two of them moved along the line until they now stood in front of Jared. “I didn’t think you believed the incident at the boutique was the work of the Butcher.”
Rebecca didn’t believe it. She wasn’t engaged. But maybe that news broadcast had made the Butcher think that she soon would be. When he’d showed up at her house, Harris Mowery had been taunting Jared about proposing to her. He wanted her engaged, so that he could go after her—like he’d gone after Lexi and all those other poor women.
“We couldn’t find anything on all the security footage Blaine turned up from the stores in the area,” Jared said. “The guy that went after Becca was good at staying off camera—just like the Butcher always has.”
Unless the Butcher was Kyle Smith. Jared had told her that he’d questioned the reporter. She considered it a waste of time. She knew who the Butcher was. She’d even begun to believe that Jared now suspected the same.
But he hadn’t been able to break that damn alibi for Lexi’s disappearance. And the man had provided another for Amy Wilcox’s abduction. Maybe he would never be caught; maybe he would just keep killing more and more innocent young women.
“But you think he would risk getting caught—even with federal agents and bodyguards around—in order to grab Ms. Drummond?” the chief asked.
Jared’s handsome face grim, he nodded. “He wouldn’t be able to resist. It all started with Lexi Drummond. She was the most important to him.”
“So her sister would be important, too?”
Jared nodded again. “So important that he’s already messing with her—with the phone threats, with the confrontation in the dressing room.”
“Then that’s how you catch him,” the chief matter-of-factly stated.
“What?” Jared asked just as Rebecca silently uttered the word herself.
“You propose to Ms. Drummond.”
“To catch a killer?” Jared asked. “You want me to use her as bait?”
Of course he wouldn’t propose because he actually wanted to marry her. He didn’t love her—not like Dalton Reyes loved his bride. So much so that he hadn’t been able to wait to marry her. No, Jared didn’t love her—not like Rebecca loved him, like she had always loved him.
“But it might be the only way,” Chief Lynch suggested softly, as his hands dropped away from the wriggling little boy’s ears.
“What might be the only way?” the ever-inquisitive Alex asked. He stared up at all the adults, who probably seemed way too serious to him. He also had to wonder why the chief had covered his ears.
She was glad that he had; the little boy didn’t need to hear that the Butcher might have already gone after his mother. And he certainly hadn’t needed to hear anything about his parents getting married. He would get the completely wrong idea. He would think that they were in love, and all of them would become one happy family.
Rebecca knew better. Jared didn’t love her.
She moved forward, so that she stood beside the chief again. “They’re talking about catching the bad guy,” she explained to her son.
The ultimate bad guy—the man who’d killed her sister. The man who would keep killing if he wasn’t stopped.
And she was the key to stopping him. Even the chief thought so.
“I’ll do it,” she said. “I’ll help catch the bad guy.”
Alex’s eyes widened in shock. “But Mommy, you’re not an FBI agent.”
No. She wasn’t an FBI agent. She was a mother who had no business putting herself in danger. She knew that, and from the disapproval on Jared’s face, he was thinking the same thing she was.
If it was any other killer, she wouldn’t have risked it—probably not even if she knew she could save the lives of other women. But this was Lexi’s killer.
She had to do this—for Lexi. She hadn’t been around when her sister had needed her. Putting herself in danger wouldn’t bring Lexi back, but at least Rebecca would be able to get her what Lexi had been denied until now. Justice.
“I’m just going to help,” she explained to Alex. “The FBI agents will catch him.” Hopefully before he could kill her as he had all the others.
Chapter Thirteen
Jared held his temper until Alex was out of earshot. The woman who ran the wedding chapel, Penny Payne, had taken him downstairs to where the reception was being held. She’d promised him cake. Like him, his son had a sweet tooth.
But even cake couldn’t tempt Jared now, as anger churned inside him—unsettling his stomach.
After the auburn-haired woman disappeared down the steps with his son, he turned to his boss and Becca. “Absolutely not,” he told them. “This will not happen. You are not putting yourself in danger.”
She lifted her chin, her jaw tense, and her blue eyes hard with determination. “That’s not your decision to make.”
“It’s not yours, either,” he informed her. He turned to his boss. “You can’t seriously be considering using a civilian to bait a serial killer?”
“Ordinarily, I would never allow it,” Chief Lynch admitted. Then he uttered a heavy sigh. “But we haven’t been able to catch this man any other way.”
“We won’t this way, either,” Jared said. Instead, he risked losing Becca—forever.
“You said yourself that he won’t be able to resist trying for me,” Becca said.
Jared bit off a curse. He hadn’t realized she’d been listening when he’d said that. There had been so many people standing in the foyer then. Now it was only him, the chief and her. Everyone else had gone downstairs to the reception. He had to get to the reception soon, too. He had a toast to make—had a head table to sit at; he should have ignored Reyes’s suggestion that he bring a date. He never should have invited Becca.
“And because you’re not a trained agent, you’re not equipped to deal with him,” Jared pointed out.
“I got away at the boutique.”
“You admitted he let you get away,” he reminded her. “If he’d really wanted to abduct you, he would have. And he will if you pose as my fiancée.”
She flinched. And he wasn’t sure why. Because he’d told her that she wouldn’t get away again? Or because he’d told her she would only be posing as his fiancée?
Did she want to be his real fiancée? Did she want to make their living situation permanent? He wanted to, but not now—not like this—when it could put her in so much danger.
“I won’t be part of this,” Jared continued. She was already in too much danger for his peace of mind. He couldn’t use her as bait and risk losing her forever. “I will not pretend to be your fiancé.”
Her face reddened—either with temper or embarrassment. And she turned to the chief. “So assign another agent to act as my fiancé,” she implored him. “There has to be someone els
e...”
“They’re all married,” Jared told her. “And as easily as Kyle Smith found Alex’s birth certificate, he would find their marriage licenses.”
She laughed. “Every FBI agent can’t be married.” She gestured toward one of the men walking around. “What about Agent Rus?”
The man she’d pointed at was actually one of the bodyguards that Reyes had joked was Rus’s clone. But she must have met Nicholas earlier.
“He’s on assignment here—in River City,” Jared said. “And the killer will know it’s a trap if your groom is anyone but me. He would have seen the story Kyle Smith did on us.” Unless the killer was Kyle Smith, then he had run the story himself.
She expelled a heavy sigh of resignation and said, “So it has to be you.”
He shook his head. “No, I won’t put you in any more danger than you already are.”
He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if something happened to her. She meant too much to him—more than he was willing to admit to her. He was struggling with admitting it even to himself.
“You’ll ignore a direct order?” Chief Lynch asked.
Feeling as if his boss had sucker punched him, Jared drew in a quick breath. “Is this a direct order?”
Instead of answering him, the chief turned toward Becca. “Will you give us a minute, Ms. Drummond?”
She nodded. “Of course.”
Jared’s stomach churned with anxiety now as she walked across the foyer toward the stairwell leading down to the reception area. He hoped one of his friends was available to protect her. But it was Agent Rus who met her on the stairwell and turned around to walk back down with her. While Nick was a friend, he wasn’t Jared’s first choice for her fake fiancé. But he probably only felt that way out of jealousy, because Nick had been Becca’s first choice.
When had he become the jealous sort? He’d never been possessive of anyone before. But he’d never cared about any other woman the way he cared about Becca. She was beautiful and smart and a loving sister and a wonderful mother and a phenomenal lover. He couldn’t lose her.
“She’s safe,” Chief Lynch assured him.