Agent to the Rescue (Special Agents At The Alter Book 3) (16 page)

“Bell won’t answer his phone,” Trooper Littlefield said from the backseat. He’d taken Campbell’s cell and had kept hitting the redial.

“He would answer,” Dalton said, “if he could.” He had gotten to know the man well over the past few days. He was every bit as focused an agent as Dalton usually was.

Bell was already gone. Elizabeth probably was, too.

The next curve brought the house into view—lights burned in several of the windows. He nearly struck a rental car parked near the police car at the end of the driveway.

“Nobody’s here,” Blaine said as he took in the empty police car. “I can get out and see if the keys are inside and move it.”

But before he could reach for the door handle, Dalton backed up and slammed his SUV into the patrol car—pushing it out of his way. Then he pressed hard on the accelerator and tore up the driveway. As he slammed it into Park and jumped out, he heard the gunshot.

Just as he’d worried, he was too late.

Chapter Twenty-One

A scream of pain tore from Elizabeth’s throat. Loss wrenched her heart as Tom’s blood spattered her face. He dropped to the floor as he had earlier. But this time she doubted he was just unconscious.

He was dead. While she didn’t love him anymore, she once had, so she still cared what happened to him. She cared that he had been killed—because of her. Just like so many others had lost their lives because of her.

Dalton. Her chest hurt, panic and pain pressing so hard on her heart that she couldn’t draw a breath. Dalton was already dead. Now Tom.

And she was going to be next.

At least she hoped she was going to be next. Gregory kept glancing up—where the little girl could be heard screaming, too. The terror in her voice broke Elizabeth’s heart. She ached to hold her, to soothe her fears and dry all those tears—to take care of her as she had promised Kenneth and Patricia she would.

Gregory Cunningham moved, as if heading toward the stairs. She almost reached out to stop him, but Tom’s body lay between them and she nearly fell over him—nearly fell on top of him.

“Please don’t hurt Lizzie,” she pleaded with the madman—hoping to appeal to his sense of decency, even though she doubted that he had one after all the pain he had already caused.

“She’s an innocent child,” Elizabeth continued. “She’s your niece.” But Kenneth had been his brother and that hadn’t stopped him from killing him. “She’s the only part left of Kenneth and Patricia—the best part.” That was what they had always said. “The best part of the best people...”

He turned back to her, and tears glistened in his eyes. Maybe he had a conscience, after all. “I didn’t want to do it, you know.” But his tears cleared as he justified the horror he’d done. “But Kenny gave me no choice. He stopped giving me money.”

That was her fault. She had advised Kenneth that it was time to cut off his brother. Her friends had died because of her. Now Dalton and probably Jared Bell and Tom next.

“Promise me you won’t hurt her,” she pleaded with him again. “I don’t care about
me
. Just please take care of Lizzie. Raise her the way that Kenneth and Patricia wanted her to be raised.”

His face—so like his brother’s—twisted into a grimace of pain and regret. “Elizabeth...”

“They wanted her to always feel loved,” she said, glancing up at the ceiling from which the little girl’s cries seemed to emanate. “To be confident and self-assured and fearless.”

Like Dalton. He was confident and self-assured and fearless, but he’d wound up dead because of that. Because of her.

Tears streamed from Gregory’s eyes. “I’m really sorry about this, Elizabeth.”

“Just promise me...” But she knew that even if he gave it, it wouldn’t be like the heartfelt promises Dalton Reyes had made her. Gregory’s promise would be an empty one. He had already threatened to kill the child. Maybe that had been an empty threat—only meant to draw her out of the office so that he could kill her. “Don’t hurt her.”

“I won’t,” Gregory said. “I couldn’t harm her before. I won’t be able to do it now. I need the money—that’s all, Elizabeth.”

She could have tried to lie—tried to claim that the money was gone. But Kenneth and Patricia had been fanatical about earning and saving money, and they had already set up a trust fund for their daughter. Unlike his brother, Kenneth’s investments had paid off well. There was money; she just hadn’t realized that someone would have killed them over it.

And now her.

She bit her lip so she wouldn’t plead for her life. It was no use trying to appeal to Gregory Cunningham’s sense of decency. If he had one, he wouldn’t have already killed so many people. She had already accepted that she was to be the next—and hopefully the last.

So she closed her eyes and waited for the bullet.

* * *

D
ALTON
HAD
SLIPPED
silently into the house—through an open window in the den. Before he’d found the open window, he had found Jared Bell lying on the porch, blood pooled beneath his head.

He had been certain that the man, whom he was just now beginning to consider a friend, was dead. But when he’d reached down for Jared’s throat, he had felt a steadily beating pulse. Like Elizabeth, the blow hadn’t killed the profiler. But he needed an ambulance.

Blaine had gestured that he would make the call for help. The other agent had kept pace with Dalton on his mad dash to the house. But they had hesitated to burst inside before they assessed the situation. So Dalton had slipped through that open window alone.

Blaine and Littlefield were waiting for his cue. But he couldn’t give it and risk one of them startling Gregory Cunningham into killing Elizabeth. He had realized it was him at the hospital when Littlefield had admitted that everyone had shared Elizabeth’s opinion of Kenneth and Patricia Cunningham—that they were a loving couple who would have never harmed each other.

The only person who’d offered a different opinion had been the man who’d killed them and tried to make it look like a murder-suicide. Kenneth’s own brother.

Now the man intended to kill Elizabeth and not just to keep her from reopening an investigation into the Cunninghams’ deaths. Alone in the darkness of the den, Dalton had listened to their conversation through the doors that had been left open like the window.

Through those open doors, he had also seen Tom Wilson lying on the foyer floor. Like Jared Bell, blood had pooled beneath him. The shot he’d heard, as he’d stepped out of his SUV, must have been fired at Wilson.

It was too late to help him. But he could help Elizabeth. Maybe...

He had heard everything Gregory had said—his confession about the murder of his brother and sister-in-law. He had also heard everything Elizabeth had said—had heard her negotiating for the little girl’s life. She was willing to give up her own life to keep the child safe. As safe as she would be with a killer for a guardian.

In Elizabeth, Kenneth and Patricia had chosen the right guardian for their daughter. They had chosen someone who loved little Lizzie every bit as much as they had.

Dalton didn’t want to lose either one of them. The child had stopped crying. Either Blaine or Littlefield must have made it up to the nursery without Gregory noticing them. One of them was soothing her fears. At least she was safe now.

It was up to him to secure Elizabeth’s safety. But if he shot Gregory Cunningham and the guy squeezed the trigger of his gun...

The barrel was pointed directly at Elizabeth’s head. Gregory was doing it again—exactly as he had killed his brother and his sister-in-law. First he’d killed the man and then the woman.

Had Patricia done the same thing Elizabeth had—had she negotiated for her daughter’s life and then closed her eyes to accept her gruesome fate?

For Elizabeth, Dalton would fight fate. He would keep his promise to her and make sure that she stayed safe. So he stepped out of the shadows of the den.

Gregory Cunningham caught sight of him. His eyes widened with shock, and his face paled. He must have been pretty certain that he had killed Dalton back at the abandoned horse ranch—so certain that at first he’d probably thought he was seeing a ghost. But now, realizing that Dalton was real and alive, Gregory Cunningham swung the barrel of his gun toward him.

But Dalton was already squeezing the trigger of his gun.

If Gregory fired now, the bullet would hit him. Not Elizabeth. For Elizabeth, Dalton would gladly give up his life.

* * *

E
LIZABETH
FLINCHED
AT
the sound of the gunshot—so close to her head. She waited for the pain. But it never came. Instead, she felt more drops across her face. Blood...

This time it had to be hers. Didn’t it?

But where was the pain? Or was she numb? Paralyzed?

Dead?

“Elizabeth...” Dalton’s deep voice called to her.

From the beyond?

Then fingertips skimmed over her face. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Were you hit?”

She opened her eyes to his face—to his dark eyes staring at her with concern. And something else.

She must have died. Or at least she was unconscious and dreaming. Because that emotion couldn’t really be in his eyes—although she was certain it was in hers.

“You’re alive!” she exclaimed. “You’re alive!” She threw her arms around his neck and clung to him. “I thought he shot you!”

“He did,” Dalton replied matter-of-factly, as if his gunshot wound was of no consequence.

She pulled back and then she saw the blood, which soaked the sleeve of his dark green shirt. “You’re still bleeding!” she exclaimed. The fabric was warm and damp. She jerked her hand away—afraid that she’d hurt him—and her palm was stained red with his blood. “Didn’t they treat you at the hospital?”

“I couldn’t stay,” he said. “Not when I knew you were in danger. And Jared wasn’t answering his cell.”

She covered her mouth to hold back a cry of alarm and regret. Poor Agent Bell.

“He disappeared,” she said. “I don’t know what happened to him.” But she suspected that it wasn’t good.

“I found him on the porch. Blaine called an ambulance for him.” But from the concern in his voice, he wasn’t sure the ambulance would arrive in time to help his friend.

Sirens whined in the distance as emergency vehicles rushed to the scene. Fortunately, Gregory hadn’t noticed those sirens, or he would have shot her before help could have arrived for her.

Before Dalton had arrived.

“You saved me.” As he had so many times before. But he needed help now.

Hopefully, the ambulance would be able to get up the driveway. Tom had said that it was blocked.

Tom...

Her breath hitched with regret over all the lives that had been taken—because of greed. If only she hadn’t told Kenneth to cut off Gregory.

Then they would all be alive. Her dearest friends would be able to raise their precious daughter. Little Lizzie had stopped crying. How was that possible with all the shooting? She had to be terrified from all the commotion.

Fear gripped her again. Dalton was here—with her. Who was with Lizzie?

Dalton had kept his promise to protect her. But had she failed in her promise to protect the little girl?

“Lizzie isn’t crying,” she pointed out. “She’s been crying since Gregory shot Tom. Why would she stop now? Is there someone else in the house?”

“Yes,” Dalton replied. “Blaine Campbell and Trooper Littlefield came with me from the hospital. One of them must be with her now.”

She needed to be with her—to make sure that the little girl was really all right. But she couldn’t leave Dalton—and not just because he was wounded. She couldn’t leave Dalton because she loved him, and she was so grateful that he was alive. She had been so worried about him.

That fear must have been on her face yet, because Dalton assured her, “She’s safe now. It’s all over.”

But just as her fears eased, she heard something else that had her tensing with fear. Someone groaned, and there was a flurry of movement on the floor.

She had thought that Dalton had killed Gregory—that it was his blood that had struck her face when she’d had eyes closed as she’d waited for death. But what if Dalton had only wounded the madman?

What if he was reaching for his gun again?

Dalton reached for his, drawing it from his holster. But would he be able to save her or himself?

Or would Gregory finish what he’d started so many months ago with Kenneth’s and Patricia’s murders?

Chapter Twenty-Two

“You’re a fool,” Ash Stryker called Dalton.

He glared at his happy friend. While Stryker and Claire had returned from their honeymoon, it was obviously far from over—if the guy’s smiling face was anything to go by.

“Just a few short weeks ago you were begging me to be your best man,” Dalton reminded him with just a slight exaggeration. “And now you’re calling me a fool?”

“Because you are one,” Blaine Campbell said from where he leaned against the brick wall of the living room of Dalton’s condo.

They had invited themselves over to his place. He had thought to check up on him and make sure he was completely recovered from the gunshot wound—minimal though it had been. But now he felt as if they were staging some kind of intervention.

“Two against one?” he scoffed at their pitiful attempt to gang up on him. “These are my kind of odds, you know.” Hell, he’d always taken on more than two at a time.

“They would have been,” Blaine agreed. “If you’d had the guts to go for it.”

Now they were talking over his head. “What do you mean?” Nobody had ever accused him of being a coward. A fool—well, that wasn’t the first time.

“Elizabeth Schroeder and the little girl,” Blaine clarified. “If you’d had the guts to go for the two of them, you could be happy right now.”

“Who says I’m not?” he challenged them.

He had a great place in the city with a view of the lake, a fast car. The single lifestyle most married men would envy—most. Not these guys, but most. Maybe...

Ash laughed at him. “I know happy. And you’re not it, my friend. You’re miserable.”

He couldn’t argue with him. The new husband radiated happiness like a neon sign—making Dalton want to hurl...something. But they were at his condo, and he liked to keep the place neat, the way his grandmother had taught him.

“You guys don’t know what you’re talking about,” he insisted.

He had seen Elizabeth’s face when she’d realized it was her fiancé moving around on the floor—that he wasn’t dead. She had been more than relieved; she had been elated. And since the nanny had arrived to care for Lizzie, she had ridden along in the ambulance with him and Jared Bell to the hospital.

“I never had a chance with Elizabeth,” he told them.

“If you think that, you really are a damn fool,” Blaine said. “That woman’s in love with you.”

“That woman was grateful,” he said. “I found her in the trunk of that car when she was barely clinging to life, when she didn’t even know who she was.”

But she knew now. She was Tom Wilson’s fiancée.

“Her memory didn’t affect her feelings,” Blaine said.

No. Seeing Tom Wilson nearly die had affected her, though. She loved the man. She wouldn’t have been wearing his ring if she hadn’t.

He shrugged. “I’m not going to argue this with you guys. The case is over.”

Gregory Cunningham was dead. Kenneth and Patricia Cunningham’s deaths had been ruled homicides. Just homicides. Their names were cleared because of Elizabeth, because she had been so determined that their memories be untainted for their daughter.

“The case is over,” Blaine agreed.

“But you two don’t have to be,” Ash added.

Of course the happily married men would think that. Who were the fools? They had just been damn lucky that the women for whom they’d fallen had loved them back.

Dalton had never been that lucky. “She’s going to marry Tom Wilson.” He was certain of that.

“Not if you stop the wedding,” Blaine suggested.

Could he? Could he put his heart on the line without knowing if she even returned his feelings?

He’d already been accused of being a fool. What did it matter if he made one of himself? He would rather regret making a scene than never telling her how much he loved her. He should have told her before. He should have told her when they’d made love how much she meant to him. How he had never cared for anyone the way he cared for her.

“I really hate you guys,” he muttered, even as he dug his car keys from the pocket of his jeans. They had goaded him into embarrassing himself. “You’re enjoying this—enjoying that I’m going to make a fool of myself.”

Why would Elizabeth choose him—an FBI agent with a penchant for danger—over the conservative lawyer she had already agreed to marry?

Blaine chuckled. “You’ve got it bad, Reyes. You’re not your usual cocky self.”

He wasn’t—because he wasn’t sure of Elizabeth’s feelings. He was sure of his, though, and he would regret never sharing those feelings with her.

Even if she rejected him...

Ash just laughed and patted his back, urging him, “Go get your bride!”

* * *

R
EGRET
PULLED
THE
fake smile from Elizabeth’s face. She shouldn’t have stopped by Tom’s hospital room. But she had already been at the hospital visiting Agent Jared Bell. So she had stopped in out of courtesy.

Nothing more.

“As soon as I’m released, we should move in together,” Tom was saying. He had already reached out for her hand and tugged her down onto the hospital bed next to him.

“What?” she asked. Clearly he must have sustained some brain damage from the gunshot wound to his head.

“You and the little girl can move into my condo in Chicago,” he said as if extending a magnanimous offer.

She shook her head.

“It makes the most sense,” he said. “It’s bigger than your place. And really, you can’t stay
here
.”

“I can’t?”

He chuckled. “Your job is in Chicago. Your life is in Chicago.”

The love of her life was in Chicago. He must have been because she hadn’t seen him since she had ridden away in the ambulance. She’d expected to see him at the hospital. That night. And maybe today.

That was one of the reasons she had come by to visit Jared Bell. She had been worried about him, too, though. It hadn’t been all about Dalton.

“Lizzie’s home is here.”

“Lizzie is a child,” he said. “She’ll adjust.”

“She only recently lost her parents.” She sighed. “And now her uncle...” Gregory Cunningham had always been part of the child’s life. The boogeyman. But she might miss him, too. “She’s had a lot of adjustments to make.”

“Exactly,” he said. “She’ll be fine. She has you.”

“What about you?” she asked, wondering why he had stopped suggesting that she give up the child.

“I understand why you want to keep her.”

He made Lizzie sound like a stray to whom she’d gotten attached.

“Why do you?” she asked. Did he have any feelings for the little girl? He had never paid any attention to her.

“To keep you,” he said. “I would do anything to make you happy, Elizabeth.”

Something cold and hard slid over her finger.

Her skin chilled and she shivered with revulsion. He’d put that damn ring back on her finger. “Tom...”

“Sorry,” a deep voice murmured from the doorway. “I didn’t mean to interrupt...”

She jerked away from Tom and turned toward the door—just in time to see Dalton’s broad back as he walked away.

“Wait!” she called out to him, her heart beating quickly. “Dalton!”

Tom sighed. “I guess I have my answer.”

“I didn’t realize you’d asked me a question,” she said as she tugged off the diamond. “You just assumed.”

“You rode in the ambulance with me,” he reminded her. “You acted like you cared—like you still have feelings for me.”

“We were together a long time,” she said. “I have feelings for you. But I don’t love you.”

“No,” he agreed. “I see that now. I see who you love.”

She hoped it wasn’t too late to make Dalton see that she loved him. Would he care? Did he return her feelings? Her pulse raced.

“I’m sorry.” As she passed his ring back to him, he caught her hand and held on to her.

“I feel sorry for you,” he said, “because he’s going to break your heart. He’s not looking to be a husband or a father.”

Maybe Tom was right. But that didn’t stop Elizabeth. She tugged her hand free of his grasp and hurried into the hall. But Dalton was gone. She should have run faster.

She sucked in a sharp breath along with her disappointment.

“So when’s the wedding?” a deep voice asked.

She glanced up and found him standing across the hall, in the doorway of an empty room. She shook her head and lifted her bare hand. “I’m not getting married.”

Because Tom was probably right about Dalton. He had made his feelings clear about marriage and fatherhood before. He had no interest in them. The only thing he hadn’t made clear to her was his feelings for her.

“Really?” he asked with a dark brow arched in skepticism. He leaned closer and studied her hand. “I swear I saw a ring on there just a second ago.”

“Tom got the wrong idea,” she said.

Dalton shrugged. “Can’t say I blame him. You were awfully worried about him back at the house.”

“I thought he was dead,” she said. “I was relieved that he wasn’t. Enough people had already died because of me.”

“Because of Gregory Cunningham,” he corrected her. “Not because of you. Nothing was your fault.”

Guilt weighed so heavily on her as she admitted, “I told Kenneth to cut off Gregory.”

“And you don’t think he would have done that without your advice?” he asked. “From everything you told me about the guy, Kenneth Cunningham was smart. He wouldn’t have kept giving his brother money.”

She released a shaky breath and along with it, a lot of the guilt she’d been feeling. “No, he wouldn’t have.”

“But giving Wilson the wrong idea, that is your fault,” he said. “If you hang out in his hospital room, he’s going to think he has a chance.”

“I didn’t come here to see him,” she said.

“Who did you come to see?” Dalton asked.

“Agent Bell,” she replied. “I was relieved to see that he’s doing well.” So well that the profiler was being released later that afternoon—or so he’d told her.

“Jared said you’d been by his room.”

She drew in a deep breath, swallowed her pride and admitted, “I was hoping that you would be here visiting him. I was really hoping to run into you.”

His dark eyes brightened. “Seriously?”

She glanced uneasily back at Tom’s room. This wasn’t a conversation she wanted her ex-fiancé to overhear; she wasn’t cruel.

“Do you want to come back to the house?” she asked. “And see Lizzie?”

His eyes brightened even more and a smile curved his sensuous mouth. “I would love to see Lizzie.”

As they headed down the hospital hall, he took her hand in his—the way he had so many times before. And as they stepped inside the empty elevator, he said, “But I really came here to see you.”

Hope fluttered in her heart, lifting it.

* * *

E
LIZABETH
’
S
FACE
FLUSHED
with color at her embarrassment over finding the nursery empty. Dalton barely held back a chuckle at her reaction.

“I’m sorry,” Elizabeth said as she read the note the nanny had left for her. “I didn’t know Marta was taking Lizzie to a playdate with her grandchildren.”

“I did,” Dalton admitted.

Her eyes widened in surprised. “How?”

“I suggested it when I came here earlier.”

“You were here earlier?” she asked, her beautiful eyes widened in surprise. “Why?”

“I played with Lizzie,” he said, and his grin slipped out now with the memory of how happy the little girl had been to see him. She’d clung to him. And he’d been so happy to hold her and play with her. “I missed her.”

She nodded. “She’s such a special little girl.”

“Yes, she is,” he wholeheartedly agreed. “You’re lucky to have her.”

She blinked her thick lashes as if fighting back tears. “Yes, I am.”

“And she’s lucky to have you,” he said. “You’re very special, too, Elizabeth.”

She smiled, but there was a tinge of sadness to it. And she continued to blink furiously, as if she was about to cry.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. He hoped she didn’t still feel guilty about becoming little Lizzie’s guardian.

“I just realized what this is,” she said with a quick gesture at his chest.

“What is this?” he asked.

“Goodbye.”

When he’d found her in Tom Wilson’s room—in what had looked like an intimate moment—he’d thought he might have been too late. But then she had called out to him. And she’d come out of that room without the ring on her finger. Hope warmed his heart—along with all the love and passion he felt for her.

He slid his arms around her and pulled her close. Then he covered her mouth with his. He’d missed the sweet sigh of her breath as she kissed him back. He’d missed her lips and the way she ran her fingers into his hair and clutched him closer. When he could lift his mouth from hers, he asked, “Does that feel like goodbye?”

She shook her head.

He swung her up in his arms and carried her down the hall to that sunshine-filled master bedroom. He undressed her slowly, kissing every inch of silky skin as he exposed it to his sight and his touch.

She moaned and sighed, reacting to his every caress—his every kiss. He made love to her thoroughly and, most of all, lovingly—making sure that she had no doubt about his feelings.

But yet he didn’t utter the words that burned in his throat. He wasn’t sure how to say something he’d never said before. So, after shouting his release, he collapsed back on the bed, and he fell silent.

She lay on his chest, panting for breath. Once she’d regained it, she pulled away from him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You probably need to go back to the hospital.”

He pressed a hand over his madly beating heart. “I’m fine,” he said. “I don’t need medical attention.” He needed her attention, but she wouldn’t look at him.

“I meant that you probably have to pick up Agent Bell,” she said. “I know he’s being released this afternoon.”

He nodded. “Yeah, he is,” he said, “probably against medical orders.”

“Why would he leave, then?”

“A young woman recently disappeared,” he said with a shudder as he remembered how Elizabeth had nearly disappeared forever.

If he hadn’t stopped that car...