Agent to the Rescue (Special Agents At The Alter Book 3) (6 page)

The car could have been taken a while ago, and he wouldn’t have even noticed.

“And you don’t recognize me?” she asked. “You haven’t seen me in the building or anywhere?”

He peered through narrowed eyes, studying her face and hair. “I would have remembered a redhead.” He shook his head. “No, honey, I’m sorry.”

“I know you...” the older woman murmured. “I know you...”

She shivered, uncertain to whom Mrs. Schultz was speaking—her or herself. Would she wind up like that—murmuring to herself—if her memory never returned?

* * *

D
AMN
IT
!
H
E
was still furious that he had been duped. He should have known better than to think Agent Reyes would have left the woman to the protection of the inept state trooper. But he hadn’t lost much time, because he’d guessed where they were going. Reyes had obviously traced the car back to the owner—in Chicago.

That was
his
city. So it would be even easier for him to take care of them—especially given what he’d learned at the hospital. It hadn’t been a total waste of time.

He had managed to eavesdrop on some nurses’ conversation. And he’d found out why the only ones coming to see her in the hospital had been law enforcement officers.

She had no idea who she was.

Too bad that she would be dead before she even had a chance to remember...

Chapter Seven

She leaned over the railing, staring at the water below as if she was contemplating jumping into the cold depths. Dalton shouldn’t have brought her walking around the city—especially not out here on Navy Pier.

He kept his gaze on her as he stepped away to take a call. His phone had been vibrating in his pocket, but he hadn’t dared to take it at the Schultzes’ apartment. He’d kept hoping that they would actually recognize her. But with Mrs. Schultz’s dementia and Mr. Schultz’s cataracts, they probably wouldn’t have recognized her even if she had actually been their daughter.

“Agent Reyes,” he identified himself to the number who’d kept dialing him. Hopefully, someone else had come up with a lead to the attacker and to her identity since he had come up empty-handed.

“Reyes? This is Agent Bell.”

He swallowed a groan. He wanted a lead, but he would have preferred to get one from someone else—because he suspected Bell’s would lead him back to the Bride Butcher serial killer. But at this point, he didn’t care; he had to have something to follow because Mr. Schultz had given him nothing. “Do you have something for me?”

“Are you all right? You and the woman?” Bell asked, his voice full of concern.

“Yeah, we’re fine.” He was only speaking for himself, though. She wasn’t fine. She had pushed herself too hard in the hopes of finding something familiar, but those hopes had been dashed. By bringing her along to follow a dead-end lead, he had dashed her hopes of learning her identity. “Why wouldn’t we be fine?”

“Someone ambushed Trooper Littlefield in the hospital restroom and stole his uniform.”

He cursed. “Is he okay?”

“No.”

He cursed again—loud enough that he drew her attention from the water to him. He took a deep breath, controlling his anger. He didn’t want to upset her any more than she already was.

So he pitched his voice low and asked, “Is he dead?”

“He’s in a medically induced coma,” Bell replied. “He took a helluva blow to the head. They’re not sure he’s going to make it.”

“I should drive back to Michigan.” He had brought the state trooper into this case with that damn bulletin he’d put out for leads to his car theft ring.

“No,” Bell replied. “Keep her away from here. Keep her safe.”

He was afraid that he had already put her at risk just bringing her here. He clicked off his cell and slid it back into his pocket just as she slowly approached him.

Her legs looked shaky; she looked shaky, as if she was totally exhausted. But before he could ask her, she asked him, “Is everything all right?”

He had promised not to keep anything from her. But he wasn’t sure she could handle knowing that Trooper Littlefield might not be as lucky as she’d been. He might lose more than his memory.

“No, it’s not,” he answered her honestly. “We need to leave here. All this walking and trying to remember has been too much for you.”

She didn’t argue with him, so she must have been exhausted—so exhausted that she swayed on her feet. He reached out and slid his arm around her shoulders—for support and protection. He started walking along the pier, toward the parking area. But she stopped and clutched at his arm. Her fingers were cold against his skin, but still her touch heated his blood.

“I don’t want to leave,” she said.

“Why?” he asked. “Does this area seem familiar?” He’d already asked her, but he didn’t know how amnesia worked. Would something just click in her mind and all of her memories would come rushing back?

She shook her head, tumbling her hair around her shoulders. The setting sun shimmered on the shiny tresses, making the red glow like fire. “No. It’s just...”

She sounded so lost that sympathy and concern clutched his heart.

“What is it?” he asked.

She turned her face to his, tears glimmering in her pale gray eyes. “I—I don’t want to leave here because...”

Maybe it was because she was so strong that her tears affected him so much—as if she’d crawled inside him, and her pain had become his. He tightened his arm around her and pulled her against his chest.

Her breath tickled his throat when she murmured, “I have no place to go.”

* * *

S
HE
CRINGED
THINKING
of how pathetic she must have sounded. Of everything she had been through, it shouldn’t have hit her so hard that she had no place to go. She had been released from the hospital, so she couldn’t go back there.

Where else could she go?

She didn’t know who she was, let alone where she lived.

Dalton hadn’t said anything in reply to her pathetic comment. He had just whisked her out to the parking lot and into his SUV. Then he’d driven her here—to another apartment complex near River North.

“Where are we?” she asked as he led her through the parking garage to an elevator. “Do you have another lead?”

She’d hoped that was what his phone call had been about, but he had seemed too upset for it to have been good news.

“No,” he said. “But it’s too late and you’re too exhausted to do any more running around or driving around. You need to rest.”

So why hadn’t he brought her to a hotel? Or to a holding cell for protective custody?

“Where are we?” she asked again.

But he didn’t answer her. He pressed a button for the twentieth floor. They rode the elevator in silence, the only sound the swoosh of air as the car quickly rose. This building was newer than the Schultzes’, or at least it had been recently renovated—probably converted from a warehouse or factory into pricey urban lofts. As they stepped off the elevator, she could see that the ceiling was high and exposed even in the hallway—the boards painted black, the walls all exposed brick. He stopped at a door and punched in a code, and then the metal door slid open like a barn door along the wall.

He stepped back and gestured her inside in front of him. “We’re home,” he said.

Hope flickered in her heart and must have shone on her face because he clarified, “My home.”

She stepped into his place and stared in awe at the tall windows looking out over the river. Like the hall, it was all exposed brick and timber and metal ductwork.

“How much do FBI agents make?” she murmured. “Maybe I should become one.”

With another punch of the console by the door, it slid closed again. And suddenly she felt very isolated and alone with a man she really barely knew.

Sure, he had saved her life. But what else did she know about him?

He had been in a gang. He’d grown up on the streets. Had he really given up that life? Or was he using it to finance his lifestyle?

He looked around him with a strange mix of pride and sadness in his dark eyes. “I have my grandma to thank for this place.”

“She lived here?”

“No, we lived in South Side.”

“We?”

He nodded. “She raised me...in a tiny little studio apartment above a convenience store. She worked three jobs and barely spent a dime—saving it all for me to go to college someday. I used that money to buy this condo.”

“You didn’t go to college?”

“I’ve got my bachelor’s in criminal justice,” he confirmed, “but my work as a gang informant and a couple scholarships paid for my tuition. I didn’t use any of her savings or life insurance money until I bought this place.”

Maybe it was because she knew nothing about her own life that she was so interested in his—or maybe it was just that she was interested in him. “When did she die?”

“Before I graduated high school,” he said. “She got confused...” His usually grinning face contorted with a grimace of pain. “And she got into it with some gang members...”

Now the pain was in his voice. Like the pounding in her head, she could feel it, too. She reached for him, clutching his hand as he had so often clutched hers to offer comfort and support.

His voice cracked with emotion when he continued, “She died...”

She gasped in horror. “They killed her?”

His head jerked in a sharp nod. “A confused old lady. And they showed her no mercy.”

“That’s when,” she said with sudden realization, “that’s when you figured out what was right and what was wrong.”

“What?”

“It was something your friend Claire said—that you weren’t like Agents Campbell and Stryker, who always knew right from wrong,” she explained. “She said that you had to figure it out for yourself.”

He shook his head. “No, Grandma taught me right from wrong,” he said. “I just hadn’t paid any attention to her—I hadn’t listened to her—until she was gone.”

She didn’t realize she was crying until she felt the dampness on her face. “I’m so sorry.”

He shrugged off her sympathy. “That was a long time ago.”

But like Mr. Schultz, he wasn’t over the loss or the pain. For Dalton, it was what motivated him to be such a good agent. That motivation had saved her life.

“Don’t cry,” he said as he lifted his free hand to her face and wiped away her tears. “Don’t cry...”

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I shouldn’t be crying —”

“Oh, you should,” he said. “You have every right to cry, but for yourself, for everything you’ve lost. You shouldn’t be crying for my loss.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know what I lost. Maybe I should be happy I don’t remember.” She glanced down at that ring on her hand—the hand that was holding Dalton’s. “Especially if my fiancé is the person who put me in that trunk.”

Dalton sighed. “You don’t know that.”

“Why hasn’t he filed a report that I’m missing, then?” she asked.

He spoke slowly, almost reluctantly, when he said, “There could be another reason.”

That reluctance had her stomach flipping with dread. “Another reason.”

“You already considered it,” he reminded her. “That he could have been with you when you were attacked. That was why you asked about other DNA in the trunk.”

Maybe it was good that she didn’t remember the man—because she couldn’t feel the loss that she probably should be feeling.

“You don’t think that he just lost his memory, too.” What Agent Reyes was saying was so much worse.

“That would be quite a coincidence,” he said. “And I don’t believe in coincidences.”

“Me, neither.” She sighed. “At least I don’t believe in them now. I don’t know what I believed before this.”

“I don’t think your beliefs would have changed,” he said. “You are you—no matter what your name is.”

“Sybil,” she said.

He drew his dark brows lower over his eyes—confusion etched on his handsome face. “The Schultzes’ daughter is dead.”

“I don’t think they would mind me using her name until you find out what my name is.” She wasn’t banking on remembering—not anymore. After all, the doctors had said that her memory might never come back. “Because if there are no coincidences, why was I in their car?”

She knew that she really wasn’t their daughter. But maybe it had been fate that she would meet them—that she used their daughter’s name to keep her memory going since she’d lost her own.

“It must have been stolen by someone who knew they wouldn’t notice it missing,” he said. “A family member...”

“He said he has no family,” she reminded him. Just as she had no family now, either—at least not any family she missed or who missed her.

“Then maybe a neighbor,” he suggested. “I have a team already looking into it.”

“You will find out who I am,” she said. “I believe you.”

He sucked in a breath, as if uneasy with her faith in him. Had anyone believed in him since his grandmother?

She doubted he would have brought her back to his condo if he shared it with someone. He had his friends—she’d seen their love for him. But what about a woman—someone important in his life? Even though he didn’t want to marry, he could still share his life with someone.

“But in the meantime, I should call you Sybil?” he asked, his mouth curving into a slight grin.

She nodded and then laughed. “The character Sybil had so many personalities, and I feel like I have none.”

“Just like your beliefs, you have your personality,” he insisted. “The concussion wouldn’t have changed that. You are strong and brave and compassionate.”

He had more faith in her than she had in herself at the moment. Gratitude and something else, something even more powerful, flooded her, and she rose on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his.

Feeling like an idiot, she froze, even while her face and body heated with embarrassment. But then his arms came around her, pulling her close, and he kissed her back. His mouth moved over hers, teasing her lips apart, and he deepened the kiss. His tongue slid into her mouth with an intimacy that had her skin tingling.

And passion that she was certain was more powerful than she’d ever felt before overwhelmed her. She wanted him with a hunger that consumed her.

Maybe he felt that passion, too, because he lifted her and carried her from the living room. Moments later, her back pressed into something soft as he followed her down onto a bed, his mouth still fused to hers—their bodies tangled together.

* * *

W
HO
WAS
A
GENT
Dalton Reyes?

Maybe he wasn’t the honorable federal agent he’d thought he was. Reyes would have been told about the trooper by now. Why wasn’t he on his way out of Chicago back to that rural hospital in Michigan?

But maybe it was better that Reyes stayed in the city with the woman. It would be easier for him to take them out here—on his home turf.

It had been easier for him to find them—at the old man’s apartment building. Of course, he’d known where they were going. And he had caught up with them before they had even left the old couple.

He would have taken them out in the parking garage—if there hadn’t also been FBI crime techs crawling all over the structure. Looking for evidence...

Because of the city, it had been easier for him to follow around the SUV. The agent had skills, but he hadn’t lost him. He’d followed him back to River North, but he hadn’t been able to get into the parking garage of that condo complex.

Of course, if Reyes had taken her to a Bureau safe house, it wouldn’t be easy to get access to her. To them.