Agent to the Rescue (Special Agents At The Alter Book 3) (9 page)

Chapter Eleven

“Elizabeth...”

The voice was deep and masculine and familiar. It wound through her, igniting her desire again even though her body ached from making love with him last night. From making love all night.

“Elizabeth...”

While she recognized the voice, she didn’t recognize the name.

“Sybil,” she murmured sleepily. That was what she’d told him to call her. But even while she’d screamed his name last night, he had never called her anything.

Until now...

She reached out, but her hands only moved over tangled sheets. She was alone in the bed. So she opened her eyes. She was alone in the bedroom, too.

He stood just outside the doorway, as if he didn’t trust himself to step back inside the room with her. He’d dressed and armed himself again, his holster lying against the side of his black shirt.

“Why are you calling me that?” she asked. But she knew.

“Because that’s your name,” he said.

She shook her head. “You don’t know that for certain. That must be what someone told you. A reporter?”

“Not a reporter,” he cryptically replied. “And I confirmed the identification. I pulled your Illinois driver’s license. It’s you. Your full name is Elizabeth Ann Schroeder. Nobody calls you Beth or Liz. It’s always Elizabeth.”

He had talked to someone who knew her better than a reporter would have. She tried hard to think, to summon them, but no memories rushed back. The name was only vaguely familiar to her. She might have once known an Elizabeth.

But was
she
really Elizabeth Schroeder?

And who the hell was Elizabeth? She wanted to ask Dalton a thousand questions, but she was afraid to learn the answers. Maybe it was better she remember on her own—if she ever remembered. But maybe never remembering wasn’t a bad thing, either.

“I still prefer Sybil,” she said.

“Why?”

“Sybil had people who loved her,” she said. “Who still love her.” Mrs. Schultz might have forgotten everything and everyone else. But she still remembered her daughter.

“So does Elizabeth,” he said.

Her breath caught with alarm. “It was him.” She glanced down at the ring someone had put on her hand. “That’s who came forward with my identity.”

His handsome face grim, Dalton nodded.

“He doesn’t love me,” she insisted. “Or he would have reported me missing.”

She really hoped she wasn’t Elizabeth Schroeder because she was afraid the woman was an idiot—that she was engaged to a man who had tried to kill her more than once. Suddenly she had no questions about Elizabeth. She didn’t think she was someone she would care to know.

“I’ll find out why he didn’t,” Dalton assured her, “when I question him. I’ll have Blaine Campbell protect you while I’m gone—”

She jumped out of the bed—heedless of the fact that she was naked.

He heeded, his gaze ran over her curves the way his hands and mouth had just hours before. Then he turned away. “I’ll see you later.”

“No,” she protested. “I’m going with you.” Wherever he was going. “I want to see him.”

“He could be the one who hurt you,” Dalton warned her. “Who’s still trying to kill you. It could be him.”

“That’s why I want to see him,” she said. “I want to know why. I want to know what kind of person I am that he could hate me that much.”

He turned back. And this time he touched her with his fingers, sliding the tips along her cheek. “No one could hate you,” he assured her. “No one...”

But he didn’t know Elizabeth Schroeder any better than she did. So she had to talk to the person who actually knew Elizabeth—her would-be killer.

* * *

J
UST
AS
HE
’
D
had no intention of bringing her to the hospital, Dalton had had no intention of bringing her to the local state police post, either. But she sat in the passenger’s seat of the SUV.

She wasn’t staring out the window as she had on the way to Chicago. She wasn’t sleeping, either, as she had on the way back, even though she’d had as little sleep as he’d had the night before.

He didn’t regret making love with her. He was glad that he had. Or he might have lost her without ever fully knowing what he was losing.

God, he was a masochist—because maybe it would have been easier if he hadn’t known how amazing she was and how amazing they had been together.

But he wouldn’t have traded last night for anything—not even for her memories. Would they come rushing back when she saw him?

Would she remember the man trying to hurt her? Maybe it would be enough to put him away for good. Or would she only remember the love she had for her fiancé?

Agent Jared Bell met the SUV as he drove into the parking lot of the small brick building of the police post. “She really can talk you into anything,” the other man said. “I can’t believe you brought her along.”

“Maybe she can identify him as her attacker,” he explained. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”

Because he was hoping to finally close his one open case and apprehend the Bride Butcher.

Jared shook his head. “I already cross-referenced his name against my files.”

“Tom Wilson.” It sounded like an alias to him. But he’d checked him out—just as he had checked her out.

Bell continued, “Tom Wilson never came up before.”

But none of the names in those files had led to an arrest. So maybe it was someone who hadn’t come to his attention yet. Dalton kept that observation to himself, though. He’d already been fighting not to lose this case to Jared Bell. He didn’t want to just hand it to him.

Nor did he want to hand Elizabeth Schroeder over to her fiancé. He walked around the front of the battered SUV and reluctantly opened her door. Usually she didn’t wait for him to open it. Usually she would have already been out and halfway to the building.

She was reluctant, too.

“You don’t have to do this,” he told her. “It’s not like you remember him.”

“But I might,” she said, “if I see him again.”

That was what worried Dalton.

“But if you don’t remember him, you can’t believe what he tells you,” he said. “Because of the news reports, he knows that you’ve lost your memory, and he might take advantage of that.”

Her mouth curved into a slight smile. “Nobody takes advantage of me.”

He had. Several times last night.

Her smile widened, and she shook her head, as if she’d read his mind and disagreed with his thoughts. Then she whispered, “Nobody.”

He couldn’t argue with her in front of Agent Bell. And he didn’t want to argue with her about last night. He wanted to argue with her about walking through those glass doors into the reception area of the police post.

But Agent Bell had walked ahead of them and now held open one of those glass doors.

“You don’t have to—” he began.

But she pressed her fingers over his lips as she’d done before. “I have to,” she said. And then she slid her fingers from his lips, along his jaw.

His skin tingled with desire. He had never wanted any woman the way he wanted her.
Elizabeth...

It was an old-fashioned name, but it was also a strong name. A classy name. It was her.

He saw the confirmation on the man’s face as she walked through that door Bell held open for her. The guy rose from the chair he’d been sitting on the edge of, but he didn’t rush forward. He didn’t reach for her. He just stood there.

The way she just stood there, studying the man. Dalton studied him, too. He was tall with a runner’s lean build. His hair was blond—blonder even than Blaine Campbell’s. He was handsome in that kind of baby-face, smooth-edges kind of way—an all-American-looking guy. Unlike Dalton, who was a mutt of nationalities.

He felt someone watching him, too, and turned toward Jared Bell. Instead of looking at the reunited couple, Jared was staring at him. He had seen Elizabeth touch his face, and he knew they were more than agent and victim. Dalton expected to see disapproval on the no-nonsense profiler’s face; he saw only pity. And something he couldn’t quite identify.

He couldn’t identify the strange emotions between Elizabeth and her fiancé, either. They just continued to stare at each other. Was he waiting for her to remember? Or was he worried that she would?

“You don’t recognize me?” Tom Wilson asked, and his voice cracked slightly with emotion.

Just what emotion?

Hurt?

Or relief?

She shook her head. “I’m sorry...”

“Are you all right?” he asked. “The news reports said you’d been near death when an FBI agent found you in the trunk of a car.”

How had the damn reporters gotten so many details about what had happened?

“He found me,” she said, and she stepped closer to Dalton as if seeking his protection.

She had it. He wouldn’t let anything happen to her.

“Dalton saved my life.”

The man’s eyes widened with surprise—probably that she had used his first name. Jared Bell’s head moved in a fractional nod, as if her familiarity confirmed his suspicions about how close they’d become.

Dalton stepped forward and held out his hand. “Agent Reyes,” he introduced himself. He didn’t want the man using his first name. “We spoke briefly on the phone.”

“You’re the one who asked me to come here,” Tom Wilson said, and he put his hand in Dalton’s.

Like his hair and his clothes, the man’s skin was smooth and cold. He seemed more like some plastic doll than a real man. But that was just Dalton’s opinion, which was admittedly biased.

The man shook his hand, though, in a surprisingly firm grip. “Thank you,” he said, “for saving Elizabeth.”

Dalton nodded. He hadn’t saved her for this man. “Thank you for coming here. We have some questions for you.”

Wilson turned toward his fiancée. “Of course, Elizabeth, I will tell you whatever you want to know.”

Dalton shook his head now. “No. When I said
we
, I meant the
Bureau
. I have some questions for you.” He took his arm now and led him toward a room off the reception area of the state police post. He turned back toward Jared Bell.

The agent nodded. He would make sure that Elizabeth Schroeder stayed safe. And so would Dalton. He closed the door behind the guy and gestured him toward a chair at the table.

Wilson gazed back at the door, as if he could see Elizabeth through it. “Shouldn’t she be in here? So I can tell her about her life, about everything she’s forgotten...?”

Dalton dropped onto a chair across from him. “I don’t want you anywhere near her,” he admitted.

“What!” the man exclaimed as he shot back up from his chair.

Dalton waved him back down and continued, “Until I know for certain that you’re not the one trying to kill her.”

But even if Wilson wasn’t the one who had hurt her, Dalton still didn’t want him anywhere near her.

“I would never hurt Elizabeth!” the man hotly denied.

Dalton waited, but Tom Wilson didn’t add a profession of love to his denial.

He leaned back in the chair so that he wouldn’t reach across the table and throttle the man. “Then why didn’t you report her missing?”

Wilson looked away, and his face flushed slightly—either with embarrassment or temper. “I didn’t
know
she was missing.”

“You don’t live together?”

He shook his head. “No.”

Dalton ignored the relief that flowed through him and focused on his job. But Elizabeth had already become more than a job to him. “You don’t talk every day?”

“No,” Wilson admitted. “Elizabeth is very busy. And very independent. Sometimes a week would pass before I would see her or talk to her.”

“What do you do, Mr. Wilson?”

“I’m a lawyer, like Elizabeth,” he replied. “I also work in corporate law—just for a different company.”

“So your jobs keep you busy?”

“Elizabeth has more going on in her life than just her job,” Wilson said with a trace of resentment.

“Are you saying that Elizabeth is seeing someone else?”

The guy stared at him, and maybe he was more astute than Dalton had thought, because his eyes narrowed in speculation. “I hadn’t thought so...”

He wasn’t going to answer any of this man’s questions, and it was apparent that he had some questions about Dalton and his fiancée. It was up to Elizabeth to answer those questions—if she wanted. Dalton still had questions he needed answered. “Do you have an alibi for the day I found her in the trunk of that car?”

“According to the news reports, that was three days ago?” Tom asked.

Dalton nodded.

“Then I was out of town. My company had flown me to Miami for a conference.” He pulled a plane ticket out of his pocket and set it on the table between them. “I just got back this morning.”

Was that alibi a little too convenient? Dalton picked up the ticket, but he also picked up his cell phone. And he called a contact at the airlines who verified that Tom Wilson had been on both flights and none in between.

And there hadn’t been enough time between the attacks and his flights for him to have driven the distance back and forth. Dalton ignored his pang of disappointment—especially as the other man wore a smug grin.

“Can I talk to my fiancée now?” he asked.

Dalton wished he could refuse, but this couldn’t possibly be the man who’d just tried to run them off the road the day before. And it wasn’t as if he was going to let the man be alone with her.

He would have Jared Bell or Blaine Campbell sitting with her for her protection. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t watch her reunite with her fiancé—not when he had so many feelings for her himself.

* * *

T
HEY
WERE
AT
the damn state police post. He couldn’t get them there. And he hadn’t dared to try running Agent Reyes off the road again.

It was too risky.

He slammed the motel room door behind him with such force that the windows rattled. He tossed his keys onto the broken plastic and glass already lying on the floor.

Something buzzed and then vibrated. His phone was ringing again. He knew who was calling—who had kept calling since that damn news report.