by Lisa Childs
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.
* * *
THEY 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.
He didn’t have to play the voice-mail messages to know what they said.
She’s supposed to be dead.
I paid you well to kill her.
Sure, he’d been paid well, but not enough to risk his freedom again. This was supposed to have been an easy hit. Thanks to Agent Dalton Reyes, it had been anything but.
He could have walked away. He would probably eventually wish that he had. But he had been hired to do a job. It wasn’t personal to him, but it was very personal to the person who’d hired him.
To save his own reputation, he had to kill the woman. But he was going to kill the agent, too. Because that had become personal to him.
Chapter Twelve
The man had come out of the conference room alone. She hadn’t seen Dalton again. Maybe he was done with her now that her fiancé was found. Obviously he trusted the man. If he hadn’t, he would have arrested him. Or he at least wouldn’t let him be alone with her.
Agent Bell stepped inside the room where Dalton had questioned her fiancé, and he closed the door. Except for a couple troopers standing behind a glassed wall, she was essentially alone with a stranger.
“How are you doing?” the man asked. “Should you be out of the hospital yet?”
“The doctor released me,” she said.
“But you don’t remember anything...”
She shrugged. “Amnesia can’t kill me.” But maybe it could—if she trusted the wrong person. She wanted to go to Dalton—to have his support and protection.
But she couldn’t count on him being around her always. He had other cases. She was just one.
“But the concussion...”
She lifted her hair and flashed him the small bandage. “A few stitches.” Or so. “And I’m fine. Really.”
He nodded. But she couldn’t tell if he was relieved or disappointed.
“Are we fine?” she asked.
He nodded again. “Yes, of course we are.”
But he hadn’t ever tried to reach for her—to embrace her—as Dalton had so many times. Despite the man’s good looks, she had no desire for him to touch her. She ha
d no desire for him at all.
“Then why didn’t you report me missing?” she asked.
Tom Wilson pushed a hand through his hair, tousling the golden strands. It was pretty hair, but it was the kind that was already thinning. It wasn’t thick and soft like Dalton’s hair.
“Like I just told the agent, we’re busy people,” he said as if already weary of repeating himself. She wasn’t going to get the answers she needed from him. “I was at a conference in Miami.”
So he wasn’t the one who had tried to kill her.
“And you were busy,” he continued. “You’re always busy.”
She heard the resentment in his voice. “I am?”
He sighed. “I’m sorry, Elizabeth. I know that you’re busy. But we have drifted apart since the baby.”
She gasped as shock gripped her. “Baby? We have a baby?” She shook her head. “No, no, no, there’s no way I would forget having a baby.” She couldn’t be that horrible a mother.
“Biologically she isn’t yours,” he said. “You became her guardian after her parents died.”
Her heart clenched with intense pain—a pain she remembered feeling. It was the first real emotion she had recalled. “Her parents?”
“Kenneth and Patricia Cunningham,” he said. “You roomed with them in college and during law school. They were your best friends.”
Shouldn’t he have been her best friend? How the hell had they become engaged?
Laughter tinkled inside her head—a woman’s laughter. Then a woman’s pain-filled cry as she gripped Elizabeth’s hand and the hand of a man. A baby’s cry echoed the woman’s...
Elizabeth’s head began to pound as the memories rushed through her mind like a movie in fast-forward. Panic pressing on her lungs, she struggled to breathe.
“Are you okay?” Tom asked. Instead of stepping forward, though, he looked toward the door of the closed conference room—as if he wanted Dalton to step in and take over for him.
She wanted that, too.
But the memories kept coming...of Kenneth and Patricia and little Lizzie. They had named her Elizabeth.
Tears stung her eyes, burning them. And a sob choked her as pain overwhelmed her. It was like losing them all over again. “Lizzie’s alone,” she said.
Tom shook his head. “She has a nanny. She’s fine.”
Elizabeth’s gut churned with guilt and fear. “No, a nanny isn’t fine. I promised Kenneth and Patricia that if anything happened to them I would take care of her like she was my own.”
“You remember?” he asked with shock. “Your memory returned?”
“I remember Kenneth and Patricia.” Mostly she remembered the pain of losing them. “I remember my promise to them. I need to honor that promise.” To honor her friends.
“You have,” Tom assured her. “But you have a job, too. I think you were going back to Chicago to handle something for your office.”
He thought? Did he have amnesia, too? Or hadn’t he cared where she was or what she was doing?
She must not have cared, either, because she couldn’t summon any memories of him. All that filled her mind now was images of a curly-haired baby—giggling and then crying as if her heart was broken.
And it had been broken when her parents died—just as Elizabeth’s had broken. All they had now was each other.
“You have to bring me to her,” she insisted.
Tom glanced toward that door again.
She could have pounded on the door. Or she could have called out for Dalton. But he didn’t know where baby Lizzie was. She knew her friends’ home was somewhere near here—somewhere in Michigan. She could envision the house that Patricia had decorated like that little honeymoon cottage Elizabeth had stayed in the night before with Dalton. But she couldn’t recall the road or the roads she would need to take to drive there.
Tom had been there. They had been together too long for him not to know. And they had been together too long for him to be a danger to her.
As he’d said, he had been in Miami when the man had tried to kill her. The attacker wasn’t him. It couldn’t have been him.
“You have to take me to her,” she demanded. “I have to see her now.”
* * *
“SHE’S SAFE,” JARED BELL assured Dalton as the profiler joined him in the conference room where just moments before Tom Wilson had sat across the table from him. “They’re talking in the reception area. He’s not going to try anything in the middle of a state police post.”
The guy was smart enough not to try to hurt her physically. But emotionally, she was vulnerable. With her memory gone, she could believe whatever the man told her. And he could lie to her about their relationship—claim that they were closer than they had obviously been.
He hadn’t even noticed her missing.
Dalton couldn’t imagine having a woman like Elizabeth Schroeder and not wanting to see her every day or at least talk to her. Tom Wilson might not be a killer, but he was a fool.
“He’s not the perp. He’s got an ironclad alibi.” Dalton sighed. “I’m not sure it’s such a good idea letting them talk, though. If he overwhelms her with information...”
“She’s a tough lady,” Jared said. He carried a thick file under his arm. That was the kind of agent he was—all cerebral, with his research and paperwork.
Dalton followed his gut and instincts and that voice in his head that sounded so much like his grandmother’s. His grandma would have loved Elizabeth Schroeder.
“Yeah, she is,” Dalton agreed. “She’s tough and maybe a little too brave for her own safety.”
“You regret her going back to the hospital yesterday to see Trooper Littlefield.”
“I regret nearly getting run off the road,” he said, “and I regret the reporters ambushing her.”
Jared Bell grimaced at the mention of reporters as he dropped onto the chair across from Dalton. “Yeah, but they probably were a necessary evil. We found out who she is. You kept one of your promises to her.”
“I’ll keep the other,” Dalton said. “I’ll find out who’s trying to kill her—even if I have to turn the case over to you.” Maybe that would be for the best—for Elizabeth—if he stepped back entirely. Then she could regain her old memories and her old life without him being a distraction.
Jared arched a dark brow. “What? Why?”
“I thought you’d be happy,” Dalton said. “You’ve been trying to hijack this case from me the minute I found her in that trunk.”
Jared shrugged but didn’t deny his intentions. “The bridal gown...it seemed connected.”
“There are no coincidences,” Dalton agreed. And if her fiancé wasn’t a viable suspect, then it was even more likely that Jared’s serial killer was involved.
But Jared Bell shrugged. “Maybe not accidentally.”
“You think someone was trying to copycat the Bride Butcher?”
The profiler nodded. “He would make a good scapegoat.”
“But it could really be him,” Dalton pointed out. “It hasn’t been that long since he killed last. He could have started killing again.”
“But why Elizabeth Schroeder?” Jared asked. “Since you gave me her name, I’ve checked her out.” He passed Dalton that thick file across the conference room table.
“She’s engaged,” Dalton reminded him. He needed no reminders himself. Even last night he hadn’t been able to forget that there was someone else out there, someone with a closer tie to Elizabeth than he had.
“But they haven’t set a date for their wedding,” Jared said.
“How do you know that?”
“Checked out their social media,” Jared said. “They’ve been asked when the big day is and both say they’re in no hurry to get to the altar. That they’re way too busy to plan a wedding anytime soon.”
That fit with what Tom Wilson had told him—about why he hadn’t noticed she was even missing yet. He’d been at a conference and she was always busy.
Dalton shrugged. �
�So...”
“So if there’s no date set, she wouldn’t have been getting fitted for a wedding dress,” Jared pointed out.
“The dress wasn’t hers,” he agreed. “A bridal shop had reported it stolen the day before I found her in the trunk.” Unfortunately they’d had no cameras and had no idea who’d taken the gown.
“Your guy is quite the professional thief,” Jared Bell mused. “Cars. Bridal gowns.”
“Yeah, he’s a pro.” Realization struck him like a blow. “He’s a hired killer.” So it didn’t matter that Tom Wilson had an alibi—that oh-so-perfect and prepared alibi. Dalton cursed. “He could have hired someone to kill his fiancée.”
“Seems like kind of an extreme way to break an engagement,” Jared said.
So extreme that it probably didn’t matter that he was inside a state police post. Dalton jumped up, knocking his chair over, and jerked open the door of the conference room.
But he was too late.
The lobby was empty. They were gone.
* * *
HE WASN’T GOING BACK. It was a damn state police post. He’d probably killed that trooper, so it was the last place he should be hanging around. But after listening to all those voice mails left for him, he’d gone back.
He had a job to do. And no matter how damn hard it got, he was going to finish it.
When they stepped out of those glass doors, he grinned. This was perfect.
Well, it would be better if she had been leaving with Agent Reyes. But Reyes would have protected her.
This man wouldn’t protect her.
He finally had his perfect opportunity. He waited until they got into the rental vehicle and turned out of the parking lot onto the road. Then he pulled out of the gas station from which he’d been watching them. And he began to follow the car. He didn’t wait long—the way he had with Agent Reyes, following them for miles.
He waited only until the rental sedan turned off onto a road that wound around an inland lake. The first hairpin turn he sped forward and struck the rear bumper of the sedan. It swerved off the road, hit the deep ditch and rolled.
It was so easy...
He braked. Then he grabbed his gun from the passenger’s seat. This time he would make damn certain that Elizabeth Schroeder was really dead.
