by Lisa Childs
She needed to fight him. But that shaking left her head reeling with dizziness and nausea. Her memory had returned, but she wasn’t completely recovered from the concussion. Summoning her strength, she wriggled and twisted, trying to break free of his hold. And then suddenly his hands slipped away as he dropped to the floor in front of her.
She looked up—expecting to see Agent Bell or even Dalton standing where Tom had stood. But it was Kenneth’s brother, Gregory Cunningham, wielding a gun. He must have struck Tom with the butt of it.
“Oh, my God,” she said with a shaky breath of relief. “I thought he was going to kill me. Thank you...”
But her gratitude turned to nerves as he stared at her with a strange expression, with no expression on a face that had always reminded her so much of Kenneth’s—until now. Now he looked nothing like his brother in appearance or demeanor. And, for some reason, he wore an ill-fitting uniform. A trooper’s uniform. From the badge on the pocket, she realized it was Trooper Littlefield’s uniform. Gregory turned the barrel of the gun toward her.
“What—what are you doing?” she asked.
A phone vibrated. He reached into his pocket for it, but his grip didn’t loosen on the gun. “Agent Campbell keeps calling...”
“That’s Agent Bell’s phone,” she realized. “What did you do to him?”
He shrugged. “I’m not sure if he’s dead or just extremely unconscious.”
She cursed him.
“Agent Campbell must be calling to report to him about Reyes’s condition,” he mused. “Now him—I’m sure he’s dead.”
She gasped as pain stabbed her heart. “No...”
“I had to get him out of the way,” he explained. “He kept messing up my plans for you.”
“Why?” she asked. “Why do you want to kill me?”
“I don’t want to,” he assured her. “I’ve always liked you, Elizabeth. I’ve always admired your drive and spunk. I even admire your loyalty.”
She edged backward—toward that office. If she could get inside and lock the doors...
“Then why have you been trying to kill me?” she asked. He was really the crazy one. Had he always been? Was that why Patricia and Kenneth had left her their daughter instead of him? She had always wondered.
“It’s really Kenneth’s fault,” Gregory said. “I thought my brother would leave me custody of Lizzie.”
She gasped again, with another jab of pain. “You killed them.”
“That was Kenneth’s fault, too,” he said. “He cut me off. Stopped giving me money. And without money, I’d lose Miranda.”
She flinched because she had advised Kenneth to stop giving his brother money that he’d lost anyway. Gregory had used Kenneth’s loans for risky investments—in get-rich-quick schemes to finance his wife’s lavish lifestyle. If he didn’t keep buying her the expensive clothes and cars she craved, his wife had threatened to leave him.
Elizabeth remembered Patricia’s disgust that her sister-in-law cared more about the money than she had about her husband. Patricia had believed in her vows—in sickness and health, in until death do we part...
Tears stung Elizabeth’s eyes as she realized that death had parted her friends. No. She had to believe they were still together—that they would always be together. If Gregory killed her, as he had Dalton, would she reunite with him?
But she wasn’t about to give up her life without a fight. She slid a little closer to the doors of the den that she had left open. “So you killed them because you thought you would get their money,” she continued. “You don’t care about Lizzie.”
“I’ll take care of her,” he promised.
She didn’t trust his promises the way she had Dalton’s. She wouldn’t put it past him to get rid of the little girl, too—once he was awarded custody.
“Kenneth and Patricia wanted me to take care of her,” she said. She’d assumed it was because they hadn’t liked Gregory’s mercenary wife. Now she realized that they might have known there was something wrong with him—that his desperation had driven him to madness.
“Kenneth and Patricia always got everything they wanted,” he said. “The degrees. The jobs. The house. The kid. Their lives were perfect.”
And he had obviously envied them that perfection.
He glanced down at where Tom lay unconscious on the floor, and she edged into the doorway of the den. “I should thank Wilson for showing up like he did,” Gregory said. “He’s making this easy for me.”
“You’re going to do to us what you did with Kenneth and Patricia,” she said, feeling nausea all over again at his sick plan. “You’re going to make it look like a murder-suicide.”
“It worked the first time,” he said.
She shook her head. “Dalton reopened the investigation.”
He shrugged. “Reyes is gone.”
“Agent Bell—”
“Gone, too,” he said.
She shuddered at his callousness. “Agent Campbell will look into everything, then,” she said. The men were too close to not look out for each other—even if some of them were gone.
“And he’ll blame Tom Wilson for it all,” Gregory assured her. And as he glanced down at the man again, she stepped back and slammed the office doors between them. She twirled the dead bolts even though she doubted they would keep him out very long.
Already he pounded on the doors. And as he pounded, a cry rang out from above as the noise woke little Lizzie.
She crossed the den to the exterior wall and pulled up a window. The opening was big. She could climb out onto the porch and disappear into the darkness of the acreage surrounding the house.
But then the pounding stopped.
“I’ll go get her,” Gregory shouted through the locked doors.
Elizabeth froze with fear—just inches from saving herself. She couldn’t do it. She stepped away from the open window and walked back to the door.
His shaky sigh emanated through the doors before he added, “I probably should have killed her with them—then I would have inherited the money straightaway. I wouldn’t have had to go after you. It would have been simpler.”
“But you care about her,” she reminded him. “She’s an innocent child.”
“She loved her parents, Elizabeth,” he said. “Isn’t it kinder to reunite her with them?”
She quickly twisted the dead bolts and pulled open the doors. “No,” she said. “Please don’t hurt her.”
She had promised Kenneth and Patricia that she would take care of Lizzie as if she was her own. She would gladly die for the child.
* * *
“YOU’RE GOING TO bleed to death,” Blaine warned him with a curse.
Blood saturated Dalton’s sleeve. But it was only a trickle from the wound now. He didn’t care about that, though.
“And you shouldn’t be driving,” Blaine added, gripping the armrest and the dash as Dalton careened around a curve.
He hadn’t trusted anyone else to drive as fast as he could—as he had to in order to get to Elizabeth and the little girl. But no matter how fast he drove, he worried he wouldn’t get to them in time.
“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.
* * *
DALTON 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.
* * *
ELIZABETH 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.
