by Lisa Childs
“You weren’t sleeping,” Alex said. “You were just lying there with your hand on your gun.” Her precocious little boy missed nothing.
Jared had been protecting them. Her and his son.
She could see from the dark circles beneath his eyes that he hadn’t slept at all. And he was so tense that a muscle twitched along his heavily shadowed jaw.
“I didn’t know what I should tell him,” Jared said. He wouldn’t want to tell a child about a threat. “He didn’t believe that’s the way all FBI agents sleep.”
Alex snorted. “They would be too tired to catch bad guys if they never closed their eyes.”
He was definitely his father’s son—too smart.
The corners of Jared’s mouth turned up into a slight smile of amusement and pride. “He didn’t buy that I had too much coffee, either...”
“He wasn’t jumpy,” Alex said, “like you get when you have too much coffee.”
She nearly sputtered on the sip of coffee she’d just taken. Given that Jared had had his hand on his gun, she was glad that he hadn’t been jumpy. He might have shot their son if Alex had exploded out of his bedroom like he usually did. “FBI agents can’t be jumpy,” she said.
Alex nodded as if she’d just made a good point. With his intelligence, she always wondered what he would become. A doctor. A lawyer. An FBI agent...
The possibilities were endless for him...as long as whoever was watching her caused him no harm. She was glad that Jared knew now that Alex was his son. She should have told him so much sooner.
And she could wait no longer to tell their son. “Jared stayed last night because we need to tell you something.”
Jared sucked in a quick breath as if bracing himself for what she was going to reveal. But he already knew. He just didn’t know how Alex would react.
Neither did she.
“What?” Alex asked. “Are bad guys after us? Is that why he stayed?”
“No,” she assured her son. “Nobody’s after us—” She hoped. You’re being watched...
“But the man looking in my window—”
“Was just a reporter,” Jared said.
“They were here about Aunt Lexi,” Rebecca explained.
Her little boy nodded. He had seen Aunt Lexi’s face on the news before—had overheard her story before Rebecca had been able to find the remote and shut off the nightmare.
But the remote couldn’t shut it off. Only Jared catching the killer could stop the nightmare.
“Then what did you want to tell me?” he asked.
Panic had her pulse quickening, and she glanced at Jared. Should she tell? Did Jared even want to be a father?
That muscle twitched again in his cheek, but he nodded in response to the question she hadn’t even had to ask him aloud. They’d once been that connected—that in sync that they’d spoken to each other’s thoughts. And when they’d made love, they had instinctively known where to kiss, where to touch each other.
She shivered with another kind of awareness. But then Alex tugged on her arm, and his voice went all soft and shy as he fearfully murmured, “Mommy...”
She shrugged off her thoughts of Jared and focused on her child instead. Like his father, he also deserved the truth. “I want to tell you the answer,” she said, “to that question you keep asking me.”
His brow puckered with confusion. “I ask a lot of questions.”
She almost smiled. He certainly did. All his teachers exclaimed over how inquisitive he was—that was how he had skipped first grade and was already in second. But she was too nervous to be amused as she clarified, “The one question I haven’t answered yet.”
He sucked in a quick breath. “Who’s my daddy?” Then he glanced at Jared as the answer dawned on him. “Are you my daddy?”
Jared’s throat moved as if he was swallowing hard. Choking on emotion? Then he gruffly replied, “Yes.”
The little boy stared at him, his blue eyes narrowed in speculation. “We don’t look alike.”
“No,” Jared agreed. “You look like your mother.”
“And your aunt Lexi,” Rebecca added. She clung to the fact that a part of her sister lived on in her son. It made Lexi’s death seem less final to her.
But Alex was focused on Jared now. His voice quavered as he asked him, “Why haven’t you ever come to see me before?”
Jared glanced at her, leaving the explanations for her to make. The explanation or the excuses. But there was no excuse for what she’d done.
She had to swallow hard, choking on guilt, before she answered, “Jared didn’t know that you were his son—until last night, until after you were already in bed.”
“You should have woke me up,” Alex said. “You should have told me.” He must not have wanted to miss another minute with the father she’d denied him for six years.
“I should have told you both a long time ago,” Rebecca admitted. And she hoped that they could both forgive her someday.
“Why didn’t you?” Alex asked.
She couldn’t answer that honestly. It was too complicated for even a child as bright as Alex to understand. She wasn’t sure she understood herself why she’d never told them. “I didn’t know how...”
“To get ahold of me,” Jared finished for her. “I’ve been really busy.”
“Catching bad guys?” Alex asked him.
Jared nodded. “Trying to.” As if on cue, his cell phone rang. He hesitated, letting it ring a few times before pulling it from his pocket.
He may have just found out he was a father, but he was also in the middle of a murder investigation. “I have to...”
But he clicked off the phone without answering it. Then he continued, “I have to leave.”
“You got a bad guy to catch now?” Alex asked. Now the longing was in his gaze as he stared up at his father. He wanted to get to know him—wanted to be with him.
Jared nodded. “I’ll be back, though,” he said. And he crouched down to Alex’s level. “I’ll spend time with you, getting to know you.”
Alex nodded but tears shimmered in his eyes. Then he threw his arms around his father’s neck and clung to him.
And Rebecca suspected there were tears in Jared’s eyes, too, as his arms closed around Alex’s small body. But she couldn’t see clearly through her own tears.
Chapter Seven
Jared’s head had finally stopped hurting. Now the pain was in his chest—his heart specifically. It ached with loss. With fear.
He shouldn’t have left Becca and Alex. Not after the threat. And not after Alex had learned Jared was his father. Had he already let down his son?
“What’s the 9-1-1?” he asked as he walked into the office of the chief of the Chicago Bureau of Federal Investigations. If anyone else had sent him the text, he would have ignored it. But if he ignored Chief Special Agent Lynch, he would have been taken off the case, at the least, and out of a job at the most.
Lynch stood over his desk instead of sitting in the chair behind it. He could have been impatiently waiting for Jared—since he’d had to drive to the police post and take a helicopter to Chicago. Or he could have been just standing because the man rarely sat. Despite his position, Lynch was no bureaucratic paper pusher.
“The Butcher has claimed another victim,” the chief said. From the dark circles beneath his eyes, he didn’t appear to have had much more sleep than Jared had. Like Jared becoming a profiler at a young age, Lynch had become a Bureau chief at a young age. But in the past six years, he’d aged—getting more lines on his face and gray in his hair. The serial killer eluding them had affected him, too. “That’s a 9-1-1—one I thought you would have called yourself, Bell, after you identified those remains as Amy Wilcox’s. Where have you been since you made the death notification?”
“Following up on a lead.” But the photo of Lexi and Amy Wilcox wasn’t why he had gone back to Becca’s so late the night before.
The chief arched a dark brow over skeptically narrowed eyes. “Lexi
Drummond’s sister?”
“She’s been threatened,” he said.
“Why?” Lynch asked. “Is she engaged?”
“No.” At least Jared didn’t think she was. He hadn’t asked her about a possible fiancé or even a boyfriend. He’d been too consumed first with his case and then with her revelation that he was a father. “But she received a strange call late yesterday afternoon—someone warning her that she’s being watched and that she’s in danger.”
“So you put a protection detail on her?” Lynch asked.
“I don’t want to take any chances,” Jared said. And he wouldn’t with Becca and his son. At least not with their safety. Dare he take a chance to try to act like a father to his son? Would it hurt the boy more if he tried and failed or if he didn’t try at all?
Lynch uttered a weary-sounding sigh. “You’re right. With the Butcher, we can’t take any chances. We have to catch this bastard. Now.”
“Nobody wants him caught more than I do, sir,” he replied.
Lynch sighed again. “That’s not true. Someone else wants him caught more—the victims’ families. That’s why I called you here. Amy Wilcox’s fiancé is in the conference room. He has questions.”
“When I made the notification, I promised I would keep them apprised of the investigation,” he said, “that I would let them know when we discovered any new information. It hasn’t been that long—I have no new information.”
“He has questions,” Lynch repeated. “Even if you don’t have any answers yet, he needs to ask those questions. Go. Talk to him. Maybe ask some questions of your own...”
Jared had been keeping the chief apprised of his investigation, too, so he reminded him, “I already interviewed Troy Kotlarz as a possible suspect. He doesn’t fit the profile.” The profile he’d begun after the second victim was found and that he’d added to with each new victim. White male, thirties, single, charming but with few friends, professionally successful, personally unsuccessful—either jilted at the altar or broken engagement. Narcissist with a sadistic streak.
Lynch shrugged. “He may be worth another look.”
The chief had become the chief because he’d earned the position by being a damn good agent. So Jared nodded in agreement. “I’ll talk to him.”
But he hesitated outside the conference room. The man had experienced a loss that Jared couldn’t imagine. Becca wasn’t even his fiancée but the thought of her just being in danger...
His heart pounded fast and furiously in his chest. She had protection. She and Alex would be safe. He had to believe that so that he could focus on his job. He opened the door and stepped inside. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Troy.”
Kotlarz was a big man with prematurely thinning hair. His reactions and movements were slow. He seemed the exact opposite of the young and vivacious Amy Wilcox who’d been so athletic and adventurous. “I have no place else to be,” Troy replied. “Your coroner hasn’t released her body yet, so her parents can’t plan her funeral.”
Jared nodded. “We want to be thorough. We will catch him.” And there he went—making that promise he had no business making.
Troy jerked his head up, his eyes wide as he met Jared’s gaze. “You have new information?”
“Not yet,” Jared admitted. “Or I would have called you. Why did you come down here?”
“I know you can’t release her body yet,” the other man replied. “But when can you release her things?”
“Things?” And why was it so easy for the man to talk of his fiancée’s body? He was lucky to have a body to bury; Becca hadn’t had one. Maybe the chief’s instincts were still as sharp as ever.
“The engagement ring I gave her,” Troy said. “That was my grandmother’s. I really need to get that back.”
Jared bit the inside of his lip and nodded. But he pulled out his phone and checked the list he’d made of everything recovered from the crime scene. “However, I don’t see any record of a ring among her personal effects.”
Troy gasped. “Do you think someone stole it from the scene?”
Why would he think first of a cop or a crime scene tech? Why wouldn’t he blame the killer? Unless he was the killer? But if he was the killer, wouldn’t he have taken the ring when he killed her?
And why would he have killed the other women?
That was why Jared had ruled out the man as a suspect. He had no motive for killing the others. There was no connection between him and any of the other women...except maybe Lexi Drummond.
“We’ll search for the ring,” he assured the other man. “Do you remember anyone ever calling Amy ‘Root Beer’?”
Kotlarz shook his head. “No. She never even drank soda.”
“Her initials...”
“Oh...” The man didn’t just react and move slowly; he thought slowly.
Maybe it was Jared’s pride that didn’t want this man to be a viable suspect—since he couldn’t conceive how Troy would have eluded him for six years.
“Did Amy ever mention going to a support group for women who suffered from domestic abuse?”
The man’s face reddened and finally he moved quickly, jumping up from his chair. “I never hurt her!”
“She was in this group—” or so Becca thought “—six years ago.”
“I met Amy six months ago.”
And they were already engaged? That would have seemed odd to Jared if a couple other agents had recently married women they hadn’t known long. Even Reyes was talking marriage.
“Did she ever talk about an abusive ex?”
Troy’s eyes widened with sudden understanding. “You think he could have done this to her? There was some guy in high school who gave her a rough time. I don’t remember his name. And her parents didn’t know about him.”
“I’ll find out,” Jared assured him.
“And you’ll find the ring?” the man asked him hopefully.
He seemed to want the ring more than he wanted his fiancée’s killer found. Jared offered him a vague nod before showing him out.
“What do you think?” Dalton Reyes asked as he followed Jared into his office.
Files, with a thin sheen of dust, covered his desk. Because of the prior case and his concussion, Jared hadn’t spent much time in his office. And he didn’t want to be here now, either. He wanted to be with Becca and Alex.
“I think Troy Kotlarz is a jerk,” he replied, “but I don’t know if he’s a killer.” He would find and interview Amy’s high school boyfriend, though. He had another suspect to find, too—the one he’d promised Becca he would interview again. Lexi’s former fiancé.
Reyes said, “Well, I’ve got good news.”
“The crime lab found something? DNA?” Jared needed some evidence—any evidence—to lead him to the real killer. And convict him.
Reyes shook his head. “That must’ve been some concussion if you think they got results back in less than a day. This isn’t a damn TV show, you know.”
Jared sighed. “If only it could be that fast...”
Reyes sighed, too. “Unfortunately this is the real world. But the real world can be fast, too. Penny Payne called.”
“Is she a witness?” Jared asked. For six years he’d been looking for a witness. “Someone from the bridal shop?”
“She owns a wedding chapel in River City, Michigan,” Reyes said.
“River City?” No victim had been abducted from there, but he knew the place. “That’s where Special Agent Nick Rus has been working a case—for a year now.”
“Yeah, investigating the police and district attorney’s office,” Dalton replied. “The corruption runs deeper than he realized. Guess he reconnected with some family, too.”
“Rus has family?” Jared was surprised. He’d known the other agent a long time. Hell, they even shared an apartment in Chicago—when either of them was actually home. Nick hadn’t been for the past year. But when he’d been there, he’d never mentioned having any family. Jared had identified with that because he’d
been an only child, too. Like Alex...
With no one else to play with, he’d focused on school and excelled. Would Alex? His son looked nothing like Jared—except for being small for his age. Did he have any other of his characteristics? Or, because they’d never been around each other, were they nothing alike?
“You sure you should have checked yourself out?” Dalton asked. “You just zoned out. Are you feeling all right? Should I take you back to the hospital?”
“I’m fine,” Jared insisted. “Just wondering if you got hit in the head, too. I don’t know why you’re talking about some wedding chapel in River City.”
“Nick recommended Elizabeth and I get married there. Penny Payne is the woman who runs it. Her family is all bodyguards, so she can provide protection, too. She handles everything. She called me because she had a cancellation. Elizabeth and I are getting married next weekend!”
“Next weekend?” It was crazy to consider a marriage now. “That’s too soon.” It didn’t give him enough time to find the killer and prevent him from trying to kill Elizabeth. When she’d first been found, the media had dubbed her the one who’d gotten away from The Bride Butcher. The killer would no doubt want to prove that she wouldn’t have gotten away from him.
“Feels like forever to me,” Dalton said.
Jared snorted in derision. “You must’ve gotten hit in the head. I know you love Elizabeth, but you’re putting her in danger.”
“It’ll be fine,” Dalton insisted. “This killer isn’t going to get past professional bodyguards and FBI agents. So are you in?”
Jared had to be in—he had to make sure nothing happened to Dalton’s bride. “Of course.”
“So you’ll be my best man? I asked you last night, but you never answered me.”
He’d been distracted the night before. “You were serious about me being your best man?”
He hadn’t thought he was. Dalton Reyes had many friends—many more friends than Jared had made in the Bureau or outside of it. He was still the loner he’d grown up as—whereas Reyes had never met a stranger.
“I told you that Elizabeth and I feel like you helped bring us together. And you nearly died trying to protect her and little Lizzie.”
