The Agent's Redemption (Special Agents At The Altar 4)

by Lisa Childs

  He shook his head. “But that would be breaking with my MO.” He turned back to Lexi. “You know it,” he said. “You gave it to me.”

  “How?” she asked. “How did you know exactly what happened there?”

  He smiled again—that arrogant, smug smile. “Kyle Smith had a mole inside the Bureau. Some stupid female agent that fell for his slick smile—she kept him apprised of all the details of the case.”

  “And he told you?” Rebecca asked.

  “Not intentionally,” Harris said. “Probably not even consciously. He was a fool. And a braggart. It was easy to play him for everything he knew.”

  Except this last time. Kyle must have figured out he’d been aiding a killer, and he hadn’t wanted to help anymore.

  Why hadn’t help arrived for Rebecca? There had been agents all around earlier. Had they left to bring George to jail? Poor innocent George who would lose the mother of his children if Harris had his way.

  The agents must have left, or they would have heard this conversation through the mike she wore. They would have come to her aid and Jared’s. Instead, he was bleeding to death on the floor. And as Harris swung that knife toward her, Rebecca realized that she would soon be bleeding, too.

  She lifted her hands, but she didn’t know how she would be able to fight off that blade. That sharp blade that had already killed so many other women.

  “No!” she screamed as that knife slashed through the air on its descent toward her chest. Her heart...

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Jared was right-handed, but with that arm numb and bleeding, he had to use his left hand to grab for and fire his weapon. So he squeezed the trigger and emptied the magazine, hoping that he hit the son of a bitch.

  Harris’s body tensed as at least one bullet struck him. But he didn’t drop the knife, he clutched it harder as he lunged down on Becca.

  Screaming filled the room. But it was Lexi—not Becca. She just lay still—beneath Harris’s still body. Had Jared been too late to save her?

  He cursed himself—furious that this killer had gotten the jump on him twice. And now he might have killed the only woman Jared had ever loved...

  He lurched across the short space separating him from their tangled bodies. With one arm, he dragged Harris off her. He’d had to drop the gun. If the guy held the knife and was still alive, he could plunge that knife into Jared’s heart. But if he’d already killed Becca, Jared had no heart left to hurt. And Harris had no life left to take anyone else’s. His limp body slumped onto the floor, and he stared up at Jared through eyes wide with shock and fury.

  He’d died knowing that he’d failed. He hadn’t killed the woman he’d wanted to kill. He hadn’t killed Lexi Drummond. She scrambled to her knees, tears streaming down her face. Together they moved toward Becca.

  Her eyes were open, too, and wide with shock. Her hands clasped her stomach. Jared cursed, and Lexi gasped. But then he noted that no blood oozed between her fingers. Instead of being plunged in her body, the knife was stuck in the floor next to her arm.

  He had missed. Not only had he died but he’d died without taking either Becca or Lexi with him. Jared should have felt relief or even triumph. But his heart hadn’t stopped pounding with fear for Becca’s safety.

  “Are you okay?” he asked her. He had to touch her, so he slid his fingers along her cheek. She was so beautiful but so pale and fearful. “Becca?”

  Her breath shuddered out in a sigh of relief. “You’re alive. I was so afraid that he’d killed you.”

  “I was afraid for you,” he said. “And you...” He turned to Lexi. He shouldn’t have cuffed her; he’d made her helpless to defend herself. But that hadn’t stopped her from defending and trying to protect her younger sister.

  He needed to find the key to the cuffs. But he couldn’t take his good hand from Becca’s beautiful face.

  But then the door to the dressing room opened and he pulled his hand back to reach for his gun.

  “You didn’t flash SOS,” Rus said as he stepped inside with his gun drawn.

  “That’s because I had this,” Jared said.

  “You just flashed once, so I knew you were alive,” Rus said. “We held back because—”

  “He would have shot us all if you’d tried breaking through the door,” Jared said.

  “We heard it all,” Dalton added. “Rebecca was wearing a mike.”

  “So you released my husband?” Lexi asked.

  “We caught him trying to break in,” Dalton said. “And we heard what you and he did to your sister.”

  Jared pulled out the key to his cuffs and handed it to Dalton. “Let her go. She was just trying to protect her sister.”

  “But she faked her death,” Rus added.

  Jared stared down at the body of the dead man. Then his gaze went to the huge knife shoved deep into the floor. “To escape the Butcher...”

  He didn’t blame Lexi for what she’d done. He blamed himself. He should have listened to Becca. He’d gotten hung up on Harris having an alibi for Lexi’s abduction, so he hadn’t looked at him as a suspect in the other murders like he should have. If he had, he could have saved some of the other women. Harris had had no connection to them, though. He’d randomly picked brides—probably from their engagement notices in the paper—and as he’d killed them, he’d imagined Lexi. If Jared had caught Harris earlier, Lexi would have been able to come home to her sister and the rest of her family. It was more his fault than Lexi’s that she’d had to stay away so long. “I’m sorry,” he told her.

  Dalton unhooked her, and she pulled her arms in front of her and rubbed her wrists. “I understand why you would arrest me,” she said. “You must be furious over what I did.”

  “I understand why you had to,” he said. “And that’s why I’m sorry. I failed you. I should have caught him a long time ago. So you could have come home.”

  Tears spilled out of Lexi’s eyes. “It wasn’t your fault. None of it was.”

  She might see it that way, but he doubted that Becca did. Would she ever forgive him for not listening to her? And even if she could, he wasn’t certain that he could forgive himself.

  “We need to get you to the hospital,” Nick said. “You should have gone after you took the blow to the head. Now you’ve been shot...”

  Maybe it was the head wound or the loss of blood from the gunshot wound or maybe it was just hearing Rus say it aloud, but Jared suddenly got very dizzy. His vision blurred, and the pain in his head and shoulder intensified. He groaned, then dropped as oblivion claimed him again.

  * * *

  HER HEART POUNDING and nerves frayed raw, Rebecca paced the hospital waiting room. She’d nearly lost Jared so many times in just a few hours. He couldn’t have saved her life only to leave her life. Tears blurred her vision. She loved him so much. Alex loved him so much.

  Her little boy couldn’t lose his father now—when he’d only just learned who he was. That was her fault. It was all her fault.

  She hadn’t let Jared know about his son. And then she’d committed to that crazy plan to flush out a killer. She was a physician’s assistant, not an FBI agent. She hadn’t been prepared for anything that had happened.

  “I could help him,” she murmured. “I should have helped him at the scene. I could have stopped the bleeding...”

  “Harris wouldn’t let you near him,” Lexi reminded her. “He would have shot you, too.”

  She shuddered as she remembered how close she’d come to being Harris Mowery’s latest and last victim. She had felt the air move from the slash of that sharp knife. If Jared hadn’t shot him...

  Lexi stepped into the path of her pacing. When Rebecca moved to the side, Lexi matched her movement and caught her. Then she pulled her into her arms and hugged her. Rebecca held herself stiffly. If she gave in to the tears, she probably would never stop crying.

  But she felt Lexi’s tears dampening her shirt and her skin as she clutched her closely. And Rebecca found her arms lifting and
wrapping around her sister. She hugged her back. She was real. She was warm and soft and real. She was alive. And the tears began to fall.

  “I’m sorry,” Lexi murmured. “I’m so sorry...”

  At first Rebecca thought she was offering the kind of apology people offered at funerals as an expression of sympathy. But Jared couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t...

  She pulled back from her sister and looked around the waiting room. His friends were there—but for Blaine who’d stayed with Alex. Instead of pacing like her, they stood in a corner—talking and laughing. Trading stories about Jared.

  They knew him better than she did. He’d been part of her life such a short time—six years ago—and a short time now. He couldn’t leave her. But even if he survived his wounds, he would still probably leave her. The killer was caught now—dead now.

  She trusted that he would stay part of Alex’s life. But what about hers?

  “He has to be okay,” she murmured.

  “He is,” Lexi said. “He was so focused on saving you. He won’t leave you.”

  “He did,” Rebecca said, pain cracking her voice. “He left me six years ago. He didn’t think I really loved him. He thought I was just using him to get over losing you.” Tears threatened again, but she blinked them back. “But I never got over you.”

  “The news has been reporting that your son is his,” Lexi said. “I have a nephew...”

  “Yes, Alex,” Rebecca said, and her heart warmed with love for her amazing child. “But I didn’t tell Jared when I got pregnant. He just recently found out that he’s a father.”

  “So I’m not the only Drummond who kept a secret for years,” she said. “Do you hate me for what I put you through?”

  “No,” Rebecca said, and she pulled her sister back into a hug. “I could never hate you. I’m so glad you’re alive. Were you telling the truth—do you and George have kids, too?”

  Lexi smiled again and reopened the wound on her lip. “Two girls. Becky is five, and Amanda is three.” She blinked back tears. “The same years apart that we are. I think they’ll be as close as we were.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Becca asked. “Why didn’t you tell me what a monster Harris was?”

  “He would have killed you,” Lexi said. “I worried that he still would when you kept publicly accusing him. That’s why George and I have kept an eye on you all these years. I’ve seen Alex...” Her voice cracked with emotion. “I can’t wait to meet him, though. And I can’t wait for you to meet my girls.”

  All Rebecca had wanted the past six years was to have her sister back—to share her life the way she wished they’d been doing before Lexi disappeared. But she couldn’t think about her now. She couldn’t think about anyone or anything but Jared.

  “He has to be okay,” she murmured again.

  The door to the waiting room opened, and a doctor stepped inside. It was the ER doctor who’d treated Jared. She rushed forward—along with Nick Rus and Dalton Reyes, who asked, “How is he?”

  “He’ll be fine,” the doctor assured them. “We did a CT scan. He has a slight concussion.”

  “What about the gunshot wound?” Rebecca asked.

  “The bullet went through his shoulder,” the doctor replied. “He needed a few stitches and an IV. He’ll be fine. Would you like to see him?”

  Rebecca stepped back as the agents stepped forward. They turned to her. “You can go first,” Nick Rus offered.

  She shook her head. “No, that’s okay. I’m sure he’ll want to talk to you about the case. He’ll want to get everything finished up.” She stepped back again—until she bumped into Lexi.

  Lexi’s hands gripped her shoulders and steadied her. The agents left—anxious to see their friend. And instead of holding her, Lexi shook her, albeit gently. “What are you doing?” she asked. “You want to see him. You’ve been so worried about him. Why didn’t you go see him?”

  Rebecca shook her head. “I don’t know...”

  “You know,” Lexi said. “Tell me.”

  “Because it’s over,” she said. “Harris is dead. The Butcher has been stopped. It’s over.”

  “The killing is over,” Lexi agreed. “My having to play dead is over. But you and Jared—that doesn’t have to be over.”

  “It was just an act,” Rebecca said. “A trap. We never intended to get married.”

  Lexi uttered a soft sigh of disappointment. “So Jared was right six years ago. You didn’t really love him.”

  Self-righteousness filled Rebecca. “No, he wasn’t right. I did love him. I really loved him. It had nothing to do with filling any void you’d left. It was about him. I loved him.”

  “‘Loved’?” Lexi asked. “Past tense? You don’t love him anymore?”

  “No...” If anything, she loved him more. He was such a good man. Such a good father for only just finding out that he was one. He and Alex had a bond—in their genius—that she would never share. But it was more than that. They were close already.

  And Rebecca had seen what their life could be like as a family, taking care of and playing with Alex together. And then she and Jared sleeping together every night, wrapped up in each other’s arms.

  “So you don’t love him anymore,” Lexi said.

  “I didn’t say that,” Rebecca said. She wouldn’t lie to her sister. She wouldn’t lie about her feelings for Jared.

  “So you do love him?”

  Maybe Alex had gotten his inquisitiveness from his aunt. “Why do you keep asking? Why do you care?”

  “Because I want to know,” Lexi said. “You willingly used yourself as bait for a serial killer. So I thought you were brave, but you’re acting like a coward now—when it comes to admitting your feelings.”

  “I want to know, too,” a male voice added.

  She turned around to find Jared standing behind her. Even though the doctor hadn’t said anything about discharging him yet, Jared was dressed already—in his bloodied shirt and coat. And she was more afraid of facing him than she’d been of facing the serial killer.

  What if she admitted her feelings and he didn’t return them? That would hurt worse than if Harris Mowery had plunged that knife into her heart.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  She wasn’t going to answer him. Jared couldn’t blame her. He had put her on the spot. She looked as if she wanted to be anywhere else than standing in that waiting room with him and her sister.

  She probably wanted to get back to Alex. She’d been gone a long time.

  “Forget it,” he said. “You don’t have to answer that. I’ll take you back to the apartment—back to Alex.” Maybe he would hook her up to Alex’s lie detector test and ask her again. Then he would know if she told him the truth.

  “So I can pack?” she asked. “So Alex and I can leave.”

  And he realized why she hadn’t answered her sister’s question. Because she wasn’t sure how he felt. Because he’d never told her.

  “I don’t want you to leave,” he said. “Ever...”

  Then she was in his arms, clutching him closely. “Are you really okay?” she asked.

  “Yes.” They’d given him some painkillers that had dulled the ache in his head and his shoulder. But the narcotics had done nothing for his heart—only she could fix that.

  “Are you sure you should be checking yourself out?” she asked anxiously.

  “I’m fine,” he replied, but it was a lie. “At least I will be once you tell me how you feel. Do you want to pack up and leave?”

  She shook her head. “No,” she replied. “I don’t want to leave. Ever...”

  Warmth and relief flooded his heart. Her admission made him feel much better than the painkillers had. “That’s good,” he said as he ignored his wounded shoulder and clutched her closer. “Because I’m never going to let you go again. I love you, Becca.”

  He didn’t care that he’d announced it in front of her sister and his fellow agents who’d joined them in the waiting room—probably when they
hadn’t been able to find him in the ER.

  “I love you,” she said. “I’ve always loved you.”

  “I know,” he said. “I shouldn’t have doubted you six years ago.” But he’d been scared. He hadn’t wanted to put his heart on the line if her feelings hadn’t been real. And even if they’d been real, he’d doubted they would have lasted through her disappointment in his being unable to find her sister’s killer.

  “I should have told you about Alex,” she said as she pulled back. “We’ve both made mistakes. We’ve both hurt each other.”

  He nodded. “But we have the rest of our lives to make it up to each other.” He dropped to one knee right there in the waiting room. And he pulled out a jeweler’s box. He’d bought the ring the day before. He hadn’t had time to get it sized. It probably wouldn’t fit. Maybe she wouldn’t even like it. But he’d wanted to have the ring for this moment—for when the killer was caught—and it would be safe to propose. He opened the box and held it out to her. “Will you marry me, Becca? Will you become my wife?”

  She said nothing; she just stood there, staring at him like she’d been staring at Lexi when he’d kicked open the door to the bride’s dressing room. As if she couldn’t believe her eyes. “Are you serious?” she asked.

  “You can hook me up to Alex’s lie detector test and ask me again,” he offered with a chuckle. “But yes, I’m serious.”

  Her eyes widened in surprise.

  “I guess I’m an old-fashioned guy,” he admitted. “I don’t want you to live with me forever without making this official. And as I understand it, we already have a license and a wedding all planned out.”

  “For a fake wedding...”

  He shook his head. “Let’s make it real, Becca,” he urged her. “Say yes. Become my wife.”

  “Yes,” she said. Then she shouted, “Yes! I want to marry you. I want to become your wife! I love you!”