Lisa Childs - The Agent's Redemption

Her hand trembling, she turned off the cordless and put it back down on the table beside the couch.

Why would she be in danger?

The serial killer only went after brides-to-be. She was not engaged. She wasn’t even seeing anyone.

She was safe. Wasn’t she?

Chapter Five

The silver car. The blood-soaked lace spilling out of the open trunk. Jared flashed back six years ago to finding Lexi’s car. Unfortunately, Becca had been with him when they’d come across the abandoned silver Chevrolet.

There had been no body but so much blood...

Now there was a body...

No matter how many victims he had seen over the years, horror and dread still clutched at his heart. How could a human do this to another human? How could they act so viciously and subject another person to so much pain and cruelty?

He shuddered. And he wasn’t the only one.

Special Agent Dalton Reyes’s usually tanned complexion had gone ashen, and he shook slightly as he stepped back from the trunk. “That could have been Elizabeth...”

Dalton had recently found a woman in the trunk of a stolen car he’d run off the road. Fortunately, that woman hadn’t been dead—just so injured that she had lost her memory.

“It wasn’t,” Jared said. “She’s alive.” And she had recovered her memory, as well.

Dalton expelled a ragged breath of relief. “She’s alive, and she’s amazing. I can’t believe she agreed to marry me.”

Jared glanced back over his shoulder and groaned. He’d taken a Bureau helicopter from the closest police post to Becca’s house; that was how he’d made such good time—arriving while the sun was still up. How the hell had the media already gotten wind of their finding a crime scene?

News station vans rolled into the middle of the Indiana wheat field, kicking up dust that shimmered in the setting sun. Jared gestured at the local police officers. “Keep them back. I don’t want any pictures of this scene leaking out.”

Before he’d had time to notify the family. He turned back to the trunk. The victim’s face was swollen and bruised but identifiable. It was Amy Wilcox. She stared up at him through open, glazed brown eyes; he only imagined the accusation in her gaze. The blame for not catching this killer before he’d killed again—before he’d killed her.

I’m sorry, Amy...

He’d kept apologizing to Becca, too. But now he knew why she’d been so reluctant to accept his apologies— because she owed him a bigger one.

Alex was his son.

His head began to pound, and he flinched. But he pushed the thoughts back. He couldn’t afford to be distracted now. He’d deal later with the shock and anger that was rolling through him like those vans through the wheat field.

Now he had to get to Amy Wilcox’s family—before the media did. But he wouldn’t do that until he’d made certain that the coroner removed her body from the scene without the media getting any photos of her.

Where the hell was the coroner?

Was he or she lost? The media had no trouble finding the field.

“Did you hear me?” Dalton asked.

If the other agent had been talking, Jared hadn’t heard him. Despite his best intentions, he was distracted—too damn distracted.

Becca had always distracted him but never more so than now—when he’d learned they had made a child together. He had a son...

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. He’d been doing a lot of apologizing tonight. “What did you say?”

“Elizabeth agreed to marry me!” He slapped Jared’s back. “I’m getting married—thanks to you!”

“Me?” He was shocked—not shocked like he’d been when Becca had told him he was Alex’s dad. But he was surprised that Dalton would give him any gratitude for getting hit over the head.

Dalton grinned. His color was back now. And if a guy could glow, Dalton was glowing. “Elizabeth and I feel like you’re part of the reason we’re getting married. If you’d been the jerk I thought you were going to be and took the case from me, I wouldn’t have fallen for Elizabeth. That’s why I want you to be my best man.”

“So you want me to be your best man because I’m not a jerk?” Jared shook his head. “I’m not so sure you’re right about that. If I’d really thought that the Butcher was after Elizabeth, I would have taken the case.” But he’d never really believed that the serial killer had grabbed Elizabeth—because she’d lived.

“You would have been right to take the case, then,” Dalton agreed with a quick, regretful glance in the trunk. “So will you do it? Will you be my best man?”

“How can you think about that now?” Jared wondered.

Dalton glanced in the trunk again and shuddered. “I know my timing stinks, but I don’t want to wait to marry Elizabeth.”

“Do you see this?” Jared asked.

“Of course I see it.”

“It’s a message,” Jared said. “He’s mad that someone tried to blame the attempts on Elizabeth’s life on him. He’s making it clear what is his work and that women don’t survive when he abducts them.”

“He’s a sick SOB,” Dalton agreed. “But you know that.”

“I know that he might try to get Elizabeth now—to prove that she wouldn’t have survived if he’d actually grabbed her. You shouldn’t get married now.”

Dalton sighed. “You’ve never been in love, have you?”

Jared sucked in a sharp breath as if his friend had slugged him.

And Dalton apologized. “I’m sorry. I almost forgot about that first victim’s sister...”

Jared had never been able to forget her. And now he never would. But he didn’t want to talk about Becca. “I know you love Elizabeth, so you should want to keep her safe.”

Dalton said, “I will keep her safe. And so will you. You’re going to stop him.”

“I’ve been trying for six years,” he reminded his friend. “I haven’t been successful yet.” He hadn’t even been able to establish a profile of the killer until the second victim. Since Lexi’s body hadn’t been found, he hadn’t known exactly how this killer killed until then.

“You will be,” Dalton said with absolute confidence.

The arrival of the coroner’s van saved Jared from a reply. Six years ago he’d been confident he would stop this killer—like he’d stopped so many others before and after him. Now he wasn’t so sure. But still, when he notified Amy’s parents and fiancé, he found himself making them the same promise that he’d made Becca.

He would get this guy. For them. For Amy. For all those other victims. For Lexi. And, even though she had denied him six years of his son’s life, for Becca. Maybe most of all for Becca.

He would stop this killer if it was the last thing he ever did.

* * *

REBECCA HADN’T MEANT to turn the television back on after Jared left. She really didn’t want to see the news—not when she was sure that Jared had rushed out because a body had been found. Amy Wilcox’s body.

The camera zoomed in on the open trunk of a silver car—and the blood-stained wedding gown spilling out of it. The scene in that fallow cornfield, so much like the one she and Jared had come upon, knocked her back six years. There had been so much blood...

But on the television screen, it wasn’t just a dress that had been found, like it had been with Lexi. Moments later another camera followed a gurney on which lay a black plastic bag—a body zipped inside it—to the coroner’s van.

The young woman had known Lexi—had been her friend. And now both women were dead. Gone. Forever.

Was Jared forever gone? Or would he be back? He’d only been gone a few hours.

But he had been so shocked when he left. So betrayed.

He’d apologized for thinking that Alex could have been his, for thinking that she could have kept a secret like that. He had given her too much credit, and now she was the one who owed him the apology. So many apologies for all the years she’d kept him from their son.