Lisa Childs - Agent to the Rescue

The paramedic in the back shouted in fear.

The driver couldn’t regain control of the van and it flipped—over and over—hurtling Dalton over the seat and toward the windshield. If he went through it—if he lost consciousness—he risked losing the bride...

But then the accident would probably be enough to finish her off. She was already critically wounded. He held his breath and tried to brace himself.

But it was too late.

* * *

THE AMBULANCE LAY crumpled on its side in the ditch, but its lights flashed and sirens blared yet. With a gloved hand, he turned off the lights and sirens inside the state police cruiser. But he could hear an echo of the ambulance’s sirens in the distance.

More emergency vehicles were on their way to the scene. Maybe the trooper had called for more help. Maybe the agent had managed to get a call out before the ambulance had crashed. The agent was inside that crashed vehicle. He’d seen him climb into the ambulance with the woman—determined to protect her.

The agent had even shot at him; the windshield of the police cruiser bore holes too close to where his head had been. He shuddered at how close those shots had come to hitting him. Even with both vehicles moving, the agent had nearly struck him. He was a damn good shot. A dangerous man.

Maybe that was why he hesitated before approaching that crumpled ambulance. He didn’t know what he would find inside: dead bodies or a still-armed government agent.

The ambulance sirens grew weaker, while those sirens in the distance grew louder as those vehicles approached. He could hesitate no longer. He had to hurry. Before the other emergency personnel arrived, he had to make certain that both the woman and the lawman were dead.

* * *

HER HEART AND her head pounded with fear and pain. Strapped to the gurney, she had actually taken little impact from the crash. Since the gurney was anchored to the floor, she hadn’t been thrown around like the others.

The blond-haired paramedic who’d been in the back with her had bounced around like a rag doll and then crumpled against the side of the ambulance where it had come to rest in the deep ditch next to the road.

She couldn’t tell if the man was just unconscious.

Or...

A cry burned her throat, but she held it in—refusing to panic. Yet.

Strapped down and hanging on her side, she could only twist her neck to peer around the vehicle—to see what had happened to the others. To the FBI agent.

The driver was pinned beneath the steering wheel, so he remained in his seat. Like the other paramedic, he wasn’t moving. How badly was he hurt?

They had come to help her. But now they needed help. Because of her?

Guilt struck her with all the force that the ambulance had struck the ditch. Could this be her fault?

Could she have done something to cause this destruction—this pain? How much destruction?

She craned her neck, but she couldn’t see the agent. Had he catapulted out of the windshield? The glass was broken. But then, he might have shot it out. He had been shooting—trying to stop the other vehicle from running them off the road. According to the paramedics’ comments, the other vehicle had been a police car.

The trooper’s uniform had looked vaguely familiar to her. Had she seen him before? Was he the one who’d put her in the trunk?

Was there anyone she could trust? Special Agent Reyes had done his best to save her. But where was he now? Pinned beneath the vehicle when it had rolled?

She shuddered as she imagined the worst. And her head throbbed more with dull pain. The pounding wasn’t just inside her head, though.

Someone was hammering on the back doors of the ambulance—trying to open them. She struggled against the straps, but they held her fast to the gurney. She couldn’t move—she couldn’t escape. She could only wait for whoever had run them off the road to finish her off.

Chapter Four

Water seeped through the tuxedo, chilling Dalton’s skin. He awoke with a jerk—then grunted as his head slammed against metal. Stars danced behind his eyes as oblivion threatened to reclaim him. But then he heard the hammering and felt the force of it rocking the ambulance.

Fortunately he wasn’t beneath the vehicle. Instead of going through the windshield, he had grabbed hold of the dash and had somehow wound up wedged beneath it—between the passenger’s seat and the door. Water surged through that door from where the van lay on its side in the ditch. If he hadn’t awakened, he may have drowned.

But now, as the doors creaked and finally gave, he still could die because he had no intention of letting anyone hurt the injured woman more than she had already been hurt. He fumbled around on the wet floor, looking for his gun. Finally his fingers grazed metal. He closed his hand around it, but the barrel was stuck—wedged between the seat and the crumpled passenger door.

As he tugged on the Glock, he lifted his head to assess the situation. The bride, strapped to the gurney, was suspended on her side. Her silvery-gray eyes were open and wide with fear. She knew she was trapped. Then she noticed him.

And he saw hope brighten her face, infusing her pallid skin with a hint of color. Of life...

She was okay now.

But he wasn’t sure how much hope he offered her—when he couldn’t get his damn gun loose. So he turned away from her to focus on those opening doors. And he released his breath in a ragged sigh of relief.

* * *

WHEN THOSE AMBULANCE doors jerked open, Dalton had been relieved to see—along with his friends Blaine and Ash—Jared Bell. Now he was worried rather than relieved. While the FBI profiler hadn’t said much of anything in the hour since he had arrived at the accident scene, Dalton was pretty sure the man was going to try to snag his case and his witness.

As Dalton rushed into the hospital emergency room, he realized he was more concerned about losing the witness than the case. That concern worried him more. She was easy to find in the small rural hospital; two troopers stood outside the curtain where she was, while the blond FBI agent stood guard next to her bed.

“Is she okay?” he asked Blaine.

Dalton had managed to talk Ash into returning to his wedding, but that hadn’t eased much of his guilt over disrupting the reception. Unfortunately, the other agents had heard the trooper’s call for an ambulance and thought Dalton was the one needing medical attention. That was why they had all showed up when they had—at the perfect moment.

But none of them had caught the man who had driven the ambulance off the road. He had escaped them just as easily as he had escaped Dalton. And just like Dalton, no one had even gotten a glimpse of him.

In response to Dalton’s question, Blaine shook his head. Dread had Dalton’s stomach plummeting.

“Is she...?” He turned toward the bed where she was lying, her wedding gown replaced with a hospital gown. The blood washed away from her face, it was devoid of all color now. But her red hair was vibrant against the pillow and sheets. She couldn’t be gone.

Wouldn’t they have covered her face, her beautiful face, if she were dead?

“God, no, she’s not,” Blaine hastened to assure him. “But the doctors are concerned about her head injury.”

“Why isn’t she in surgery, then?” he asked.

He shouldn’t have stayed behind at the accident scene with Agent Bell. He should have ridden in the second ambulance, which had arrived to replace the crashed one, with the victim and the injured paramedics. But because he had stayed behind, he had been able to point out things to Bell that the man might not have noticed on his own—like how both the Mercedes and the trooper’s car had been hot-wired.

Had Bell’s serial killer known how to do that?