Agent to the Rescue

* * *

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?

But then, Dalton’s car thieves had never taken a hostage before.

Whose case was this?

Her heavy lashes fluttered against her cheeks as she lifted her lids and stared at him. “You’re back...” Her breath shuddered out with relief.

Relief eased the tightness in his chest. She wasn’t dead...

“Where are these doctors?” he asked Blaine. But he didn’t look around for the ER physicians; he couldn’t pull his gaze from hers.

“She doesn’t need surgery,” Blaine said.

“But the head wound...” If her head was bandaged, it must have been beneath her hair, because he couldn’t see any gauze or tape. “It isn’t a GSW?”

Blaine replied, “She wasn’t shot.”

Dalton uttered a sigh of relief—which Bell echoed. Until now, the profiler had barely paid any attention to the victim. Of course, as a profiler, he was all about the perp. Did he intend to link this case—and her—to his serial killer?

“I have a concussion,” she said. “The neuro specialist said that’s probably why I can’t remember...”

“You can’t remember?” Bell asked. “Anything...?”

She glanced at him but turned back to Dalton, as if seeking assurance that she could trust the stranger. Earlier he had convinced her that she could trust Blaine. Hell, Blaine Campbell was well-known for his protectiveness. Dalton wouldn’t have trusted her safety to anyone else—not with a man out there determined to kill her.

Dalton hesitated only a moment before nodding that she could trust Bell, too. The guy was legendary for his intelligence and determination. Only one killer had escaped him in all the years he’d been a profiler.

“I don’t remember anything,” she said. “But him...” She lifted her hand toward Dalton. “I just remember him lifting the trunk lid...”

“Nothing else?” Bell asked. “You don’t remember anything that happened before that?”

She closed her eyes as if searching her mind for memories. Or maybe she was just exhausted.

“She’s in no condition for an interrogation right now,” he admonished Bell.

“The doctors said her concussion is serious,” Blaine added. “She lost a lot of blood from the head wound, too, so she’s really physically weak.”

Her eyes opened again. “I am not weak.”

“She’s not,” Dalton agreed. Just as he had told her earlier, he repeated, “She’s very strong.” She had survived two attempts on her life.

“I could handle an interrogation,” she said. “I would love to answer your questions—all of your questions—if I had any answers. But I can’t tell you anything about how I wound up in that trunk. I can’t even tell you my name.”

Tears glistened in her eyes, but she blinked furiously, fighting them back. He suspected they were tears of frustration. He couldn’t imagine losing all of his memories—to the extent that he didn’t even know his name. As he had when she’d been bleeding in the trunk, he reached out and clasped her hand. At that time he had been urging her to hold on to life; now he wanted her to hold on to him.

She clutched at his hand and squeezed. “Since you can’t interrogate me, I’m going to interrogate all of you. I need answers. I need to know who I am and what happened to me.”

He had been right about her. She was strong—hopefully strong enough to handle the truth, whatever it was.

“Does she have any other injuries?” he asked Blaine.

“I remember what the doctor told me,” she informed him. “I just don’t remember anything before you opened that trunk.”

He didn’t want to upset her by asking her how else she might have been injured, but it was important to know what kind of attacker they were dealing with. A sexual predator? Anger coursed through him. He wanted to find this guy. And he wanted to hurt him for hurting her.

“What are your other injuries?” Jared Bell asked the question now, no doubt because he was trying to profile her attacker.

She shivered even though a few blankets covered her hospital gown. He squeezed her hand, offering comfort and reassurance, and she offered him a smile. God, she was beautiful—so beautiful that his breath stuck in his lungs for a moment.

“What you’re thinking,” she said, “it didn’t happen.” She shuddered now—in revulsion at the thought and in relief. “I have some bumps, bruises and scrapes—”

“In addition to the head injury and amnesia,” Blaine finished for her.

“Amnesia,” she bitterly repeated. “I need to know who I am. You’re all in the FBI. You must know something about me.”

“Contrary to public opinion,” Blaine said, “we don’t have files on everyone. So we don’t know your identity. We don’t know anything yet.”

“We checked the missing person’s report in the area,” Agent Bell said. “No one’s reported a bride missing.”

She glanced at Blaine and then Jared Bell before focusing on him again. “None of you have any answers,” she said with a ragged sigh of resignation and weariness. “You don’t know who I am or why I was in the trunk of that car, either.”

“We don’t,” Dalton admitted.

“So what do I call myself?” she asked. And now her voice sounded weak, thready, as exhaustion threatened to claim her.