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* * *
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.
“Jane Doe,” Blaine suggested.
She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “That makes it sound like I didn’t survive. Like I’m a dead body.”
Dalton had another suggestion. But he didn’t want to upset her. “We’ll find out your real name,” he said. “And how you wound up in that trunk. I promise you that we will find out.” He squeezed her hand again.
While she wasn’t weak, she was exhausted, and her eyes closed again as sleep claimed her.
“You shouldn’t have made her any promises,” Jared Bell admonished him.
“Why not?” Because the profiler intended to steal the case from him?
“It isn’t like you,” Blaine agreed. “You always swear you’re not going to make anyone any promises. You’re never getting married.”
“I’m not marrying anyone,” Dalton anxiously corrected him. That was a promise he’d made himself long ago. “I’m just going to find out who she is and how she wound up in that trunk.”
“But if nobody reports her missing and she doesn’t have DNA on file, there might not be any way to find out who she is,” Bell cautioned him. “You can’t risk putting her picture out there. You can’t risk a news report about her.”
“I wouldn’t risk it,” Dalton assured him. He couldn’t risk kooks coming out of the woodwork trying to claim they knew her or cared about her—not in her vulnerable state.
“Why not?” Blaine asked. “Her attacker obviously knows she’s still alive, or he wouldn’t have tried running the ambulance off the road.”
Jared Bell shook his head. “The last thing her attacker needs is any publicity...”
Dalton wasn’t worried about her attacker; he was worried about her.
“But it might be the only way,” Blaine said, “since the doctors said she might never regain her memory.”
Even while his heart sank for her, Dalton shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I will still find out who she is and what happened to her.” And he would find out without putting her in even more danger.
* * *
SHE MIGHT NEVER regain her memory.
She had only closed her eyes to hold back more tears—not to sleep. So she’d heard what the agent had said.
She had already heard the doctor say it, too, though, so the pronouncement wasn’t a shock. But hearing it again made it more real. She might never remember her life before the moment that Special Agent Dalton Reyes had opened the car trunk and rescued her.
Her oldest memory was of him—standing over her looking all handsome in his black tuxedo with his bow tie lying loose around his neck. If not for the trunk and the concussion and the blood, it might not have been such a bad memory. He was such an attractive man. But he wasn’t just a man. To her, he had become a hero.
The FBI agents must not have realized that she wasn’t sleeping, because they spoke freely over her—as if she wasn’t there. Since she didn’t remember who she was, it was almost as if she didn’t really exist.
She had no name. No history.
“You didn’t find anything at the crime scene to reveal her identity?” It must have been the blond man—Agent Campbell—who’d asked, since he had been the one assigned to protect her in the second ambulance. Fortunately, the paramedics from the first ambulance had had only minor injuries from the crash. They’d ridden along with her, too, to the hospital.
“No,” Dalton replied. “The glove box was empty, and there was no license plate on the car. I’ll have to run the vehicle identification number to find out whose name it was titled in last.”
Hers?
She hadn’t even seen the vehicle. She had no idea in what kind of trunk she had been found.
“The car was hot-wired, though—like Trooper Littlefield’s patrol car had been,” he continued. “This guy’s a pro.”
“So you think he’s part of that ring of car thieves you’ve been tracking?” Agent Campbell asked.
“Definitely.”
“Have your car thieves taken a hostage before?” the other man asked. Back at the crash site Dalton had introduced him as Agent Bell. She could remember all of their names; it was her own she couldn’t recall.
Dalton said nothing in reply to Agent Bell’s question before the man asked another. “And would they risk returning to the scene to reclaim that hostage?”
Now Dalton cursed. “I know what you’re up to,” he said, as if he was accusing the other agent of something nefarious. “You’re going to try to make this your case.”
She almost opened her eyes then so that she could protest. She wanted Special Agent Reyes on her case—and not just because he’d promised to find out who she was and what had happened.
Maybe it was because her oldest memory was of him—maybe it was because he had saved her life—that she felt so connected to him. Even dependent on him...
She had no sense of herself. Her only sense was of him. But the only thing she actually knew about him was that he was an FBI special agent. She knew nothing of his life. She’d heard him say he was never getting married, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t involved with someone. That he didn’t have kids.
“I hope it’s not my case, Reyes,” the other man replied with grave brevity. “I don’t want to think that he’s back—that he’s killing again...”
“She’s not dead,” Dalton said.
“She would have been—if you hadn’t stopped him,” Agent Bell said. “But you didn’t really stop him. He came back and hot-wired the trooper’s car. He tried again.”
“But he didn’t kill her,” Dalton said. “It’s not him—it’s not your serial killer. Or she would be dead. Some of his victims may not have been found, but nobody’s ever escaped him. It’s not the Bride Butcher.”
Bride Butcher...
The words chilled her, but she suppressed a shiver and a shudder of horror and recognition. The name sounded vaguely but frighteningly familiar to her.
But why would the killer be after her? She was no bride. Then she realized there was a slight weight on her left hand, something hard and metallic encircling her ring finger. Was she engaged? Married?
“I hope it’s not him,” Agent Bell said again, “because if it is, he’ll keep trying until he kills her.”
So she might not have lost only her memory. She could still lose her life...
* * *
BY THE TIME he had made it to the hospital where she’d been taken, the place was crawling with FBI agents and state troopers—just as the crash site had been.
He had just about had those crumpled doors of the ambulance open when those other vehicles had arrived on the scene. He’d slipped back into the woods just as two men dressed in tuxedos, like the dark-haired agent, and another dressed in a suit had rushed to the aid and protection of the crash victims.
He had moved too quickly into the concealment of the dense forest for them to see him. And they had been too preoccupied with rescuing the others to notice him watching them.
The way he was watching them now—at the small hospital near the Lake Michigan shoreline. There were so many of them: agents and state troopers and even some county deputies for added security. So he would have to be careful—because he was damn well not going to get caught.
So he would have to bide his time until the perfect opportunity presented itself. And, eventually, it would. He wasn’t going to give up; he wouldn’t stop until he had finished this.
