Читать книгу: «Agent to the Rescue»

Chapter One

The noose tightening around his neck, Dalton Reyes struggled to swallow even his own saliva. His mouth was dry, though, because fear and nerves overwhelmed him. He tugged at the too-tight bow tie and thanked God he wasn’t the one getting married right now.

He couldn’t imagine promising to love one woman for the rest of his life and then to spend the rest of his life trying to make that one woman happy. Even though he didn’t want that for himself, Dalton stood at Ash Stryker’s side as the FBI special agent vowed just that to Claire Molenski.

Ash turned and looked at him, his blue eyes narrowed in a warning glare. Realizing he’d missed his cue, Dalton hurriedly reached into his pocket for the ring. Why the hell had he wanted to be the best man? Wearing the monkey suit was bad enough, but having to keep track of the damn ring, too...

It was too much. He would rather have mobsters shooting at him than this pressure of the whole church watching him. At least the church was small. But it was hot and stuffy, too. Sweat beaded on his lip, but then his fingers encountered the band. And he pulled out the delicate gold ring. It was tiny—just like the bride.

The first time he had met Claire Molenski, he’d thought the little blonde was hot. But she looked like something else in that white gown—like an angel. Dalton had always preferred bad girls, the ones who wore too much makeup and too-little leather skirts.

As soon as the ceremony was over, he rushed outside and gulped some air.

“You’d think you were the groom,” a man teased him from the shadows of a huge oak. “With as much as you were sweating up there...”

“That’ll never happen,” Dalton replied with the confidence of a man who had never been in love and never intended to take that fall. “I won’t ever be anyone’s groom.”

Finally the man stepped from the shadows. He’d beaten Dalton outside, so he must have been there before the ceremony had even ended. Apparently, though, he had been inside the church long enough to see Dalton sweating at the altar. Since he’d left early, he didn’t seem to like weddings any more than Dalton did.

Then Dalton recognized him and realized why. “You’re Jared Bell...”

The man was a legendary FBI profiler. Recruited out of college into the Bureau, he already had a long and illustrious career for his young age. But he was almost more legendary for the serial killer he hadn’t caught than for all those that he had. The sick bastard who’d eluded him had had a thing for killing brides...

It probably hadn’t been easy for him to see Claire in that white dress and not imagine all those other brides who hadn’t lived long enough to wed their grooms. All those victims...

Jared Bell extended his hand to Dalton. “And you’re Agent Reyes.”

He should have been flattered that the profiler knew him. But then Dalton Reyes wasn’t so much legendary as notorious—for growing up in a gang but then leaving the streets to become a cop and then an FBI special agent assigned to the organized crime division.

“Nice to meet you,” he said. With a glance back at the church, he asked, “I take it you know Ash...”

The grinning groom stood on the stairs of the stuffy little chapel with his smiling bride clasped tightly against his side. Ash Stryker couldn’t take his hands off the petite blonde, but Dalton didn’t blame him.

Bell nodded. “Yes, I know Ash. Not as well as you do, apparently, since you were his best man.”

Reyes grinned at the surprise in the other man’s voice. “You thought it would be Blaine Campbell?”

Bell nodded again. “Stryker and Campbell were marines together.”

The two marines had known each other longer than Dalton had known either of them. So he was pretty sure that Blaine Campbell had been Ash’s first choice, but somehow he had wound up with the honor. Ash and Claire had told him it was because they probably wouldn’t have made it to the altar without him. A lot of people had recently been trying really hard to kill them. He had helped out, but he’d only been doing his job.

A job he loved. He still couldn’t believe that Ash was cutting back—no longer going undercover. Dalton shook his head and sighed. He had wanted to stand up as best man for Ash, but he didn’t agree with him.

His cell rang, saving him from making a reply to Jared Bell. He fished his phone from the pocket of his black tuxedo jacket.

“Good thing it didn’t ring in the church,” Bell remarked drily.

Dalton nodded in agreement. He probably would have been fired on the spot from his position as best man. He glanced at the screen of the cell phone. Why would the local police-post Dispatch be calling him?

“I have to take this,” he said “But I hope we get a chance to talk some more at the reception.”

Bell sighed. He probably thought Dalton wanted to talk about what everybody always wanted to talk about—that case that had never been solved.

Dalton clicked on his phone. “Agent Reyes here.”

“This is Michigan state trooper Littlefield,” a male voice identified himself. “I heard you might be in my area for a wedding.”

Littlefield had helped Campbell, Ash and Reyes apprehend some bank robbery suspects at a cottage in a wooded area nearby this chapel. It was how Ash had heard about the wedding venue. And Littlefield must have heard about the wedding because he’d been invited.

“I’m in your neck of the woods,” Dalton admitted. “Why aren’t you at the wedding?”

“I’m working,” Littlefield said. “I couldn’t get off duty. I had Dispatch patch me through to your cell. Are you working?”

Harder than he’d thought he would have to as best man. “Not at the moment...”

“What I mean is,” the trooper clarified, “are you still working that car theft ring?”

It seemed as if he was always working a car theft ring. He would no sooner shut down one operation before another would spring up. Sometimes he went undercover himself; sometimes he used informants, but he hadn’t failed yet to solve a case. This case was giving him trouble, though—probably because the operation was a lot more widespread than he’d originally anticipated.

“Yeah, I’m still working it.” He had recently put out a bulletin to state police departments and sheriffs’ offices to keep an eye out for any suspicious vehicles.

“I just passed a strange Mercedes heading down a dirt road,” Littlefield shared, his voice full of suspicion. “It looked vintage.”

A vintage Mercedes on a dirt road? It was unlikely that the car owner would have risked the paint or the suspension of the luxury vehicle.

“Where are you?” Reyes asked. “And how do I get there?”

“Aren’t you at a wedding?”

Ash would understand. Maybe.

Dalton had been chasing these car thieves for a while. But he hadn’t caught them—probably because their chop shop was off some dirt road in some obscure wooded area.

Like here...

He tugged his bow tie loose as he headed for his SUV. With its power-charged engine, he should be able to catch up to that Mercedes in no time.

* * *

THE BRONZE-COLORED MERCEDES fishtailed along the gravel road, kicking up a cloud of dust, as Dalton pursued it. He had caught up to it in less time than he’d anticipated. Now his anticipation grew. If he could follow it back to the chop shop...

But the driver must have spotted Littlefield’s patrol car following at a discreet distance. And the Mercedes had sped up to lose the trooper. The Bureau SUV was more powerful, though, and had easily passed the patrol car. Dalton had caught sight of the Mercedes, but had the driver caught sight of him yet?

Could he see the black SUV through the cloud of dust flying up behind his spinning tires?

Even if he hadn’t seen him, the driver wasn’t likely to go back to the chop shop now. He was more likely to try to dump the car since a trooper had seen it. Littlefield hadn’t gotten close enough to read the plate, though.

Dalton was getting close enough, but too much dirt obscured the numbers and letters. Actually, he couldn’t even tell if there was a plate on the car at all. Then the Mercedes accelerated again. The driver must have seen him.

Dalton pressed on his gas pedal, revving the engine. But his tires slid on the loose gravel. The road wasn’t driven that often, so it wasn’t well maintained. There were deep ruts, and the shoulders of the road had washed out into water-filled gullies on either side. If he lost control, he might wind up in one of those gullies. So he eased off the gas slightly and regained control.

A city kid born and raised, Dalton wasn’t used to driving on dirt roads. The driver of the Mercedes had no such problem. Maybe he had grown up around this area, because the car disappeared around a sharp curve in the road.

Dalton cursed. He had been so close. He couldn’t lose him now. He sped up and fishtailed around the curve, nearly losing control. The SUV took the corner on two wheels. Worried that he was going to roll the vehicle, he cursed some more. Then the tires dropped back down and the SUV skidded across the road—toward one of those gullies.

He braked hard and gritted his teeth to hold in more curses as the SUV continued its skid. He grasped the wheel hard and steered away from the ditch. Finally he regained control only to fight for it again, around the next curve. He skidded and nearly collided with the rear bumper of the Mercedes; it was the only part of the luxury vehicle that wasn’t in the ditch.

Maybe its driver hadn’t been as familiar with the roads as Dalton had thought—since he’d gone off in the gully himself. The tires of the SUV squealed as he braked hard again. He shoved the gearshift into Park and hopped out of the driver’s side. His weapon drawn from beneath his tuxedo jacket, he slowly approached the vintage Mercedes.

Its engine was still running, smoke trailing up from beneath its crumpled hood. The water in the gully sizzled from the heat of it. The Mercedes wasn’t going anywhere now. But the driver was gone—probably out the open passenger’s window.

Dalton lifted his gun toward the woods on that side of the road. The driver had disappeared into them. But he could be close, just hiding behind a tree. Or he could be following a trail through those woods to that chop shop Dalton was determined to find. Since he was a city kid, he would probably get lost. But he started down toward the ditch, anyway, to follow the driver into those woods.

Then the smooth soles of his once-shiny black dress shoes slipped on the loose gravel and the muddy bank. He started sliding toward the water—which he wouldn’t have minded falling into if the damn tux wasn’t an expensive rental. To steady himself, he grabbed at the Mercedes and braced his hand on the trunk. But then his hand slid the way his shoes had. He glanced down and figured out why when he saw the blood on his palm. It was also smeared beneath the dust across the trunk lid.

Dread tightened his stomach into a tight knot. Growing up where he had and working in the division he worked, he had already found more than his share of bodies in car trunks. But he suspected he was about to find another.

He had nothing on him to pry open the lid or to break the lock. So he took the easy way and kicked in the driver’s window, which started an alarm blaring. Then he reached inside for the trunk-lid release button. Fortunately the car wasn’t so vintage that it hadn’t come equipped with some more up-to-date features. The button clicked, and the trunk lid flew up, waving like a flag in the woods.

It wasn’t a surrender flag, though, because the driver had fled into the woods and apparently for a damn good reason, too. Even if the car wasn’t stolen, he would have had some trouble explaining the body in the trunk.

Sun shone through the trees of the thick woods and glinted off that trunk lid. It was such a beautiful day for a wedding. Dalton should have stayed at the stuffy little church and celebrated with his deservedly happy friends. Instead, he had nearly wiped out on some back roads and probably stumbled upon a murder victim.

He drew in a deep breath of fresh air to brace himself for what he would find in the trunk. Then he walked around to the rear of the Mercedes.

White lace, stained with blood, spilled over the bumper. He forced himself to look inside the trunk. The woman’s face was so pale but for the blood smeared on it. And her long hair, tangled around her head, was nearly as red as her blood.

He recognized the dress, since he had just seen a gown eerily similar to it. But that bride had been alive and happy. This bride was dead. He reached into the trunk to confirm it, his fingers sliding over her throat where her pulse would have been—had she had one any longer.

Something moved beneath his fingertips—in a faint and weak rhythm. He looked down again just as her eyelids fluttered open. Her eyes were a pale, almost silvery, gray, and they were wide with confusion and then fear.

She screamed and struck out, hitting and kicking at him, as she fought him for her life.

* * *

THE SCREAM STOPPED him cold, abruptly halting his headlong escape through the forest. He had heard that scream before—seconds before he’d thought he had killed the woman. Hell, he’d been certain he’d killed her.

How could she be alive?

It wasn’t possible...

More important, it wasn’t acceptable.

He had let the state trooper distract him. With his heart pounding in his chest with fear and nerves, he hadn’t known how to react to that police car behind him. At first he’d driven normally, hoping that the trooper wouldn’t notice the missing plate—hoping that he would give up following him for some more interesting radio call.

But the trooper must have called in someone else—some other agency—because then he’d noticed the black SUV. And his every instinct had screamed at him to drive as fast as he could—to outrun that vehicle.

Instead, he had let it run him off the road—into that damn ditch. He’d barely escaped the vehicle before the guy had run up to it.

In a tux...

What kind of government agent wore a tuxedo?

The kind that had happened into the wrong situation at the wrong time.

He had to go back. He couldn’t leave the woman alive. And if he had to, he would kill the man along with her. And this time, he would make damn certain that she was really dead.