Agent to the Rescue. Lisa Childs

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       Chapter Three

      The man had drawn his gun again. But she wasn’t afraid of him this time. She was afraid for him. A shadow had fallen across the road behind him. And that soft click of metal must have been another gun, already cocking...

      The bullet would hit the man first—before it hit her. He had positioned himself so that it would. He had positioned himself to protect her.

      Maybe he wasn’t who or what she’d thought he was. Maybe he wasn’t the person who had hurt her. Maybe he wasn’t a monster. But how had he found her?

      “Who are you?” she whispered. But she wasn’t asking for just his name.

      “FBI,” he identified himself—not to her but to whoever had come up behind him. “Put down your weapon...”

      A man uttered a ragged sigh of relief. “Agent Reyes, I couldn’t tell if that was you or not...from behind...and in a tux...but of course you were at the wedding...” The man’s sigh became a gasp as he peered around the FBI agent and saw her in the trunk. “Is that the bride?”

      “No,” the agent replied. “Not the bride from the wedding I was at anyway. I don’t know who she is. I found her in the car we were pursuing.”

      Unlike the agent who wore a tuxedo, this man was wearing a vaguely familiar-looking uniform. It was tan and drab like the dust coating the car, but he had a badge pinned to his chest. He was also a law enforcement officer.

      She breathed a slight sigh of relief. Maybe she had been rescued—if only she remembered from what...

      “Where’s the driver?” the state trooper asked. He was shorter and heavier than the agent—with no hair discernible beneath the cap of his hat.

      The FBI agent gestured toward the woods. “He ran off before I could even get a look at him. And then I found her in the trunk. She needs medical help.”

      She heard the urgency in his voice and knew her situation was as critical as she feared it was.

      “Does your phone or radio work?” the agent asked the officer. “I can’t get a signal.”

      The other man grabbed at the collar of his shirt and pressed a button on the device attached to it. “We need an ambulance.”

      They didn’t need the ambulance. She did. She had been badly injured. All the blood was hers. No wonder she felt so weak—too weak to even pull herself out of the trunk. Too weak to fight anymore.

      “Help’s coming,” the man called Agent Reyes assured her.

      He had already helped her—when he had stopped whoever had been driving the car and opened the trunk for her. She wanted to thank him, but she struggled for the words—for the strength to even move her lips.

      “Shh,” he said, as if he sensed her struggle. “You’re going to get medical attention soon. The ambulance is on its way.”

      But she was afraid that it would be too late.

      “Hang in there,” he urged her.

      She shook her head and dizziness overwhelmed her, making her stomach pitch and pain reverberate in her head like a chime clanging against the insides of a bell.

      “You’re strong,” he said. Instead of clasping her wrists, he took her hand and squeezed it reassuringly. “You must be strong, or you wouldn’t still be alive. You’re a fighter. You can hang in there.”

      She had suspected he was lying to her earlier—when he’d told her she would be okay and especially when he had urged her to trust him. Now she was certain that he was lying. She had never felt weaker than she did right now. At least she didn’t think she had...

      Memories still eluded her.

      “What’s your name?” he asked.

      She blinked, trying to focus on his face again. He really was quite handsome—with that tanned skin, those dark eyes so heavily lashed and his thick, black hair. It was a little long—longer than she would have thought a government agent would be able to wear his hair.

      “What’s your name?” he asked again. Moments ago he’d shushed her when she’d tried to talk. Now he was getting insistent, as if he needed her name in case she didn’t survive until the ambulance arrived.

      She gathered the last of her strength and admitted in a raspy whisper, “I don’t know...”

      Her memories weren’t just eluding her. They were completely gone, as if they had seeped out with her blood—leaving her mind entirely blank.

      “I don’t know...” she murmured again...just as oblivion returned to claim her.

      * * *

      “WHERE’S THAT DAMN AMBULANCE?” Dalton demanded to know. Maybe the trooper had called only minutes ago for help, but it felt like hours—with the young woman lying unconscious in the trunk of the car.

      Dalton had pressed her veil onto the wound on the back of her head, trying to stem the bleeding. But the fabric was flimsy.

      Trooper Littlefield pointed down the gravel road where he must have abandoned his squad car, since he’d come up behind Reyes on foot. “I can hear them coming now.”

      The faint whine of sirens reached his ears, too. And in the distance a cloud of dust rose up into the trees.

      “Help’s coming,” he told the woman, hoping that she could hear him even though she was unconscious. “Stay with me. Help’s coming.”

      Then he turned back toward Littlefield. The trooper was older than him—shorter and heavier. And he was sweating so badly that it streaked from his bald head down his neck to stain the collar of his tan shirt. He probably hadn’t chosen to walk the rest of the way down the gravel road. Had СКАЧАТЬ