The Agent's Redemption. Lisa Childs

was the coroner?

      Was he or she lost? The media had no trouble finding the field.

      “Did you hear me?” Dalton asked.

      If the other agent had been talking, Jared hadn’t heard him. Despite his best intentions, he was distracted—too damn distracted.

      Becca had always distracted him but never more so than now—when he’d learned they had made a child together. He had a son...

      “I’m sorry,” he murmured. He’d been doing a lot of apologizing tonight. “What did you say?”

      “Elizabeth agreed to marry me!” He slapped Jared’s back. “I’m getting married—thanks to you!”

      “Me?” He was shocked—not shocked like he’d been when Becca had told him he was Alex’s dad. But he was surprised that Dalton would give him any gratitude for getting hit over the head.

      Dalton grinned. His color was back now. And if a guy could glow, Dalton was glowing. “Elizabeth and I feel like you’re part of the reason we’re getting married. If you’d been the jerk I thought you were going to be and took the case from me, I wouldn’t have fallen for Elizabeth. That’s why I want you to be my best man.”

      “So you want me to be your best man because I’m not a jerk?” Jared shook his head. “I’m not so sure you’re right about that. If I’d really thought that the Butcher was after Elizabeth, I would have taken the case.” But he’d never really believed that the serial killer had grabbed Elizabeth—because she’d lived.

      “You would have been right to take the case, then,” Dalton agreed with a quick, regretful glance in the trunk. “So will you do it? Will you be my best man?”

      “How can you think about that now?” Jared wondered.

      Dalton glanced in the trunk again and shuddered. “I know my timing stinks, but I don’t want to wait to marry Elizabeth.”

      “Do you see this?” Jared asked.

      “Of course I see it.”

      “It’s a message,” Jared said. “He’s mad that someone tried to blame the attempts on Elizabeth’s life on him. He’s making it clear what is his work and that women don’t survive when he abducts them.”

      “He’s a sick SOB,” Dalton agreed. “But you know that.”

      “I know that he might try to get Elizabeth now—to prove that she wouldn’t have survived if he’d actually grabbed her. You shouldn’t get married now.”

      Dalton sighed. “You’ve never been in love, have you?”

      Jared sucked in a sharp breath as if his friend had slugged him.

      And Dalton apologized. “I’m sorry. I almost forgot about that first victim’s sister...”

      Jared had never been able to forget her. And now he never would. But he didn’t want to talk about Becca. “I know you love Elizabeth, so you should want to keep her safe.”

      Dalton said, “I will keep her safe. And so will you. You’re going to stop him.”

      “I’ve been trying for six years,” he reminded his friend. “I haven’t been successful yet.” He hadn’t even been able to establish a profile of the killer until the second victim. Since Lexi’s body hadn’t been found, he hadn’t known exactly how this killer killed until then.

      “You will be,” Dalton said with absolute confidence.

      The arrival of the coroner’s van saved Jared from a reply. Six years ago he’d been confident he would stop this killer—like he’d stopped so many others before and after him. Now he wasn’t so sure. But still, when he notified Amy’s parents and fiancé, he found himself making them the same promise that he’d made Becca.

      He would get this guy. For them. For Amy. For all those other victims. For Lexi. And, even though she had denied him six years of his son’s life, for Becca. Maybe most of all for Becca.

      He would stop this killer if it was the last thing he ever did.

      * * *

      REBECCA HADN’T MEANT to turn the television back on after Jared left. She really didn’t want to see the news—not when she was sure that Jared had rushed out because a body had been found. Amy Wilcox’s body.

      The camera zoomed in on the open trunk of a silver car—and the blood-stained wedding gown spilling out of it. The scene in that fallow cornfield, so much like the one she and Jared had come upon, knocked her back six years. There had been so much blood...

      But on the television screen, it wasn’t just a dress that had been found, like it had been with Lexi. Moments later another camera followed a gurney on which lay a black plastic bag—a body zipped inside it—to the coroner’s van.

      The young woman had known Lexi—had been her friend. And now both women were dead. Gone. Forever.

      Was Jared forever gone? Or would he be back? He’d only been gone a few hours.

      But he had been so shocked when he left. So betrayed.

      He’d apologized for thinking that Alex could have been his, for thinking that she could have kept a secret like that. He had given her too much credit, and now she was the one who owed him the apology. So many apologies for all the years she’d kept him from their son.

      She couldn’t call him, though—even if she hadn’t thrown away his phone number all those years ago. He was in the middle of what was now another murder investigation. He had a family to notify.

      A killer to find...

      Would he find him now? Would he look where she had been pointing him? Where Lexi had pointed her?

      Had Harris known Amy Wilcox, too?

      She turned off the television, shutting off the blond-haired man she realized now was Kyle Smith. Over the years he had hounded her more relentlessly than the others—wanting that follow-up interview, wanting to open up all her pain again. But he hadn’t been interested in just Lexi. He’d wanted Rebecca to talk about FBI profiler Special Agent Bell, too. Like Jared, he hadn’t wanted to talk about the real killer, either. Harris Mowery hadn’t been newsworthy to him.

      Maybe she could find what the FBI profiler and investigative reporter had failed to find—evidence leading to the real killer. She reached for the plastic tub of Lexi’s photos and letters and journals and dragged it across the floor to the couch where she sat.

      Rebecca had been so busy taking notes during class and studying that she’d had no time for journaling. But Lexi had written every night—sometimes just a short paragraph or sometimes pages. Remembering the date on the photo Jared had showed her, Rebecca reached for that year—the year that Lexi had disappeared. The journal cover was neon green with yellow and orange stripes. It was bright and happy like Lexi had always seemed. But inside those pages was another story—a dark story. This was the journal in which Rebecca had found those photos—of the battered and bruised Lexi.

      Jared had been right: it was too great a coincidence that the women had been photographed together the month that Lexi had disappeared—especially when that woman later disappeared like Lexi had.

      She had looked through this journal earlier when Jared had been there—after he had looked at it and determined that there was no mention of Amy Wilcox. The photos had distracted and angered her then. Now she focused on what Lexi had written. While there was no mention of Amy, Lexi had written several references to meeting someone she had nicknamed Root Beer. Amy’s initials were the name brand of a popular root beer.

       Could it be?

      It was something Lexi would have done—something cute and funny. But they hadn’t met that way. Lexi had met Root Beer at a support group for battered women.

      Harris had been battering Lexi. Who had been battering