fine,” he said again.
Color rushed to the blonde’s pale-skinned face. “Good. Now I feel a little less guilty for threatening your life when I realized you ditched our wedding to chase down a stolen car.”
He didn’t blame her for being angry with him and could just imagine the words she had probably silently mouthed about him. “I’m sorry, Claire.”
She pulled away from her husband, rushed forward and hugged Dalton. “I’m so glad that you did.” Then she turned toward the bed and smiled at the patient.
“I’m glad, too,” the red-haired woman said, “since he saved my life.”
“He does that,” Claire said. “Saving lives is kind of his thing.” She moved closer to the bed and extended her hand. “I’m Claire Stryker.”
Ash chuckled. “She keeps introducing herself to everyone—even her dad.”
The redhead took Claire’s hand in hers. “I wish I could tell you my name, but...”
“You really don’t remember anything?” Claire asked.
“No.”
“We will find out who you are.” Dalton reiterated the promise that, according to Jared Bell, he’d had no business making. “But in the meantime, we need to call you something.” Besides redhead...
“Special Agent Campbell suggested Jane Doe,” she reminded him. “I guess that is what unidentified females are called...” But she hadn’t liked it because Jane Doe usually referred to unidentified dead bodies.
But he’d thought she was dead when he had first opened that trunk. He resisted the urge to shudder at the thought of her being dead.
“We could call you Mercedes,” he suggested. He had hesitated to bring it up the day before, but it was better than Jane Doe.
“Mercedes?” she and Claire asked in unison.
“It’s the kind of car he found her in,” Ash explained. “Of course Reyes would go with the name of a car.”
He whistled in appreciation of the vintage Mercedes. “She was a beautiful car...” Before she’d been put in the ditch. And now he knew who owned her. The car. He hoped that there was no guy out there who thought he owned the woman. But she had been put in the trunk like so much baggage...
Claire’s blond brows drew together as she considered the choices. “Jane or Mercedes?”
The redhead shrugged as if she didn’t care what they called her. “It doesn’t matter.”
“We need to find out your real name,” Claire said.
“We will,” Dalton said, but he felt a frisson of unease over how easily he was tossing out these promises. He had never been that guy—like Blaine or Ash. He wasn’t the marine. He wasn’t the hero. He was just the guy who worked hard because his job was his life. It was all he had. It was all he wanted, though.
“I’m really good with computers,” Claire said, which was a gross understatement of her world-renowned hacking skills. “Maybe I could do some digging—”
“I already have a team on it,” Dalton said. “They’re using facial recognition to try to link her to online media pictures. It’s being handled, and you two have a plane to catch.”
“You sure you don’t want our help?” Ash asked. His offer sounded sincere, but Dalton wouldn’t blame him if it wasn’t.
Selfishly, he would love their help. Claire was a genius and Ash was a legendary agent and former marine. But there was no way that Dalton would mess up any more of the Strykers’ plans. They had been through hell to earn their much-deserved happiness.
“I doubt this has anything to do with terrorism or national security,” Dalton said—since that was Ash Stryker’s specialty with the Bureau.
“Then maybe Jared Bell is who you need,” Ash suggested.
The redhead shook her head again despite the fact that the motion had her wincing in pain. Then she turned toward Claire. “You agreed with me,” she said. “You agreed that I’m not married. So if I’m not a bride, I couldn’t be a victim of the Bride Butcher.”
She had heard them yesterday. He’d thought she was sleeping, but she had heard everything he and Blaine and Jared Bell had said in her room. Now he flinched—with regret. He didn’t want to keep anything from her, but there were some things she hadn’t had to hear...like anything about the sadistic serial killer.
If that was who had abducted her, it was probably better that she never remembered what had happened to her. She would never recover from the nightmare of confronting such a monster.
* * *
PANIC OVERWHELMED HER, stealing away her breath. But she was actually less afraid of having a serial killer after her than she was afraid of losing Agent Reyes. He couldn’t pass off her case to someone else.
“The victims of the Bride Butcher aren’t married yet,” Agent Stryker said. “He abducts the women at their last fitting for their wedding dress.”
She shook her head—not in denial of what he claimed but in denial that she could have been at a fitting for a wedding dress. “No...”
“Do you remember something?” Claire Stryker asked. “Something that makes you think you’re not really engaged?”
“I can’t remember anything...” She stared at the newly married couple. Their love was palpable—like another presence in the hospital room. “But if I was married or engaged, wouldn’t I remember...him?”
“Maybe you don’t want to remember,” Dalton suggested. He apparently suspected that was who had hurt her.
Was she such a horrible judge of character that she would have fallen in love with a monster?
The petite blonde stepped closer to the bed and reached for her hand. She twisted the ring on her finger.
“What are you thinking?” she asked. Such intelligence shone in Claire’s eyes that she wanted to hear her opinion.
“It looks like this ring has been on your finger for a while,” the other woman replied.
Her stomach pitched. And yet the person who’d put that ring on her hand hadn’t even filed a missing persons report for her? What kind of man was her fiancé? The monster Dalton Reyes apparently suspected he was?
Agent Stryker glanced at his watch and said, “If we’re going to make our flight, we should get going...”
“We should stay,” Claire told her husband. “We could help...”
“You could,” Dalton agreed. “But you’re not. You’re going to leave for your honeymoon and have a wonderful time.”
Claire hesitated.
Even
