Free Agent to the Rescue (Special Agents At The Alter Book 3) by LISA CHILDS

and gestured her inside in front of him. “We’re home,” he said.
    Hope flickered in her heart and must have shone on her face because he clarified, “My home.”
    She stepped into his place and stared in awe at the tall windows looking out over the river. Like the hall, it was all exposed brick and timber and metal ductwork.
    “How much do FBI agents make?” she murmured. “Maybe I should become one.”
    With another punch of the console by the door, it slid closed again. And suddenly she felt very isolated and alone with a man she really barely knew.
    Sure, he had saved her life. But what else did she know about him?
    He had been in a gang. He’d grown up on the streets. Had he really given up that life? Or was he using it to finance his lifestyle?
    He looked around him with a strange mix of pride and sadness in his dark eyes. “I have my grandma to thank for this place.”
    “She lived here?”
    “No, we lived in South Side.”
    “We?”
    He nodded. “She raised me...in a tiny little studio apartment above a convenience store. She worked three jobs and barely spent a dime—saving it all for me to go to college someday. I used that money to buy this condo.”
    “You didn’t go to college?”
    “I’ve got my bachelor’s in criminal justice,” he confirmed, “but my work as a gang informant and a couple scholarships paid for my tuition. I didn’t use any of her savings or life insurance money until I bought this place.”
    Maybe it was because she knew nothing about her own life that she was so interested in his—or maybe it was just that she was interested in him. “When did she die?”
    “Before I graduated high school,” he said. “She got confused...” His usually grinning face contorted with a grimace of pain. “And she got into it with some gang members...”
    Now the pain was in his voice. Like the pounding in her head, she could feel it, too. She reached for him, clutching his hand as he had so often clutched hers to offer comfort and support.
    His voice cracked with emotion when he continued, “She died...”
    She gasped in horror. “They killed her?”
    His head jerked in a sharp nod. “A confused old lady. And they showed her no mercy.”
    “That’s when,” she said with sudden realization, “that’s when you figured out what was right and what was wrong.”
    “What?”
    “It was something your friend Claire said—that you weren’t like Agents Campbell and Stryker, who always knew right from wrong,” she explained. “She said that you had to figure it out for yourself.”
    He shook his head. “No, Grandma taught me right from wrong,” he said. “I just hadn’t paid any attention to her—I hadn’t listened to her—until she was gone.”
    She didn’t realize she was crying until she felt the dampness on her face. “I’m so sorry.”
    He shrugged off her sympathy. “That was a long time ago.”
    But like Mr. Schultz, he wasn’t over the loss or the pain. For Dalton, it was what motivated him to be such a good agent. That motivation had saved her life.
    “Don’t cry,” he said as he lifted his free hand to her face and wiped away her tears. “Don’t cry...”
    “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I shouldn’t be crying —”
    “Oh, you should,” he said. “You have every right to cry, but for yourself, for everything you’ve lost. You shouldn’t be crying for my loss.”
    She shrugged. “I don’t know what I lost. Maybe I should be happy I don’t remember.” She glanced down at that ring on her hand—the hand that was holding Dalton’s. “Especially if my fiancé is the person who put me in that trunk.”
    Dalton sighed. “You don’t know that.”
    “Why hasn’t he filed a report that I’m missing, then?” she asked.
    He spoke slowly, almost reluctantly, when he said, “There could be another reason.”
    That reluctance had her stomach flipping with dread. “Another reason.”
    “You already considered it,” he reminded her. “That he