Revealing: PAVAD: FBI Romantic Suspense, #10

By Calle J. Brookes

ENEMIES.

     LOVERS.

         A DEADLY HUNT. 

FBI Agent Paige Daviess is good at what she does. Her appointment to the best FBI division in the country is proof of that. She makes a difference, protecting vulnerable children from the same horrors she'd faced when she was young. Paige will do the same with this latest local case she's been assigned.

Paige looks at the victims and sees herself in each of their faces. No one had been there to protect those girls, anymore than someone had been there to protect her when it had mattered most.  

Now one of her past horrors has returned to haunt her, even as she tries to find the answers. He wants to take from her everything—and everyone—she loves. He intends to make her suffer while he does it. Paige's only hope is the one man who has always made her question her worth as an FBI agent since the moment she met him.

★  SHE GETS UNDER HIS SKIN COMPLETELY.  ★

Internal Affairs supervisor Mick Brockman lives by the rules. Rules kept agents in the field safe. Kept them alive. Mick knows far too intimately what happens when an agent goes off the rails. People get hurt. Sometimes they get killed. He's dedicated his life to making certain that the rules are followed, and the agents in PAVAD are kept as protected as he can make them.

No one gets under his skin like his younger sister's partner, Paige Daviess. The woman is far too reckless for the FBI. She belongs behind a desk—where she can't draw trouble her way so effortlessly.

But as the killer gets closer, it becomes clear that his agenda has been to get to Paige all along. Mick will stop at nothing to keep Paige safe from the past that threatens her once again.

Even if it means breaking the rules he prizes so much...

 

 

 ◆Don't miss other PAVAD titles: Beginning, Waiting, Watching, Wanting, Second Chances, Hunting, Redeeming, Running, Revealing, Stalking, Ghosting, Burning, Gathering, Falling, Hiding & Seeking. ◆

• Language: English
• Publisher: Calle J. Brookes
• Release date: Jul 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781386033899

Book preview

PROLOGUE

HE watched the car as it pulled out of the college parking lot. It was a small school, an offshoot of a main campus, and focused on performing arts. The woman looked like the sister she didn’t know she had. Long legs, long hair, dark eyes, and a thin build. A beautiful laugh. A sweet soul. That made this even harder.

He was about to shatter this young woman’s trust in a way he would never forgive himself for. But what other choice did he have?

He could not lose his family; he had already lost his soul several months earlier. He’d never thought he’d betray the company he’d worked for since he was in his midtwenties. It had provided for his family for over thirty years now. It had sent three of his four children through college, and it had paid for his wife’s cancer treatment until her death three years ago.

It had been good to him.

But it was his job that had brought him to this low point. The job and his fourth child. His son had made some seriously bad decisions since his mother’s death. And now he had to bail the boy out again.

He’d made a decision four months ago when the first telephone call came—give over the information the caller wanted or watch his son go to jail for a decade or more for his latest stupidity.

A trade of a woman’s whereabouts versus his son’s life. It had seemed like such a simple, logical choice. But he should have known—once a blackmailer got his hooks into you, they never stopped.

He shouldn’t have been so stupid. And he should have let his son face the consequences of his actions.

But now he had to face the end results of his own choices.

And that involved this beautiful young woman.

He pulled his car out in front of hers. It was a rainy night, and she was driving cautiously. But he knew how to set her up. How to take advantage of her youth and inexperience, and even Mother Nature.

She didn’t stand a chance.

He braced himself for impact.

Everything went according to plan.

She ran up to his car to check on him, sweet and concerned.

She reminded him of his baby daughter, who was probably a year or so younger. That made him feel like even more of an evil bastard.

He feigned a pang in his chest, and she helped him to stand.

That was all it took for him to sink the syringe into her shoulder. He caught her when she collapsed. He placed her carefully in his trunk, then returned to her car. He drove it back to its original parking spot, grabbed her purse and a battered gym bag from the front seat, and climbed back into his driver’s seat.

He’d effectively kidnapped the young woman in less than ten minutes. And no one had seen a damned thing.

CHAPTER 1

IT was the kind of life you could never escape. Not really. No matter how many trappings of normalcy she put on it, she would always have that dark connection that she could not sever.

At least in the world she lived in.

Paige Daviess walked away from the crime scene. She kept walking until she got outside. She’d been in the warehouse for way too long.

Why?

She wanted answers to those questions, but she’d long known she wouldn’t ever get those answers. The profilers she worked with could tell her theories and statistics and information from their own considerable experiences, but it would never fully tell her why some monsters existed.

Why they chose the most vulnerable to target.

Thirteen young women—the oldest probably no older than Paige’s own twenty-eight—were dead in the piles of old blankets they’d called their beds.

The youngest girl was no older than her landlord’s teenage daughter. The victim’s hair had been just as golden red as Gracie’s.

Paige had had to turn away. She kept seeing Gracie lying there.

What do we know? Her boss—and brother-in-law—Sebastian asked as she stepped around the back of the bureau-issue SUV he’d arrived in. She’d hated to call him in today—he was about to become a father any day, and he needed to be at home with her sister.

Absolutely nothing yet. Thirteen females, most likely vagrants. I’ll let you see for yourself. How’s Carrie? She’d wanted to take a few days off to be with her sister, but it hadn’t been possible.

Telling herself she’s not worried. That she’ll be just fine. Running through birth statistics. A faint smile touched his mouth. She loved how he loved her sister. She’s beautiful, perfect.

I’m sorry to drag you out today.

Don’t be. I’m not here long. Ed is assigning a temporary team leader, and I wanted to be here when he showed up. Smooth over any problems.

Who? She tried to think of who was free and available to lead a team temporarily.

Brockman.

Mal? He had his own team, and she seriously doubted Ed Dennis—head of the PAVAD directorate—would be moving an established team leader to Team Three. Not when Team Two needed him. It made more sense for Mal’s sister Alessandra—Paige’s partner—to take over. Al, I guess?

She could deal with that, easily. Al was Sebastian’s second-in-command and had been since the teams were formed. But I thought she was taking a few days to plan the ‘great wedding of the century’?

Al was driving everyone crazy with details of her dream wedding, to Sebastian’s brother Seth.

Not Mal. Not Al… Paige… Ed’s put—

A bureau vehicle pulled in, and Paige recognized the behemoth behind the wheel. Horror filled her. Not—

I knew you wouldn’t like it, but Ed was able to pull him from Internal Affairs for a few months to help out the CCU. Sebastian’s face was full of compassion.

Everyone knew she and Al’s brother Mick burned one another every time they were within fifty feet of each other.

Working one-on-one with him ranked right up there with her top-ten nightmares.

He can’t be partnered with Al because of the familial relationship. She’s switching for this case with Compton on Team One. So that leaves you.

No choice? No, no, no, no, no.

None. You’re stuck with him. For the time being. I’m sorry. Maybe I can get you switched, too.

Paige thought of those thirteen young women. Thought of what their lives had been like.

Thought of Beaver Cleaver Brockman, with his perfect background and everything-in-life-was-either-black-or white attitude.

Those thirteen victims needed someone who understood the different gray that most people actually lived in.

No. I’ll stick it out. Can’t guarantee that he will, though. He wasn’t capable of sticking through a case like this. His shtick was to rip the people who worked the field, who actually got their hands dirty. To make them feel like crap and make them second-guess every decision they made on the job.

She’d always despised Internal Affairs.

She’d keep her eyes on him, make sure he didn’t mess it up. Thirteen lost girls depended on it.

MICK hadn’t been on an active crime scene in more than a year. IA agents often were called in after investigative agents screwed up. And then there was a lot of ass covering that he had to ferret out.

But this…this wasn’t just him filling in for Sebastian Lorcan. It was his entrance into the world of the CCU.

The very unit he was trying to preserve.

Ed Dennis had called him into his office again that morning for an update on the special assignment Mick had taken months ago. Mick hadn’t been able to give him an answer.

There was a traitor, a mole, inside the Complex Crimes Unit within the entire PAVAD—the Prevention & Analysis of Violent Acts Division. It was Mick’s job to find that traitor.

He’d been working the case off the books for months, and had gotten nowhere.

Mick wasn’t used to failure in his cases. His personal life—hell, yeah, he’d had a few noticeable screw-ups there—but not his professional.

He rubbed the scars from his most recent screw-up more out of habit than pain. Although sometimes those bullet holes itched like hell. Usually when something he wouldn’t like was about to happen.

Mick scanned the gathered agents for the one he needed. Sebastian Lorcan had told him where to meet the rest of the team, and Mick needed to find the head of the CCU Team Three before he could do anything else.

Lorcan wasn’t hard to spot—he was taller than many of the other agents around him and was at the center of the action.

Right next to Daviess.

Daviess.

Why had he forgotten her?

The scar just above his heart pulled and itched worse than it ever had before. Something damned bad was about to happen. It always had when that woman was involved.

PAIGE kept her eyes steady on Mick’s. She wouldn’t look away first. He’d take it as a real sign of weakness, and she knew he already doubted her in every way. She wasn’t totally sure what she’d ever done to him to bring on his irritation. It was as if he’d taken one look at her almost four years ago and decided to hate her, no matter what.

And she didn’t owe him a thing, so why should she have tried to make nice with him?

She didn’t have to prove herself to anyone. Not any longer.

Especially him.

She had more field experience than Mick, at least with the CCU, and no one—no one—was going to doubt that.

What have we got? He practically barked the words at Sebastian. It was the way he talked—big, abrupt, brusque, bordering on rude. That was Al’s older brother.

She’d never quite figured him out. His younger sister and older brother were great people, friendly, helpful, fun. She trusted them completely. But not this guy.

Didn’t he eat kittens for breakfast? Sometimes she half thought so.

Thirteen dead, Paige said. She’d make it known to him from the very beginning that this was her case. He was just along for the paper trail. All female, ranging from early teens to late twenties.

Cause of death?

We won’t know that definitively until Mia and Jules finish. Policy for the CCU was that COD was always confirmed, not speculated on. It covered their butts that way.

Give me an idea of what I’m going to see when I walk in there. He cut between her and Sebastian. Isolated her from the rest of her team with his brick of a body.

She couldn’t help but step back. He just took up so much of her space.

He was taller than Sebastian by an inch or three, and he weighed a ton compared to most of the men she knew.

Half a granite mountain stood there in front of her, glaring.

How was she supposed to do this? Blood. And lots of it. And their eyes. Try not to look at their eyes. Or you’ll never forget them. And…they never made it out of their beds, Agent Brockman. This was a slaughter, and they never saw it coming.

CHAPTER 2

HE’D seen blood. He’d seen death. Mick had even seen dead kids in Afghanistan and Iraq and a few places he would never think about again.

It never was easy, and he knew it would never get easier. That was part of what he’d signed on for when he’d joined the military right out of high school and gained his degree while enlisted.

He’d joined the FBI when he was in his late twenties, and his current position when he was thirty-three.

He had never forgotten the dead he’d seen.

Mick forced himself to breathe through his mouth.

Death had a particular smell, and if he wasn’t careful, he’d be haunted by it in his dreams.

Daviess was cool and collected at his side. Lorcan was on his left when they entered the old warehouse down in the river district. Any idea who they are?

No IDs on most. The few that had them had multiple each. I’ve forwarded them to Questionable Documents. Payton’s handling the rush for me.

Mick nodded. The supervisor of the QD department was damned good at her job. Do we know anything else?

Homeless females, reasonably attractive physically. Their clothes aren’t the worst I’ve ever seen. And they seemed cleaner than would be expected.

Sex trafficking ring? Just the idea of it disgusted him, but he knew the truth. Sex was a big industry and was estimated to gross at least fourteen billion in the US alone.

And young, healthy females were the main product.

He and Daviess’s brother Luc had nearly had their asses blown to hell and back seven months ago when Luc had taken it upon himself to crack a trafficking ring on his own, bypassing legal channels until the last minute.It was an admirable thing the guy had attempted—but damned stupid in execution.

He knew Luc well enough now to suspect that a reckless streak was imprinted in the Daviess’s genes. Paige was certainly less cautious than she should have been. She’d end up getting someone killed someday.

The building they entered was an old one, but it was in reasonably good shape. Who owns this place?

Daviess answered, keeping her body just half a step ahead of his. That grated on him. Barratt Handley Enterprises. One of my brother’s top competitors. He’s been notified and a representative is on his way down here.

Have Compton start on the interviews when he gets here. He looked at Lorcan. You sticking around very long? Everyone knew Lorcan’s wife was due in three days, and it shocked the hell out of Mick to see the guy still hanging around. Guy was nuts about his wife. I think we can cover things here.

Lorcan stared at him for a moment. Mick liked the other guy and respected his work a great deal. But right now, Mick needed him out of the way. Go.

See that you don’t leave each other raw before this case is solved. PAVAD needs you both whole. And on good terms.

I don’t have a problem with Agent Brockman, Seb. He’s the one who has a problem with me.

DID she really think that? Hell, he supposed it was true. He didn’t trust Paige Daviess as part of the CCU. There was too much… fire… in her for the FBI. At least long term. Fire meant passion. Passion meant mistakes.

He knew that down to the bottom of his soul. He’d learned it the hard way. Passion and fire meant trouble. And trouble had a way of finding Paige. Mick scratched the scars on his chest absently, hand slipping beneath the dark suit he wore. They’d both nearly died the last time trouble had found the two of them. An old friend of Mick’s family had turned out to be a serial killer targeting Mick’s brother. And he’d wanted Paige.

The guy had drugged her and then kidnapped her, along with Mick’s sister-in-law Jules, and nearly killed them all. Mick’s brother Mal, Sebastian Lorcan, and the rest of PAVAD cavalry came rushing in just in time to save them—barely. Paige and Jules—and Mick—had been hospitalized. Mick had almost bled to death in the snow-covered driveway of his home. That SOB had wanted Paige and Jules as his own personal collection.

Mick understood it in the fact that they were both beautiful and engaging women. But Stubborn and Hardheaded were their nicknames. Lorcan spoke to the forensics team inside. Agent Cody, was heading up the scene. All evidence would coordinate through her and her partner, Dr. Reynolds. With thirteen victims, there would be a lot to process, and it would be time consuming. It would take several days to get all the information back.

What’s your first impression of these girls? He might not like Paige’s style, but he wouldn’t deny that he respected her mind. And her skills. Up to a point.

He didn’t doubt her competency, just her judgment at times. Reckless, she was so damned reckless that it scared him. He told himself it was because she was his sister’s partner, and responsible for his sister’s safety every day.

But he knew the truth. She acted too damned much like another woman he’d worked with. And lost.

Mara had had big dark eyes and a sweet mouth too. She’d had zest and zeal and heart driving her, just like Paige. And look what it had gotten her. There had only been three people at her funeral. Him and her brother and father. He’d not been able to answer their questions about why she’d made the choices she had. The accusations in their eyes would haunt him forever.

Thirteen girls and women, clean, healthy, not malnourished. A variety of ethnicities. Fingernails were buffed. These girls were someone’s possessions. And he—or she—took good care of them.

He nodded. The girls—and women’s—conditions told them quite a lot. If they had been low on resources such as food or clothing, it would have painted a different picture. But how do we find out who?

By asking the right kind of questions. She stopped walking and turned toward him. Natural lighting from one of the large windows on the outer wall of the warehouse haloed around her, drawing eyes her way. She could draw attention even dressed in a serviceable black pantsuit and leather boots. Black made the contrast between her pale skin and dark hair and eyes even more noticeable. Her skin was so flawless it looked almost unreal. Any other woman and he would have chalked it up to some seriously expensive cosmetics. But Paige Daviess wore minimal makeup. We’d probably better just get this out of the way.

He tensed. Oh?

"Don’t get in my way on this, Mick. I get that Director Dennis needs someone higher up the chain than me. But you’re a paper pusher and an ax-grinder. You are not CCU."

And you are. He was quicker to anger with her than anyone. Mick forced himself not to allow the anger to take over this time. Listen up, Daviess, and listen close. He crowded her space as a bit of that anger leaked through. He trapped her between him and the concrete support post behind her. "This is my case. You’ll follow my lead. No matter what. Or I’ll sideline that scrawny ass of yours for the entirety of this case. Maybe even sidelined permanently."

PAIGE wanted to scream. Why did she always feel that way with him? He was one of the few men she had to look up at. At almost six feet tall, she was usually able to meet guys at eye level. But he was more than six inches taller than she was, and she hated that she had to tilt her chin to keep her eyes on his.

The ass had trapped her against the concrete post deliberately. Just to prove his was bigger.

Mick was good at intimidation; he’d tried it with her several times before. She slowly stepped around him, purposely brushing her front against him. He stiffened. "Thirteen dead, Agent Brockman. Dependent on us, God help them, to find the answers. This is what I do. Because places like this, girls like these? I know them. Better than someone like you ever will. So don’t you dare stand there and think for a minute that this is something you know more about than me."

Paige shoved past him and walked away for a moment. She studied the environment. The warehouse was nothing different than any of the others she’d been in. Lived in. She’d slept in hundreds of similar places. More than she would ever be able to remember—or count. She looked for Cody, the senior forensic tech, and her friend. She needed a friendly face, if just for a moment.

To remind her that she was not that girl anymore. She threw one more look over her shoulder. "Go home, Beaver Cleaver. You’re not wanted or needed here."

She wouldn’t let him—anyone—see how she was shaking inside. How harsh words with him always ate at her after it happened.

Why? Why did he always do that to her? What had she ever done to him?

Not that it mattered. The only thing she needed to deal with was the fact that someone—possibly more than one someone—had brutally killed more than a dozen women.

Without hesitation.

Paige wasn’t stopping until they had that killer.

Mick Brockman wasn’t going to get in the way of that.

CHAPTER 3

NUMBER one, victimology. Number two, crime scene. Number three, method of death.

Paige repeated the triad to herself as she and Mick bypassed the security that had been put into place to preserve the scene. The warehouse looked like any other in the neighborhood, a dingy tan paint on the outside, cracked concrete surrounding it. The locks had been rusted out years ago. There was nothing to keep the girls out. Had that been their downfall?

Were they killed because of being in this location, or was it something else?

There were still old boxes crammed on metal shelves in a third of the building; Paige took a look in one. Plastic automotive parts, probably useless at this point. Unless one could find a specific consumer.

Mick was across the aisle checking boxes himself. She studied him for a moment. He was so danged big. He wasn’t fat—she’d seen him without a shirt a few times, and there wasn’t a piece of him out of place. He looked like a statue. All perfectly molded and chiseled. He didn’t exactly look real. His hair was very short, but it was thick and rich brown. It wasn’t dark like his brother’s, nor was it the platinum that was his sister’s. He was somewhere in between.

His eyes were just as blue as his siblings’, maybe even bluer. She’d never really compared. His shoulders were very wide, like a linebacker’s. She’d seen pictures of him from high school in a football uniform. Al had said once that he’d been offered football scholarships but had had his heart set on the military. So instead of college, he’d joined the army right after high school