Chapter 1
This had been a month Dr. Miranda Talley, profiler with the FBI: PAVAD’s Cold Case division—co-head of that division, actually—wanted to forget.
Everything just hurt a little too much. And not just physically, but down deep. In the soul. She was fighting her way from that again. She’d been doing it a lot lately.
Too many bad things had happened to people she cared about, loved, and liked, lately. It hurt. So much.
She had wrapped up a case in southern Indiana a little over a week earlier.
She’d worked it with a local deputy—who had been a friend of hers for a few years.
He was hurting, still. She’d worked a case before that in her own hometown that had resulted in the SUV she was driving being run off the side of an icy mountain.
It had been a pretty hairy situation. She’d gotten pretty banged up, then, too.
That was just the least of what had been happening in Masterson County with her family.
Miranda half feared it wasn’t over yet, even though her sister was recovering with the man who loved her, her cousin Dylan was out of the hospital now, Dylan’s fiancé—or whatever they were calling the man who loved Dylan now—was healing from the bullet wound, and everything was supposed to be getting back to normal very soon.
Well, Miranda didn’t believe in normal.
Not any longer.
If she ever really had.
What she believed in was family, and being there for the ones who mattered. That included her little boy. Who had just spent the last two weeks in Masterson County, Wyoming with her own father and stepmother, getting spoiled rotten while on break from his school.
School was a big part of her problem now.
He was in the second grade now. Second grade was a big deal, and he was struggling.
And it was just not going well. Trauma made things like behavior at school difficult sometimes.
Bentley had some learning gaps they were working on, too.
Fortunately, she had access to one of the best child psychologists in the country here in St. Louis, the mother of a friend.
Miranda was a psychologist in her own right now.
She had a plan to help her little boy through the dark times. It would just take time. She kept telling herself that. It would take time.
He hadn’t wanted to go back to school. It was hard to remember the rules at school. Bentley had wanted to stay in Wyoming with his grandparents. That was perfectly normal. She was trying to remember that.
But now…she was going to have to leave him again. After less than a week of them both being home together.
It was like pulling her heart out.
Most times she worked out of St. Louis and kept her traveling to a minimum. It was one of the perks of being the co-head of the unit. But, sometimes, she had to take the out of state assignments. It was just the way the job worked.
The timing could have been a lot better on this one, though.
It always took a little bit of time to get Bentley readjusted after a long school break.
Brynlock Academy, the private school her father paid for her son to attend, went on a year-round schedule, with long breaks throughout the year.
She liked the stability for Bentley, and it was an excellent school that she never could have afforded without her father’s help, but going back was always tough.
Brynlock genuinely cared for the kids—she kept telling herself that over and over. Bentley would be okay.
She looked at the little boy who held her heart.
She’d only had him for a little while. A case in Indiana and Missouri had resulted in her ‘finding’ him tucked away in a group home for older teenage boys who were aging out of the system—with criminal records.
He’d been six. Miranda had taken him into FBI custody immediately.
As a material witness. He had had no one.
And she had just known—he was meant to be her kid.
Somehow, and she thought her father—a former diplomat—and the head of PAVAD, Ed Dennis, had both pulled strings to help make it happen as quickly as it had.
Bentley was hers now. Forever.
His half-sisters, who he hadn’t known before she’d found him, were with Miranda’s closest friend on the planet.
Jac had known the girls’ mother, before Bentley’s father had murdered her.
Now, Miranda and Jac did the best they could to make sure the kids had a healthy relationship, while getting their own individual needs met fully.
While Miranda and Jac and Jac’s husband Max worked for the best FBI division in the country. Which definitely didn’t make things easy at times.
Sometimes, the exact opposite. They’d make progress—and then she’d have to leave him again. Bentley just didn’t understand why she kept having to leave him all the time.
“I don’t want to go to Aunt Jac’s, though. When are you coming back?” He had that look in his eyes. The one that said he was about to turn stubborn. Her kid had stubborn down to an art form.
“I don’t know. Probably soon. You know the rule.
” No more than fifteen days on location for a cold case like this.
And even that was pushing it. Most were five-day consults at the most. That was the way their division had been designed.
Cold cases by their very nature…there were far too many of them, far too few of Miranda and her team—the unit only had six investigators and one technical support agent—and were sometimes decades old.
They couldn’t spend weeks or months on location.
It just wasn’t feasible. “I will be back to you as soon as I possibly can. I will call you every chance I get, and we will video-chat every night.”
He wasn’t happy, but…it was their life now. They were going to somehow make it work. But…it broke her heart every time she had to leave him.
She dropped him off with Max and made it through the agony of leaving him behind.
Jac was still out of town on her most recent assignment.
But Max was more homebound than either Jac or Miranda.
He had taken over the coordinator’s position when Dan Reynolds retired.
It was by nature a position where he had a more nine-to-five.
It came in handy. Miranda didn’t trust just anyone with Bentley.
And Bentley loved hanging out with Max and the three girls.
He had his own bedroom there, too. The younger two girls were Bentley’s half-sisters, and while the relationship was one of confusion and pain for Bentley, they were healing. They were getting better.
For now…he subconsciously blamed his little sisters for replacing the family he had lost before. When his father had killed them all in an arson fire when Bentley had been only a baby, then been murdered himself shortly after Miranda had found Bentley. During that same case.
But they were working on helping him heal. And there was hope one day that her little boy and his two sisters would be able to build lasting, healthy relationships over time. That was something she, Jac, and Max were all committed to seeing happen.
But for now…leaving him behind…hurt.
Miranda suspected it always would.
That put her in a foul mood when she got into the conference room and saw the other agent waiting, too.
Damn it. Not him.
They had just completed a case together. Shouldn’t that have been her quota for the year? Miranda really did not feel up to dealing with him today. She just didn’t. Not him. “Knight. Just my luck. I think I have been cursed. I really do.”
The queen of sunshine sounded almost bitchy. That had him pausing to study the woman standing in the doorway now. Just as beautiful as ever, but…she looked damned tired. Almost defeated.
Someone wasn’t being her usual sunshine and rainbows self. Dr. Allan Knight, co-head of the PAVAD: Cold Case unit, stared at her—and waited. And…waited some more.
Nothing.
Interesting.
She had a tight expression in her big green eyes that had him pausing what he had almost said. Now wasn’t the time for snark, apparently. “Dr. Talley. Rough morning?”
The woman almost snarled. “You care, dear? I’m shocked.”
Well. Must be much worse than he thought.
Of course he cared. There probably wasn’t another woman on this planet he cared about as much as he did this particular one. Probably never would be, either.
Knight knew his own weaknesses. Especially his biggest.
She was his every weakness rolled into one terrifying package.
He also knew he wasn’t going to be an idiot with her, no matter how tempting the woman was. But today…his biggest albatross had a serious snarl on her beautiful face. “What’s wrong?”
It was fifty-fifty whether she’d answer him or not. With Miranda, nothing was predictable. Other than that, she would get beneath his skin at almost all times. The woman was an expert at that. It was like she practiced.
“Just single parenting and this job, Knight. Don’t always mix well. Sometimes one has to make sacrifices.”
Hell, the big green eyes looked a little damp around the edges. Had she actually been crying?
“Your boy all good?” That kid was her heart and soul. And she was a damned good mother. Even though he knew it wasn’t easy for her.
“He’s with Max. Max is off today. Max is off for three days. All of the kids are with Max and are fine and he will be okay. What have we got?” She reached for the file folders he’d had an admin prep for her. Knight put his hand down on the files—keeping her from moving them.
Until she looked at him.
He wanted to make sure she was okay for a damned minute. The woman just did something to him. No denying that. And she was hurting.
Damn it. He couldn’t stand it.
This woman…she shouldn’t have to deal with the darkness. It pissed Knight off every time. “You good?”
“Of course I am. Why on earth wouldn’t I be?”
Because Miranda Talley was always bubbling over with happiness when he first saw her each weekday before a new case. It was only when they’d get into the specifics of the case that she would turn serious and professional and damned good at what she did. He was used to the bubbling—not the snarling.
“Hell if I know. Far be it for me to be concerned.”
It was a test. He actually was concerned. But she wouldn’t expect that from him. And he wanted to see how she’d react. To catch the woman off guard. “Talk to me.”
“Just…” She was silent for a long moment—he was almost convinced she’d just blow him off.
“Bentley was really struggling this morning. Going back to school after a break is tough for him. And I am not going to be there in the morning, either. He still…we’re still working on adjusting to this job.
It seems like all I can do is keep asking him to adjust, ever since I found him.
And he’s just a little boy. It…hurts sometimes, Knight. It hurts.”
“I know. But he will understand one day.” Maybe.
The kid was seven and his biological father had killed multiple members of the kid’s family.
Bentley’s only sense of stability—a grandmother—had also died.
Then he had been shoved into a high-risk group home, thanks to the fucked up foster care system in this country.
Hidden and forgotten, like so many other kids in this country.
Miranda had found him there. And basically just…took him and kept him. While hunting for a mass murderer and serial killer. No one really knew what had happened to Bentley in that group home intended for boys twice his age, or why—or how—he had ended up there in the first place.
Knight had his own experiences with group homes—he wouldn’t ever tell her about what had happened to him there. He would not put those nightmares into her head. Knight just wouldn’t. And he’d been in his teens at the time. It infuriated him on Bentley’s behalf every time he thought about it.
There were still a lot of questions surrounding the little boy Miranda loved so much. Knight was digging into those questions himself when time permitted. She and Bentley deserved to know the truth.
Miranda was a damned good mother. Of that, Knight was one hundred percent certain. Fierce and protective of her kid, too.
“Will he?”
“I can wait. We can get Ian on this one when they get back. You can stay home with him this time.” They were already the two most office bound in the Cold Case Unit.
By design. They were the heads of the department, after all.
Very rarely were both of them out on the same case.
Whether she’d realized it or not, Knight and the rest of the unit tried to arrange things where she and Jac Jones were the ones who handled the most local cases. Or stayed office-side.
She and Jac were the only ones with children. Maybe it was wrong of him to do that, but…she and Jac had children. The rest of them didn’t.
They didn’t just have children—they had children who had been traumatized.
And that mattered.
At least to him, it did. This job—it could destroy families. He wasn’t going to sit back and watch that happen in his own damned unit. Not if he could help it. “I can handle this one, if you want to sit it out. Go over Archivals again.”
Once or twice a month, one of them would go over what cases they still had on the books, or go over any special requests that had been submitted.
The director of PAVAD would sometimes put in special requests when certain cases crossed his desk.
Someone in the unit would go over it again, then funnel to either Knight or Miranda.
One of them would study the case, determine if it was a case they had the resources to assist with, or what would be needed, and then they would assign a pair of Cold Case agents to cover the case.
They would then have fifteen days on location to assist however possible.
After that fifteen days, the Cold Case unit would continue to work the case, but it would be done from the home office.
There were far too many cold cases still waiting, and far too few agents to work them.
That was something he and Director Dennis—and Miranda—had discussed many times.
If he and Miranda could make the unit effective, that was something Dennis had promised to rectify as soon as he could. Before Dennis retired.
Knight wasn’t holding out hope. Knight didn’t ever hope for anything. That was a good way to get kicked in the damned teeth, after all.
He had learned that before.
“I’m good. Me and Bentley, we’re just going to figure this out as we go along.” She pulled in a deep breath. “Tell me what we have. And who is working it now?”
Well, she wasn’t going to like it, but… “You and I get another one. Special request from the director’s former partner’s younger brother’s daughter’s best friend. Or something like that.”
“One big happy family. Gotcha.” She picked up the file. “Let’s get started.”