Ghosts Inside (PAVAD: FBI Cold Case #1)

Chapter 1

There was blood everywhere. Crimson splashes that drew the eye from every direction. Her stomach cramped, seeing the devastation. This…she would never stop hurting when she saw things like this.

And it was only in photos. Eight-by-tens, carefully labeled. Photos that could not hurt her. But it didn't matter. She'd never forget what she looked at now. She never did.

Dr. Miranda Talley carefully placed the last photo on the conference table in front of her, arranging it in chronological order from the moment it was taken. So she could have a visual of what the original investigators would have seen that first day. When they’d walked into that hell.

She'd been to Washington before. Population twelve thousand five hundred.

Miranda’s son had been kept in foster care near Washington before she had found him.

She’d rescued him from the group home he had been hidden in by his serial killer father—literally.

She’d been the agent sent on a lead, that lead had been a terrified little boy.

She still hadn’t figured out how that had even happened.

She would never stop looking for answers for him.

Now, another reason would take her to Washington. She fought the shiver. No matter how many times she looked at cases like this, it still hurt. So, so much.

Miranda had the video taken by a tech-savvy investigator back then, too. She would watch it once she had prepared herself a bit more with the photographs.

But first...she had to meet the M.E. assistant assigned to this case. Mia Stephenson had called. When the M.E. called, Miranda listened. It paid to get in good with the people who could feed her information when needed.

This case started fifteen years ago. She didn't want it to wait another fifteen. Cold cases, especially those occurring in small towns, drove her.

Miranda rubbed the scar from the final surgery she’d had to repair damage done to her arm when her former best friend had tried to kill her in her own grandmother's kitchen not all that long ago. That betrayal still stung.

She locked the Cold Case conference room—only she and her co-supervisor (and total pain in the ass) Dr. Allan Knight had keys. Even custodial and security had to be allowed in by her or Knight. They had invaluable files in that room. Some files she doubted Knight even knew about.

She had just enough time to meet with Mia, convince her friend to go with her to Smokey Jo's for barbecue and conversation, while Mia's husband was out with his team and Miranda's son was in Masterson County, Wyoming, with her father and new step-mother, being pampered for the week, and then tomorrow.

..she'd delve deeper into who had killed a family in Washington, Indiana almost fifteen years ago.

Tomorrow...would be soon enough for yet another delve into someone's nightmares to begin.

As she pulled the door closed behind her, she turned. And slammed into a ridiculously hard chest. Hot hands landed around her waist and the man in front of her held her still for one infinite moment.

Miranda froze.

Like she almost always did when he showed up out of nowhere.

Him. Great.

She and Dr. Knight had a bit of an acrimonious relationship, no denying that.

There was a dark cloud hanging around her partner's head.

One she couldn't seem to break through, no matter how hard she tried. Miranda had tried—she really had tried. Nothing she had done with this man worked. He just got crankier, darker, than he was when they’d first worked together.

Miranda's gaze landed on the vicious scar that ran above his left eye and disappeared into his slightly longer than regulation hairline.

The man had taken a bullet to the head from a serial killer's gun and survived. It just made him come across as even more dangerous. Sometimes, a woman just couldn’t look away.

He was tall, hard, and tough, and he gave her the shivers in ways she had yet to fully identify.

In ways she wasn't fully interested in identifying either. She had told herself that many times before.

Dr. Allan Knight was one of the most terrifyingly hot men on the planet—but Miranda wasn't ever going to get close enough to get burned. "What are you doing lurking around tonight, Knight?"

"Keeping you from falling on your ass. You really need to watch where you're going."

So that was why his hands were still on her waist. He was helping her. Uh-huh.

"I'm on my way to the morgue to catch Mia Stephenson. I've pulled a case."

"Oh? You and who else? Who's next on the list?"

Her stomach dropped. From the arrogant smirk on his lips, she suspected she knew. They had a six-agent team in Cold Case. They usually had two agents per case. On a revolving, but modified system.

Modified—in that she and Knight, as the two supervisors, rarely worked a case together.

That was by unspoken mutual agreement. The last thing she wanted to do was be alone, even on a case, with the man who still hadn't taken his hands off of her.

But Miranda was no pushover. Especially where men like this one were concerned. "Getting touchy tonight, Knight. Keep it up and I may just think you don't hate me after all. The sky might just fall if I did that."

Miranda arched her back just a little. Pressing closer. Pressed closer than she definitely should have. There was something about being pressed against a man his size...

But alas, Miranda Talley and Allan Knight together were definitely not meant to be.

His lips pursed, and a flash of anger hit his face. It had her tensing.

She was almost five-foot-eleven. She didn't often have to look up at a man, especially this close. But seven inches separated them in height. And he was lean muscle and male perfection. And very unpredictable.

It really wasn't fair that he could look like that and be such a total ass...

She deliberately stepped away. Sometimes, she had to just retreat. "I don't know, who? Please tell me it's Jac? We have some girl-talk to get down to when we get the chance."

"Sorry. Jac and Ian are on the Rockford, Illinois missing elderly men. Should be wrapping up soon, though. The other two are in California now."

"I thought everyone was in?" She'd had two days off, since she’d driven home from the trouble in Wyoming. An ongoing case in her hometown involving a nasty drug called Opal Joy—Miranda had been sent home by PAVAD fast to help out. She still had the bruises from the so-called car accident. She had her theories, but it was Wyoming’s case, not hers.

Well, Wyoming and Texas State Police. It had been a joint investigation.

"Called back out." This time the smile he gave her was cold. Almost sinister. Dangerous. "It's just you and me for this one, Sunny."

Sunny. The ridiculously irritating nickname he had given her on the first case they had worked together. Her hand unconsciously went to the arm she had broken during that case as memories came back again.

"Hope you can handle me, Mr. Doom-&-Gloom." She smirked right back. This was not a man who should ever get the upper hand. "So...the case photos are on the conference table. See you first thing in the morning."

Miranda did something no Talley had ever admitted doing before—she retreated.

Ran away completely.

A girl had to do what a girl had to do, after all.

Especially with a man like Knight.

They drove. Dr. Allan Knight knew his partner wasn’t too thrilled with his presence, but she would never let that show. Miranda Talley never let anything he did or said make her react visibly. And he liked making the woman react.

He enjoyed the challenge.

Not very well done of him, but he did it anyway.

He enjoyed digging beneath the woman's skin, however he possibly could.

He'd found her both fascinating and irritating from the first case they'd worked together. That fascination hadn’t gone away in the months—over a year now—since.

"So tell me what your initial thoughts are? What did Dr. Stephenson say?"

"That her husband is the biggest stud PAVAD has ever seen." She sent him a sly look from those ridiculously green eyes. “She claims it’s indisputable now.”

"Excuse me?" He'd met the assistant supervisor of the pathology department several times. She wasn't exactly the type to be boasting of her husband's sexual prowess. Anyone said sex in front of her, she’d probably turn beet red—and hide behind that husband completely.

Mia Stephenson was shy—beautiful, sweet, kind, incredibly brilliant, but very socially awkward. She was one of Knight’s favorites in PAVAD, no denying that.

"She's pregnant again. It's their second.

We discussed that for a bit. Then we were distracted when her husband tracked her down, along with some of his buddies.

Since I had the rest of the night free, we ended up closing down Smokey's together.

Didn't really discuss the case much. At least, Mia didn't have anything more than what we already had. And I was busy dancing the night away with members of Evan’s team.”

Well, he didn’t doubt that. Men were drawn to this demon-spawn next to him. He’d seen it far too many times before. “And she has…?”

"Come on, Knight, admit it. You spent at least three hours or more in the conference room going over everything we have after I left. I have you figured out."

She probably did. The woman was one of the most perceptive he had ever seen, both off the job and on. "You win. But give me your initial impression."

"Mass murderer. Not a family annihilator, for one thing.”

"Why is that?" He'd pored over the photos, just as she had said.

What they had could be summed up quickly: a family of four in a small town in Southern Indiana had been brutally murdered.

Father shot first. Then the nine-year-old boy.

The mother had been sexually assaulted after her son's death, before being stabbed to death almost twelve hours later.

Their bodies had been arranged neatly on the living room rug, the boy nestled between his parents.