Chapter 7
PAVAD Forensic analyst Danielle Connor rolled her chair closer to the monitor, where her team leader’s face was blown up to a ridiculously big size. “Hey, Randi, what do you have for me?”
“Just the initial. We did a walk-through of the house yesterday after we arrived. I need what you have on neighborhood canvases back then. Can you track down everyone within a six-block radius? See what they are up to now?”
Of course, she could—and had already gotten started.
They had worked this kind of case before.
Cold cases were kind of what they did, after all.
Dani had familiarized herself with the case the night before when Miranda had told her the file number before she and the hottest Knight on the planet had taken off yesterday.
Her heart hurt for that family, for the older teenager who hadn’t been home.
Dani knew what trauma was like. Violence.
Intimately.
It was why she had wheels now, after all.
She would never forget. The violence she’d experienced at seventeen years old had left a daily impact on her life.
She still had the nightmares, more often than she wanted to think about.
This job probably didn’t help, but she’d dedicated her life to helping people in the worst moments of their lives.
This is the way she did it. “I have already started. I’m running every key name, and everyone on the periphery.
See if anything pops. I have two men with repeated domestic violence reported on a far too regular basis in the fifteen years since—and one woman with an even worse line of credits here.
She’s currently incarcerated, actually. Battery against a child. ”
“I figured you already had. Anything standing out to you?”
Dani shook her head. At the moment, they were just getting started, going over everything done before.
“Nothing outside the norm yet. Although, I did pull up a photo of one First Sergeant Pierce Asher fifteen years ago. He looked like a very young, very boy version of Dr. Lucas. Only much, much…bigger.”
“He has gotten far better with age, Dani. Far better. But…he has the ghosts in the eyes now. This case weighs on him. I’d like to find the answers so he can have some sort of ending.
He’s quitting the biz after this one. Not even taking a desk job.
Walking away from law enforcement completely. He’s done.”
“I’ve seen those kinds of ghosts before.
I play the same game on that.” Dani had her own questions, about her own case, so long ago.
She was finally coming around to the idea she’d probably never even get to ask those questions.
It had left one of her closest friends dead, and Dani lying next to the highway, almost gone.
She didn’t really remember what had even led up to that day.
No one else seemed to want to find the answers, either.
She had never really understood that, either. She didn’t have a passionate Pierce Asher-type cop on her case now. Dani’s case had just been forgotten. She was dealing with that, too. In her own way.
“I am keeping you exclusive on this one. We are under a bit of a time crunch. Pierce is relocating to Texas in a week—I think. He seems extremely conflicted about that. This Asher tends to be slow to make decisions, I have noticed. I want to get as far as we can on the Gibson case before that happens.”
“Have I met this one? I mean, I’ve met some of her brothers—but I can’t remember which ones.
They all look alike.” Big, blond, muscled, and beyond beautiful—the Asher brothers were definitely hard to forget.
Their only sister Payton had worked three labs over from where Dani was right now.
Payton had semi-retired when she’d married one of the richest guys in the world—half the tech in Dani’s lab had his icon on it, he was just that good.
Payton was still in at least once a week, consulting on Questionable Documents.
She was now considered one of the world’s best experts and the FBI kept her as a consultant.
Payton had invited Dani to dinner multiple times.
Sometimes, Payton’s brothers would be there.
Dani had noticed, Dani had noticed. But…
she didn’t think she remembered one named Pierce.
“Probably. Pierce spends the most time in St. Louis. We’ve been to dinner a few times, when our paths crossed.”
“Oh, so is First Sergeant Pierce Asher the secret boyfriend?” Recent rumor around the building had it Miranda had been dating someone. Dani just hadn’t heard who the boyfriend was. Sometimes PAVAD was worse than a soap opera. But…entertaining, no denying that.
“That he is not. And…let’s not talk about that guy ever again. Totally didn’t work out. Moment he learned about the kid, he had a problem. No issue with the job hours, but the whole mommy thing totally freaked him out. Especially the adopted part of it. Asshole.”
“Jerk. He’s so not worth the time.” Dani very rarely went out in the field, being the most lab-bound of the Cold Case unit.
She had babysat Miranda’s little boy multiple times.
He was an awesome kid—who had been through literal hell in his short years before Miranda had found him during a case gone horribly bad that had left him out there in the world alone.
Now Miranda had him, and their teammate Jaclyn Jones and her big, beautiful husband had his half-sisters.
Dani considered herself his unofficial godmother.
She loved spoiling that kid. “Bentley is the best kid in the world.”
“I happen to think so.” Miranda was quiet for a moment.
She had that look in her eyes again that said she was trying to figure something out and just couldn’t.
Yet. Dani had seen it before. “His group home I found him in wasn’t that far from here.
I may do some digging while I am here. Before I head back. ”
So it already felt a bit personal. Dani understood. “Where’s Bentley at for this one?”
Miranda mostly stayed in St. Louis to run the unit, but when she couldn’t, she had a support system to make sure Bentley was well taken care of. Dani was a part of that support system, too.
“He’s on break from Brynlock right now. My parents have him in Masterson County. He’s working at the inn, he says. My dad is paying him five dollars an hour for two hours a day to do odd jobs and chores. Bentley is very grown-up, you know.”
Miranda came from a family that owned a historic inn in Masterson County. Dani thought it was one of the most beautiful, romantic places in the world.
Talk turned toward the case details and less personal. Dani spread everything out on the table in front of her. Most of her work involved computer screens—but sometimes she worked better with everything where she could pick it up and touch it.
She was still poring over the paperwork when he walked in. Him.
The one member of the Cold Case Unit she just did not understand much at all. Not that he’d ever been rude, it was just the way the man watched her. He had the most disconcerting eyes she had ever seen. “Hello, Agent Ward.”
She was on a first name basis with everyone in the Cold Case Unit, and seventy-five percent of the rest of PAVAD. But not this guy. Something about him…
“Hello Danielle, Knight sent me to get an update about the latest case.” He stepped into her lab, and the room just seemed to shrink immediately. Like he’d sucked up all the air with him.
Dark blue eyes were just watching her, and his mouth was in that little smirk that he had. It drove her crazy.
This guy freaked her out, he knew it, and she suspected the man did it on purpose. Dani turned toward the files in front of her. She would give him what he asked for, and then get him out of her territory. Fast.
It was the only safe way to deal with this man. Period.