Revealing Read online

  Other Titles

  by

  Calle J. Brookes

  Paranormal

  The Blood King

  Awakening the Demon’s Queen

  The Seer’s Strength

  The Warrior’s Woman

  The Healer’s Heart

  Once Wolf Bitten

  Live or Die

  The Wolf’s Redemption

  A Warrior’s Quest

  Out of the Darkness

  Warrior Blind

  The Outcast

  Romantic Suspense

  Watching

  Wanting

  Second Chances: A PAVAD Duet

  Hunting

  Running

  Redeeming

  Revealing

  Coming Soon

  Stalking

  Ghosting

  Calle Jaye Brookes is first and foremost a fiction writer. She enjoys crafting paranormal romance and romantic suspense. She reads almost every genre except horror. In her day job she is a fiction content editor for an epublisher that opened in 2011. She spends most of her time juggling family life and writing, while reminding herself that she can’t spend all of her time in the worlds found within books. Calle Jaye loves to be contacted by her readers via email and at www.CalleJBrookes.com.

  REVEALING:

  A PAVAD Romantic Suspense

  CALLE J. BROOKES

  The Lost River Literary name and imprint are the sole properties of independent publishers Calle J. Brookes and B.G. Lashbrooks. They cannot be reproduced or used in any manner; nor can any of their publications or designs be used without expressed written permission.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, or locations, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  ****

  For my very own hero. Thank you for always believing in me.

  And for my own kid, who helps me see the good side of life every single day. I love you, Stinkerbell!

  ****

  REVEALING

  SMASHWORD edition 2.0

  Copyright © 2014 Calle J. Brookes

  Cover by B.G. Lashbrooks

  All rights reserved.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

  REVEALING

  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 mid-twenties. 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 non-inconsiderable 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 w
hen 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.

  “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 each other 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 did 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 almost 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 anymore.

  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 c.o.d. 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’d 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. The only one who even came close to him in height was her brother Luc, who topped off near six and a half feet.

  But her brother was built lean, this guy definitely wasn’t. 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.

  But 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 Q.D. 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 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’ brother Luc had nearly had their own 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 fucking minute.

  It was an admirable thing the guy had attempted, but damned stupid in execution.

  But then again, he knew Luc well enough now to suspect that a reckless strea
k was imprinted in the Daviess’ genes. Paige was certainly less cautious than she should have been. She’d end up getting someone killed some day.

  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. “One of my brother’s top competitors. He’s been notified and 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. “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.