Knocked Out Read online

  PAVAD: FBI

  Case Files #0001

  “Knocked Out”

  Calle J. Brookes

  Copyright © 2015 Calle J. Brookes

  Cover by CJ Brookes

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN:

  The Lost River Lit Publishing, LLC name and imprint are the sole properties of independent publishers Calle J. Brookes and C.B. Brookes. 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.

  For our daughter, may you someday follow your own dreams.

  Other Titles by Calle J. Brookes

  Paranormal

  Dardanos, Co. Series

  The Blood King

  Awakening the Demon’s Queen

  The Healer’s Heart

  Once Wolf Bitten

  Live or Die

  The Seer’s Strength

  The Warrior’s Woman

  The Wolf’s Redemption

  A Warrior’s Quest

  The Wolf God & His Mate

  Out of the Darkness

  Warrior Blind

  The Witch

  Dardanos, Co:

  The Adrastos Series

  The Outcast

  The Forlorn

  Romantic Suspense

  PAVAD: FBI Series

  Beginning

  Waiting

  Watching

  Wanting

  Second Chances

  Hunting

  Running

  Redeeming

  Revealing

  Stalking

  Suspense/Mystery

  PAVAD: FBI Case Files #0001

  “Knocked Out”

  Coming Soon

  Balance of the Worlds

  Ghosting

  PAVAD: FBI Case Files #0002

  Knocked Down”

  PAVAD: FBI

  Case Files #0001

  “Knocked Out”

  Calle J. Brookes

  Lost River Lit Publishing, L.L.C.

  Prologue

  AL stumbled down the hall toward the room she shared with her partner. She hated hotels. They really, truly sucked. Especially when the hotel in question was dark, dirty, and run down.

  Not to mention in the middle of nowhere. Her partner was doing something Paige rarely did—sleeping—and Al had found herself far too restless to stick around the room listening to her best friend breathe.

  Not when it had come too close to the opposite happening for Al’s comfort. They could have lost Paige so easily, and that was something she couldn’t seem to get out of her head.

  She slipped back inside the room and made certain to lock the door and to slide the room’s only chair beneath the handle. There had been one memorable case where she and Paige had been surprised in their room by a couple of drunken fools who’d followed them back to their hotel from the local precinct, of all things.

  Paige had ended up clubbing one of them upside the head while Al had pulled her weapon on the two idiots. Not the highlight of that case.

  But that case had been a weird one to begin with. So was this one, and Al wasn’t sure how she felt about things.

  Paige had nearly gotten her clock cleaned, as Al’s husband was known to say. And Al had witnessed the entire thing and been helpless to stop it.

  Paige wasn’t just her partner anymore. Or just her best friend. Paige had married her brother Mick less than a month ago. This was only their second case since Paige had returned from her honeymoon.

  Al loved Paige, there was no doubt about it. But it had been even worse seeing her sister-in-law in danger this time. Because if anything happened to Paige it would devastate Al’s brother. And he’d already lost one woman he’d loved in the past.

  And Paige meant so much more to him.

  Still, Paige had managed to protect herself. Somehow. And wasn’t that what mattered?

  Al stepped over to Paige’s bed and looked down at her. She lifted her phone up and snapped a quick picture of the other woman with her mouth wide open and dark hair tangled around her head. Paige’s cheek rested on her left hand.

  Where the wedding ring her brother had placed there gleamed.

  It had been Al’s grandmother’s, and she couldn’t think of anyone more like that woman had been than Paige. It was fitting, wasn’t it, that Mick gave that ring to Paige?

  She quickly texted the picture to the man in question. Mick headed up the PAVAD’s Internal Affairs division. Any and all cases involving injuries were reported to his division automatically. And of course his people ran to him the minute they learned Paige was involved. Why wouldn’t they?

  Al felt a twinge of guilt. She should have been the one to call him and let him know the first chance she got. But it had taken hours to finish up at the crime scene and they were just now getting settled in.

  Hopefully a pic would reassure him.

  And maybe Al could finally grab some real sleep, and forget what had happened. Somehow.

  Someone knocked on the door softly and Al hurriedly moved the chair before the knocker could wake Paige. She wasn’t surprised to see her team leader Sebastian standing in the hall.

  Why wouldn’t he be? He was Paige’s brother-in-law, married to her sister. And he looked so much like Al’s husband her own heart hurt. Sometimes when she was missing Seth, looking at his identical brother definitely didn’t help.

  So many connections on their team. It was a wonder Ed Dennis, leader of their directorate, even allowed them to remain together. How long would it last?

  “I figured I’d check on her before heading to my room for a few hours. We’ll head home first thing in the morning.”

  “I don’t think the jerk did too much damage.”

  “She was lucky. If he’d been a better shot…”

  “I know. But he wasn’t…” Al looked over her shoulder one more time as the events leading up to this moment replayed in her head…

  Chapter 1

  “STALKING case. Let’s go!” Paige was one of the first ones to greet Al when Al walked into the PAVAD—Prevention & Analysis of Violent Acts Division—building three days after their last case had wound up unexpectedly. “North Texas.”

  “I just got here.” She took a quick look around for the rest of their team. Jaz and Hernandez were bickering near the elevators, nothing unusual there at all. It was actually reassuring after what the two of them had gone through at the hands of a previous enemy of Paige’s a few months ago. Jaz had come far too close to dying, and Al’s brother Mick had actually carried Saul Hernandez’s unconscious body to safety. The two partners had been extremely stilted and quiet with each other ever since. But not today. Today they were almost back to themselves.

  Paige was probably responsible. She’d been out for three weeks, planning her wedding, getting married, then relaxing for two weeks with her husband in a Caribbean hut. Al definitely didn’t want to know all the details—not with the knowledge that the guy in that hut with her best friend was her older brother. There were some things a girl just didn’t want to know…

  Did Paige even realize how important to their team she was? She was the one person who everyone on the team considered a confidant, a friend. She was at times the conscience of the Complex Crimes Unit Team Three. Al smiled at her new sister. “You always this happy when it comes to stalking creeps?”
r />   “When it comes time to stopping them.” A strange light of emotion went across Paige’s face and Al could have kicked herself. It hadn’t been all that long ago when Paige had been stalked herself. Or a few other people they had both loved.

  Stalking really wasn’t something any of them ever joked about anymore. “You’re awfully chipper this morning.”

  “Your brother fed me well.” Paige grinned. “Among other things.”

  “Ugh. Don’t say anything else.” Mick had moved out a few months earlier, into a foreclosure about a mile from the home he had shared with Al and their brother Mal, along with Seth and Mal’s family. It was odd having her brother gone. But he was with Paige, and Paige’s teenage brother Simon.

  They were making their own family now. And Al was definitely happy for all of them. But hearing the details? Unh uh. Definitely not something she wanted to contemplate.

  “What? Just consider this payback for everything I listened to after you and Seth figured things out…”

  “If you two are finished?” Their team leader had come up behind them and put a hand on each of their shoulders. Al looked at him, then tried not to do a double take.

  His brother had worn an extremely similar suit to work that morning. The longer she and Seth were together the more traits she discovered he did have in common with the brother he always called the good one.

  Seth was pretty good himself. “Of course. How are you this morning? Little Maddie?”

  Her niece was an absolutely beautiful baby—that Al hadn’t had a chance to see if a few days. She needed her baby fix. She had Mal’s son Auggie, but she still missed Maddie at times.

  “Colicky. Carrie’s taking the day off to make a run to the pediatrician.”

  “Hopefully this case won’t be a long one.” One of the biggest drawbacks of their job was the traveling. The being away from family so often. They all struggled with it. They’d be lying if they said differently.

  “Hopefully. Let’s get rolling. Before it escalates.”

  She never even made it into her office. Al just chalked it up to the nature of the job. At least she’d had time for breakfast and a shower before she’d had to leave.

  Many a times she’d gotten called out in the middle of the night.

  She’d learned to be grateful for small favors…

  Chapter 2

  IT was a bumpy flight. Paige was practically clawing at the windows of the jet trying to deal with being caged for the length of the flight. It wasn’t anything Al wasn’t used to.

  “Sit.”

  Yeah, right. This was Paige she was talking about. Her sister-in-law definitely liked to move and fidget.

  “Take a nap. You look exhausted.”

  She felt it. Sometimes this job just zapped her. Of course she’d been feeling tired a lot lately. Probably because she and Seth were busy searching for a home of their own and she was helping with baby Auggie some when Mal’s team was out on cases—she loved that little monster with his big eyes shaped just like Jules’ and Mal’s wicked grin—who still didn’t sleep through the night completely. “I’m fine.”

  “Uh huh. Built in shopping bags beneath your eyes tell a different story.” There was concern in Paige’s eyes and Al appreciated it.

  It was nice to have sisters like Paige and Jules. “I’m fine, Paige. I promise. Just tired.”

  “Rest if you need it,” Sebastian said. He was looking at her out of those eyes of his—the ones just like his brother’s—and she wondered if the concern was from her team leader or her brother-in-law. Sometimes it got a bit confusing for her.

  Eventually she could see the teams shifting and reforming. Somehow.

  The CCU was supposed to grow every year, according to what she’d heard from Mal and Mick who had often spoken of slightly more privileged information in her hearing.

  She half thought she’d want to lead her own team eventually. She’d filled in for Sebastian many times before. “I’m good. Shouldn’t we focus on the case and not on me?”

  Half the problem with working alongside family was the eyes on her all the time.

  She wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.

  There would be plenty of time for the hovering over the next few months. Her family had been horrible when Jules…

  She’d think about all that later. She’d only had the one test, and another waited in her bag. Just to confirm what she and Seth already suspected. When she got a private moment she’d take it. And then decide how she was going to tell everyone else.

  They had planned on waiting another couple of years before they took this step. Fate apparently had other plans.

  “Al? You want to tune in here?”

  Sebastian again.

  Dang it, she missed his brother right now.

  “I’m fine. Let’s get to this.”

  Chapter 3

  STALKERS were some of her least favorite cases—not that any case other than the few who resolved positively were enjoyable—and Al knew from the moment she took a look at the file that this one was going to be a pretty nasty one from the get-go.

  Stalkers were horrible, and she’d seen firsthand too many times to think about the damage they could do to a person’s sense of security.

  She and Paige were given the task of speaking with the woman being victimized. Gillian Birch was around their age and sweetly pretty with brown hair and light gray eyes.

  Gray eyes that were absolutely terrified. The first thing the woman did was shake Al’s hand and cling. “Thank you. I don’t know how or why the FBI is here, not really. Surely there are other things you guys do than help women in this situation.”

  “We’re here to stop this guy and to study how he works. Because the more we learn about people like him the faster we can stop them.” Al always hurt for the victims in these types of cases.

  Especially since…since a life-long friend had stalked Mal, Jules, and Paige and had even duplicated Mal’s home right down to the same décor that had been in Al’s bedroom.

  Another reason she hoped she and Seth found a place of their own soon. She smiled softly.

  Her husband didn’t exactly like sleeping in a pink bedroom with her brother and his family right down the hall.

  Said it cramped his style. If he wanted his wife naked in the kitchen, he’d said, he wanted to be free of family intrusions.

  “We will stop this guy, Ms. Birch. I can promise you that.”

  Chapter 4

  GILLIAN Birch was a small-town woman who enjoyed living in the same small Texas town she’d grown up in. Her parents lived a mile down the road and her three older siblings were within two miles.

  She didn’t date much, so the chances were slim that it was an ex-boyfriend. She was quiet, bookish, and sweet. In her spare time she wrote children’s novels and went to church.

  Nothing to deserve someone wanting to threaten or control her this way.

  Paige liked her, from the very beginning. She almost reminded her of Calista, the woman who’d worked at the runaway shelter for years. Calista was quiet in the same sweet way.

  Why would someone target a woman like Gillian? Paige would never understand some people sometimes.

  The woman looked between her and Al and Paige knew what she was thinking. What a lot of the victims thought and felt. Hope mingled with fear of disappointment. Fear of the unknown. That sick twist of nausea because someone out there wanted to hurt or control you somehow. She impulsively held out her other hand to the woman, too. “Ms. Birch, I know we don’t exactly look like FBI agents, especially my partner FBI Barbie here…but we’re very determined. We’ll stop this guy. We’ll make sure your safe.”

  “We will. Ms. Birch—“

  “Please, call me Gillian. I really appreciate this. I’m not sure what I’ve done to deserve this. I never…maybe I led him on or something somehow. But I’m always careful with men. I—“

  Paige remembered how she felt when she’d woken bound and drugged by the man who’d stalked her, wh
o’d video-taped her in her own apartment. And then later when she’d been targeted by a monster from her own past. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You might have just stood in line behind him at the library or coffee shop. Or walked by him on the street. Stalkers don’t need to necessarily know their victims. All it takes for some is a single point of contact. Once we figure out where that point may have been, we can find him.”

  “In the meantime, can you tell us what you’ve received in the mail lately?” Al asked.

  Paige took a quick moment to look at her sister-in-law. Al looked like crud, but she wasn’t about to tell her that. A moment of worry hit her. Al never looked anything less than perfect. Was something going on with her?

  “Thank you, Agents Brockman and…I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.” She looked at Paige again.

  “It’s Brockman. Well, Daviess-Brockman, actually. I’ve added my husband’s name for a while.”

  “Are you related?”

  “Sisters-in-law. Paige married my older brother recently.”

  “I got the best Brockman of the litter.”

  It seemed to break the ice for the woman. She relaxed and actually let them into her small home. She chatted about her own brothers, she had two, and her sister. Paige mentioned her own siblings, the two brothers she’d reunited with in the last few years.

  One of those brothers was currently grounded for a week and possibly arguing with her husband right at that moment.

  It seemed so weird to Paige when she thought about it. Her husband and the child they were raising were waiting for her at home.