Gunderson finally pulled back from the woman. Travis got his first real look at her. A pretty woman, with light reddish-brown hair. She reminded him of his brother Rafe’s sisters-in-law, who all had varying shades of red hair. Some even had long curls like that.
The woman looked at the occupants of the table, settling on Travis. She smiled a very pretty smile. Travis relaxed. This woman wasn’t exactly intimidating. Now, the guy beside her—he was a different story. Hard as bricks and sober as a judge.
“Dr. Miranda Talley. I’m with PAVAD. This is my colleague, Supervisory Special Agent Allan Knight.”
Lacy shifted next to him, leaning forward as the woman looked toward her. “I believe we’ve met in St. Louis. At Payton Lucas’s baby shower?”
The woman’s smile widened. “Yes, of course. You’re friends with Carrie Lorcan and Paige Brockman. I work with Paige frequently. Knight here is…acquainted…with the Brockman brothers.”
Some of Travis’s tension lessened at the familiar names. Travis’s oldest brother, Marc, had married Paige Brockman’s sister, Ariella. His brother Rafe had married Carrie Lorcan’s sister.
One big happy family, and he liked it that way.
“All this is fine and dandy, but can we get down to business? Why were we brought here?” the man in a business suit asked.
“Don’t mind him; I suspect he’s chronically cranky.” Dr. Talley smiled at one of the waitresses. “I’m starving, Darcey. I’ll owe you if you—”
“Move you to the front of the line? You know what Grandma will say. No special privileges for family. You can wait your turn. Consider it punishment for not calling ahead. One of us would have stayed behind to get you.”
“I think she’ll understand this once. Help your favorite cousin out.”
Dr. Talley sank into the chair next to Clint. Knight followed her, sitting absolutely straight in the chair. He reminded Travis of his brother Rafe before Rafe’s hellion of a wife had gotten ahold of him and made him a better man. Starchy and precise. And pissed off at the world. Of course, Rafe’s anger had been due to trauma. Travis understood that a little more now than he had at first. Almost losing Lacy had made it clear.
Dr. Talley turned toward the sheriff and Clint. “So what’s going on here? This seems like a strange little mashup.”
Clint leaned forward. “I’m the one who requested you, Randi.”
“I figured as much.”
“We’ll talk more in my office,” the sheriff said. “I don’t think our business needs mentioned here. No offense to your family, Dr. Talley.”
“Please, it’s Randi, Joel. You know that. The first guy I ever kissed was Levi, after all. And you’re the one who caught us on your daddy’s couch—just in time.”
“Who you dumped for Clint here,” one of the waitresses said, putting a cup of iced tea in front of Dr. Talley. “Grandma and Daddy were scandalized. Especially Daddy. How dare you break it off with a Masterson for a Gunderson. The scandal! I tried to tell them you weren’t going to marry a Masterson, a Gunderson, or a Tyler, but…”
“Go away, Marin. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Whatever. But your aura is glowing yellow again. You should really take care of that.”
“Go away.” Dr. Talley was calm, easy. Confident. She waited until the waitress disappeared. “Sorry about that. There’s a reason I went into abnormal psychology—mostly to deal with my younger sisters and my cousins.”
Knight practically growled. The guy had a real impatient streak. “Can we stay on task here, Dr. Talley?”
Dr. Talley grabbed her bag, then promised yet another waitress they’d talk later, then stood. “Well, then. Time to get this party started. I want answers. I’ve waited fourteen years to find out what happened to Monica Beise’s family. No time like the present to get started. Then I’ll get Knight here back to the inn so he can tuck himself in for his nine o’clock bedtime. He apparently gets cranky as the sun goes down.”
8
Dr. Miranda Talley was going to be a real pain in his ass. The sunny cheer already grated.
Knight finished his dinner without a word, letting her and Gunderson talk quietly. Gunderson was showing Dr. Talley photos of a pretty, blond baby girl. Talley was cooing, leaning against Gunderson’s shoulder. Like she’d sat there three thousand times before. No doubt she had. He wasn’t stupid. Gunderson and Talley had slept together. It was in the way they looked at each other.
Knight studied her over the top of his hamburger and fries, trying to figure out if that was true.
Shame hit him. He knew he was being an ass. He hadn’t missed the looks both Gunderson and Dr. Talley had sent his way. So he wasn’t exactly friendly, himself. He wasn’t here to make friends.
Making friends with people he worked with had nearly gotten him killed once before.
But as he watched Miranda surrounded by people who obviously cared about her, the envy hit him. The pain. Knight had never had any biological family—he’d grown up in foster care in Portland—and he’d once had a great deal of friends. None that he was extremely close to, but enough that he hadn’t felt alone in life. Not then.
Before the shooting.
People had tried to get close to him since, but he knew the truth—his personality had changed. He remembered the man he’d been before the shooting. Theoretically. Most of the memories were there. Like something from a movie. Or through a filter.
A few of the memories were missing, too.
Doctors said it was a miracle he was back to work and fully functional at this point already. Sometimes, he didn’t feel like he was. Sometimes, he felt like a carbon copy of who he used to be, minus the personality that had made him who he was back then.
Most of his so-called friends avoided him now.
Knight couldn’t blame them. He had been an ass at times.
He was still trying to decide if he wanted to change that yet or not. Knight wasn’t exactly leaning that way.
All he had was the job. He had no deep, lasting connections. From anywhere. And that was his own fault. But he had his job. Knight was going to focus on the job for a while. Everything else—like friends—could just wait.
He’d lost people in his life before. Left them behind with no hopes of ever reconnecting. He didn’t need that kind of connection to survive. He never had.
Not like Dr. Miranda Talley. She laughed again, surrounded by the people she cared about. The woman laughed too much. Was too happy to be in this job. Good thing they wouldn’t be on the same team. It would drive him nuts to be around that constant goody-goody cheer.
They weren’t on the same team now, either. He was just there to observe.
He’d have to remember that.
She finished and stood. Like good little puppets, he and Gunderson stood, as well.
“We’ll walk back to Grandma’s. Call me if you need to,” she said softly. The look she shot Gunderson had Knight fighting a smirk. Yeah, girl had it bad. No doubt they’d find their way into each other’s beds sometime soon. Probably right there in the Talley Inn.
He fingered the scar at his forehead.
He’d been gifted this little lifelong memento when her teammate Malachi Brockman had gotten caught up acting like a rabbit with the PAVAD medical examiner while a serial killer was on Brockman’s ass. All three of them could have died because of that.
Knight had come too close to just that.
Maybe after this, he’d take a small vacation. Forget all about the FBI for a while.
“If you’re finished here, Talley, I’d like to get back to the…inn. We have work to do, if you’ve not forgotten.” He almost winced and apologized when green eyes widened as she looked toward him. He’d been rougher than he intended, apparently. Had crossed the line into rudeness.
He’d have to work on that.
Her body stiffened. It was a nice body, long, tall, and curved just right. Before the shooting, he would have stared, seeing her like this. In jeans that fit just right
and a shirt that hinted at the feminine curves beneath. He hadn’t seen her like this before—not that he remembered. Their paths hadn’t crossed that much. He didn’t think.
He’d been a bit consumed with his own team back then. And the missing memories would probably never return fully.
He had never dated women he worked with. He wanted his work separated from what little personal life he had.
His previous team had disbanded after two of his teammates, Jaynice Miller and Ian Ward, had been shot by a sniper targeting the FBI and PAVAD. It had taken several months for Jaynice and Ian to recover. Jaynice had taken medical retirement to spend time nursing her fiancé, who’d also been wounded in the shooting. It was a miracle they’d both survived. Ian was scheduled to return to the bureau within the next month. It would take him a long, long time to get back up to speed, but he insisted he wasn’t ready to retire. Ian claimed he still had a lot to offer the bureau.
Knight pushed the anger away again. Anger wasn’t productive.
Anger had been his Kryptonite since he’d been injured, and he understood that. Flying always made it worse. The therapist and physicians had made it clear to him what to expect. Traumatic brain injuries were going to cause mood regulation struggles. Those struggles could be a permanent thing, or they could stop tomorrow.
No one knew. Each TBI case was completely different.
He’d made that clear to Ed Dennis when the director of PAVAD had called him personally to offer him the newly forming cold-case division.
Knight probably wouldn’t make himself any friends in PAVAD now. He was good with that. He didn’t want friends. Not any longer.
“Sorry for snapping,” Knight said grudgingly when he realized the occupants of the table were still staring at him expectantly. “I just have a bit of a headache.”
He wasn’t going to use his injury as an excuse. Not by a long shot. But the headaches were real. Infrequent, but they were a visceral, almost tangible reminder of what had happened to him.
A reminder of how alone he had felt in the few moments before he’d lost consciousness back then. That was a memory he hadn’t lost.
Dr. Talley’s gaze went to the scar. Knight fought the urge to touch it, to hide it. He wasn’t embarrassed by it or self-conscious about it. But people liked to stare at it. Far more often than was considered polite.
“Of course. I always get a bit of a headache the first night back in Masterson.” She shot him a gorgeous smile. Damn it. That smile had far too much power. “I think it’s all the fresh, clean air up here. We’re not used to it in St. Louis.”
“Sure. Whatever. Let’s just get out of here.” He turned to the men next to her. “Gunderson, Masterson. I’m sure we’ll be seeing you first thing in the morning.”
He nodded at the other couple and headed for the door.
Dr. Talley could follow him or not. It was up to her.
9
Supervisory Special Agent Jaclyn Jones settled into her seat on the FBI jet fifteen minutes before four a.m. and tried to ignore the man at her side. It was hard to do. Max was six-foot-four inches of solid male muscle right next to her.
He took up a lot of room.
He was hard to ignore, as was the tension between them.
Two profilers probably shouldn’t argue with each other about personal things. It was far too easy to wound one another. To know all the dark secrets and ways to jab a stick into those bruises.
Jac had never been an easy flier; no matter how many times she flew. She forced herself not to think of all the statistics, all the ways planes could crash in rainy weather. She was going to trust the pilot to keep them all safe. No matter what.
That said a lot for her.
Trust had been beaten out of her long ago.
The only one on the plane who knew of that part of her background was Max. And he refused to meet her eyes anymore.
Ever since he’d kissed her just moments after their first real argument.
It had been one of those angry kisses written about in books, but never experienced in real life. One of frustration and pain. And longing.
Jac understood that.
What she still didn’t understand was why it had happened at all. Or why he had avoided her ever since.
Max gave a quick summary about the case they’d been tapped to help with. They weren’t normally on the same team. They’d just happened to be the handful of agents still in the bullpen filling out their weekly reports before Monday’s meeting when the director had walked through looking for available agents to help on a cold case consult.
“Masterson County, Wyoming. It’s near the central west area of the state.”
Jac gave a startled reaction when Max finally spoke. It took her a moment to focus on what he was saying.
“Masterson?”
Max nodded his big, shaggy head. “Population five thousand or so. That covers mostly ranches and a few tiny farming communities. The largest of those, and the county seat, is Masterson.” He answered in his warm, quiet, mellow voice that she had always found nice. Soothing.
It was just another case. So what if Max was there? It was bound to have happened sooner or later.
She wasn’t the one with the problem. He was. He was the one who had shut down. Shut her out. They’d argued. And that had been the end of it. Three years of friendship right down the drain. Three years of trust that had been so difficult for her to give, and he’d trampled all over that after one single kiss. She was going to get over the sting of losing Max, even if it killed her.
But now, it was time to focus. They were going to…Masterson. Wyoming.
“That’s Miranda Talley’s hometown. I’ve been there a few times.” That was one of the few places Jac had felt welcome. It was a beautiful place with wonderful people. She’d been back three times with her friend. She’d even fantasized about returning to Masterson when she retired from the FBI in a few decades. Buying a little cottage of her own near the inn, maybe growing a garden. Getting her own dog and just enjoying the world for once.
Max nodded. “This case has a definite personal twist. Dr. Talley was born and raised in Masterson. We’ll be staying at her family home. She and Agent Knight are already there.”
“At the Talley Inn? It’s a beautiful place. Miranda’s grandmother runs it,” Jac said.
Max glanced at her quickly, then looked away. “It is the only building in town large enough to accommodate us all. The requesting detective on this case is an old friend of Dr. Talley’s.”
Jac flipped open her case file. It was time to get started. By her calculations, they’d arrive in Masterson by eight or so in the morning. Plenty of time to get started on what they had to do.
10
Knight beat her to the breakfast room. He fought the irritation at that. He’d heard her in the bathroom that pressed against his suite. It hadn’t been a huge room, typical of the age in which it had been built, but it was clean and comfortable.
He was filling a plate when the woman in question strolled in. She didn’t ever rush when she walked; she strolled, those long legs eating up the floor with a steady, fluid pace that had a man snapping to attention to just stare. Miranda Talley had one of the sexiest walks he’d ever seen. A grace he had to admit drew him like a moth to a flame. He had to get ahold of himself.
The woman was going to drive him insane if he didn’t. This was the worst time for his long-dormant hormones to suddenly come back to life.
“Good morning, Agent Knight. Sleep well?”
“Just fine until I heard the dog barking.” He waved a hand toward the window and the pond. Her gaze followed, and her face softened as she saw the dog now sunning herself on a rock at the pond’s edge, with the half-dozen ducks swimming nearby.
“Yeah, Chloe is at that age where she barks at shadows. She slept in my room last night and got scared when the moonlight shone through the open window. I’m sorry about that. I just don’t get many opportunities to be with her any longer.”
He grunted. It was just a dog, after all. There were plenty more in St. Louis if she wanted one. He was just about to say something when someone called her name. He turned. A handful of PAVAD agents stood in the entryway, a small, darker-haired redhead at the front.
Dr. Talley smiled. “Great. Our team has arrived.”
Goodie. Now the fun could begin.
Knight finished filling his plate. He was hungry. He’d eat while she filled them all in on what had happened to Helen Caudrell. It was her show, after all. He was just there to observe.
11
Miranda looked around the Masterson police station. It was just as she remembered it. With one notable exception.
That donkey Clive Gunderson wasn’t sweating all over the nicked wooden desk. No, now there was a tall, handsome cowboy with broad shoulders and one of the best asses she’d ever seen.
There was no denying this man was a Masterson.
His young, pretty wife was right next to him, giving him a lecture about something. Phoebe Tyler Masterson was a distant cousin of Miranda’s grandmother. Phoebe had a little boy next to her who looked enough like her to be one of her brothers, and a tiny blond girl on her hip.
Phoebe smiled at Miranda, then shot a wary look at the man next to Miranda and at the crowd coming in behind her. “Hello, Miranda. It’s nice to see you again.”
Miranda accepted Phoebe’s hug gently. Phoebe and her sisters had always been a bit shy, especially around strangers. Miranda had known their mother before she’d been killed in a wreck a few years earlier, and had babysat for Phoebe’s younger siblings a time or two when she’d been about thirteen or fourteen. One benefit of her grandmother having the only diner in town and Miranda working there for years as a teenager—she’d started when she was twelve—was that Miranda knew just about everyone in Masterson County. Except…
“Who’s this little one?” Miranda smiled at the little girl. Phoebe and Joel had only been married a short time, and neither had had children before. At least, not that Miranda had been aware of.
Buried Secrets: PAVAD: FBI Case File #0005 (PAVAD: FBI Case Files) Page 4