She stabbed him a few more times and then, with one swipe, rid him of what had been his weapon. It would take him awhile to bleed out, but she was prepared to stay with him until the end.
-
Chapter 1
TUESDAY, AUGUST 25TH, 1:30 PM EASTERN TIME
FBI HEADQUARTERS, QUANTICO, VIRIGINIA
I’D NEVER UNDERSTAND WOMEN—at least not one woman in particular. But I wasn’t about to admit it out loud when my job with the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit required that I successfully assess other people’s states of mind. For the life of me, though, I couldn’t figure out what had gotten into my colleague and ex-lover Paige Dawson or why she’d decided to take off and go to California with a man she hardly knew. But I sensed there was more to it.
I knew she’d recently lost a childhood friend, but it wasn’t a tragic accident that had suddenly claimed her life. Really, she’d been merely existing as it was, as her life for the past twenty-some years had consisted of being hooked up to a ventilator. It wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that the woman’s mother decided to pull the plug. I could only guess how Paige was feeling, and maybe a getaway was exactly what she needed to process it all. It wasn’t like she discussed her emotions with me anymore.
We’d decided to end our romantic relationship—if it could be called that—not long before she took up with what’s-his-name, actually. Speaking of what’s-his-name, she was probably snuggling up to him at some bar while I was buried in paperwork from the last case. Murderers killed people and trees.
“How’s it coming along, Brandon?” Zach asked.
I hadn’t even noticed that he had returned from lunch. It was a rarity that the senior profiler even took one. His desk was about three feet from mine. That meant zero privacy, but it did encourage open communication.
Thinking of being posted behind a desk made me feel useless, as if my time could be put to no better use. Here we were, stuck pushing paperwork while as many as fifty active serial killers targeted their next victims.
I looked over at Zach. “I assume you’re referring to all these reports?” I splayed my hand over the paperwork, and he nodded. “Oh, it’s coming along wonderfully.”
“You do know sarcasm is anger’s ugly cousin, right?”
“It’s also a sign of intelligence.”
Zach smirked, a spark lighting his eyes.
I narrowed my gaze at him. Something was different. “Who is she?” I asked.
His eyes widened, a subtle blush coming to his cheeks. “Excuse me?”
“The woman you’re seeing. I take it by your bright-red lips, you’ve either taken to wearing lipstick or you’ve been kissing. Heavily.” I was the one smirking now. Zach, however, was stark serious.
Maybe I shouldn’t press my luck. I had just become a full-fledged agent, having only passed my probationary status last month. But it was too much fun to tease him after he’d done it to me for so long with that damn nickname he’d had for me, “Pending.” He certainly couldn’t call me that anymore.
“Brandon, mind your own business,” he snapped.
“Ah, so it’s serious… That’s why you don’t want to talk about it.”
He shuffled some papers around on his desk with no apparent purpose. “I never said that.”
“You never denied it.” I paused for a second, but he never continued. “Redhead? Blonde? Brunette?”
“I like how you started with redhead.” He locked his gaze on mine, an obvious dig at me for having a thing with Paige.
I shrugged. “That’s in the past.”
“So you two keep telling me. But I guess it must be true if she’s on vacation with Sam, huh?”
Zach might be a genius and older than my thirty-one years, but at times he had the maturity of a college student.
The glint in his eyes—in addition to his words—hinted that he hadn’t expected me to know.
I flicked a glance at him, then back to my work. “I’m well aware.”
That’s as far as the conversation went. I couldn’t afford to concern myself with Paige’s love life. Besides, I was seeing someone myself. I met her during a previous case. Her name was Becky, and she was a police officer for Dumfries PD. It was nothing serious, but we enjoyed each other’s company.
Zach chuckled, and the tapping of his fingers on his keyboard told me I was free from any further teasing for the moment. There were times I could strangle the guy. He had the tendency to push buttons and then stand back, awaiting a reaction. Maybe it had to do with him not having any siblings to torment while growing up. However, I was an only child and I turned out perfectly fine.
I turned my attention back to thoughts of Becky. We had plans to meet for drinks at the Earth and Evergreen Restaurant near her place, which was about twenty minutes north of Quantico. And if everything went according to plan, I’d be spending the night with her and coming back in the morning.
I conjured up the smell of her perfume and the softness of her skin beneath my fingers—
My cell phone rang, breaking me from the beginnings of my fantasy and wresting me back into the real world.
“Agent Fisher.” I had answered without checking the caller ID, but the ensuing silence on the other end of the line had me pulling back the phone and consulting it now.
SANTA CLARITA V.
That tells me nothing…
“Hello? This is Special Agent Brandon Fisher. Can I help you?” I looked for Zach, but he was gone again.
There was no verbal response on the other end of the line, but I heard a distinct exhale, followed by more deep breaths.
Santa Clarita… Where was that? It sounded Californian.
And I knew only one person in California.
“Paige?”
There was a jagged intake of breath. A sob, maybe?
“Oh God, Brandon.” It was Paige, and she was definitely crying. And Paige didn’t cry. I’d witnessed the odd tear fall when our relationship had ended, but this was different. Something was very wrong.
I leaned on my desk and looked around, but no one was nearby.
“What’s going on? Are you okay?” I asked. I gave her a few seconds to respond. She didn’t. “Where’s Sam? Is he okay? Talk to me, Paige.”
“Shh. I don’t want everyone to know.”
“What’s going on?” I was starting to get annoyed that she was avoiding my question. She was the one who had called me.
“I’m in trouble,” she began. “Big trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“I’m in…jail,” she ground out.
Her words struck me as a physical blow. I even stopped breathing for a second. I sank back into my chair. “You’re what?”
“There’s been a misunderstanding is all.”
I’d hope so…
“Where is Sam?” I asked again.
“Please, Brandon, don’t tell Jack or Zach.”
Another aversion tactic. “I don’t know much to tell.” My concern for her was quickly morphing into irritation. “Where’s Sam?” I repeated a third time. Maybe I should record myself and just hit “play.”
Another deep exhale into the receiver.
“Talk to me,” I entreated.
“He doesn’t know.”
“What? How can he not know you were—”
“Shh! I can’t explain everything over the phone. I need you to get me a good defense attorney and send him to the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station. Have them ask for Detective Grafton or Mendez.”
A good defense attorney?
“What are you suspected of?”
“I don’t want—”
“You called me, remember?”
She sighed. “Something I might be regretting…”
“I’m sorry, but you asked me to get you—”
Jack came up next to my desk. He ran a hand along his throat, indicating my call needed to end. Now. And based on the way he was staring me down, refusing him wasn’t an option.
“Where’s Zach?” he asked.
“God, is that Jack?” Paige whispered. “Brandon, you can’t say a—”
I cupped the receiver portion of my cell phone and held it away from my ear. “He’ll be back,” I told Jack. “He probably just went to the bathroom.”
“Hang up,” Jack demanded. He never tolerated personal calls on the job, but this was going overboard. Besides, this particular one wasn’t personal. Or was it?
And why did Paige call me and not Sam? Was it just that I was familiar, or did she not want to give the new guy a bad impression? I dismissed the idea of her still harboring feelings for me before I even considered it, but whatever it was, I wasn’t sure I was completely comfortable with it.
I got up from my chair and walked away from Jack, taking my cell phone with me. I had it pressed to my ear again and could tell Paige was still on the line. I could feel Jack’s eyes watching me, but so far, he wasn’t following.
“I will do what you asked,” I said into the receiver, “but it would help to know what you’re…you know.” I didn’t want to say being charged with, seeing as Jack was still within earshot.
“I don’t want to get into it with you, Brandon. Hell, I probably shouldn’t have even called you. I just thought I could trust you.”
“You can.” The words had come out of their own volition.
“Thank you. I just need a defense attorney who is good at getting the innocent off—” Someone spoke to her in the background. “Yes, I know… Fine,” she said, her voice muffled, probably from her hand over the receiver. Then back to me. “I’ve got to go.”
“I’ll get you someone.”
“Remember, Detective Graft—”
“Grafton and Mendez. I got it.”
“One more thing, Brandon. Please let Sam know I’m okay.”
“And what about the part where you were…” I couldn’t elaborate as Jack was now literally breathing down my neck.
“You can’t tell him I’ve been arrested.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Can I trust you or not?” she asked impatiently.
I nodded even though she couldn’t see it. “You can.”
“Sam’s at the Hyatt Regency, room 328.” Then she hung up. With the conversation over, I was left to face Jack, and based on his epic scowl, I was going to have explain why I didn’t hang up the second he had told me to.
“I need to make another phone call,” I said.
“Not right now you don’t,” Jack replied.
Zach came back to his desk, a confused look on his face when he saw the two of us, and Jack gestured for us to follow him into his office.
I was pacing in front of Jack’s door, not wanting to go in because I needed to get Paige that lawyer ASAP.
Jack gripped my shoulder with a firm hand. “Go inside.”
“Uh, yeah. On it.” I pressed on a smile and went into his office.
Jack shut the door and didn’t bother to take a seat. Neither did Zach or I, but the two of us kept looking at each other for a clue as to what this was about.
“Paige has been brought in as a murder suspect.” Jack delivered the statement as if it were any other case—direct, punchy, and succinct.
I swallowed roughly, my throat so dry I wondered if my mouth was even producing any saliva. I sought out one of the chairs that were positioned in front of Jack’s desk.
Jack’s gaze followed me until I sat down. “That was Paige on the phone with you, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I choked out.
His jaw tightened. He shook his head. “Unbelievable.”
I wasn’t exactly sure what he was referring to—Paige’s arrest or my consorting with the…enemy?
Jack closed his eyes. “She just couldn’t leave it alone.”
“Leave what alone?” Zach asked.
Jack let out a heaving sigh, met my eyes, and then turned for the door. “Come on, we’re going to California. I’ll explain on the plane.”
-
Chapter 2
TUESDAY, AUGUST 25TH, 4:47 AM PACIFIC TIME
VALENCIA, CALIFORNIA
IT WAS EARLIER THAT MORNING and Paige was standing in the window of the hotel room, looking down on the town’s streets and watching people carry on with their lives. Sam was still asleep, and last she looked, he was on his back with one leg under the sheets, one over. It felt good to get away from her job, but this vacation wasn’t really for pleasure. Sam had tried to convince her they could also have some fun while in Valencia, but Paige had only one thing on her mind: confronting the man who had destroyed her friend Natasha’s life.
It had happened twenty-two years ago when they were on spring break in Mexico, but the repercussions had lasted a lifetime. Natasha had been gang-raped by a group of four guys they had met at the resort. It had led to a suicide attempt a year later that resulted in Natasha losing all brain activity, and after all this time, Natasha’s mother had finally decided it was time to say good-bye to her daughter. The funeral service was unbelievably rough on Paige, but it provided her with the one lead she needed to find the group’s leader. That was the real reason she was in California…
“Paige?”
She turned to find Sam lying on his side now, braced on his elbow. She walked over and sat next to him.
He placed a hand on her back and maneuvered to look at the clock. She followed the direction of his gaze. “What are you doing up so early?” he asked.
“I couldn’t sleep.” She wasn’t going to get into everything with Sam. Like how she had slipped out last night and took a trial run past the rapist’s house, how she had followed him… Some things were best left unsaid.
“You don’t have to see this Ferris guy, you know. I would understand if you changed your mind.”
She pressed her lips together and nodded. “I know, but we’ve come all this way.”
He took her hand and tapped a kiss to her fingertips. “It’s never too late to just turn this into a fun vacation.”
The words stung. A fun vacation. She felt as though she had cheated him. They each only had a few weeks of vacation time a year, and she’d talked him into using his to follow her out here. “I never should have asked you to—”
“Hey.” He struggled with the sheets a bit as he sat up. “I wanted to come. Remember?”
She stared into his eyes, trying to determine if he was telling the truth, reliving the moment when she had asked him to come along. Maybe she had been wrong to include him in this. He was relatively new to her life; they’d met only a couple of months ago, and with the distance between them—him living in North Dakota and her in Virginia—they had only spent a few weekends together.
“You didn’t make me come here,” he reiterated. “And I’ll be by your side the entire time.”
Paige rose from the bed and crossed her arms. It was warm in the room, but suddenly chills rippled through her. After bringing him all the way here, how could she tell him that she had changed her mind and wanted to approach Ferris on her own? But maybe he’d find relief in being left out of this. She’d do what she needed to do to get closure with Ferris, and then they could have a normal vacation.
“I think this is something I need to do alone,” she said, watching for his reaction.
Sam’s brows lowered in consternation, and he swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Do you really think that’s smart? Safe? You know what this guy is capable of.” His words were hot and fierce.
“What he was capable of over two decades ago anyway. He could have changed.” She wa
sn’t going to tell Sam that Ferris had served thirty-six months in prison for sexual assault just seven years ago.
He angled his head to the right. “And you and I know the likelihood of that is slim.”
“Maybe he wasn’t the ringleader I thought he was. Maybe he was pressured by the others to…” For some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to say the word rape. Being this close to Ferris was almost too much for her to handle. All those years of trying to track him down just after the rape, of learning a foreign language and even returning to the Cancun resort, and it was all coming to an end.
He came up next to her and took her hands in his. “I understand that you feel you need to see him.”
She took her hands from his, looking away. When she returned her gaze to him, she saw his concern. Where there was once conviction, there was now doubt. “You don’t think I’m taking this too far?”
He splayed his arms to take in the room. “I’m in California, nearly two thousand miles from home. With you.”
She smirked. “Fine. Stupid question.”
“Damn right, it was a stupid question, but I’ll allow you the one. Any more and I’ll need to take it from your hide.” He wrapped his arms around her waist and placed his mouth on hers, his tongue probing, teasing, claiming. She lost herself in the moment, and as he led her back to the bed, she could think of nothing but him. She teased, touched, caressed. She leaned back against the pillow and arched her back as he trailed kisses from her neck down to her breasts. Her breathing became heavy, her desire burning, as Sam began panting, his jaw tight, his energy possessive. When he thrust into her, she let out a moan and she was lost.
SAM ROLLED TO THE OTHER side of the bed. As the heat of sex cooled, Paige stared at the ceiling, her hands laced over her stomach, thinking about her goal. No matter how much he didn’t like it, she’d stick to her conviction to see Ferris on her own. Given the guy’s history, maybe she was being foolish and rash, even naive to think she could handle the situation herself. She was emotional enough already and not even face to face with him yet. But she was a trained FBI agent. She had brought down many psychotic unsubs. She had firearms training and could shoot a target from a thousand yards out, easy. She had strong hand-to-hand combat skills and had defended herself against those hell-bent on keeping their secret lives just that, so how was Ferris any different? From a black-and-white perspective, Ferris was no different, except for one thing. With him it would be personal. Her blood chilled even as the warm pulse of adrenaline flowed through her.
[Brandon Fisher FBI 05.0] Violated Page 2