Chapter 1
There was blood everywhere. Crimson splashes that drew the eye from every direction. Her stomach cramped, seeing the devastation. This…she would never stop hurting when she saw things like this.
And it was only in photos. Eight-by-tens, carefully labeled. Photos that could not hurt her. But it didn't matter. She'd never forget what she looked at now. She never did.
Dr. Miranda Talley carefully placed the last photo on the conference table in front of her, arranging it in chronological order from the moment it was taken. So she could have a visual of what the original investigators would have seen that first day. When they’d walked into that hell.
She'd been to Washington before. Population twelve thousand five hundred.
Miranda’s son had been kept in foster care near Washington before she had found him. She’d rescued him from the group home he had been hidden in by his serial killer father—literally. She’d been the agent sent on a lead, that lead had been a terrified little boy. She still hadn’t figured out how that had even happened. She would never stop looking for answers for him.
Now, another reason would take her to Washington. She fought the shiver. No matter how many times she looked at cases like this, it still hurt. So, so much.
Miranda had the video taken by a tech-savvy investigator back then, too. She would watch it once she had prepared herself a bit more with the photographs.
But first...she had to meet the M.E. assistant assigned to this case. Mia Stephenson had called. When the M.E. called, Miranda listened. It paid to get in good with the people who could feed her information when needed.
This case started fifteen years ago. She didn't want it to wait another fifteen. Cold cases, especially those occurring in small towns, drove her.
Miranda rubbed the scar from the final surgery she’d had to repair damage done to her arm when her former best friend had tried to kill her in her own grandmother's kitchen not all that long ago. That betrayal still stung.
She locked the Cold Case conference room—only she and her co-supervisor (and total pain in the ass) Dr. Allan Knight had keys. Even custodial and security had to be allowed in by her or Knight. They had invaluable files in that room. Some files she doubted Knight even knew about.
She had just enough time to meet with Mia, convince her friend to go with her to Smokey Jo's for barbecue and conversation, while Mia's husband was out with his team and Miranda's son was in Masterson County, Wyoming, with her father and new step-mother, being pampered for the week, and then tomorrow...she'd delve deeper into who had killed a family in Washington, Indiana almost fifteen years ago.
Tomorrow...would be soon enough for yet another delve into someone's nightmares to begin.
As she pulled the door closed behind her, she turned. And slammed into a ridiculously hard chest. Hot hands landed around her waist and the man in front of her held her still for one infinite moment.
Miranda froze.
Like she almost always did when he showed up out of nowhere.
Him. Great.
She and Dr. Knight had a bit of an acrimonious relationship, no denying that. There was a dark cloud hanging around her partner's head. One she couldn't seem to break through, no matter how hard she tried. Miranda had tried—she really had tried. Nothing she had done with this man worked. He just got crankier, darker, than he was when they’d first worked together.
Miranda's gaze landed on the vicious scar that ran above his left eye and disappeared into his slightly longer than regulation hairline. The man had taken a bullet to the head from a serial killer's gun and survived. It just made him come across as even more dangerous. Sometimes, a woman just couldn’t look away.
He was tall, hard, and tough, and he gave her the shivers in ways she had yet to fully identify.
In ways she wasn't fully interested in identifying either. She had told herself that many times before.
Dr. Allan Knight was one of the most terrifyingly hot men on the planet—but Miranda wasn't ever going to get close enough to get burned. "What are you doing lurking around tonight, Knight?"
"Keeping you from falling on your ass. You really need to watch where you're going."
So that was why his hands were still on her waist. He was helping her. Uh-huh.
"I'm on my way to the morgue to catch Mia Stephenson. I've pulled a case."
"Oh? You and who else? Who's next on the list?"
Her stomach dropped. From the arrogant smirk on his lips, she suspected she knew. They had a six-agent team in Cold Case. They usually had two agents per case. On a revolving, but modified system.
Modified—in that she and Knight, as the two supervisors, rarely worked a case together.
That was by unspoken mutual agreement. The last thing she wanted to do was be alone, even on a case, with the man who still hadn't taken his hands off of her.
