Revealing

by Calle J. Brookes

  “Who was?” Perhaps there had been something about that first victim that the killer had missed, or some other indication of the man’s character or unique makeup that would lead Mick to him just a little bit faster. Anything could change a case.

  They needed something to tie the dead girls to that Leo Butelli guy.

  Anything.

  “The youngest one there. Sixteen. Dark hair, dark eyes. Look at her closely, Mick. She looks the most like Paige in that photo. This might have been misplaced rage. Though I’m not sure where the drugging came in at. That’s for the profilers and head boys and girls to figure out. Not me.”

  Mick couldn’t say anything else. His phone beeped a message. Security, to let him know that he had a visitor headed for the bullpen. Headed for Paige. “I got to go. Tell Mom I’ll stop by after this is all over. And I’ll be bringing Paige with me.”

  Chapter 31

  PAIGE looked into the guy’s green eyes and tried to remember where it as she’s seen him before. It took her a moment to put the man in front of her together with the young guy who’d arrested her twelve years ago. She’d never expected he’d show up at her desk, that he would be the visitor security had sent to her bullpen. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember your name. I’d forgotten you were with the FBI.”

  “Sure you have. Been arrested so many times you don’t remember me? I’m hurt.”

  She remembered the same kind of snark from him—that was something she hadn’t appreciated back then. He was just as good looking, though. Blond, shaggy hair around his face, along with a dark stubble growing. His eyes were very blue. Not Mick-blue, but close enough. He was lean and very good looking. But she could see the cockiness and arrogance from ten feet away. Why was he here? Did it have anything to do with Leo? How could it not? “I’m sure you are. What are you doing here, Agent Whatever your name was? What can I help you with today?”

  “I’m with Missing Persons now. And I’m trying to track down a missing young woman. Her name was flagged by your team.”

  Paige thought of the thirteen dead women in Jules’ department. Thirteen, was one of them this man’s case? “What name?”

  “Ariella Avery. Brown hair and eyes.”

  “Do you have a photo?” She would just have to put her feelings for this man aside, and forget he’d terrified her that day. And he’d done so deliberately. Whenever she’d interviewed younger witnesses or suspects she’d always remembered how this man had treated her. And she’d vowed never to repeat his actions without damned good reason. She’d worked with men she didn’t like before—this case, especially—she would not let this man, Blake or Lake, or whatever his name was, get to her.

  If Mick hadn’t gotten to her yet, this guy, a complete stranger, wouldn’t be able to. “I have thirteen dead bodies in my morgue, Agent Blake. You are welcome to come downstairs and see if your girl is one of them. If not, leave your information with my teammate Jazz Therez. She’ll contact you if we need any further information.”

  ***

  “It’s Lake. But I’m not surprised you can’t remember my name. Since yours has changed since I last saw you. Why don’t the two of us get some brunch and we’ll discuss why you’re in my playground now, and what happened twelve years ago?” What the hell? He found the entire idea of that teenage Houdini now on his side so damned intriguing. And he wanted his questions from twelve years ago answered.

  He’d never had enough to tie the girl to his missing sister, or the missing girls he’d been looking for a dozen years ago, but he had always wondered about her. About that day. He’d known she was connected to the Buckham-Butelli brothers, but he’d never known how.

  Now here was his chance to get his questions answered.

  And he still had to break the news that the girl he was looking for was her sister. And that she had more siblings out there. Did she know? How would she take it? What were the odds she’d be on his MP case to begin with? “Or we could do a drink or dinner, maybe once I find my girl?”

  She looked at him with brown eyes so much like the teenage boy he’d left in Texas. The same as the girl in the photo. If he gave her the snapshot, would she recognize the girl? Would she be hit with the same kind of loss he felt every time he looked at the image of his own younger sister?

  “Are you asking me out, Agent Lake?”

  He looked at her, trying to reconcile the beautiful, sexy woman in front of him with the awkward, boney, smart-mouthed teenage girl he’d met that one day. It was hard to do.

  P.J. Deveraux, aka Paige Jane Daviess, had grown up into a very, very beautiful woman.

  One he wouldn’t mind knowing a hell of a lot more about. “I think that’s exactly what I’m doing. We’ll find my missing girl. Solve your case, whatever it is, and then you and I can get reacquainted.”

  “Daviess? Something you’d like to share?”

  Lake looked past Agent Daviess toward the guy who’d come up behind her while they’d been talking. His first thought was that the guy was The Hulk personified. The second was that the guy was about to chew him up for a snack. Big brute looked like he could smash a bull with just one fist. The woman tensed, then looked over her shoulder. “Agent Brockman, this is Agent Lake, from the Dallas Field Office’s Missing Persons unit. One of the names on the IDs we found matched one of his missing persons.”

  “And that was why he was asking you to dinner? To discuss cases?” The guy glared at Cam. Cam smiled back. Was that what had crawled up the guy’s ass? Had Cam trespassed on the guy’s turf or something? “Didn’t mean to step on anyone’s toes. She’s free to say no if she wants.”

  “Mick, Agent Lake and I have met before. And he’s just being friendly. I don’t think he realizes we’re in the midst of a mass murder case.”

  Cam dropped all pretenses. “You serious? How did Ariella’s name come up? She one of the victims?”

  “I don’t know,” Agent Daviess looked at him. Damn, she really did resemble the Avery girl. “You’re welcome to come down and see if you can identify her.”

  The big guy wrapped a hand around her arm. “I want to clear him with his supervisor first.”

  “That so? Don’t trust me?”

  “He’s I.A., Lake, he doesn’t trust anyone.”

  “One of those losers, then.” Lake handed over his badge and gave his business card. “Supervisor’s name is Elizabeth Purcell.”

  “I’ll call her now. Paige…Jules is about to go to lunch and Mal is in a meeting. You want to meet me in her office in five minutes? Bring Lake.”

  Cam was surprised at the man’s attitude. But then again, I. A. was filled with a bunch of mean, cold, sons-of-bitches. It was the same no matter what field office he entered. But Agent Daviess didn’t seem fazed by the man at all.

  After the asshole left, Lake walked with her toward the elevator. She didn’t say much. He took the opportunity to study her again. “You look a bit different than you did twelve years ago.”

  “I was a lot younger. And a lot undernourished. Let’s be honest, at least in this elevator. We both know exactly what I was back then.”

  “A thief and a hustler. A common criminal.” He thought about how she’d slithered out of the building—and down the side of the brick. “And a bit of a Houdini. You’re lucky you didn’t break your neck that day.”

  She looked up at him out of sad eyes. “I had no choice. The only family I had back then was in some serious trouble. I’d have broken every bone in my body if that’s what I had to do to get to her that day.”

  Cam thought of his sister. “I’d have done the same, I guess.”

  “And besides, the information you wanted? I didn’t have it. I hadn’t been in the area long enough to answer your questions. It would have been a dead end for you, and major trouble for me.”

  They rode the elevator to the bottom floor, then she led him to a hallway on the left. “We have an annex where our Medical Examiner’s department is located. She’s through here.”

  Cam thoug
ht of the field offices he’d been in. None were as state of the art, or as sleek as this place. “Sweet setup this PAVAD has here. How’d you end up here?”

  “Those skills that let me slip out from beneath your nose led me to the FBI. I was recruited in college.”

  “So how did you end up going from the streets of Texas to college?”

  “GED once I turned eighteen and DPS couldn’t get their clutches into me. Got my degree in humanities. Then was recruited. I’ve been in St. Louis since I was straight out of the academy. And when Ed Dennis was creating PAVAD he pulled most of my team to this new division.”

  “You like it here? I’ve heard he’s a cold bastard.”

  A flash of irritation hit her face. “Ed Dennis is probably one of the few people I absolutely admire. And trust. That man will go the distance for his teams. I don’t just consider him a boss, he’s a friend.”

  That surprised him. Rumors abounded about the director of this new division that no one knew much about. And not all of them pleasant. “It true? He married one of his secretaries?”

  She smiled. “No. He married the head of our forensics department. She has seven sons, all under the age of eighteen. They’re a beautiful family. His daughter and son-in-law also work for PAVAD. He’s not like the rumors you’ve heard—unless you mess with the people of PAVAD, or his family.”

  She pushed open the steel doors that proclaimed Medical Examiner and headed toward the biggest office. “Jules is in here.”

  An extremely pregnant woman sat at the desk; the nameplate proclaimed her Dr. Julia Brockman, Chief Medical Examiner. “Any relation to that I.A. gorilla upstairs?”

  “Sister-in-law. And don’t insult him in her presence. She’ll take off your head.” The woman answered instead of Agent Daviess. She stood and offered him a hand. “I’m a bit protective of my brother-in-law. Especially with people I don’t know. Mick texted you were coming down with Paige, Agent Lake. I’m Dr. Brockman. This is my department. You go in to see one of my bodies, you follow my rules. First off, scrub up, second, I have paper outfits for you. They’ll show off your figure perfectly. Paige knows the drill. Or would you just prefer to compare photos?”

  Before he could answer, the door opened and Brockman entered, seeming to swallow up half the standing room in the office.

  Cam thought about what else he had to tell Agent Daviess. If one of the bodies in the cooler was that of her sister, he did not want her learning of it over the girl’s dead body. Maybe he should tell her before they went in? “I have something else to tell you, Agent Daviess. You might want to sit down.”

  Both women tensed. The M.E. came around the desk. Agent Daviess sat. “What?”

  “Ariella Avery. She is the daughter of a woman named Denise Daviess.”

  Chapter 32

  Mick put it together pretty quick with the way Paige paled and her lip trembled. “What are you saying, Lake?” He thought about what Agent Purcell had told him about the man who worked on one of his team’s in Missing Persons. Good at his job, a bit reckless, and extremely driven due to his own personal tragedy. “Spell it out for all of us.”

  The man looked at Mick. “I’m looking for Agent Daviess’ younger sister. A twenty-four-year old woman from Houston, Texas. She was reported missing the day after she didn’t return home from orchestra practice. There was a hit on her name by your division when someone in this directorate entered her ID as found. It’s the first lead I’ve gotten in three days.”

  Mick fought to keep a curse from escaping. He always felt awkward cursing around his brother’s wife, even though she’d let out a few new ones to him before. “I suggest you take a look at the victim photos, then. And after that you can explain to me everything you’ve got on this girl. We’ll find her.”

  He wrapped his arm around Paige’s shoulders and pulled her unresisting into his chest. She just looked at him with confused eyes.

  What this guy was saying summed it all up horribly in Mick’s mind. It wasn’t about Carrie Sparks Lorcan. It was about Paige. But why? And what was the guy planning? Was he the killer? His ID had checked out. And Paige had recognized him, hadn’t she?

  He looked over at his sister-in-law. Jules had that particular mother-hen overprotective glare in her eyes. He could sense it rising quickly to protect Paige. Hell, he felt the same urge himself. “Paige, sweetheart, we’ll find her. And we’ll find the son-of-a-bitch responsible. Lake, get us everything you’ve got. And you’ll be tagging along with us until we figure this out.”

  Lake looked at him, and Mick knew the guy was about to resist. “It’s either you work with the CCU on this, or you find yourself reassigned temporarily to the field office in Idaho. What will it be? This isn’t just about your missing girl. It’s about someone targeting Paige and her family specifically. I’m not going to let some rogue agent mess up what we’ve already accomplished.”

  Mick turned his attention back to the woman in his arms. “Listen to me. We all know shit like this can happen, shit we can’t always control. All we can do is the very best we can to clean it up, and to keep monsters like this from hurting others. We’ll find this sister, and we’ll deal with that fallout. No matter what. You’re not a scared kid, all alone in the world except for an autistic girl and some abusers. You’ve got Luc, you’ve got Al and Jules and Mal, and Carrie and all three of the damned Lorcans in your corner. You’ve got Dennis and his daughter, and you’ve got the entire Reynolds family. All love you. And like it or not, even though I annoy the piss out of you, you’ve got me. So, fuck it all, Paige, pull yourself together. We can do this.”

  Mick waited until she nodded, until her spine straightened. He felt her take a deep breath. Then she stepped back. He looked at Jules, seeing surprise and speculation in her pretty eyes. His sister-in-law, at least, knew some of what he was feeling. And he had no doubt she’d be questioning him about it again later.

  “Jules, call Mal. Let him know to get down here. I need a profiler, and fast. Lake, you’ll be going in with us. I want you to look long and hard. See if you recognize any of these girls. We know one of the bodies is a woman named Elizabeth, from Dallas. A third of the IDs found with the bodies were Texas in origin. The rest Chicago and St. Louis.”

  “The three cities where Carrie and I stayed the longest.” Paige’s words were low, subdued. “You think that’s significant.”

  “Hell, we all know stalkers can stick with their victims for years. I think the three of us know that better than almost anyone.” Mick rubbed his chest where the bullets had torn him apart. His family had been stalked for years before the majority of the attacks had happened. Was that what they were dealing with here?

  What were the odds of lightning striking twice so close together?

  He looked at the woman beside him. He would fight heaven and hell to keep her from being hurt again.

  ***

  She never thought she’d ever be grateful for the support provided by Mick. But she was fighting not to throw herself into his arms and let him hide her from the reality she was about to face—at least for a little while.

  Her sister was probably in there, dead on a cold slab in Jules’ morgue. The morbid irony of it all sickened her.

  A sister. And she was most likely dead already. It shouldn’t hurt to lose someone she hadn’t ever had. But in a way it did.

  Paige had always had to be the strong one in her life, even when she had people to care about her. This time, though, she needed someone to be strong for her. Funny that it would be him.

  She looked up at him and felt the remainder of any hostility she’d ever had for him melt away. Right there. Just gone. She’d never be able to look at him as a big jerk again. She’d always remember how he’d looked in that moment, how warm his hand had felt on her back as he’d walked with her to the cold, sterile room where Jules and her people found the answers to some really horrific questions every day.

  She didn’t need the speech, the platitudes and the compassion from the sta
ff of the morgue. She’d given the speech a hundred times herself to next of kin. She almost had hers memorized—the words of comfort were something that was seared across her mind. Those words came to the front every time she’d ever dealt with the dead’s loved ones.

  Now she realized almost how hollow I’m sorry for your loss actually sounded. And she didn’t even know this girl. And they didn’t even know if she was one of the bodies they were about to look at.

  The thirteen dead girls had bothered her more than any of the other victims she’d seen since joining the FBI. She had chalked it up to the similarities to her past. She was lucky she hadn’t ended up like those girls.

  “Was…is…Ariella happy? Loved? Does she live with her mother? Tell me about her?” She looked at Lake. He had remained quiet as they’d scrubbed up quickly and put on the paper coveralls Jules required of all visitors to the forensic pathology department.

  “She’s the oldest of four. She has three younger brothers. Her biological father took her home from the hospital. She’s never lived with Denise Daviess.”

  “But did she know her?” Paige had never wanted to know anything about the woman who’d let her and Luc go into the system. She’d known from an early age that her mother hadn’t wanted her. Had thrown her away. Apparently the same thing had happened to this younger sister of hers. “And how many others are out there?”

  “From what I could find, Ariella never contacted her mother, and Denise never contacted her. From what I could see, Denise isn’t much of a mother. Not much of a person, either.”

  “You met her?”

  “I met her. And Denise had six successful pregnancies.”

  “Six. So…there’s three more out there, somewhere.” She couldn’t fathom. She’d always thought she and Luc were all there were in the world. Thought Luc was all she’d had for so many years. And then when she’d lost him so young…she’d been alone until Carrie.