Second Chances: A PAVAD Duet (37 page)

Even when she borrowed
Georgia’s clothes, she never managed to look quite that good. The
other woman was gorgeous, with long, curling dark brown hair, large
dark brown eyes, and a small, curvy body. But Georgia never
acknowledged that fact. Men looked at her, much more than they
looked at Ana’s flat-chested, childishly angular body, her dark,
ridiculously straight red hair and clichéd green eyes. She looked
like a damned leprechaun. A tiny, redheaded, half-Ukrainian
leprechaun who dressed funny and spoke in an even funnier
accent.

“
You were missing blocks
you shouldn’t have. Your attention was anywhere else but on me.
And, well, you were making yellow-belt mistakes.” Georgia never
sugarcoated. And as a profiler and behavioral psychologist, she
most often knew exactly what Ana was thinking or feeling. It made
it hard to lie to her.

“
Nightmares,” was all Ana
said, knowing Georgia would understand.

“
Same ones?” Georgia paused
to study Ana’s face.

“
Yes.” Ana didn’t
elaborate. She’d told her friend what had happened to her within a
month of them first meeting. They were the only female members of
the seven-agent team, and always bunked together.

The two women knew each
other’s nightmares well.

Georgia knew of Ana’s hours
spent trapped in a collapsed elevator after a serial arsonist
detonated a bomb and Ana knew of the colleague of Georgia’s father
who broke into their house one day when Georgia was sixteen, intent
on hurting her.

They both still bore the
scars. Inside.

“
Dreams are the
subconscious mind’s way of telling us something,” Georgia said.
“Anything different about this dream?”

“
No.”

“
No difference?”

“
This
time, he bleeds to death in the
elevator, and I’m trapped with him. For hours. Then he comes back
from the dead, and we’re trapped in that supply closet in DC. Same
story, minimal variation.”

“
And when you woke, how did
you feel?”

“
Angry. Scared. Sad.
Guilty.” Ana listed the feelings she’d felt nearly every time she
woke from the dream. Just like Georgia had insisted the first time
she helped Ana deal with them nearly two years ago. “When I first
woke, I was sure he was dead. Dammit, Georgia. I’ve not had the
dream in months.”

“
Subconscious telling you
something?”

“
But what?”

Their conversation was cut
short as they entered the large conference room.

Dr. Malachi Brockman looked
up at their entrance, dark blue eyes warm over the wire-rimmed
glasses he wore for reading. Ana loved it when he wore his glasses;
it made him twice as hot. “You’re both late.”

“
Sorry, Mal,” they said in
near unison as they took their seats.

“
Sure you are.” Malachi
smiled. Ana was late at least once a week. He never chastised.
“We’ve all been summoned to Conference room A.”

“
Great,” Ana whispered to
Georgia as they immediately stood back up to follow him and the
other four men out of the room. “Now what?”

“
We’ll just have to wait
and find out.” Georgia shrugged, slinging the backpack that carried
her laptop and various other necessities over her shoulder. The
backpack went with Georgia everywhere.

They rounded the corner,
looked through the window into the largest conference room in the
St. Louis field office. “I don’t think this is going to be
good.”

“
I think
this is the whole field office.” Georgia’s tone was just as
puzzled. “Something
must
be going on.”

Some of the people Ana
recognized. Some she didn’t. Holding court in the center was one of
the Assistant Directors of the Directorate of Intelligence.
Georgia’s father.

Ed Dennis looked a lot like
his daughter, Ana thought again. The man was cold, imposing, larger
than life. And terrifying. Until you got to know him, then you
realized he was just very reserved.

He nodded in his daughter’s
direction, and Ana caught the small smile. Ed Dennis loved his
daughter—there was no doubt about that in Ana’s mind—and that was
the only thing that made him appear human at first.

“
Wow. They called out the
big cheese on this one,” Special Agent Whitman said from behind the
two women. “Isn’t that the...”

“
Assistant Director?”
Georgia asked. Ana smirked. Whitman was young, obnoxious, the
newest transplant to their unit in the CEPD, and both women enjoyed
tormenting him whenever possible.

“
I heard he was a real cold
bastard. Heard he fired this SA for messing up his lunch order last
week.”

“
I don’t think he’s cold at
all,” Georgia said. “Daddy’s always been shy.”

“
Daddy
?” Whitman’s blue eyes widened
and he paled. Georgia didn’t advertise her relationship to the
assistant director, though Ana thought most people
knew.

“
Hmm,
Whitman,
Dr.
Ed
,
Director
Ed
—you think they’re related?” Ana widened her own eyes at
Whitman. “Wouldn’t that be just awesome?”

Whitman said nothing, just
moved away.

“
You know, we probably
shouldn’t tease him that much,” Georgia said as they took their
seats on the left side of their field intelligence leader. Whitman,
Tompkins, and Royal took the seats on the right. Chalmers took the
seat on Ana’s left. “One of these days he’s going to take us
seriously.”

“
You’d think he’d know to
take you two seriously to begin with. Ana, love. You’re cheek is
swelling slightly.” Brockman frowned at the two women. His glasses
were gone but that didn’t detract from how attractive her
dark-headed, blue-eyed boss actually was. She sniffed discretely,
taking in the warm mint-tinged cologne he favored. She favored it,
too; one of the reasons she always tried to sit by him.

She was in deep for
Malachi, but would never act on it. That would be too weird—and
could potentially ruin her career. But that didn’t mean she didn’t
enjoy him thoroughly whenever given the smallest chance.

“
Georgia beat me up, boss.
This time. I’ll take her next time.”

“
Sure you will.” Tompkins
leaned forward to look at the two women. His black-rimmed glasses
slid down his nose and he pushed them up with one finger. He was
such a skinny little nerd, with his blond hair uncombed and his
shirt stained and untucked, but Ana loved him. Fiercely, the way
one loved a younger brother, or particularly lovable little puppy.
“You two still running neck and neck?”

“
Dead even. Ana beat me
last week,” Georgia said, as the conference room door opened and
one more team entered. The man in front was large, tall and
muscular—at least six-foot-five, broad shouldered, with auburn hair
and a handsome face. She’d seen him before but couldn’t place him.
He was followed by several other agents, including a young redhead,
with hair nearly as dark as Ana’s and a gorgeous blonde woman. The
redhead was a bit odd, but someone Ana knew well enough to say
hello to in the elevator. The blonde made Ana feel even more
self-conscious in the pantsuit she’d filched from Georgia’s
donation pile a few weeks ago when the other woman had done her
ritual spring closet cleaning.

The man glared fiercely at
Ed Dennis. Ana’s gaze moved to the older man. The assistant
director’s return look was pure ice. “Uh, Georgia...”

“
What?” Georgia turned, and
Ana knew she saw what she did.

“
Who is that?” Ana
asked.

“
I’m not sure,” Georgia
said softly, her eyes trained on the auburn-haired giant. “But
whoever he is...I don’t think he likes my father very
well.”

“
That’s Michael Hellbrook,
ladies. From the Complex Crime Unit two floors up. Wonder what he’s
doing here?” Mal asked. “He usually steers clear of any cases or
anything involving your father, Georgia.”

“
I’ve heard Daddy grumbling
but I’ve never met the man. I’m not so sure I want to,
now.”

Ana couldn’t blame her.
Rumor had it that Michael Hellbrook had earned his nickname of
‘Hell’. They said he was hell to work with, and had one hell of a
temper. “What’s the deal, Mal?”

“
A case, nearly fifteen
years ago. Hellbrook’s first, I think. Two agents were killed.
Rumor has it Hellbrook blames your father, Georgia.” Malachi shook
his head as if he couldn’t understand it.

“
Even after all this
time?” Georgia asked. Both women watched the man and his team as
they settled into the last row of seats. “Must have been horrible.
We’d just moved to St. Louis, then. Daddy had his choice of
regions. He chose this one.”

Ana suspected the man had
also pulled strings to get his daughter in the St. Louis field
office, where he’d worked for over fifteen years, as well. Georgia
had spent her entire career in St. Louis. Ana had jumped around
more. She’d started in Washington four months before the events of
9/11 in Hostage Recovery. Then she’d transferred to Chicago’s
branch of Violent Crimes, before finally coming to Malachi’s
notice. He’d handpicked her around the same time he’d filched—as he
liked to call it—Georgia from a Child Abduction Rapid Deployment
team. Tompkins was their computer analyst, and he did a phenomenal
job. Chalmers and Royal had been with the CEPD just as long as Ana
and Georgia.

They worked well together.
Even Whitman, who’d not been picked by Malachi, served his purpose
well. Of course, that purpose was basically that of errand boy—he’d
yet to earn more. Ana sent him for her lunch at least twice a week.
He did it, too. Without much complaint.

“
If I may have your
attention, please.”

Ana focused on the stage as
the room quieted quickly. Ed Dennis stepped to the front center,
immediately commanding attention. The room quieted.

Georgia was capable of
that. She’d seen her friend draw attention her way with just the
tone of her voice. Georgia didn’t do it often. But when she did, it
was highly effective.

Not Ana; Ana preferred to
do her work behind the crowd. She was the strategy specialist, the
one who planned extraction maneuvers. Ana had grown up in a world
far removed from Georgia’s. Ana’s father had been nomadic, dragging
his small family everywhere. They’d stayed nowhere more than two
months.

Her family—her, her mother,
father, and older brother—had made their living as peddlers,
hocking junk they’d collected from yard sales and selling artwork
her mother and older brother would create. Ana had been almost
forgotten about, artless and untalented in the ways her family had
prized. It had hurt her the way they’d ignored her.

It had surprised them when
Ana had chosen the FBI as a career. She’d deflected, defied the
family tradition of being artists and nomads and searched for
security in a world they wanted no part of. She’d not spoken to her
family since she’d told them she’d been accepted to UK at the age
of seventeen.

Georgia was her family.
Matthew, Georgia, and Brockman. Tompkins, Royal, Chalmers, even
Whitman. And to Ana, her new family was everything.

Fin McLaughlin eyed the
crowd of agents with the experienced eye of a behavioral analyst.
Some of them would be his new team. And it burned him that he’d not
be allowed to pick which ones. Fin was very particular in who he
wanted at his back, yet for the first time since he’d become a Unit
Chief six years ago, he’d have no say.

That privilege rested with
Director Ed. And like the older man had said, he had a definite
list in mind.

“
Funding
has been approved,” Ed said. “For a new division. It will be based
here in St. Louis, separate from
this
field office. Primary focus will
be on a new age of crime. Crimes don’t just cover one area anymore.
We have pedophiles committing cyber-crimes, we have sex crimes
blending into violent crimes, we have terrorism intermingling with
gang activity. This new division will seek to address all those
overlaps by the blending of specialists in every area. Calls to
us—this division—will be special requests that only our teams can
solve.”

Fin scanned the crowd,
beginning in the front two rows, and tuning out the political
words. One hundred plus people crammed the room. Seventy percent
were male. Most were in their thirties, forties, or fifties. A
handful were younger. Half a dozen were older.

They all had the jaded look
of law enforcement in their eyes. It was a look McLaughlin saw in
his own eyes whenever he’d look in a mirror.

Ed droned on. Fin flexed
his prosthetic hand, readjusted it a bit. There was a thread or
something between it and the stump that was his forearm. He’d have
to remove it later. “Our only order of business is team
restructuring.”

There were discontented
murmurs from the crowd then. Fin straightened. He hadn’t known Ed
would be screwing with the teams that severely. People were bound
to be unhappy having their teams jerked around. He would be. One
man stood and glared at the platform. “The Complex Crimes Unit is
not part of your directorate; there will be no changes to my
team.”