Chapter One

 

 

Anastacia Sorin was screwed.

Her opponent had her—and they both knew it. It had been as fair a fight as it could be. Both women were small in stature, of the same build and age. Both had at least eight years’ training in the martial arts, weaponless fighting, and hand-to-hand combat. Both were skilled supervisory special agents with the Child Exploitation Prevention Division of the FBI.

But Georgia hadn’t been up all night fighting nightmares. And she coolly, methodically wiped the floor with Ana. Ana’s face hit the mat and a knee rammed into her spine. “Do you yield, Ana?”

“Yield.” Ana’s relaxed every muscle in her body, pressed closer to the rubber floor beneath her cheek. Submitted. “Dammit, George! Get off me! Your knee’s sharp!”

“Spill,” Georgia ordered ten minutes later, as the two women changed out of their sparring clothes and into their regulation business dress. “You’re not up to par today.”

“What do you mean? Just because you beat me...” Ana slipped her trousers over her hips before glancing at her friend. Georgia always managed to look great no matter what she wore—Ana would be the first to admit a small pinch of resentment as she compared Georgia’s black trousers to her own dark navy. There was dust on one navy knee, and a safety pin held the trousers together. Ana always somehow managed to look a bit ragtag. And she knew it, felt it.

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 curvy body. But Georgia never acknowledged that fact. Men looked at her, much more than they looked at Ana. She looked like a damned leprechaun.

“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.

“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 fifteen, 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.

Their team leader 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,” Ana said, 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.

Ana had stuffed a spare set of throwing knives in there, as well. Georgia made a good pack mule with that bag and Ana took advantage of it. 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 the Assistant Director of the Directorate of Intelligence. Georgia’s father.

Edward 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 quiet.

He nodded in his daughter’s direction, and Ana caught the small smile. Edward 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. Whitman was young, obnoxious, the newest transplant to their unit in the CEPD, and both women enjoyed tormenting him when 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.

“Hmm, Whitman, Doctor Dennis, Director Dennis—you think they’re related?” Ana widened her own eyes at Whitman. “Wouldn’t that be 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 Mal. 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 not 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, Ana realized, but that didn’t detract from how attractive her dark-headed, blue-eyed boss actually was. She sniffed discretely, taking in the warm mint-touched 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.” J.T. Thompkins said, leaning forward to look at them. His black-rimmed glasses slid down his nose and he pushed them up with one finger. He was such a nerd, with his blonde hair uncombed and his shirt stained and untucked, but Ana loved him. Fiercely, the way one loved a younger brother. “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 chestnut hair and a handsome face. She’d seen him before but couldn’t place him. He was followed by several other agents, including a younger redheaded woman, with hair redder than Ana’s and a gorgeous blonde woman. 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 Edward 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?” Brockman said. “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. Still.” 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 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 Mal’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 front. Edward 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 Indiana University 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.