Page 3 of Final Inning

There was too much blood for it to be…minor. No.

There was nothing minor about this.

She swallowed. Forced herself to at least look professional from the outside. To be the one in charge now.

But then she saw…and she would never forget.

Chapter 1

This had been a month Dr. Miranda Talley, profiler with the FBI: PAVAD’s Cold Case division—co-head of that division, actually—wanted to forget.

Everything just hurt a little too much. And not just physically, but down deep. In the soul. She was fighting her way from that again. She’d been doing it a lot lately.

Too many bad things had happened to people she cared about, loved, and liked, lately. It hurt. So much.

She had wrapped up a case in southern Indiana a little over a week earlier. She’d worked it with a local deputy—who had been a friend of hers for a few years. He was hurting, still. She’d worked a case before that in her own hometown that had resulted in the SUV she was driving being run off the side of an icy mountain. It had been a pretty hairy situation. She’d gotten pretty banged up, then, too. That was just the least of what had been happening in Masterson County with her family.

Miranda half feared it wasn’t over yet, even though her sister was recovering with the man who loved her, her cousin Dylan was out of the hospital now, Dylan’s fiancé—or whatever they were calling the man who loved Dylan now—was healing from the bullet wound, and everything was supposed to be getting back to normal very soon.

Well, Miranda didn’t believe in normal.

Not any longer.

If she ever really had.

What she believed in was family, and being there for the ones who mattered. That included her little boy. Who had just spent the last two weeks in Masterson County, Wyoming with her own father and stepmother, getting spoiled rotten while on break from his school.

School was a big part of her problem now.

He was in the second grade now. Second grade was a big deal, and he was struggling. And it was just not going well. Trauma made things like behavior at school difficult sometimes. Bentley had some learning gaps they were working on, too. Fortunately, she had access to one of the best child psychologists in the country here in St. Louis, the mother of a friend.

Miranda was a psychologist in her own right now.

She had a plan to help her little boy through the dark times. It would just take time. She kept telling herself that. It would take time.

He hadn’t wanted to go back to school. It was hard to remember the rules at school. Bentley had wanted to stay in Wyoming with his grandparents. That was perfectly normal. She was trying to remember that.

But now…she was going to have to leave him again. After less than a week of them both being home together.

It was like pulling her heart out.

Most times she worked out of St. Louis and kept her traveling to a minimum. It was one of the perks of being the co-head of the unit. But, sometimes, she had to take the out of state assignments. It was just the way the job worked.

The timing could have been a lot better on this one, though. It always took a little bit of time to get Bentley readjusted after a long school break. Brynlock Academy, the private school her father paid for her son to attend, went on a year-round schedule, with long breaks throughout the year. She liked the stability for Bentley, and it was an excellent school that she never could have afforded without her father’s help, but going back was always tough.

Brynlock genuinely cared for the kids—she kept telling herself that over and over. Bentley would be okay.

She looked at the little boy who held her heart. She’d only had him for a little while. A case in Indiana and Missouri had resulted in her ‘finding’ him tucked away in a group home for older teenage boys who were aging out of the system—with criminal records. He’d been six. Miranda had taken him into FBI custody immediately. As a material witness. He had had no one. And she had just known—he was meant to be her kid. Somehow, and she thought her father—a former diplomat—and the head of PAVAD, Ed Dennis, had both pulled strings to help make it happen as quickly as it had.

Bentley was hers now. Forever.

His half-sisters, who he hadn’t known before she’d found him, were with Miranda’s closest friend on the planet. Jac had known the girls’ mother, before Bentley’s father had murdered her. Now, Miranda and Jac did the best they could to make sure the kids had a healthy relationship, while getting their own individual needs met fully.

While Miranda and Jac and Jac’s husband Max worked for the best FBI division in the country. Which definitely didn’t make things easy at times.

Sometimes, the exact opposite. They’d make progress—and then she’d have to leave him again. Bentley just didn’t understand why she kept having to leave him all the time.

“I don’t want to go to Aunt Jac’s, though. When are you coming back?” He had that look in his eyes. The one that said he was about to turn stubborn. Her kid had stubborn down to an art form.