PAVAD SPIN OFFS Info & EXCERPTS

Well, I'm hard at work on Ghosting and on Balance of the World's, plus a few other projects. CB is hard at work on whatever it is CB's do when their wives are writing...Stinkerbell is hard at work driving her father crazy..(I see a correlation here...) It's those other projects I wanted to talk about today! In our first newsletter (if you need to sign up, do so here!) I mentioned that I was working on a few spin-offs of the PAVAD series. One is most definitely a romantic suspense series similar to the PAVAD series, but set in Texas, following the fictional Texas State Police (TSP for short!). The second is a mystery/suspense serial that will be around 75 pages each ‘episode’ and follow some of the PAVAD’s CCU teams around on different cases.
 
There may be hints of romance between upcoming PAVAD characters or some squeee moments from already-written-couples, but the primary focus will be on cases. (Think Criminal Minds, PAVAD style, ongoing, but complete episodes!)
 
The TSP books will mostly follow Carrie’s biological family (introduced in Wanting, Running, and Revealing for those who want to reread…) and a few family friends attached to the Beck family. One of the books will feature Carrie’s sister Mel (wounded in Revealing) and will actually be a PAVAD/TSP crossover. It’s scheduled sometime around the middle of 2016.
 
But the first book starts with Gabby Kendell (Brynna Beck’s partner/best friend). I don’t have a title yet, but I think it’ll be either Freedom or Justice.
 
I do plan to submit the first book of the series to Kindle Scout, Amazon’s crowd voting platform. If you aren’t familiar with Scout it’s basically where authors upload the first 5000 words (approximately 25 pages for me) and readers vote on which books they’d like to see published.
If an author’s book is chosen, it is published within six months and has all the benefits of Amazon’s marketing behind it.
 
If the TSP book 1 is published through Amazon, anyone who nominated it (and you don’t have to have a Kindle to participate, you can use a Kindle app in a web browser, so everyone should have access to the book!) will get a free advanced copy of the full book, edited, and all ready to go!
 
 
She’d witnessed her best friend’s family murdered ten years ago, and the killers were still out there. Watching, waiting for Gabby Kendell to do something stupid. She was really good at doing stupid—that’s why Gabby had spent most of the past ten years hiding out in her apartment and working in the computer forensics department of the Texas State Police.
 
Elliot Marshall had spent the last ten years trying to catch the ones who’d killed his entire family and when he stepped into the position with the TSP that his father had once filled, he was determined to use all the resources the TSP had to offer.
 
And that included the forensic tech who’d been there that day…The tech who was still being threatened by the killers.
 
There wasn’t anything that he wouldn’t do to keep her safe…
 
PROLOGUE
 
The desk had been his father’s. The position, as well. Elliot Marshall Jr. never thought he’d do more than share a name with his old man. But it was so much more than that now.
 
His father had been damned good at what he did, the best police chief this branch of Texas State Police had ever had.
 
It was what had gotten his father killed, along with Elliot’s mother and younger sister.
 
Or so the rumor went.
 
They’d never got the bastards responsible, but there had been much speculation in the last ten years that it had been related to something his father had been involved in.
 
Good or bad. No one really knew.
 
He had his father’s old office now, a personal assistant of his own, and a private security detail.
 
And a whole hell lot of responsibility. The Texas State Police was the smallest law enforcement body in the state, the Rangers outnumbered the TSP ten to one, but Elliot was determined to run the TSP as well as his father had.
 
Nothing would stop him.
 
“Will you be needing anything else, Chief Marshall, sir?” His assistant was a beautiful young woman with an impeccable record with the TSP and a cool manner he respected. Professionalism was what he prized in his people. Everything else was just secondary.
 
“I think I’ll be good for tonight, Amanda, thank you.”
 
He needed time to process the changes life had brought him.
 
His appointment to the position had come from the governor of Texas directly. The call had come at one of the lowest points of Elliot’s career, and he’d snapped up the appointment without thinking it through. Now he was starting to question himself and the why of the position.
 
He’d certainly never made any friends in the governor’s office. The biggest question he had was why.
 

 
CHAPTER ONE
 
Gabby Kendell didn’t know what to do. No surprise; she found herself that way quite a lot of the time. It was just the way things always ended up for her.
 
But this…this was a bit scarier than she had expected. It had been ten years, three months, and sixteen days since the world had tilted on her axis and made her afraid of every shadow in the room.
 
She’d thought she’d gotten herself past all of it. Thought she’d convinced herself the world was actually a pretty safe place after all.
 
The call from her step-father had erased ten years of hard work in five minutes.
 
Gabby closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe again. To think.
 
The killers had been out there for more than ten years. And they hadn’t found her yet. If they were smart, they weren’t even looking. They’d probably faded into the evil-people sunset or been arrested on other crimes long ago.
 
If she was lucky, they may even be dead. Unable to make good on the promise to find her and kill her they’d made ten years ago.
 
Yeah, that was what she hoped. She’d just have to convince herself of that, somehow.
 
Her partner pushed her own chair back and sighed. Gabby looked at her best friend. Brynna was staring at her. “What?”
 
“Something’s wrong. What?”
 
“Just some freaky bad news from my step-father. Nothing to worry about. Nothing that I can’t handle.”
 
“What is it? Tell me. Tell me.”
 
Gabby thought about it, and thought about not telling Brynna. But her friend was more than relentless when she was worried. It was the way Brynna was. “My friend’s killers. They’ve struck again.”
 
Brynna was the only one in their division of the TSP that Gabby had told the entire story of what had happened to Sara. And she knew Brynna had looked up the crime scene details after they’d spoken. Brynna had brought several questions to Gabby’s attention after the night Gabby had broken down with Brynna.
 
It had gotten Gabby thinking, and that was why she’d called her step-father in the first place. Michael Deckard had been the FBI agent assigned to Sara’s murder. Gabby had been the sole witness. Mike had fallen hard for Gabby’s mother, and had become an integral part of their family.
 
Mike had always kept Gabby safe, and today’s phone call was just another way for him to do that. “In Oregon, there’s been a case that’s similar.”
 
“Similar, but not a guarantee.”
 
No, there was never any guarantees, but she knew the truth—until they had the people in custody and could compare forensics. “Still, it was enough to have Mike calling me. Warning me.”
 
“I see. What are you going to do?”
“I’m not sure there is anything I can do. The case has been cold for ten years.”  And Gabby had never understood that. With such a high profile case, she’d have thought it would have been at the front of the TSP’s case load every day since.
 
But it wasn’t.
 
“The new chief started two days ago.”
 
Gabby looked at Brynna again. Her friend had a habit of wild conversational jumps at times. Brynna was on the autism spectrum and sometimes Gabby had a little difficulty keeping up with how her friend’s mind worked. “So? I heard we were getting a new guy after Blankenbaker’s retirement.”
 
The former head of TSP had taken early medical retirement to help his wife battle breast cancer and spend time with his teenage children.
 
Gabby had always liked working for Blankenbaker, and hadn’t bothered to ask who the emergency appointment to the position was going to be.
 
In the four years Gabby had worked in the computer forensics department of the TSP, the chief had entered her office three times. Gabby liked it like that.
 
People in authority made her nervous. When she got nervous she rambled. When she rambled she said something royally stupid.
 
Not exactly how she wanted her career to go.
 
“I said, the new chief started two days ago.” Brynna was still looking at her with her green eyes so serious. No surprise there, Brynna was always serious.
 
“So?”
 
“You know who it is, right?”
 
“No. I missed the memo…and the meeting.” Gabby tried not to feel too guilty. She wasn’t good when shoved in small room with bunches of people. She was better when they left her alone with her computer. Brynna was the same way. One of the reasons why the two of them got along so well.
 
If people just left them alone to do their jobs there pretty much wasn’t anything they couldn’t accomplish together.
 
Thankfully the former chief and the rest of the officers they worked with understood that.
 
Hopefully the new chief would be the same way.
 
“You know who it is, right?”
 
“No. Who?”
 
“Elliot Marshall. Your friend Sara’s older brother. Maybe he can help you.”
 
Gabby just stared. “Unh uh. No way. Elliot Marshall wouldn’t have anything to do with the Texas State Police. And he definitely wouldn’t believe me. He always thought I was nuts. That I didn’t see anything that night. And he wasn’t all that nice to me before that.”
 
“Well, a lot has changed in ten years. You have, right? Maybe he has, too.”
 
Somehow Gabby doubted it. People didn’t really change. Everyone knew that…
 
 
 
As for the PAVAD: Case Files serial…

I have started the first one, and it follows Al’s team, and is in Al’s point-of-view. It takes place shortly after Paige’s wedding, and once again Paige gets herself into a bit of a tangle before Al and Sebastian, Jazz and Hernandez, and the rest can get her out of it!
 
*This serial will be published at all the retailers, as well!
 
PAVAD: Case Files #0000-1 “Knocked Out”
 
 
PROLOGUE
 
Al stumbled down the hall toward the room she shared with her partner. She hated hotels. They really, truly sucked.
 
Especially when the hotel in question was dark, dirty, and run down.
 
Not to mention in the middle of nowhere. Her partner was doing something Paige rarely did—sleeping—and Al had found herself far too restless to stick around the room listening to her best friend breathe.
 
Not when it had come too close to the opposite happening for Al’s comfort.
 
She slipped back inside the room and made certain to lock the door and to slide the room’s only chair beneath the handle. There had been one memorable case where she and Paige had been surprised in their room by a couple of drunken fools who’d followed them back to their hotel from the local precinct, of all things.
 
Paige had ended up clubbing one of them upside the head while Al had pulled her weapon on the two idiots. Not  the highlight of that case.
 
But that case had been a weird one to begin with. So was this one, and Al wasn’t sure how she felt about things.
 
Paige had nearly gotten her clock cleaned, as Al’s husband was known to say. And Al had witnessed the entire thing and been helpless to stop it.
 
Paige wasn’t just her partner anymore. Or just her best friend. Paige had married her brother Mick less than a month ago. This was only their second case since Paige had returned from her honeymoon.
 
Al loved Paige, there was no doubt about it. But it had been even worse seeing her sister-in-law in danger this time. Because if anything happened to Paige it would devastate Al’s brother. And he’d already lost one woman he’d loved in the past.
 
And Paige meant so much more to him.
 
Still, Paige had managed to protect herself. Somehow. And wasn’t that what mattered?
 
Al stepped over to Paige’s bed and looked down at her. She lifted her phone up and snapped a quick picture of her friend with her mouth wide open and dark hair tangled around her head. Paige’s cheek rested on her left hand.
 
Where the wedding ring her brother had placed there rested.
 
It had been Al’s grandmother’s, and she couldn’t think of anyone more like that woman had been than Paige. It was fitting, wasn’t it, that Mick gave that ring to Paige?
 
She quickly texted the picture to the man in question. He’d somehow heard about what had happened and was freaking out.
 
Hopefully a pic would reassure him.
 
And maybe Al could finally grab some sleep, and forget what had happened. Somehow.
 
Someone knocked on the door softly and Al hurriedly moved the chair before the knocker could wake Paige. She wasn’t surprised to see her teamleader Sebastian standing in the hall.
 
Why wouldn’t he be? He was Paige’s brother-in-law, married to her sister. And he looked so much like Al’s husband her own heart hurt. Sometimes when she was missing Seth, looking at his identical brother definitely didn’t help.
 
So many connections on their team. It was a wonder Ed Dennis, leader of their directorate, even allowed them to remain together. How long would it last?
 
“I figured I’d check on her before heading to my room for a few hours.”
 
“I don’t think Masters did too much damage.”
 
“She was lucky. If he’d moved half a second faster…”
 
“I know. But he didn’t…” Al looked over her shoulder one more time as the events leading up to this moment replayed in her head…

 
CHAPTER ONE
 
“Stalking case. Let’s go!” Paige was one of the first ones to greet Al when Al walked into the PAVAD—Prevention & Analysis of Violent Acts Division—building three days after their last case had wound up unexpectedly. “Cleveland.”
 
“I just got here.” She took a quick look around for the rest of their team. Jaz and Hernandez were bickering near the elevators, nothing unusual there at all. It was actually reassuring after what the two of them had gone through at the hands of a previous enemy of Paige’s a few months ago. Jaz had come far too close to dying, and Al’s brother Mick had actually carried Saul Hernandez’s unconscious body to safety. The two partners had been extremely stilted and quiet with each other ever since. But not today. Today they were almost back to themselves.
 
Paige was probably responsible. She’d been out for three weeks, planning her wedding, getting married, then relaxing for two weeks with her husband in a Caribbean hut. Al definitely didn’t want to know all the details—not with the knowledge that the guy in that hut with her best friend was her older brother. There were some things a girl just didn’t want to know…
 
Did Paige even realize how important to their team she was? She was the one person who everyone on the team considered a confidant, a friend. She was at times the conscience of the Complex Crimes Unit Team Three. Al smiled at her new sister. “You always this happy when it comes to stalking creeps?”
 
“When it comes time to stopping them.” A strange light of emotion went across Paige’s face and Al could have kicked herself. It hadn’t been all that long ago when Paige had been stalked herself. Or a few other people they had both loved.
 
Stalking really wasn’t something any of them ever joked about anymore. “You’re awfully chipper this morning.”
 
“Your brother fed me well.” Paige grinned. “Among other things.”
 
“Ugh. Don’t say anything else.” Mick had moved out a few months earlier, into a foreclosure about a mile from the home he had shared with Al and their brother Mal, along with Seth and Mal’s family. It was odd having her brother gone. But he was with Paige, and Paige’s teenage brother Simon.
 
They were making their own family now. And Al was definitely happy for all of them. But hearing the details? Unh uh. Definitely not something she wanted to contemplate.
 
“What? Just consider this payback for everything I listened to after you and Seth figured things out…”
 
“If you two are finished?” Their team leader had come up behind them and put a hand on each of their shoulders. Al looked at him, then tried not to do a double take.
 
His brother had worn an extremely similar suit to work that morning. The longer she and Seth were together the more traits she discovered he did have in common with the brother he always called the good one.
 
Seth was pretty good himself. “Of course. How are you this morning? Little Maddie?”
 
Her niece was an absolutely beautiful baby—that Al hadn’t had a chance to see if a few days. She needed her baby fix. She had Mal’s son Auggie, but she still missed Maddie at times.
 
“Colicky. Carrie’s taking the day off to make a run to the pediatrician.”
 
“Hopefully this case won’t be a long one.” One of the biggest drawbacks of their job was the traveling. The being away from family so often. They all struggled with it. They’d be lying if they said differently.
 
“Hopefully. Let’s get rolling. Before it escalates.”
 
She never even made it into her office. Al just chalked it up to the nature of the job. At least she’d had time for breakfast and a shower before she’d had to leave.
 
Many a times she’d gotten called out in the middle of the night.
 
She’d learned to be grateful for small favors…
 
 
 
 
I’m not sure when these stories will be available, but I will keep everyone updated!