Finely Ground Read online

  Finely Ground

  Book Two in the Killer Cup of Joe Series

  By Jennifer Templeman

  Copyright © 2015 by Jennifer Templeman

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Amy Malkoff / www.amymalkoff.com

  Book design by Jennifer Templeman

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Jennifer Templeman

  Produced in the United States of America

  First Printing: September, 2015

  Idyllwood Press

  ISBN-13 978-0-9715045-3-0

  Acknowledgements

  This story came to be because of the support and help of many people. In particular, special thanks are due to Jenny Rarden, my editor and friend, who was willing to read and reread multiple drafts. Your excitement over each element and encouragement to continue kept me typing.

  Marianne Valentine, you were so kind to be a beta reader, and give your impressions from South Africa. Your wisdom and kindness made this process even more fun.

  To the group at BCRU, your regular messages to check on my progress and insistence that, despite the long period you silence, you had not forgotten about me, kept me motivated to keep working until this project was complete.

  To Graham, Andrew and David, my three boys. Your creativity and unique ways of looking at the world gave me the courage to try something new as well. Being your mother is the thing of which I am most proud.

  To Mark, my husband and best friend. You are the most creative and bravest man I know. Your encouragement of my dreams helped me to believe they might be possible. And in those moments when I felt stuck, you sir, were always a willing thought partner and brewer of coffee.

  To Mark ~ who believes in my dreams even before they take shape.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  “I expected more from you, Miller,” the older man stated, disappointment dripping from every word.

  “I’ve given you five of my best field agents,” Miller replied, his spine straightening. “If you aren’t seeing what you want, then you haven’t been clear enough about what you’re looking for.”

  With that challenge, the older man pulled a small picture from his suit pocket and tossed it on the table separating them. “Michaels.”

  Miller glanced at the photo of one his desk-review agents from the department housed in the basement. “She’s not ready.”

  The man simply raised his eyebrow as a challenge. “She just solved a serial-killer case that had stumped agents with much more experience.”

  “She was nearly killed and only came back to the office last week.”

  “It’s in her blood,” the man argued. “Word is she’s exactly like her father.”

  “No one is exactly like her father,” Miller answered. “Michaels has no interest in working in the field.”

  The man waved his hand. “Because she hasn’t done enough of it.”

  “What are you suggesting?” Miller asked, “That I force her into more field work and then announce I’ve handpicked her for a special task force out of HQ?”

  “Get her cleared for field duty; I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “We have protocols for this,” Miller reminded him. “After she’s returned to her desk duties successfully for a couple of weeks, she can go through an internal evaluation and be fully reinstated.”

  “Send her to O’Reilly.”

  Miller tightened his grip on the picture and then tossed it back on the table before moving his hand to hold the aged Scotch in the glass in front of him. “I thought you wanted her cleared. O’Reilly is usually the last stop for agents we all think are done.”

  The man nodded. “She’s efficient.”

  “She’s a bully who makes gross overstatements and assumptions about people’s skills and forces them to admit that they’re not cut out for this line of work.”

  “Not everyone is.”

  “Then why send Michaels to O’Reilly if you want her cleared for the field?” Miller asked.

  “O’Reilly is willing to read the entirety of a file before moving forward. She’s also open to input about an agent’s state before meeting with them.”

  “She does what you tell her to do.”

  “Not always.” The man pinched some lint from his trousers and allowed it to fall to the floor. “But enough that I feel we can get Michaels back out where she belongs more quickly than if you go through the standard channels.”

  “Protocol is there for a reason.” Miller hated having to repeat himself, but the man wasn’t listening. “Why are you focused on Michaels?”

  “She has an uncanny ability to make connections that no one else sees,” the man replied. “That kind of talent needs to be carefully…handled.”

  Chapter 1

  Seventeen… Why would someone build an office so peculiar in shape that it would have such an odd number of ceiling tiles? Ellie felt her irritation growing, although she was unsure if it was because of the room’s configuration or the fact that she’d been kept waiting for an appointment she didn’t want to have in the first place.

  After her recent foray into the field ended with an emergency admission to the hospital, a condition of her being fully reinstated to work was clearance by a psychiatrist within the FBI. She’d tried explaining that her mental stability didn’t matter because she wasn’t planning on returning to the field, but her boss, Phil, and the section chief, Miller, both insisted. Since this was the rare exception when they seemed to see eye to eye, Ellie knew she was doomed to have to give at least of hour of her life to some mental doctor, hoping they didn’t pick up on her mild obsession with details and suggest she had a condition that required treatment. Of course, continually counting the ceiling tiles in the office just because the odd number annoyed her probably wasn’t providing much evidence about her sanity.

  Unable to bear the waiting, Ellie began to pace, desperate for a distraction to keep her from counting once more. On the wall were three small framed prints that appeared to be abstract designs painted in black on a white canvas. Grateful for the diversion, she found herself looking for designs in the pictures, knowing that was probably their purpose.

  Freshman psychology was all she had to go on, but Ellie thought these kinds of pictures were supposed to be symmetrical so the person looking at them could easily associate the pattern with a real picture. All she could make out were random swirls and marks. The one on the bottom did vaguely resemble a gun, but she knew better than to admit to that when she was here to prove the shooting hadn’t impacted her mental abilities.

  “The guy in here yesterday was crying on the floor like a little baby staring at those pictures,” a brash voice spoke from the door.

  Ellie blinked but was imp
ressed with how bold the woman seemed, barely standing at five feet and surrounded by long and wildly curly bright-red hair.

  “I didn’t have the heart to tell him those are my two-year-old daughter’s first attempt at finger painting, so I let him use the whole hour describing the horrors he thought the Rorschach test was depicting.”

  Relief must have shown on Ellie’s face, because the small woman stepped forward, extending her hand and saying, “I’m Doctor Makayla O’Reilly, but please call me Mack.”

  As Ellie readied to introduce herself in return, Mack cut her off. “And you are Ellie Michaels, daughter of the famous Elliot Michaels.”

  “Yes, that’s me,” Ellie admitted, never appreciating it when her father was her means of introduction.

  “Don’t worry,” the bold woman still shaking her hand assured her. “I only know him through the field notes my colleagues wrote on him a few years back. And I’m guessing you don’t want me to waste time comparing you to him, so we’ll just forget I said that and start fresh.”

  Mack began tossing files around on her desk with what seemed like reckless abandon. “So, why are we here?”

  “I need to be cleared to return to the field,” Ellie replied, curious why else someone would come here.

  “No…” Mack disagreed, tapping her index finger on her chin, “that’s not it.” She sat down hard in the chair behind her and then jumped up once more and turned around to exclaim, “I’ve got it!”

  Mack held up a folder in her right hand as explanation for her outburst. “You’re here so I can see if having to deal with the demons of your past while nearly getting killed in your first active assignment in half a decade is enough for me to take your gun and badge permanently.”

  Ellie knew whatever color may have been in her face began to quickly fade. “I didn’t realize this could end with me having to leave the Bureau.”

  “Don’t worry. That rarely happens,” Mack said in an attempt to comfort. “I mean, you’d have to be completely nuts for me to take your badge, but I have locked up a firearm or two temporarily until somebody let go of their cuckoo tendencies.”

  Stunned into silence, Ellie’s mind began to wonder if perhaps Mack needed to use some of her analytical and diagnostic skills on herself, because so far, she hadn’t acted much like a mental-health professional.

  “Let’s start from the beginning…” Mack put on a pair of half-moon glasses and grabbed a pen and legal pad. When she looked back up, her face looked expectant and eager to hear whatever Ellie might share. “I’ll help get you started with something simple.” She smiled. “How’s your relationship with your mother?”

  Ellie coughed, feeling as though she were choking. Why couldn’t the fiery redhead have asked something simpler, like how to solve the Middle East peace process? Finding the right words to describe Janice was impossible.

  Mack started to chuckle, which quickly turned into a full-fledged laugh. “I’m just kidding with you. I don’t know a single strong woman who sees eye to eye with their mother. And since your dad’s dead and you basically followed in his footsteps to come into the Bureau, I’m guessing there are all the typical father issues too, so why don’t you tell me about what happened during your last assignment?”

  For the next half hour, Ellie described the events as factually as she could recall them, thankful to be able to talk about her near-death experience instead of her family. As she spoke, the doctor made notes and interrupted only occasionally to ask clarifying questions.

  When the tale was done, Mack slipped off her glasses and used them to point in Ellie’s direction. “When you dream, is it of that night?”

  Ellie was relieved to answer honestly. “No.”

  “What do you dream about?”

  “Normal stuff.” Ellie hoped that was true. “Sometimes they’re memories, or sometimes they’re strange things that could never happen in real life. Usually I don’t remember them.”

  “Do you ever wake up with your heart racing or covered in sweat?” Mack asked, leaning forward and giving Ellie in the impression the answer to this question was important.

  “Not that I can remember.”

  Mack switched the subject abruptly. “So tell me about the coffee guy.”

  “He saved me,” Ellie answered as dryly as possible.

  “No he didn’t.”

  Ellie thought back over that night, when a serial killer had drugged her and was slowly choking the life out of her. Joe had used his training as a sniper to shoot out his coffee shop’s side window and eliminate the woman killing her. As far as she was concerned, that constituted saving her.

  Mack seemed to understand her confusion. “He saved your life. That’s not the same thing as giving him credit for saving all of you. From what I read and observed, you had a traumatic experience five years ago and all but shut down. Over the past few months, you’ve begun to come out of your head and live, even making friendships and allowing yourself to work in the field again. That took a ton of courage, which coffee guy didn’t give you. Credit for that rests solely on your own shoulders. You’re a strong, capable, brilliant woman because you were brave enough to venture out of your comfort zone, not because somebody stepped in to let you live another day. He saved your life, but he’s not your savior.”

  “They sound like the same thing,” Ellie argued.

  The glasses that had been in Mack’s hand landed on top of the papers scattered on the desktop. “You’re not nuts,” she announced directly. “I don’t see any danger to yourself, the Bureau, or society at large if you continue in your duties here.” Before Ellie could fully relax at that news, the redhead added, “So I’m clearing you back to work in file review but not to handle active cases in the field.”

  Despite that being ultimately what she wanted, Ellie found herself getting angry.

  “I don’t think there would be any problems if you were called out again, but I think there are a few marbles rolling around in your head that you’d benefit from playing with until you learn how to control them,” Mack continued.

  “What marbles?” Ellie couldn’t decide if the doctor’s lack of proper vernacular was endearing or concerning.

  “You need to come to terms with your father—who he was, how he died, and the shadow you live under because of your name,” Mack explained, holding her index finger in the air. “The way you keep glancing up at the ceiling tells me you’re counting tiles. Most people would have let go of the fact that this room is asymmetrical, but it’s bugging you, even subconsciously, so there’s probably something there we should talk about.” Continuing to hold up fingers for each point, she added her final issue. “Plus, you can deny it all you want to, but there’s more to the coffee-guy story, and I want to hear it.”

  “Does it have anything to do with me serving in the field?” Ellie was curious what Joe had to do with her job.

  Mack’s curly hair bounced around her as she shook her head. “Probably not, but I’m a sucker for a good romance, and I’m going to keep poking at you until you tell me all about it.”

  “Oh, Joe and I…we’re…well, so far we’re friends.” Ellie felt like a middle schooler whose crush was just outed to the entire eighth grade.

  “Lighten up, Michaels.” Mack grinned. “It’s none of my business, but the way your cheeks match my hair says you’re hiding something.” The strange little woman picked up her glasses and returned them to the tip of her nose before writing some quick notes on her tablet. After completing whatever she felt the need to capture, she looked up at Ellie and smiled softly. “I know I can be a bit much and a lot of people find my style a little atypical.”

  It was hard for Ellie to keep from smiling at the degree of understatement in that last comment.

  “But I think you’d get a lot out of us talking for a while. My records are confidential, and you continuing to see me will have no bearing on your job. I’ve already told you I’ll clear you to resume your duties with Phil.” Mack took off her spectacles once
more to point them at Ellie. “I can’t make you do it, but you owe it to yourself to at least give it a shot. You’re a strong woman living in fear. Don’t you want to regain the freedom you used to have before you pulled back and went into hiding?”

  Ellie hadn’t thought of it like that before, but her world had narrowed to a small group of people she associated with. “All right,” she conceded, wondering if it made her appear weak to have given in so easily. If she were the strong woman Mack said she was, shouldn’t she have fought it a little more?

  “Hey.” Mack slapped her palm on the desk to get Ellie’s full attention. “Don’t do that. Don’t pick apart everything you say and wonder what kind of judgment I’m going to pass on it. Think of this as a couple of girlfriends talking. Rumor has it you’re an early bird like me, so we can set up some time to talk when we both first arrive and maybe share a coffee so it won’t be so intimidating for you. And if I prove to be too much spunk for you to handle, you can stop meeting with me at any time.”

  It was hard to imagine a few conversations could make a difference in Ellie’s life, but she had noticed herself slipping back into the old habits and routine that the case had helped her to get out of. “I’ll bring you a coffee from my favorite place, and we’ll give it a try,” she said decisively.

  “Perfect.” Mack’s whole face seemed to light up. “Keep in mind, I like my coffee like I like my men: short, strong, and potent enough to leave you feeling their effect for hours.”

  Chapter 2

  “Wait…” Joe turned around and stopped making their drinks. “She likes her coffee how?”

  “Short, strong, and potent enough to leave her feeling the effect for hours,” Ellie repeated while motioning for him to get back to the task at hand. They’d gotten involved in talking from the moment she walked into Mocha Joe’s, and after smelling the brew all around her, she was getting desperate for a cup to drink herself.