Discarded by Fate

by Morgan Kelley

  Callen choked on his coffee.

  They all looked over at him.

  “You know it’s more telling when you don’t talk but do that,” she teased. “Now they are all thinking whether you’ve left fingerprints, hair, or semen.”

  “ELIZABETH!”

  Why was he surprised?

  He shook his head and laughed.

  Chris pointed at Christina. “You’re with me. Kane will kill me if I leave you in a room where someone magically broke in to leave a body.”

  She grinned. “He wouldn’t hurt you. Kane-y-kins is the sweetest man I know.”

  And a freaking giant.

  Just as Elizabeth was going to give the orders, the doors opened, and there stood her security.

  “What the hell, Ivan?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I know! I didn’t let anyone slip past me. I was on duty all night, and Rory was here with coffee at three.”

  She stared at him.

  “I meant your face. Who hit you?”

  She pointed at Blue.

  “Did you kick his ass? I think I said get him sprung, not beat him with your purse.”

  She laughed. “I didn’t do it. He was like that when I found him. I swear!”

  Elizabeth demanded an explanation.

  “The cops thought I killed her,” he said, pointing at the bag. “You know, since I was a soldier, so that means I have to have PTSD and be insane.”

  “Well, two out of three…”

  “Stop. I may have PTSD from working with you. Cut me a break.”

  She snorted. “Sure. And?”

  “And what? I’m crazy for following your hag ass around, but not enough to do that,” he said, pointing at the body bag.

  “So you let two fat, donut-munching, tie-wearing cops kick your ass?”

  He opened his mouth, and then closed it.

  Technically, that’s exactly what he did. Had he known Blue was coming…yeah, he wouldn’t have taken the beating.

  “And now, I feel so much safer,” she said, laughing. “Maybe I should call my husband and give him the heads-up, Ivan, you know…for your own good.”

  He didn’t speak.

  This was exactly what he expected to happen.

  She’d called Ethan, and the shit was about to hit the fan.

  “Everyone out. Load up. I’m going to have a private meeting with my security guy. I may kick his ass around the room a little too.”

  They all did what she said.

  When the door closed, she stared at him.

  “True or false?”

  He knew this was going to suck. While watching her was dangerous, he’d gotten accustomed to her.

  He actually liked her.

  Why?

  NO.

  FREAKING.

  CLUE.

  “What?”

  “You called my husband last night and gave him the heads-up about what happened that night in Salem?”

  He didn’t speak.

  “If you lie, I’ll never trust you again,” she warned.

  “I called him and told him to ask you about it. Technically, I didn’t spill the beans. I know better. You’re insane.”

  “Why?”

  He’d asked himself that a few times. While he was being detained, the thought had even crossed his mind that being interrogated was her way of punishing him.

  Then he realized she’d hurt him herself.

  Elizabeth didn’t let others do her dirty work. That was one of the things he respected most.

  “I did it because you were carrying shit that was not your fault. You take it as your own, and this wasn’t your wound to carry, Mrs. Blackhawk.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “I carry my own guilt. We all do. This was on Bonnie and Maeve. This was NOT on you.”

  She moved toward him, and he braced for it.

  When she hugged him, he couldn’t have been more surprised.

  What the hell was this?

  Was she showing him…affection?

  Jesus.

  He had to be knocked unconscious in that interrogation room. There was no way this was going down.

  “Thank you. I know why you did it, and I know what you risked to do it. I appreciate it.”

  He patted her back.

  He was so unsure of what to do. Elizabeth Blackhawk was hugging him.

  Surely, this was one of the signs of the apocalypse.

  “Number four,” he muttered.

  “Horsemen, huh?” she asked, knowing what he was thinking. “I do actually like people, and you’re on that list.”

  That freaked him out even more.

  “Someone get some holy water. She’s possessed.”

  That made her laugh.

  “I appreciate you watching out for me, Ivan. I know I’ve been hard to handle.”

  “Uranium is hard to handle. Plutonium is hard to handle. You’re basically impossible.”

  She snorted.

  “Well, then you’re going to like this.”

  He watched the change. It wasn’t subtle. She stood taller and morphed from Elizabeth to Director Blackhawk right in front of him.

  “You need to get your sad, busted up ass to check how that nut bag got a disarticulated body into my room while I was sleeping in THERE! You were on duty, and this cuckoo fest is on you now too. Solve it, Igor, and get your shit in order.”

  He saluted.

  Now…this side of her…he got.

  “On it, Hagarella. We wouldn’t want you to miss the ball by shoving your ass into a pumpkin.”

  She fought not to laugh.

  “Well, then that makes you my fat-assed fairy godmother. So, who’s laughing now, Twinkles?”

  He was.

  As always.

  “If you’re done comparing me to cartoon princesses, I should get to work. I’ll leave you an agent. Do you want Agent Garrick or Agent Seaton?”

  “I get to pick?”

  “Blue Garrick it is!” she said, heading for the door. “You get the newbie.”

  “Bitch.”

  “Girl in combat boots who needs a manual to clean his gun.”

  He sputtered.

  Yeah, she was good with this. They were back to where they were supposed to be.

  Now she had her bearings.

  “Find it! Oh, and get us into someplace that a sicko can’t sneak into while we are asleep! The last thing I need is to roll over in bed and find a corpse.”

  “Well, that’s destined to happen, you soul-sucking harpy.”

  She stopped moving, and her body shook as she appeared to begin crying.

  “HEY! I’m sorry!”

  She turned. “Sucker!”

  With that, she slammed the door behind her, leaving him staring at her.

  “You are a total lunatic,” he muttered.

  And he respected her.

  When Blue’s boss ordered her into the room to work with her security, she was good with that. She liked being around people. All of her life, she was a loner.

  This was fun.

  Who knew socialization was going to be this awesome?

  So, she headed into the room, carrying her bag, laptop, and the rest of her gear.

  Oh, and a cheery smile.

  “I guess I’m supposed to be your partner,” Blue said, giving him the heads-up.

  “I work alone.”

  She stared at him.

  “Uh, no, you don’t. You have a bunch of other security guys that are your partners. There’s Rory, Peter…”

  He stopped her.

  “You take everything seriously, don’t you?”

  “Yes, most of the time. Why are you scowling?” she finally asked. “When you do that, you make permanent lines in your face.”

  He stared at her. “Expert, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m scowling because a crazy person came into this room, left a dead woman, and could have killed Mrs. Blackhawk or Mr. Whitefox. That’s my job. I’m supposed to keep her sa
fe. I dropped the ball on this one, and I don’t know how the person did it.”

  “Okay, so you’re upset that you failed.”

  “I didn’t…”

  “Yeah, you technically did. You let someone past, so now you have to figure out how.”

  “Well, don’t sugar coat it.”

  “I don’t. Sugar is bad for you.”

  He was getting exasperated.

  “I have to get them into a hotel, and then Elizabeth wants us to figure out how it happened. So, I’m going to make a call, and you’re going to start without me.”

  “You’re bossy.”

  “Yeah, not the first time that I’ve been told that,” he muttered.

  “Okay, I’ll work on it.”

  While he sat down to begin making calls to get his security concerns handled, she pulled out a device and scanned the room.

  From his seat, he watched her. He was curious as to what the hell she was doing.

  She followed the perimeter of the room, and then when she was done, she plugged the device into her laptop.

  Then she began typing.

  “What the hell are you doing? I said start looking for the way he got into this box.”

  Blue glanced over.

  “Uh, I am,” she said. “I took a scan of the room, and I’m running it against the information we have of the rooms schematics. If there’s a hidden wall, the room’s dimensions won’t match up. Then we know where to start.”

  He stared at her.

  That was…genius.

  “How did you think to do that?” he asked, on hold with the hotel.

  She tapped her head. “Gray squishy matter. Work smarter. Don’t work in circles. I’ve learned by watching Elizabeth that she wants higher productivity with optimum outcome. You can’t do that if you’re chasing tail.”

  He stared at her.

  “Chasing YOUR tail. Chasing tail means getting laid. That’s really not the same thing.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” she muttered, watching the numbers scroll on the screen.

  He was curious as hell. Not only did she evoke a response from his dormant libido, but she made him smile.

  Blue was something.

  Truth be told, she was different than he’d expected. While she was smart, clearly, she was also really attractive. As she was bent over her laptop, he couldn’t help but check out her ass.

  He actually had to force himself to look away.

  This was NOT the time to find some woman sexy. In fact, this was the WORST time to do that. Granted, she’d copped a feel in the interrogation room, but he was pretty damn sure she didn’t realize it was hot.

  She was an enigma.

  As he procured them a hotel—one that he knew wouldn’t be easy to break into, he watched Blue move all the old furniture against a wall. She dug into her bag and pulled out some baby powder.

  He couldn’t help but watch her.

  What the hell was she doing?

  When she began squirting it all over the floor, he had to keep his mouth shut. She was making one hell of a mess.

  “What the hell?” he asked, as the cloud of powder surrounded them.

  He began coughing.

  “I’m looking for a trap door.”

  She had to be insane.

  That was the ONLY explanation.

  “What? What do you mean you’re looking for a trap door?” he asked.

  When the dust settled, she looked over at him. His black cargos were covered in baby powder.

  So was she.

  “If there’s a trap door, there will be a draft. With the baby powder, it won’t remain where the draft is coming in, and we’ll see an outline.”

  Ivan stared at her.

  That was…genius too.

  “There,” she said, pointing to where the big rug had been. “It was under the rug.”

  He moved toward it, and pulled a knife from his pocket. They got down on their knees and popped it open. It didn’t make a sound as it was lifted.

  He couldn’t believe this.

  There was no way their security team would have thought to look for a trap door in a historic bed and breakfast for something like this.

  “How did you know?” he asked.

  “Well, I went through my Bostonian history. Revolutionary war, they had hidden basements below homes. This isn’t the main home, so I crossed that off the list.”

  He listened.

  “Then I thought about some other key moments in time, like the Civil War. The North was getting slaves out of the South and to freedom across the Canadian border. That seemed to fit. This was an old carriage house. They’d kept horses in here at one time, and who would look under the floor of a horse stall for a tunnel?”

  “You are incredible.”

  She smiled. “Well, ‘The Underground Railroad’ came right through Boston. I assumed that when the walls were to spec, that the way in had to be beneath us.”

  He was astounded.

  “Sorry I made a mess. I’ll clean it up.”

  “Yeah, don’t worry about it. Elizabeth’s team can pull prints off the walls still. You might have actually made it easier with the powder.”

  Ivan didn’t want to be wildly impressed, but he really was. How could he not be? Blue, the newbie, just pulled a tunnel out of thin air.

  “What do we do now?” she asked.

  Yeah, he didn’t know if she was going to like this one or not. Girls didn’t tend to like to explore hundred and fifty-year-old tunnels. There were going to be spiders, crawly things, and…

  Well, who knew?

  He stared into the hole, and she pulled a small flashlight out of her bag.

  “Here. We’ll need this if we are going to crawl into that tunnel.”

  He laughed.

  Well, that answered that one. She wasn’t as girly as she looked.

  “What?”

  “You’re like Nancy Drew.”

  She grinned.

  Blue had one woman in her youth that she craved to be like, and she was it. That’s why she told Elizabeth that.

  Who didn’t want to be Nancy Drew when they were growing up?

  Cool Dad.

  A mustang.

  Ned—the hot token boyfriend.

  Oh, and friends.

  “God! I hope so.”

  He laughed as he took the flashlight from her. It shone down into the hole. “Well, I hope you don’t mind spiders,” he said.

  “In Boston, there aren’t any poisonous ones. We’ll be good. We should be more concerned with mold. That’s toxic. If it’s in there, and we breathe in the spores, we’ll be dead within a week.”

  He stared at her.

  Ivan didn’t know whether to laugh or tell her stay in the dusty talc covered room.

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” he said. “I’ll go first. I’ll catch you.”

  She was good with that. Blue loved an adventure, and this was one hell of one.

  All she needed was the sweet car, the cool friends, and a man.

  Speaking of which…

  She had one of those.

  Technically.

  “That sounds good, Mr. Bennet.”

  “Ivan.”

  “That sounds good, Ivan,” she corrected.

  Dropping into the hole, he stared up at her. It was going to be a little drop.

  “Fall through, Blue. I have you. I won’t let you hit the mold covered ground,” he teased.

  She did what he said. When she let go of the lip of the tunnel, she fell right into his arms.

  He held her.

  “See? I told you,” he stated.

  It was hard for him not to notice she felt good against his body, and that she had her arm around his shoulders.

  Ivan liked it.

  A little too much.

  “We should get moving. Who knows how long this tunnel is going to be?” he asked, placing her on her feet.

  “That works for me.”

  Yeah, and it worked for him,
too, and that was going to be one huge problem.

  * * * B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x * * *

  Damascus

  Across the

  Country

  Coming back to that side of the country was always bittersweet.

  Damascus had been their first home as husband and wife. It was a special time in their lives as they began their journey as a couple.

  Then there was Callen.

  They added him to their relationship as they were running FBI West, and when he looked back on it, he didn’t think it was going to go this well.

  How could a threesome ever really function in modern day society?

  He’d been worried that their lives would be a mess.

  Ethan had been wrong.

  Then add in that he’d reconnected with Timothy out here. He’d come home, the prodigal son returning.

  Now he was back.

  AGAIN.

  It was time to hunt down Wyler. With him, Ethan had three of his security detail. He’d explained to them that this wasn’t about pleasantries, but more about getting the man back onto the jet without anyone calling the cops or getting shot.

  He had to explain that part to one of the guys. The newbie looked a little too excited when he said ‘extricate’. It was better to explain multiple times than to explain how someone had been shot.

  That was a nightmare of paperwork.

  As they drove toward the rez, Blackhawk was thinking about coming back there.

  When they left, they closed Callen’s cabin, they sealed up Granddad’s, and they didn’t think they’d be coming back.

  The place hurt to be there. Even years after Timothy had passed, they still mourned his loss.

  Well, here he was.

  A part of him was urging Ethan to visit. His heart hurt, but his brain had talked him into it.

  What if someone vandalized the place?

  What if it had been damaged?

  Yeah, he needed to take a look to silence the irrational thoughts in his head.

  “I need to make a stop before we go after Wyler,” he said.

  The team didn’t mind.

  As they pulled up to the cabin—the one he’d directed them to—he ordered them to wait.

  “It’s my family’s, and I want to get a few things.”

  When they left Damascus, they didn’t take all of Timothy’s things. It felt wrong to strip the place bare. He and Callen paid someone to check on it and to cut the grass, but now he was going to make sure that sacred place was safe.