Discarded by Fate

by Morgan Kelley

  “Grab that watch and let’s go! Don’t worry about trace!”

  She did as he said and shoved it into her pocket.

  “I’m sinking!”

  He dropped his belt into the hole and he could feel her grabbing the end. His end was wrapped around his wrist. “I’ll pull you up,” he said, beginning to do just that.

  She held on for dear life.

  All that stood between her and dying was this man and his belt. Talk about putting your faith in that one last thread that held you to life.

  As he pulled her up, he could feel his muscles screaming from the lactic acid burn. Moving his position, he dropped his legs over, and kept pulling.

  When she reached his boots, he hooked his feet under her arms.

  It gave him a second to rest.

  Then she started slipping. He grabbed her by the hands and with all of his strength, he pulled her up and out of the hole.

  She landed on his body, and they didn’t move. Ivan was flat on his back with her over him.

  He was breathing heavily.

  So was she.

  “Are you okay?” he finally asked.

  “Yes.”

  “That was too close. No more playing Nancy Drew!” he said, as he held her.

  Yeah, she could live without the fancy Mustang, the fun friends, and the sexy boy toy. She’d rather live.

  Period.

  “That’s fine with me.”

  He noticed she wasn’t moving.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Just a little freaked out. That was scary. I don’t think I want to do that again.”

  Ivan held her as she shook. When she rested her head on his shoulder, he tried not to think about their bodies being in contact.

  Again, that damn adrenaline.

  Still, he comforted her.

  “It’s okay, honey. It’s okay, and we aren’t doing that again. Ever. Give me a minute and we’ll work our way out of this tunnel and to Elizabeth,” he said, holding her and rubbing her back.

  A few moments passed.

  “I think I’m good,” she said.

  Yeah, well, he wasn’t.

  When Blue sat up, she was straddling his hips as he remained flat on his back. Try as he might, he couldn’t control it anymore.

  His body reacted to the visual and feeling of her on top of his man goods.

  Shit!

  Ivan began praying that she wouldn’t notice, or he had some explaining to do.

  “Thank you for working out and having excellent upper body strength.”

  He stared at her.

  Then he began laughing. “You could have said I was strong.”

  She looked confused.

  “I did.”

  That made him laugh even more, and it eased the tension in his lower body.

  This woman was completely different than anyone he’d ever met in his life.

  “Blue, you’re…something.”

  “You keep saying that, but I don’t get it.”

  Honestly, when it came to her, he didn’t get it either. What was it that made him want to figure her out?

  That was the problem.

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

  Damascus

  The shit was about to get real. Ethan Blackhawk was done with the jackassery and tomfoolery. When he had to chase down a grown man, it was time to do it up Blackhawk style.

  His father was shit out of luck.

  This was about to get ugly, and he didn’t care. The man was getting his drunken ass on that jet if he had to cuff him, gag him, and call him a Native terrorist.

  There was going to be a showdown, and he was going to win. The crap he’d pulled the last four weeks, abandoning his family was finished.

  What Wyler needed was a come to Jesus talk, and he was going to be the one handing out the sermon.

  This was done.

  He gave his driver the directions, and sat in the back with two of his men. They were coordinating the ‘extrication’, and he didn’t care.

  As long as no one died…

  Screw it.

  As they pulled up to the cabin, it looked like every other home on the rez. It was rundown, pathetic, and had more beer cans around it than a recycling plant.

  Yeah, it was clear that Bly was using his father’s money to enjoy her life. She’d accessed his accounts, and there was jewelry, cash withdrawals in the thousands, and more liquor store runs than should be human.

  Someone was on a suicide mission, and he was having help. No one would think twice about a Native drinking himself to death.

  No one.

  Well, Ethan wasn’t letting that happen.

  “How do you want this handled, boss?” Heath asked.

  He was new to the team, and he was still acclimating himself to Blackhawk’s style.

  This was a more civilized version of the wild, Wild West. He was the sheriff, and Bly, and her money-sucking leeches, were the enemy.

  It was time to save Wyler from his own jackassery.

  “I want him restrained, in the vehicle, and out of here.”

  “And if someone tries to stop us?” the newbie asked, cracking his meaty fists.

  Oh, what he would like to say is take no prisoners. What he was going to say was the legal mumbo-jumbo he was bound to abide by.

  There was a fine line.

  “Heath, you are NOT to kill anyone. Am I clear?” he asked.

  “Even if…?”

  “NO ONE.”

  “Can I rough them up?”

  “We’ll see. If it gets hairy, then you will be asked to do your job to protect me, and my father.”

  He grinned.

  “I love this gig. When do I get to blow shit up?”

  The driver stared over at him.

  The other security guy did too.

  “Not today, Heath. No blowing shit up. You get to scare people.”

  He shrugged.

  As they hopped out, all the stray cats scattered.

  “Wow! I grew up in the slums, and that was better than this shit dive,” he said.

  Oh, Ethan was aware.

  Jesus!

  He was so glad he escaped all of this. It brought back memories and was exactly why he’d paid for his grandfather’s home for all those years.

  This was a sad existence.

  If you got out without having six kids by six women, three warrants, and no drug addiction, you were lucky.

  As they walked onto the porch, he knocked on the door. Inside, they could hear voices.

  “I hear three,” Johnny stated, peeking in the window. “We have four,” he stated. “The subject is on the couch drinking.”

  Of course he was.

  “He doesn’t look so good, boss. He’s normally neat and clean. He looks like a homeless person.”

  Well, this happened just in time.

  When the door opened, Bly stood there, and she was a drunken mess too.

  Great.

  The family that drinks together…

  “Where’s my father?”

  She laughed. “Oh, Mr. Bigshot is here. Well, he doesn’t want to see you. He came back to me,” she stated. “Get out of here.”

  She slammed the door.

  This called for a tougher stance.

  “Heath, kick the door in, and I mean take it off the fucking hinges. I want that woman to piss herself when you go through that door.”

  “Can I hold my gun?”

  “Can you not shoot anyone?”

  He pulled it and grinned. “Yep.”

  Ethan was good with that.

  The big beefy man, who replaced Liam after Bonnie killed him, put on his leather gloves and cracked his neck.

  “Director, step back,” he said, getting into position. “Boys, follow my lead. Three. Two…”

  He hit the door like a ton of bricks. It actually splintered under his weight and crashed in.

  Everyone in side panicked.

  Ethan’s security h
eaded in, and they pinned Bly and two other men to the floor. Wyler sat there out of his mind.

  Literally.

  “What the hell?” Ethan said, as he stepped over Bly and a man who looked like her son.

  “You can’t just come in here,” Bly stated.

  “Silence her.”

  He did. He knocked her head off the floor.

  Well, so much for doing this quietly. Ethan would take what he could get at this point.

  “She’s wearing a shitload of stolen jewelry,” he said. “It comes with my father. He paid for it.”

  Heath giggled as he stripped it off her hands. When Ethan got back, he was going to make sure the man had actually had a background check.

  He was a little too happy.

  That would have to wait.

  Ethan approached his father, and Johnny was right. He was one hell of a mess.

  “Come along, Wyler. We’re heading home.”

  “I’m not going home. My wife is dead. She let her die! She didn’t save her! I’m not returning.”

  Ethan wasn’t putting up with this.

  One—his wife had saved his son.

  Two—his wife had carried enough.

  “You’re coming back, Wyler. You should be ashamed of yourself. You leave your family, your grandkids, and your sons to come back to this squalor. Are you out of your fucking mind? This? What? So you can prove that you’re a deadbeat father who bails when the going gets tough?”

  “You should talk! You ran! You must get that from me then.”

  “You know what, Dad? I did run. I left this shit hole, but I had the balls to come back on my own. I didn’t have to have my son come back and drag me home. You were given one chance to redeem yourself, and look at you. You’re a disgrace. You come back to that whore? Why? So you can live in pity and pain?”

  “She understands.”

  “She’s using you. I bet you drained your accounts for her. On what? Booze? Drugs? Jewelry? This is NOT how you honor your wife’s death. You’re going home.”

  Ethan motioned toward his father.

  “Bag him and tag him. He’s going to be luggage on a flight,” Ethan said in disgust.

  Two of his security guys went for Wyler, and he fought.

  “Knock him out,” Ethan said. He stopped caring about ten minutes ago when he found his father in this shit mess.

  Enough.

  Was.

  Enough.

  When Heath sucker punched him in the neck, the man went out. They bound his legs and arms with handcuffs.

  They had to carry him past TSA, and they were going with the whole ‘he’s a fugitive’ excuse.

  Wyler had chosen the hard way, and so be it. Ethan was done with babying the man.

  “Let’s get him out of here,” Ethan said, walking out of the deplorable conditions.

  His team followed him to the big vehicle.

  “Put his ass in the back. I’m over this. If he makes a peep, gag him.”

  Again, Heath giggled.

  “I love my job.”

  Ethan rubbed his eyes. The only thing giving him any solace in any of this was his grandfather’s note in his suit jacket pocket.

  He said it would be okay.

  Ethan had to believe.

  As he buckled in, his guys did what he said. Wyler was basically tossed into the third-row seat in the large, black, luxury vehicle.

  “Let’s go. Next stop, DC and my home. It’s time my dead-beat father met his son.”

  While Wyler may have bailed on him and Callen, screwing them up beyond belief, he wasn’t going to let Timothy’s life be ruined.

  It wasn’t happening.

  Not on his watch.

  Chapter Four

  Morgue

  Boston

  W hen they rolled up, they had an audience. It wasn’t like she was shocked, but still. The people outside the morgue in Boston were staring at them like they were the enemy. The furthest was from the truth, but what was she supposed to do about it?

  Déjà vu.

  Haters were going to hate.

  Cops and Feds were like oil and water. If you mixed them, they were going to repel.

  It was the law of nature.

  “Ahhhh, this brings back memories,” Chris said, hopping out of the van. “Remember when we came here over ten years ago to work that one case?”

  She laughed. “Yeah, and we took over then. It was a shit mess. That ME hated our fucking guts.”

  “YOUR guts. She hated your guts. I was an innocent bystander,” he said, laughing at the look on her face.

  “Really? You’re going to play it that way? You don’t remember telling her she was standing too close to you or that her set up was that of a kindergarten classroom?”

  He snorted.

  Of course she’d remember. Elizabeth had the memory of a pachyderm.

  “She was crowding me.”

  “She liked you. God knows why. You were a total dick to her,” she said as the techs unloaded the van.

  “The woman didn’t take a hint.”

  “You should have just slept with her, and she would have left you alone,” Elizabeth teased.

  “I would have but I was interested in someone else. We were shacking up, and I wanted to be with you—not her.”

  She smiled at him. “Yeah, when you finally got the balls to ask me out, and we became a couple.”

  “It was. We became a couple, and then had morgue sex.”

  Callen walked around the van and cleared his throat. “Please. I don’t want to kick your ass in front of all these witnesses. The only time I want to hear you and morgue sex in the same sentence, is when you’re saying, ‘a funny thing happened in college’ and not referencing the mother of my children.”

  Elizabeth found that amusing.

  Chris, not so much. He couldn’t tell if the man was kidding or not.

  “Uh, anyway…”

  Someone was heading their way. Elizabeth immediately recognized her.

  Well, well.

  The ME time had forgotten.

  “Doctor Julliard. It’s a pleasure to see you once more,” she offered, holding out her hand.

  “Well, this is…awkward,” Chris muttered, holding out his too.

  “Yeah, yeah, what are you doing here?” The woman asked, disregarding Elizabeth’s hand to go right for his.

  It looked like someone held a grudge.

  Clearly.

  “We’re commandeering your morgue. You should know what that’s like,” she said. “You seem to get lots of things taken out from beneath you.”

  Chris cringed.

  Oh, there was going to be a chick fight. He could see it coming. Doctor Julliard had made some hard plays for him, and Elizabeth, back then, had knocked her on her ass.

  Literally.

  The woman stared at her. “Yeah, by you. Since you’re partnered up with someone else, I guess that’s not happening again,” she said.

  Elizabeth smiled.

  “Don’t bet on it. Old habits die hard.”

  Doctor Julliard ignored her.

  Callen whispered in her ear. “If you ‘old habit’ anything, I’m going to make Chris die hard.”

  She almost laughed.

  “I knocked her on her bitchy ass and stole a key from her. Your mind is always in the gutter.”

  Heather was focused on the other ME.

  “It’s good to see you, Doctor. Welcome back to my town. You could have left her home.”

  Chris laughed. “That’s not how this works. She has to be here. It’s her job, and she’s my partner in this. I need her.”

  Elizabeth knew he meant that on many levels.

  “Well, when I gotta work, I gotta work. Don’t be a hater. I’ll have MY ME handle the body, and you can polish your nails. What color is that? ‘Blood of my Enemies’ or ‘Death of Your Soul’? Did you expect me?”

  The woman rolled her eyes.

  “She hasn’t changed,” Elizabeth stated, not caring if the o
ld battle-ax heard her or not.

  “I heard that,” she said. “I have changed. I have even less patience for people coming into my home, criticizing it, and then kicking me out.”

  Chris got it.

  She was holding a grudge.

  On their first time in Boston, the woman had hit on him—as in trapped him in the office and tried to get into his scrubs.

  Literally.

  That case had been the catalyst for his and Elizabeth’s relationship. As it began, he owned his feelings to her, and they moved in together right after the case.

  “She’d knocked the woman off her feet, stole the key to the lab, and then probably threatened her life. I don’t recall it exactly, but it was Lyzee being Lyzee,” Chris told Callen.

  She recalled it like it was yesterday.

  It didn’t go over well when the doctor tried to poach her man, but it did end in them having some really hot morgue sex.

  God!

  He actually owed the woman one.

  “I’m not turning my morgue over.”

  Chris knew he had to take one for the team.

  “I was thinking we could work together,” Chris offered. “I could use some insight from a colleague.”

  Elizabeth looked back at him like he was possessed.

  ‘What?’ she mouthed. ‘Did you hit your head?’

  He nearly laughed.

  Doctor Julliard stared at him. “Seriously? You want me to consult?”

  Chris protectively moved in front of Elizabeth.

  Normally, she was protecting him, but he was going to buy her some room to breathe by playing nice with the local ME.

  It was the least he could do. Plus, with age came patience.

  “Absolutely.”

  “I might be able to help out. I have other bodies, but I think we can share a space.”

  Chris was officially Elizabeth’s hero.

  “Can we get her in and get her started?” Elizabeth asked, as her techs waited.

  “Louis!” Doctor Heather Julliard shouted to her tech. “He’s my head tech. He’ll be more than happy to get you set up. I was about to make some coffee. Would you like some?” she asked.

  “Yes, please, Doctor,” Chris said.

  “I’ll meet you inside.”

  When she headed away, Chris accepted the kiss to his lips.