Discarded by Fate

by Morgan Kelley

  She understood that.

  “She asked about you.”

  Oh, he could only imagine.

  “And? Is she pissed I wasn’t following my boss’s order and following her around?”

  She laughed. “She probably respects you more for breaking the rules. She’s more an ‘outside of the box’ thinker.”

  He grinned. “So I am.”

  Blue didn’t dislike the man. They were pretty close in age, and she got it. Sometimes, it was hard to fit in.

  “She wants to know if you can help me with some runs and research. I have to get through Lucy O’Donnell’s life and her roommate’s. The boss doesn’t like to leave any stone unturned.”

  He smiled.

  That was what he was doing at that moment. He was trying to find something that connected them.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, if you miss shit, she loses it.”

  “No, I meant that she really wanted me to help.”

  “Yeah, do you want to grab a pizza and work at our hotel? It has less reporters wandering around. We can’t let anything slip out.”

  Blue helped lay Elizabeth’s trap.

  He closed up his laptop.

  “Perfect. I was working on Lucy anyway. I don’t get how a call girl and a congressman’s daughter crossed paths. There has to be something.”

  Oh, there was, but he didn’t realize it was the bar. Blue wasn’t going to give him that. The detective would have to find it on his own.

  Yeah, and hopefully, he wouldn’t.

  Blue knew she was going to have to work hard to keep the man in the dark. She knew she was going to have to have them research crazy leads.

  All in a day’s work.

  Later, she’d find Ivan and see if he was in the mood to decompress. Johanna said jump him, and she might just do that.

  She might even impress him with her new pizza skills.

  He would really like that.

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

  Harvard

  Deans’ Offices

  When they arrived at Harvard to see if the dean was still there, Chris was in his glory. It actually put a spring back into his step. As he walked around with them, his cane in hand, he was back in his element.

  Elizabeth was glad.

  She knew he had to be struggling. Chris might not tell her, but she would always know.

  When you lived with someone, slept with them, and had a relationship, it became easy to read them.

  To her, Chris was an open book.

  “God! I’d redo so much, and this is part of it,” he admitted. “I would have had more fun and stop stressing being perfect.”

  “I just tried to drown a pot-smoking jock in a fountain. Is that really the route you wanted to take?” she asked. “Who knows what’s in that water?”

  He laughed.

  “I wish I was an investigator. You have all the fun.”

  “Clearly. That’s why you make twice as much money as I do, and I have to get shot at.”

  Callen was amused.

  “Most of the time that you are getting shot at, it’s because you pissed someone off. Plenty of agents never experience that,” Callen stated.

  “He has a point,” Chris agreed.

  “Yeah, and it’s going to be me pointing at the couch if he doesn’t zip that sexy mouth of his.”

  Callen made the motion across his lips as he winked at her. The man was too sexy for his own good, and he knew it.

  Anyway, it was time to do her job.

  “Chris, can you hang out here?” she asked, pointing at the one building. “We’re going to do the interview, and two is company, with an ME, three is a crowd.”

  He laughed. “Darn.”

  “Yeah, and I can’t say here’s my bff and ME. He’s here to watch me in action.”

  “You’ve done it before.”

  She snorted. “Yeah, well, in my youth, I was a lot more willing to stir the pot. The boss is tough on me,” she said.

  Callen found that amusing and laughed. “Sure, blame Ethan.”

  Chris gave her a kiss on the cheek. He was sure someone in the media got a picture of it too.

  “Be safe, okay?” he asked.

  “Always.”

  Chris waved and headed into the library.

  “He’s having a rough time,” she said, even though Callen hadn’t asked her what she was thinking.

  “I know.”

  “I want to wrap him up and protect him from anyone who tries to hurt him.”

  Callen understood. The bond between them was so strong.

  “If he hadn’t cheated on you, would you have married him one day?”

  She knew she had this conversation with Chris before, and now it looked like Callen wanted in on the action.

  “Probably. At one point, we were pretty close to it. The first five years, we were really happy as a couple. We took this vacation to a vineyard, and he was nervous. I thought he was going to ask.”

  “Then what happened?” he asked, as they walked toward the building. “Did it get worse after the five years?”

  “No, it got even better.”

  Okay, that he didn’t want to hear. He loved Chris, but Elizabeth…she was theirs.

  “We did everything together. We had a really great foundation.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Chris has always had insecurities. He would always think I would replace him. His mother wanted to meet me, and it began going downhill.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I didn’t know she was a witch. I think he was embarrassed, and I think I was hurt. How is a woman supposed to feel when a man does everything in his power to keep you away from his mother?”

  “Like he was embarrassed?”

  “Yeah, let’s face it. He came from money. In my head, I pictured some stuffy woman who would think I wasn’t good enough for him, and that hurt me. I assumed that was it.”

  “Only, it wasn’t.”

  “Nope. He was embarrassed of her. So, that little hidden secret festered. He became paranoid that I wouldn’t like him if I saw the dirty laundry in his family.”

  “He didn’t know you.”

  “He did, but fear…it’s enough to debilitate you when you least expect it.”

  That he got.

  “I was hurt, and I didn’t say anything. I began pulling away. Had he taken me to meet his mother, I would have likely married him.”

  Callen didn’t say anything.

  “It bothers you still, huh?”

  “If fate was off just a little bit, we wouldn’t have met you. You would have married Chris, and likely been his. Things like that freak me out.”

  She could tell.

  “Well, that’s not how it worked. He got paranoid, and he assumed I was cheating on him. We all know how that ended. It wasn’t meant to be. Do you ever think about cheating on me?”

  He laughed. “Not even for a single second. I think about molesting you, jumping you, and when I’m really in a dark place, tying you down and using your body until you beg me to stop.”

  Her heart skipped.

  “Well, you sweet talker, you.”

  He laughed. “I’d never cheat. On my dream girl wish list, you’re at the top.”

  “Even above that movie star who wanted your autograph?” she asked.

  “Yep. She’s all plastic. My girl…she’s sexier every day, and she’s smart. Men like that.”

  She took his hand in hers.

  It surprised him, but he didn’t let go. Instead, he twined his fingers with hers, enjoying the moment.

  Upstairs, in the building, they followed the signs to the second floor.

  At his door, she knocked.

  “I’m not having office hours. Leave. Learn to read a bloody sign! This is Harvard—not preschool!” someone shouted.

  Well, that pissed her off even more.

  She knocked again.

  “I SAID I’M NOT HAVING OFFICE HOURS.
”

  “I say two more knocks and he shows up at the door pissing himself,” she whispered. “Do you want in on this one since the Chris bet seems all kinds of wrong?”

  Yeah, he did.

  Callen held up his fingers. “One more time. I win, you buy dinner.”

  She gave him a fist bump.

  Then she knocked.

  The man came rushing the door, and he flung it open. “I SAID…”

  Then he saw her.

  “You win, Cal. It looks like I get to buy. Hey, Lucca. Knock-knock. Who’s there? FBI. FBI who? FBI is here to ask you why you’re diddling your students.”

  Callen had to fight not to laugh.

  The man looked horrified as did the student in the office. It appeared that Elizabeth wasn’t far off on this one.

  How did he know?

  The very busty girl with her shirt askew.

  “Hey, you, girly. Run. There’s a new Big Bad Wolf in town, and she has a badge.”

  She did.

  The girl scrambled out of there. When she rushed past, Elizabeth headed in.

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Lucca Carmen stated.

  “Your fly is down, and I think I saw dick.”

  Callen agreed. “I saw it. It was definitely commando dick. I hate when that happens.”

  “Don’t get wee willy Lucca caught in your zipper. That would be awkward to explain at the ER in handcuffs.”

  The man zipped up his fly and sat.

  “What do you want?”

  “Well, let’s get this intro thing done. I’m Director Elizabeth Blackhawk, and he’s my ride or die bitch. You can call him Director Callen Whitefox. Now, tell me why you’re having sex with students? Is it that hard to pick up a woman when you don’t have control over her grades?”

  He stared at her.

  Elizabeth knew this was going to be a tricky one. He was the law dean. The man was going to know all of her tricks since he taught them.

  Unfortunately.

  So, she was going to have to keep him off balance. That should be…fun.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about you and Tajel West, the congressman’s daughter, getting your fun on at ‘McCory’s’.”

  He laughed. “I’ve seen her name on my roster, but I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

  So that was his game, huh?

  Okay, it was on.

  “Oh, so the security footage at ‘McCory’s’ isn’t of you trying to be incognito? Funny, she also kept an online diary of all the times you ‘hooked up’.”

  The man looked rattled.

  That was a total lie, but he didn’t know that. It was also funny that he didn’t ask why she was there asking about Tajel. It just hit the news an hour ago, and he was busy getting…debriefed.

  “Well, since you say it’s not you, I’ll just take it to the media and have them re-loop it nonstop until someone recognizes your doppelgänger.”

  Callen was proud of his wife.

  She was playing this well, and the man didn’t have a freaking clue. Elizabeth had done this a long time, and this was how you could tell.

  If anyone ever thought she was washed up, they only had to watch her in action.

  Elizabeth smiled ferally as she put her feet up on the corner of his desk. She checked out her nails and gave him the impression she was going nowhere fast.

  “I met with her there to discuss…”

  She held up her hand.

  “Did you go to Harvard?”

  He stared at her.

  “Callen, find me his info.”

  Callen pulled out his phone and began typing in the man’s name on every single federal site they had access to. At some point, it would pop.

  There was silence.

  Then a beep.

  “Nope. He did not go to Harvard. In fact, he went to a state school in Wyoming.”

  She made a tsking sound. “Our Harvard dean may not know his way around the law as much as he thinks. How long has he been dean?”

  “Two years,” Callen offered.

  “Awwww, a newbie. I’ve been playing this game for almost twenty. Guess who is going to win?”

  He glared at her.

  “Here’s what I think,” she said. “I think our dean here is in big trouble. I’m willing to bet this is the first time he’s been caught with his hand in the co-ed cookie jar, and he thinks that because he teaches here at Harvard,” she said, using a Boston accent, “that I’m going to be shaking in my boots.”

  She pointed at them.

  “Are they shaking, Lucca?”

  He actually looked at them.

  “No, they aren’t. So, I’ll take my Cornell degrees against your state school, and go all in. You want to play poker. Let’s do it. I’ll show you my cards. I have a dead girl, one who was mutilated by an angry man. She was having a dalliance with a dean, and maybe she decided to tell him kiss off. Maybe she found out that he was playing in the kiddie pool with more co-eds. I’m going to say she threatened to have him kicked out, and that scared him.”

  “I like this hand,” Callen stated. “It’s a good, solid hand, and will play out nice in the media.”

  “Yeah, now let’s look at his hand. We have a dean who was just getting one hell of a blowjob from the blonde set of breasts that just left. She was disheveled, he wasn’t. I know a swollen set of lips from giving head when I see them.”

  Wasn’t that the truth?

  “FINE! I was seeing her. We would meet, we’d have sex, and I’d help her with her papers. Only, she didn’t break anything off. We were fine. I was getting her through law school.”

  She stared at him.

  “Prove it.”

  He turned on his laptop. On Word was a half-written paper. At the top, there was Tajel’s name.

  Well, well, well.

  He wasn’t lying.

  It was the first thing he’d done right since he started screwing students.

  “We’d meet, she’d tell me the paper she needed, or the project, and I’d write it. She didn’t want to be a lawyer,” he offered.

  “Is that so?”

  “Yeah, her father was pressuring her, and she didn’t have it in her. To be in law, you had to want it. Tajel wanted nothing to do with it, but she was making her old man happy. I was going to get her through, and she was paying me with sex.”

  So, she was hooking too.

  Now the dead hooker sounded a little more probable when you tried to find something that connected the two victims.

  Elizabeth dropped her feet.

  “Someone killed her. You’re at the top of the list. I want you to write down your entire schedule for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.”

  He pulled out a pen.

  “I wouldn’t kill Tajel. She was doing me a service.”

  Elizabeth stared at him.

  She was going to do him a service.

  She was going to lock his ass away if she found out he was the killer. All she had to do was see if this man liked hiring hookers along with using college girls looking for A’s.

  This man stunk, and she was willing to bet there was something hidden in his past.

  And she would find it.

  Outside, Callen dropped his arm over her shoulders. It wasn’t lost on him that many of the young men were staring.

  Not at him.

  At her.

  There was that need to protect what was his.

  Well, his and Ethan’s.

  He figured the millennials didn’t know how to watch the news to see that she was taken, so he’d give them a clue to teach them that open ogling wasn’t polite.

  “Well, what do you think?” Callen asked.

  “I don’t think he did it.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Did you see his hands?”

  “I wasn’t looking. Why?”

  “His nails were all shiny and his hands looked soft.
That’s not someone who will pick up a device and dismember people.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No. That’s just my gut.”

  He got it.

  They all had that inner voice. If hers was screaming, they were going to listen to it.

  Outside the building, Callen stopped.

  “Uh, what are you doing?” she asked, as he looked around the quad.

  “There’s something I need to do,” he said, glancing over at her.

  “What?”

  “You’re the most beautiful woman in the world. I’m so lucky to have you, Elizabeth.”

  Her heart skipped.

  “When I met you, I knew that day that you were the one. So, I want to do something that I never thought possible.”

  She lifted a brow.

  “What?”

  Callen knew that media was lurking. He knew that students were watching.

  It was perfect.

  “Marry me again,” he said, going down on one knee, in front of her.

  She stared. “Callen.”

  “We had a private ceremony, and I want the world to know that we did get married. Maybe it’s not legal, but it’s legit. Let’s get remarried in front of our family, and let me take you away on a honeymoon.”

  He held her hand and stared up at her.

  “My heart doth not know the fortune it found, but it only knows that you are but the one who owns it,” he said, quoting the poem.

  Elizabeth’s eyes filled with tears.

  “You are my sun, my moon, and my stars, and I, but a breath of soul through you. Be mine, sweet lady, the keeper of my heart and soul, and let us combine our lives to be more than one doth ever think he can be.”

  This was silly, a little embarrassing, but so romantic and sweet.

  “Say yes!” some girl said, grinning at her.

  They all began chanting.

  “Why, Callen?”

  “I want everyone to know we are one. These college kids look at us, and they don’t know us. I even want them to remember the love I felt for you.”

  Her heart thumped as they kept chanting yes.

  “Absolutely. I’ll recommit to you and marry you all over again. Let’s go somewhere fun.”

  He stood, pulled her into his body, and found her mouth with his.

  Elizabeth held on, staggered by the emotion she felt for this man. Callen, while the jokester, had a romantic streak a mile wide.