“Yeah, I know who you are. I’m Gary Cook. I’m the owner of ‘McCory’s’. What’s up?”
“Have you owned it long?” Ethan asked.
“Over a decade, why?”
She pulled out her phone. “I had two women turn up dead,” she said.
“Yeah, ‘The Puppet Master’ killing, huh?”
She rolled her eyes. She was going to hurt whoever gave that info out.
“Yeah,” she said, rattling off Tajel and Lucy’s name. “Can you tell me if they were in here?” she asked.
He looked at her phone.
“Yeah, she comes in with some stuffy looking white dude. Like him.”
Ethan’s glass paused halfway to his mouth.
“Actually, I’m Native American. So, white…not applicable, but stuffy? Really?”
All of them stared at him. Normally, he said he was white with some Native mixed or he was a half-breed—heavy on the Caucasian.
This was new.
“I actually meant the stuffy part. It’s happy hour. Take your suit jacket off and relax. People come here to have a good time, and you look like you’re still at the office.”
He laughed. “I have a gun strapped to my hip, and that’s going to get more attention than me being ‘stuffy’.”
Point to Ethan on that one.
“Anyway, yeah, that woman is always here with him in that back table. She’s generally all over him. Why?”
“Let’s just say the media reports don’t paint as ugly a picture as what he did to her.”
The man shook his head. “It’s a crazy world out there. I hate people.”
“Well, then this is the wrong business to be in,” Chris said.
The man focused on him. “You used to come in here, didn’t you?” he asked. “I swear you did.”
“We did once,” Elizabeth stated, as she noticed a bunch of media taking their pictures. They were pointing at Chris. “We were here on another case,” she admitted.
“I don’t recall you,” he said, pointing at her.
“Oh, I know why,” she said, leaning in and kissing Chris on the mouth. At the same time, she flipped off the photographers outside the window.
“No, that’s not it. I was the manager here for years.”
Callen and Ethan stared at her.
Chris laughed. “I don’t recall making out a lot that night,” he said, grinning at Elizabeth. Maybe they did. It was hazy.
She got them all to focus.
“And how about the other girl?” she asked. “Again, her name was Lucy O’Donnell.”
“We all know Lucy. She likes tricks.”
“Was anyone bothering either of the girls, Gary?” she asked, sipping her beer.
“No one bothered the first girl that was with the man. She was nice. She came in, she’d order, he’d pay, and then she’d tip. It was the same thing almost every night.”
“Did she come in Wednesday?” she asked.
“Yes. She met with him, he left, which was odd, and she went out back to have a smoke.”
Elizabeth nodded toward Chris and Callen. They slipped out of the booth and headed toward a back exit.
“Do you think she disappeared here?” he asked.
“Yes.”
That said it all.
“What about Lucy?”
“She went with some guy. She doesn’t stay long. A drink, a smoke, some flirting for clients, and she goes on her way.”
“And you’re okay with this?”
“It brings in customers. She’s overt about it. She’s not doing it on the tables.”
Well, there was a relief.
As Callen and Chris came back, they didn’t look excited.
“Thank you, Gary. If you think of anything, here’s my card,” Elizabeth stated.
He hustled away.
“Anything?” she asked.
“Nothing. There’s a shitload of cigarette butts, but that’s where everyone, and their mother, smokes out there,” Callen offered.
They took a seat.
“Uh, making out with Chris isn’t really permitted,” Ethan said, not forgetting what she’d just done.
“They were filming him,” she said.
“Uh, and?” Callen asked.
Chris raised his hands. “Don’t look at me. She kissed me. I was sitting here, drinking my beer.”
“Well, see, it had dual purpose. They weren’t shooting live, and they love filming with me ‘cheating’ on my husbands.”
They were confused.
“So, you helped them?” Ethan asked.
“I also flipped them off behind his head. They can’t use the footage. How irritating.”
They got it, and all the men laughed. It was all because of the conversation they had earlier.
She was protecting him.
“You’re sadistic.”
She shrugged. “Yeah, on a good day.”
Before they could say anything, Elizabeth heard her name being called.
When she looked over, Johanna was heading their way, and she had one hell of a grin on her face.
“Tell me you got her.”
“Oh, I caught her red handed.”
She slid in next to Ethan and he slid over, closer to his wife.
“Give me the juicy beef on that crazy bitch.”
Johanna handed her the camera. “A picture, in this case, is worth a million words.”
They flipped through the pictures, and they found the damning one.
“Chris, you filed that fake page in the file, right?” she asked.
“Yes, yes, I did. Our killer is drugging the women in their water bottles.”
They looked at him.
“Hey! It was the least freak out thing I could think of. So the people of Boston don’t drink water…it’s fall. They’ll survive.”
She laughed.
“When she gets those reports, she’ll leak it, and then I get to go break her face. In fact, I’m going to break it now.”
Ethan took the camera.
“I’m sorry. No.”
She stared at him like he just stole a puppy from her. “What? Why no? This is how we roll. We find the jackwagon, the purveyors of naughtfooliery, and I fuck them up.”
“No.”
“Give me one good reason.”
“I told the commissioner he could handle it. That’s his rodeo, and he’s the cowboy. You are sitting this one out, Tex. We’re going to email them over to him, go back to the hotel, and you can start whiteboarding this with your ME. No kicking ass tonight.”
She stared at him.
Then she actually pouted. “That was anticlimactic. I don’t like working with you.”
He laughed and patted Johanna on the back.
“Yeah, I’m mean like that. Joey, I hear your husband is on the way,” he said, ignoring the look his wife was giving him.
“Uh. Yeah.”
“Have a good night.”
She grinned when he dismissed her. “I don’t care what she says. You’re the best.”
“Traitor!”
With that, she was gone.
Elizabeth saw her burger heading her way. When the waitress put hers in front of her, she waited until she was gone. Then she switched his and hers.
“Elizabeth!”
She bit into hers.
With one hell of a grin.
That was for not letting her kick that rapist harpy’s ass.
* * * B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x * * *
Finding her was easy.
Approaching her was so much harder.
When Ivan found Blue, he was staggered by what he saw. She was alone, wandering among the flowers at the Boston Gardens. She was smelling roses, and then she took a seat on a bench.
Quietly, he walked up behind her.
As he got close enough, he could hear her sniffling.
She was crying under the setting sun, alone in the garden because of him.
He was an asshole.
What he
did know was he regretted it.
What he didn’t know was how to make it right.
As he moved closer, she spoke, “Go away.”
He didn’t know how she knew, but he wasn’t going to listen.
“Blue.”
She got up, and began walking away.
“I just want to apologize,” he said.
“It’s too late. You’ve snapped at me, you were playing some game, and you ripped into me for having a detective, who was working, in there with me. You don’t own me, Ivan, and even if you had some claim to me, that’s not how to keep someone in your life.”
“Blue, I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry I met you,” she said. “For my whole life, I’ve been the outsider. I never expected to find anyone for me. I never thought I could find that one special person who could be all mine. Then I met you, and you deceived me. You’re not kind, sweet, or gentle. You’re mean. You’re vicious. You took my naivetés and used it against me.”
He stood there.
People were walking past them.
“I showed you me. I never show anyone that. I went down to that bar to be WITH you. Instead, I saw why I don’t want a man in my life.”
He moved closer.
This was bad.
She was crying.
People were staring.
He was an asshole.
“What you did…that was mean. I’m not a mean person, Ivan. I could never hurt someone, or hate someone so much. I did nothing to you but shared me. I let you see the real me, and that’s scary enough. Then to watch you decimate that trust. I don’t know what made you so cold. I don’t know why you don’t trust, but you don’t deserve me. That I do know.”
“I’m aware.”
He stood there.
In frustration, he ran his hands through his hair.
“Leave me alone, Ivan. I’m going to go back to my mother’s practice. It’s safer as a doctor.”
He’d follow her.
“I’ll sit outside until you talk to me,” he said. “I won’t stop.”
She didn’t care.
“I don’t want to see you anymore. I don’t want to be near you, and I don’t want you to even think about me. Have fun with the bartender. It’ll be a fast, quick, easy lay with no strings attached. I have strings, and it’s clear you don’t want them. I wish you weren’t kind to me. You gave me hope. Losing that is worse than getting your heart hurt. Hearts heal. Hope never comes back!”
She turned.
Oh, he knew.
He’d had hope so many years ago. Now it was gone. He was left in the ashes of what it used to be.
He had no choice.
“Her name was Cara,” he said, while she could still hear him. “I married her, and I loved her.”
She stopped.
Blue didn’t see that one coming.
Not.
At.
All.
“I never thought I could love someone that much in my life. I never thought that I would be graced with someone so kind, sweet, and gentle.”
He prayed that telling Blue all of this would be enough to give him a shot.
Ivan screwed up, and he saw that now. He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
“I don’t talk about her,” he said, crossing his fingers and saying a prayer.
“Why?” she asked, still not turning around.
He moved closer so the whole freaking world wouldn’t hear him shouting among the roses.
“She died.”
He stood behind her.
“We were so young, Blue. We fell in love one summer—the summer before I first joined the Marines. We had one hell of a time together.”
She turned. “Is this supposed to make me feel better?” she asked.
It wasn’t.
God!
This hurt too.
“I’m not telling you to make you feel better, Blue. I’m telling you to make you understand. I need you to see why I did what I did.”
He stood there.
“I want you to understand me.”
He’d never wanted that from anyone, but in that moment, in that garden, he needed Blue to see past how mean he’d been, and see to the festering rot that filled his soul.
He needed her to save him.
Someone had to for a change.
“We laughed, loved, and eloped. We rushed off and got married so fast. She was so young. I was so stupid. In that moment, there was no need to worry about tomorrow, or the next day, or a year from then. We had the summer. We had that perfect moment in time.”
She waited.
“I deployed, and she wrote. Nothing was wrong. I went to boot camp, I went to the spot I was stationed at, and there was nothing wrong.”
Blue listened.
He took a deep breath and offered up something to show her what was wrong with him.
She was smart.
Maybe she could fix him.
“Five months go by, and I’m just about done with my tour. It was hot, sweaty, and long. All I wanted was to get home to my wife.”
He stared down at his hand as if he could see that stupid gold band that meant so much to him—and so little to her.
“Two weeks before I’m to head home, my boss calls me into the tent. He calls me in, has me sit, and there’s a chaplain standing there.”
She stared at him.
He looked upset.
“He tells me that my wife, while out, was killed in a car accident. She was killed when the car went out of control.”
She gasped.
He looked up.
“I lost Cara that day, but I didn’t see the truth. It wasn’t that day she was gone. It was four months earlier.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“I went home on leave. I got sent back stateside to deal with it. I went to the funeral home, and I made arrangements. When the police came to my house…to our little slice of the world, they had the whole report for me.”
She sat on the bench that was right there.
He sat, too, bracing his arms on his legs as he prepared himself to be honest for the first time in…ever.
“They told me that she wasn’t driving. He was. It seems that she was with some guy.”
Uh oh.
Blue’s eyes went big.
“She was having an affair. On top of that, Blue, she was four months and two weeks pregnant. I left six months before. So, my wife, the woman I loved, had moved on, and she didn’t tell me. They were living in the home I was paying for with my blood, sweat, and service. They were enjoying the life that was supposed to be mine.”
She touched his arm.
He moved away.
“I wasn’t mean to you because I’m playing a game. I’m trapped in that moment. I didn’t want to be mean to you. I didn’t want to be that asshole. I just don’t know how to fix that part of me. I’ve been single for thirteen years for a reason.”
She let him purge.
“That day, the part of me that was able to love died. I can’t find it again. I try, and I can’t find a way to silence those demons. I see you, and I think…I could love her. I could really love that woman. Then I think…I just met her. It’s like Cara. I’ll have to go away to protect someone, and when I come back, she’ll be gone too.”
“I’m not Cara.”
He looked over at her, his eyes full of emotion. “And I’m not that man who could love so easily—trust so willingly. I’m that square peg trying to fit into that heart shaped hole.”
Her heart broke for him.
She’d never been betrayed like that.
Ever.
“So, I’m sorry I hurt you. I know since I’ve met you the last two days, I’ve been every name in the book and then some. I just wanted you to know it wasn’t you, Blue. While you move on, and you find that man, it was never you. You’re perfect. You’re beautiful, and any man who ends up with you is going to be so damn lucky.”
She wanted to make him feel bett
er.
This was what she wanted.
Honesty.
She wanted him to just be himself.
“I’m the one who’s rotten on the inside. One of us should go, but it shouldn’t be you. You broke the last case wide open. You’re smart, and you’re someone the world needs. Don’t leave Elizabeth’s team. I will.”
“Ivan.”
He stopped her.
“I’m going to do it now. I’m going to the hotel and I’m leaving. She needs you. I’m just armor. I’m only there so others can live and I can watch life go by.”
He stood. Then he leaned down to give her a kiss.
It was soft.
It was gentle.
It was tender.
“Be yourself, Blue. She’s an amazingly, wonderful woman. Your sweetness is precious. Don’t lose it. When you do, you can never go back. I know. I’m wandering trying to find my way home.”
With that, he touched her cheek and walked away.
“Ivan!”
He kept walking.
Blue watched until he was gone.
And she didn’t know what to do.
* * * B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x * * *
Hotel
Blackhawk’s room
When they got back, Ethan pulled out the whiteboard, and they planned to get to work.
Only, there was a knock on their door.
Heading there, Ethan found Ivan standing there. He was out of his customary cargo pants and Kevlar.
“Hey, come on in.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I just came to tell you I’m heading back to DC.”
Ethan didn’t get it.
Elizabeth headed his way. “Uh, you’re going? Are you sick? Insane?”
He laughed sardonically.
Wasn’t that the truth?
“Yeah, I’m sick all right. Thanks for the fun, Tex. I’m going back into the corps. I’ve decided that this protection duty isn’t for me. I suck at it.”
She begged to differ.
Ivan was the only one she really wanted to protect her. They’d built a rapport.
He was good.
She trusted him.
“What happened, Ivan?” she asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Thank you for the opportunity, sir,” he said. “Thank you for allowing me the privilege to protect the woman you love. I won’t forget my time in this service.”
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