Ethan and Chris were just about done with an interview when one of the nurses took a call on the radio.
“We have a woman who has a severe concussion heading in. She was beaten in a fight. We have two Feds on board. Get X-ray and Cat scan ready! She has lacerations from a knife that might be life threatening!”
Ethan looked at Chris.
There was that sick feeling in his gut as he thought about the possibilities that it was his wife.
Feds on board?
That one sentence scared him.
Well, that and ‘beat in a fight’.
Elizabeth was notorious for getting in fights, and the killer they were looking for could have…
Chris touched his arm.
They both followed after the team of nurses and doctors to the admission bay of the hospital ER. They couldn’t get close enough to the ambulance. All they could see was a woman’s form and a doctor straddling her body as he tried to do CPR.
“She’s coded. No pulse. No breathing. She’s been down almost the whole trip. Ten minutes.”
Ethan had to lean against the wall. When he saw his brother get out of the second ambulance, he saw another person on a gurney, but he was handcuffed and fighting.
He headed his way.
No, he ran.
Ethan reached his brother, and before he could say anything, his wife popped out of the first ambulance, talking to the driver.
“Jesus Christ. I’m going to drop dead one of these days!” he said, staring at her.
“What?” she asked.
Ethan didn’t give her a chance. Instead, he hugged her to his body, and wouldn’t let go.
“Uh, handsome, you’re suffocating me,” she said, breathing into his shirt. “You have witnesses if you’re trying to kill me.”
The second he released her, Chris did the same thing. This had been too close, and it reminded him of the issue years ago.
“What is it? Hug a Fed day?” she asked.
“We were inside and heard the radio. I thought you were hurt. Jesus, Elizabeth!”
“Why were you at the hospital? You were heading to the morgue to babysit him,” she said, pointing at Chris. “Did the two of you need a field trip? Has digging in bodies become so boring that you needed to take him somewhere he could get more?”
Chris laughed.
“We wanted to get the one woman’s ID and help you out, smartass,” he said.
She laughed. “Small world. I wanted to get Louis Vincent to admit he killed those women. He had other plans.”
“What happened?” Chris asked. “Why is your shirt split up the front?” he asked.
“He tried to ‘stick the pig’ I believe is what he said before I kicked the shit out of him.”
“And ball booted him into a glass table,” Callen stated. “Oh, and Ethan, Rory followed us in, and he already told me he’s not watching the crazy train. Get Ivan’s ass back here. He’s not having a stroke over her.”
He laughed and then hugged her again.
“What did you find out?” she asked Ethan as he was still keeping her pressed to his body.
Well, it wasn’t like she disliked that at all. Ethan could hold her whenever he wanted. She was game.
“That Melanie Coffman was loved by all. They called her the ER Saint. She took care of everyone and loved people. No one has any idea who could do this.”
Chris continued, “No one was bothering her. Everyone said she was good with people, small animals, and even the criminals that came in,” he said, pointing over at the man handcuffed to the gurney.
“I’m at a loss,” she said.
“Yeah, well, guess where she lives?” he asked.
“Where?” she asked.
“Across from ‘McCory’s’.”
Well, wasn’t that one hell of a coincidence?
AGAIN.
“I am shocked,” she said, staring down at her shirt. “I really liked this plaid one. It was so damn comfy!”
Callen laughed.
“Well, when you go in low…”
She snorted. “You’re taller. You should get high. That’s a no-brainer.”
Ethan pointed at the suspect.
“Want to interview him?” he asked. “You know, since you kicked the shit out of him or can I do the honors? I have some questions to ask him with my fist.”
“Well, I may have saved him the death penalty. He was trying to kill her. He’s angry enough to be the killer and he might still be one if that woman dies.”
They could see that.
He was pulling on his cuffs and trying to spit at the cops who were babysitting him.
Still, she couldn’t help but think about their killer.
He was taking people apart.
He was methodically doing it.
He was planning.
Then she stared at Louis Vincent.
He was high as a kite.
He smelled like stale beer.
And he was practically trying to gnaw off his own arm to escape.
That said it all.
Elizabeth knew the cold hard truth.
“It’s not going to be him.”
They all looked at her.
Elizabeth noticed that Ethan didn’t look surprised that she was saying it either.
“You think so, too, don’t you?” she asked.
He nodded.
“He’s out of his mind and strung out. Your killer is going to be crazy, but not because he’s angry at the world. He’s going to be vicious, but he has a methodical reasoning behind it. His Houdini-esque escapades proved that.
Chris could tell the man was definitely on something.
“My bet is it’s going to be Spice. He’s erratic. That’s the big thing now. Only, the users don’t realize that it’s this dangerous. People are cutting it with crack and smoking it.”
The man started seizing on the gurney.
As they worked on him, they watched the doctors and nurses fight for his life.
Well, that was going to be one hell of a battle. As they stood in the ER, watching the teamwork for fifteen minutes straight, they pretty much knew the outcome.
In the end, Louis Vincent coded.
He was done.
“Well, if he was the killer,” Callen said, “we don’t have to worry about justice.”
Yeah, if only.
“We still have a problem,” Elizabeth admitted. “Molly Flannigan is missing, and Congressman West is going to want to find the rest of his daughter.”
Yeah, this was far from over if that was the killer.
Then it was a body scavenger hunt.
Great.
This case looked like it was never going to end.
* * * B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x * * *
There she was.
As she was walking out to her mailbox to get her paper, he noticed she was wearing nothing but a robe.
His body reacted.
He’d told her he’d find her one day, and that day had come for her—and him.
He told her he’d fuck her for making his life hell.
Well, she was about to see that he wasn’t kidding about any of those promises.
Rehabilitation only went so far.
It didn’t make him better.
It made him angry.
So, as she headed toward her house, in the gorgeous side of town, he’d though about how he’d been forced to live.
He’d been in a cage as she was free.
Well, he was calling in the debt, and she had to pay.
They all did.
But that was okay. Once he made them into art, he could stop hating them. He could stop blaming them for his life.
They were his penance.
They were his to remold and make into what he needed them to be.
So he crept toward the house, and as she began closing the door, he kicked it with his foot, sending it crashing into the wall behind her.
She screamed, but he was on her.
He
was on her so fast she didn’t have a chance.
As he twisted her neck, he heard the vertebrae pop.
She stopped moving. On the floor, beneath him, her robe had come open, and she smelled like magnolias.
Well, so much for not killing her so she could suffer.
He knew how to defile her.
He took out his dick, and he showed her who had the bigger set.
Then he spent the next hour cursing at her as he used her to get off.
When he was done, he went, got his car and dumped her into the trunk. He cut all the wires to the security cameras, and took the hard drive.
She was his now.
And he was going to make her beautiful.
One cut at a time.
Chapter Fifteen
Hotel
W hen she got to the hotel, she was changing in her room when she heard Chris and Callen talking. As she listened, she heard Chris telling him about what happened in the morgue. While they might not be a couple, they were still a unit.
He was her family.
Then, she listened more, and heard him asking Callen if he would be upset if Bethe called her mommy.
Her heart skipped.
She loved that little girl. No, she wasn’t hers, but in a way, she was. She was born to Elizabeth when Lily Sanderson took her mother away.
She was born in pain.
She was born in suffering.
She was born in blood.
Yeah, Bethe was hers.
Callen, of course, didn’t mind and she knew why. He got it. With Cat, he feared that she couldn’t love a child that wasn’t hers. That was total BS. When you were gifted something so special as a baby, you loved them despite their DNA.
As she was about to go out, Callen changed the subject.
He was talking about rape.
Elizabeth stayed silent and listened.
“I heard you pulled a gun on Elizabeth,” Callen said, sitting beside Chris on the couch.
“I was startled from sleep.”
Callen didn’t speak. He simply watched the man with those calm brown eyes.
“I’m struggling.”
“With?” he asked.
“I wasn’t held at gunpoint.”
There.
He said it.
“You were still sexually assaulted, Chris. Men can be raped. It’s a hard word to wrap our heads around when it’s us being assaulted.”
He didn’t speak.
“She drugged you, and you had no control over your body. At any time, did you want to stop?”
“The whole time,” he said, staring down at his hands.
“Then she violated you.”
“I could have stopped her,” he said. “I didn’t. Why didn’t I?” he asked.
Callen figured it was time to talk about what he was familiar with.
“I never said no,” Callen stated.
Chris looked up.
“As my mother’s druggie boyfriend sodomized me, I cried, but I never said no. It took me years to come to grips with that. In our society, if a man is raped, it’s deemed impossible. We have external organs. They tell the tale.”
Chris let him talk.
“I wanted food so badly, that I let it happen. I didn’t tell anyone, and I didn’t really fight. For me, I carried that shame.”
“I feel that shame. I feel like I’ve been violated.”
“You were. This is not on you, Chris. What I did after is what shames me even more.”
“What?”
“For years, I slept with every woman I could find. I jumped them, screwed them, and then walked away. It was one after another one-night stands, and I did it to hurt me. Don’t take that route.”
“I don’t want to,” he said. “I don’t want to keep looking for something I know I won’t find. She was the one, Callen. Elizabeth…she was my one.”
He dropped his arm over his shoulders to comfort him. Chris leaned into him.
“I know. I’m sorry that you lost her. Really, I am.”
“No, you’re not.”
He waited until Chris looked at him.
“I really am. I love you, Chris, and I know that hole it leaves in you. I watched my brother with the woman I knew was my soulmate. I suffered.”
“I don’t want her back,” he said. “I know I broke us, and I have to live with that. I can live without sex, but I can’t live without her. That’s why I’m afraid.”
“Of?”
“That one day, you and Ethan will get sick of me being part of this. Ironically, I’m the fourth wheel.”
“I used to feel that way about being the third wheel. Guess what? It was unfounded.”
“Yeah, well, she has your children. You’re safe. I feel…lost.”
“She has your child, too, Chris. I’m not willing to share her sexually, but I am willing to share her love. Elizabeth has the ability to love all. She will be yours forever, and Bethe will not grow up motherless. She’ll grow up with all of us.”
He wiped his eyes.
“Take the gift. Stop over thinking it. If you want to get off the sex rollercoaster, I get it. Be true to you and value yourself. You’re worth more than taking the path I took. Boning every babe on the East Coast won’t save you. Love of your family will.”
She figured it was time to make her presence known.
“He’s right, Christopher. You don’t have to worry about it. You and Bethe live with your family, and I’ll be there for her the day she goes off to the prom, and on the day that she’s married, I’ll sit there in that front row and be the stand in for Cyra.”
Tears filled Chris’s eyes.
“She won’t ever worry that she doesn’t have a mother. I have enough love in my heart for that little girl and for you.”
He wiped his eyes.
“Thank you for that. I’m a blessed man.”
He pulled the feather out from beneath his shirt.
“Ethan gave me his,” he said, as he held it.
“Well, then we have to make sure we replace it, and that Bethe gets one too. She needs a special one with some pretty sparkles. In fact, when I get home,” Elizabeth began, “I’m going to take my girls to the spa. We are all getting pedicures. They have cute colors that remind me of unicorns.”
Chris was overwhelmed. That was something he always wanted for his daughter. It was ironic that two people who swore they’d never have kids together now did in a roundabout way.
“Thank you, Elizabeth. Thank you for the day you took me under your wing, and the day you decided to be mine. I know I hurt you, but I want you to know that if I could go back and change that moment—that selfishness—I would. It wouldn’t be about getting you back, but healing what I did to you.”
She loved him.
Even if Chris wasn’t her husband, she still wanted to help him be happy.
But first…
“That’s why this hurts me to say this.”
“What?” he asked.
“You are in in trouble.”
“Why?” he asked.
“What the hell is wrong with you? That skank gave your man junk a squeeze, and you didn’t think to hit her in the face with a metal tray? Have I taught you NOTHING?”
Ethan walked in and shook his head.
“And that’s why I’m glad I was the one who walked in on that. You’re out of control.”
The men laughed.
She joined them.
“Did Christina find anything?” Ethan asked.
Chris pulled out his phone.
He knew there wasn’t going to be good news. Christina would have updated him first.
“No. We may have to stop in. I want to change before we go,” Chris offered.
Ethan and Callen agreed.
“That works for me, I’m changed and ready to go.”
Before she could suggest they get their asses moving, there was a knock on the door. When they opened it, there stood Blue, Johanna, and a wheelchair riding Brody.
&nb
sp; “We found something!” Blue stated.
Ivan moseyed in after them. He was proud of his girl. She found something that might just help.
“What?” Elizabeth asked.
“You wanted me to run the detective, and that’s exactly what I did.”
“Yeah, and what did you find?”
Then she stopped.
“Uh, where is the man who is supposed to be my tail for his boss? Where the hell is he?”
Johanna knew the boss lady was going to want to know where he was at all times. So, she’d done her homework too.
“He’s digging in the library for information on that bar. He’s working that angle. Since everything seems to be happening in that area.”
Well, at least he wasn’t under foot.
“While we have latitude to discuss the case in the privacy of our room, lay it on me. You had to find something. You’re too happy.”
Then she pointed at Ivan.
“Unless he’s jacking with my training and making you all giggly and jolly.”
Ivan wiggled his eyebrows.
Elizabeth knew what he meant.
She made gagging sounds. “Great! I pictured it. Get the bleach.”
“Welcome to my world, hagzilla. This is a circus of fornication up in here.”
That made her snort.
“Blue, carry on.”
“Well, he’s spotless,” she stated. “Well, in every database I could find to run him through.
“Uh, that’s not going to help me,” she offered. “If you’re happy about that…”
“No, but this will help you. I was thinking about his social media accounts. I ran his ISP against all of them.”
“Okay, and?”
“I found a blog.”
“Then she found me,” Johanna stated. “It was a closed blog. I contacted the site, and they gave me enough information that it’s questionable.”
Elizabeth loved when her team was doing their jobs and without her babysitting.
“It’s not full of naked pictures of dolls by any chance, is it?” she asked. “He doesn’t like to be called Geppetto in bed, does he?”
Ethan laughed.
In fact, they all did.
Even when she was working a case, Elizabeth’s mouth was still a wild card.
“You know it won’t be that easy, right? We don’t have that kind of luck.”
Discarded by Fate Page 46