“I’m not,” she said. “I chose this life, and I’m so blessed, but we are broken, Ethan. Here. In the job. You need to trust me to do my job. When you look at my personnel file, what do you see? Remove my identity, and what do you see?”
“A well-trained investigator, who knows how to handle the situation. I also see a master manipulator when it comes to screwing with a criminal. You get them.”
“You need a killer to take out a killer, Ethan.”
Like it or not, that was born in her so many years ago. She was made to do this.
She was done with distraction.
She was done pretending.
Elizabeth was nothing more than a killer with a badge, and as soon as she accepted that, she could move on with her life. She was going to hunt down Bonnie and end her.
“I don’t like it either,” she said, seeing the look on his face, but this is what it is. “I am a killer. I killed ‘The Butcher’. I’ve killed more criminals than I can count. I can’t pretend.”
“I hear what you’re saying. I don’t have to like it, but I accept it. I simply want to protect you,” Ethan stated.
She focused on Callen.
He looked hurt, and more so than just physically.
She dropped down in front of him. “Without you the last two months, I would have died. I would have quit. I didn’t keep going for our kids. I kept going for you. You pushed me on, Callen James. I owe you more than I can pay back, but I need your faith. Without it, I might as well be a weeping mess.”
He touched her cheek with bloody fingers.
“You’re so important to me,” he offered. “I don’t know how not to protect you. My instinct is to be your armor.”
She used her t-shirt to clean the blood off his face. “I’m not saying stop protecting me. I’m saying let me have a hand in protecting myself too.”
He got it.
She gave him a gentle kiss. “I want to be your partner, but I need your backup on this. I know we can rattle Bonnie.”
He got it.
“The money is yours.”
She laughed. “It was mine before, but your faith in me matters more.”
Ethan didn’t speak.
“What?” she asked, glancing over at him.
“You need to hit her hard. You need to give her something that she’s not going to see coming. A reward will be part of it, but we need that one, two, punch.”
“Well, then let’s get to the morgue. Maybe Chris will have something.”
“Do you want to sleep?” Callen asked.
She looked at him. “Callen…”
“I’m not trying to baby you. I’m all hot and bothered. You just kicked both of our asses, and that was so hot. I just want you in bed but not for some shut eye.”
She snorted, and held out her hands to them.
That was the man she loved.
“I could use sex. The morgue wasn’t enough,” Ethan admitted.
Callen stared at him. “Wait! What? Did you get your sex on in the morgue and without me?” he asked.
Ethan grinned. “A gentleman doesn’t talk about such things in mixed company of a lady.”
Callen looked around. “Where?”
She slapped him. “That’s why he got laid in the morgue and you get a bed.”
Callen was trying to cheer her up. “I’m going to grab a girl and fornicate in the morgue too.”
She stared at him.
“That did NOT come out the way I wanted it to,” he admitted. “You’re the girl.”
She patted his cheek.
This was why she loved them both.
“Later, Callen James, I’ll rough you up and you can get horny all over again.”
“Promises, promises,” he said, as she pulled him to his feet.
He was good with that.
And he planned to collect.
* * * B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x * * *
Washington DC
Lab
Christina was confused as hell.
She was sitting there, staring at two prints, and they matched.
Only they were not for the same person.
There was no way that was possible. Fingerprints were unique to each person. They weren’t duplicated.
Ever.
She had to have made a mistake, but the ridges were matching up.
Something was wrong.
She’d checked and double checked the results. It didn’t make any sense. The only way it could happen was if someone went in and manually overrode the system. Tying the prints to a name in the system.
But that would mean…
Someone faked the results.
She didn’t know what to do.
Christina started combing all the files all over Amir’s desktop.
This was troubling.
“We’re heading home, Christina,” stated one of the techs. “Want to walk out with us?” he asked.
“Uh, no, I have to find something, and then I’ll crash here in Chris’s office.”
They were good with that.
The team left.
Alone in the morgue, Christina kept digging.
Something was up.
And she was going to solve it.
* * * B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x * * *
Salem
The Wayfarer
Sarah was tired.
No, that wasn’t the word for it. She was trying to keep up with the agent beside her, but the woman was like a freaking machine.
She was going to have to sleep soon. Words were starting to blend on the paper. It wasn’t easy to be awake all night, working on tiny details.
Everything was starting to blur.
“I think I found something.”
That had her attention.
“What?” she asked Blue.
“We are trying to find a connection between Filip Howe and anyone, right?”
She nodded. “That’s the plan. Why? What did you find?”
“I can tie him to the deceased woman, Keres Hatch. She died in college, right?”
“Yeah, she did.”
She turned the tablet around and showed her the picture. “There’s Filip, there is Keres, and look there…”
She did.
And her mouth fell open. “That’s freaking Lizzie, our mystery woman!”
She smiled.
“And look at her real name.”
She grabbed her cell phone.
It was time to make a call.
Elizabeth needed to see this.
NOW.
* * * B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x * * *
Salem
Morgue
Elizabeth was watching as Chris did the Y incision. Yeah, he said she wasn’t going to be allowed in there to watch, but then he saw Callen’s swollen nose. As soon as he heard she’d done it…
He changed his mind.
Out of fear?
Hey! It worked.
“I don’t have a COD,” Chris stated. He knew his friend, and she always asked right about when he was cutting into the body.
“That’s okay. I just want to be here,” she said. “If this was my final outcome, I’d hope someone would be here with me,” she offered.
Chris glanced up at her. “I’d be there. I’d hold your hand and do the autopsy if you wanted me to. It would suck, but I’d give that to you as my final act of love.”
That touched her heart. She knew how hard that would be for him, and still…he would hurt for her.
That was love.
She smiled. “I know you would, Christopher, and I appreciate that.”
“We have a medallion,” he offered.
She couldn’t wait. “Where?”
He pulled it from the man’s throat. It was coated in goo and nastiness. “I think that’s pureed penis.”
Great.
Elizabeth crossed toward her friend.
“That’s Saint John,” she stated. “My mother had that medallion when I was a kid. Her
best friend gave it to her. He’s the saint of friendship. She was buried with it.”
Chris dropped it into a bag for evidence.
“I’m sorry.”
She stared into his eyes. “I know. So am I. I just can’t let them rattle me.”
He got it.
“Are you, Callen, and Ethan okay?” he asked, lowering his voice. They were in the office working.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Did you really bust up Callen’s nose?”
“Yes, and I punched Ethan in the balls. It was cathartic.”
He started laughing. “I am NEVER getting on your bad side again. You’re mean.”
She gave him a kiss on the cheek.
“What’s that for?” he asked.
She told him what she’d said to the men in her life. “You never doubted me. You made me tougher, Christopher, and I will never forget that. I love you for it.”
He kissed her back. “It was my pleasure.”
Before she could say anything, Elizabeth’s phone began ringing. She answered on the first ring.
“Yo, you got me. It’s the middle of the freaking night, so spill it.”
“It’s Marshal Sarah Valley, Elizabeth.”
“What’s up, Marshal?”
“We found something. Agent Garrick found Lizzie’s picture. We have her ID.”
That had her attention.
If what she was saying was true, that was huge.
“Hold on. Let me get my team together and get you on speaker.”
She rushed into the lounge. “We have something. Hurry,” she said to Ethan and Callen.
They followed her out.
“We’re ready. Repeat that, Marshall.”
She did.
“I sincerely hope you’re not jacking with me. I’m a woman on the edge with nothing to work with on this case.”
“Oh, well, then you’re going to be happy.”
Elizabeth was about to ask for more when Ethan’s phone rang. He grabbed it.
“Hello?”
Elizabeth was going to have Sarah continue while he took the call, only she saw the look on his face.
“What?” she asked.
“Christina is borderline hysterical on the phone. She has something.”
Well, holy hell!
Two-fold.
It looked like their patience and diligence had paid off.
They placed their phones side by side on the spare metal table, and let the whole team hear.
“Introductions later. Christina, give Marshal Valley a few moments since she called first.”
“Yes, boss!”
“Okay, what did you find, Sarah?”
“Blue traced Filip Howe back like you recommended. You were right. That was the connection.”
Hot damn!
She could feel her spirits lifting. The end was in sight. This might be exactly what she needed to nail Bonnie and Lizzie to the wall.
“Okay, spill it, Agent Garrick.”
“I dug through Howe’s college education. I found the university, and then saw that Keres Hatch went there. Lizzie actually used another real person’s name, but this time, it was tied to her past.”
“Okay, and?” she asked.
“Then I pulled up an honor roll photograph.”
“What was on it?”
“I have Filip Howe, Keres Hatch, and our faker wannabe Tammy Beard—not the old lady but the actual woman—all together. I can verify by visual. It’s definitely her.”
This was good.
They were close.
“Please tell me there’s a caption under that picture. Is there?” Elizabeth asked.
“Yes, I also have her name.”
She was getting excited.
“And it is?”
“Amara. Amara Hayden.”
She looked at Ethan the second she heard her last name. “Pardon? Did you just say Hayden?”
“Yes, yes, I did.”
Christina couldn’t handle it. She was about to exploded. This was too good to hold in.
“My turn?” she asked.
“Go for it,” Ethan said, a little shocked by what they’d just learned.
“What Agent Garrick found makes total sense. The samples you sent over, boss, I started and finished them. I even handled that flowerpot.”
“Okay.”
“I found something weird. They matched the other scenes. I had the victims, Lottie Tipton, and then the ones tagged Tammy Beard.”
“But?” Ethan asked, knowing there had to be something more to it, or Christina wouldn’t have called.
She knew how they rolled.
“BUT…the new ones you sent from the mayor’s home, the ones you personally pulled, don’t match the name that comes up in the system when I run them.”
She was confused. “How?”
“Someone manually overrode them. When I started, I commented how Amir’s desktop had shit hidden all over it. He had a file with all kinds of evidence in it.”
“Yes, I recall.”
“Well, he swapped out Amara’s name and overrode them with Tammy’s name. He never actually ran them. He just claimed he did, and used Tammy Beard’s name. If he ran them, they would have pulled up Amara Hayden.”
Well, shit.
They had inside help.
Christina continued, “When he sent you the information, you couldn’t tell it was false because you wouldn’t ever look it up in the system to see if it was manipulated. You always trust the techs.”
She did.
“Only, he didn’t know about me using his system, and having access to his password. Gabe kept it on the DL.”
And that was the break they needed.
“Son of a bitch!”
No wonder she was stalled in the investigation. She was being stonewalled and pointed at Tammy Beard for a reason. Amir was involved.
Shit!
Christina continued, “So, all the ones you’d been given before were wrong. I triple checked. They are definitely Amara’s prints, and I also ran the DNA to double check.”
“From the flowerpot?”
“Yes, and other things. She registered on a bone marrow registry in college. It was what all the cool kids did.”
“Focus,” Ethan stated.
“I can confirm that Amara Hayden is definitely your Lizzie Borden—wannabe, and I can confirm that she’s biologically related to Amir. I ran his DNA against the sample. She’s his sister.”
“That rat bastard!”
“And…”
They got quiet.
“I also found in his desk copies of your files. Every one of your cases all the way back to your days before Ethan. I can tell you who the next victim is too.”
“How?”
“He circled names in a file. These are all people who you’ve come in contact with at some point. They picked Cannon because of you mentioning in him in a report, they picked Margaret Peace, since you and Chris worked a case long ago where she popped into it.”
“I remember that case,” Chris said. “They were the Jesus murders.”
Yeah, she recalled it too.
She had been a witness she’d interviewed.
“Doctor Michaels worked with you on a couple cases where you had bones.”
She thought back. “Yeah, before Tony Magnus strolled into our lives. Then I only used him.”
Christina kept going. “Mayor Santana was part of two cases. Ethan noted him once in his files and you noted him in one of yours.”
Yes, yes, they both did.
Bonnie and Lizzie had used her case files and the FBI against her. This wasn’t about people she disliked. It was random.
“I’ll kick his ass all over the place,” she muttered. “Then I’ll toss him into jail for so long they’ll find his skeleton sitting on the shitter in his cage.”
Ethan was curious about the last two names.
“Who else do we have, Christina?” Ethan asked. “Who are they targeting next? There’
s two more people on her list. We have an enemy and family.”
There was shuffling.
“We have Will Argot. That’s it. I only counted five circles not six. I don’t have a clue on the family.”
She let out a deep breath.
That was fine.
Maybe they could wrap this up before they needed to worry about someone in their family being targeted.
It was time to do their job.
“We need to split up,” Elizabeth stated. “I want the sheriff to head to Will’s place, so he can get the man into protective custody.”
Callen picked up his phone to call the sheriff. This would be easier for him to help them with than if they rushed over. He knew what his wife was thinking.
They were going after the rat in the hole.
The more Ethan thought about it, the more he was pissed. “So, last the case, when I accused him of being a killer because he was in possession of your files…?”
She laughed at the irony.
“He’s the accomplice and you were just off one case. How’s that for being an awesome profiler? You tagged someone a whole case away. He did have my files for nefarious reasons!”
Clearly, Ethan’s instincts were spot on. It was bullshit about how Amir wanted to learn from her.
He was stalking them.
“Boss, I’m going to have to redo all the evidence for a jury,” Christina said. “If they get wind of this…”
Ethan got it.
There would be a shit mess. They could get the case tossed, and that would suck.
Yeah, she would.
“Get started,” Ethan stated.
His wife gave him a look. Christina had been going for hours. She needed down time.
He gave in.
“Well, you can do it after you sleep. I’m going to make sure you have more than enough people there tomorrow to help you.”
“No problem, boss.”
“Christina?” Elizabeth asked.
“Yeah, boss?”
“You get the gold star, and thank you for coming back to be my head tech. You saved the day. I love you.”
She laughed. “YAY! I can’t wait to tell Kane-y-kins! I got a gold star on day one!”
Elizabeth laughed. “Yeah, you did.”
Revenge has Come (An FBI/Romance Thriller Book 19) Page 55