“That was your assignment?” he asked, incredulously. They’d all seen the dossier on it, because it was legend at Quantico, and not for a good reason. It was a big slipup that allowed the killer to get away, and all the families were furious that the FBI screwed up and didn’t get them justice.
Elizabeth laughed. “Yeah, I headed that clusterfuck.”
Blackhawk didn’t know what to say, but it still didn’t answer why she was able to manipulate Gabe over it. If anything she should owe him, her name was never tied to it.
“The killer focused on Livy. The sicko began stalking her everywhere, and we contemplated using her as bait.”
“Okay, I’m with you so far.”
“Right about then, Gabe and Livy fell in love. She asked him to marry her,” Elizabeth laughed. She remembered the day, and it still made her smile. Her boss was so stiff and rule orientated that Livy rocked his world upside down.
“Gabe told me that Livy proposed.”
“Yeah, she didn’t like to play by the traditional rules, and it’s probably a good thing. Gabe tends to drag his feet on certain things, like living wild and crazy.”
“You’re stalling.” He hoped it didn’t come out hard, but he was starting to get a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“Yeah I am, because what I’m going to tell you is that damn bad.”
Blackhawk wanted to go to her, but he knew his wife and for now she needed to work through this.
“Anyway, this wackjob was getting more twisted and leaving presents for her, dead animals, nasty notes and then one night she called me. I couldn’t understand the call, it was her whispering and it was garbled. I rushed over as fast as I could.”
“What happened?”
“She went home to her apartment after work, Gabe was working late, and ‘The Butcher’ was in her place.”
“Oh shit.”
“Yeah, when I got there he had roughed her up and was going to kill her, but I interrupted.” Elizabeth left it at that. The details weren’t hers to share, and she hoped her husband understood that.
“Baby, I’m so sorry,” he said, the emotion was clearly visible on her face, and he couldn’t imagine what she was feeling.
“I called Gabe, and he was going to go after the guy.”
“I don’t blame him,” Blackhawk stared at his wife. It was starting to all come together.
“I wouldn’t let him. By that time in the case, Livy and I had a suspect, and when he came at her, we knew we could identify him, but it would mean her having to testify against him.”
“He assaulted her, didn’t he?”
Elizabeth felt her eyes welling up. When her husband went to move to her, she shook her head. “I need to get through this, and you can’t sooth me. I don’t deserve it.”
Blackhawk sat back down. “Okay, Elizabeth.”
“Ethan, if I tell you the rest of this, you’re obligated to arrest me. I broke the law, and Gabe buried it.”
“What did you do, Elizabeth?”
“I played judge, jury and executioner for my partner and my friend.”
Ethan walked to the bed, took the coffee from her hand and placed it on the end table. “I’m guessing ‘The Irish Butcher’ didn’t really get away did he?”
“No. The victims got justice, but the families never knew it.”
Blackhawk’s cheek twitched.
“If you want a divorce, I completely understand, and if you want to turn me in, I’m ready,” she said, placing her hands on her child growing in her body.
His heart broke that she’d been carrying this alone, and honestly believed he’d see her differently. “I wouldn’t ever divorce you.” Blackhawk climbed on the bed beside her and pulled her into his arms. “Elizabeth, I love you, and you aren’t some sicko killing random people.”
“It’s a fine line, Ethan. A gray one that once you cross you can’t get back from. I’m not proud of it, but I did what I had to do to protect the people I loved. Livy couldn’t sit in that courthouse and talk about it, and Gabe was going to lose his mind over the entire thing. They had a strong connection, but a yearlong serial murder trial that culminated with one of the lead investigators being raped and having to testify would have broken them. Love is fragile.”
Blackhawk thought back to when his wife was abducted, and he thought she could have been assaulted. Just the idea made him willing to kill. He couldn’t imagine what it would have been like had Thomas Mason sexually assaulted Elizabeth. That wasn’t true; he would have been driven to murder.
Easily.
“I acquired an unregistered. I made the shot and he died.” She finished it up, leaving out as much as she could.
“No one ever suspected?” he asked.
“To this day, the police in Boston have it as a cold case.”
Ethan kissed his wife on the top of the head and pulled her tightly against his body. “Did you really believe this would change what’s between us?” he asked, softly.
“You’re an honorable man, Ethan.”
He tipped her chin up to look into her eyes. “I also know that ‘The Irish Butcher’ was a vile, disgusting man and he deserved to die. I’m just sorry my wife had to be the one to do it.”
Elizabeth shrugged.
“Any more secrets?” he asked, hoping she didn’t have anything bigger than this hidden in her past.
Elizabeth laughed. “I’m not as bad with a gun as Livy and Gabe let on,” she added. “In FBI qualifications, I helped Livy, not the other way around.”
“I suspected. When you took that shot between me and my brother at the quarry to take out Mason, it wasn’t a shot that just any special agent would take.”
“So you suspected huh?” She wiped her tears.
“Dead giveaway.” Ethan kissed her slow. When he broke away, she had more tears. “I love you, Elizabeth. Your secret is safe with me.”
Elizabeth was a lucky woman.
“I know you think it’s your job to protect the Blackhawks, but we also get to protect you too. It goes both ways.”
“We can stop worrying about this then?” she hoped. “You really can’t tell anyone Ethan, including Gabe. I swore an oath that day. If this ever got out, I’m going to jail, so is Gabe and now so are you.”
“It’ll be okay baby.”
“Ethan, if this does get out, I’ll do the jail time. You have to promise me that you’ll play dumb and never, ever say you knew about this. We’re having a baby and you can’t get dragged into this. Someone has to make sure our son is taken care of and I don’t trust anyone with our child but you.”
“My lips are sealed,” he answered. Now he was an accomplice just by knowing and neither one of them were going to jail. He’d protect his wife, just like Gabe had protected Livy. He owed it to the man. After all, if he didn’t send him to Salem, he never would have met his wife, and had a chance at a real life.
Sometimes you had to look the other way when you had a debt to pay. This was one of those times. As far as he was concerned, his wife wasn’t ever going to jail and neither was Gabe Rothschild.
“Want to get some work done?” she asked, wanting to forget all about her past for a while. Now she wanted to live in the present and future.
Ethan hugged her again. “Yeah, let’s get some work done.” Now he needed to regain focus and start thinking about the assessment at hand.
“I’ll go get the files,” she said, slipping off the bed. “Thank you, Ethan.”
Blackhawk smiled as his wife blew him a kiss. Now that this big mystery was solved most of his thoughts were now refocused. Callen Whitefox was walking right into danger. He had that feeling again, that twist in his gut that meant that something bad was coming. There were a few times he felt it in his life, the day he woke in Salem to find his wife on their patio with a giant raven was one, and it almost cost them both their lives. The other time when they were trying to find a serial killer targeting pregnant woman on the reservation. Both times they survived to tell
about it, but he only hoped his brother would be that lucky.
Something bad was brewing and he hoped his brother would be ready and not distracted by women issues.
Desdemona didn’t know what to say to the man driving her back to her home. There was this uneasiness filling the Denali and she knew it was all her fault. She’d over reacted as they were on their date. Obviously the man with her was a good guy. It wasn’t even dawn, and he was driving through horrible weather to get her back to her house and the waiting mess. There was no doubt what she needed to do.
“I’m sorry about last night, Callen,” she spoke, quietly.
He was surprised. “You have nothing to be sorry about, Desi. I should have been more focused on you and me, and less making it about work.”
“We’re here on an assignment, I over reacted. It wasn’t a date, it was a job.”
Callen looked over quickly. “It wasn’t a job. What I feel for you has nothing to do with the job. If you want me to quit to prove it, I will.”
“What?” Now she felt panicked. “Why would you quit your job?”
“I’d quit to prove a point. The job is the job, and we were on a date last night. My brother didn’t need people watched, yeah, it was helpful, but he wanted us out of the house.”
She stared at him openmouthed.
“Yes. He wanted to have wild sex with his wife, and he wanted us to go out on a date and give them the house.”
“I don’t know what to think.” Then she started laughing. Could she blame them? She would have done the same exact thing to get Callen alone if she was in their position. “They could have just had sex, I don’t care if they do. They’re married.”
“Ethan’s straight laced to a point. He wanted to focus on Elizabeth,” he paused. “If you tell them I told you, I’ll deny it,” he added, laughing.
“I won’t tell.” She promised him and she’d keep it.
“Pinky swear?” he asked, holding up his free hand, and waiting for her to make the oath. When she laughed and did it, he kept her hand in his. “I know I may not deserve to ask this, but I want a first date re-do.”
She didn’t think she was that lucky in life, but apparently she was indeed.
“I screwed it up, and I want a first date to prove how serious I am about us. Twenty years from now I don’t want you thinking back to the screw-up but to the re-do.” Whitefox looked over at her and hoped she’d say yes. “Give me a second chance?” he asked seriously.
“Yes.” Desdemona finally got it out. Twenty years from now? Her heart was skipping in her chest, and she may need to go to the ER. It was quite possible that she was having a cardiac incident. How could she say no?
“Good,” he said, grinning. Now to just figure out how to dazzle her and keep her completely interested in him. He was a simple man, and he may need some help on this one too. “When we get to the house, let me go in first okay?” Whitefox didn’t want her to see the place totally destroyed. If he could he’d bribe the tech team to put it back together again best they could, and he hoped they were delicately sweeping for trace.
“Okay,” she answered, shivering. Just the idea that this wackjob was touching all her things, it freaked her out.
Whitefox pulled into the development onto the street that held her house, and it looked like an invasion. When his brother sent in a team, he sent in a squadron. “Sit tight,” he said, leaning over and kissing her fast on the lips. “I’ll be right back.” Callen Whitefox hopped out of the Denali and headed over to the police sitting outside of the house.
“Sir, you can’t come on the property.” The man moved to block the large man trying to gain access.
“I’m Special Agent Callen Whitefox, and this is my crime scene,” he stated, pulling out his badge. “The team inside is mine, and the woman that owns the house is our Medical Examiner.” He simply pointed at Desdemona sitting in the running Denali.
“Sorry sir, I didn’t know. I was told to just keep anyone who wasn’t supposed to be here off the property. Some bigwig from the FBI West building called my boss, and had us assigned to sit out here until the agent in charge arrived. I think his name was Blackhawk.”
Whitefox grinned. His brother would cringe at being called ‘bigwig’ and that entertained him. “Thank you so much, Officer. I can’t tell you how much it means to me. Can you tell me what happened?” Now he needed all the details before he entered to see the mess.
“We got a call from the alarm company informing us of a breaking and entering at the residence. Apparently, someone went in through a window on the first floor in the office. They made one hell of a mess in there.”
“I bet.” Callen Whitefox’s anger was palpable.
“The good news is, the call came in at two a.m. and we were here by two ten. So, the person or persons didn’t have much time to get in there and do too much damage. It is mostly just books thrown all over the place, furniture knocked over and just a mess.”
“Great. Thank you for all your help,” he shook the officer’s hand. “I guess you and your partner can head out.”
“It’s a slow night; we’ll sit here in the car and keep an eye on your crew until we get called to something else.”
“Thank you so much. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go check on the fingerprinting and sweeping,” he said, and headed into her house and closed the door behind him. Yeah, the maniac did a number on her things.
“Director Whitefox, how are you?” asked the agent he’d never met before. The woman currently in charge of the scene was watching him with unblinking blue-gray eyes.
Whitefox noticed they bordered on a blue and appeared to see everything. Her red hair was pulled back and she wasn’t wearing makeup. The call must have pulled her out of bed. He’d seen Elizabeth look the same during a few early morning calls.
“I’ve had better wake up calls,” he said, and looked down at the badge. “What do we have, Special Agent Christensen?” He scanned the room, and there were ten tech team specialists milling around, gathering evidence.
“We have everyone gathering evidence. The person entered through the doctor’s office window. It was jimmied. From the wet footprints through the house, the intruder tossed this room first.”
“You think it was tossed, because they were looking for something?”
Agent Christensen mulled it over. “I definitely think that the perp was looking for something. Let me show you, follow me please.” She led him over to the desk. “See that book?” She pointed to an old book under a glass protective box. “That’s a first edition William Shakespeare. Othello. A book in that kind of condition is worth my salary for the entire year and then some.”
Whitefox stared at the book. “The intruder walked right past it? Maybe our criminal wasn’t an avid book collector.” He offered up that as an excuse, unsure if his brother and sister-in-law wanted anyone else in on what was going on in Desdemona’s life.
“Yeah, and that’s not all. Look at the wall behind us. See the doctor’s diplomas?”
“Yes.”
“On the black market, they’re valuable. They are authentic sealed diplomas for Harvard. Know what they would get for those outside this country? Some wannabe doctor in Russia could open his own practice and pretend he was trained here in the US if he had access to one of those beauties.”
Whitefox nodded. He already knew the intruder was the stalker and wouldn’t want the diplomas. He wanted to terrorize.
“Now, if you come out to the great room, this is the second place I believe the intruder came. The wet floor patterns show that he or she stopped in front of the bookshelf. All the doctor’s things are all over the floor, the books, her trinkets, and some of them look smashed, like the person stomped all over them. That doesn’t scream random break in for me. The person that trashed her things was angry.”
“Possibly because the alarm was going off?”
Christensen shrugged. “I checked. It’s a high end alarm. It’s silent and directs right to the alarm c
ompany. If the Doctor hit the button herself it would alert all her neighbors, but with the intruder jimmying the window, it sent it silent.”
“It’s a smart alarm?”
“Exactly. Our criminal didn’t know the cops were coming until they pulled up. The intruder’s anger was directed at Doctor Adare.”
Callen knew that the fact her collectables were destroyed was going to crush her, she loved her odd little things.
“This looks like the intruder had personal knowledge of the doctor. If this was random destruction, and I was the intruder I would have gone for maximum cost. See the couches? Real leather, and with a blade done in three seconds with a few slashes.”
She led him to the kitchen. “Doctor Adare, she’s an interesting person, but when it comes to inviting in crime,” she paused, pointing to the stack of papers sitting on the counter mail basket. “In here are two credit cards, unopened, a bank statement and then all her personal information she wrote in this little book.”
Whitefox nodded. Yeah, that was pretty careless. Desdemona was making it easy for the stalker.
“I’m assuming none of it was touched, which again makes me believe that this person was looking for something. Doctor Adare has money, you can tell by her house, her things, and the person who came in here didn’t touch a single thing worth value. So, the intruder was either an idiot, or it was someone here with intent.”
Whitefox knew the intent. It was to terrify her and make her run. But where? “How about upstairs?”
“That’s the funny thing,” she led him there. “We found no damage upstairs, but the person did make it there.”
Whitefox walked into the woman’s bedroom and it felt like her, and then he saw it. On the bed stand was a vase of roses, and on the bed a single red one.
“Maybe someone she’s in a relationship with did this, is she sleeping with anyone?” she asked. “He could be the first suspect we need to talk to about this.”
Now Whitefox was angry.
“Doctor Adare is sleeping with me, and I can guarantee I didn’t leave her red roses. I was on the same assignment, and we left three days ago to work in Red River with both directors. Ethan and Elizabeth have the list of her past relationships, and he’s working that angle already.” Agent Christensen was very smart and very good at her job. Just by walking through, she’d come to the conclusion they were all aware of, and he knew evading the truth wouldn’t matter. Now he had to trust the woman who was running this assignment.
True Love Lost (An FBI Romance Thriller (book 3)) Page 33