True Love Lost (An FBI Romance Thriller (book 3))

by Kelley, Morgan

  “Where,” asked Blackhawk, the anger rising in him.

  “Dumpster at ‘Cup of Joe,” he answered, softly.

  “We’re heading out. Have your deputy keep the scene contained,” said Elizabeth. Her husband was silent, and that usually meant he was going to blow big time.

  “Callen, help Doc grab her gear and get the keys for a tech van.” She didn’t have to tell them anything. Elizabeth looked back over at the techs and their faces said it all. When the ME had to get her kit, it meant one thing. Derek Williams wasn’t coming home alive.

  As the team started to move, Blackhawk shook his head. “No. I don’t want any of you to have to do this.” There was no way he could subject his team to retrieval of their friend and a sweep of evidence ten feet away. “We’ve got this,” he stated, and then he walked out of the room. “I’ll be down in the Denali.”

  Callen took the kit from Desdemona, and then caught keys from one of the techs. They were going to bring home their team member.

  “Team stays in-house until we get back or I call, am I clear?” she said, and everyone nodded, and there were tears and there were looks of anger. But right now all that mattered was getting to Derek and giving him dignity. Before she walked out the door she turned to face them. “Derek’s ours now. I’ll get him justice, I promise,” she said, looking into their faces, the faces of the people that had hope she’d return when she was lost. The belief she found there propelled her forward. Now she just needed to keep her husband from losing it.

  Blackhawk drove to the scene, the feeling of dread and horror overwhelming him. Here was going to be the man that he sent to his death. It was his job to keep them all safe, and here he knowingly sent a man out alone. Gabe should have warned him how crappy this job could be at times. If he could take it back, he would. He wished he could rewind the last twelve hours and give the man back his life.

  “I can do this alone, Ethan,” his wife said, softly. Elizabeth knew how hard this was going to be for him. “This isn't your fault,” she added. It was the famous Blackhawk guilt and it now had full control of the man beside her.

  “I sent him alone at night.”

  Blackhawk parked the Denali, and looked over at his wife and his eyes were filled with fury and pain.

  “We can do this together.” Elizabeth took his hand in hers, and looked into his eyes. “We are unbreakable as a team.”

  He nodded the fury still beating at his heart. “Let’s go get Derek.”

  Elizabeth hopped out of the vehicle as the tech van pulled up, and the other two members of their team exited into the cold. “Doc, you ready?” she said, knowing this man was possibly her friend too. If she could she’d spare her too.

  “I want to see him before we move him, and we need to get pictures first. I prefer to not get body temp out in the elements. It’s freezing out here; there won’t be an accurate reading.” Her real reason was that she didn’t want to probe him while Ethan Blackhawk was there. She could tell he was struggling with it. “I simply want to see in situ and then bag him up for transport.”

  “Got it,” said Elizabeth.

  “We have a timeline of his last moments. That’ll be good enough,” she said, softly to just Elizabeth.

  They all headed for the back of the building. Julian Littlemoon was standing guard at the dumpster.

  As they approached he had gloves on and he lifted the lid, nothing but sympathy in his eyes. “Is this the entire team?” he asked.

  “I don’t want my people to have to pull his body out of here. He mattered and had friends in the lab,” said Blackhawk, looking over the side at his dead tech. He didn’t go peacefully into death. It looked like dried blood on the side of his head. At least he still had his eyes, and his face.

  Callen began snapping pictures.

  “Director Blackhawk, what can I do to help you?” Littlemoon asked, watching both women climb into the dumpster.

  “Can you track the movements of my tech?”

  “I can try, what time did he leave your location?” he asked, pulling out a pen and paper. “Do you want me to find the van?”

  “Yes, but don’t approach it. Once you locate it, call me.”

  Julian Littlemoon respected the Native man before him. It took a lot to make something of yourself when you came from a Rez. This man remade himself, and you could tell he didn’t stomp on people in the process. He had a good aura. “I’ll be in contact,” he said, slipping off into the night.

  “Doctor Adare, are you finished with the photos?” asked Blackhawk. “I want to get him out of there as soon as possible.” The sight of his tech laying in the trash like he was discarded like garbage pissed him off. He deserved a better end than this, and he’d give him the dignity the killer took away.

  “Yes, Director. We can move him.”

  Elizabeth hopped out and rolled out the black bag, and unzipped it. Her brother-in-law took her place in the dumpster, and helped the doctor move him, careful to not disturb anything that might be evidence. They lowered him into the bag and zipped him up.

  “What did the killer take?” he asked, almost afraid to ask.

  “I didn’t look under his clothing, Director. I’ll look when we get him back to the station. I don’t want to disturb any trace before I collect it.” Desdemona looked up at Whitefox. “Can you back the tech van around for transport? I don’t want to carry him around the front. He isn't a spectacle to be gawked at.”

  “Can do,” he said, jogging off.

  “Load him and then let’s just check the area. See if we can find anything. I want to talk to the person that found the body,” Blackhawk said. “Then when we make sure it’s clear, I’ll have the team come in for trace. I don’t want them in the room while you’re doing the autopsy.”

  Whitefox returned with the van, and hopped out, opening the back.

  “The autopsy is going to be closed. In fact, I’m the only one that’s going to be in the room.” There was one only one reason for that, and it was the man in front of her. She had no doubt the other two agents would survive it, but Ethan looked to be a man on the edge.

  “I will be in there Doctor. He was my responsibility, and I’m seeing this out until the end,” he said, heatedly. That man was his fault and if he couldn’t stand over his body and swallow it, he didn’t deserve to be in charge.

  “Director, with all due respect, because you are my boss,” she paused. “You aren’t going to be in there because it will be a distraction to me too. He was my co-worker, and I worked in the lab with him daily. I need to do this alone, and I need you to let me have my final moments with him. He comes first now, and my ability to do my job. That won’t be doing Derek any justice if I rush and miss anything. Once I’m done, you can finish what needs to be completed.”

  Blackhawk stared down at her debating whether to pull rank and insist, but at the last moment he just nodded. “I’m going to talk to the person that called it in.” With that, he turned and headed to the ‘Cup of Joe’.

  The three remaining let out a breath collectively.

  “Callen, call the team in once you load up Derek. We need the entire area swept, and I need a rush on every single test that can possibly be done. If we have to transport the samples to FBI West, we’ll get them there, or get a courier to drive them. I’ll sign off on all expenses on this one.”

  “Elizabeth, I can tell by the lack of blood loss, he was likely dead before the killer took what she took, or he’d be covered in blood.”

  “You did look then?” asked Elizabeth, looking over her shoulder to make sure the coast was clear.

  Desdemona dropped her voice. “Derek had a full removal of genitalia.”

  “Christ,” Whitefox was nauseous. Just the idea that the man had been hacked at like that not only made him sick, but it freaked him the hell out. “What kind of lunatic are we dealing with?”

  “A dead one if Ethan gets to her first,” Elizabeth paused. “Let’s keep this quiet until we can break it to him gent
ly.”

  “Lyzee, there’s no way to gently break that to him.” Hearing it himself gave him goose bumps and the creeps. “Once he hears that the man was emasculated there’s going to be an eruption of global proportions.”

  “I’ll tell him once autopsy is done. Desdemona, don’t send it via email. I’ll hand deliver it to him, and break it to him. This is going to take him right over the edge, and it’s going to be ugly.”

  “Agreed. Can you keep him out of the autopsy? Since I’m doing this one alone and the trace retrieval, it’s going to take me a while to get it done the right way. I’m going to need at least six hours.”

  “Callen, you need to take him to interview Carly Kester at the bookstore. If we can keep him distracted during the autopsy, then he won’t try to even come down and watch it.”

  “I’ll keep him busy,” he replied, as the three of them hoisted the man into the back of the van.

  “Transport Derek once you make the call to Christina and the team. I’ll keep Ethan occupied until you can get Derek prepped for trace removal.” Elizabeth didn’t want her husband anywhere near autopsy when the man’s clothes were removed. She wasn’t sure she wanted to even see that, but if she had to, she’d do it to keep him from witnessing it. What had her worried right now was that her husband was a powder keg and a lit match just waiting to meet and explode. The look on his face said it all; he was battling internally for control of his temper.

  Elizabeth watched the van pull away, and she pulled off her gloves and stuffed them in her pocket. Now she needed to go find her husband and keep him from losing his temper on any witnesses.

  Surprisingly, she found him sitting at a table talking on the phone to Gabe. Obviously, he called waking him up. Maybe that cheered him up a bit. There was nothing he liked more than rousing his boss from bed. It was a little game he liked to play. Usually it made him smile, but when he looked up at her that wasn’t the case. Ethan Blackhawk had the scary look on his face, and for the first time it even had her pretty rattled. It was like waiting out a natural disaster. She felt like a killer tsunami was getting ready to break through and sweep all the hapless victims out to sea in a wave of anger.

  Elizabeth motioned to the waitress on duty for two cups of coffee and even went and picked them up at the counter, tossing down cash. “Make sure we have privacy,” she said to the woman that she’d never seen before. “Hey?”

  “Yeah?” answered the redhead.

  “When did Wilma May leave?” she asked, looking down at her own watch.

  “I came on at eleven, and I think her shift ended around five p.m. She was gone before I got here, but I can check the time cards if you want.”

  “Yeah, do that, please.” Elizabeth carried the two coffees over to the table, just as her husband was hanging up the phone. “Here’s some coffee. You’re going to need it. I have a feeling we’re done sleeping until we get to go home,” she said, dumping creamer in the coffee and sliding it across the table to her husband.

  “Is Derek on his way back?” he asked, softly.

  Elizabeth nodded. “Tech team is on the way in, and we can check on them and get them started before we head back. Until then, want to talk about how ready you are to blow?”

  Ethan wasn’t surprised his wife could see right through his carefully built outer façade. The rage he was feeling at that moment was so great, that he didn’t even think he could discuss it with the woman he loved. If he even started discussing the situation, he’d lose it. “No, I think we best just let it go.” He looked up at her and fully expected a fight or at least for her to push him to get him to open up.

  “Okay. What did the manager on duty say?” Elizabeth switched the focus back to the circumstances at hand. If she could keep him talking, by the time they returned to the station the bookstore might be open, and her brother-in-law would be next up to bat on keeping her husband busy.

  “The night manager went to take the trash out, and when he opened the lid, he looked in and there was Derek. Right after that he called it in, and then we arrived. It was only him and the redhead working. I think she said her name was Tiffany, and she confirmed the story. ‘Cup of Joe’ was dead at the time.”

  Elizabeth leaned back and sipped her coffee. “Profile this for me, knowing what we know Ethan.” There had to be something they were missing.

  “Female unsub, and she’s removing pieces of males. One might say she’s trying to collect something, or pieces of someone.”

  “I’m with you so far.”

  “We know she’s blonde, and I would say that she’s about your age, maybe a little younger. But I’d say around thirties.”

  “Okay, agreed.”

  “She isn't hacking them to pieces, it’s controlled. It’s almost like collecting organs and limbs with a definite purpose. I prefer when the killer leaves us a note, it makes it so much simpler.”

  Elizabeth wasn’t sure if he was joking or not, since his voice was dead monotone. Oh yeah, he was holding back the tsunami.

  “Poisoning is a controlled killing. You can’t be hurried or rash, a part of her is enjoying the act of the drugging the victim. I want to say that the killer is using something easily found at hand. Poisoning isn't an elaborate crime. The killer makes the conscious effort to take a life, by adding a toxic substance to the coffee. There’s little planning unless it’s a spouse. They plan and plot,” he said, drinking his coffee.

  “Good to know.”

  Blackhawk tried to smile. He didn’t want to take this out on her, but he was just tied up in knots over it all.

  “How do you feel about the profile?” Elizabeth asked.

  He sighed. “You know what pisses me off?” he asked, looking her right in the eyes.

  “No, tell me.” She took a sip of her own coffee.

  “It’s like you live in here,” he pointed at his head. “You know for a fact that the profile has me tied up in knots, and you know I’m not buying my own rationale.”

  “It’s the marriage thing, Ethan. I’m sorry me being a wife is pissing you off.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  Elizabeth looked him in the eyes. “My job is to know people, just as much as you do. We wade through this shit every day of our lives. If I couldn’t tell the man I love is on the edge, what the hell kind of agent am I, and what kind of wife?”

  Blackhawk’s cheek twitched.

  “You and I can talk this out,” she paused when he tensed. “Or how about you listen to what I have to say and then go from there?”

  Blackhawk didn’t want to talk it out, so that only left one option. “Ok, shoot.”

  “Here’s where I’m having a problem, and it’s probably where you’re getting caught up too. You and I tend to be in sync for lots of things in our life, and especially as partners working an assignment. We’re two halves of a whole.”

  “So you think I’m wrong too?”

  “I can’t figure out how this woman is transporting the bodies. I don’t mean by car, I mean by lifting. I’m pretty strong, and I can lift a good deal of weight, minus now with the baby. But generally, I could carry Desdemona if I had to do it. Maybe a few hundred feet, a half a mile if it’s a fireman’s hold, but I couldn’t carry Derek. He was my size. I might piggy back him if he were alive, but as a body? It’s dead weight.”

  Blackhawk drank his coffee and considered her words.

  “Now you and Callen have both carried me around. Just a few days ago you were both tossing me back and forth and not even breaking a sweat. At home you’ve carried me up two flights of stairs when I’ve fallen asleep, and you probably didn’t get winded.”

  “You’re not heavy.” Now he did smile, when she lifted an eyebrow waiting for the word ‘yet’.

  “Could you carry your brother?”

  Blackhawk weighed it in his mind. “Callen weighs about what I do, give or take five pounds. I can do pull ups at home and that’s dead lifting my own weight, so yeah, I could carry him, but a limited distance
.”

  Elizabeth just stared at him not wanting to say the words. The profile didn’t fit for her.

  “I get what you’re saying, but profiling is a science. A woman is most likely to use poison. Look at our victims. All of them are men, which means something happened in her life that caused her to want to take the men apart- piece by piece. Maybe she was abused by a spouse or boyfriend.”

  “We need to ask Sheriff Duffy for any domestic related cases in the last year.”

  “I get what you’re saying Elizabeth. I really do, but I just think this one has us both tripped up.” Blackhawk watched the tech van start to pull in and he stood. “Why don’t you head back to the station, and I’ll stay here and work? It’s miserably cold out here, and I don’t want you freezing our baby into a uterus-cicle.”

  “He’s perfectly fine, he’s all cozy warm and surrounded by subcutaneous fat.”

  Blackhawk looked over at her and gave her the look.

  “I know! All that time around the doctors in autopsy is making me weird isn't it? I used to be so much cooler,” she said, taking his hand and squeezing it.

  “I love you, Elizabeth. Thank you for being my wife.” Without her he would have been brooding, but in twenty minutes she managed to untangle some of the knots in his gut and make him tolerable again. Now at least he could carry his tech team when they needed him. His grandfather was right, without Elizabeth Blackhawk, the men in their family were screwed.

  “I love you too, Cowboy. We can take care of this together,” she said, zipping up her parka and slipping into gloves. “Ready?” she asked, pulling up her hood.

  “As ready as I think I’ll ever be.”

  They pushed out the door together, and once again, team Blackhawk would get through what threatened to break them.

  Callen assisted Desdemona as she loaded the man’s body onto the gurney and wheel him into the prep area of the makeshift morgue. Part of him wanted to get the hell out of there, but part of him couldn’t leave her to do this on her own. “Need my help?” he offered.