“You look sexy with a gun, Doctor Death. You’ve got this.”
He hoped she was right.
Heading toward the door, Elizabeth kept in mind what had happened to Callen earlier in the week. She wasn’t going to let her guard down when it came to this man opening his door. Outside the apartment, she knocked.
It took a while.
When he opened, he looked worried.
Yeah, finding a dead woman would do that to you.
Well, that and sleeping with a priestess of weird shit. He had to be one bundle of nerves.
“I’m Director Elizabeth Whitefox-Blackhawk, and this is Doctor Christopher Leonard, and we’re with the FBI.”
He stepped outside and closed the door behind him.
That meant only a couple of things.
He had some woman tied up in there.
He didn’t want them finding his drug stash.
Or, he was married.
Yeah, she’d seen the ring on his finger. Someone was dipping his dick in someone while married. This was going to be fun. Since she’d never cheat, and she didn’t condone it, breaking him would be icing on the cake.
“Jasper Butler, we were told you were visiting a lady friend this evening when you happened upon a dead victim tied to our case.”
He looked horrified.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Yeah, she bet.
“Really? Marie Babineaux says otherwise. She states for the police report that she was with you and...” Elizabeth paused, searching for the right words, “doing the bedroom rodeo.”
He stared. “What?”
Chris picked up for her. “You know…roasting the broomstick.”
Elizabeth fought hard not to laugh. This was a little game they played so many years ago to keep sane while working.
He remembered.
She had hope he was going to be fine.
“What? Wait!” The man in front of her was staring, and they were going to keep him off guard.
“Uh…rocking the Casbah?”
Chris wouldn’t let her outdo him. “Makin’ the bacon.”
“A bit of the ol’ in and out,” she said with a horrible British accent.
“The lust and thrust.”
The man shushed them. “Come on! Stop! I have neighbors, and they’re getting up for work.”
Elizabeth looked at Chris. “I’ve never heard it called getting it up for work, have you?”
“No, but I’ve heard it called ‘on the job’,” he offered.
“Okay! Shhhhh! I was with her, but I really need to keep this quiet.”
Yeah, he was totally married.
Asshole.
“Well, at least we don’t have to swab her for semen and ask you for a sample. Thanks for that. We hate making our tech do that this early in the morning.”
“What do you want?” he asked, keeping his voice down low. It was clear who he didn’t want hearing this conversation.
His wife.
“We get why you ran, Jasper. You couldn’t get caught at a crime scene with another woman when you had a perfectly good one keeping your nest warm.”
He closed his eyes. “I knew this was going to get me in trouble. I told Marie I was going to get caught.”
“How about you tell us how long you’ve been…churning the butter?” she asked.
He started thinking. “It wasn’t long. This is only the second time I’ve cheated on my wife—last night, and last week on Wednesday. It just happened. I swear. Don’t tell her. I love my girl, but…”
Chris wanted to make him suffer for cheating on his wife. Despite what everyone thought about him and Elizabeth, he would never condone cheating.
NEVER.
Marriage was important, and he’d loved his wife.
“We’ll see what we can do, Jasper, but when you ‘wind the clock’ with someone other than your spouse, you get in trouble.”
He was aware.
He wanted to puke.
“How did you meet her?” Chris asked, jumping into the investigation. He was having a good time. This was brightening his mood.
“I went into her shop for some help two weeks ago.”
“For?”
He looked embarrassed.
“Spill it, or I march in there and tell your wife that you were ‘doing the hokey pokey’ with the town priestess and getting your Voodoo on.”
That freed up his tongue, and fast.
“I was having a hard time…performing. I went in, and Marie, well…she had a remedy.”
“Yeah, well taking you to her bed certainly worked wonders for your libido.”
He turned red. “She gave me some liquid. I took it like she directed, left an offering for her God, and the next day, I was fully functioning again.”
“Uh, it’s called herbal Viagra. There’s a tree bark called yohimbine that acts the same as the drugs created in the lab. When did she tell you to take it?”
“Before sex.”
Elizabeth lowered her voice. “She gave you some herbs. That’s why you got it up.”
He closed his eyes.
“Okay, so willy was ready for wanking, so why did you go back?”
“I wanted to thank her.”
“You wanted more,” Chris added. “You liked the erection it gave you, and you decided to utilize not having to see a physician to discuss something potentially embarrassing.”
“And yet here I am talking about your limp dick. Really, you should have seen the doctor. Then none of this would be happening.”
The man started sweating.
“So you went back and what happened?”
He started looking around. “She lit some smoke, gave me some more, and we had sex. It was as if I was high and out of control. It was the best sex I’ve ever had.”
Elizabeth held out her arm. “Did it smell like my shirt?”
He sniffed her. “Yes, it did.”
“That was cannabis,” Chris offered. “You took herbal Viagra, hit some bong, and got your sex on.”
He looked horrified. “Jesus.”
“So, that was Tuesday last week. Now you’re back again. Why?”
“It was really the hottest sex I’ve ever had. We did it for hours. She told me it was a sex ritual. I felt alive.”
“Again, drugs,” Chris offered.
He wanted to cry.
They could see it on his face.
“Last night, I told my wife I had to stay at the office and work all night, and I headed there. I wanted her, and I felt like I was going to die without her.”
“Drug withdrawal,” Chris offered. “She’s your dealer.”
“Oh, Jesus, I’m dead. My wife is going to cut my dick off and feed it to me.”
Ironically, they’d seen that before.
Elizabeth patted him on the arm. “If you’re not erect, you likely won’t bleed to death. There’s always that hope so you can get to the hospital.”
Chris agreed.
“You can’t tell my wife. Please.”
“We’ll see,” Elizabeth offered. “When you arrived there, are you sure there was no body?”
“I think I would have noticed.”
She laughed. “You think you would have noticed a con artist was drugging you and giving you pot too, but that evaded your high IQ.”
“I would have known,” Chris said.
“Yeah, me too,” Elizabeth offered. “Maybe it’s because we’re cops.”
Then she thought about it.
“Oh, no, I know why we’d know. We wouldn’t be thinking with our dicks. Well, I don’t have one, but I do have a brass set.”
The man lowered his voice. “Please. I’m begging you. I don’t want her to find out. It’ll never happen again.”
Chris wasn’t done.
“The only problem with that, Mr. Butler, is that your sexy priestess may or may not have been carrying an STD. As Feds, we can’t tell you if she was, but it’s a possibility. I hope you wore
a condom.”
He swallowed. “I don’t remember.”
“Have you had sex with your wife since then?”
He nodded.
“Then you know what to do.”
“Shit, shit, shit!” he muttered.
“I advise you to stay away from the priestess, Jasper. She’s just ruined your life.”
Elizabeth and Chris headed down the stairs. Once outside, she started laughing.
“God! I’ve missed you, Christopher.”
Yeah, he had too.
“You and I both know that we didn’t test her for an STD. You just boned that man’s life good.”
“If you listened to what I said, I did, indeed, tell him that We couldn’t tell him if she had one.”
She laughed even harder.
“He assumed, so that’s on him. If he’s not smart enough to go to his family doctor and get tested first, before opening his mouth, he deserves it. Besides, cheating is wrong on so many levels.”
She agreed.
Elizabeth offered him a fist bump.
Instead, he hugged her. She let him hold onto her for as long as he needed. She knew the media was snapping pictures, but friendship came first.
“Thank you for this,” he offered. “I don’t feel helpless.”
She dropped her arm around his waist as they headed toward the café. “Christopher, I’ve always told you that I’d have your back, no matter what. I meant it.”
He saw that now.
She wasn’t coddling him.
Elizabeth was just waiting in the wings for when he was ready to start living again.
His best friend had his back.
He’d been a dick to doubt her. He was going to have to apologize, and soon.
Elizabeth deserved it.
Chapter Eighteen
Meeks’ Home
Of Horrors
When Callen showed up, he looked really freaked out. A part of him wanted to ask, but truthfully, Ethan was still battling through his anger. For now, he wanted to focus on the one thing that always grounded him.
Work.
It was his safety net and a way to hide when he was feeling this kind of turmoil.
“Do you have my vest?” Callen asked as he approached his brother. Ethan look distracted, and he opted to spare him the details of his breakfast meeting. He’d save it for later when they could laugh about it.
“Yeah, here you go,” he offered, handing it to him, along with his FBI ball cap.
“Are you done notifying the mayor?”
“Yep.” Callen pulled his hair back and turned the cap backwards so he’d have nothing obstructing his view when they went through the door.
“Great. Then we should get this done.”
“Okay.”
Ethan handed his brother a pair of gloves. They were leather ones he had the fortitude to pick up on his way there. While latex ones would work fine, he didn’t want to chance them being snagged on anything and being poisoned.
Safety first.
Finally, he couldn’t ignore the silence any longer. “Are you okay, bro?” Callen asked. “You look pissed.”
“I’m good,” he offered, getting prepared to serve the warrant. He was vesting up as he scanned the area.
“Where are the cops?” Callen asked.
“We’re doing it alone.”
“Where’s…?”
“She’s not here, okay?”
His tone shut Callen up.
Someone was cranky, and he wasn’t going to provoke his brother. The last thing they needed while the media watched them was a fight.
They needed to be a unified front.
“Okay then. I’m ready.”
Ethan knew what Callen was thinking. He was well aware that he should have told Elizabeth that they had her warrant. She was pissed before that he’d taken over, and here he was, doing it again. This was going to put her over the edge.
Still, he rationalized that he was only helping.
In his head, it made sense.
At the door, Ethan peeked in the windows as Callen knocked. He hoped the man would just answer, saving them a lot of aggravation.
“Nothing,” Blackhawk said.
“So do you want to go in?”
Yeah, Ethan did.
Both men prepared.
Callen placed his back to the door, since he was wearing heavier boots. He watched his brother for the count to begin.
“I’ll take low,” Ethan offered.
Callen nodded. It made him nervous that his brother was distracted. All he could hope was that they’d have an easy apprehension. The guy, who might be hiding out, was dangerous. He’d nearly hurt their woman.
Speaking of which…
Elizabeth was going to skin their hides as it was. Throw in another injury, like the cut to his arm, and they were dead men, and she’d laugh while doing it.
“Three.”
Callen waited.
“Two.”
He braced for it.
“One,” Ethan whispered.
Callen’s foot crashed against the sweet spot on the door. It flew open, hitting the wall. Both large Native men went in, keeping their partner at their side. They made it a whole four feet into the house when the stench of death rose up to meet them.
It was horrific, and it stopped them in their tracks.
At this point, it had just become a whole new ballgame. They officially had a body. Somewhere, in that house, death waited for them.
“He’s going to be dead,” Ethan said, breathing out of his mouth.
Callen hated the smell of decaying body. After three years, he still got that overwhelming need to vomit when he smelled it. He was human, and it rolled his stomach. It was simply something he’d never get accustomed to with their job.
“Let’s clear the house and call in the techs.”
“Maybe we should call…?”
Ethan gave him a dirty look.
“Or maybe not.”
“We can handle this just fine. Everyone seems to forget I was doing this before she came along.”
Callen knew it was going to be bad when Ethan was referring to their wife as ‘she’. There was some deep seated-anger there, and it was causing him not to think.
Ethan was making this into one hell of a mess.
They began clearing the house as they waited for the techs to arrive.
When they entered into the kitchen, where the smell seemed to be emanating from, they found, who they assumed was Kaleb Meeks, sitting in a chair at the table.
“Shit,” muttered Callen.
The man was one hot mess.
His body was split open and there were maggots and flies having a party all over him. The only good thing was that gave them a timeline.
“He’s been dead at least four days,” Ethan said, checking out the bloated mess.
“Yeah, unfortunately for us, that was before our killer started taking women for their liver and blood.”
“Yeah, that’s a problem.”
Well, now they had one more issue to add to the situation. If Meeks wasn’t the killer, and he wasn’t trying to frame the priestess, who the hell was?
This was going to drive Elizabeth bat shit insane. They were officially back to square one.
“Do you want me to call in Chris?” Callen asked, pulling out his phone.
“No. I think this time, I’ll use Doctor Perette.”
That one sentence told Callen everything he needed to know. His brother didn’t want Elizabeth there, and he didn’t want to use their ME.
He was letting this get out of control.
This was really, really bad. There were bees in his bonnet, and they were likely all because their wife headed out with the ME to handle personal business.
It had set Ethan off.
Oh, boy.
“I’ll call it in,” Ethan said, pulling out his phone. As he stared out the man’s window, he saw the media. “Can you keep them back?”
“Yeah, I
can do that.”
He headed toward the door. Instead of leaving, he turned to face his brother. Callen needed to go on record. “You have to stop this, Ethan. You’re letting it damage you, her, and us. You’re starting that downward spiral again. I can see it. You never know if that one trip is going to be the one you can’t bounce back from.”
Blackhawk turned away and stared at his reflection in the window. He was aware, but he was so damn hurt.
And afraid.
He was losing the one person who kept him grounded. He was losing the woman he loved.
And he didn’t know how to handle it.
At all.
* * * B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x * * *
Elizabeth sent a few texts to Ethan to check in with him regarding the warrant. She wanted to hit up Kaleb Meeks’ house as soon as they were done with breakfast.
Part of her process would be to walk through, looking at everything there. Hopefully, it would give her something, as she struggled to work out the case in her head.
At that moment, they really didn’t have much to hold the whole thing together. At this rate, they might not be solving it—which sucked, since this was her first time out the gate in the new position.
So much for impressing everyone back at the Hoover building…
So much for living up to her badass street cred…
Since Ethan wasn’t replying to her texts, she figured he was still trying to pull off the miracle of getting the warrant signed.
So, she’d give him time, trusting in his skill. It may not happen immediately, but she had faith in the man she loved. If anything, Ethan Blackhawk was very convincing. She pictured him in his spiffy tie and suit, and the room seemed to flush with heat.
It almost made her want to giggle.
“What do you want to talk about?” Chris asked, after the waitress took their order.
“You. Me. Us.”
He stared at her as she sipped her coffee. Elizabeth looked genuinely worn down. This case was running her through the ringer. She probably didn’t sleep more than six hours since they’d arrived there.
It was taking its toll.
“Are we talking as boss to employee, director to ME, or best friends?”
“The latter. I want to forget that we work together, and all the shit that’s gone on the last four months to find my best friend again. You’re worrying me.”
Blood Shall Run (An FBI Romance Thriller Book 15) Page 47