Chris bought them all breakfast, and when they grabbed a seat, they began eating.
“Why didn’t we head home to eat? We’re done working this shit case,” Chris said.
“I’m waiting for Gabe,” she admitted. “At some point, he’s going to realize that he’s screwed-up.”
Callen laughed.
“He will.”
“Yeah, I don’t feel like driving home and coming back. That’s a waste of my time. Plus, I might throat punch a few reporters.”
Yeah, that was a distinct possibility.
Chris cut into his pancakes and shoved a forkful into his mouth. Then he moaned.
“So futterty and ahght.”
Callen was amused by the look of food rapture on his face from them.
“Buttery and light, huh?”
He tasted his, and they were.
They ate for a little bit, and then they all saw the big man coming their way. The storm was over, and he was more subdued. Someone was about to apologize.
For Gabe…that was rare.
“Heads-up,” Chris said, nodding toward the entrance of the cafeteria.
It didn’t take him long to find them in the crowd of other Feds. When Gabe saw them, he crossed the room still holding her badge and gun.
“Can we talk?” he asked.
“Well, this is a public place, so…”
“I meant privately? When I grovel, I like privacy. It’s embarrassing.”
Oh, that wasn’t happening.
Why?
He was going to do this publicly since he’d dressed her down in front of her whole team. When you were an asshole, you had to swallow your just desserts.
“Nope. Sorry, but here is sufficient. I’m not working. I’m having breakfast,” she said, showing him.
“You hate oatmeal.”
“I hate when you’re a dick even more,” she stated. “I guess it’s just that kind of day.”
It was time.
“I’m sorry for losing it. I shouldn’t have been an asshole towards you or your team.”
Oh, she knew why.
She’d bet her husband had schooled the man for her. She knew Ethan, and this was right up his alley.
“Gee, really?”
“Yes, your other boss pointed that out.”
Yeah, that wasn’t really surprising.
“Well, you should get my replacement to get moving. He or she has a lot of work cut out for them. In fact, I can bet this case will be something so monumental, it will rock the FBI if the ball is dropped.”
He stared at her.
“What? What do you mean your replacement?”
“You suspended me. I’m just here to have breakfast before I go home. I love oatmeal. Mmmmm…you were wrong about that too.”
She wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily, and he knew it.
“I’m sorry. I was wrong. Please continue working this. It’s clear that you have it under control. You are better at this kind of thing than anyone I know.”
“You think?” she asked, leaning back in her seat. “So, are you saying I earned my position using my brains?”
“Well, you certainly didn’t sleep with me to get the job. You could be much higher up on the pay scale if you weren’t so damn infuriating.”
Oh, she was well aware.
“I don’t know who did this, but I do know one thing,” she stated.
“What?”
“This is like revenge and a smear campaign. Someone hated the president a whole lot to do this. Also, it won’t be the vice president or First Lady.”
“How do you know?”
“Easy. They can’t leave the White House, and if they could, would they really go to a hooker habitat to do their own dirty work?”
He listened.
“No.”
“So, let’s see who that leaves. We have a senator who was raped. I wonder if she’s in a relationship.”
He saw where this was going.
“We also have confirmation that Damian Dean, also, raped another woman,” she said, leaving Harmony’s name out of this.
Gabe may have to deal with her bullshit on a daily basis, but here was why he did it.
She had a beautiful mind.
It was twisted, but it kept her at the top of her game.
“I wonder if someone in their lives did this as payback. Our field of suspects is limited. There can only be so many people who could do this.”
He knew she was talking it out for her—not him.
“They have to be able to walk into a hooker’s apartment building and then kill someone without being seen. Both the First Lady and vice president are too well-known. What kind of rock are you living under not to recognize them?”
He took it all in.
“So, while you may think I screwed it up, I’ve already eliminated some of the people now residing in the White House.”
“So, they are in the clear?”
Yeah, she didn’t say that.
She shook her head.
“Nope.”
“Why?”
“Because they didn’t swing the weapon, but they may have loaded the gun and pointed the crazy at the dead man. The hooker is going to be a loose end, and this killer is going to be angry. Now, today, I get to look at Ethan’s updated profile and go from there.”
“So, you’re back?”
“Are you done offering up my team to the wolves, instead of having our back while we handle this mess?” she countered.
“Elizabeth.”
“Are you?”
It was as simple as that. Unless he answered her question, she was going to sit there and gag on wallpaper paste.
Gabe sighed.
“Yes, I’ll have your back for the rest of this case, and, yes, I was wrong to doubt you.”
That was all she really needed to know.
“Then I’ll head back to work.”
“And the media?”
“I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. Boys, saddle up. Leave the pancakes. You had your sticky fun.”
Chris shoved a whole one into his mouth because he knew that this meal wasn’t happening again for a long time.
“You’re mean when you eat oatmeal,” Callen stated, following Chris’s lead, as she grabbed their trays and dumped them in the trash.
“I hate when people piss her off,” Chris stated.
“Me too.”
She laughed.
That was funny.
With her job, she was perpetually mean. That was just how she rolled.
* * * B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x * * *
Morgue
Wednesday
Morning
When they headed back into the morgue, the rest of the team was silently working. There was the humming of the machines and the normal sounds of metal trays being moved around.
Doctor Duncan was cutting into the woman after it appeared that she had already pulled the pillowcase from her head and torso.
Chris headed into the doctor’s lounge to get out of his street clothes, and into his aqua scrubs.
“What did you find so far, Doctor?” she asked, hoping the day ran a lot more smoothly than it had earlier. If that was the only bump in the road, they should be okay.
Dalia glanced up from the body to talk to Elizabeth.
“Well, we have another bludgeoned mess,” she stated. “I just extricated her from the pillowcase, and I’m finding significant damage to her face and upper body. Christina just took the pictures so it’s well-documented.”
“Thank you,” she said. “What did you learn?”
“It was brutal.”
Yeah, she was staring down at the dead woman, and that was crystal clear. Violence against women was common in DC, but it still made her want to kick someone’s ass.
This had been rage.
“What did you find?” she asked, as Chris headed out, barely having his shirt over his head. It was clear he was in a hurry to get to the body.
Without missing a beat, he pulled on some gloves and began monitoring Dalia’s work.
There would be no room for error.
“Well? What do you think?” Elizabeth stated.
Chris, bless his soul, dug in with his fingers, feeling around like she’d often seen him doing. How he’d eaten and did this? Yeah, this was proof that some people were meant to chase the crazies.
Like her.
“Well, I can tell you that while she is a mess, she wasn’t beaten as violently,” he stated. “If you look at her face and skull, there’s not as much damage.”
Dalia was staring at him.
“Uh, you can tell that by…?”
“Yes. When you’ve done this for as long as I have, you, literally, can do it with your eyes closed. I can feel the damage to the bones, and it isn’t anywhere near as severe.”
Elizabeth mulled that over.
When dealing with the crazies, she’d realized that one thing was often true.
You couldn’t look too deeply for answers. The people who slaughtered other human beings were often a little off the mark when it came to sanity.
That meant they didn’t always do things with some twisted master plan in mind.
“So, you think there’s less hate involved?” she asked.
He smiled.
“That’s for you to find out. We just give you the facts, boss.”
She was aware.
There were days when she wished there was a manual for doing her job. Today was definitely one of those days.
The pressure was on.
Knowing that she needed to talk this out, she began thinking out loud.
“What does a hooker and a president have in common?” she asked.
“What?” he asked, waiting for the punch line like he’d delivered last night.
She stared at him like he was insane.
“I don’t know. That wasn’t a joke, Christopher, and that you thought it was is all kinds of wrong,” she stated. “I was asking anyone in the room who maybe had an idea. You know, that’s my job. We are all on this shit ride together.”
He snorted.
Chris was well aware.
“Okay, so, what did they have in common other than they’d had sex?”
No one spoke up.
Yeah, she wasn’t the only one not making a connection. The president and the hooker came from two different worlds.
“Maybe the question should be ‘did they come from anywhere that connected’?” Callen asked.
It didn’t appear to be so.
“I don’t know either,” Chris offered, digging in the dead woman. “Their worlds wouldn’t connect, or you think they wouldn’t. Damian Dean had a political career before becoming president. He was a DC outsider. Our dead hooker, Ginger Snap, or Sugar Baby, was from here,” Chris stated.
“Wow! Someone brushed up on investigating one-oh-one.”
“Well, my girl likes when I can help, so I make it a point to know.”
She knew he’d always done that for her. For years, when she didn’t have a partner, he’d ponied up and been it for her.
Chris deserved a reward.
“Hey, sexy doctor,” she said.
Doctor Duncan glanced up.
“Uh, while you’re very attractive,” she began, “I was talking to him.”
Dalia flushed.
Chris found that as funny as hell.
“Yes?” he asked.
Elizabeth pulled a mini candy bar out of her pocket and held it up for him. “Want some more sugar?” she asked.
“Yeah, sweetness, talk chocolate to me.”
She unwrapped it, and then popped it into her mouth.
“What the hell?” he asked. “You’ve become a candy bar tease!”
She shrugged.
“You had pancakes. I ate oatmeal. Sucks to be you,” she said, smiling wickedly at him.
“You’re still mean.”
Oh, she was aware.
She focused on her team.
“Harmony, are you doing better today?” she asked, hoping the woman was on her game.
“Yes.”
“Can I bring up what you said yesterday?” she asked, referring to the woman’s assault.
“Is it pertinent?”
“Yes.”
“Then, yes.”
Elizabeth didn’t miss how Max moved closer, and she placed her hand on his thigh as they sat side by side. He was protecting her, and it was sweet.
Ahhhhh, Cupid.
You did well.
Again.
“For those of you not on the same page, Harmony had her own personal run-in with the president.”
Christina looked up.
“Oh, I hope you don’t mean…?”
“She does,” Harmony stated. “I am one of his victims. I know how the senator feels, and all of the other women since I’m sure there are more.”
There was nothing but sympathy for the US Marshal in front of them.
“Who did you tell?” Elizabeth asked her.
“Tell?”
“Yes, tell. Bear with me. I have a method to my madness. This isn’t my first day on the job.”
Callen held up five fingers behind her.
“Callen James, I saw that in the reflection of the metal off Christina’s equipment. Do you really believe that it’s my fifth day? On my first day, there was Chris. On my fourth, there was Ethan. Don’t make me tear up the calendar.”
He laughed.
“Ouch. Tough crowd today,” he teased.
“Anyway, back to what I was asking. Harmony, did you tell anyone?”
She thought about it.
“Well, I was dating someone at the time. I didn’t exactly tell him, but things changed.”
Max held her hand tighter.
“Like?”
“I didn’t want to be touched. I couldn’t sleep. We fought more, and it was sudden. I never doubted he knew, but he never told me he did.”
Yeah, that gave them another lead.
“Why do you ask?”
“Clearly, since you’re single, your relationship didn’t hold up, right?” she inquired.
“No, it died shortly after. Again, why?”
“Max, if your girlfriend was raped and you found out about it, what would you have done?” she asked.
“Even if she didn’t tell me?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I would have gone after the asshole who did it, taken a baseball bat to his kneecaps, and killed him the most painful way I could. I would have hurt him.”
She looked at Callen.
“And you?”
“I would make him disappear.”
“And if you couldn’t get to him?”
Chris understood where she was taking this. He knew how she rolled.
“I would have plotted his death for years to come until I could get to him.”
And there it was.
Harmony got it.
This wasn’t about her, or the rape, but about the people it affected.
“Oh, Christ.”
“Here’s where I’m heading. We have a senator who was raped on Friday and the president is dead by Sunday night. Was that the catalyst? Or could it be that you were raped years ago, and the person just finally got a shot?”
She swallowed.
“What’s his name?” she asked.
“Scott Rogers.”
“Does he work at the White House by any chance?” Elizabeth asked. “Or was he an agent like you were?” she added. Elizabeth knew people who worked together sometimes partied together.
She had with Chris.
She had with Dakota as her rebound guy.
She had with Ray as her partner.
When you spent hours at work, you socialized and tended to get attached to the people you were with all of the time.
“No, but…?”
“What?”
“He’s a cop with the Capitol poli
ce.”
Christina chimed in with that tidbit. It actually fit for her, and the evidence.
“And the killer just happened to choose a metal baton to kill the victim, and then slip that fact to the media? Doesn’t the Capitol police carry them?” she asked.
Elizabeth saw the light at the end of the tunnel.
This could be it.
It was making sense.
Harmony knew they were waiting for her to answer them. While she’d loved Scott at one time, that was dead and gone. He’d bailed on her when she needed him the most.
If he was involved…
“Yes, they are part of their riot gear. He has one. I’ve seen it on him. You don’t actually believe…?”
She didn’t say anything.
It was clear what she believed.
“I can’t believe this. He’s a good guy,” she stated. “Scott tried to hang in there, but I became cold and chilly.”
Great.
Now she was defending him even though he ran. What the hell was wrong with her?
“Listen, I get it. Only, we have a short list of suspects. We can’t pretend that it’s not viable. Was he pissed when he found out?”
“I never really told him who attacked me. Like I said, I think he put two and two together and realized I’d been raped. He got angry after that.”
And there it was.
Shit.
“Would he be capable of doing something like this?” she asked. “Be honest, Harmony. We have to find this killer.”
She closed her eyes.
Max whispered in her ear. It seemed to help her. She opened her eyes and glanced over at him.
“You’re right,” she said to him. This wasn’t only about her anymore. This was about a dead hooker, too, and while the president got what he deserved, she had only been living her life.
She didn’t deserve it.
“He would have been furious. He always had a temper, and I often tried to do things to keep him calm.”
BOOM.
A suspect was born.
Max knew how hard that had been for her. Honestly, Max had never been more grateful that the man left. This had opened up the playing field, and now, he was able to have a shot at something amazing.
Harmony was a good person, and he was very attracted to her.
How could he not be?
She made coffee naked.
She laughed a lot.
She was someone he could be himself with as they ate ice cream on the couch.
All the King's Henchmen Page 41