“CALLEN! I didn’t say that! I wasn’t married in that scenario!”
He winked at her.
“Let me have this fantasy. I finally got one over on my big brother. This day is monumental.”
She heard it in his voice. “I would have told him first. I won’t do things behind my partner’s back. I would have been honest and told him I had feelings for you.”
He tucked a hair behind her ear. “Who has the big heart now?”
“Shut up. Now the wind is out of my sails.”
He timed it just right. They were at Marta’s home. It was small, modest, but cheery. It spoke volumes about the woman.
“Let’s go.”
Callen followed his woman, ignoring the media that had tailed them. When they arrived on the porch, he knocked on the door.
A small brunette opened it. She looked like shit, and that was putting it nicely.
Her eyes were red, her face was swollen from crying, and she was clutching a box of tissues as if they were her lifeline.
Elizabeth made the introductions.
“Can we talk to you? I’m Director Elizabeth Whitefox-Blackhawk, and this is my partner, Callen Whitefox.”
She nodded and took a step back to allow them into her home. Like the outside, it was neat and cheery—full of bright colors and pictures.
Mostly of her and the dead man.
Elizabeth glanced over at Callen and the look said, ‘told you so’.
She hated that he’d been right.
“I knew you’d be coming. It’s all over the news that you’re working this case. Can you tell me who killed Richard?”
Elizabeth took a seat.
From where she sat, she could see pictures on the shelf. They were more snapshots of Marta and the dead man. His arms were around her, and they were both smiling at each other. Elizabeth knew that feeling.
She had a wall full of photos just like that.
“First off, I need to say I’m sorry for your loss. I know how much Richard meant to you, and this has to hurt.”
“What?” she asked in surprise.
“You loved him, didn’t you? I can tell by the photos, the way you’re mourning, and how you jumped into the pool to try and save him.”
Callen was proud of her.
This was why she was a good investigator.
“Thank you. I loved him more than my own life. I figured you were going to come here and tear me apart. I’m sure you’ve already spoken to Richard’s wife. I know she’s likely told you horrible things about me.”
“I have and she did.”
“She wants me dead.”
“She does.”
“I know.”
“How did it all happen?” Elizabeth asked.
“Me finding his body?”
“No, I need to hear about your relationship. I need all the details if you want me to find the person who killed him.”
She tried to smile, but it only made her cry even more. This was clearly killing her.
“Have you ever loved someone you couldn’t have?”
“Yes,” she said. She glanced over at Callen. Even before Ethan brought up their threesome, she loved his brother.
“I was hired by Richard to handle the house. Lucy hated housework. She hated anything that got her sweaty.”
Elizabeth waited for the nasty comment, but Marta said nothing mean. She was very much in mourning.
And a lady—unlike Lucy Goodwin.
“I worked for him a full year before I even spoke to him using his name. He scared me.”
“Why?”
“It was love at first sight, but I was the hired help, and he was married.”
Elizabeth let her continue.
“We didn’t cross any lines for a long time. Then one day, he kissed me. It was so out of the blue, and I didn’t know what to do.”
Callen listened, too, sympathizing with the woman. He’d been in that exact same boat. He’d been forced to watch Elizabeth, live near her, and even be part of her life, and he couldn’t act on his feelings.
It sucked.
He’d coveted Elizabeth from afar.
“One day it progressed. Out of the blue, it just happened. He told me he loved me. I knew he wasn’t lying. It wasn’t just sex. In fact, we didn’t consummate our relationship for over a year. We became close. Lucy traveled and spent his money like it was her one true love in life. She didn’t want to be his friend, partner, or lover.”
“What did you two do together?”
“We had little dates when she was away. He’d take me to the movies, theater, and dinner. I always paid my own way. It wasn’t about his money. It was about him. I loved Richard for his smile, his gentle words, and his heart. He was generous to a fault.”
She saw the ring.
“Did he give it to you?”
Marta touched it. “Yes. Two weeks ago, he surprised me with it. Richard told me that he was kicking Lucy out, giving her half his money, and divorcing her. He proposed to me. He wanted to get married. He wanted…”
Elizabeth handed her a tissue. “He wanted what?”
“He wanted away from her.”
Elizabeth knew what was coming was going to suck. Thanks to Callen, she actually felt horrible for doing it.
“I have to ask you really hard things now. I’m sorry because I can see you’re mourning him.”
Yeah, unlike his wife.
Lucy was celebrating his death.
“Ask anything. I want justice for him. I want my memory to be of him having peace. I’ll never love again. He was my one and only, and now he’s gone.”
Elizabeth glanced over at Callen.
His gaze met hers.
Elizabeth got it. She really did.
“Where were you the morning he was killed? You found the body so that makes you a suspect.”
She picked up her phone.
“He sent me a text before I left for work,” she said, handing it to Elizabeth.
She read it.
‘Marta my love,
Pick up some of our favorite bagels, and we’ll have breakfast together. I missed you last night. Soon, we’ll be together. I’m so glad I told her that it’s over. She’s going to move out. Then we can be happy. I want a family and children with you.
I love you,
Richard.’
“This is my fault,” she said through the tears.
“How?”
“If I never loved him, maybe he would be alive. Had I not gone for bagels, I could have saved him. I tried. God! I tried.”
She began weeping.
Callen moved beside her and gave her a hug. He felt for the woman—he really did.
“This isn’t your fault, Marta. You can’t help who you love. The heart wants what it wants.”
She sobbed harder.
“Marta, I need you to pull it together for Richard, okay?” Elizabeth stated.
She fought the tears. “Yes. I will.”
“He recently wrote out a check for fifty thousand dollars. You wouldn’t happen to know who it was for, would you?”
“I do. I was there when he wrote it.”
Elizabeth leaned forward. “Who?”
“The National Theater Association. They put on all the plays and musicals at the theater. He was an avid supporter of them. In fact, that’s where we met. I was in one of the plays, and he found out that I needed a job during the day. That’s why I took the position. You can’t live on your passion.”
Elizabeth glanced over at Callen. His passion was writing, and all nine of them could live on that—easily.
Well, at least they could eliminate the blackmail angle. That was a start.
“Can I see him?” she finally asked. “I won’t be able to attend his funeral. Lucy will throw me out.”
Yeah, well, Lucy had other problems. She never mentioned that her recently dead husband ended up in a pool right after he told her he wanted a divorce.
This changed everything.
; “You can’t, Marta. One of the procedures for the FBI is that we have to look at the bones to see if we can find other evidence.”
She stared at her.
“What are you saying?”
“We remove his flesh.”
She jumped up, vaulted over Callen, and raced toward a bathroom.
They could hear her puking.
Callen didn’t speak.
“I tried to be gentle.”
He patted her knee. “Oh, you were. I just feel sorry for her. I know how she feels. I was close to that desperation and pain. When I see Ethan, I’m giving him a kiss. Because he let me into your lives, I don’t have to feel like she does every single day.”
“If you kiss him on the lips, I’ll wear kinky lingerie for you.”
He laughed. “Perv. I’m in.”
They heard her coming.
“I'm sorry. I wasn’t expecting that,” Marta said, wiping her eyes and the new round of tears that were there. “That’s a horrible visual.”
They knew it was, but it was part of death for them.
“It’s okay,” Elizabeth said. “Do you know of anyone who would want to hurt Richard?”
“His wife.”
“Anyone else?”
She shook her head. “He was the sweetest man in the world, and now he’s gone. How do I go on?”
Elizabeth got it.
There was only one thing she could tell her.
“You just do.”
And that would never be enough, and she knew it.
* * * B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x * * *
Morgue
Ethan was embroiled in one hell of a phone call. The police captain out of the DC Metro office wasn’t happy. It seemed they had been right. Detective Sima Nelson was playing ugly games at the office. She had gone in and bitched up a storm.
She was crying foul, even though they had come to the FBI first.
This was not what he needed today.
He should be helping his wife with the case or working on a profile—not babysitting an adult woman who was bitter that the FBI was running her case.
Hell!
Boone was the lead, and he didn’t care.
With each passing minute on the call, the BS pissed him off. She was blatantly trying to lie her way out of the entire thing.
Some of the things were laughable.
It ran the gambit from Elizabeth wasn’t capable of handling the case to the technicality that they didn’t have the third body. The detective really wanted the case back in-house for the Metro cops.
Well, that wasn’t happening. This was a fine line to walk, but Ethan was in his glory.
There was nothing he liked more than making people pay when they doubted his wife.
Yes, he was playing favorites.
Sue him.
When he finally got that mess under control, he knew he needed to check in with Elizabeth’s two agents. It was a ridiculous trek to her office. She was on the other side of the building, floors away from him.
Ethan hated that.
When he got there, they were in her small unit office, doing their thing.
“Tell me you have something,” he said, directing it at either Brody or Johanna as soon as he arrived.
“We found the trail. The check went to an arts charity. The National Theater Association,” Brody offered.
Ethan had heard of them.
“We have tickets for early next week. We’re supposed to be seeing a show.”
“Wow! I didn’t think that was Elizabeth’s kind of thing,” Johanna stated.
He laughed.
“Yeah, it’s not. We’re going with POTUS and the FLOTUS. I had to threaten her under gunpoint to behave.”
They both laughed.
“You’re so screwed. There’s no way she’s not going to say something totally inappropriate to the First Lady,” Brody stated. “In fact, I’ll bet on it.”
Ethan didn’t ever bet against his wife. In life, if you did, and the wife found out, she’d make sure you paid. He was a smart man.
“I’ll take that bet. Fifty says she’s well behaved, no one gets hurt, and we have a good night.”
He didn’t buy that for a second, but he had to put his money on Elizabeth. She hated the social things they had to do, but it was practice. When Ethan was the boss, there’d be so many more she’d have to attend.
He pulled out his wallet and handed the cash to the man. “Now, what else do you have?”
Johanna Madden picked up where her husband and partner, had left off. “Here’s something you might find interesting, Director. Fern Yoder was a big sponsor of that association. She left all her money to that troupe of actors and actresses.”
“Really?” Ethan asked.
“Yeah, really.”
He found that interesting. They had two ties to them, and that was likely not a coincidence.
“What about Roman Conley? Have you found anything that would connect him to the group?”
“Nothing yet, sir,” Brody stated. “We’re having a bitch of a time with his financials. He’s not technically dead…so….”
He got it.
Until they had a signed statement from an ME that he was in the morgue, banks, financial institutions, and everyone else were under no obligation to assist them.
Red tape sucked.
“Keep going. You two are doing great work. I’ll forward this information over to Elizabeth, and I’m sure she’ll feel the same.”
“Thanks, sir!” Brody said.
Ethan walked away, and the entire time, he was lost in thought.
He was thinking about his wife.
Earlier, when he’d spoken to Callen while he was at the hotel, his brother had shared what she’d said about their relationship. Like the upcoming theater visit with the President, she was arm candy.
He hated it was the truth, but it was what it was. In DC, if you were a power player, you were married, had a beautiful woman on your arm, and you lived up to the hype.
Granted, he loved it.
He knew it was ten shades of wrong, but Elizabeth only added to his street cred. She was smart, beautiful, and a power player in her own right. Because of her, he’d moved up the ranks, and he knew it.
While she didn’t give herself enough credit, he did. Without his wife, he wouldn’t be where he was in DC. This was his dream, and he owed her.
It was time to pay her back.
Honestly, Ethan wasn’t shocked when Callen told him about her breakdown. He knew that when he took the position of Deputy Director, with the intent to take over for Gabe one day, it was going to be hard on all of them.
Elizabeth would have to play the role of Director’s wife, and it wouldn’t be a cakewalk. They’d have to host parties, go out as a couple, and she’d be looked at not as Director Elizabeth Blackhawk, but as Ethan’s dutiful wife.
He didn’t make the rules.
He had to play by them.
Even Callen would have to accept that the world knew they shared a wife. Their threesome actually helped them in DC. They were in the news, a point of fascination, and always on everyone’s lips. In that city, being the talk of the town was a good thing.
What upset him was that their kids would never have normal lives.
That one fact weighed on him.
Ethan would have to make sure he compensated for that in the long run. Their lives would be amazing, and he’d ensure they had everything they needed to be productive members of society.
Still…
Ethan hurt that Elizabeth was suffering so much that she thought she was being left behind. There was nothing further from the truth.
She was the center of his world.
If anything, Ethan needed her more. She was his anchor into the light. With work, he struggled to have a home and personal life. When he came home at night or took a coffee break with his wife, he was able to breathe.
Apparently, he’d done a shitty job showing her how much she meant to
him. It looked like he needed to plan something to show her that he did understand.
This would take work, and he’d need help. Since Callen was tied up with Elizabeth, he needed someone else who would know what was really going on in her head.
That meant her BFF.
Livy was away, so Christopher Leonard it was.
Heading to his office, he had the weekend secretary buzz down to the morgue to get Chris upstairs.
“Tell him it’s urgent.”
Ethan went into his office and sat down. It was hard not to worry about his marriage. A little piece of him was jealous that it was so easy for Callen to relax and be what she needed.
Ethan had to work for it.
It sucked.
At the knock on his door, he glanced up.
“Yes, Director?”
Ethan waved Chris in. “Sit. It’s about Elizabeth.”
Immediately, he looked panicked.
“Jesus! Is she okay? Did something happen to her?” he blurted, sitting stiffly in the office chair.
Well, someone needed a drink.
“Relax, Chris. I’m the one who’s not okay, and I need someone to help me out. I thought I’d come to you in the spirit of family and friendship.”
He was confused. Sitting there, he watched the raven-haired man behind the giant mahogany desk. Ethan Blackhawk was an imposing man. While Callen was bulkier, Ethan was scarier. It was likely the midnight blue eyes that followed you everywhere.
They saw everything.
“What?”
“She thinks I’m slipping away because of my job. She feels like she’s an accessory to me and not my wife. I know she’s talked to you about it because you both have a very close relationship.”
His silence about it spoke volumes. Ethan knew he’d hit it right on the head.
“Okay. What can I do to help you?” Chris asked, leaning back in his chair. The man was right. He and Elizabeth shared everything, and they likely always would.
Still, this felt like a trap.
Chris hoped Ethan was being genuine. There was always that niggling fear that one day, he’d say the same things he’d uttered in New Orleans, only this time they wouldn’t be out of anger, and he’d mean them.
Act of Blood (An FBI/Romance Thriller ~ Book 16) Page 17