Act of Blood (An FBI/Romance Thriller ~ Book 16)

by Kelley, Morgan

  He may never be madly in love with her, but he loved her optimism. He loved her kindness. Wyler needed that in his life.

  He lowered his mouth to hers, and together, they fell into the kiss. It was gentle, sweet, and then the heat welled up, filling all those empty spaces.

  He heard wind chimes in the distance, and knew his father was with him.

  When he set her mouth free, he stared into her eyes. “Can I stay here tonight? With you?”

  She held out her hand, and he took it.

  “You’re always welcome here, a’ghra.”

  Wyler didn’t want to be alone.

  His heart couldn’t bear it. Because of that, and that alone, he would take one hell of a risk.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sunday Night

  Elizabeth ordered pizza, they fed their kids, and then they got down to business. As their team began arriving, she handed them plates, told them to excuse the mess, and to step over the little ones playing all over the place.

  Wyler hadn’t returned, and they assumed that was a sign of what the evening held.

  They were going to talk bodies while kids were nearby.

  Well, this was going to be interesting.

  When Chris came in, he looked around. “Where are Wyler and Maeve? Did CJ, EJ, and Cat finally take them hostage?”

  She snorted. “No, they are off tonight, so we’re going to pull this off as child friendly as possible.”

  Chris dropped his gear and started laughing. “Well, Charlie, Christopher Anthony, and Bethe won’t have a clue, but the other three…they’re smart and can spell.”

  Callen was amused. “My son and daughter aren’t in school yet, so I’m in the clear. Someone will be going to school tomorrow and talking about dead bodies. Oh look. It’ll be the Deputy Director’s kid. That should go over like a lead balloon. I guess we know whose expulsion will be on the news.”

  Ethan laughed. “Like that will be the first time one of our children said something inappropriate.”

  He had a point.

  When the door opened, Agents Madden and Seaton strolled in holding hands.

  “Awww, the newlyweds have arrived. Grab pizza and get to a spot in the living room. NO feeding the dogs! They don’t need people food!”

  They headed in.

  “Where’s Merry and Boone?” she asked.

  “They were right behind me. I came in with the lovebirds,” Chris stated.

  They grabbed their food and headed in.

  Elizabeth heard their security gate beep and knew they’d be there soon.

  “Before they get here, I want to say something.”

  Everyone listened.

  “Find me Derek Zanders. I know it looks like I’m busy, but I really don’t want my head tech or her fiancé killed. Clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Brody said, giving the one dog his pizza crust.

  “Agent!”

  He laughed. “It’s bread. Technically.”

  “Then you’re walking him later and cleaning up after Kanje. When he leaves a trail, you were warned!”

  He didn’t mind. He liked dogs. That’s why he had one. He knew the crust wouldn’t hurt, or so he hoped.

  The door to the kitchen opened.

  “Merry! Boone! Grab pizza! We’re in the den.”

  They arrived shortly after, pizza in hand and fingers twined.

  There was a whole lot of love going on at Casa Whitefox-Blackhawk, and she was more than fine with that.

  Elizabeth sat beside her husbands and glanced over at Chris. He had Bethe on his lap, and he was feeding her little pieces of pepperoni from his slice of pizza.

  It warmed and broke her heart at the same time.

  She hoped he healed and found love again. He was a really sweet man and deserved it.

  He really did.

  “Okay, let’s start,” she said, pointing at the board. It had the victims’ names on it, but that was it.

  No pictures.

  “We have to keep this clean,” she said, pointing at Cat, CJ, and EJ.

  The team got it.

  “What do we have on trace, Merry?” she asked.

  “You’re not going to believe this, but we have nothing. He was clean. I know that’s saying a lot since he was buried in dirt, but he was.”

  Great.

  They had a killer cleaning up after himself, or herself, and he wasn’t leaving a speck of evidence behind. Someone was trying really hard to screw with them.

  That pissed her off. Where were all the idiot criminals? Had they all evolved?

  “Does anyone know if Tony found anything?” she asked.

  Chris chimed in as Charlie crawled onto his lap to join her best friend, Bethe. “He’s busy taking the bones…” He stopped, searching for a different word that the kids might not have heard before.

  “What?”

  “He’s disarticulating them.”

  They all got it.

  Before Elizabeth could continue, she saw motion from the corner of her eye.

  “Mommy?” Cat asked.

  She focused on her daughter. She was moving closer. The thing with Cat was that she’d picked up a few of Ethan’s traits along the DNA path. He was a watcher and so was she.

  The kid missed nothing.

  Tricking her at Christmas was getting harder and harder, and eventually, they knew the kid would outsmart them.

  “What Kitty Cat?” she asked.

  “What’s it say?” Cat said, pointing at the board.

  “It’s people’s names.”

  “Are they bad people?”

  Callen was watching her, ready to laugh. While Elizabeth had very little patience for jackassery, she had a bottomless well when it came to her kids.

  They ALWAYS came first, and this was proof. Mid-investigation, and she’d stop it all for their daughter.

  “No, baby, they were people who were hurt. Mommy and daddies are going to find the person who did it. It’s our job to throw them in jail.”

  Cat stared at Ethan. “Daddy said all other daddy does is ride a desk in his suit.”

  Callen started choking. “Catherine! That’s not what I said at all!”

  She stared at him with vivid green eyes. “You said Daddy is really good but he’s behind his desk.”

  Ethan was amused by it. While it wasn’t wrong, he loved when a kid ratted one of them out. It was always fun to watch. “Yeah, Callen, care to explain?”

  “I said Daddy is really good but trapped riding his desk. That’s exactly what I said.”

  “Potato-potatoes,” Cat said.

  Elizabeth snorted. “I love you, Cat. Yes, Daddy has to work in the office while other Daddy and I are out chasing bad guys.”

  “Just shoot them.”

  Madden and Seaton began laughing, as did Merry. They found the irony in that statement—until Elizabeth pointed at them. It shut them up pretty damn fast.

  “No, baby, we put them in cuffs, and they go to jail.”

  “Like the ones in Daddy’s drawer?”

  Chris Leonard started laughing. There was no way in hell he wasn’t getting in on this one. “Will you tell Uncle Chris which Daddy?”

  When she pointed at Callen, he went bright red.

  “I need some anxiety medicine and they aren’t teenagers yet.”

  Cat scribbled something in her paper pad and then brought it to him. She ripped it off. “I be a doctor. I give you medicine.”

  No one laughed.

  That one statement and the look on Callen’s face were enough to silence them.

  Ethan picked the little girl up and carried her over to her brothers. “Here,” he said, pulling out his wallet. “Cat, you go hide these bills, and you let EJ and CJ find them. If they do, they keep them. If they don’t, you do.”

  She was smiling. “Okay, Daddy. I love you.”

  “I love you too, Kitty Cat.”

  They took off.

  “Callen,” Elizabeth said, trying to offer him some reassurance.
The ghost of Desdemona struck at the oddest times, and it always leveled him.

  Never because it was good.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “It just caught me off guard. I’ll be fine.”

  Joey and Brody looked confused. Callen saw it. It was before their time in the FBI, so he figured he’d help them out. They were a team, and he trusted them.

  “Catherine isn’t Elizabeth’s biological child. I dated and was engaged to a woman before her. She was one of our ME’s, and she got pregnant, then shortly died after in childbirth. Elizabeth adopted Cat. Our daughter doesn’t know the truth.”

  And she may never know it.

  How was he supposed to explain that Desdemona kept the pregnancy out of spite, and wasn’t ever going to tell him? Then how did he break her little heart and tell her that her biological family didn’t want her because she was half-Native?

  Yeah, Callen prayed he never had to take that road. It would kill him, and he knew it.

  “Hey,” Elizabeth stated, touching his cheek. “It’s okay. She’s probably going to be a doctor. We all knew Cat was super smart. She may have gotten Desdemona’s brain, but she has your sweetness and your temperament. That’s all that really matters in the end. She’s never going to be her.”

  He knew she was right. “I know. It just steals my breath. There are days I stop thinking about Desdemona, and then she blindsides me.”

  Elizabeth glanced over at her agents, the tech, and the detective. “Please keep what you saw to yourself. No one, outside the people in this room, and Tony, know the truth. If you won’t do it for me, do it for a little girl who lost her mother.”

  Ethan interrupted. “You are her mother. You raised her, and she’ll understand. Cat is smart. She’ll get it.”

  None of them knew for sure, but they hoped.

  “I think it’s sweet,” stated Merry. “Other than the green eyes, I’d swear she was yours, Elizabeth. She’s going to be trouble, and the mouth on her...”

  That made her laugh.

  They were well aware. Cat had inherited snark by proxy. It was a beautiful thing.

  Johanna opted to share something to help Callen. She and Brody considered the Blackhawks family.

  “My mother was a horrible human being. She never cared about me. If I could have someone else as a mother, especially you, Elizabeth, I would in a heartbeat. Cat is very lucky. A child knows love, and she’ll grow up to understand. You have nothing to worry about.”

  Elizabeth smiled. “Thank you for that, Joey. That’s why we shared it with our team. We trust you.”

  Then she pointed at Boone. “We can just make you disappear.”

  He started laughing. “You’re funny.”

  Merry patted his leg. “Yeah, she’s not kidding, Boone. She’s made people go ‘poof’ before. Don’t test her!”

  He stared.

  Then they all laughed.

  “Okay, well, back to work,” she stated. Just as she did, Christopher Anthony began fussing from his bouncy seat.

  Ethan grabbed him and the bottle not far away. “Hello, littlest man. Hungry?”

  She loved the men in her life. They worked as a team, and it showed.

  “Okay, back to the case. We can talk freely now. Every child left in the room won’t be scarred by murder.”

  Elizabeth told them what she found when they interviewed Jasper Mullins. Then they discussed the search on Roman Conley’s home, and all the fun stuff they found in it.

  “Yeah, the rest of the team did a sweep,” Merry stated. “They were more than happy to tell everyone of the kink they found there.”

  “Did they find handcuffs?” Chris teased.

  Elizabeth pointed at him. “You’ve been in cuffs yourself, my friend. I’m sure if you think hard enough, you’ll recall it.”

  He started laughing. “Yeah, let’s not discuss that. It was mortifying.”

  Callen went there first. “Explain, and for both of your sakes, I hope it had nothing to do with S…E…X.”

  She laughed. “Why are you spelling it?”

  He pointed at their younger kids. “Do you really want to take a chance?”

  He was right.

  “Explain, Elizabeth.”

  She motioned toward Chris. “It’s his story, so I’ll leave it up to him.”

  They waited.

  “It’s embarrassing, but I’ll share,” he offered. “I got into a really bad situation with a woman and online dating, and even though my gut warned me, I ended up in cuffs.”

  “Arrested?” Ethan asked. He knew it couldn’t be that. It would have turned up on his background search.

  “No. In bed. She robbed me.”

  They all got quiet.

  “Don’t worry. No one got hurt, and Elizabeth saved my ass.” Yeah, and it started a whole new path for both of them. He didn’t regret the incident one bit.

  Their secret was why they were so damn close.

  He and Elizabeth shared a look.

  Callen caught it, but he let it go.

  “We’ve all been there,” Callen stated. “Ethan once…”

  “Shut up, Callen.”

  Elizabeth started laughing. “I want to hear this one.”

  Ethan wasn’t going there. “Elizabeth was arrested once by her own father.”

  It shut her up. “I was detained. There is a HUGE difference, and had that hussy not touched my man, she wouldn’t have been beat down.”

  That intrigued everyone, but it was clear she wasn’t going there.

  “Let’s get back to work. Agents, tell me about what you found on Selma Roth and the National Theater Troupe.”

  They broke out their tablets as they balanced pizza on their knees. Johanna was ready first, so she gave the boss everything she had on the director.

  “Selma Roth is a no nonsense woman who has been working for the National Theater for years.”

  “How old is she?” Ethan asked, working on his profile as he fed Christopher Anthony his bottle of milk.

  “She’s fifty. She’s been working with the same group of actors for a good ten years. She’s like a hippy met an actor, and they had a love child who likes wearing bright colors.”

  She turned her tablet around to show them.

  The description was dead on.

  “What else?”

  “In the last ten years, she’s done the following plays,” Johanna said, handing her boss a sheet of paper. They’d made sure to dig deep on this woman.

  Elizabeth went to the board and began writing them down.

  Hamlet

  Othello

  Romeo and Juliet

  Titus Andronicus

  Julian Caesar

  King Lear

  The Tempest

  The Taming of the Shrew

  “Callen, you’re up. Which ones have we hit again?” she asked.

  He studied the list.

  “Goodwin was drowned, as was Ophelia from Hamlet,” he said, moving down the list. “Portia from Julius Caesar swallowed hot coals as she tried to commit suicide. That covers Fern. The only difference was she was forced.”

  Elizabeth made notes on the board.

  “Last, we have Arron in Titus Andronicus. Conley was buried up to his neck just like that Shakespearean character.”

  She made a check by three of them.

  “I don’t, for one damn second, buy that this is a coincidence,” she stated. “This killer is either trying to tell us something, or he/she is cuckoo for Coco Puffs.”

  “I’d vote the later,” Callen stated. “There are five more plays on that list, so I hope our killer isn’t going to deliver five more victims.”

  Yeah, her too.

  That would really suck.

  “Ethan, you’re up. What am I working against on this one?” she asked.

  He was burping the baby as he moved toward her board. Ethan was the king of multi-tasking, and he didn’t miss a beat.

  “There are a few different directions we can take this. It’s possib
le that this killer is going to be dramatic, have an acting flare, and want attention.”

  “Like Jasper Mullins?” Brody asked, reminding them of what Elizabeth had told them when they started.

  “Yeah, just like him.”

  “Did we run Jasper?”

  Johanna had a sip of soda. “Yes, ma’am. He’s clean. The man has one parking ticket, and that’s it. He pays his taxes on time, he makes a six figure salary, and he’s dating someone who is even richer.”

  They all looked over at Callen.

  “What?”

  “We saw the news, and you were all over it.” Brody stated. “I can’t believe you’re Jackson James. We didn’t have a freaking clue. Some investigators we are.”

  He sighed. “Yeah, I know I’m all over it, and that’s not a good thing.”

  “I think you should keep writing,” Johanna stated. “I didn’t know you were Jackson James either, but I’ve read your first book. Come to think of it, you would have eventually been outed.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Well, that case was so damn familiar. At first, I thought I heard about it before, and I did, from a few techs telling us about…”

  She looked at Elizabeth.

  “Yes, Agent?”

  “We all heard about the time you took a bullet to the vest on purpose, ma’am. They still talk about how crazy you are.”

  She laughed.

  The men…not so much.

  “Anyway, Callen…”

  Elizabeth stopped her. “Wait a second. Why is it everyone uses their names, but I get ‘ma’am’? We’re off duty for the night. I know we’ve had this conversation before.”

  “You’re scarier,” Boone offered and then he got the look. “Again, that’s just my opinion.”

  The men laughed because it was more fact than opinion. While they could intimidate, Elizabeth could channel crazy and make it rain down on everyone around her.

  It was a skill.

  “I’ll hurt you both.”

  “And there’s your evidence,” Merry stated.

  “Ethan, dazzle me, oh great profiler. Make me happy. What else before I hurt the lovebirds?”

  “I don’t know if this nut is crazy or just putting on a show. I get the impression it’s both.”

  “Well, if this killer isn’t being dramatic, then what the hell is going on?” she asked.