He kissed her.
“I won’t leave your side. I may get mad, but I will fight for my wife, and my marriage.”
She hugged him.
“Well, what are we doing next?”
She told him where the team was, and what they were doing. Callen has them digging.
“Then we better get a shower and get to work. You have a case to solve, and I want to be by my loves—both of them.”
Elizabeth sat up, and held out her hand. “Then let’s do our jobs. I want to head home to our family. I want to be a mom.”
He got it.
So, he let her lead.
His wife would get him there in one piece. Of that, he was sure.
* * * B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x * * *
Washington DC
He got the hint.
After the fifth time that he asked her if she wanted to stay hydrated to lower her blood pressure, Jaxon Magnus had enough.
She went to their bedroom, she packed his bag, and she grabbed him a snack for the road.
When she appeared in their living room, he looked from her and the bag.
“Uh, going somewhere?”
There was that panic she was leaving him.
“No, I’m staying. You need to leave.”
“What?” he asked, his eyes going big. Was this some hormonal thing? Was she serious?
“Jaxy!”
“I love you, Tony, but you’re making me nuts. No, I don’t want water at this time of night. I don’t want a sandwich, a foot rub, a back rub, help grading papers, a handful of beetles in bed. I want you to stop clucking over me, or I’m going to remove your eyeballs and put them in backward!”
He stared at her.
“Um…you may be hanging out with Elizabeth too much if you picture that in your head.”
“I love you. Go.”
“Are you kicking me out?” he asked.
“No. I’m sending you to Boston. Go play with the team. I’m going to finish these papers, and then I’m going to go to bed. Call me in the morning. ONCE—not every five minutes. Am I clear, Anthony Horatio Magnus?”
He laughed.
“I love you. I’ll be back. I promise.”
She gave him a hug.
“Go, kiss Elizabeth for me, and Chris too. We’ll have dinner when they’re back.”
He grabbed his things and raced out the door.
Jaxon sighed as she bolted it and set the alarm. Her husband was an amazing man, but her being pregnant, and him obsessing, might just be the death of her.
Yet.
* * * B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x * * *
Ronan was feeling horrible about sending the man home. He really wanted to stop by and make sure Patty was okay.
He didn’t want the man to think he turned on him. Taking an administrative leave wasn’t all that bad. He’d get some vacation time, and Patty could work on his home improvements that he’d been too busy to handle.
This would work out.
As he climbed the man’s steps, there weren’t any lights on in the house.
That was funny.
He should be up having a beer.
He knew the man. He was habitual if nothing.
So, as he stared into the window, he tried to see him.
Only, he didn’t.
He saw something much worse.
Sitting in the man’s favorite recliner, there was a body. A garish mess of a woman, who was strung together…
His heart started pounding.
He pulled out his phone and raced for his car.
Maybe the Fed was right.
There was a body in his home.
Jesus!
Patty was a killer after all!
Chapter Eighteen
Tuesday
Ten Thirty PM
T hey didn’t even make it to their ride when the shit hit the fan. Ethan’s phone began ringing, and he couldn’t imagine the commissioner had anything to say to him at that time of the night.
It couldn’t be the killer.
They just got a body less than twenty-four hours ago.
“Director Ethan Blackhawk?”
“You have to get here! She was right! I saw another body!” he shouted into the phone.
“Slow down, Commissioner. What’s going on?” he asked, hitting the speakerphone.
“I went to check on Patty. I felt bad about putting him on leave. I was going to have a beer with him and talk him out of the mad. That’s when I knocked.”
“And?” Elizabeth asked as the phone was on speaker.
“No one answered. I knew he had to be there. I looked in a side window, thinking maybe he hurt himself. Well, I saw it! God! Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus! I saw it!”
“What?”
“Another body. You were right. He had it sitting in his living room like it was some guest. You were right, Elizabeth. God! You have to get here. I have to call the police.”
“Where are you?” she asked.
He rattled off the address. Ivan put it into the navigation system, and then he hit the gas.
“Okay, Commissioner, call the police and then call me back,” Ethan stated. “We’re on our way. We’ll be there in…”
Ivan glanced up in the mirror. “Five minutes.”
“Five. Hang in there!”
“Please hurry,” he said, sobbing.
The call went dead.
He stared at her.
“What?”
“Well, is he the killer? Or did the killer leave us a present?” he asked.
There was only one answer to that question.
They were going to need the techs there. They were going to take his house apart to find out.
* * * B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x * * *
The team was working when Chris and Christina’s cell phones went off. Ethan was calling her, and Elizabeth was calling him.
“Yeah, boss?” Chris stated. He didn’t think this was a social call. If they both were getting tagged, this was going to be ugly.
They had another victim.
He’d bet money on it.
“Get ready to roll. We have a body.” She told him what the commissioner had told them.
He couldn’t believe it.
“You have to be shitting me!”
“Yeah, I wish I was,” she offered.
Chris began grabbing his gear. “What do you want the team to do?”
What choice did she have?
She wanted them to keep going, but they had to get the scene covered. If this was the killer, they’d need to canvas. So, it was all hands-on deck.
“Wake them if they’re sleeping, and make them get their asses there.”
“What about Brody?”
“Send him to the hotel. He can’t be on camera in a wheelchair. Picture the headline. ‘Elizabeth beats her team so much they need wheelchairs’.”
He laughed.
“Hey, are you two okay? Callen mentioned that there was an issue.”
She laughed. “We are as right as rain. Tell my sexy husband to get his ass to that scene. We have a mess on our hands.”
Yeah, she could say that again.
They had more than a mess.
They had a crazed killer doing his dirty deeds.
“See you at the scene. Watch each other’s backs.”
He knew what she meant.
The cops weren’t fond of them, the killer might be after one of them, and the whole city of Boston was teetering on a razor’s edge.
* * * B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x * * *
He watched her.
She was so foul. He couldn’t wait to get her back to the little place he liked to call home.
It was his personal hell.
His cage.
His cell.
In it, he made his art, trying to silence the demons of his past. He was nothing like he’d been before they put him in that cell.
He’d been abused.
Raped.
Preyed upon, and it was all their fault.
He’d gotten them all, but one. Well, and as soon as he could reach that last victim, the better off he was going to be.
Yes, it was coming.
The end was near.
He could feel it.
As he sat in his car, he could see the light go on in her bedroom, and then ten minutes later, it went off. So, silently, he moved toward her house. Silently, he cut through the screen to her window and climbed in.
Without making a creak, since he knew where all the steps were, he headed upstairs.
He knew where she slept.
She never changed.
The years may have passed, but his old love…she’d been consistent.
As she slept soundly in what used to be their bed, he silently moved around their old love nest, and gently, he climbed in to the bed with her. When she sighed and rolled over, he was watching her.
Her eyes opened, and she gasped.
“Hello, Bessie. I’m back, and you were a very naughty girl.”
Before she could scream, he punched her in the face, and he got to work.
He was going to use her house.
Or their home.
He was going to get that cheating bastard cop who betrayed him and so many.
He was going to make his art right on the kitchen table where he and Bessie had planned their lives.
Now it was gone.
He was changed.
He was no longer going to be that caged animal. He was letting it out, and while doing that, he was saving himself.
He was being true.
While he may be evil, at least he wouldn’t lie to the world.
The truth would set him free.
Their deaths…
He would revel in it.
As he dragged the man in, he tied his sweetheart to the table, and gagged her mouth.
He didn’t want her screaming.
He forced the dead man to sit in the chair, binding him there so he could ‘watch’ what was coming.
He loved an audience.
He played to them.
He loved being the center of the stage, and he was back in Boston. He would rule the town.
But first….
As he slapped her in the face, he wanted her to be awake for what was coming.
As her eyes flickered open, he saw the fear.
He touched her cheek.
“Does it feel different, my love?” he asked.
She whimpered at his touch.
“That’s because I burned my fingertips to hide who I am. When you testified against me at trial, you killed my heart.”
She tugged at the bindings.
“Shall we begin?” he asked, unzipping his pants and pulling out his limp dick.
He rubbed it. He ripped open her shirt.
Then he climbed onto the table.
“You fucked me over, and now…I’m going to fuck you all night long.”
She screamed.
And no one heard her.
* * * B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x * * *
They all arrived at the scene at the same time. Coincidentally, it was nowhere near the pub. Elizabeth could get her bearings and they said she was way off.
“Where’s ‘McCory’s’?” she asked.
“Across town,” Ivan stated.
He stuck close as they got out.
They all headed toward the commissioner’s car. Police were starting to arrive, and they all began milling around.
“You were right!” he said, so loudly, that Elizabeth had to shush him.
“Yeah, that’s great, but we don’t need to alert him if he’s in there. Keep your cops back. We’ll clear the house.”
The man ordered his men back, but they shone their lights on the house, illuminating it for the Feds.
“Do you need my help?” Ivan asked.
She looked around.
There were two doors. And five feds.
“Blue, you stay with Chris. You make sure you both see each other at all times. This doesn’t jive for me. This guy can’t be the killer.”
If he was, she’d lost her gift.
She’d been broken after Bonnie.
“Ivan, you, Johanna, and Callen head to the back. You three go that way. Ethan and I will head through the front. Clear, and then let’s see what he’s talking about.”
They all began pulling Kevlar on, and their blue and gold jackets with ‘FBI’ emblazoned on the back.
She handed out coms.
Ivan waved one away. “I always have one in my ear. Mine is linked to your frequency. These are military grade. Your stuff sucks.”
“Good to know,” she said.
Everyone got ready.
Elizabeth grabbed Callen by the Kevlar and planted one on his mouth.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too, but my brother has a hickey, and that’s just not right.”
Ethan laughed.
Elizabeth moved to him next. “I love you.”
He gave her the words back. There was so much emotion in his eyes.
She’d chosen him to have her back going through that door.
This was the old them.
They were back.
“What about me?”
She glanced over at Ivan and shrugged.
She kissed him too.
He sputtered. “I meant my girl! Not you, Hagarella!”
Elizabeth laughed.
“I know. That’s why I did it. Oh look, you didn’t turn into a prince.”
“I hate you,” he said.
She didn’t believe him. Her family was growing.
Heading toward the house, they split off, Ethan and Callen bumping fists, as they went their separate ways.
“Do you want to boot it, or me?” he asked.
She looked down at his fancy boots and sighed. “How did I marry a model? I swear you wore jeans more often when we dated.”
“We dated four days.”
“FOUR DAYS?” Ivan said, his voice coming over their coms.
“Yeah, Toadstool. Beat that.”
Ethan rolled his eyes.
Elizabeth rock, paper, scissored him and lost. She was booting the door, which meant she was going in first.
She placed her heel against the door, and Ethan counted her and the team down.
“We are in place. In three, two, and one…”
There were the dual sounds of two doors crashing against the wall, and they began doing their jobs.
Elizabeth spun, going in low with her laser sight on her Glock. At night, she didn’t want to miss if taking a shot.
Ethan followed, keeping his wife to his back so no one could get between them. They cleared the entry and ended up in the living room.
“We are going up,” she said, not smelling any blood, which was odd since there was a dead pair of women hacked together on the couch.
“I don’t think we’re going to find him here,” she said, clearing the first room.
Ethan handled the second one. “No one in here.”
Callen was in the kitchen. They were clearing the pantry, the kitchen, a bathroom, and then there was the basement.
As Callen headed down the stairs, Ivan right behind him, and then Johanna at the end, she found the switch.
“Lights going on,” she said, making sure her team knew what was happening.
When Callen blinked, the lights filled the room, and it took a second to get his bearings.
As they walked around a wall, he stopped.
“Holy shit!” he said.
Ivan stopped too.
“Wow. I’m speechless.”
“What do you have?” Elizabeth asked over the com.
“You had better get down here, boss. You had better check this out. I think you were wrong. We may have found our killer after all.”
They moved through the house.
When they got there, they took it all in.
On a long shelf along the wa
ll were all the missing heads. Three of them.
They found Lucy.
They found Kellie.
They found Molly.
It was no longer a mystery.
And then there was a freezer.
“Who wants the honors for that reoccurring nightmare?” Callen asked.
She took one for the team.
It reminded her of when they found the remains from the cannibal in Salem.
“Please don’t let there be half-eaten people in here,” she said, lifting the lid with her leather-gloved fingers.
As the light inside came on, she sighed.
“I found the rest of them. They are packed in here like sardines. Call in Chris. The scene is his.”
Elizabeth pulled out her com and dropped it in her pocket.
“Baby,” Ethan said, as she walked away.
“Let her go. Ivan, follow,” Callen stated.
He did just that.
They had a scene to process, and a BOLO to put out on a police captain.
Ethan and Callen never thought they’d see this day.
She was wrong.
Elizabeth freaking Blackhawk had met her match, and she battled wits and lost.
Their killer was in the wind.
* * * B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x * * *
At the woman’s home, he had finished violating her.
It was just like old times, only, he liked it better when she screamed and fought.
There was something about that, which made him happy. She begged through the gag, her eyes pleaded for mercy, and he gave none.
Why?
She betrayed him.
When he was up on that stand, he wanted her to save him. She could lie and say he was with her.
They’d practiced.
They would go down together.
A team.
A couple.
Lovers.
Discarded by Fate Page 53
