“I’m not with you for the money, Christopher. I need you to believe that. I don’t give a shit about money.”
He gave her a kiss.
“I know. You might be the ONLY woman in the world who can say that to me and I’d believe it. Thank you for the coffee and cookie, but more importantly for coming back.”
“We’re going to make a fucking mess of this,” she said. “Neither one of us has any business being in a relationship.”
As he stood there, his heart skipped.
That sounded ominous.
“Are you changing your mind?” he asked, fear settling in. “Are you saying you want out?”
“No, but I hope you’ll be patient with me. I’m trying. I need a boyfriend with training wheels.”
“So you can move on?” he asked.
“No, so I don’t crash into a wall and break my teeth out of my damn head.”
“And when you’re ready to take off the training wheels?” he asked.
“Then you’re going to have a very easy relationship with very few calamities. The good news is I learn fast.”
He gave her a kiss.
“I do too. We’ll have a great relationship. I can tell.”
He dropped his arm over her shoulders.
“We’ll learn together. It’ll make it more enjoyable if we navigate this together.”
“Deal.”
He sipped his coffee as they headed out.
It was the best deal he’d ever made.
And he knew it.
* * * E l i z a b e t h L a R u e * * *
When he dropped her off at the police station, of course, he had to sneak in a kiss. The entire way there, she fed him pieces of chocolate chip cookie, and he happily let her.
It was kind of nice, and she knew it.
Maybe this boyfriend thing wouldn't blow up in her face after all. If there was one man she trusted, it was him. Chris wouldn't hurt her.
She was safe.
Later, they were going to grab dinner together, but it might have to be a working dinner. Such was the life of Feds.
When she got out, the cop was standing there waiting for her. He was watching her much like the way she watched suspects.
Well, that wouldn’t make her job easier. The man still didn’t trust her, and likely because of the FBI. She was just a cop. An ordinary cop who worked for the federal government and not a local one.
“Detective Bronson, are you ready?”
Chris pulled away with a beep.
“Yes, I am. Can I ask a question?” he inquired, still not moving from where he was standing.
“Uh, sure.”
“Are you two seeing each other?”
“I don’t see how that is relevant.”
“It’s not. I was curious because if you’re kissing random people…”
He puckered up.
He was busting her ass like she was one of the guys. She’d misjudged the man. Today might not be as shitty as she suspected.
“I also punch assholes in the face. Want that too?”
He patted her on the shoulder and couldn’t help but chuckle. He liked her. She was funny as hell.
“Come on. Let’s go. You want to do some interviews, and I’m your Boston tour guide.”
Max escorted her to his ride and hopped in. Yeah, that’s why she liked Chris. He opened her door for her, even when they were working.
She’d scored a good guy for sure.
Elizabeth got in, and the car smelled like old food and detective’s feet.
“Seriously?”
“What?”
She pointed at a used napkin on the floor. “You’re a pig, and this is a sty.”
Oddly, his ex-girlfriend told him that all the time.
“Maybe that’s why I’m single, and my ex-girlfriend won’t let me see my kid.”
She didn’t even go there.
Nope.
Not happening.
She was pretty sure there was more than one reason. There always was. Slovenliness, while gross, didn’t make people withhold kids.
“Where to first?” she asked.
“You tell me.”
Perfect.
This was exactly how she wanted this to roll. He was allowing her to do her job.
Finally.
“Let’s start with victim one. I’d like to walk her home before I speak to the neighbors.”
That worked for him.
As they drove there, he played with the radio, trying to find the news station. It was always best to stay on top of the happenings in Boston.
“Where’s your partner?” she asked.
“He said he’d rather eat his own shit than work with you. So while I’m playing chauffeur, he’s working our other cases.”
“You realize you don’t have to. I can figure this out on my own.”
He laughed.
“Okay, peaches.”
She stared at him. Well, there went any good feelings she had about Mr. Sunshine. He was leaning toward the side of douchey.
“You’re an asshole.”
“What? You don’t like men who drive you around?” he said, referring to Chris. “You seemed to be smiling about it earlier.”
She closed her mouth.
Enough was enough.
“Just get me there.”
He did exactly like she asked.
Thankfully.
* * * E l i z a b e t h L a R u e * * *
Hoover Building
Washington D.C.
When Callen arrived, he expected to be put in a big room with a bunch of other people as they waited for the profiler symposium. Instead, he was escorted to Gabriel Rothschild’s office.
Once there, he sat and waited for the man to show up. Honestly, Callen didn’t have any idea what this was all about. Then again, knowing his brother, he could be getting booted from the Hoover building.
Maybe that was for the best.
Callen wanted to go home.
He was done.
When Gabe strolled in, he handed Callen a coffee and took his seat behind the big mahogany desk.
“What’s up, Deputy Whitefox?”
“Nothing. I’m just waiting for the first training,” Callen said, no emotion in his voice.
Gabe felt bad.
There was only one reason this man would look this miserable.
“You went to see him, huh?”
Callen didn’t give anything away. He kept his face cautiously blank.
“What are you talking about?”
“I know Ethan is your brother. I’ve known for a while. It came up in his psych evaluation.”
“I see. Well, then since you had my stubborn brother’s head examined, you know he hates my guts.”
“I’m aware.”
“I’m dreading this symposium.”
“Then don’t go.”
“I have to go. I was sent here to do all kinds of things to make me a better cop. Ironically, I don’t give a shit.”
And he didn’t.
Gabe was good with people. He might come across as someone who was cranky, bitchy, and mean, but he understood how to manage.
That was the hardest part of his job. Once he got that down, it was all downhill from there.
“How about this? I give you a pass on the symposium, and then you don’t have to stress it?”
He lifted a brow.
“Then what am I supposed to do instead of sitting in a room and be humiliated by my brother, as he uses our life as a case study?”
Gabe laughed.
“He likely will too.”
“I know. Thus, why I’m dreading it.”
Gabe didn’t want anyone to be miserable. He might need the man’s help if they opened that office in Damascus one day. He was planning ahead.
“I sent an agent out into the field, and she was working on a few cold cases. Can you sit at her desk and maybe go over them? A fresh set of eyes might help her.”
Callen wasn’t too proud to
take an out.
He couldn’t handle his brother anymore. He just couldn’t do it.
“Okay.”
Gabe smiled.
That was damn easy.
“Follow me.”
He led Callen to a desk all the way in the corner of the office, obstructed by the wall of file cabinets.
“Uh, is this where you put the bad students?” Callen asked, looking around. “It’s like a prison without bars.”
Gabe roared with laughter.
“Yes. Trust me. She needs a cage. She’s wild, unruly, and the best damn agent I have—even better than your brother.”
“He’d hate that. He always has to be the best in everything.”
Oh, he was aware.
That was in his psych evaluation too.
“The files are on the desk, she’s a neat freak, so don’t jack with her pens.”
He laughed at that odd request, but he could keep his hands to himself. He preferred pencils.
“Okay.”
Gabe walked away, and Callen pulled the first file. He began reading through it, and he was enthralled at the way she thought.
The woman’s personality came out in her words. As someone who longed to be a writer one day—as a pipe dream—he saw characters all around him.
She was one of them.
Pulling out his small journal Timothy had made him, he turned to the first page.
‘She’ll be a tough Fed who fights crime, has a big heart, and is badass.’
He stared at the words.
He read them again.
Something in him clicked. He felt a connection. One day, he’d write a book, and he would need a heroine. From the notes to the scrolly handwriting, he knew she’d be a perfect model.
When his pencil point broke, he opened the desk drawer to find a sharper. Inside, he found a piece of paper.
‘To the guy sitting his ass in my chair. If you fuck with my shit, I will hunt you down, kick your ass, and make your life hell.’
He laughed the second he read it. Apparently, she’d been warned that someone was going to sit there.
It amused him that she’d taken the time to leave him a death threat.
What kind of Fed was this?
He was curious.
Callen opened the next drawer.
There was another note.
‘And if you fart in my chair, I swear I’ll rip your heart out and eat it as a sandwich.’
Callen laughed even more.
He grabbed a piece of paper and ripped off a little piece. Then he penned her a reply.
‘Your chair is safe with me, fair lady. I won’t leave anything on it that wasn’t here before. I’m not feeling particularly gassy today.’
He was amused.
Ripping off another piece of paper, he kept writing.
‘I promise I won’t mess with your things. Thank you for letting me use your space. You were an inspiration to me.
C.W’
He tucked both notes back into her desk, and he went back to his notes in the book.
Yeah, Callen Whitefox knew exactly what the first heroine in a book would be. In fact, it had to be her.
Definitely.
* * * E l i z a b e t h L a R u e * * *
Joey ‘The Thug’ followed them to the victim’s house, and then to interview the people who lived around her. The whole time, he watched them from his car.
Yeah, this woman was something.
The boss was going to want to know more about her.
Pulling out his phone, Joey called him.
“Boss, I’m here, and she’s snooping around in a case. What do you want me to do?”
He wasn’t shocked in the least.
Feds were predictable.
“Well, there’s only one thing you can do, Joey. Make her and her buddy work for it. It’s time to see what our pretty Fed is made of, and this is going to tell us all we need to know.”
“What do you want?”
He told him.
Joey laughed.
It wasn’t his style, but if the boss said jump, you didn’t argue. You did it and asked how high.
“On it, boss.”
“Call me after it’s done. I want to make sure she’s worthy before I waste my time.”
He got it.
Reaching for his gun, he got ready
This was going to be fun.
* * * E l i z a b e t h L a R u e * * *
As they went door to door, she had pretty much had the same response from each neighbor.
No one heard anything at all the night of her demise, and they were shocked to hear about her death.
Yeah.
She got that.
There was only one person left, and she was hoping there would be better luck.
“Arthur Morton?” he asked, pointing at the house across the street.
“Well, let’s get this done,” she said, heading that way. “I have very little hope it’ll lead anywhere,” she offered.
Yeah, him too.
When a car engine started up, she just happened to glance up at the sound. It had been quiet in the neighborhood, and that sound was out of place.
She was glad she did.
Not far from where they stood, there was a sedan with an open window. From it, she could see the nose of a gun pointed at them.
“GUN!” she shouted, spinning and throwing herself onto the detective beside her.
The weight of her body took them to the ground as two shots rang out, whizzing past their bodies.
Elizabeth felt the drag of the air as it just missed them.
There was the revving of an engine as it accelerated and blew past them.
Elizabeth pulled her gun and fired off five shots, hitting the back trunk and window of the car as it sped away.
The detective was up beside her, but couldn’t get off any rounds before the vehicle took a corner and was gone.
People began rushing from their homes to see what was going on.
“Shit! That was close!”
Elizabeth glanced over to check on him, and there was no blood, so that was a win for her.
“Our killer didn’t go from strangling to an unlicensed car with dark tinted windows.”
Yeah, killers rarely changed up their MO. That meant one thing.
Mob.
“Then who the hell would pull something like this?” Detective Bronson asked.
She rolled her eyes and looked at her scraped up arm to make sure that was the worst of her wounds.
“You’re kidding, right?” she asked.
“The mob?” he asked.
Who else could it be?
She was willing to bet that this was a personal message from everyone’s least favorite mob boss.
Michael O’Banion.
Well, that wasn’t good.
At all.
Chapter Seven
Washington D.C.
Friday Mid-Morning
E than Blackhawk was not looking forward to teaching a class on profiling with his brother in the audience. It made him angry, uncomfortable, and borderline neurotic. It was to the point that it took him extra-long to get ready.
He had to be perfect.
His suit.
The tie.
His hair.
It was all about that image, and he needed to make sure he was without a single flaw. It wasn’t about the law enforcement officers in the audience, but that one man.
Ethan needed his brother to see that he’d moved on, and he was no longer going to deal with his past. Ethan wanted to be free from the rez, his blood’s betrayal, and the pain.
So, as he arrived, he was ready to go and ready to dazzle the audience with his skill. He might not be funny, or witty, but he was becoming one of the leading experts in his field.
He was about to own it, showing them how the FBI did profiling.
As he stood there, ready to enter the giant conference room, his boss approached him.
“Break a leg, Ethan,
” he said.
“When this is over, I’m out of here,” he said. “That was our deal.”
“The deal has changed,” he said.
Immediately, his temper spiked, and he went red with that rage.
“You know, son, you need to wrangle that temper. One day, it will get you in trouble. I’m still your boss, and I can make or break you. Keep that in mind.”
“You can’t renege! We had a deal.”
“Yes, and the deal is that you would teach the class your brother came here to see, and then go. Well, he’s not in there. That ends the deal.”
Ethan paused, trying to ferret out the trick from his boss. He knew Gabe.
The man was notorious for his trickery.
He liked to screw with his agents.
“He’s not?” he asked.
“No. He is handling something for me. He opted to give up his spot at profiling since you didn’t want him there. He didn’t want you any more upset than you clearly are.”
That surprised him.
Had his brother?
“He’s working on a little situation for me, and you’re in the clear. You can now give your lecture without any issues.”
“I see.”
“You know, Ethan, I don’t get into the personal lives of my agents, unless it becomes an issue with work. I give you all latitude and space, but I am going to say one thing.”
“What?”
“It was a stupid girl, and you’re willing to give up your brother over a mistake he made. If you ever loved him in the first place, you would have let this go. It’s been years, and you’re holding a grudge over a woman—who I’m willing to bet you didn’t even love. You have serious issues.”
He stared at him.
“Done?” Ethan asked, biting his tongue. He knew there was a limit to what he could get away with, and he wouldn't lose his job over insubordination. His record was clean, and he wanted to keep it that way.
Dawn of Evil_FBI Flashback Page 15
