“No one cleans blood up that well. There’s a throw rug by the island. It looks like it fits there, right?”
“Yes.”
“There’s no sign of footprints in it, let alone blood. He wasn’t killed here.”
“We should have a team come here.”
Elizabeth laughed. It looked like her partner was back on her game. Some things never changed.
“What’s so funny?” Livy asked.
“You can take the Fed out of the FBI, but you can’t take the FBI out of the woman.”
She grinned. Elizabeth was right. It all came back to her the second she’d been handed that badge. Training never faded.
It was probably a good thing.
“Between the two of us,” she whispered, “I didn't think he’d go for this. I actually threw it out there expecting him to fight me tooth and nail on it.”
Elizabeth began taking pictures with her phone. “Yeah, I was shocked too.”
“I’ll have to give him lots of kisses later.”
Elizabeth snorted. “I can’t wait to hear all about it.”
She looked over at her friend. “I missed you. I think I missed this too.”
She grinned. “I couldn’t give it up. You’re stronger than I am,” Elizabeth admitted. “I love this too much. It’s in my blood. Speaking of which, I really wish we had a way to see if there was any blood here.”
“That would be helpful,” Livy stated.
Then Elizabeth had an idea. “I need to make a call.” Dialing her cell, she waited until the familiar voice answered.
“Hey, Momma-to-be, are you busy?”
“Elizabeth?” Christina asked.
“Yeah, darlin’, it’s me. How are you?” she inquired. Elizabeth missed Ethan’s old head tech. Christina Hart was wicked smart and incredibly resourceful. If there was a trick, she’d know it. Don’t get her wrong…Merry was awesome in her own right, but Christina was borderline genius.
“I’m ready to pop, boss! This baby is huge. I think I may be in serious trouble. Are you positive that they all come out the same way? I picture that scene in ‘Alien’.”
She laughed. “You push them out or they cut them out. No one’s split open and spewed out a child to my knowledge.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“How’s Kane handling the last few days?”
There was laughter. “He’s on the verge of a breakdown. I promised to marry him as soon as this baby is out. I’m not waddling down the aisle looking like a whale.”
“He’ll be okay. I promise.”
“Now, why are you calling? You’re busy and I doubt this is a friendly call.”
“I need your help.”
Christina laughed. “Is it going to be the standard payment of naked Ethan fantasies?”
Immediately, there were objections in the background. Apparently, Kane Redwolf didn't like that idea at all.
Elizabeth laughed. “Sure, but if you try to do more than visualize it, I’ll hurt you. I’m pregnant too.”
Christina giggled. “Who’s the daddy this time?”
“Callen.”
“Tell him congrats. I miss all of you. Any who…what do you need?”
“I need to make a black light to see if there’s blood. I’m in the field, and I can’t call in a tech team. Is there a way to do it?”
There was a pause.
Just then, Ethan and Gabe walked into the room. Elizabeth put the phone on speaker.
“Do you have tape and blue and purple Sharpies?”
“We just came from the director’s office. He has them in there,” Blackhawk offered.
“Hey, Ethan!”
“Hello, Christina. We miss you.”
“Not as much as I miss you and Callen.”
“Focus,” Elizabeth said, as her husband headed back into the office to find the items they’d need. When he returned, Christina walked her through it step by step.
“This will really work?” Gabe asked.
“It will, Director Rothschild. I learned this one a while back. I’ve had to do it a few times in a pinch. Julian digs up the craziest cases,” Christina offered.
When Elizabeth was finished coloring the tape and putting it over the flash of her phone, she was ready.
“Okay, now what?”
“Hit the lights, turn on the flashlight app, and you should be good to go.”
“Christina, I could kiss you.”
“Pass. I like Natives more.”
Blackhawk laughed. “Thank you, Christina. Tell Julian and Tori we send our love.”
“Bye, bosses!”
With that, the call ended.
“Okay, here we go,” she stated. Ethan hit the lights, and she did what Christina said. Immediately, they scanned the room. Some things showed up, but nothing that would have been ten pints of blood.
In fact, the room was pretty damn clean.
“That’s freaking neat,” Livy stated. “Technology is so different than when we were in the field. We had flip phones and had to call into the office to get data.”
Didn't she know it?
They had it easy now.
“Let’s head upstairs.”
When they got to the man’s bedroom, it was as stark and empty as the rest of the house.
It was sad, but he’d lived by his own choices.
Before they scanned the room, they began digging into the man’s personal effects. It was the standard procedure for any victim—FBI or not.
The bedside stand had lube, condoms, and some skin magazines.
“Well, he was a bachelor,” Gabe stated. “Paper Porn is the easiest to jerk off to.”
Livy lifted a brow. “Is it?”
He cleared his throat. “Or so I’ve been told.”
“I’m going home to check your nightstand,” she teased. It made him laugh.
“Yeah, if he had a woman in his life, she would have freaked out over his choice in literature. Apparently, he liked busty Asian women.”
Elizabeth flipped through it. As she turned to a page in the middle, both she and Livy started laughing. “That looks fun.”
Ethan knew better than to look. It was a wife trap. Nothing he could say would save his hide.
“Want to check it out?” Elizabeth asked.
“Uh, hell no. Once you get married, the fun ends,” Blackhawk stated, running his hands beneath the mattress.
Elizabeth stared at him. “Really? You have a pretty wild sex life, Mr. Blackhawk, and you’re very married. Maybe you want to retract that statement?”
Livy perked up. “Do tell. I haven’t had any details in a long time. Tell me all about your kinkery!”
Ethan pointed at his wife. “Don’t do it, Elizabeth!”
Gabe agreed. “I hate the girlfriend code. It’s the bane of my existence.”
“Later, Livy. We’ll swap stories.”
“See?” Gabe asked.
She laughed, ignoring Ethan’s protests. “Hit the lights, boys. Let’s see what we have in here.”
Ethan did as his wife asked, and they all watched. Well, someone had self-pleasured himself quite a bit. The bedding told the tale.
Still, it wasn’t blood.
When she quickly swept the room, something on the wall flickered beneath the light’s beam. Moving back toward it, Elizabeth focused the light on the thing that caught her eye.
She was surprised.
So were the others.
‘Gabriel—one of seven.’
“Oh boy,” Elizabeth said as soon as she read it. That message said it all.
Gabe moved closer. “The director was a message for me, not you, Elizabeth. The killer wanted me in this game too.”
It appeared that was exactly the case. This animal was definitely playing some sick and twisted game.
He wanted something from them. Now they needed to figure out what.
“I don’t like this,” Ethan said.
Yeah, neither did Gabe. He hated that the dead man was in the morgue beca
use of something he may have done in his past. It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t right.
What pissed him off more was that the killer wasn’t screwing around.
He wanted them to know this was only the beginning. His message was crystal clear.
There were more deaths coming.
And soon.
CHAPTER FOUR
Morgue
It was surreal being there.
Chris Leonard always remembered his roots. While he may have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he’d done his time in hell.
And this place was the definition of it.
He’d been pushed, tried, and tested above and beyond the call of duty. He’d had to learn to get a backbone, stand up for himself, and not take any bullshit.
He’d learned to be a man in that very room.
It was hardly an easy journey.
Now he was back.
Standing in that autopsy suite, he couldn’t help but recall the countless times he had headed out from that room to do his job.
He’d waded through gore.
He’d walked through blood.
He’d wept tears of pain for the victims he’d stood over.
None of those years were ever far from his memories. He couldn’t forget all the times he wanted to call it quits, only to have Elizabeth yank him back up by his boot straps. She was the reason his life was the way it was. While he did time in the bloody hell, she’d been right by his side.
Elizabeth was the one who lead them through it. On top of her tenacity and strength, he found love because of her.
He had a daughter because of the woman he called sister. His child was loved so much, that she carried his hero’s name.
If Elizabeth hadn’t stepped in, given him grief, and loved him like a brother, he never would be at FBI West doing his job. All of the blessings in his life came from one source.
They were from his very first friend.
Chris knew how lucky he was. He recalled being there as the newbie. He couldn’t forget how they tried to eat him alive. Instead of them winning, he’d come out the victor.
It made him smile.
As he stood over the ruined victim, his heart was still full. He was a blessed man.
As the door opened, he glanced up. The team was back, and he was up to bat.
“Well, Christopher? What do you have for us?” Elizabeth asked.
“Are you asking your ME or your boyfriend?”
She stared laughing at their private joke. Being there felt oddly right. This was where it all started.
Ethan stared at them as if he’d missed something big.
Did Chris just reference himself as being…
“Definitely my boyfriend, Doc. Give me all you have before Ethan’s head blows off his neck.”
He grinned.
“The victim was bound and gagged at the time of his death. I found fibers in his teeth. I have the techs working them. There was too much for Merry to process, so I passed what I could off to some of Gabe’s people.”
“Great job, Chris. Thank you for running this for me.”
“No problem, Lyzee.”
Gabe actually laughed. “I never saw this day coming,” he admitted. “I remember being in here for ‘The Butcher’ case. You were a hot mess, Doctor.”
Chris recalled. “You didn't think I’d make it, and you told me every chance you could. I guess you were wrong.”
Elizabeth held out her hand as Gabe pulled out his wallet. When he counted out five bills, Livy stared at him.
“You bet one hundred bucks that he’d fail?”
Elizabeth tucked the money into her pocket. “He also said there was a better chance of him making out with a corpse than Chris running a morgue.”
Doctor Leonard grinned.
“Yeah, I was wrong, you were right, Elizabeth. I paid up, but I’m not kissing a dead body. You’re out of your mind if you think that’ll happen.”
She winked at him. “Don’t bet against me, Gabe. You know that.”
Chris gave her a fist bump before he began pulling on his latex gloves. “For the record, every time you insinuated I’d fail, Elizabeth reminded me that I had to win so I could rub your face in it one day.”
He laughed. “You made your point, Doctor. I stand corrected. You won. Shall we begin?”
Chris glanced over at her. “Want to glove up and be my spare pair of hands? I could use an assistant for old time’s sake.”
Gabe interjected. “You can pull a tech. You don’t have to do this, Elizabeth.” He pointed at Merry in the corner with earbuds in, as she worked on the trace.
She disagreed with him. “Yeah, I kinda do have to do it. This is coming full circle. It started here, and it’s going to end here. I did this on day one.”
She pulled on gloves.
“What did you find for me?” Elizabeth asked, as she got ready.
“TOD is definitely five this morning, COD is exsanguination, and before I even ran the DNA on Seamus O’Brien, I could tell that this wasn’t the same killer.”
“How?” Gabe asked.
“The incisions gave it away. When you look at the cuts to the flesh, you can see that something isn’t right. Our first killer,” he began before pausing to show them, “was a lefty. This killer is most definitely a righty.”
Chris hit the button on the plasma screen and it came to life.
“Look at the difference.”
They studied the pictures. In the older films, the cuts were to the opposite side.
“If it was him, he wouldn’t be using the opposite hand to throw you off. Our killer doesn’t have a clue about the placement of the medallion or the hand used to do the deed.”
“So we definitely have a copycat?”
He nodded.
Elizabeth grinned at him. “I could kiss you.”
He teasingly wiggled his eyebrows. “You’ve kissed me in here before, so don’t let me stop you.”
She snorted. “Yeah, Doc, I did.” So for old time’s sake, she dropped a kiss to his cheek. “You just lightened one hell of a load off my shoulders.”
He was glad.
“Well, since I’m making your day, how about I really take all the pressure off for you?”
“Yes, please,” she said, hoping he was going to be talking DNA with her.
“I can answer the big money question for you. The blood on the bullet that was pulled from the first male victim fifteen years ago,” he said, covering for them in case Merry could hear them, “and the semen from the sexually assaulted victims matched. The night Seamus O’Brien died, ‘The Butcher’ most definitely went with him.”
Elizabeth took her first easy breath since this started. She now had vindication that she didn't kill an innocent man.
Chris returned the kiss to her cheek. “You’re all good, honey. You’re free,” he whispered in her ear.
Tears filled her eyes at his words.
While she still broke the law, she at least didn't break the moral fibers of her being. She wasn’t going down for slaughtering an innocent person.
Gabe took a deep breath. “This is good and bad news. If that asshole is dead, then who the hell is playing this game?”
Chris shrugged. “I’m good, Director, but I’m not that good. That’s a question that only you guys can answer. I did my thing, and now you four need to do yours.”
“This is why I kept fighting for you to stay,” she said to Chris. “I knew one day there would be a case that needed both of us to pull it off.”
Ethan was calmer.
Hell!
He didn't even care that Chris had planted a kiss on his wife’s cheek. He wanted to dance around the room in joy.
Then he remembered they weren’t out of the woods as of yet. Someone was screwing with his wife.
He didn't like it—at all.
Just then, the door opened and in walked one of Gabe’s techs. Carol Spade stopped dead in her tracks.
The look on her
face was comical.
Elizabeth smiled at her. “Well, well, well, this has to be your worst day on the job.”
The woman opened and then closed her mouth.
Chris couldn’t help but grin. Before them stood the woman who tried to make his life a living hell. Only, with each try, she had someone standing between him and the misery. Elizabeth had run interference for years.
“Oh, hello.”
Elizabeth didn't doubt that this was the woman’s worst nightmare. They were back together again, and it had to be horrifying. When Chris had left to take the job at FBI West, there was no doubt that Carol threw a party.
Now they were back in her domain.
“Doctor Leonard and Director Blackhawk,” she said, obviously having a hard time spitting it out. “I ran the trace you requested.”
Elizabeth crossed to her and took the paper from her hand. “Have you met my head tech? This is Meredith Peyton. She runs our lab out of FBI West. Merry, this is Carol Spade. She was one of the head techs here when Chris and I worked out of this building.”
The woman nodded in greeting, and then got right down to business. “What did you find?” Merry asked.
“The trace came back as cotton. The fibers you pulled from his teeth were run of the mill. We’re working on isolating the brand, but it may take us sometime.”
“Were they bleached or natural fibers, and were there any traces of elastic in them?” Merry asked.
“They were bleached and no, we didn't find any sort of elastic when we broke them down.”
“Thank you.”
“What do you have, Merry?” Ethan asked.
Merry knew they would be happy. “Just from that alone, I can tell you that they don’t match the original fibers. From Chris’s report from fifteen years ago, the fibers were likely from socks. They had some elasticity to them. The new fibers were more from a rag or hand towel.”
“I didn't get to see the original report,” Carol stated. “May I?”
Elizabeth stopped her. “Actually, that report is need to know, and you don’t need to see it.”
Gabe agreed when the woman looked like she was about to argue. “Denied. Elizabeth is running this, and if she gives you a directive, it has my full backing.”
Carol shrugged, but there was venom in her eyes. “Fine. If you say so. I personally can’t believe that ‘The Butcher’ is back,” she stated, glaring at Elizabeth.
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