He relaxed.
“I love you both. I’m a lucky man to be married to both of you.”
With that, he hung up.
“I miss him,” Elizabeth said.
“Yeah, me too. I guess I’ll have to molest you twice as much until he gets here.”
She snorted. “Way to take one for the team, Cal. I can always count on you to do your duty, and then some.”
He grinned wickedly. “I like doing my girl as much as possible. Hell! Twice on Sundays between games.”
She laughed. “Perv.”
He hopped out of their ride and headed toward her door. Helping her down, she stopped to fix his tie.
“You’re really sexy all spiff-i-fied, my love.”
He wiggled his eyebrows. “Why do you think I’m in this monkey suit? I want my babe all over me later. I see how you ogle Ethan. I want in on that action.”
Oh, she was definitely going to do that and so much more. When she got her sexy partner upstairs and into their room, she was going to rock his world.
As she stood close to him, his body spray turned her right on. What she wanted was to sink her teeth into that bottom lip of his. She could almost hear the moan now.
Callen grinned. “I know what you’re thinking about,” he whispered, lowering his mouth to her ear. “You’re picturing yourself riding me and screaming my name.”
Her face flushed.
Yeah, she was, among other things.
Instead of creating a spectacle when she jumped him in the street, Elizabeth kept her comment to herself as people streamed past them on the sidewalk.
“Can you check us in while I meet with the mayor?” She needed some space between them. Her mind was already planning their night. It didn’t involve food.
Well, there’d be dining, but mostly it would be on her—if she had anything to say about it.
“I can, but behave.”
“Uh, it’s a mayor, not Godzilla. I think I can handle it. I’ll have some wine and pretend I don’t hate assholes in suits. Present company excluded. You I love in a suit.”
She paused.
“Actually, I love you naked and your suit on the bedroom floor even better.”
He was glad. Now that they were officially partners, he was going to wear them more often—if not for his general appearance, then for the kinkery that came later.
“If he gives you shit, I’m going to boot his ass back to his office, and I will make him bleed.”
She laughed. “Okay, big guy. Take the testosterone down a notch. Save it for later when you play sexy alpha male in bed.”
He kissed her on the lips. “No.”
Elizabeth gave up.
Her men were a handful on a slow day. Toss in someone making her life hell, and they were damn near impossible to wrangle.
This was proof.
Heading into the hotel lobby, she looked around. It was quaint. It had that old world charm, but it was very new. She could tell that this was one of the places destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. They did a good job of restoring it back to its beauty. If she was vacationing, she’d stay in a place like this any day.
Elizabeth liked the charm.
She was glad it was back. New Orleans was one of her favorite cities. She’d been there before, and now she was able to be there with half of her husbands.
It was a good place to enjoy the ambiance, even when working.
Callen split off when the detective walked toward them. He only hoped the man had the common sense not to be a dick.
“My partner’s coming. He’s parking his ride.”
“Great.”
“Again, thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m going to make you work for it. On my team, you don’t get a free ride. You can ask any of my agents, techs, or doctors. I bust balls, I get results, and I make them earn it.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” she replied, offering him a stick of gum. She wanted to be minty fresh for her Native assault later.
He took it but wasn’t sure how to phrase it.
“Just spill it. I appreciate a frontal approach. You’ll learn I don’t like games.”
“It’s about your head tech, Miss Peyton.”
Elizabeth wanted to grin. “Yeah, what about her?”
“Is she single?”
Elizabeth knew Merry was a pretty private person. She didn’t like personal and work colliding. In fact, she’d told off the doctors a few times for bringing their shit to work.
“All I know is that when I offered her the job back East, she told me she’d broken up with her longtime boyfriend. Other than that, I haven’t a clue.”
“Okay.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Curious.”
Elizabeth started laughing. “Yeah, curiosity my ass. You were drooling on her and those beetles.”
He blushed.
“I’m not sure how she feels about Native men…”
Elizabeth cut him off. “I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, that anyone who works on my team isn’t a bigot. They don’t look at the color of one’s skin. They are open-minded, or they wouldn’t be working for me.”
He took that as a sign that she wouldn’t be repelled from any type of advance. Boone knew he was insane for even thinking it. He had no business contemplating a romance in the midst of a mess.
“Do you think…?”
Elizabeth didn’t need him to finish. “She would.”
He grinned. “You’re nothing like the media says about you.”
That had her laughing. “Oh, you have no idea.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m a million times worse than anything they portray. They only see the outside. I love to raise hell and make assholes bleed. I play nice for the most part to spare Ethan paperwork. Stick around. The fun has yet to begin.”
Boone didn’t know what to say to that, so he went with something safe. “Here’s my partner.”
Elizabeth watched the man saunter toward them. He pretty much looked like she thought he would. Someone liked booze and cigarettes. She could smell the latter on him.
Yeah, there was no shock he was divorced. If anything, a picture was worth a thousand words. This man had been run through the police work ringer. He was hardened by the job, and in his case, that might not be a good thing.
His face was crisscrossed with worry lines. Someone didn’t believe in sunblock…or he liked to party. Elizabeth was leaning toward that choice.
After the introductions were made, he shook her hand. “Sorry that I took so long. I stopped for a smoke. I wasn’t planning on starting work before shift.”
Boone told him what was going on.
“I don’t mind covering the nights if you do the days. I’m getting too old to do both like you. I’m an old man.”
Elizabeth gauged his age around mid to late forties. She had news for him. He was probably Ethan’s age. If he cut back on the booze and smokes, he might not feel so shitty. Exercise could be your friend.
Unfortunately, she’d seen plenty of cops go down by vices. It was the nature of the beast.
“Well, I’m glad you are okay with it. I’ll have your partner update you at the start of your shifts. It’ll make it easier this way. With more eyes all over the town all day, the better our shot at finding the person doing this.”
“I agree,” Detective Rolland Le Bleu said, pulling off his sunglasses. “Did you clear this with the mayor? He’s got his undies in a twist over being seen in a positive light.”
“Yeah, well, he has a serial killer. There’s no way to spin that to be anything but ugly.”
“I think you’ve got a point.”
“We should go in,” Boone offered, leading them into the bar. He lowered his voice. “Rolly, no drinking!”
Elizabeth heard him.
Great.
They had a boozer on the second shift. It looked like her instincts were right. Elizabeth h
ad that sneaking suspicion that he wasn’t going to help all that much. At least her team would be on their game.
She hoped.
Inside, the mayor was there, and he wasn’t alone.
Elizabeth wasn’t shocked. She’d dealt with a few dicks in her time. From the way the man beside the mayor looked, she knew he was going to be the PR guy. It was too early in the game for someone to be toting around a lawyer.
Besides, this man had that slippery sheen to him. It was the kind on a water eel. From a distance, it looked fine, but up close…he was slimy.
Great.
“Mayor Nathaniel LaCroix, this is Director Elizabeth Whitefox-Blackhawk.”
She shook his hand.
“Have a seat, ma’am. I have to say that you’re even lovelier in person.”
“I’m also a bigger bitch, so multiply what you’ve heard about me by a thousand. Then you’re close.”
Before the men could speak, she pointed at the slippery looking one. “Let me take a wild guess. You’re the city PR guy?”
“I am. How did you know?”
Yeah, what kind of investigator would she be if she didn’t see him coming?
“Lucky guess.”
“This is Phineas Mortimer, but we call him Fin. He’s in charge of spinning this nightmare.”
“Lucky him.”
He shook her hand. “Nice to meet you, ma’am. I’ve got some ideas on how we can downplay this to lessen the blow if the media runs with it.”
She ordered a glass of wine since their shift was over. In fact, if she didn’t have a drink, she might hurt someone. There was no way she was getting a tattoo on her ass. The men would enjoy that a little too much.
Plus, who knew what they’d put there?
“While I appreciate your desire to make this look all pretty and less scary, you have someone stealing corpses and mutilating them. You also have someone cutting up hookers. There’s really not a pretty way to play that off.”
“I’m good at my job.”
“Yeah, so am I, and this isn’t my first case. Hell! It’s not my thousandth. You can’t spin shit. You may spread it out, but the stink is still the same.”
“We’ll see.”
Great.
This one had an ego.
Here was one more jackwagon in a long line of them present in the city.
Elizabeth sipped her wine. “Listen, I don’t give a fat monkey’s ass about how you spin this. All I care about is catching a killer. So, you do your thing, and as long as it doesn’t piss me off, I won’t yank your tonsils out, tie them in a bow around your head, and laugh while doing it. Deal?”
He looked horrified.
“Are you always this violent?” he asked.
The mayor was watching her.
“No.”
They relaxed.
“I told you that I’m worse.”
“And NO, before you even think to ask, I’m not going to play posterchild for the media. If you suggest it, your testicles will have the same treatment as your tonsils.”
Callen arrived just in time. “I love when I hear my girl threatening to handle another man’s junk. It always sets the mood for the entire meeting.”
He handed her the key to their room and motioned to the waitress that he needed a beer.
Make that two.
If he didn’t have some, he might hurt the man staring at his wife. One looked freaked out. The other was busy checking out Elizabeth’s breasts.
“Which one is the mayor and which is the PR dick?” Callen asked, nailing it.
The men looked confused, like there was some sign above their heads pointing them out.
Elizabeth did the introductions.
Callen didn’t shake their hands. He wasn’t feeling it.
He liked to stay out of the crossfire when Elizabeth was sharpening her tomahawk.
She had wicked aim.
Yeah, no, thank you.
The mayor started dishing out his spiel, in hopes Callen would change her mind.
That was useless.
Elizabeth was running this one. This was her team and her assignment.
“I really want to be kept in the loop. Is there any way you can do that?” the mayor asked. “Maybe I can meet with your partner daily, and he can update me?”
Elizabeth recalled the bet when Callen started grinning. He expected her to lose it.
Well, she wasn’t going to.
“There is, but I need a little something too.”
“What?”
“Your ME screwed with our evidence. If I have to have a press conference, and this killer gets away, I am going to have to tell them what happened. I don’t like to lie. Call me crazy like that.”
“What can I do to ensure that you don’t do that?” Nathaniel LaCroix asked.
Ahhhh, the games began.
At least he was willing to play ball.
“I want your ME relocated to another morgue for the time being. There have to be a few in New Orleans.”
There were.
She’d done her research.
“Is that necessary?” he asked. “Doctor Perette is outstanding and one of the best our city has to offer.”
Elizabeth held out her hand. Callen dropped his tablet onto her palm and she plugged in the zip drive that the detective had given him. As they got to the date in question, she turned it around.
“What does this look like?” she asked.
The mayor and his PR guy watched.
“It looks like someone is breaking into the morgue through the back door.”
“Yeah, and you had staff in there. How did a killer get in, take a body, and walk back out?” she asked, as the time lapse showed that happening.
This was why she had asked her agents to do a search on all the employees there.
If this man had help…
Neither man spoke as they watched the surveillance footage.
“See? You can’t spin this shit, Mr. Mortimer. This is bad publicity. At the bare minimum, the staff in that morgue screwed up. At the worst, they helped someone break the law. One of the city employees wasn’t doing their job those four nights. I can’t have that happening anymore. I don’t need to be playing scavenger hunt for bodies. That tends to piss the families off. They tend to bitch to the media.”
The man seemed to get it.
His eyes were huge.
“See what I mean? We can’t have their loved ones’ remains turning up all willy-nilly. That pisses them off when they have to wait to get them back, since they’re part of an investigation.”
“About that…?”
She cut him off. Elizabeth already knew what he was going to say. “Right now, they’ve been half eaten by a bunch of beetles thanks to your ME, so the answer is not until this investigation is over, and your PR genius can find a way to spin that.”
He thought about it.
Really, he didn’t have a choice.
“Deal.”
Elizabeth was impressed.
Here, she stayed calm, and no one had to get hurt. This might not be as hard as she thought it was going to be. Honestly, she had the mayor over the barrel, but still...
This may be a first for her.
“Thank you for working with me,” she offered.
“I told you that I want to make this as low key as possible. We are in the middle of tourist season. We don’t need to scare people away. After the storm, we lost a lot of revenue. I can’t let the good people of New Orleans feel the pinch.”
Yeah, in translation—he didn’t want them pissed off and voting his over coifed ass out of office.
She could play the game.
“So, does that earn me a daily update from your partner? Can I get into the loop?” the mayor asked.
She would play nice.
“I can get you updates if you keep your ME out of my ME’s way. He gets bitchy when people dig into the bodies. He’s the best, and he’s known for finding the smallest detail. I need that now.”
“Okay. I’ll tell him to lay low unless you ask for his help.”
She laughed.
Hell would freeze over first. The man was dead to her. He’d screwed with their bodies. She’d eat her own arm before letting him back into that morgue.
It would NEVER happen.
“I also need to commandeer your two detectives. I want to put one on the day shift and one on the night.” She broke down her plan to the two men, and neither seemed to care about that part. Apparently, they were all about the bad publicity aspect.
Whatever.
The less they interfered, the better.
So, she continued, “This guy is coming out to hunt at night, and with someone on duty, I can have eyes on the street. Most of the investigation will take place during the day, since I’m only one person. I can’t run nonstop for days. I have to sleep at some point.”
Callen was glad she was worried about her well-being. Now he wouldn’t have to force her.
That never went over well.
“Besides, let’s face it. Everyone knows who I am. If Detective Le Bleu can wander around unnoticed…”
They all glanced over at the detective.
“Are you good with that, Rolly?” he asked.
“Yes, I am.”
Then it was settled.
“I’ll agree to that. Will you be babysitting my detectives or do you want them to check in with me?”
What the hell?
Did he really think grown men needed to be watched while they did their work? If that were the case, this wasn’t going to be as easy as she hoped. Elizabeth had agreed to let the cops in on it, assuming they would bring something to the table.
“Do they need babysitters?”
“That’s not what I meant,” he offered.
“Listen, Mr. LaCroix, I need some help during the day, and your one detective will be able to give me insight into the city. I have to trust that Detective Le Bleu can handle his own shit. How long have you been a cop?” she asked the man.
“Twenty-three years.”
Yeah, that was a long ass time.
“If he needs a babysitter, then you have other issues.” Now the other man’s comment about no drinking made sense. Apparently, someone was an alcoholic. He was a rough forty-six years old. Then again, better him in a bar tying one on than under her feet, making her angry.
The mayor didn’t fight her. “I agree to it. I’m sure my detectives won’t screw around.”
Blood Shall Run (An FBI Romance Thriller Book 15) Page 11
