All the King's Henchmen

by Morgan Kelley

  Now that they’d taken off, there was no calm. In fact, the opposite was true. He was pacing on the jet, and he felt like the whole world was turned upside down.

  He called Ethan.

  Nothing.

  He called Chris.

  Nothing.

  He called Elizabeth.

  Nothing.

  It was officially time to commence his mental breakdown, followed by one hell of a freak-out.

  He couldn’t help it.

  His whole world was falling in, and he was struggling not to have the mother of all panic attacks.

  What the hell?

  Callen had even called Ivan, who couldn’t give him any information. He couldn’t tell him if Elizabeth was alive or dead, missing or found. He simply told him that they were working on it and outside the White House.

  WORKING ON IT?

  WHITE HOUSE?

  WHAT?

  What the hell was going on in Washington DC? What the hell had happened to his family in a matter of days? Being away from them had been bad, and he was never leaving again.

  No.

  Never.

  When he left the other day, everything had been fine, and no one had been sick, injured, or missing. Elizabeth wasn’t even out on a case. She was just doing paperwork.

  They were happy. They were stronger than they’d ever been, and now he was suffering.

  His woman was missing.

  Chris was missing.

  Callen took a seat, closed his eyes, and prayed. He needed his wife back.

  Desperately.

  All of the worst-case scenarios were running through his head, and they were scarier than the killers he put in his books.

  Jesus.

  His books...

  This was on him.

  He’d never should have left her at home. Callen never should have gone away without her. The books…they didn’t matter. His wife…she was paramount.

  She was all.

  What was he going to do?

  Callen knew the truth.

  It was stick like glue. If he got her back, he’d be all over her, and she’d never be out of his sight.

  Ever.

  Why?

  He couldn’t do this without her.

  * * * B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x * * *

  Oval Office

  She sat on the couch, and a doctor took a look at both her and Chris to make sure they weren’t in need of a hospital. Without saying a word, the White House physician cleaned their wounds, and then left the room—to escape the tension.

  No one blamed him.

  Everyone there wanted to do almost the exact same thing. The level of intensity, and scrutiny, was through the roof.

  Someone had manhandled two Feds, and it wasn’t the enemy, but the freaking Secret Service at the vice president’s request.

  That was all kinds of wrong.

  They were beaten, battered, and looked like they’d gone through a war. The only thing that kept Ethan Blackhawk from losing his shit all over the man behind the desk was that the Secret Service people were in far worse shape.

  Elizabeth had put seven of them on the wounded list, and he was freaking glad. They deserved it. They were the walking wounded, and now required hospital care.

  Oh, they were lucky he couldn’t get to them.

  They would require a burial.

  At that moment, Ethan was watching his wife to make sure she was, indeed, okay. So far, she was silently sitting there, mulling it all over.

  They were all pissed that Gordon dropped that file bomb, and it sucked that someone was going to try to blackmail them.

  He wanted to rage, but Ethan knew his wife had to make the decisions on this. She was the one who had the shit kicked out of her, and it was her life.

  Ethan had to support her.

  What he wanted to do was hold her. Elizabeth was holding an ice pack to her face, and now that the doctor was gone, her head was resting on Chris’s lap.

  She was tired.

  Bone.

  Weary.

  Tired.

  He knew her, and she was coming down off of fight mode. She was ready to crash, and it was going to be brutal too.

  What Ethan needed to do was get them both home so they could rest and regroup.

  But first…

  He had to handle this jackassery. Speaking of which, the vice president wasn’t relenting, and it was making Ethan very angry.

  “I need your wife to investigate,” Gordon Downing stated for like the fiftieth time. “We need to figure out what happened last night at the party. You were there.”

  “Yes, and we left together early, so I know who DIDN’T kill the president,” he said, pointing at him and his wife. “Chris was home. It wasn’t him either. Start there. You only have about four hundred people to interview—including yourself and all of your Secret Service agents.”

  Gordon sighed.

  He knew this was going to happen. That’s why they ‘borrowed’ her. Ethan Blackhawk and Gabriel Rothschild did not like the office of The President of The United States, and they really didn’t like Damian Dean.

  Period.

  While he understood, this was dire. The leader of the free world was lying on a slab in the White House basement. He was dead, and they needed answers.

  “Director.”

  He cut him off.

  “My issue isn’t about my wife doing this and doing it quietly,” Ethan stated. “My issue is you had them plucked off of the street and held them against their will.”

  Like he had the right to put his hands on two people Ethan loved and called his partners.

  “Watch the tapes,” Elizabeth muttered. “They recorded us as we were locked up like criminals before I took out both cameras. Someone is a sick fuck,” she muttered.

  “Agreed,” Chris stated. “We aren’t zoo animals.”

  He lifted a brow. That infuriated him, and he had to play with the bracelet he wore to remind him what was at stake if he lost his cool.

  His relationship.

  “Did you really record my family in lockdown and being abused by your agents?” he asked.

  Gordon hesitated, but fortunately, for him, he didn’t lie to Ethan. Instead, he agreed with them.

  “Yes.”

  “I want them.”

  “You’ll have them. You’ll see that no one put their hands on her until after she escalated it.”

  “Yeah, protecting me,” Chris stated, “and trying to get us out of here. Oh, and they punched a woman in the face three times!” Chris added.

  “Yeah, and that too,” he stated. “What the hell? I want the tapes! I want them now, and if I find out you’ve made copies as a way to blackmail any of us…!”

  He motioned to the man standing there.

  “Get them. Hurry!”

  He left.

  “I’m sorry. They got a little too excited,” Gordon stated, covering for his people. “The president is dead. We’re all running on fumes, and their need to figure this out was amped. Let’s be honest. They aren’t fans of your wife.”

  She snorted.

  “It’s mutual, I’m sure.”

  “They crossed a line, and Mrs. Blackhawk, I’m sorry,” Gordon stated.

  “You abducted a Fed. Use my freaking title, Mr. Downing. See how shitty that is? You’ve degraded us enough. The least you can do is give us the dignity we earned by serving this country. I’m Director Whitefox-Blackhawk, and he’s Doctor Christopher Leonard. We are not your friends or acquaintances,” she said.

  Ethan agreed.

  “You’re in the wrong,” Gabe stated.

  He hated a cover-up.

  Sure, he’d been part of one a few times, but lesson learned. You couldn’t kidnap people. He’d figured that out with O’Banion and the mess of the last case.

  “We tried to keep it low-key. Your wife escalated it,” he said, refusing to use her title.

  She didn’t care.

  In fact, she found it amusing a
s hell.

  Elizabeth laughed.

  “Yeah, I tend to escalate a situation when seven masked men jump me, then when I’m locked in a room, a gun is pointed at me, and you threaten my loved ones. Go figure. I’m the aberration, not the norm.”

  Gabe wasn’t happy, and he wasn’t done with the whole situation.

  “Gordon, if you want to make this better, you need to do a few things. Your people should be retrained. She whipped their asses. Your men should be ashamed of themselves. First, for allowing the president to be alone in a hotel, and secondly, that a middle-aged woman beat them.”

  “HEY!” she stated in objection. “Watch with the middle-aged bullshit! That stings. I’m in the prime of my life. I took out a bunch of grown men, all at different times. They had guns. I did not.”

  “And they were told not to shoot her. We didn’t want to kill your wife, Deputy Director. They were allowed to…rough her up.”

  Ethan went red.

  “Breathe,” Gabe told him, knowing that if it had been Livy, he’d be in the same pissed off boat.

  “I am calm, Gabe, but the fact remains that there are rules. I can’t rough up my wife so what the hell gives him the right to allow a bunch of pathetic, sorry-ass Secret Service guys to do it?”

  Well, that made friends with the agents in the room. They didn’t look happy to be called names.

  Or that a woman had made them look bad.

  “They let the president go down,” Ethan stated. “That’s on them. We are not the president’s cleanup crew. No, my WIFE is not his cleanup crew or yours. He’s had us do it too many times and that ends now. This is their mess. Let them J. Edgar Hoover it!”

  They all knew what he meant.

  If they wanted a pansy and someone to cover it up, it was on them—not the FBI.

  “We need someone to investigate,” Gordon stated.

  “Sir, we can handle this internally,” some woman, who was wearing a Secret Service pin, stated.

  Elizabeth laughed again.

  “They couldn’t handle jerking off in a circle,” Elizabeth stated. “The logistics would confuse them.”

  All those in question glared at her.

  “Who are you?” Ethan asked, pointing at the woman. “And why the hell do I give a shit what you’re saying?”

  She straightened her suit jacket and offered up her hand in introduction.

  He stared at her like she was batshit insane.

  “I’m Agent Tiegan Blackett, sir. I’m in charge of the people around the president. He went down on my watch, sir. My team dropped the ball, and we’ll clean up after ourselves.”

  The vice president knew that couldn’t happen. If they even tried to handle this, the whole freaking world would explode in a million conspiracy theories.

  Foreign entities.

  CIA double agents.

  Aliens.

  It would be a mess.

  No, they were the last people who could do it, and he knew it.

  “I’m sorry, Agent Blackett. We have to allow an outside source to handle this. The FBI has jurisdiction in the death, or in this case, the murder of the president. If it were to happen outside the US, the CIA would handle it. Inside the borders, Director Rothschild gets to appoint a team. It’s out of our hands.”

  Yeah, and that was why he’d had the woman grabbed. They needed the best, and whether he liked it or not, she was it.

  Shit.

  “She’s not capable, sir. Look at her,” the young Secret Service agent stated. “She’s barely holding it together. I can handle it. I’ll help Director Rothschild out.”

  That had Elizabeth’s attention.

  Was she serious?

  Elizabeth sat up and kept that icy, chill look on her face. She used it to intimidate assholes, and it looked like her work was NOT done there for the day.

  What the hell was going on in this building? Were the people who did the hiring stupid?

  “You’re the one I’m coming for next. Wait until you see where I shove that fugly desk lamp. Every time you bend over, the light will go on.”

  Agent Blackett looked horrified.

  “Elizabeth,” Gabe said as Chris laughed from beside her. It took everything for Gabe not to snicker.

  The visual…

  “No! I’m the one who gets to make this decision,” she stated, still holding the ice to her face. “I was the one abducted. I was the one dragged into this mess. I decide. I don’t get pressured or pushed out if I don’t want to be. Am I clear?”

  Oh, they all got it.

  They just hoped they didn’t regret it.

  Gabe sighed.

  “What do you want, Elizabeth?”

  “That’s easy. I want to do this one. Hand-off the case to me. I know I normally deal with serial killers, but I’ve got this one. I’m the ONLY one who will do it right. No one liked the asshole, and no one will make sure it’s handled to the letter of the law. I will. You can trust me.”

  He was aware, but it didn’t make him happy. She was a little too close to the fire on this one.

  Gordon waited for him to say something, he opted to try to get the man to agree to it.

  “Director Rothschild, she’s the best. While the president didn’t like her, he knew that if there was something to be handled, she was the one to do it.”

  Elizabeth waited.

  “Well?” she asked.

  Ethan didn’t like any of this.

  Then again, his big issue was that she looked like she went a round with a boxer.

  Gabe pondered it, and finally made up his mind.

  “If she wants the case, it’s hers,” he said, knowing he didn’t trust anyone more than Elizabeth and her skill. “I know she can do it. I have faith in her,” he stated, taking her side.

  “I will find the person who killed the president, and justice will be done. Then I’m coming for his pansy-assed team of merry screwups!” she said, pointing at the Secret Service.

  They glared at her.

  Good.

  Let them.

  She was done with it.

  Gabe looked over at his deputy director, and he could see his face.

  “Ethan? What is your input since we’re both her boss, and you have some say in this, too, since you’re married to her?”

  Yeah, he was aware. That was exactly what made his job damn hard.

  How did he make this decision?

  “Elizabeth,” her husband stated, needing to know if she was really ready for this. There would be ramifications that would reach beyond just doing the job. The president was dead, and that was HUGE. This case…it might just very well be the biggest one of her life.

  “Yes?” she asked, expecting him to tell her no, and honestly, could she blame him?

  The last few hours had to be hell for him, and she knew it. If their roles had been reversed, she’d be freaked-out.

  “Are you sure you want this mess? If it gets out, it’s going to be beyond high profile. This case is going to be difficult at best, baby. Think about it. That’s from Ethan your husband, not, Ethan Blackhawk, your boss.”

  Oh, she had.

  Yeah, she wanted it.

  It wasn’t only about someone killing the president, but about proving to his majesty’s henchmen, who he employed, that you didn’t fuck with a woman—especially an angry one.

  “I’m doing it, handsome,” she said, staring into those blue-black eyes. In them, she saw the worry and fear. In them, she saw the weight of the world, and Elizabeth understood. “Please have faith in me.”

  He moved to where she sat on the couch and placed his palm on her cheek.

  “My love, I only have faith in your ability.”

  When he gave her a soft kiss, she knew she could do it. She knew who would be in her corner.

  That left someone else.

  Turning, she took Chris’s hand in hers. She knew he had some say in this too. After all, they’d taken him and beat on him in the parking lot. She still thought about the gun
held to his head.

  “Christopher.”

  “Don’t,” he said.

  She closed her mouth.

  “Do it. Prove that you are not some middle-aged Fed who should be screwed with. Prove to them that you have this, and you can do it. This case is ours.”

  That said it all.

  She gave him a kiss and squeezed his hand. Chris, as always, had her back.

  “I’m in,” she told Gabe. “We’re in.”

  “Good,” Gordon stated.

  She smiled at the man, and it wasn’t that happy smile, but the ‘I’m going to bitch slap you for being stupid’ smile. Those who knew her got it.

  “Back the cart up, number two.”

  He bristled.

  “Technically, I’m now the president,” he stated. “Maybe you can keep that in mind.”

  She laughed.

  “Yeah, I wasn’t talking about your position. I was referring to you as a pile of shit, but okay…”

  Gabe cleared his throat.

  “Head injury. Ignore her sarcasm…,” Gabe said, trying to keep the peace. They all wanted to walk out of this cuckoo farm in one piece.

  Gordon bristled, but he didn’t say anything.

  “What am I backing the cart up to?” he asked.

  “Oh, there’s going to be a whole shitload of stipulations before I do this. First off, the body heads to the FBI morgue. If Chris doesn’t want to do the autopsy, I’ll have someone else do it.”

  “NO,” Gordon stated. “We need it kept quiet. This is a perfectly adequate facility!”

  Yeah, a prison.

  It wasn’t happening.

  They were ALL walking out of here together, and only coming back if she had more people backing her up.

  “If the body leaves here, word will get out.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Are you an idiot?” she asked, getting him to raise his eyebrows. “You can’t do an autopsy in the basement of the White House. I don’t care what happened in the fifties with Kennedy, or any other alien nonsense. When he’s stripped down, faceless and naked, who will know it’s him?”

  He thought about it.

  She had a point.

  “Know what’s suspicious? Having Gabe, Ethan, myself, and my ME here. Clearly, I didn’t look like this this morning when the media saw me before our appointment. What do you think they’re going to say when they see me now?”