Yes, it was in a pretty package, but this was deeper. She was compassionate, loving, and accepted him.
“I like being your bad girl,” she admitted. “Morning, noon, and night.”
“Amen,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows. “That’s my holy trinity right there.”
That was the beauty of this man.
He would always lift her heart, keep her sane, and give her levity. Today, she needed it. At this point, her hunt for O’Banion was looking hopeless.
It was pissing her off.
Still, it was time to make amends. A selfish wife was a lonely wife.
“Tell me about the book,” she offered, knowing it was about time she put him first. He was the only one of the three of them that had a job, also, outside of being Feds. Certainly, he would want to talk about it.
It was time to put him first.
“Well, it’s going to loop back to the first one. I’m going to make a series, and resurrect that sexy babe who was the star of them. It seems right.”
“Then go for it.”
“I plan on it. I have a few other books in the works, and I’m really excited about the one coming out on our wedding day.”
“What’s it about?” she asked.
“You’ll have to wait and see. It’s top-secret. You’ll get to read it AFTER our week of fornication. There won’t be time for reading books.”
She couldn’t wait.
Elizabeth leaned over, and she gave him a kiss.
At least something was working for one of them. She was shit out of luck on her job. Callen deserved all the success he received. The man worked tirelessly to make a name for himself, and he did a damn good job.
“I can’t wait to read them both. Want me to go in and kink up the sex scenes in the series one?”
He laughed like a lunatic.
“Oh, beautiful, I may need you to take them down a notch. The woman in my books is a total pervert. She’s a woman after my own heart.”
That made her snort.
They all knew who the king of kink was in their relationship. Ethan was straight-laced until he was pushed over the edge, and she played off their needs. If they needed Miss Kitty, they got her. If they needed her to play the woman bedding down with Jackson James, she was there.
To her, she was the lucky one.
She got to have fun with it.
“My damn name better not be in there,” she stated. “If it is, you’re going to hurt. In fact, don’t dedicate it to me. You know how the media is.”
Oh, he was aware.
The second he dedicated his books to his spouses, it opened up the floodgates for the questioning and the assumptions.
“Note to self, remove Belizabeth Elackhawk from the books and come up with a better name for her.”
She sipped her ice-cold coffee and laughed at her husband. Callen always made her giggle. Beneath all that bulk and hair, he was a goofball.
Her goofball.
“I’d appreciate it. We don’t need the world to know what goes on in our bedroom. You’re a dirty man and we should be ashamed of ourselves.”
He rubbed his hands together maniacally.
If it were up to him, that was never going to change.
Before he could offer up some of his own lechery—to prove she was damn right—there was a knock on their conference/office door.
“Come in!” they called at the same time.
When the door opened, she didn’t expect to see their visitor standing there. It was Detective Max Chase.
He was far from home.
Boston was eight hours away, and he should be back home doing his detective thing.
That he was there…
Yeah, it didn’t bode well for her.
Something was up.
“Uh, you’re a little shy of Boston, aren’t you?” she asked, getting up to shake his hand.
Callen did the same, and then they offered him a seat.
He took it.
The man looked nervous, and that made them both curious and edgy.
“I took some vacation time. I needed to come and see you. I needed to ask you some questions, and I think they’re ones that only you can answer. I came across them when you left.”
She was good with that.
If he wanted to take his vacation and visit DC, who was she to argue? At least, he was taking a vacation. Her first one in a while would be her honeymoon.
Still, she didn’t know what this could be about.
“I wish I could give you some information, Max, but I haven’t found O’Banion yet. The US Marshals won’t help a girl out.”
He leaned back and took it all in.
Here was the woman running the Violent Crimes Unit, she was all over the news, media, and the papers, and yet she was working out of a conference room in jeans and boots.
She was an enigma.
He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t been thinking about her since the day she left.
“It’s not about that,” he admitted. “It’s about this,” he said, reaching into his coat and pulling out something.
“What?” she asked, watching him.
Reverently, he handed her the card in the envelope, and immediately, Elizabeth recognized it.
Wow.
This took her back.
Clearly, the man had been using those detective skills to find out things about the case that had been the end of his father all those years ago.
It looked like the truth was coming out.
“Oh,” she said.
Callen watched her.
“And this came with it,” Max offered, reaching under his shirt. “I’ve worn it a long time, and I thought it was my fathers. I never realized it was yours. It is yours, isn’t it?”
He took the cross off and placed it on the desk. It was tiny and gold, and it brought back so many memories.
She sighed but didn’t touch it.
That day had changed her.
Irrevocably.
That was the day she gave up on religion and believing that everything happened because of a plan. She’d walked away from religion after watching a good man die and leave his child behind. She’d turned her back on God when she’d had to watch a young man doing heinous things to women.
To her, God died that day with Max’s father.
She’d let it go so she could go on.
“What’s going on?” Callen asked, seeing the look on her face. He knew for a fact that the necklace was hers. He’d seen pictures of her with something similar when she was younger. They’d been on the mantle of her home in Salem.
“That was a long time ago,” she said.
Callen didn’t know if she was answering him or Max’s question, but his wife looked weary. Like suddenly, the past had come back to weigh heavily on her shoulders.
He didn’t like it.
Not one bit.
Still, Max wasn’t done.
“I need you to explain it to me. You said you worked with him, but this was from you, wasn’t it? You’re E. LaRue, and you knew him more than just in passing.”
Yeah, it was all true.
Elizabeth knew it was time, so she rattled off the date that she’d never forget.
Ever.
It was forever burned into her memory.
“That’s the day he died. That’s the day he went down in the line of duty against Michael O’Banion, and, yes, that was my necklace.”
He was aware.
“What do you want to know about him?” she asked, willing to help him. After all, it had been his father.
She’d want the same thing if she were in his shoes.
“I need to know everything. After you left Boston, Levi called me when he saw you handling the ‘Marionette Killer’ case. He asked about you, and he let on that he was VERY familiar with you. He’s been a surrogate dad to me the last few years.”
She was glad.
Levi McAllister had been a decent man trying to clean up a sick city filled with
garbage.
Irish mob garbage.
That had been one hell of a battle, and as of late, it had paid off. Boston wasn’t being sucked under.
Crime didn’t win.
“I’m glad he was there for you. He genuinely liked your dad. He wanted him to head the mob task force. He didn’t trust anyone else.”
Max Chase listened.
He’d only had one side of the story. Well, and his mother’s take on it. Now he wanted her to tell him everything.
Max needed to know about his dad.
The man behind the badge.
“All those years ago, your father was fighting an uphill battle. He was a letch of a cop who hit on me nonstop, but I genuinely liked him. He talked about you a lot.”
“Uh, awkward,” Callen stated.
Max laughed.
“That sounds like what my mom has told me about him. She said the ladies liked him.”
“Oh, he was charming, funny, and one of the good guys. I didn’t know him for long, but sometimes you have to go with your gut, and mine has never let me down. Max Senior was a damn good cop.”
He was glad to hear that.
He pointed at the items on the desk.
“I needed you to know that your card changed everything. I was so angry and pissed at the FBI, the mob, and the world when I was growing up that it was consuming me. My dad was gone, my mom felt horribly guilty, and I was lost. On my eighteenth birthday, Levi showed up and gave me that. It was dated the day they buried my dad.”
Oh, she was aware.
She’d wanted Levi to do that one thing, and she was glad he had. That was her way of paying it forward for Max. He went into that building first and saved her life.
Elizabeth wanted to save his son.
“I asked him to give it to you when you turned eighteen. I wanted you to know the truth.”
He appreciated that.
“It made me decide to do what he wanted me to do, and what he could never finish. When I read it, there was this need to fight for justice. I’d been robbed of it, but I stopped feeling sorry for me, and began feeling sorry for everyone else who had been wronged too.”
That was what made a good cop.
You had to stop thinking about yourself and rush headlong into the crazy. You could die, but that was part of the badge.
Cops.
Feds.
Detectives.
They all had to have that code, or they weren’t worth the title or job. It took a special kind of lunacy to do what they did. She knew.
She was as cuckoo as they came.
“I need to know one thing,” Max said. “I need the truth, and while I love Levi and my mom, they will protect me. I know you’ll be honest. Cop to cop.”
“Okay,” she stated. Already, Elizabeth knew what he was going to ask.
“Was he crooked?”
She leaned back in her chair.
“Not in the least.”
Max relaxed.
“In fact, he was the opposite. What got him killed was his need to kick Michael O’Banion’s ass and bury him. His need for justice is what ended his life—well, that and betrayal by his partner, Patty O’Brien.”
That was what he needed.
Max needed to hear that from a neutral party. She owed him nothing, and Max knew, from researching her, that she’d give it to him straight. Elizabeth Blackhawk didn’t sugarcoat anything.
That wasn’t her style.
“Can you tell me more about him?” he asked.
She thought back to that day. It was so long ago, and yet, it was never forgotten. She’d left that building shot, and with Max’s blood and brains on her. She still saw the hole in his head.
She still could smell the stench of organs.
Of his bowels releasing after death.
It was something a cop never forgot.
Callen could see her struggling with it. While she looked calm and collected on the outside, she was rattled.
All the good investigators suffered from the nightmares, the trauma, and the PTSD of their jobs. If they didn’t, they were psychopaths.
All three of them had nightmares.
They lived them.
Gently, he took her hand, sharing his strength. Their fingers twined, and she used it.
“On the first day I met him, he tried to get into my britches and date me. The thing is, he didn’t mean it. His way of breaking the ice was being an asshole. He’d make a comment, but smile and laugh. Your father was very likable.”
“I hear that about him,” Max said.
“He loved you more than anything,” she said. “Max told me all about you every time he could. He was fighting to get custody of you. Your mother…she wasn’t a fan.”
“Yeah, I know. She regrets not telling him about me sooner. She’s asked me for forgiveness, but how do I blame her for it?”
She understood.
That right there…it was proof he was a decent human being.
He was his father’s son.
“He was so dedicated to being a father, that we were in the middle of a case and he had to go home for the night early. He’d promised to be there for you. You, as a cop, know how hard that is.”
He did.
“Was he a good cop?”
“He was an amazing cop. You should be proud of your old man. Everything Levi told you about him—it was legit. Max was one of the good guys. Your legacy is your father’s tenacity. Hold your head high. He never played dirty.”
Max closed his eyes.
Elizabeth could see the weight lift off of him with those words. She could tell that the boy needed someone to tell him what he feared others had lied about.
“He was tough, he wanted to clean up the city for you, and he did. He died, but eventually, that was the catalyst to getting Michael O’Banion out.”
“The card?”
She owed him that.
“On the day of his funeral, I stayed so I could make sure the commissioner was given that card from me. It was my way of saying sorry. He went down on my watch.”
He corrected her.
“My dad went down fighting the bad guys. That’s on them, not on you.”
She pushed the file to the middle of the table.
“I’m still fighting those bad guys for Max, for the child you were, and the woman I once was. When I returned, nothing was the same. I’d started a relationship, found myself, and realized that I was a different person.”
“Who killed him?” he asked.
“Tommy ‘The Greek’ was given a heads-up before we raided his home. We needed him to build a case against Michael O’Banion, and as we found out on the last case, his partner was crooked. I suspected, but I didn’t have proof.”
“Then I’m glad Joey took him out. I hate saying it, but for my dad, he got justice from his crooked partner.”
“Oh, he did.”
“How did it happen?”
Max listened.
“Someone let him know we were coming. There was no way he wasn’t ready for us. In the five seconds that it took to bust the door down, shout about the raid, and enter, he had been ready with a high caliber gun. He took one shot to the head. Again, that someone was Patty.”
Max listened.
He’d stolen the autopsy report that no one would ever let him see. So far, she wasn’t lying.
“To this day, I struggle with it,” she said. “On that day, Max went through the door first because he thought his dick was bigger than mine.”
Callen squeezed her hand.
He knew that wasn’t true.
No one had bigger brass ones than his wife, and she’d proved it time and time again.
“He didn’t suffer. Max didn’t have time to even fire. The first shot killed him and the second got me in the arm.”
He kept listening.
“They thought at first that I shot him. That I’d ‘accidentally’ discharged my weapon. Only, after about five hours, the ballistics didn’t match my gun. T
he hole…”
He understood when she stopped talking.
“Levi said that you stood there for him. That you were there when he was brought into autopsy. Why?”
“Because he was on me. Whether I’m blamed or not, I had his back, and he put me there. When you have someone’s back, you follow through.”
“You didn’t do this.”
Callen wished she’d listen to him, but he knew his wife. In her world, she had to carry it.
That was her penance for the sins she’d committed. It was for the lives she took, and the ones she didn’t regret like ‘The Butcher’.
“That picture…,” she began.
“It had blood on it when I got it.”
She took a deep breath.
“It was his. The picture was tucked into his helmet for a reason. He carried you with him everywhere, and on that day, when he was killed in cold blood by one of O’Banion’s men, you were with him. You were always with him, Maximus Chase, and now he’s always with you.”
Yes, yes, he was.
“Thank you for having his back. Even though you think you failed, you didn’t. When he went down,” Max began, “you had his back for the rest of these years. You didn’t have to leave me this card. You didn’t have to leave me this cross. You did because you had his back, and I will always be grateful for that. It made me a man he’d be proud of, Elizabeth.”
She was getting emotional.
“I miss him,” Max said, wiping his eyes as he spoke to her. “I miss him every damn day. When a parent dies, you expect it one day. When they die as a cop, it’s hard.”
Oh, he was preaching to the choir.
It was time to continue having the dead man’s back. His son was suffering, and as a mother, she wanted to heal him.
“I know how you feel. My dad was killed in his own kitchen. He was a sheriff, and he fought for justice too.”
Max listened.
He wasn’t surprised.
You could tell she was a child of a cop. It was born into her blood, engrained in her every fiber, and it was the essence of her being.
“He was working a case and the killer poisoned him. I wasn’t there, and I wish every day I was, so I know how you feel, Max.”
She didn’t tell him that it was her stepmother and brother who had been behind a string of killings.
“It sucks.”
“Yeah, it really does.”
Dead are Forgotten Page 6
