Darkness Of Truth (An FBI/Romance Thriller~ Book 6) (31 page)

He took an elbow to the ribs when the men started laughing. “You two are real damn funny. I guess you both forgot how evil I can be. I see we need a refresher on it and soon.” Elizabeth glanced back and forth between them. “And stop telling people you were the ‘Kings of Larceny’. We know it, but the world needs to stay oblivious.”

Ethan gave his brother a fist bump. “For the record, I earned all my feathers. They’re supposed to be displayed and not locked away, but I have them in their own box. I don’t have enough for a warbonnet. Granddad worked a long time to get his.”

Callen grinned. “Mine are in a box too. The last time they were out we wore them in a ceremony.”

Elizabeth began thinking about both men partially naked, wearing war paint and the feathers. The flush crept up her neck as the heat filled her body.

The Natives in the room found it funny and laughed, knowing what she was fantasizing about. Elizabeth tended to have a dirty mind, especially while pregnant. It was pretty much a sex fest in her brain.

“Okay, so then the feathers shouldn’t be hard to track.”

Elizabeth regained focus. “We hope.”

“We have two notifies today. Someone has to go back out to the Sumner farm and to
Hopper house to tell the family.”

Ethan and Callen immediately started Rock Paper scissors. Neither one wanted to do the notify. That was the worst job for either of them.

Callen won.

“Damn it!” Blackhawk muttered. “I hate notifies.”

Elizabeth snickered. “I like how you both think you had an option in going. You’re both on Notify duty. Nice try though.”

“Shit,” muttered Callen. “I’m going to have the Hopper
sister climbing all over me again. She was a bit too handsy for a woman in mourning.”

Tori laughed. “I’ll take
family visits if you want. I don’t mind doing them.”

Elizabeth contemplated it. “The only problem with that is whoever does the notify
, also needs to head to Sheriff Dickhead, I mean Duffy’s office. He needs to be informed and is most likely going to want to join you. I noticed there are signs all over town with his name on it, and I’m guessing it’s an election year.”

The man didn’t really bother her. “I’m not worried about him. He’s a lecherous asshole and nothing more. If he puts his hands on me, I’ll break them.”

Elizabeth wiped a mock tear. “I think I’m in love.”

Tori snickered. “I’ll go get my gun and badge
. Then I’ll be ready to head into work.”

The three
waited until she was gone. When she was out of earshot, Blackhawk spoke. “Julian’s going to have to go with her, and we both know Duffy’s going to be an issue.”

Elizabeth nodded. “I’m aware, but this is work boys, and personal life has to come second in the field. You know that. One of
you pull him aside and scare the shit out of him,” she said, pointing at Ethan. “Tell him if he acts like a Jackwagon, he won’t get Tori back. That should do it.”

“You’re evil. Do you use this woman manipulation on us when we’re not aware?” questioned Callen.

“Pretty much every day.”

             
                          *   *   *

It wasn’t a good day at all. Julian
was barely able to roll out of bed. His head was pounding from the booze and his chest was on fire. It honestly felt like someone kicked the shit out of him. When he opened his eyes, he prayed the previous day had been nothing more than a bad dream. Yet, when he looked around, Tori was gone and reality came crashing back. Her side of the bed was ice cold, and so was his heart.

The memories of his
stupidity came flooding back to him, and he wanted desperately to just slide back into sleep and hide. Then he remembered what his brother suggested; follow his woman around as much as possible.

Between
Justin’s words, the screaming alarm, pounding headache and burning chest, he knew today was going to be a disaster. Climbing out of bed, he stumbled into the bathroom to the medicine cabinet. Digging out a bottle of aspirin, he popped three and prayed for divine intervention.

Staring back
at him in the mirror was one hell of a hot mess.

Great
!

Today wasn’t only going to blow, but everyone was going to know he was a bomb waiting to go off. Julian
stood in the shower, gently washing the tattoo he’d gotten across the front of his chest. After eight beers, it seemed like a really good idea. Now it just hurt like a bitch.

When he saw his brother, he
was a dead man. Then again, what had he expected? Justin tended to be the out of control brother and when he went off the deep end, Julian was generally dragged with him.

When the shower was done, he smeared some cream his brother handed him over the entire tattoo and layered up shirts, so it wouldn’t ooze through his polo.

“What the hell was I thinking?” he muttered, grabbing his sunglasses and riding jacket. If he was going to suffer all day, he might as well enjoy being out on his motorcycle. Maybe it would cheer him up.

Rolling it out of his garage, he sat there for a moment staring at Tori’s bike. The pain rushed through him. They’d yet to ride together, since the weather was just breaking, and now it sat there as a reminder of what
he’d just lost.

He’d
thrown away the only good thing in his life.

How was he
supposed to move on?

“I’m an asshole,” he muttered again, closing the garage and locking it. Starting up the bike
, he pulled out of his driveway and headed to the police station.

Today began his penance.

He was going to have to stand beside a woman he loved, knowing she’d began the process of moving on without him. Gone were the rights to touch her, kiss her, and love her, all because he allowed anger to fester inside of him.

All logic had left as he threw away trust and faith to appease the jealous beast he’d allowed back into his heart
.

It occurred to
Julian that he was dead wrong.

He wasn’t a hot mess. His entire life was.

                                        *   *   *

Pulling into the p
arking lot at the same time as the Denali, Julian watched Tori hop out and stand beside Elizabeth. He was grateful his eyes were hidden behind his shades. They gave him a little iota of protection from the woman that he’s pushed away and out of his life.

His heart skipped a beat, as the wind blew her red hair around. As if she knew what he was thinking, Tori pulled it back, restraining it in a ponytail.

Life came rushing back into him, just from seeing her. Dropping his riding jacket over the seat, he walked towards his bosses.

“Hey Julian, Good to see you,” stated Blackhawk.

“Thanks,” he muttered.

Ethan was amused. “You’re right on time.”

“Yep.”

Elizabeth didn’t even look at the man. If she did, she’d laugh. He looked like hell, and although she felt bad for him, he deserved it. “I’ll meet you three down in autopsy. Tori and I are heading there now,” she stated, walking away with the woman.

“Can we talk to you?” Ethan asked, not moving.

“Yeah.” Julian kept it to one word answers or he may puke
, and it had nothing to do with the raging hangover.

Both men moved
closer, lowering their voices.

“
Are you going to be able to pull this off today? You look like shit,” stated Ethan, pulling no punches.

Callen went next. “You’re hung over aren’t you?”

“Yep.”

“How bad
are you?” Blackhawk asked, knowing they couldn’t send him out riding a beer high.

“
I have a bitch of a headache.”

Blackhawk looked at his brother, putting his wife’s plan into action. “Go home. You can’t do this today.”

He pulled off his sunglasses, the words of his brother bouncing around in his brain. He needed to be near her all day, ensuring she wouldn’t forget him. “I can handle it.”

Both men looked doubtful.

“Ever screw up so bad that if you didn’t fix it fast, you just knew it was going to be ruined forever?” he asked, softly.

“Hell yeah,” answered Callen. “All the time.”

“We’re men, Julian. We screw up with women. It’s some fault in our DNA. Get used to it.”

He shook his head. “I crossed a big line
, and I need to fix this. If you send me home, I won’t get her back.”

Ethan spoke next. “Here’s the deal. You want Tori back in the worst way, so don’t act like an asshole today. If she sees you being a jackwagon, you have zero chance of redemption. Take it from us, we
’ve been run through the woman wringer.”

Callen laughed. “We’re married to Elizabeth. She’s the mother of all reapers
when it comes to men’s balls. Listen to us and maybe you’ll survive.”

“Don’t lose your cool, stay calm and for Christ’s sake, look apologetic,”
Ethan added.

Julian took a deep breath. “Okay, I can do this.”

Blackhawk patted him on the shoulder. “Go in and get some coffee and meet us downstairs. Today’s going to feel like the longest day of your life.”

“Thanks,” he said, walking away.

Callen looked over at his brother. “I can’t believe that worked. Elizabeth is maniacal.”

He started laughing.

“I’m starting to believe she’s been in charge since the first day I met her. We’re nothing more than puppets,” Callen added, grinning.

“Hell yeah, but think about the sex.”

Callen did. “It’s so worth it.”

His brother dropped his arm around his shoulder. “Oh yeah it is.”

The lab was a twitter in activity. The techs were hustling and the doctors were busy with the bodies. One was stripped of its muscle and organs, while the other was still intact. The team was still trying to find what the mystery substance was that coated the bodies along with the carbon.

Both doctors were working their asses off to get Elizabeth the results.

“We can’t figure it out,” he finally said, frustrated.

Elizabeth had never seen Chris look so stirred up over anything. “Doc, did you give it to Christina to run? She’s generally really good at little
obscurities like this.”

“We’ve run all the standard tests on it
, and now we’re going into the ambiguous substances category.”

As the
three men walked in and everyone glanced over, all conversation paused.

Tori wanted to rush to him and hold him in her arms. Her poor Julian looked like hell. Someone went on a bender last night.
She almost wanted to smile. Obviously, he was feeling bad about what he did.

When Julian stood in the lab, the noise was making
his head throb. Then he noticed Tori was watching him with her beautiful smoky blue eyes. Lifting his sunglasses off his face, he stared back at her. He let all the pain show. Julian wanted her to know he was hurting for what he did.

There was hurt
present in her features too.

Tori
might be exceptionally good at keeping her emotions in check, but her eyes spoke to him. Hope began to blossom. Maybe there was a chance to get her back after all.

“We’re going to run the
mystery material all over again,” continued Chris. “We’ll figure it out. It appears the substance was placed in the fire and the smoke carried it onto the victims as the killer skinned them.”

“What do we know about
it?” inquired Blackhawk.

“It ha
d high concentration levels. It had to be put into the fire for a reason. We just have no idea why.”

Julian listened to the doctors. “
Did you check Peyote?”

Everyone looked over at him.

“You’re on a reservation. What do you think it’s going to be?” he muttered. “The killer was getting high as a kite as he was skinning his victims.”

Chris ran to his tablet and began furiously typing. “
We never checked Lophophora williamsii. The common mescal button could be it!”

Everyone waited while the doctor played with this chemical analysis, comparing it.

“It’s a match. We didn’t run plant based analysis, since it originated in the fire.”

Julian spoke
, pushing past the pounding headache. “It’s common here in ritual. Next to booze, Peyote is a big problem. Talk to the chief of police, and I’m sure he’ll confirm it.”

Elizabeth grinned. “You should get shit faced drunk more often Julian. It’s been incredibly useful.”

“Thanks,” he muttered, staring at Tori. What he wouldn’t give to just hold her against his body.

Chris was excited and grateful to the
Native.  His entire mood was lifted. “We ran the DNA that you brought in against our victims. Number one, Andrew Sumner, is the more decomposed victim. We stripped his body since he was in pretty rough shape. You can do the notify to the wife, but explain he’s not looking quite like himself.”

“Okay, so we’re one for one. How about number two?” asked Callen, scribbling down notes.

“Victim two is definitely Jeffrey Hopper. When I opened his skull I found skull fractures. He bled a little into the brain. It wasn’t fatal immediately, but it would have eventually led to skull pressure and death.” Chris pulled back the sheet on him.

Elizabeth
ignored the man’s face and eyes. “What do we have?”

Chris pointed to the area of the chest, and everyone gathered ar
ound the table. “With victims one and two, they were clean strikes. The knife went in, and did its job effectively. With victim three, I believe he fought. The strike was one here,” he tapped Julian’s chest. “And then one here.”

Julian fought hard to not flinch and didn’t think he pulled it off. The man’s fingers hit right on the sorest part of the tattoo.

Tori was watching Julian and something was definitely wrong. He looked to be in pain. She hoped he didn't do something stupid like a barroom brawl while intoxicated.

“Now we go
back to victim three, William Boyd. I can now confirm that it was the same killer. The knife cuts and removal of the skin were methodical and identical. I’ll even venture to say the same knife was used on all three victims.”

“I’d need a shitload of peyote to do this to another human being,” added Tori. “The killer had to be high.”

“The bodies have a heavy concentration of the drug covering them. The killer had them relatively close to the smoke.”

Tony Magnus spoke up. “Peyote is very common in Native American rituals.”

All three natives in the room laughed, thinking about the absurdity of the sentence. On the Rez, you could call pulling weeds a ritual, just to get stoned.

Elizabeth lifted her eyebrow. “I know the men in my life are very aware that peyote is illegal and banned in the United States.”

Again they laughed.

Julian finally spoke up. “It doesn’t grow here indigenously. But natives take a little trip to other southern reservations, get some plants and grow them in their homes. It’s Indian pot.”

Ethan grinned and said nothing. “Hey, when on the Rez,” he stated, laughing.

She pointed at him. “I expect that from him,”
She pointed at Callen, “but not you.”

Whitefox started laughing. “I refuse to implicate myself in any way. But I will say this, Julian is absolutely correct. For twenty bucks and a car ride, you can get a clipping of Peyote and grow your own.”
When she pointed at their unborn child, he continued. “Or so I read online.”

Ethan
snickered, continuing for his brother. “Most peyote takes up to ten years to mature, but there are hybrid versions that only take three. You can get different aged plants and have at it.” Then he saw the look his wife was giving him too. “Or so Callen told me when he read that article.”

The doctors
began laughing. The Blackhawk/Whitefox story game was funny as hell to watch happen. The three of them made it enjoyable to come to work.

Julian wished he had some peyote to kill
the wicked ache behind his eyes. “I’d like to take another look at the original site. There were two paths into the clearing, and I need to check it out in the daylight.”

Elizabeth grinned. “Oh, well you have another job today. You get to go to Sheriff Duffy’s fine office and help Agent Christensen do the notifies. That is unless you want to ride with the men and further discuss peyote. I don’t mind handing Duffy his ass when he hits on women.” Elizabeth let that hang there until Julian got the meaning.

“Hell no! I’m going with Tori.” She may hate him, but he wasn’t letting that womanizing asshole anywhere near her. Duffy liked to pick up the opposite sex, use them like tissues and toss them aside. The last thing he wanted was that scumbag near the woman he loved.

“Chris, when Christina rolls into the lab today, tell her I need something on those feathers by end of night. I want to know the species before I go to bed or I’m going to go all crazy up in the lab.
Do any of you want a wacked out pregnant woman losing her damn mind?”

Tony snickered and then cleared his throat. “We’ll pass that along to
her. She was working late last night. I’m sure she’ll be in soon.”

Everyone walked out of the building
, standing in the cool breeze to have their discussion. It was time to divide and conquer.

“Cal, can you give them the keys to your Denali?”

He pulled them out and tossed them to Julian. “You break her, you bought her.”

Tori took the keys from Julian’s hand. “Then I better drive. He looks like he won’t pass a breathalyzer.”

When her hand touched his, immediately his fingers tried to hold onto hers as long as possible. The familiarity warmed a part of his heart, and hope continued growing as she didn’t pull away as if burned.

“Remember,” Elizabeth warned. “You head to
the sheriff’s, you do the notifies, and after that if you go into the reservation land to look at the site you text us. I don’t want the killer taking shots at you.”

Tori nodded. “Come on, Julian,” she
stated, walking towards the vehicle.

Elizabeth grinned. “Ahhhh, they’ll be fine by tonight. You can tell she’s ready to forgive him. Julian showing up looking like hell worked in his favor.”

“Mercy huh?” Ethan said grinning, then realizing that Elizabeth had yet to tell them exactly what their part of the day was going to entail. “I do have a big question for you, Lyzee,” he said, getting that nervous feeling.

“Yeah?”

“You said that we’re tracking the feathers, but we don’t exactly have any information on them. So, what exactly are we doing today?”

Elizabeth grinned wickedly.

“Oh shit,” muttered Callen. “She’s got something planned that’s going to make us cringe. That’s her ‘trouble’ smile.”

She simply shrugged. “We have peyote and eagle feathers. That screams ritual to me.
What about you two?”

Both men simply stared
, knowing it wasn’t going to be good.

“I’m thinking that I want to hit up the Shaman and council all at once.
I’m curious to see how they’ll react when confronted with what’s going on here.”

Ethan stared openmouthed. “You can’t go in front of the council. You’re not Native, Elizabeth. You know that.”