Darkness Of Truth (An FBI/Romance Thriller~ Book 6) (48 page)

Tori and Julian walked in, only to find Elizabeth feeding a tiny infant. “Holy crap, did you give birth to a baby?” inquired Tori, walking toward
her friend.

Elizabeth began laughing
at the question.

Tori saw the baby bump and shook her head. “You found one?”
Now she was confused as hell.

Callen dropped his arm around Elizabeth. “This is my daughter, Catherine.”

Julian and Tori simply stared at him like they didn’t understand the language he was speaking or that he had three eyes and antennas.

Tori obviously had to ask.
“Maybe I’m just really oblivious to everything around me, but who had your daughter.”

Julian figured it out. “Desdemona.”

Elizabeth stroked the infant’s cheek. “She gave birth last night and didn’t survive.”

Tori actually gasped and covered her mouth. “Callen, I’m really sorry,” she said, unsure what to say to the man. “If there’s anything I can do for you, please let me know.”

He nodded. “Thank you.” Deep down he knew he should feel horrible the woman lost her life, but honestly he was still pretty numb over finding out he had a child.

Julian stared down at the girl. “When we were in Cypress Grove
, she was pretty sick. Desdemona kept saying it was because of the stress. It never occurred to me.”

Callen
shrugged. Again, his well of compassion had gone dry when it came to Doctor Adare.

“She wasn’t going to tell you, was she?” Julian
inquired, feeling outrage himself for the man.

Elizabeth patted his cheek
, gazing into his eyes. “No, she wasn’t, but it all worked out. Didn’t it, Cal?”

He smiled
, kissing Elizabeth. “Yeah, it did. We have our daughter and that’s all that matters.” The hurt was still there, but he refused to let anyone outside their unit see it. Callen wouldn’t allow a dead woman the victory over his heart.

Blackhawk stood behind them protectively. He dropped a hand on each of their shoulders, connecting the three of them together.

“Wow, you’re going to make the staff absolutely nuts over this one. Just when I think you couldn’t mess with them more, you pull something new out of your bag of tricks,” stated Tori, laughing. I so can’t wait to get into this baby pool.”

Elizabeth winked. “You have to split the winnings if you use anything you learn here.”

“Oh, I’m so in. You can have the winnings for the baby. I just want to screw with them all.”

Julian shook his head. “Are we working out of here today or are we heading into the office?”

Blackhawk looked down at his wife. “What’s the plan, Tex?”

Elizabeth cuddled with the little girl. She missed her son and he’d be arriving
soon. “I think you should head into the office with Tori and Julian. You need to ride the techs on the samples we dropped off yesterday. Callen isn’t leaving until dad gets here.”

“Crap, I have to tell him?” he said, laughing.

“Hell yeah you do! I’m not covering for you. You knocked a woman up that wasn’t me, and you have to break the news. Oh, and Bly. You know she’s going to have some ‘mother’ comment.”

Blackhawk started laughing. “Welcome to fatherhood and responsibility.”

Whitefox grinned because he didn’t mind it one bit. The fatherhood thing seemed pretty awesome. “I’ll head in later.”

“Send me copies of the tech reports. I’ll work out of here for a while, depending on if Dad can handle a newborn on top of CJ.” Then she dropped the bomb. “I think I’ll take a leave of absence when this assignment is over.”

Callen and Ethan stared over at her. “What?” they both said at the same time.

Julian grinned. “Come on, Tori. Let’s head over to the office and let them get over the shock in private.” They escaped out the door as quickly as possible
to her SUV. It was quite possibly the apocalypse, and they needed to get to cover before it all hit the fan.

“Why are you taking a leave of absence?” questioned Blackhawk
, when they were alone. “Are you feeling alright?”

“I want to stay home with
Catherine and give her the attention a newborn needs. When CJ was born I was home for twelve weeks with him and when EJ is born he’ll get the same thing. Why shouldn’t our little Cat get my attention?”

Callen still couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Seriously? You’re going to stay home?” It warmed him that she was completely into mothering the baby.
Obviously, when she said it was her daughter, Elizabeth wasn’t kidding.

“
I think I can work half days. It’ll give Dad a break. In four months we’re going to have three kids at ‘Fort Blackhawk-Whitefox’. That’s daunting for anyone.”

Ethan
considered it. “If you work from noon until six, I can work from eight until two.”

Callen started laughing. “What do I get to work?”

Elizabeth grinned. “Out of the three of us, you travel the most. You’re gone a week a month easily.”

That made his heart hurt. Callen didn’t want to be away from his child for a moment.

“On the weeks you’re home, you can work from the office Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. On Monday and Fridays you can work out of the home office. I’ll work later those days to get the conference calls done. With three of us, we should have enough coverage.”

Whitefox nodded. “That’s doable. I appreciate that you both are being really awesome about this.”

“It’s what family does, Cal. We take care of our own,” his brother reassured. “She’s our child and Catherine needs us.”

“We’ll work it out,” Elizabeth stated. “You better head in, Cowboy. God forbid we leave the techs alone. They’ll start some revolution on the reservation.”

Blackhawk kissed her on the head and then leaned down to drop a kiss on Catherine’s nose. “Bye baby Cat. I’ll see you later,” he said, grabbing his keys and heading to the door.

“I’m the luckiest man in the world,” whispered Callen in Elizabeth’s ear. “I have two gorgeous women in my life
, a son on the way, and a terrific brother and nephew on top of it all. I’m complete.”

Elizabeth leaned into him and cuddled against him with the baby in her arms. “Yeah, we’re pretty lucky.”

Callen enjoyed the scent of Elizabeth’s shampoo as she rested against him. “I love you.”

“I love you too, Cal.” It was probably time to discuss the obvious. “Want to talk about Desdemona’s death?
I can see it’s hurting you.”

Whitefox simply sighed. “I feel off balance. I’m so angry with her, but I feel guilty. I got her pregnant and she died because of it. I feel like I not only destroyed her life, but I ended it now too.”

Elizabeth knew the ache was swallowing him alive. Out of the three of them, Callen was the more sensitive. The pain was still very evident in his eyes. “You didn’t cause her death, Cal. You wouldn’t blame Cat would you?”

He looked horrified. “Never!”

Elizabeth kissed him. “Then how can you blame yourself? Fate had a plan and this was what was meant to be. You didn’t kill her and neither did the baby. It simply was her time. In the big ol’ book of fate, her exit from life was childbirth.”

“I didn't think people died that way anymore. It’s not like the middle ages,” he stated, running his hand over her baby bump.

“It still happens. When you give birth, it’s always a possibility that you’ll bleed to death.”

His hand suddenly stopped moving, as the idea of the same fate happening to her scared the hell out of him.
It was one more thing to worry about now.

“I’ll be fine,” she reassured. “I’ve already survived one baby, what’s one more?” Elizabeth wasn’t worried. In the back of her head, there was the lingering dream she’d had of Timothy Blackhawk. He assured her that he wouldn’t see her for a long time. Elizabeth was holding onto that.

Callen nodded. “I know you’re right in here,” he tapped his head. “But in here,” he touched his heart, “
I feel out of control.”

He wasn’t telling her anything she didn't already know. “You know
that you can mourn her. She was part of your life, and you wanted to marry her? If you need to be sad and upset about her dying you’re entitled to it. Don’t hide it because of me.”

He closed his eyes. “I know.”

“When it’s time, I’m here for you.”

Callen knew she always would be. Elizabeth was more than his rock in the storm. She was his stability and the one person in the world that could look at him and just know.

“Always, Cal.”

And for that he was forever grateful.

Ethan Blackhawk considered himself a very patient man. To be head of the second largest FBI hub in the United States, you had to ha
ve a decent amount of control. Too many lives depended on his decisions and the effectiveness of his teams. What he’d found he didn’t have patience for was jackassery.

Before even sitting down, he had company knocking on the door frame. The man standing there looked downright pissed off, and ready to strike like an angry viper.

“Chief Longtree, what can I do for you?” he asked, sitting and brushing lint from the sleeve of his suit jacket.

“What the hell went on at the council building yesterday? I had three angry emails and a call from Shaman Tallman and Chief Soaring Eagle, instructing me to boot the FBI from this office.”

Blackhawk laughed. “Yeah, you can tell us to leave, but honestly we don’t have to comply. You have three dead bodies and possibly more victims.”

That stopped him in his tracks. “Pardon?”

“I need a case file on a past murder. It’s been brought to my attention that when Julian’s father died over two decades ago, when his body was found there was a white feather.”

The man looked dumbfounded
and immediately, his temper cooled. “Really?”

Ethan shrugged. “Apparently. Now, if that’s the case, I can trace the path of this killer back almost twenty five years.  As of this moment, the council has a bigger issue to worry about than my wife being a bit rambunctious.”

“Today is getting worse and worse by the minute,” he stated, shaking his head. “I already have a pounding headache and on top of that, I’m to tell you that your team goes nowhere on the Rez without one of the officers.”

Blackhawk laughed. “You’re so damn lucky that my wife isn’t here. She’d tell you exactly what to tell them, and in your native tongue.”

Longtree looked over his shoulder to make sure they were alone. “Did she really tell them off just like she did officer Yazzie?”

He nodded. “Yep. She loves when people assume she’s some back woods hick. The clothes are all just a show. Elizabeth dresses like that to mess with people.
It’s a little known fact, but my wife is incredibly smart and intuitive.”

“The council was pissed.”

“Yeah, well she did apologize to the shaman.”

He frowned. “Really? He didn’t tell the
chief. Shaman Tallman said he wanted an apology from the outsider.”

Blackhawk laughed. “He already got one. He’s not getting another. I wouldn’t have given
him one to begin with if it were up to me.”

“Me either.”

There was another knock at the door. “Director?” came the chipper voice of their head tech.

Blackhawk held up his hand to stop her. “Chief Longtree. I really need that file on Blake Littlemoon if you wouldn’t mind
retrieving it for me. I need to talk DNA with Christina, and then we can continue our discussion.”

The man nodded, excusing himself.

“Come in Christina.”

She grinned, looking around for Elizabeth before she began her naked fanaticizing of her boss. “I ran into Julian and Tori in the lab, and they said you’d be up here.”

“I was heading there next. Unfortunately, I was sidelined by the chief of police as I walked in here. You look all happy, what did you find?”

“I analyzed the two blood samples and the rock you dropped off last night, and we have a little problem,” she said, immediately.

After Callen’s use of that term that morning, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “Is it going to make me weep?”

She looked at him funny. “Uh no. Do you want me to make you cry?”

Blackhawk laughed. “Thanks for that, Christina. What’s the issue?” He might as well get it all out in the open.

“Well the issue is one of the blood samples isn’t from the dead victims.”

That piqued his interest. “You think we have the killer’s DNA?”

She grinned. “I believe we do, but I can’t
say definitively. I’d like to go back out where Julian found this and look around. We searched the clearing and the cave, but didn’t go too deep into the tree line. I may find us more.”

Ethan thought about it. This would be the perfect use of
Longtree’s staff and get them off his back if they needed to go out. “Okay, you can head there, but you’ll have to take the Rez officers with you. The council isn’t feeling too magnanimous with us having free reign on the lands. Apparently, we’re untrustworthy.”