Darkness Of Truth (An FBI/Romance Thriller~ Book 6) (52 page)

Ethan
simply pointed at their partner. “You want her man handling some news guys while she’s pregnant?”

“Okay, I’ll buy that, but why aren’t you doing it?” he questioned. “You’re better at this.”

“You’re the liaison to the Native American community. This technically is all you.” Blackhawk patted him on the back, noticing the look of sheer terror on his face. “Don’t panic. This scenario might not happen.”

They
began the walk back to the ATV’s and Elizabeth linked her arm through his. “It’ll be fine, Cal. I’ll help you get through it.”

He just stared ahead. “Yeah, okay.”

Ethan climbed onto one of the ATV’s and patted the seat behind him, winking at his wife. “On second thought, you better ride with Callen, he looks a bit gray.”

She nodded and hoped onto the back, wrapping her arms around his waist. “I got you, Cal. No worries, my love,” she whispered in his ear.

Right then and there he started praying the media didn’t get wind of any of this. There wasn’t enough reassurance in the world to get him through winging it on camera.

The ride back to the police station wasn’t filled with talk about the killer. Elizabeth had immediately
pulled out her phone, calling Wyler to make sure the kids were happy and there weren’t any issues. When he answered on the third ring, there was a crying baby in the background.

“Is everything okay?” she asked, wishing she could rush home and pick up Catherine. Her
screams were breaking Elizabeth’s heart. Thank God the phone wasn’t on speaker, or Callen would be losing his mind.

“She’s good. Your son tried to eat her face. I told you teaching him to kiss at nine months wasn’t a good idea.” Wyler was laughing.

Elizabeth grinned at the visual. It didn't surprise her that CJ would try and eat someone. The kid had one hell of an appetite already. “We’ll be working out of the house later. Right now we have another victim and have to do an interview and a search of his house. We’ll be home as soon as possible.”

“You’re not calling because you don’t think I can handle it, are you?” he asked, waiting for her answer.

“Hell no! You’re one bad ass granddad. I just miss my kids and nothing more.”

Ethan started laughing.

“Kiss them for us. We’ll see you later.” She hung up the phone and shook her head. “Damn, he’s suspicious. Oh, and our son tried to eat our daughter,” she said, pointing from man to man.

“What?” Callen looked alarmed.

Blackhawk laughed more. “Cal, I doubt she meant literally. You’re all wound up. Take a deep breath and just chill out. You’re all tied up in knots.”

Whitefox stared at Elizabeth in confirmation. “Is she okay?”

“Apparently, CJ wanted to make out with her.”

Oddly that didn’t offer him any reassurance or comfort
either. “Excuse me?” he asked, his cheek twitching.

“He was practicing kissing on his baby sister. Nothing more, big guy,” she answered, laughing.

That made him grin. The idea that CJ was kissing her already was sweet. “We taught the boy well. We just need to teach him not to do it with his sister.”

“Well, technically, their cousins
and where I’m from in the south that’s completely acceptable,” Elizabeth added, tormenting the man further.

Blackhawk
couldn’t help but snicker. “We don’t need that happening,” he teased, laughing. “The neighbors are already talking about us three.”

Callen shook his head. “You two are seriously messing with me big time.”

“Yeah we are.” Elizabeth offered Ethan a fist bump. Both of them knew they could get away with it, only because Callen was generally the most laid back of the three.

He smiled good naturedly. “I can’t wait to get home with our kids. We’re going to have to paint the room we were planning on making a playroom pink.”

Ethan thought about it. “We can still make one room a playroom. Wyler’s not using his anymore now that he’s above the garage. “We can use that for the kids to play, paint little Cat’s room pink and put her and EJ in there until the boys are ready to share a room. Then we have a solution to the problem.”

“Until we have two kids up at night,” laughed Elizabeth. “Holy crap we’re going to be freaking exhausted. This is why I’m taking time off from being a baby machine.”

That caught Blackhawk by surprise, causing him to glance over. “Really? What happened to letting fate decide?”

Elizabeth laughed.

“She told me she’s going on something to stay baby free or abstaining from sex.” It was his turn to screw with his uptight brother and the way to do it was to hit him where it hurt.

“What?” he
replied, glancing over at her. “Seriously?”

She still said nothing
, only laughed.

“No sex, Ethan. That’s going to completely suck,”
Callen added fuel to the fire.

He thought about it. “
It’s never going to happen, Cal. Our Lyzee initiates sex more often than we do. She’ll never make it a week before the abstinence thing will go right out the window. I’m not worried.”

Elizabeth winked at Ethan. She knew he was spot on and wasn’t going to refute it
, and that’s why she was going on something to give her body a break. “Oh look! Time for work and a subject change,” she retorted, trying to get everyone focused on work again.

They all hopped out, watching the body being carried around the back of the building. First
, they needed to head into the offices upstairs and talk to the chief of police. The team was going to need to get some leg work done.

“Julian, Tori can you keep an eye on the tech team?” called Blackhawk.

Julian nodded as they followed them to the back of the building.

Once inside
, the three directors began searching for Rick Longtree. They needed some assistance, and he was the man that could help them out. They found him getting something from the vending machine in the break room.

“This stuff is horrible for you,” he said, picking out some cookies. “But I’m a bachelor, and we live on toxic food choices.” When he turned around, he noticed how serious they looked. “Uh oh, you three look pissed off.
Was it a bad day in the field? Cookie?” He offered it to the pregnant one, only because he figured she’d keep the men from pouncing.

“No thank you, but we do need to have a discussion.” Elizabeth stated, pointing at the table. “Can we have some of your time?”

He sighed, knowing that the shit was about to hit the fan. “Yeah, let’s have a seat.”

The three sat across from him, each man flanking one of her sides. “We had another victim.”

“Damn it! Really?” he said, surprised. “Where did you find him? Who was it? What can I do to help?” Longtree rapid fired the questions at them. This wasn’t a good thing. No one wanted another body, especially him. The council was already chewing him a new one.

Blackhawk
offered up the answers. “The tech team and your two officers came across the remains when they were out at the original crime scene. As to the identity of the body, that we can’t tell you until we get an ID back, but it’s the same as the others. He was completely stripped of all his skin,” he paused. “I’m glad you offered to assist us, though. We do need a little legwork done, and we’re short of manpower.”

“Anything, just tell me what I can do to work with you on this.”

Elizabeth was still trying to gauge the man. Generally they had a hard time with the local law enforcement officers when they rolled into town. Chief Longtree had been nothing but nice to them from the get go, and he was genuinely trying to be helpful. “We need your officers to scan your files, going back as far as they can. There has to be one common thread that ties all these cases together, originating around the time of Blake Littlemoon’s death.”

“The feather?” he said.

“Yep. We’re limited on time to chase paperwork. We also don’t have time to babysit your officers. Is it possible if we technically still have them help, but in the administrative aspect?” Elizabeth waited for the pushback.

“Technicalities work for me. I’ll have them start on it right now.
How hard can it be to find any reference to a feather found on a crime scene?” Longtree wondered.

Before any of them could answer his question, there was a very large
disruptive voice.

“Here you are!” Chief Soaring Eagle
boomed, pointing at the chief of the police. “I was in your office looking for you!”

Elizabeth leaned back in the folding chair, rolling her eyes at her
men. After their last confrontation, she had no intention of saying a word to them. Already she’d had to apologize and that made her sick to her stomach. If she kept it zipped, nothing bouncing in her head would spill out all around them.

“Yeah, you found me Chief,” he said, sighing. “I was getting something to eat.”

His focus shifted to the others in the room. “I see you’re here. Are any of you going to tell us about the new victim?” he stated, staring down the FBI agents. “We want to know who he was since this happened on our land!”

Elizabeth said nothing and didn’t even look at them. If she did,
snarkiness was coming out. Something along the lines of how they knew there was a crime before Longtree even knew. The council obviously had eyes everywhere. That was more of a reason to keep everything they now had silent.

“We haven’t a clue yet,” stated Whitefox. Since he was Liaison, he took one for the team. “Once we know, the chief of police will be notified, and then I’m sure you’ll be informed.”

That answer didn’t appeal to him at all, but if they didn’t know, there was nothing he could do to make the answer come to them magically. Then he stared over at Elizabeth, who was sitting silently between the two men, analyzing some invisible crack in the wall.

“You have nothing
to say?” he asked.

Elizabeth shook her head.

The man nodded. “I see you’ve learned to hold your tongue. It’s about time your husband learned to put a leash on your temper and your mouth.”

Oh
, what she wouldn’t give to be able to kick the shit out of the older man. Elizabeth focused on chewing her gum and her dwindling sense of control.

“It’s good to see you in your place.
Too many outsiders come here and think they own our land, can do whatever they want and not have to pay a price. The same goes with manners. There are rules for a reason.”

Blackhawk placed his hand on her shoulder and was getting ready to kill the man himself. He knew what it was costing his wife to not make Callen’s job harder.

“If there’s nothing to add, I think we’ll be going,” stated Chief Soaring Eagle.

Callen stood. “I actually have something to say, if you don’t mind, Chief.”

The man turned and faced him. “Yes, Director Whitefox.”

“If you ever talk that way to
our wife ever again, they’ll be pulling me off you. You think you have any right to talk to a woman like that? Let alone a pregnant one? You have to be seriously out of your damn mind. She’s sitting there silently not because she’s been schooled and put into her place, but for my benefit. My woman is being nice enough to not make my job any harder, well fuck it.” Callen could feel the heat creep up his face.

“Young man!” he began.

“Shut it, Chief. I’m not going to sit here and let you talk like that to any woman, and I’m sure as hell not letting you talk about mine like that. She’s the mother of my children and honestly, you deserved everything she said to you both at council,” then he turned on the shaman. “You got an apology from her and didn’t deserve it.”

The
chief looked at his friend in surprise.

“She offered up the olive branch
, swallowing your overbearing masculine pride for this assignment, and I’m not going to let anyone kick the shit out of her ego just to prove that she’s less than them. You want to talk to women like that, head to your own homes and pull that crap. You don’t come here while we’re working and talk down to us. I’m full Native, and I’ll drag your crypt keeper ass outside and gladly watch my woman beat you down for having no damn manners.”

Elizabeth grinned
, trying not to laugh.

“Now, you both can sit
yourselves down and wait until we figure out who the victim was, and if you want to know his identity you follow chain of command. We’ll notify your head of the police, and you can ask nicely or when I give my little conference with the media I’ll make you look like even bigger assholes than you are. Am I damn clear?”

Both men stared at the outburst, but said nothing.

“You,” he pointed at the
shaman. “Nice try submitting live peyote. We want the dried samples that I know you have. Our grandfather was a shaman for over fifty years. I know what herbs he used in his rituals, so stop yanking our damn chains. Do I need to hold you here and ransack your homestead to find it?”

The man shook his head.