Devil Hath Come (an FBI/Romance Thriller ~book 7) (76 page)

When he didn't answer her, she stared over at him. “Cal, are you okay?”

He shook his head. “I’m afraid, Lyzee.”

She was too. “We’ve got this. I need you to make me a list of everything that didn't make sense. Anything that didn't match up, and we’ll go from there.”

He nodded, doing as she asked. 

“I’m going to find him, Callen. I’m going to bring him home and nurse him back to health. I promised granddad that I would protect you both, and I’m done being scared and running. Now, I’m going to get him home and make us whole again.”

He believed in her.

She stood. “Cyra, what do we have on that land?” she asked, pointing at the map. “I need to lock this down so I can get it off my mental list.

“It’s another federal game preserve.”

She jumped up on the bed and wrote it on the wall. Turning, she stared at the three of them. “Who picks federal land to screw with the FBI?” she asked.

“Someone that’s nuts?” Cyra asked.

Elizabeth shook her head. “No. He had to use that land. I don’t think he had a choice. That would be even too close for comfort for him. He’s a watcher and likes to live in the shadows. He wouldn’t risk it unless there was no other option.” Before she could continue, Chris’s phone chimed.

“I have the email from the distributer of the Demon powder,” he stated excitedly, and then he scanned the information and his face fell.

“What?” she asked, staring at him.

“One address is the church of Satan,
and the second is a PO box. We can’t access that information without a miracle.”

The killer wanted magic?
Well, she would give it to him. He’d picked the wrong team to mess with, because she had a few cards up her sleeve. “Oh, I’m going to get us that address.” Elizabeth pulled out her phone and dialed the private number, even though he would be in his office.

When he answered the phone, she wanted to cry but managed to keep it in check. “Gabe, I need your help.”

“Lyzee honey, what’s wrong?” he asked, sensing the tension in her voice.

“I have a big problem and if I eve
r needed you, it is right now. Before I trust you, I first need you to swear that you’ll adhere to my wishes and trust my judgment.”

Gabe hated the sound of that
, but he also knew the woman who was on the other line. She’d never start a conversation like that unless it was important. “It’s a deal. What happened?”

“The killer’s taken
Ethan, and I have less than nine hours to find him before he kills him.”

“I can mobilize everyone on the west coast.”

“NO! Gabe, listen. If we call in anyone, he’s dead. The man’s stalking my every move. I’m holed up in the hotel until I get a lead on him. I need a favor and I need it done quietly and faster than you’ve ever worked your magic before.”

Gabe was listening.

“I have a post office box address, and I need the name that’s tied to it. I know its three days beyond legal, but if I don’t get something, Ethan’s dead.” Emotion filled her voice. “Please Gabe! Help me get my husband back. Callen and I need you. Your Godchildren need you to help me bring their father home.”

“You know
that I will do anything I can. Give me the box number. I’ll call in some favors and have it to you in a little bit.”

“I don’t have that long. Work fast.”

He understood. “You hang in there, Elizabeth. Tell Callen I said it’s going to be fine. Ethan is a tough man and will fight the killer every step of the way.” Gabe prepared for the worst and knew that he might be heading west to his surrogate family if it went bad.

Cal heard
the man’s reassuring words and tried to believe them. God, he prayed that he was right.

“Call me back, Gabe.”

There was no reply since he was already gone.

Elizabeth needed an update from her ME. “Catch me up to speed on Artemis’s autopsy.”

Chris did as he rattled it all off. He told her about the lack of smelling salts and the physical abuse.

“
It’s too bad that we don’t have that DNA,” Cyra said. “Who would have thought that those four hairs would have broken this case wide open?”

Elizabeth didn’t move
as she replayed Cyra’s words over and over in her head. “You know, you’re right. It would have done just that!” Pulling out her phone, she called Christina.

“
Boss, are you ok?” she whispered.

“Yeah, but I have a few questions. Are you alone?”

She moved around. “Let me call you right back, Mom. I have to step outside. It’s too noisy in here.”

The phone went dead.

Elizabeth stared at them. “She’s not alone.” Shortly, the phone began to ring and she placed Christina on speaker phone. “Where are you?” she asked.

“I’m in the ladies room. It’s been crazy here today. Everyone’s been in
looking for you.”

That alarmed her. “Who?”

“When I arrived, the police chief was here with an officer. She left a little while ago after talking to the ME. Then another officer was in with donuts for the tech team.”

She was automatically suspicious. “Okay, I need to know about the hairs
that we lost.”

“I’m so damn sorry,
boss. If I knew they were going to be the only DNA evidence I would have slept with them.”

All of this rubbed her the wrong way
. Her team was one of the best in the nation. This should have been a red flag from the start. “I need you to walk me through the process. You were working on the hairs and then what?”

Christina
thought back to the day. “I took them to evidence lock up, where we always keep them. They were in a metal cage and locked inside a room.”

“Clear bag?”

She thought about it. “Yes, why?”

Elizabeth knew they brought their own evidence cages with them. It was their way of keeping everything contained to one person and one key. She also knew they weren’t solid but had little bars at the top. “W
hich cage did you place the hairs in?”

Christina really thought she was losing her mind.
“In the top one marked DNA,” she paused. “Ohhhhhh…” Finally she got it.

“Was the room
secured?”

“Yes
, I locked it myself.”

Now for the big question
that was plaguing her mind. “Where did you get the key to the room that you were using?”

“Probably the same place
that you got your key for the upstairs space. I had to pick it up at the main desk in the police building. Since they own that building, and it houses all their administrative offices.”

Callen was getting excited. “So you got it from Clifford Bean?”

“Yes. I asked Doctor Parrish who to talk to, and he sent me there.”

Elizabeth started grinning. “I’m betting nothing else went missing because the hairs in the plastic evidence bag
were all that would fit through the top. Someone fished it out. In order to do that, they’d need a key to the room, and I doubt there’s only one per room.”

“Someone’s knocking, I have to go,” she hung up the phone.

The three stared at her. “What?”

Callen laughed. “I’m glad you’re back. I never would have even suspected the missing DNA was stolen. How did you come to that conclusion?”

“What if he’s not altering his killing methods because he’s crazy, but because he has inside information and is changing it up to stay one step ahead of us?”

They all
appeared dumbstruck.

Elizabeth was prepared to plead her case.
“Okay, hear me out. When we arrived on scene to victim one, we found clothing with blood and DNA evidence. We know that the victim was still dressed, only her dress was cut open as he carved her up.”

“
I’m with you so far. You think that he knows we found evidence in the fire and decided to make sure we didn't again.”

“I do,” Elizabeth replied. “Still
, with victim one, there was a necklace down her throat and you, Chris, said he was standing beside her when he sliced her jugular.”

The ME
nodded. “I did.”

“So
, the very next victim, what happened?”

Cyra answered,
“There was no necklace and Chris determined that he stood behind her head and changed position.”

“You could be onto something, Elizabeth,” Callen stated.

God, she hoped so. “Next, we have the raven blood. We pinpointed it during the testing and ‘
poof
’ it stops until he takes Ethan.”

Chris was enthralled. “So
, he’s fixing them to be harder crimes to solve.”

Callen understood
where Elizabeth was leading with it. “He didn't want to give away anything else with the bird. He was afraid that you would figure out it wasn’t you that he was referring to, but Ethan.”

“Exactly.
No one outside our family knows that I’m the protective raven. There is no way in hell he could find that out. Who would spill that detail? Certainly, it wouldn’t be us or Wyler.”

They were all on the same page.

“So, we find four hairs, and they’re going to identify him at some point, so he tries to make it look like we jacked it up. He takes suspicion and places it on us as error. In the meantime, we never find another one, because he’s making the next kill better and perfect in his eyes.”

Cyra was excited too. “The smelling salts! On victim three we found trace on her lip.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Then on the next victim
, it was wiped clean from her skin,” stated Cyra, “but he didn't think to remove it from her nasal cavity.”

“Or
he didn't expect us to be suspicious by that one aberration. We’re in a town with very few murders, so a killer might not know how deep we take our investigation. Every little change is suspicious to us. My ME is the best one in the whole damn realm, and he’d pick up on something like that,” Elizabeth stated.

Chris
knew what his bosses expected. “Then with Artemis he just stopped using it, fearing we’d use it to catch him.”

“Yes. Every time we pinpointed a flaw in his plan, he changed it up. Where we thought he was just a box of broken crackers, he was actually working
it against us, so we would be busy chasing our tails.”

“He underestimated you,” Callen stated.

God, she hoped so.

Elizabeth ran to the wall and scribbled more down for them. It was starting to click together. They just needed something to come back to give them a direction. “It has to be someone that’s around us all the time. It couldn’t be anyone that we didn't have contact with on a daily basis.”

“Oh shit,” muttered Callen. “If they had a key to the lab storage room, they also saw the white boards and Ethan’s profile. The killer didn't randomly take him.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “He
decided to take away my profiler. In all the news stories and interviews that I did, I always gave Ethan credit. I mentioned a few times that without my profiler husband, I would be lost.”

“As we got closer, the killer got nervous.
Yeah, he took him to hurt you, angel, but he really took him to stop us,” Callen stated.

Elizabeth added more, “He took him to keep me in the game. He had this all planned out from the beginning. After the women, he couldn’t risk me leaving. I don’t doubt that he would have taken you or Ethan to keep me trapped in Circle Rock.”

Picking up her phone, she texted Christina. “I want Christina to run up to the room and check the office,” she said, typing the message. It didn't take long for the reply. She started laughing when she got it.

“What’s so funny?” asked Callen, reading over her shoulder.

“Any one find it coincidental that the room was unlocked and the board was erased? I know I locked it up before we left.”

Cyra
didn't doubt her boss for a second. “He took Ethan to stop us, use him as leverage to get to you, and then thought we wouldn’t have backup copies of the profile?”

Callen pulled up Ethan’s last entry into his profiling update and handed it to Elizabeth. “He didn't think the killer was too smart, and he said we were going to have to out
maneuver him.”

Elizabeth was willing to give him exactly what he asked for on this one.

Cyra started laughing. “Gee and to think, he thought you were going to quit.”

Elizabeth stopped. “Wait, what?”

They all looked at her like she was crazy.

Her agent explained,
“The note that he left when he took Ethan,” she offered. “He stated that now you couldn’t quit.”

Okay, she needed to reread that. “I was on my way to blacking out. I don’t remember what it said.
I only caught the highlights before I went out. I need that note.”

Callen rushed out and returned with it. Elizabeth re-scanned it.
The one line said it all;