True Love Lost (An FBI Romance Thriller (book 3)) (48 page)

“You’ve mentioned it a few times
, but I think you’re bullshitting me and thinking about my ass most of the time.”

Blackhawk snickered
at her blatant honesty. “Yeah, I am,” he answered, and then kissed her some more, enjoying the taste of his wife before work.

Elizabeth felt her husband’s body coming alive as his hands wandered her body and his mouth took all he wanted. “Mr. Blackhawk!”

“I can’t help it, a smart woman who wears trashy lingerie is such a turn on,” he stated swinging her up in his arms. They had a few minutes before work and he planned on showing her just how appreciative he was of her mind, her very fine posterior and the incredibly sexy lingerie.

He stood outside her home, holding her hand and preparing her for what may or may not lay waiting for them inside. He’d received the call from Special Agent Christensen, and she’d told him it was clear of techs and clean-up crew. Now he just had to trust that Desdemona wasn’t going to get any nasty surprises.

“You don’t have to do this, Desi. I can handle it.”

“No, I have to do it, Callen,” she said, squeezing his hand. “
How’d he get in?” she asked. If she could she’d pack up and run away from the house, but she owned it. It was hers. It was home and because of it she now had ties with people too. If she ran she’d lose Callen and her new girlfriend.

Her
ONLY
girlfriend
.

Desdemona could live without love, she had for such a long time, but she finally had a best girlfriend and that was an amazing feeling.

“Your office window,” he answered, leading her into the foyer. Everything was righted back into its place and nothing was lying in their path. Score one for the tech team and clean-up crew. “Most of the damage was in there,” he said, and noticed she looked horrified.

She dropped his hand and rushed to her office.
Her heart pounded that her single-most important treasure had been destroyed. “I only have one thing in there that matters,” she yelled over her shoulder to Whitefox.

He assumed it was the book. When she walked right past it to the book shelf, she burst into tears and dropped
into the arm chair beside the bookcase and just began sobbing. “Sweetheart,” he rushed to her and sat beside her. “What isn't here?” he asked, looking around.

“I had only one picture of my mother,” she said between sobs. “It was her, me and my sister.” He picked her up in his arms and
carried her to the desk chair and sat with her in his arms until she stopped sobbing. “Honey, we’ll look for it, maybe the tech team misplaced it. The entire room was tossed.”

She listened to his reassuring words and the tears slowed and eventually
stopped. “Okay,” she whispered, believing that he’d tell her the truth and they’d find it.

His heart was breaking for her, and he wiped her tears, and offered her kisses to soothe the hurt, like she was a lost child. Slow kisses that drew her attention and made her focus on him and nothing more. Once he knew she was thinking about him, he deepened them, holding her mouth to his, refusing to let her pull away until he
believed she was forgetting about everything around them. His own body suffered at the closeness and the way she felt sitting across his lap. He prayed for control and patience as he soothed her body and tormented his own, unmercifully. When he finally broke away her eyes weren’t filled with tears, but hazed with heat and lust.

“Better?” he
inquired, his voice barely there.

“Yes,” she whispered, and licked her lips. They tasted like him and it kept her thinking about the man she was currently resting against.

Whitefox needed to think about anything else but the woman sitting across his body, or they were going to be clearing the desk and copulating right there. He prayed again for control, and then realized this was probably his karma for not being a saint for all those years and lusting after his brother’s wife.

“At least your book is safe
.” Whitefox threw it out there, drawing her attention to the book.

“Yes,” then she cocked her head, and looked confused. “Did the team put it on my desk?”

Now he was confused. When he toured the house with Agent Christensen, he was sure it was on the desk. They wouldn’t have put it there. “It was there when I entered the house. Why? Where was it?”

She turned in his lap, and faced the book and the box. “It was beside the picture on my shelf. I bought that book a few years ago
. It was an impulse buy.”

“Sweetheart, a candy bar is an impulse buy. A hundred thousand dollar book is an investment,” he laughed, and tried to cheer her up. “I hope you have insurance on it.”

“I do,” she answered, pulling open her desk and removing a trace kit she kept as a spare. Out of it she pulled gloves and then proceeded to carefully lifted the glass lid to the box. “I don’t ever touch this book. It’s too rare and valuable. Oils and dirt on fingers would degrade the value.” Now she noticed it was crooked on the little holder. “Someone touched the actual book.”

Now he looked alarmed.

Slowly Desdemona opened the book, and inside was the picture of her mother, her and her sister. A sigh slipped past her lips. Then she turned it over, in her gloved hand, and there in angry red words were the warning.

                     
COME HOME OR

      
I’LL KILL ANYONE YOU LOVE.

Desdemona dropped the picture and stood from Callen’s lap. The stalker was now willing to hurt anyone she became attached to, and there was only one person she loved.

“You have to get as far away from me as possible,” she whispered and rushed from the room. She felt sick to her stomach that she could be the reason the man she had fallen for would be pulled into his mess.

Whitefox watched her hurry away from him. He read the message over and over. Part of him was worried that the lunatic was going to scare her away, and the other part of him was thrilled that she was worried about him. That meant one thing. She did have feelings for him, and he may have a chance with the woman. As for her going home, he was inclined to keep her there with him permanently. If the killer wanted her there they were going to do the exact opposite.

Desdemona
wasn’t going back to the bayou.

EVER! At this point in the game he was going to forbid it.

The team of Blackhawk and Blackhawk sat in the sheriff’s office and worked on getting as much information out of the man as possible. When they arrived in Red River, they had offered to allow the sheriff in on the investigation, giving him the option to be part of the team. To their surprise, he told them to just handle it and update him when need be. That was relatively surprising, most law officials saw the FBI as a horde taking away control, but the sheriff, he didn’t want anything to do with it.

It was odd.

It was off-settling.

And frankly it pissed off Elizabeth
Blackhawk to no end.

She’d been a
sheriff, and she knew what it felt like for the FBI to roll into town, and there was no way in hell she would have given over control of her town. Not even on a bad day. Every time she thought about it, it made her want to shake the man and see what fell out of his head.

Sitting there and listening to her husband update the man, she really was at a loss, and it took a grea
t deal to render her speechless, and she was battling with herself for composure.

“I’m sorry, I have to interrupt. Sheriff, forgive me for being so blunt, but why the hell do you just look bored out of your mind
when we come to update you?”

Blackhawk should have known it was coming. His wife was like a bloodhound and anyone that wasn’t sucked in by the curiosity of the entire situation had to
be a few bricks short of a wall in her book.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Her husband gave her the look. It pretty much said ‘don’t piss off the locals-too much’.

“You just don’t seem to care what happens to your town, or for your own well-being.
Last night you were at a bar, getting cozy with a blonde. Were you not?”

Sheriff Duffy shrugged.
“The FBI is good at taking care of these things, and I’m not. I’m fairly laid back, Director Blackhawk. Why get in your way? As for the blonde, that was just Carly Kester. She owns the local book store. We hang out all the time, if you know what I mean.”

Blackhawk jumped in before his wife slapped some sense into the man. “You are aware that there’s a blonde woman killing men and leaving their bodies in your town. Right?”

“I do believe you told me that the other day.”

Elizabeth just shook her head in disbelief. This man was a lost cause
and she needed to take a new tact. “Okay, what do you know about Carly Kester?” Maybe that route would get them more information. Apparently, self-preservation didn’t matter to the man.

“Carly is plenty of fun. I don’t think she’s seeing any one man specifically.” He leaned back in his chair waiting for the FBI agents to get his meaning. When neither spoke he elaborated. “She gets around
and just likes a good time.”

“And you frequent her company?” asked Elizabeth.

“I do off and on. Carly is like a good pair of shoes. You don’t wear them every day, but sometimes you miss them and try them on a few days in a row.”

Blackhawk spoke fast. His wife was vibrating in her seat
over the man’s choice of descriptive endearments for a woman. Maybe it was a very good thing that the sheriff had very little interaction with the team. He might be strangled by a pregnant woman in a rush of hormones. “Who else does she ‘frequent’?” Blackhawk could see his wife getting ready to pounce.

“Well, I believe she and Bobby Lee had a few one night stands.”

Elizabeth actually smacked herself in the forehead and laughed. Here was a sheriff, his deputy killed by a blonde nutjob, and here he had just had a relationship with the woman. “In most investigative circles, we’d call Carly a suspect.”

He laughed. “Agent Blackhawk, I grew up with Carly.
We’ve been hooking up since we were sixteen years old. I know she’s not a killer. Carly is opportunistic, a man collector and possibly a nymphomaniac, but what she isn't-is a killer.”

Ethan knew it was a dead end. So he changed the subject before his wife had a stroke. “Here’s a new topic. Has anyone reported any abandoned vehicles? The victims weren’t from Red River, so that means they had to drive or be driven. Did anyone see any?”

Sheriff James Duffy thought about it. “If there were any vehicles left on the roadside or in private parking lots, they’d be towed to the impound lot.”

“How long would they be held for?”

“That I can’t tell you, you’d have to swing on over to the impound lot and ask for Randy. He’s my brother, so he’ll help you out, if you ask nice.” He directed that right at Elizabeth. 

Blackhawk patted her on the leg. “Do you know anything about a Courtney Brewer?” he inquired. “It seems that she had a domestic squabble in the middle of a restaurant last night.”

“She’s had it tough since her husband took off with his secretary. Courtney loved him to death, and then one day she just found the truth out. He loved dicking around with a younger employee.” He leaned forward. “It makes you think to not hire younger secretaries,” he added, laughing.

“I have a younger secretary,” interjected Blackhawk, grinning at his wife.
“I’m quite attached to my wife and wouldn’t dream of cheating on her,” he added, reassuringly.

“
What a coincidence,” added Elizabeth grinning back at him and not missing a beat. “I seem to have my own younger administrative assistant, and he’s Native.” She started laughing at the look on her husband’s face. The fact she had Native eye candy in the office and it wasn’t him drove him nuts. Why tell him the young man did nothing for her, when she could make him completely insane over it?

James Duffy had no idea what they were going on about and decided the agents had lost their minds.

“If you wouldn’t mind, Sheriff, can you tell your brother we’ll be swinging by?” he asked, trying to ignore the need to kill his wife’s new administrative assistant. He knew her hiring a Native admin was going to be a problem from the day she mentioned it. Then and there he should have crushed it.

“Sure will, Agent Blackhawk.”

Elizabeth and her husband walked out to the Denali. “We have a few blondes to look at now at least.”

“Good job on not being too insulting in there, Elizabeth.” He laughed and took her hand, so she wouldn’t
slide on the snow. Fortunately she had the fortitude to wear snow boots, and not her cowboy boots.

“Ethan, if I seriously
ever lose my mental capacities to that extent, please put me down with my own damn gun. Don’t let me wander around making a jackass of myself.”

Blac
khawk grinned at her. “Yes dear, and just so you’re aware, when I get back to FBI West I’m putting down your Native administrative assistant just for shits and giggles.”