True Love Lost (An FBI Romance Thriller (book 3)) (75 page)

Elizabeth smiled over at her friend. The power of family was an amazing thing, and it meant one more person to love and watch over. Desdemona Adare was taking one for her husband, and that meant a great deal in her book.

“Thank you,” he said, looking back over at the body bag. “I appreciate it.”

“Anything for family,” she said, smiling. “That is the family motto, no?”

Elizabeth shrugged. “Well, it used to be, ‘Anything for a bacon cheeseburger’ but that seems grossly inappropriate anymore now that he fell in love with a vegetarian,” she said, pointing at Whitefox.

All four laughed.

“Okay, I have to start this, if you want out of the room, now’s the time to do it,” she said, double gloving and getting ready for what waited her. She put it out of her mind that this was a person, and thought about it as a science experiment she needed to find the answers with. “Ready,” she said to her techs, and they unzipped the bag and even they looked horrified. Lifting out the corpse, everyone stared.

There lay a mummified looking corpse, skin pulled taut over bones, and organs harvested from the victims grotesquely placed on the body.

“Holy shit, you weren’t kidding,” muttered Whitefox. “It looks like Doctor Frankenstein tried to rebuild a person.”

Elizabeth nodded and shivered. “We are dealing with one sick asshole,” she said
, finally.

Blackhawk agreed and watched as the tech’s started taking the pictures. He was pretty sure he’d never seen anything quite like it.

“Ethan, give me what you’re thinking,” his wife said, softly. “How the hell did we end up getting that body?”

Blackhawk thought it through. “I don’t think the killer thought we’d find the van,” he said, finally. “If you think about it, that
’s her prize, and she must smell us getting closer to move it from her home or hiding place to the tech van.”

“She took a shot at us when we took her bodies away the first time, now we have all the bodies and her prize. What’s that going to do to her now?”

Blackhawk shook his head. “I can’t answer that. Already her state of mind seems fractured that the unsub really thinks she can rebuild a person. That she’s building a male- I’d venture the killer’s rebuilding someone she loved and lost.”

Elizabeth looked over at the corpse. “
Our perpetrator is going to go shit nuts when she finds that her long dead love is gone, isn't she?” she whispered.

“I
believe so.”

Whitefox shook his head, as he looked at the hands and feet on the corpse. The killer had removed the skin from the victims
’ severed limbs and placed it over the appendages of the dried out corpse. It was a grotesque testament to the killer’s mind.

Sick and twisted.

Doctor Adare began her work. Slowly she removed the added on parts, the eyes, the skin from the feet and hands, and the genitalia from their own team member. She looked over as she reached into the cut already present in the body and pulled out a well preserved stomach.

“She must have had the organs in a solution,” she said finally. These parts,” she pointed to the hands, feet, stomach and tongue. “They were done
months ago, and they are still,” she searched for a non-technical term for the three agents staring at her, “fleshy.”

“So you think she collected and placed them in jars to collect everything then put it together?” asked Elizabeth. “Ewww.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t buy she was done,” said Blackhawk. “I think she threw him together because we were getting close and she
needed a safe place to put him until she was done killing.”

“Could be,” said Desdemona, as he had the team swab Derek’s organ and then she bagged it, safely inside a non-see through bag. She instructed her tech to go out to the van and place it with Derek’s remains.

“Thank you, Doctor,” said Blackhawk. He looked at his watch and then motioned over to Christina. “We should hit the road. I want to get Derek to his family before it’s too late, and then back here before sun up,” he said.

Elizabeth went to his side and wrapped her arms around him. “Please Ethan, be safe. Don’t stop for coffee, and don’t do anything
to get hurt,” she pleaded softly. “We need you to come back.”

“Baby, no worries
.” He saw the fear in her eyes and it touched him that his woman was so worried about him. Before her, there was no one to care if he returned home or not. “I’ll have Christina with me. I’ll be completely safe.”

She started laughing, and went up on her toes to kiss him. Elizabeth didn’t care that there were techs in the room, or that everyone was staring. If she couldn’t kiss him goodbye, it would bother her the entire time they were apart. The kiss was deep and slow, and she felt her own skin flush. When she broke away she looked up into his eyes and touched his cheeks.

“I love you, Ethan Blackhawk.”

He grinned wickedly, and kissed the tip of her nose. “I love you, Elizabeth Blackhawk. Hold down the fort,
Boss,” he said, looking over at his brother as he walked away.

Elizabeth
glanced over at Christina and motioned her over to her side. The look of fear was entertaining, but she had other things to worry about. “You watch his back. You make sure he doesn’t stop for coffee or any other reason. You carry your gun and you shoot any blondes, brunettes or redheads that come near him.”

“Got it,” she said, nodding.

“Please keep him safe and get Ethan back to me, and I’ll forget that you were just checked out his very fine ass while you were standing behind him.”

“Damn it, you have eyes in the back of your head
!” she muttered, laughing. “Or wife radar.”

“Both.”

“Don’t worry, Elizabeth. I’ll stick like Cyanoacrylate.”

Elizabeth didn’t speak Chemical-ese, but if it was Christina
, she knew she’d be all over her husband to keep an eye on him. “Ok, watch his back and for once I’m giving you complete permission to follow him everywhere he goes. You get to be his shadow,” she said, then dismissed her.

Elizabeth looked over at Desdemona for translation.

“Glue,” she said, laughing. “Cyanoacrylate is superglue.”

Whitefox moved to Elizabeth’s side and protectively wrapped his arm around her shoulders, holding her to his body. “Then why didn’t she just say that?”

Elizabeth relaxed against him, twining her fingers with him. “Who knows why?”

Whitefox could hear the tension in her voice.

“He’ll be okay,” added Whitefox, whispering into her ear. “I promise.”

Elizabeth just nodded and thought back to what her husband had said about the killer losing her mind over them having the body. All she could hope was the nutjob wouldn’t think her husband was transporting the victims and go after him.

How would she go on if anything happened to him?

Blackhawk detoured to the deputy’s desks upstairs. He found Julian Littlemoon sitting there doing paperwork for the end of shift. Ethan Blackhawk had a special favor to ask the man and it involved his wife.

“Julian, you off shift?”

“Yeah, in ten minutes.”

“I need a big favor,” he said, pausing. “I have to transport our tech back that was murdered. I need to leave Elizabeth here to run it.”

“You want a babysitter?” he asked, looking up. “I don’t think she really needs one
. Not after watching her out in the snow today and with that shotgun.”

“How about we call it, ‘keeping her company’?” he said, thoughtfully. “She can handle herself, but she tends to get into trouble. How about you just find a way to keep her from getting herself abducted, shot, stabbed or killed while I’m gone?”

“Is she going to skin you alive if she finds out about this conversation?”

Blackhawk thought about it. “Yeah, and
scalp me while I sleep to add insult to injury.”

The man laughed. “Okay, I think I can do it for you, and forget the favor. She kept that mountain lion from chewing on me today, even though I was riding her pretty hard over her being a pregnant woman.”

“Just don’t piss her off, or you’ll be the hairless one.”

“Got it,” he said, grinning. He certainly liked a feisty woman, and this was going to be entertaining.

Desdemona placed her scalpel down and shook her head. This was completely wrong and she didn’t understand it at all. This new piece of information made her head spin, and she felt off balance. Everything they were assuming just got tossed to the wind. “Uh oh,” she said, looking over at Elizabeth.

“Oh shit, I really hate when the ME has her hands in a body and says ‘uh oh’. It always means something horrible is about to go down,” she
said, moving closer to the body, Whitefox following her.

“You’re not going to like this at all,” she said, pointing. “The corpse isn't a male. It’s a female.”

“What?” Now she was shocked and surprised. “You mean our killer is a woman killing a man, and then placing the parts on a woman’s body? Are you sure?”

Desdemona pulled the skin back on the mummified woman. “See these small organs and this sac like object?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s a uterus and ovaries.”

“Well crap. I hate late in the game changeups.” Elizabeth pulled out her phone and dialed FBI West. When the tech room answered on the third ring, she barked orders to light the fire under their asses and fast. “I need all the trace evidence transmitted ASAP, and if I don’t get it, someone will be getting my boot where the sun don’t shine,” she drawled.

The tech didn’t sound impressed
, he must have been new. “We’re working as fast as we can,” he simply stated.

“Oh, well you can tell that to Director Blackhawk, he’s in route to the lab now. So, when I call him and tell him you weren’t enthusiastic about getting me the data, you can explain it to him. You like being unemployed?” she asked.

There was dead silence, as if he was weighing his options.

“I want it by the time I get upstairs to my whiteboard, and I don’t care if it’s partial at this point, I need that damn information two days ago!” she shouted, and hung up on him.

“And this is why they call you Attila the Hun,” laughed Desdemona, “and have little Lyzee voodoo dolls in their lockers on standby.”

“Really?” she asked, completely amused by that.

Whitefox shook his head. “I don’t know if you should be amused by the voodoo doll part, Elizabeth.” Whitefox dropped his arm protectively around her shoulders.

“Little
do they know, granddad did his Native mojo thing over me and the baby so I’m covered. It should cancel it out.” Now her focus was back on the body on the slab. “I’m going up to the whiteboard, and need to call Ethan. This little twist has to change the profile and I need him to update it.”

Whitefox debated on whether or not to follow her upstairs.

“Cal,” she turned to him and wrapped her arm around his waist. “I’m sure Ethan told you to watch over me like a hawk, but I’m indoors and I’m armed. Who gets abducted from the middle of a sheriff’s department?” she asked, laughing. “You have to be a special kind of unlucky to have that happen.”

“Okay, but you shoot anyone you suspect that
moves towards you.”

Elizabeth hugged him
, glancing over at Desdemona. “You two stick together. I mean everywhere,” she said. “Until I get a handle on who the killer is, no one goes anywhere alone.”

“Uh,” she went to point out the obvious, that Elizabeth was breaking her own rule.

Immediately, she pointed to her baby belly. “I’m technically two right now,” she said grinning. “But nice try. See if we can get a rush on the corpse’s DNA, if you can find anything viable.”

Desdemona shook her head. “Will do,” she said, looking through her micro-goggles, for any hair or flesh that she could use.

Elizabeth walked away, and fell deep into thought. The killer was using male parts, on a female corpse. That had to be significant. Before entering the room they were occupying as an office, she decided to swing into the sheriff’s office and dig up some information. The man was completely aloof as of late, and she didn’t know if he was just worried about the FBI running him down, or if he was just so busy trying to keep his people as far away from theirs.

At the knock at his door, Sheriff Duffy
glanced up.

“Hey, you have a few minutes?”
Elizabeth inquired.

“Sure do, Agent Blackhawk,” he
answered, putting down his pencil and relaxing back in his chair. “Has someone done something? I can handle it if there’s a problem.”

Elizabeth stood by a chair. “May I?”
At his nod she took the seat, crossing her legs. Soon that wouldn’t be a possibility. “Actually, your Deputy Littlemoon was super helpful today in finding our van. We appreciate his help.” The man actually looked calmer now that she wasn’t there to give him grief. “Sheriff, I’m sorry if we came off difficult to work with, and I can completely understand. I was once a sheriff and had the FBI roll into my town.”