Chapter Six #4
“Hey, now. Karma got me,” he said, pulling on his coat as he was referring to his casted arm.
Callen was skeptical.
“Really?” he asked. “You want to help me?” he inquired, as if there was going to be a trick—more so than him just escaping Timothy’s company.
This was Ethan.
After all.
He nodded.
“Yeah, because if they are Native, your office can’t handle it, and it comes to us anyway. I won’t tear the rez apart or make your life a living hell in the process. I don’t hate you to make your job miserable.”
Callen lifted a brow.
Well, Gene the miracle worker struck again—somehow.
Gene was looking at Timothy, and he did NOT look happy. He was betting it was because they would likely NOT be getting out of there tomorrow. There was no doubt in his mind that the man was pushing Ethan’s buttons to do just that.
Apparently, the universe had a different plan.
Tag.
They were going to be it.
He could feel it in his balls.
“Okay, I’ll drive,” Callen said. “Unless you don’t want to be in the truck with me.”
Ethan didn’t care.
He was pulling his badge from his back pocket and putting it on his hip. Honestly, he’d rather deal with three dead bodies than his grandfather.
Truth.
This was his way out, and he was taking it. Even if they didn’t end up helping, he was getting out of here with Gene and wasn’t staying for dinner.
His gut said not to.
His anger was too close to the surface for the man who raised him. They needed space and time.
A LOT of space.
And a LOT of time.
“We can go together,” Ethan offered. “You’ll have to give us a ride back later.”
Callen could do that, or he could let his brother have his truck. In that moment, it felt all too…familiar.
Easy.
Calm.
That made him incredibly worried about letting his guard down again, and getting hurt by Ethan. This was a calmer man, but that storm could roll in pretty fucking fast.
He of all people knew that.
Plus, he knew that he couldn’t let the man stay here. They couldn’t have a relationship. Ethan had to get out of here for his well-being, and Callen might have to be the one to tell him to go.
And that sucked.
Oh, the universe was a nightmare.
Here was the proof.
He was going to have to make his brother never come back here, so one of them survived this place.
Like his lover had done, Gene pulled his badge from his back pocket and hung it around his neck instead of his hip. Then, he pulled on his coat to follow the men out.
Before he closed the door, he looked back.
“Thank you, Timothy,” he offered. “We won’t be back,” he added.
Timothy stood.
At least this man actually listened.
“Remember what I told you. Please.”
Oh, he would.
Instead of saying another word, he simply nodded and closed the door behind him.
Now, he had another issue.
Not only did they have a body, but he had a new mission in life. He needed to keep Ethan away from this place.
Well, at least that should be easy.
Right?
* * * Blackhawk & Cantrell * * *
En Route
The Location
As they were heading there, Ethan needed to know.
“There really are bodies, right?” he asked, making sure that this wasn’t some elaborate plan to get him away from Timothy. Callen knew how much he disliked being near their grandfather, and it had been getting ugly in the cabin.
The bottom line was that he held a grudge.
At his question, Callen was amused.
Hell!
He never even thought about using that as a plan to get him, and Ethan out of there.
Instead, he laughed as he drove through the falling snow.
“Uh, newsflash, Ethan, I’m not going to make up a crime scene to save you from Timothy. I’m doing that to save me from him. With you here, he’s not up my ass,” he joked. “I had about ten minutes of peace. It was refreshing.”
Ethan actually laughed.
“Well, here I thought you were helping me make my escape.”
Callen had news for him.
“You don’t need help escaping, Ethan. You can do that fine all by yourself.”
The truck got really quiet, and Gene braced for it. Oh, that comment was going to land poorly.
When it didn’t, he was shocked.
“Yeah, you’ve got a point,” Ethan admitted. “Then, I guess what I said stands. Take us to the bodies.”
Gene let out the breath he was holding.
That it didn’t erupt…
That was a pleasant surprise.
Callen told them what he’d been told by the deputy so they could assess the situation.
What Ethan had said was right. The reservation police were NOT equipped to handle this.
If they got there and it was Native victims, he’d have to insist on helping them.
If they weren’t Native…
Not his circus.
Not his monkeys.
Yeah, he was passing this shit off fast.
Mostly because this was NOT his wheelhouse, and while he was bored on the rez, he wasn’t that kind of bored.
He liked long walks on the beach, reading books, and not working homicides—especially three at once. That took a special kind of crazy.
Ethan crazy.
Clearly.
“Here’s what I know. It was a short conversation. My deputy said he thinks he found three naked women in the woods, and they’ve been mutilated.”
Ethan was listening.
That the deputy could determine gender told him they wouldn’t be bones, like Callen said.
Callen continued.
“So, I’m going to bet it was either a camping trip that ran into a bear, or some nefarious body dump. We don’t get a lot of death here. People go missing, but that’s mostly an escape from the asylum.”
Oh, he was aware.
Ethan had escaped just like so many others. He just walked away and never came back.
Now, here he was.
Oh, the irony.
“Well, if it’s Native, how do you want to proceed, Chief?” Gene asked. “You’ve got to call in help. You don’t have a forensics team, but if us helping is uncomfortable, it doesn’t have to be us.”
Ethan looked over at him.
“Uh, yeah, it does have to be us,” he stated. “You know the rule. The Fed that finds it, works it. Thus, the whole mess in Puerto Rico.”
Gene was to the point.
“Gabe doesn’t need to know you were still here when Callen’s deputy found the bodies. As far as he’s concerned, you’re on your way back by car. We can drive most of the way, say we stopped to see some sights, and fly out of Tennessee, or Cali.”
Ethan was listening.
Gene wasn’t just saying it for funsies. He was giving him a way out.
“We can bail. All Callen has to do is call in to the local Fed office in Salt Lake City. It’s less than two hours away. One of those agents will get tagged in. If Gabe asks, we already left. We never checked into a hotel, so there is no paper trail. I’d love to see Graceland.”
Callen listened.
It was clear that Gene was worried about his brother.
Oh, and he respected that. In fact, he wanted his brother to be protected. Ethan needed that.
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Ethan admitted.
Gene lifted his casted arm as if he was trying to prove a point.
“I’m not allowed in the field. I don’t even have a gun. Yeah, I brought your backup piece in our luggage, and Gabe gave me yours to give to you, but I’m without a sidearm.”
Ethan let him explain his point of view. It was rare that Gene put up a fight.
“What I’m saying is you’d be on it by yourself, or with the local law. Callen can’t work it. He’s got no experience. So, that means the Damascus police. If there are three missing women, this is their jurisdiction—if they aren’t Native.”
He understood what he was saying, and even with Gene only working research, and backing him up, he could pull it off. Ethan had worked plenty of cases before they had been teamed up.
He wasn’t just a pretty profiler face.
“So, we’ll see what we have and go from there.”
Gene knew that was Ethan pretty much telling him that he was working this.
Yeah, here they went again.
One of these days, they were going to leave Philly and NOT catch a case at the worst possible moment.
Or so he could hope.
As they pulled up, Callen parked on the side of the road by his deputy’s cruiser. As they got out, he whistled and heard a shout from inside the tree line.
“Back here, Boss!”
Callen started that way, a flashlight out, as he scanned the ground. The snow had been lightly falling, and everything, including the deputy’s footprints, were now covered.
Not far behind him, Ethan and Gene followed.
As Callen reached his deputy, they saw a pile of something covered in more snow.
“Here, Chief,” the deputy offered.
Immediately, Callen crouched down to get a better look, but he didn’t touch anything.
Mostly because he didn’t want to.
“I can’t see if they are Native or not,” he admitted. “I think that’s the first step,” he added. “Well, now that we know they’re people, and not hunting remains.”
The deputy sighed.
“I think I can look at a pile of stuff and determine what it is, Boss,” he offered.
Callen hoped so.
“No offense meant, Deputy Running Bear.”
Ethan agreed.
“You’d be surprised how mutilated remains can look very un-human-like.”
The deputy looked grossed out by that.
“Uh, okay,” William stated.
Since they needed to see what was under the light cover of snow, Gene was curious.
“Do you have gloves and maybe one of those ice scrapers with the brush on the one side in your cruiser?” he asked the deputy. “So we can clear off one of their faces and bodies to see if they were mauled by bears?”
The deputy was confused.
In fact, the Native man stared at him.
“Uh, why is he here?” he asked Callen.
The man did the introductions.
“Deputy William Running Bear, this is my brother, Special Agent Ethan Blackhawk, and his partner, Special Agent Gene Cantrell.”
Gene showed him his badge, and it wasn’t lost on him that Ethan hadn’t had to do the same thing. They were NOT equal in this Native’s eyes.
“FBI.”
The deputy got it.
More importantly, he was seeing the elusive Ethan Blackhawk in person. There were plenty of tales running rampant on the reservation regarding this man.
It was clear he did exist.
Not only that, but he and the boss looked similar—with one of them just less Native and more half-breed.