Chapter Seven #3
“This is my partner,” Ethan said, his voice cold and icy. “Special Agent Gene Cantrell, these are the local law. This is Detective Dannie Pezzimente and Detective Leah Balo.”
Gene shook their hands, and he watched as the reservation police cruiser drove past them.
Callen stared at Ethan with such a look of devastation and loss in his eyes.
And Ethan didn’t look back.
“Thanks for meeting us,” Gene said, hating what was going on behind the scenes. It was going to make this a hot freaking mess.
Bet.
On.
It.
The female cop was to the point.
“We want to help work this. We know that now that the bodies showed up on reservation land, the FBI takes jurisdiction, but this is our case.”
Gene knew Ethan had to make that call.
He was normally the lead investigator, but he’d called Gabe, who also didn’t want to see their faces for a long time, and he’d put Ethan in charge.
All he wanted was a written report when it was done because he’d nailed this one. Gabe wasn’t backing them up anymore.
They were on their own.
Yeah, they’d made so many friends on this trip West. How could this get worse?
Ethan went there, ignoring what she’d said. He was done playing around.
“We’ll need to borrow your ME, and we’ll see how we can use you in the investigation. I suggest we check the bodies, now that you have an ME on scene, and go from there.”
The female went to say something, but her partner elbowed her. They were being told they might be able to help. That was more than they expected.
“That sounds fine,” Dannie offered.
Pissing them off meant being excluded. Leah tended to be a little too bossy when it came to cases, and she was all over this one like it was personal.
Honestly, the two men didn’t look like they’d appreciate that—especially since they’d taken this case from the Chief of Reservation police.
“Good,” Ethan said. “This way.”
He led them back into the trees where the ME’s people were setting up lights and a perimeter to begin pulling trace.
“Doc,” Leah said, getting the ME’s attention.
As they reached the bodies, there was a man kneeling beside them.
“This is Doctor Parker,” Leah stated, introducing him. “He’s our ME in Damascus.”
Ethan and Gene shook hands, since he wasn’t gloved up yet.
“I’d say it’s a pleasure,” the ME began, “but it’s cold as balls out here, and I like working with the FBI as much as I’d like having an infestation of crabs.”
Gene lifted a brow.
“Well, that sets the pace. I can’t imagine this being anything less than a miserable time,” Gene admitted. “Apparently, you won’t be keeping your crabs to yourself. I’m feeling crabby myself now.”
Honestly, Ethan didn’t care.
They needed to get this on the road so they could get away from this place. Here was the LAST place he wanted to be.
It was too close to the people who spawned him.
“We had to move the snow from their faces,” Ethan offered. “We gloved up, and we used a brush from an ice scraper,” he said, pointing to the tool on the ground. Beside it was the used gloves, turned inside out.
The ME bagged them and signed off on them.
“Well, at least you had the common sense to preserve the scene. That’s shocking.”
Gene was curious.
And getting angsty.
“Is he always a bag of rotten dicks, or did we wake him from his bitchy snooze?” he asked. “Because I’m about to match his energy, and he’s not going to like it.”
Hell.
He was on desk duty.
What was Gabe going to bust him down to?
Mop cleaner?
Dannie laughed and covered it with a cough, but it wasn’t like the man was wrong.
Their ME was a special kind of cranky most of the time. To know him was to accept that and not take it personally.
Before anyone could ask any questions, which would have just made him crankier, the ME went there.
“I’ll have the bodies ID’d and ready to go by morning. Meet me in my morgue then. Until morning, we have nothing to talk about. Let me do my job so I can get back to my ‘bitchy nap’.”
Well, they were getting nowhere now.
God.
This was why Gene and Ethan preferred using an FBI team over the local law. They were always a questionable bunch. Sometimes, you got lucky, and sometimes, you didn’t.
“Come on, guys,” Dannie offered, leading them away. “How about we go get a coffee, and talk where it’s warm? I’m sure the Indians want us off their land.”
Ethan was about to correct them, but he didn’t get a chance to do it. Honestly, he didn’t know why he wanted to after what just went down.
Maybe it was just automatic.
“Natives,” Gene said. “Indians are from India.”
The man looked confused.
“I’ve heard them call each other Indians. Are you sure?” he asked. “We do live right next to a reservation and are familiar with a lot of them.”
Well, la-dee-dah.
Gene was sleeping with one.
That beat this cop’s hand of low card when he was doing the sexy bed bounce with the Ace himself.
So, yeah.
Gene was damn sure.
It was crystal clear that the two cops didn’t realize that there was a half-Native man inches from them or they wouldn’t have just made that statement.
So, Gene explained.
“It’s like the N word. Unless you’re African American, you don’t say it. It’s the same with Indian. A Native can throw it around. We can’t. We get to say white, Caucasian, and cracker. Got my point?” he asked, pointing at his complexion.
The cop shrugged.
“Okay, then.”
Gene just wanted to get Ethan away from the reservation. He could feel his energy, and it wasn’t good. Someone had to step in and slow this down.
FAST.
While he understood what Callen had done, Ethan clearly did not.
“Give us the address of the coffee place. We’ll meet you there. We need to pick up our rental, and swap out vehicles first, okay?”
The two cops nodded, and it was clear that they were fine with that.
The male detective handed Gene a piece of paper from his little notebook with the name of a place, and the two cops headed out. When they were gone, Ethan was to the point.
Oh, and he didn’t mince words.
“I don’t want them working this,” Ethan stated.
Oh, well, that might be easier said than done. His partner wasn’t going to suggest they do this on their own, was he? Did he miss the part where he’d repeatedly told him he was ON DESK DUTY because he’d been injured last case?
Really?
“Why?” Gene asked.
Blackhawk went there.
Maybe it was his pissy mood, or maybe it was something more.
Who knew?
“They didn’t even push the ME. We have work, and they should have pushed.”
Gene said nothing simply because he knew Ethan was up in his feels. Later, he’d try to talk him down.
“Okay. We’ll see what they have and go from there. You’re the boss.”
Ethan didn’t have a reply to that.
Instead, they walked to Callen’s truck, and Gene got behind the wheel. Then, they headed to Timothy’s to drop it off.
Thank God Gene had put their bags in the trunk of the rental, so they didn’t have to head to Callen’s.
The storm was brewing, and it was likely going to be a very bad storm.
Yeah, but the good news was that Gene would do exactly what Timothy and Callen had asked.
It looked as if they weren’t coming back here anytime soon.
So, that was a win.
Right?
Now, he only had to calm his partner down and get him to work a case with some help.
Or they weren’t getting out of here anytime soon.
Call it a hunch.
* * * Blackhawk & Cantrell * * *
Callen’s Cabin
Same Time
He got a ride back to his place for one reason. He was done dealing with this disaster tonight.
Callen was a mess.
His gut was raw, and he felt absolutely miserable about how it had gone down.
Only, he was doing it for his brother, or that was what he was telling himself. There was no doubt he was trying to justify it to himself.
Only, the truth was the truth.
Right?
Ethan would never be good here, and someone had to force him away from this place.
Deep down, Callen was likely doing it for himself, too. After seeing Ethan, he was unsettled.
And his heart hurt.
There was a piece of him that had always been in love with him, and had he not been his brother, things might have been different long ago.
How did he know?
Because emotions and feelings were now entering the chat.
Back then, he felt safe around Ethan because he didn’t like men. Now that Callen knew his brother did go both ways, it drew feelings to the surface that he wasn’t willing to deal with.
Like how seeing his brother in the throes of sex turned on his libido.
It shouldn’t, but it did.
That was something he fought daily.
In fact, Callen was fighting the demons of his past, and worried that the rapes that he endured as a child had broken him in some way.
Is that what made him attracted to his brother?
All Callen knew was that couldn’t happen. Letting Ethan stay around would be a mess.
He’d bet on it.
So, he’d done the right thing.
Hadn’t he?
Despite Ethan’s anger and how he’d hurt him, he was trying to save him.
As he walked around his place, he hated that it smelled like Ethan’s cologne. It had that woodsy smell that he knew was his. Opening the windows, he tried to flush it out.
For his sake.
That’s when he saw the note on the counter.
His brother told him to toss it, so Callen knew that was the exact opposite of what he was going to do.
Why?
Because he was a fucking idiot.
Clearly.
Picking it up, he recognized the handwriting. The neat penmanship, almost mechanically written on the front of the paper, took him back.
They used to pass notes back and forth when Timothy separated them. They’d sneak them under the door to their shared bedroom when one of them was in a time-out.
Then, as they got older, they used to pass notes to each other in the school hall—or as he liked to call it, ‘the asylum that created them’.
They’d hand them off, walking back and forth through the halls, keeping each other connected well before the time of cellphones.
This note in his hand hit him hard.
It was his last note ever.
There would be no Christmas cards or birthday cards. There would be no messages mailed or emailed.