Chapter Eight #5
“You can’t say shit about knowing either.
I told you so we don’t get buried in the shit.
You also can’t saddle me with her job if she does leave.
This is all classified. I’m not taking the director’s job, and I don’t care what you say, offer, or threaten.
I’m up to my eyeballs with bullshit, and I don’t want any of that. ”
He laughed.
Why?
She called that.
“Am I that transparent?”
She didn’t miss a beat.
“Yeah, Casper. I can see right through you. Go haunt some other person’s life.
I like where I am, and with Wyler having cancer, Ethan wanting to be out here, and wedding after wedding coming up, I can’t carry one more thing.
I’m at max capacity,” she warned. “I will up and quit. Trust and believe my big tits will be in a bikini on a beach somewhere while DC burns around you. So if you fuck around, you will find out. I mean it.”
Gabe understood.
Elizabeth was doing a good job, and she was right where she needed to be.
For now.
One day, maybe she’d move up, but for now, she was running it like she owned it.
The hard part was going to be finding a person who could work well with Elizabeth, and not get their feathers ruffled because Elizabeth LaRue Whitefox-Leonard-Blackhawk was NOT an easy person to run a ship with on a daily basis.
“If she bails, you’re on duty. You’ll have to pick up the slack until I can find someone.”
She freaked out.
How could she not?
“Gabriel! I’m already doing three jobs. I’m running a division with two offices. I’m the deputy director. I can’t pick up any more slack. The only thing left is my family, and I can’t dump them to play director. I told you so you could be ready. FIND SOMEONE!”
Oh, he got it.
“Calm down. You’ll have a stroke.”
She corrected him.
“My blood pressure, unlike yours, is fine. I’ll have a goddamn conniption fit before I have a stroke. I’m helping your daughter be a mom, and raising my own kids. PASS. I’m not carrying anymore burdens right now. When I say I’m at my max, Gabe, I mean I’m at the point of breaking!”
To hear her say that rattled all of them. Elizabeth never complained, or said shit about how difficult life was for her. She just kept moving forward.
To hear it out loud…
It was scary.
From where he sat, Ethan felt bad. He’d dumped another job on her, helping him plan a wedding—when he should have done it himself.
That was a dick move. It was just instinctual to go to his partner in crime.
Gabe tried to soothe her.
“Okay, calm down. I promise I won’t dump this on you. I’ll get someone who can handle it.”
It was clear that he saw she was at her breaking point.
Never let it be said he didn’t know her well enough.
Elizabeth was to the point, and didn’t mince words.
“Find someone,” she said. “I’m giving you the warning so that we’re not caught off guard. Get someone vetted, and make sure they aren’t someone who I hate. I have to work with that person.”
He was honest, and shared, since she’d given him the heads-up. There was no way it wasn’t a difficult decision since her family was involved.
“I like Kate Natalia for the role. I’m leading with her, if she wants it,” he admitted. “She is a damn good director, runs her own division with the child sex crimes, and you like her. The two of you work well together.”
What was this?
Could she get that lucky?
She liked Kate Natalia too.
“Are you actually not going to fuck me over for once?” she asked.
He laughed.
And laughed.
And laughed.
“Elizabeth, you’ve burned through how many directors in the last twenty years? There’s been a few. One committed suicide. One was killed by a serial killer on a case you worked. I had to move on. Axelle is quitting. One got blown up. Me thinks you’re the problem here, cupcake. YOU. Not me.”
She snorted.
“Listen. I only had something to do with some of them. You have no proof on the others. We’ve always said when the FBI crumbles, I’m going to be last woman standing because I’m like a cockroach.”
That they had.
Gabe was honest.
“Are you going to get nasty when I leapfrog her over you?” he asked. “Or can you play nice?”
She recalled what Kate did for her daughter, and how hard she’d worked to get justice for all of the girls like Willa. That took balls of steel to face down perverts like the Senators, and she’d done it with power and grace.
That told her all she needed to know about the woman.
She.
Was.
Amazing.
“I like her. I’ve worked with her. I’m good,” she said, not mincing words.
Finally.
A transition that didn’t raise hell.
“I’ll have my team start vetting her, and if she agrees, we’ll give it to her. I have to wait until Axelle gives me her notice. I don’t want the blowback from the Red Queen getting bitchy, even though she’s bailing to go back to the CIA.”
She laughed at the vetting part.
“Yeah, they do such a good job of that, Baldy. Let them vet a few people for me, too. I don’t have enough of a clusterfuck on my hands.”
He knew what she was talking about.
“Don’t be a smartass. You stole Ian Patterson away from me due to that vetting, and you got damn lucky. I want him back.”
Yeah, that still wasn’t happening.
Not on her watch.
“You got Tiffany out of it, and she’s like a female Ian. You can stop your bitching.”
Gabe snorted.
That was true.
“As I was saying, I’ll start the process, and if Axelle does leave, it’s handled. If she doesn’t leave, I’m firing her. I don’t like sneaky-ass people who get jobs behind my back,” he said testily.
She slowed his roll by amusing him.
“I’m taking a job with another agency. Fire me. I’m going to sign up with the ATF so I can get my sons off the hook later.”
He laughed.
“And let you be happy? Fuck no. You’re a lifer, and I’m going to ride that misery to the end of my days. I’ve already warned everyone not to hire you.”
She was amused.
Her husbands…
Not so much.
Oh, and for a plethora of reasons.
Only, this was how she and Gabe joked. She knew he meant well.
Okay, that was a lie.
He meant ill more times than not, but that was his charm. A leopard didn’t change those particular spots.
“I have to go, Elizabeth. Happy hunting. Don’t call unless it’s to talk wedding. You’re like the kiss of death,” he said, busting her ass as he hung up, getting the last words.
Ivan agreed.
“Well, I’ve been saying that since I met her,” he stated as he was getting them to the cemetery. “I know when I see you, I think it’s my death wish.”
She flipped him off.
“Har-har, Toady. You only wish someone would kiss you, frog prince. Your wife has to close her eyes.”
It made him laugh.
Why?
People always closed their eyes when they kissed someone unless they were cuckoo.
As Ivan pulled into the cemetery, it was freaking huge. As they drove down one of the greenery and tombstone-lined drives, it just kept going forever.
She wouldn’t want to play hide-and-seek in this massive place. It was row on row of stones.
“Saint Mary’s is huge,” Gene said.
That it was.
“We’re here,” Toady said. “I’m dropping you off. Find a nice hole,” he joked.
She snorted.
“Keep it up, and I’ll try,” she said. “Wait until I ditch security later. Who’ll be laughing then, Ivan? Who?” she asked, as all the husbands were staring at Ivan.
Oh, he didn’t like that.
Who wasn’t laughing now?
To distract them, Callen went there.
“Do you know what I heard about this cemetery?” Callen asked.
Elizabeth was curious since they’d been quiet all through the call with Gabe.
“What?” she asked, falling for it.
He delivered the joke.
“That people are dying to get in.”
She stared at him as he giggled like he’d done something miraculous, like turn water to wine.
Oh, someone was out of his damn, sexy mind.
“A dad joke?” she asked. “Really? We have jars of eyeballs, skulls with mismatched ones, and you want to dad joke me in a massive cemetery where someone was playing grave robber?”
He was to the point.
“Actually, I want to fuck you, but that seemed inappropriate while on the clock. You got a dad joke. That was me showing restraint. You’re welcome.”
Both Ivan and Uriel gagged from the front seat.
And Elizabeth just shook her head.
That was Callen being Callen.
For.
Sure.
Getting out, they saw a sign that said, ‘groundskeeper building’, and an arrow pointing.
With Ivan, Raphael, and Uriel flanking them, after Raphael met them at the door, they all headed toward the building. When they saw a man working on some flowers not far from it, she assumed that was the groundskeeper.
“Excuse me.”
When he stood, he was massive.
Holy.
Freaking.
Shit.
The man was a goddamn giant, and he looked like he could fee-fi-fo-fum her off the planet with one swipe of his arm.
Yowza.
She was a tall woman, but this dude made Callen look short. He had to be six foot eight or nine. Plus, he had the biggest meat hook hands she’d ever seen in her life.
The scowl on his face said it all.
He didn’t like being bothered.
“What do you want?” he barked.
Jesus.
Someone wasn’t friendly.
This should be fun.
Not.