Chapter Twenty-One #2
When he looked up, he was shocked. It registered on his face.
“Uh, the Deputy Director of the FBI?” he asked.
Nailed it.
Someone knew who she was.
“Yeah, that’s me. Who’s the dead person?” she asked, pretending she cared. What she wanted to do was get closer to see if they had their eyeballs.
As she approached, Travis said nothing.
But his brother did.
“That’s Mrs. Williams. She died from a stroke. We’re trying to reconstruct her face, so the one side isn’t drooping.”
Yeah, she didn’t care.
Oh, don’t get her wrong, she felt bad for the woman, but she didn’t care what they were doing.
“Does she still have her eyeballs?” she asked in what must have seemed out of the blue.
They both looked at each other, and then her.
“What does that mean?” Travis asked. “Of course, she does. Why wouldn’t she? What is this about?”
It was time.
That’s when Elizabeth told them.
“Well, gentlemen, and lady, we have a problem. We had a casket unearthed at Saint Mary’s cemetery, and the person inside was missing something…,” she began, but didn’t get to finish.
They were all caught off guard by the brother holding the putty spatula.
He lost his damn mind.
Travis shoved the table so hard, Mrs. Williams went for a ride, right at them.
Had it not been for Gene to stop it, the table would have slammed into him and Ethan.
Hector fell over, and she had enough time to avoid the table, vault it along with the dead woman, and chase after the man, leaving Gene and Ethan behind.
As she ran through a doorway to catch him, Elizabeth found herself in the storage room at the back of the funeral home. Inside, she saw darkness, shadows, and a plethora of things they used in the business.
Maybe she’d get lucky, and they’d find eyeballs.
Hitting her vest, she alerted the Marines that were still outside the building that she was on the move.
Yeah...
It was a bad time to leave them by the car.
“Ivan, I have a runner. Block off the exits,” she said, as a casket came careening toward her. She moved back, and just narrowly dodged it before it crashed to the floor.
She heard one thing over the comm.
“Jesus Christ, Elizabeth,” Ivan said in annoyance.
Well, she got that.
She wasn’t exactly thrilled playing Hogan’s Alley in the back of a freaking funeral home.
Only, she couldn’t waste time and let this dude slip away. She was in a dark storage room with so much clutter.
“Get to Ethan. Gene is with him, and Hector,” she managed to say into her com as she was preparing for the next thing that was thrown her way.
It was an urn, and it exploded with the ashes of someone’s nana, or papa.
Over this whole thing, she pulled her gun, and began playing hide and seek with a nut.
A part of her was relieved.
They might have just found the killer, but the other part of her didn’t like playing this game. Well, at least they’d lock the place down, and he wouldn’t get away with her if she got jumped.
Right?
Moving through the dark, she listened, and she could hear someone breathing.
“Travis, don’t make me shoot you,” she said, moving under a casket just in time to have a vase of fake flowers land where she’d just been.
The man said nothing back.
Instead, she kept moving, silently crossing the carpeting, and keeping her breathing silent.
She wouldn’t catch him if he knew where she was.
It was stealth mode time.
Taking side steps, she utilized a technique the Marines used to sneak up on someone. She’d learned it from them, and it was effective, She closed the distance rather quickly.
Only, that’s when she heard a doorknob jiggling, and saw light.
Well, shit.
He made it to the other side of the building.
Now, she had to haul ass. As she approached the door, it was closing, and she could see the man running across the back parking lot to a fence.
Elizabeth put on the speed, and heard Ivan not far behind her. Of course, he was going to track her.
As she approached the man, he was climbing, so she jumped onto the hood of the limo-hearse, and leapt from the top onto the man, dragging him off of the fence.
He fought all the way down, but she got him to his face, pressed to the asphalt.
“You’re under arrest for being a dumbass!” she stated, kneeling on the man as Ivan reached her. “You had better tell me Ethan and Gene are okay!” she said, not worried about herself but her family.
Raphael’s voice came over the com.
“I have the eagle and his bear. He’s annoyed with his wife, but safe and sound.”
Well, now, she could get irritated, too.
Yanking the man up, she stared into his eyes. He looked crazed, and that said it all.
He was loco for running.
“I shouldn’t have stolen the ring! It was just nice, and she had no family! I didn’t think anyone would know! I’ll give it back!”
She was staring at him because that caught her off guard. It wasn’t what she expected.
“What? You stole a ring?”
He nodded.
“Mrs. Delliman’s. It’s in my desk. I don’t know what came over me!”
They didn’t have a Delliman on their list, and she wasn’t here for some old woman’s jewelry.
What the fuck?
She’d been bamboozled again in this wackadoo scavenger hunt for a crazy.
Her hopes had been up, but they were dashed. This was another red herring left by the killer.
Son of a bitch.
Someone got lucky when pointing her at this funeral home.
Again.
When Ethan, Gene, and Raphael joined them, Raphael was dragging Hector Del Rio out with him.
Blackhawk raced to his wife’s side.
“Holy shit! Are you okay?” he asked.
She pointed at the man in cuffs who was now sobbing up a storm.
“He stole a ring, and that’s why he ran,” she offered. “Not because he’s raping corpses and taking their eyes and head. He got us again.”
Both brothers gasped.
“WHAT?” they said together.
In that moment, Elizabeth knew one thing.
The killer had perfected the game. This was not going to be a lead but a pitfall. They’d hit another dead end. He’d purposely picked all the same victims who used this particular funeral home for one reason alone.
To fuck with them.
Oh, and he’d done it again.
Spectacularly.
* * * The Blackhawk Family * * *
Back In Damascus
Alex Bartlett’s Place
Tuesday
Ten A.M.
Not only had he driven away from his career, and another one-night stand, but he’d driven away from hope, and Alex knew it.
It was funny how yesterday at that time, the world looked completely different than it did now.
Now, it sucked.
That was all his fault, and he knew it.
When he got into his car, he turned off his phone, not wanting to deal with Elizabeth. There was no doubt that she’d be calling him to talk him down from the ledge, but that wasn’t happening.
His mind was made up.
He was done with the FBI.
The next step for him was to notify the landlord of this apartment that he was leaving, and head back to DC. Alex was going to tuck his tail and run.
Back in DC, he could hide for a while, living off of his savings until he figured out what he was going to do.
Maybe he’d leave the country.
He heard Spain was nice.
Then again, he was a disaster on this continent. Should he really spread that around?
As he moved through his sparse apartment, the one he’d just begun renting, he was doing his laundry when there was banging on his door.
Oh, boy.
Had Elizabeth chased him back here?
Going to the door, he tried to peek out, and the hole was blocked. While he normally wouldn’t open a door without knowing who it was, he didn’t have the energy to fight with anyone.
He.
Was.
Empty.
As he opened it, he saw that it wasn’t his old boss, but instead his once partner—the one he’d had sex with last night.
Immediately, he tried to close it.
Only, that didn’t end well.
Corbin shoved his foot into the door to keep it from being slammed in his face.
He said one thing.
“We need to talk.”
Oh, contraire.
They had nothing to say that wasn’t expressed the night before. Corbin made it perfectly clear that it changed nothing, and it never would.
There was no room for him in his world.
And Alex was done pretending he could assimilate into someone’s life.
The definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.
He was a waste of space.
PERIOD.
His person wasn’t out there, and he’d never find them. He’d tried women, men, and nothing stuck. He was giving up, and calling it a loss.
“Actually, we don’t. Everything was said last night.
It changes nothing. Besides, I know what is going to be said.
What happened was just one more ‘fuck you’ in the long line of them in my life, and we’re no longer partners.
I quit, so there’s no need for you to be here.
You wanted off the team, and you ran as fast as you could, so I did the same.
You’re absolved of your responsibilities of being saddled with me.
You said it changed nothing, so why have this conversation? ”
Corbin heard the tone, and someone had given up. He’d been a constant resident of rock bottom, so he understood the hopelessness.
It became all he had.
He knew if he was going to get through to Alex, he had to be one hundred percent honest with him.
After all, he’d been holding back, and it caused this rift. It was time to fix it.
“Please, can I come in?” he asked. “I need to talk to you, and I’d prefer your neighbors don’t hear the whole thing as I talk about last night’s sex, and my personal life.”
He stared at him, and it hurt Alex’s soul looking at him. Corbin and his boy-next-door good looks were enough to make him do stupid shit.
Case in point…
LAST NIGHT.
“Please?” he asked.
Finally, Alex relented, and set the door free. He headed into the sparse apartment, and sat on one side of the couch, making sure he took up as much space as he could to keep Corbin from being near him.
After all, the scent of him hurt the man.
The last thing he wanted was Corbin smelling his cologne, and thinking of his dead husband.