Chapter Nine #4
Elizabeth had lines etched around her mouth, there were bags under her eyes, and she looked like she’d run a marathon back-to-back with zero sleep.
He was worried about her mental health, and how this was going to affect her.
So, he started at the beginning.
“An hour ago, flowers were delivered to the FBI office here.”
She stared at him, and she could tell there was something more to that.
“They were for you.”
Uh-oh.
She hated cut flowers.
All four men knew that.
Truthfully, she was more of a ‘dig a hole’ and plant a bush kind of a girl. Still, she stayed calm, as her belly rolled with the horrible possibilities.
“And?”
Chris shared.
“Vivian brought them in. She saw that they were from one of your husbands, and didn’t realize they weren’t.”
She blinked.
“I know they won’t be from anyone I’m married to, but they will definitely be from Devon Slater.”
He nodded.
Here they went. The cuckoo ride was just non-freaking-stop at this point.
“What did he say? I know it’s going to be horrific. I can tell by your face.”
It was.
Never let it be said that she couldn’t read a room, or that she hadn’t already considered an assault on FBI West as a possibility.
“MATE, show her the card,” Chris stated.
On the screen of her tablet, it went split, and the words appeared for her to read herself.
So, Elizabeth read them.
‘Roses are red.
Death is sudden.
One sniff of this rose.
And your body is frozen.
I’m coming for you.
You’ve been a nasty lass.
Thanks to that, press conference,
You will watch one of them pass.’
Well, she’d been expecting him to lash out, so that wasn’t shocking. Unfortunately, it had been her only way of trapping him in one location. She couldn’t keep chasing him all over the country.
There were still clues from the last scene she couldn’t figure out.
The one-hundred-dollar bill, mostly. She knew it meant something, but Elizabeth wasn’t sure what. It was percolating in the back of her head, driving her crazy.
“Oh, no,” she said.
He wasn’t done.
“Vivian carried them in, and she was smelling them. Think back,” he said. “Remember that case we had where that man was poisoning his true loves, over and over again.”
The sleep was still clouding her mind, clearly. She’d forgotten about that.
“Oh, yeah,” she began, and then knew what Chris wasn’t telling her.
And she was scared.
“Vivian is dead, isn’t she?” she asked, as she felt like vomiting.
He nodded.
“We couldn’t save her. We couldn’t touch her. He dug into our cases and used Aconite. He doused the roses with it, and her body was overwhelmed with the poison. We had to watch her die,” he said, his voice filled with emotion.
Elizabeth closed her eyes.
When she opened them, the icy-blue eyes were filled with tears.
“This is all my fault,” she said.
Chris went to stop her from saying that, but she wasn’t having it.
“I can’t,” she said. “I have to go. I’ll see you when I land. Right now, Christopher, I’m about to break. I need to regroup and get my balance.”
He opened his mouth, trying to soothe her, but she cut off the call.
When the call went black, she tossed the tablet onto the bed and began crying.
In the bedroom cabin of the luxury jet, Elizabeth broke down. While she didn’t mind risking her life, she absolutely abhorred costing anyone else theirs.
And that’s what she’d done.
With each choice she made in this game, it was a matter of protecting those around her or her family. He’d backed her into a corner, and each decision was haunting her.
This was the true way to break her.
This.
Right.
Here.
Now, an innocent woman, who had her whole life ahead of her, was dead.
“Pull it together. You have to pull it together. This is what he wants. He wants you devastated. He’s going to hit hard, and you opened this can of worms. FUCKING close it!” she said, angrily.
Elizabeth picked up her phone and sent Gene a text. What she needed was information. She knew Devon was a sick fuck, but she also knew he’d want to deliver those flowers personally.
He’d want the satisfaction of looking the person in the face as they took his death gift and smelled them.
If he delivered them, she’d been right.
He was in Damascus.
‘Get me the video of the flowers being delivered. I want to see everything when I land. I want to see who did the job, and if it was him! ASAP!’
She sent it, and she was physically shaking from rage. She’d bypassed the mourning and went right to explosive anger. He’d pushed her into a dangerous place.
And he’d regret it.
You didn’t back an animal into a corner. When you did, it was going to lash out and do wild things.
Now, she was that animal, and she was dangerous.
When she got the text back, she read it and didn’t reply to Gene. Now wasn’t the time to cry.
Now was the time to inflict the most pain possible to the biggest asshole on her radar.
‘Are you okay?’
Was she?
No.
Would she be?
No.
This was breaking her in ways no other killer had ever been able to do before, and that was saying a lot. This was a push into dangerous territory.
The last time she felt this helpless, it was years ago, and she didn’t like going to that point in time.
Now, she was forced to make the ultimate choice.
Keep playing the hand she was dealt, and have more people die, or let Devon Slater win.
She was a ticking bomb, and it was only a matter of time before she went off.
When the door to the cabin opened, in came Raphael, and he looked concerned.
“Gene texted me to check on you. Are you okay, Boo?” he asked, clearly seeing she wasn’t.
Elizabeth shook her head.
She.
Was.
Pissed.
“With each move I make, someone’s going to die,” she admitted. “I’m having to choose who to protect, and who to let him kill. I don’t like being in this position. I hate it. I hate him.”
He closed the door and headed her way.
Winn was worried.
In all of the time he’d known her, he’d never heard her say the word ‘hate’.
Ever.
That she was there…
That was a bad thing for Devon Slater. He could already see what was coming, and it wasn’t going to be pretty. He’d pissed off and hurt Elizabeth to the point she was struggling to stay in control.
Her kids weren’t with her.
She’d been isolated from her husbands.
Now, he’d killed an innocent woman.
She was going to break, and when she did, it was going to be spectacularly ugly for him.
“He’s already won,” she admitted. “I can’t beat him the legal way. He’s stacked the deck, and I only have one choice. He’s beaten me with the chance of using justice. Now, I have only one thing left.”
Sitting down, he picked up her hand.
“Elizabeth.”
She stared at their joined hands.
“He’s dead. When I find him, I’m going to make sure I make him pay for this. With each strike at me, he makes me more like him, and less like Elizabeth.”
He was to the point.
“I’ve seen some shit, Lyzee,” he admitted. “I’ve seen some things that would make the strongest people weep. Not every person deserves justice. They’re animals, and they deserve what they reap.”
She let him talk.
“He’s killed, he’s maimed, and he’s been foul. If you put him in jail, he’s definitely getting out. That’s not justice. He’ll buy a hung jury. He’ll get a lawyer just slimy enough to get him off. Sometimes, Boo, you have to be justice. This is likely one of those times.”
She stared at him.
“I took an oath.”
He understood that.
“We all did too. Life is NOT black and white. Sometimes, you have to live outside those colors and dance with the devil in the gray area. You live in the gray. Justice holds a scale and sword. There comes a time when you have to use both.”
She appreciated him sitting with her.
“Will it make me a monster?” she asked. “My daddy always told me that when you break the law, you become what you hunt. Will I become a monster, Winn?”
He lifted her chin, and stared into her eyes.
“No. You’ll still be what hunts the monsters.
Do you think I’m a monster for doing what I’ve had to do?
I know you’ve read my very classified files.
Or Ivan? Or Uriel? Why do you think Ivan is such a tight ass over rules?
He’s had to break them. Why do you think Caspian meditates?
He’s seen some shit. We all came back from breaking the rules because we’re NOT monsters.
We’re people who had to do a distasteful job to save lives. ”
She listened.
“I had to kill someone,” Winn stated. “I was sent in, and when I got there, they’d slaughtered children. I saw them all,” he stated.
Elizabeth didn’t say anything.
“Pieces of babies, and limbs of broken little ones. I killed him, Elizabeth, and I loved every fucking second of it. I took him apart, when all I had to do was put a bullet in his head. Instead, I let him feel that wrath so I wouldn’t keep it bottled up.”
He worried her rings on her fingers.
“And I’m good with it. Justice ALWAYS gets served. It might be served cold, or hot, but it gets to where it needs to go. Stop worrying about being the monster, and instead FIND the monster and deliver justice.”
She said nothing, but he could tell she was mulling over his words. Elizabeth, while a wild card, was a very methodical person. You could tell with how she did things.
Start.
Middle.
End.
She stayed on task, and got it done.
In the silence, he knew what she needed because after he had to do something distasteful, he needed something too.
Releasing her hand, Raphael pulled off his boots, and climbed onto the bed with her.
“Don’t tell Saint, but I’m going to cuddle a woman,” he said, trying desperately to make her laugh.
Anything at that point.
She did, a little bit, so that was another victory.
The storm raged, and Elizabeth knew what the water in her dream had to mean.
They were her tears.
They were each and every one she’d shed in her lifetime, as she waded through the blood and bowel of all of her choices.
“You’ve got this, Boo. If anyone can take him down, it’s you. I know everything is getting heavy, and you’re tired, but when he’s done, you’ve walked through the fire once again.”
She hoped that would be the end result.
In fire, maybe she’d be cleansed.