Chapter Four
Littlemoon Investigations
Same Time
Impromptu Meeting Time
When dealing with Avalon Carter, or Oracle, Elizabeth Blackhawk knew that nothing should be surprising. In fact, the norm for her was to pop in and out of Elizabeth’s life like there was a goddamn revolving door.
No matter what she said about not doing it, the woman was going to keep making that happen and in the weirdest ways too.
Elizabeth supposed if she was blind, she’d use any gifts afforded to her too.
So, instead of getting spicy, she just sighed.
Now, though, Tori was curious.
“And you heard her in your head?” she asked her best friend.
Yeah, not this time.
Instead, Elizabeth turned her tablet, and Tori and Julian saw what had summoned her.
She was sitting at home in her office, and the one window had frosted over. On it, there was a message.
‘Call the Littlemoons.’
“Texting has to be easier.”
Avalon’s laughter filled the room.
“Well, in my defense, I don’t own a phone. You told Nate and myself that we could be tracked that way. So, the dead are my way of texting. I asked one to find you.”
Oh, well, it did.
Ridiculously.
She warned her.
“It better not stay here,” she said, looking around. “My kids have a little too much fun with ‘Uncle Trey’. Do you know how horrifying it is to hear them talk about their dead uncle and all the things he’s taught them?”
Avalon laughed.
“I mean, your place is filthy with ghosts,” she said. “A dead gold-baron’s home? Elizabeth, surely you knew better than that,” she joked.
Tell her about it.
“I swear to God, I’m killing Callen. He’s going to be haunting our own home when I get my hands on that sexy hide of his!”
Since she knew Elizabeth was busy, or about to be incredibly busy, Avalon got to the point. You didn’t call up the Deputy Director of the FBI and waste her time.
“Elizabeth, they need to be reassured that I’m not some lunatic trying to con them.
The energy in the room says most are worried.
Can you tell Tori, Julian, and their family, that The Phoenix Files were legit, and that we hunted killers who targeted psychics, so they stop staring at me like I’m insane? ”
She snorted.
“We’re all insane,” she said. “But Avalon is not lying. She was trying to save people. That’s her mission in life. As for her psychic ability, she’s always spot on. It’s weird, but it’s accurate.”
Tori didn’t like this for a bunch of reasons, and all of them were sitting beside her. She could roll with the punches, but Julian looked about ready to have a stroke.
Her husband didn’t like this kind of thing. On good days, he didn’t like his own gift or trust it.
Someone else’s?
Yeah, no.
“You could have warned us.”
Elizabeth laughed.
Warn them what?
That she was coming?
That she was eerily accurate?
That she made Elizabeth feel off balance all of the damn time?
Avalon Carter was more an ‘experience her yourself to believe it’ kind of a moment.
“I told you about her what? A day ago? Bishop called, and I answered. I knew she was on the move, and I told you she left California. Well, she’s there, bestie.
You’ll be okay. I see that Maura and Jagger have popped in.
That means your ass is safe. Maura gets bitchy, but she is damn good at anticipating bad things coming. ”
The woman she was discussing smiled.
“It’s one of my finest traits to be bitchy. Ask my husband,” she offered.
Jagger just laughed.
“Yeah, well, pregnancy makes her spicy as hell.”
That was true.
Despite Elizabeth’s reassurance, Julian was worried that the shit was about to hit the fan. They’d already had that issue with Beckett, and now, Wynter.
Their people were in danger.
“How do we find this person? We’ve been working on this for two days, and we have NO clue who it is.”
Elizabeth was to the point.
“You literally have a building full of investigators. Why don’t you use them?” she asked. “Don’t assume that the woo-woo and the boots on the ground can’t work in tandem.”
And that was what Avalon had meant when she said they needed their help.
That.
Right.
There.
From where he sat, Julian considered it.
“I mean, we do know this was tied to what happened forty years ago. Only, they didn’t know who was killing people back then, so that’s beyond a cold case.”
Yes, it was.
Now, though, Nate clued him in.
“It doesn’t have to be a cold case. Believe it or not, they had a suspect.”
As soon as he said it, they all looked at him—and by ‘they’, it was the Littlemoons.
He saw the confusion as to how he knew that.
“I found out the good old-fashioned way. Legwork,” he said, and then continued. “I was a Fed. I solved shit. My sister still works for the FBI. I may or may not have reached out to Callista. WHO, for the record, is married to Maura’s one brother. This is a big circle, and we’re all in it.”
Well, his reasoning made some sense, except why did the FBI have that information, and not them?
“We probably could have used that information,” Tori admitted. “Had we had it.”
Elizabeth stopped that then and there.
“Bestie, I don’t recall you asking for information on killings years ago. Had you, I would have looked into it. You asked about Oracle, and I did what I could to reassure you. I’m not a mind reader,” Elizabeth said.
That was true.
Tori didn’t ask about the case. She had questions about the woman sitting amid them.
To help out, Nate explained.
“It was called in to the local FBI office forty years ago. Since then, it closed. They consolidated the files to Boston for storage, and then when they went electronic, the files there went to DC. Callie went case file spelunking in the dusty rooms to find anything she could that might have been too ‘weird’ to upload, but not too ‘weird’ to hold onto just in case. There was one file, and it only had one thing in it. A name.”
Elizabeth knew why.
“J. Edgar Hoover likely had them purged. He left the FBI in seventy-two. That was half a century ago, plus some. Feds are hoarders. There’s no way they’d discard a file with any information in it.”
Avalon shared.
“This has been an ongoing thing. It likely had incidents prior to forty years ago. This place has always been a battleground. Good just tends to win.”
Tori shook her head.
“I can’t wait for this to all go back to normal. I miss normal cases like dead people seeing their murders.”
Booth actually laughed.
“If my wife was here, she’d lose her goddamn mind hearing you say that.”
Oh, they were aware.
Those kinds of cases were the good, old days, and they really wanted them back.
“Thank God she’s handling all the paperwork,” Bishop said. “Because this would make her twitchy.”
Elizabeth was a busy bird, and while she loved to help her friends, she could feel the shit on the horizon. It was making her twitchy, and that meant she had to focus on that.
These people would be on their own.
Why?
Well, simple.
“So, you have a name. You also have a room full of investigators, some who were cops, and Feds. Maybe deal with that. I don’t have time to play games right now, so maybe don’t let anyone else die or have your homicide captain call the FBI so I get a call.”
Avalon was to the point.
“You’re about to have a hellish case. You won’t have time to help us. Be safe.”
Oh, she didn’t like that.
Then again…
“Nope. I don’t want to know,” Elizabeth stated. “All of my cases are hellish. Call me if you need me. Tori, you can trust Avalon and Maura. I would trust those two Marines with my kids. I swear on my baby birds’ lives that they are good people and would never do you dirty.”
Well, that said it all. Everyone knew how much Elizabeth loved her children.
Tori nodded.
“Thank you,” she said.
Elizabeth nodded.
“Call if you really can’t handle it. I’ll see if I can send you some help.”
Julian brushed that off.
“We’ll do it. I feel better knowing that we have help that’s reliable.”
That they did.
When the screen went black, the TV shut off. Then, Julian took over.
“You came to us, and we’re going to do what we do best. Avalon, we’re taking you on as a client.”
Everyone stared at him, and he held up his hand.
“Listen, if I pretend that she’s another client, I might not lose my goddamn mind, and we’ll all get through this together.”
Well, that was pretty much a Julian thing to say, and no one blamed him.
For sure.
He focused on the woman.
“You know us so well, so I’ll say this. You could have just come to us. You could have told Lucian you needed our help. We would have listened, helped, and maybe avoided this mess.”
She didn’t mince words.
“While I respect your belief that would happen, let me tell you what happened if I did this any other way,” she offered, giving them an insight into her burden in this life.
Then, she dropped the bomb.
“Your wife would have been killed, and along with her, both your daughters that she carries.”
Julian gasped for a few reasons.
Only, she wasn’t done.
“In the process, I would have changed the timeline by interfering, and that would have cost more lives. I try not to do that. Beckett would have died. Claire with him. After them, Hart was going to go down.”
They all looked around.
“After he died, Julian, you took your own life. Now, it’s only us three at risk to die.
While I love my life, I can’t allow others to die for me.
That’s not right. So, by doing it this way, I bought us all time in hopes we could find this person, before Lucian dies in the static, and Genesis eats her gun.
Well, not her gun. Her boyfriend’s. Yes, yours, Josh,” she said, not looking over at them.
Oh, Jesus.
That brought silence over the group, and for good reason.
That was horrific.
Finally, Tori went there.
“Legit?” Tori asked.
Avalon touched Lucian’s arm, and she pulled him into the static with her. It was her world. As he sat there, not moving, his eye blinked, but they were completely blank.
It was like the lights were on, but no one was home.
Nate explained.
“She’s showing him what could have happened had she showed up and asked for help without setting the scene for this battle.
Oh, and it didn’t take long.