Chapter Thirteen
FBI West
Cafeteria
Dinner
Since nothing was going their way, and they were running on absolutely nothing but fumes, the family knew the best thing for them, and Elizabeth, was to get some food in them. If they didn’t, winning this game would be moot.
It was to the point that they had to take the time to regroup, or they weren’t surviving this marathon.
And that’s exactly what this was turning into.
Days flew by.
Hours seemed like minutes.
Minutes felt like seconds.
With each tick of the hand on a clock, they all knew the truth of the matter. He would be regrouping, and someone else would die.
Until they could find his hidey-hole, and stop him, no one was safe. Well, they were, as long as they kept their asses inside the building.
But how long could that last?
Realistically?
For now, they needed a moment as a family, so that they could figure out their next move.
Most importantly was the fact that no one could recall the last time they saw Elizabeth eat something.
Not the husbands.
Not her security.
No one.
Elizabeth didn’t carry a lot of weight on her tall frame to begin with, and the last four days had taken a toll. She looked pale and gaunt, and that scared the bejeezus out of them.
She was losing weight.
So, they wrangled her to the cafeteria, and they got her food so she could fuel up. By promising to work, she was all in, and that helped.
Because Ethan was ready to toss her over his shoulder, and force-feed her. They could all see that look of worry on his face.
He was about to lose his damn mind.
As they got her to eat, the plan of action was to distract and feed at the same time.
Beside her, Gene was shoveling his fries onto her plate when she wasn’t looking in an attempt to keep getting calories into her.
On the other side of her was Chris, distracting her so that Gene’s part in this plan went off without a hitch.
Yeah, it was a team effort.
Across from Elizabeth, Callen and Ethan were sitting, and both men were worried.
It was written on their faces.
They had never been this far behind a killer when it came to body count and the chase. Deep down, they weren’t sure if they’d be able to find him with the lack of forensics and evidence.
Oh, they knew who it was, but locating him was like finding a specific needle in a needle stack.
Yeah, that damn difficult.
For now, they were hitting a wall because there were so many questions.
How was he moving around the country so easily?
What were the clues he was leaving?
Who were the skeletons?
If they didn’t get a lock on this soon, there was no doubt that Devon Slater was going to get one of them—or one more of their security.
He got lucky with the Russian assassin, but next could be someone closer to Elizabeth.
And that would only go one of two ways.
It would break her.
Or it would put her over the edge to the point of no return—and that was the scariest part.
As she ate the burger on her plate, she was focused on the men around her. She would be lying if she said she wasn’t scared shitless.
The bottom line was this.
She was going to have to go off her normal route when solving shit because Devon had marked one of them.
Only, reading the clues…
She didn’t trust them.
It would be just like him to fuck with the evidence—like he’d done using a hacker. Oh, he wanted a game, but he didn’t want a fair game.
He wanted one that only he could win by stacking the deck. Everyone’s life depended on her skill in playing it, too.
That was a lot to carry alone.
Over the last twenty-plus years, she’d played plenty of games. It had been twenty-five years of bullshittery, tomfoolery, and straight-up chaos.
Only, in those games, she had a chance. There was no doubt in her mind that in this one, she did not.
He was fueled by hate.
The man hated women.
He hated her.
So, someone at this table was in danger, and she didn’t think it would be her. Well, not until she gave herself over to him if he took one of the men in her life.
If she focused too much on protecting them, he popped up and took out someone she wasn’t watching. What she needed now was to figure this out.
Elizabeth had to get through the story he was telling, and figure out the truth.
Lives depended on it.
“He’s going to escalate,” Ethan said, eating a fry. “At some point, he’s going to try to shock you. When you put the bounty on him, it threw him off, and that attempt might give you something we can use.”
Elizabeth was to the point.
It wasn’t that she doubted her profiler.
She didn’t.
It was just that he missed one important thing.
“I’ve seen it all, Ethan. Shocking me is going to be difficult. There’s not a scene I haven’t walked onto, or a travesty that I’ve yet to navigate. I’ve seen everything that humanity has done to itself.”
He was aware.
“He’ll try to shock you with who you find then. That’s his only hope. He has to keep you off your feet. While your struggle is anticipating the clues and the outcome, he has to worry about slowing you down with shock and awe.”
If he really wanted to slow her down, he should try shooting himself in the face. That would shock her more than anything he was doing.
Already, she was mulling over the things he’d left to screw with her, and she wasn’t going to be leveled by it.
At some point, you pushed a person too far.
She was that person.
When she rolled her neck, Chris looked over at her.
“Is your arm still sore?” he asked, knowing she was babying it. He knew her well enough, and when Elizabeth protected that side, it meant the accident in the car had done some damage.
When she opened her mouth to answer, he stopped her.
“Don’t. It’s not like I can pull you.”
She was honest.
“I wasn’t going to lie. I was going to answer you legitimately. My shoulder hurts like a bitch, and I really need some OTC pain meds.”
A bottle of Acetaminophen came flying toward the table from Raphael, who had clearly been taking some.
Chris caught it, opened the bottle, and dumped some into her hand.
She popped them and chased it with some cooling coffee.
“Thanks.”
It was nice not to be bullied over her arm, too. What she wanted was a nap. What she wanted was her bed, where her children were down the hall, and she was able to feel safe.
Until this was over, what she was getting was some meds, some caffeine, and all the information they had so far, so she could pick it apart.
The constant feeling of being on edge while balancing the whole world was wearing her down, and Elizabeth was about to break, and she knew it.
What she wanted was peace and some downtime.
What she could have was more work.
Since they had to wait for The Hunters to get there, and they needed something, that meant it was time to actually work.
“I need to talk it out,” she admitted. “There are some things I don’t have locked down. If I miss one thing, we have an issue. It’s only a matter of time before someone else dies. I’m three days past my breaking point.”
Oh, they believed her.
Why?
Because they were too.
There was nothing worse than feeling emasculated and being forced to hide when their woman was out there doing everything in her power to save all of their lives.
Someone was going to need therapy after this.
Them.
Because he was her ride and die in this, Gene pulled out his tablet, and handed it to Elizabeth, so she’d have something to look at as she broke it all down.
She took a deep breath, rolled her neck, and got down to work.
“Let’s start with Corpus Christi,” she stated.
“We’re going to have to work this in a more difficult way,” she stated.
“Because he’s giving us the forensics that we NORMALLY would need to solve this.
He knows my process, and that tells me that Ethan is one hundred percent right. He’s had access to FBI information.”
Callen went there.
“It had to be older cases. Chris said the poison was a while ago. It had to be before everything went electronic—unless he had someone hack in and get the more recent cases.”
Elizabeth stopped him.
“There are safeguards on anything tied to me. Because I’m the deputy director, any case with my name on it is flagged if it’s opened.
If ANYONE but the people I allow access try, it sets off a very quiet alarm, and Gabby hears about it.
Gabe had that set up just in case we had a situation because I work the high-profile cases. ”
Well, that was good.
“So, older cases it is,” Chris stated. “That gives you a chance,” he added. “You were good back then, but now…you’ve perfected how you do this.”
Had she?
Elizabeth was beginning to believe she had just gotten lucky. Because this case sucked.
She tapped the tablet.
“Let’s start with what we do know. There is no doubt he’s hidden clues in things I haven’t considered. Again, one missed lead, and we’re further behind.”
That worked for them.
She started.
“We have a nun and two prostitutes. For me, he’s making a reference to me.
He knows I go to church, and he knows I’m Catholic.
He also knows I’ve had a hysterectomy. That’s the likely reason he removed the woman’s uterus.
What he wants me to do is make the correlation and know he’s up in my business.
Also, he wants me to know that I’m all of those women—a sinner and a saint. One men want, and one men avoid.”
No one spoke as she began working through it.
“He took their eyes and left us none because we took his collection. Plus, at this point, he was already planning the next set of victims. He knew there wouldn’t be eyes there to take or use, so he had to prepare.”
Ethan nodded.
“He’s a collector. I wouldn’t be shocked if somewhere, his father’s collection is being treated like it’s a shrine.
Remember, Devon idolizes his father. He hated his mother for the divorce, and he was tainted by the man to think just like him.
He has his father on a pedestal. The man and his memories are sacred to him. ”
She sat there and considered it.
Oh, she knew what that was like.
Charlie was sacred to her too, but her daddy wasn’t a sick fuck. He was just a menace.