Chapter Fifteen #3
Just the one act of protecting herself the best she could in that moment. If she didn’t have to save them all, she might have let him end her.
That was how devastated she was.
And how empty.
As he stared up at her, his arm in a painful lock that the Marines showed her, ironically, she made a promise.
“I’ll get her justice,” she said, as he couldn’t move.
Honestly, no one could.
This could only go two ways, but in those scenarios, someone was getting hurt.
“I’ll get you justice too,” she offered.
When he started crying again, that second wave of mourning assaulting him, she set his arm free. It gave her no pleasure to stop him. If he thought she didn’t wish he’d just pound her into oblivion so the pain would stop, he was wrong.
Glancing over at Ethan, she said one thing.
“I will be in my office in lockdown. I have things to handle before they get here.”
By things, she meant a nap.
God.
She wanted to hide in sleep so badly.
As for her husband, Ethan knew who she was referring to, and he hoped they would find Devon.
Only, the damage was already done.
“I’m going out hunting,” she stated. Then, she laid down the mother fucking law.
Because this was still her shitshow.
“You’ll be staying here,” she stated. “All of you. If you argue, you’re fired,” she said, pointing at security.
“You’ll be on the first flight back to DC, and reassigned by the President of the United States,” she said to Raphael, the Archangel.
“Test me if you want to see the depths in which I’ll stoop to keep you all alive! ”
Wisely, they said nothing.
Then, she looked at her husbands and laid down the line in the sand. If Ethan crossed this one, it wouldn’t end well, because she was done.
“If you argue, our marriages are over.”
BOOM.
That bomb was dropped, and the boundaries were set and with that, Elizabeth walked out, leaving Raphael to try and calm Caspian down, Ivan to stand there with his mouth hanging open, and her husbands believing that she’d meant every word she said.
Elizabeth Blackhawk was at the end of her rope.
Clearly.
This was territory they’d never seen before.
* * * The Blackhawks * * *
Three A.M.
Middle Of
The Night
With the morgue locked down, Chris, Chrissy, Tony, and Jaxon were left to their own devices. They all had work to do, and truthfully, MATE was doing all the heavy lifting.
For them, it was a waiting game.
What went down over the last two hours had been mostly digging through files for dentals, and any kind of matches to cases they’d worked.
When Chris had heard that the man had bought FBI intel from Elizabeth’s old cases, they began trying to match the bones to someone they’d seen in the morgue before.
Only, Tony hadn’t been convinced that was going to pan out, and he was right.
He’d seen something in those scans, and he was chasing ghosts.
Yes, they were ghosts of their past.
And it had him worried.
Now, though, in the silence of the room, as Jaxon had her head down on the counter, taking a nap, and Chris was cleaning up from the body repairs from Hell, he was watching the screen.
MATE was meticulously doing the reconstruction, as that dread sat in the pit of his stomach.
Over the last twenty-five years, he’d seen a lot of bones, and he had the uncanny ability as an anthropologist to see markers and get a baseline of the victim.
For the male one on his table, he didn’t like what he saw. Now, he was waiting for confirmation.
He’d not told Chris, simply because he wanted to make sure he wasn’t losing his mind—or just tired.
But truth be told, he was scared.
As the system chimed, he knew the analysis was complete, and his suspicions would either be right, or he hoped, wrong.
Printing out the results, he saw the name, and it was a sucker punch to his solar plexus.
He’d been right.
Oh, this hurt, and stole his breath.
A part of his brain was screaming one thing.
This couldn’t be happening.
There was no fucking way what he was seeing was accurate.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “NO, no, no,” he muttered, staring between the paper and the skull in horror.
From where he was cleaning up, that had Chris’ attention.
“What?” he asked, heading his way. “What did you just find?” he asked. “Is that the ID?”
Tony stared at him.
And said nothing.
Even though he’d suspected this, he still hoped he’d been wrong. Now, he wasn’t so much shocked, but horrified. Because of what he saw, he wanted to hide the results, and for one reason, and one reason alone.
“Chris, this is bad. We can’t…”
Taking the paper, Chris read the name. It was at that moment that the irony wasn’t lost on him.
Not.
One.
Bit.
Of course, this piece of shit defiled the one thing that Elizabeth held sacred. He’d gone after the one thing that would certainly put her over the goddamn edge into a full-on breakdown.
He stole her father.
‘Charlie LaRue.’
Tony was to the point.
“If that’s him…”
Chris already knew. Now, the injuries on the female set of remains made one hundred percent sense. The BFT to the left side of her body was indicative of being hit by a drunk driver in a car.
The impact would have killed her with the skull fracture, while causing fracturing throughout her body.
They not only had Charlie LaRue, but this piece of shit dug up Catherine LaRue too.
Elizabeth’s parents.
Yeah, this wasn’t going to go well. His wife was already on the edge as she was ready to fall off. Giving her this news…that was going to make her spiral.
Without a doubt.
“It makes sense,” Chris stated. “The sacraments. Marriage. He wasn’t talking about Elizabeth. He was talking about her parents. The remains were the clue. At some point, he dug up her parent’s bodies, and I’m going to say it was done a while ago.”
Tony agreed.
“The oxidation on the bones…he’s likely had them a good year.”
Of course, he would have planned ahead. He would have watched the cemetery where they were buried, and he would have gotten the timeline of when Elizabeth visited—which wasn’t often.
He loved a graveyard, and he loved digging people up for his sick little games.
This was possibly the sickest of them all.
He wasn’t The Grave Robber for nothing.
They might have been in the hands of the minister and his wife, but he would have wanted to dig them up personally, use their skulls, and find great amusement in that.
“I’m going to get a warrant to open their graves,” he said. “We have to keep this quiet.”
Seeing the conversation, of course, the two women in the locked room headed their way.
“What’s going on?” Chrissy asked.
Oh, it was best she not know.
“I don’t think…”
She pointed at him.
“You can tell me, or I can find out by asking the boss lady what’s going on.”
Both of them looked panicked.
When she pulled out her phone, Chris grabbed it.
They had no choice.
They were all in this mess together. If they didn’t tell her, the whole lab would be up shit’s creek if she found out.
That was ALL of them.
Instead of saying anything, Chris handed them the paper, and both Jaxon and Chrissy read it.
Chrissy gasped in horror.
“Oh, no. She’s going to fricassee him in a pot of his own juices when she finds him,” she whispered.
Yeah, she had no idea how accurate that statement was.
“What are you going to do?” Jaxon asked.
Truthfully, Chris wasn’t sure.
If he didn’t tell her, that could blow up spectacularly. If that was part of the clues, he’d handicap her.
If he did tell her, she was going to go nuclear, and she might lose her mind and be unable to keep fighting. Then, her life was in danger.
Finally, Chris made up his mind.
This was his cross to bear—also ironically.
“I have no choice. I have to tell her. Package them up. Put their remains in cardboard coffins for transport. Handle them with the utmost care. I’ll tell her.”
Jaxon stopped him.
“We didn’t get positive ID on the female yet.”
Chris shared.
“Her mother died in a drunk driving incident. She was hit on the driver’s side of the vehicle, and died instantly. The injuries match up. When they open the graves, she won’t be there. I’d bet my career on it.”
Well, shit.
Jaxon knew that from the damage to the bones, that was most definitely a possible cause of death.
“How long ago?” she asked.
He did the math.
“Forty years ago. Elizabeth was ten at the time,” he stated. “The timeline matches up with the type of embalming residue you both found. Charlie died seventeen years ago-ish.”
Jaxon didn’t question it. Ultimately, this was Chris’ final decision. This was his circus, and they were his clowns.
Chrissy knew she was going to be angry.
“Oh, this is going to go badly.”
Yeah, tell him about it. For now, though, he needed backup on this one.
Pulling out his phone, he called Ethan.
“Hey, my love,” he began, but was cut off rather quickly by his one husband.
Chris didn’t mince words.
“I need you, Callen, and Gene in the morgue. It’s important. Drop what you’re doing. ASAP.”
Oh, boy.
Well, that said it all.
No one questioned it. Chris RARELY made a call with that kind of a demand. He could handle his own issues, most of the time.
“We’ll be right there,” he said. “We’re trying to find Devon. Is it more important than that?” he asked, knowing The Hunters would be there in a few hours, and they had to have something for them.
Like a way to find Devon.
“Ethan, it’s bad. Hurry!”
That was all he had to say.
“We’ll be there.”
Hanging up, Chris was pacing. It was rare to see him unsure of himself, but he knew what Elizabeth had said in the body elevator.
She was inches from the edge.
Knowing how she felt about her father, and how her mother had died in front of her, he wasn’t sure if this would break her, or set her off like fireworks.
It was a crapshoot.
Oh, and he didn’t like having to take this gamble.
Fortunately for Chris, it didn’t take his husbands long to get there.
As the morgue door opened, the passcode being entered, in came the men with security all over them.
“Outside,” he said to Demeter, Gryphen, and Gunny. “This is classified.”
That caught them off guard.
“Seriously?”
Chris had no gentleness in his tone.
Honestly, he was pissed too.