Deep Dark Mire (An FBI Romance Thriller ~ book four) (15 page)

Talk about
complete and total torture.

First was
the erotic dream, then Elizabeth lying across his body in bed asleep, and finally Ethan disemboweling him with a garden shovel. Whitefox wasn’t sure where to put this day on his scale of good and bad.

How the hell did his brother ever get any sleep? If he was
his brother, he’d be dead from copious amounts of fornication all day long until he dropped.

But w
hat a way to go.

Now he had to figure out what to do to get out from under Elizabeth and into a really ice cold shower.
His body was still erect from his dream, and she was inches from the evidence. This was three times the trouble. Here he was technically still engaged to another woman, a woman who broke his heart last night by denying him, like he was a shameful secret unworthy of her. Top it off, he was waking up in a bed after an erotic dream with a woman he was in love with, but married to his brother.

Well shit
!

Could life become more ridiculously painful
and cruel?

What to do? What to do? Looking over at the alarm clock on the bed stand it was just five thirty in the morning. Any second Elizabeth was going to wake up. This was when she usually did her run, and she was going to open her gorgeous blue eyes, and…

Then what?

Oh hell, how could he let himself fall asleep in bed with
Elizabeth? Had he dreamed about her in the other room, he could just hop into the shower and pay for his sins there. Now, he was going to be trapped, forced to come face to face with them. The truth was evident; he was going to have to call his brother and confess, praying he didn’t lose the family to this one mistake.

Elizabeth shifted and her hand slid right across the part of his body he didn’t want her to be anywhere near. That wasn’t true
. Callen absolutely wanted her all over that part of his body. He just couldn’t let it happen.

His brother
had faith in him.

Elizabeth trusted him.

He didn’t trust himself.

But
God, it felt so good as she accidentally touched him. It was even better than the dream, because it was real.

Suddenly,
Callen knew when she came awake. At first there was the tensing of her body, and then she went completely lax as she yawned and stretched. Well, so much for her being pissed. To her, it seemed almost natural.

“Morning, Cal,” she whispered, cuddling against him.

This was like the day of a million tortures. Now there was cuddling too? How much more could he take? A sex dream, waking up in bed with Elizabeth with a raging erection, and no way to satisfy it, as she cuddled against his body.

Just fucking kill him now.

“Morning, Elizabeth.” He was tense.

Elizabeth could hear the stress. “Are you going to freak out and lose it?” She didn’t look up at
him; if she did she swore she was going to laugh.

“
Truth be told, I’m very close to losing it.”

Elizabeth knew exactly what he was talking about. She could feel the tension in his body.
“Want me to get off you?”

Now
, he laughed, and it was that hysterical laughter that came when someone was about to completely lose their damn minds.

“Ethan’s going to kill me.”

Now she did look up at him. “Why is he going to kill you?” She really was puzzled.

“I just woke up in bed with his wife.”

“You and I fall asleep on the couch together all the time. How many times have you both carried me up stairs to bed?”

“Many.”

“Cal, he’s not going to freak out.”

He wished he could seriously believe that.

Elizabeth rolled over and grabbed her phone and rolled back into place.

“What are you doing?”

“Calling Ethan.”

“Stop
!” He took the phone away from her. “You have to let me tell him, okay? I did something stupid, and I need to call and tell him, man to man, and without his wife present.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “Okay, then call him. I’m going to get dressed and run down and get us some coffee. You want breakfast?”

“Coffee is fine. I’m not really hungry.”

Elizabeth
slid away from Callen, pulling her suitcase out from under the bed and searched through it. “You sure you want to call him?”

“Yeah. I need to be the one that does this.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Can I use your bathroom since you're in here?” she asked, grabbing her things.

“Yeah, go ahead.” Whitefox watched her walk away and closed his eyes. After she was gone
, he looked at the phone and dialed his brother.

And began praying for a miracle.

                                *   *   *

Desdemona Adare rolled over and looked at the ceiling in her bedroom. It had been the worst night’s sleep she’d ever had in her entire life. After last night, she felt horrible. She called her fiancé a friend, and actually was disrespectful to Elizabeth too. They hopped a flight and followed her down to save her from the stalker
, and she was just plain rude.

Today she was going to stop over at the
bed and breakfast and apologize to them for what happened. She owed them both that much. Elizabeth had been nothing but nice to her since she met her. When she was insecure, she gave her support to stand up and be strong, and Desdemona had been a horrible friend.

Wow, she didn’t just break the girlfriend
code; she kicked the shit out of it.

Then there was
Callen.

Everything she said to him was how she felt, but she could have done it without anger. They were still engaged.

Desdemona looked down at the ring on her finger and twisted it. She knew how important it was to the family, and she wished she had the same emotional connection with it and them. But let’s face it. Desdemona was an outsider to them and even if she married Callen, she wouldn’t fit into the fray.

The phone on her nightstand rang, and she looked at the caller ID. It was the lab. Chris Leonard was calling her back.

Awesome!

“Hello, Chris?” she answered.

There was a pause. “No, it’s Director Blackhawk.”

Oh holy bloody hell
! She was a dead woman.

“Oh,
good morning, Director.”

Blackhawk could hear the terror, and he norma
lly wouldn’t have reveled in it. But the woman did break his brother’s heart, lie to them all, and rush into a situation where they were going to get killed, all because of her stupidity.

“I think
that you know why I’m calling.”

Desdemona knew. “I lied and called off sick. I tried to get Chris Leonard help me feloniously behind your back, and I’m fired aren’t I?”

“Yes, Yes, and possibly, but that depends on what you do next.” One last chance was all this woman had left in his books, and then he would ship her to Outer Mongolia to be the ME there.

She was confused.

“I have the package that you were searching for yesterday,” he said, nonchalantly.

“Oh. Can I have it?”

Blackhawk laughed. “Doctor Adare, that’s pretty funny. Thank you for the laugh though. I’ve been up all night waiting on the tech team to read through it and find out what was so important, and I needed that early morning chuckle to get me through a shitty start to the day.”

“
They read it?”

“Ye
s they did.”

She didn’t know if she should be mad or not, since she didn’t
even know what the hell it was to begin with, but part of her wasn’t thrilled.

“Why are you looking for it?” he started.

“I searched my sister’s room, and found a shipping slip in her purse dated relatively close to the day she disappeared. I went to the post office and found out that she shipped a book to me two weeks ago, to FBI West. Only I didn’t get it.”

“It was tagged suspicious and put in holding. You just can’t mail
nondescript packages to the FBI main offices, Desdemona.”

“What is it?”

“It appears to be the journal of a woman. It looks old; I’m going to venture to say it’s your mother’s.”

“
You opened it, and the tech team is reading my mother’s journal?” Desdemona was appalled that they had invaded her life and privacy like that.

“Oh, you're offended?” he said,
laughing.

“Yes
, you better believe it.”

Ethan Blackhawk was a man on the edge. “Well, here’s what offends me, Doctor Adare. My wife is out in some
God forsaken swamp trying to dig up your sister after you lied to us. If we were just your bosses, I could forgive it. I could rationalize it as an employee being an idiot. But we were more than bosses, or that was the impression we had. Our lives are kept very private for a reason and that matters. We opened up and let you in and you still lied to us. In our family, we don’t pull that shit.”

Desdemona said nothing
and just swallowed the dressing down.

“My brother offered you a family that would take care of you, and he also gave you a ring that matters to us. We took it very seriou
sly, but you obviously didn’t. I love my wife and brother, and right now, they’re trying to help you, despite the jackassery that you pulled yesterday. So suck up the shock and general dismay that we got to the book first and are trying to solve this mess.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

“You know, that would be okay if you were twelve. You’re an adult Desdemona. You’ve been to our home, and we’ve trusted you with our child. Now I hear my brother was held at gun point and my wife had to defuse the situation. It’s a good thing I’m stuck here or I would have just shot your grandmother and asked questions later. So when you see my wife, thank her for being the rational one in this situation. Because I’m pretty damn pissed off at all this bullshit.”

Desdemona was surprised.
He was really mad. “Ethan, I’m sorry.”

“It’s Director Blackhawk. Since you chose to toss us to the wayside, I’m not in the mood yet to be
generous and forgive yet.” He took a deep breath. “I just have one question, Desdemona. Why?”

She thought about it, and he didn’t want her to lie, so she told him the truth. “Your brother is in love with Elizabeth, as in LOVE, and I can’t deal with it anymore.”

“Unbelievable. So, because your fiancé has someone that loves him, adores him and wants to keep him safe, you ran headlong into a mess where one of them could end up losing their lives? You may have gone to Harvard, Doctor, but the degree obviously wasn’t in common sense or compassion.”

She
swallowed the hurt slashing through her heart. “Can I get my mother’s journal back?”

“
It’s being scanned and then the copies shipped to Callen and Elizabeth to help find your sister. The original journal is going to be sent to my wife for her discretion. You want it back, you go talk to her.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. Good luck with that, and as a heads up, she’s pretty damn pissed at your blatant disregard for our family.”

“I tried to apologize to her for my grand'mere calling Callen an Indian
.”

There was a pause.

“She didn’t tell you, did she?” Yep, she was officially the stupidest woman alive, but soon Elizabeth would be rectifying that little detail.

“No,
if she had, then this conversation never would have happened at all. Have a good day, Doctor Adare. When you return to FBI West, we will be having a performance review. Your one year is just about here. Then I’ll be deciding on if you're staying. I hear Mongolia is gorgeous this time of the year. I suggest you brush up on your Mongolian.”

Desdemona looked at her phone as her boss hung up. “Oh crap, what have I just done?”

Ethan had just hung up, when his phone rang again. He really prayed it wasn’t the doctor calling him back to try to rationalize anything to him. As he looked at the ID, he saw it was his brother and calmed down. Just the idea that he had been called ‘Indian’ by Desdemona’s grandmother made his heart ache. Blackhawk had a thicker skin, but his brother not so much. Immediately his overwhelming need to protect his younger brother kicked in.

He wondered why Elizabeth didn’t tell him.

“Hey Cal! Are you doing okay?” he asked, calmly.

There was a pause.

“No, I did something really bad, and I think you’re going to hate me.” Whitefox took a deep breath and would do anything his brother asked of him to gain his trust and forgiveness.

“Okay, well this can’t be good.” Now
, his heart was pounding in his chest. “Did you kill someone?”