Deep Dark Mire (An FBI Romance Thriller ~ book four) (2 page)

In the belly of the beast.

Rinsing his hands in the murky water and watching to assure the alligator kept its distance; he washed off the knife and then thought twice about it. It was best to toss it in the water and let it sink.

The deed was done and now he only
needed the last one to return home.

Alone.

It had been more than half a year since he’d been able to get to her. There’d been no reason to travel, and he couldn’t allow it to look suspicious. Getting her to leave the safety of her new family wasn’t an easy task, but this should do it.

Desdemona Adare would certainly
return when she realized that her sister was now gone too. When her mother died, the death was written off easily, but two women in the same family? That would pique her interest and bring her back to the bayou.

Then he’d make his move.

Time was at hand. The truth was poised to surface and hurt all the innocent ones caught in its wake.

Everyone knew t
he Adare women were born in sin, raised in sin and lived in sin, but no one knew who gave them life. That piece of information needed to stay dead, just like the two women in the crevasse.

There was so much to lose if it all came out.

The pain would be immeasurable.

It was time to bury the secrets of shame once and for all.

~Chapter One ~

Two
Weeks Later

Friday

Desdemona Adare’s alarm on her phone screamed for her to wake up and climb out of bed. It was another day dealing in death and crime. Rolling over, she stared wistfully at the empty space in the bed beside her and sighed. The man she was currently living with was once again gone on assignment. Desdemona knew his job mattered, but she really wished they spent more time together as a couple. Deep down everything in her hated that she was feeling resentful towards a job he loved so much. Whenever he returned from an assignment, he joyfully told her all about it and talked shop nonstop. Callen Whitefox lived the job and couldn’t take a break from thinking about it. It was one of the giant loves in his life.

He only had a few
obsessions.

His w
ork and a woman.

Then she pushed it down and scolded herself. Callen was a really good guy who tried his best to take care of her, and she shouldn’t be so damn ungrateful. The time apart was just getting hard to swallow
, and it grated on her nerves and patience.

Once back from this assignment it would be the same conversation and same outcome. Her fiancé would ask to plan a wedding, and she would have to
artfully deflect. He wanted to rush into marriage, and she didn’t have any intention of doing any such thing. They both came from broken families. Doctor Desdemona Adare never knew her father, and Callen Whitefox grew up the ‘bastard’, but knew his. Maybe it was that little circumstance that made all the difference in their outlook on life.

Or none at all
.

Like it or not, he’d
try and persuade her get married sooner rather than later. Preferably in the fall on the reservation just like his brother and sister-in-law did. She’d have to hope and pray she could gently slip out of the oncoming arguments path.

It wasn’t that she didn’t love him and want to marry him;
Desdemona had this fear that it wasn’t right yet; that he wasn’t ready. Callen lived for the FBI and after the assignment that brought them together in Red River, they almost died. Part of her hesitation was that she didn’t know if she could spend every day wondering if her fiancé wasn’t going to make it home at night. Then there were the constant assignments that took him away for weeks at a time to mediate conflicts between the ‘outsiders’ and the Native tribes. Genuinely, he loved his work and threw himself into it whole heartedly, but what did that leave for her?

Yes, she too worked for the FBI, but as the Medical Examiner
and mostly in house. Field work wasn’t common, and only popped up once in a great while. Desdemona had gone out on body retrievals, but then she brought them home to the office and did her job there. Safe, secure, and minus the bull’s eye on her back. Desdemona couldn’t say the same for him, and that was a big hang-up for her.

It scared her that she was going to get the call
, finding out the love of her life was dead from a sniper’s bullet or crazed maniac.

They’d both been there and done that, and it didn’t sit well with her.
Once she even broached the topic of possibly finding new work that he could love. After all, she made more than enough money to support them comfortably. You would have thought she asked him to sever one of his own limbs with a dull instrument.

Huge mistake there
!

It ended in an ugly fight where the make-up sex had proved to be a Band-Aid on a festering wound,
still left to never heal. It sat between them uncomfortably and often reared its head.

Yet, it wasn’t the only issue adding to her growing discontent.
Toss in the fact that they never did anything alone together when he was home. Desdemona was starting to think that maybe rushing into getting engaged was a horrible decision on her behalf. Yeah, she followed her heart and placed a gag order on her brain, but now it seemed that she should have gone with logic and not matters of the heart on this one.

Granted
, along with Callen came a very protective family, one she didn’t have in her own life. The gift of a family and a girlfriend made the hard parts seem more tolerable. When her fiancé was away, the house behind her was where she’d go to hide. The surrogate family kept her safe, and they made sure she wasn’t scared or alone for too long. It was nice to have that security in her life, but when he came home all she wanted was to retreat back to their space and reconnect.

Being alone with Callen was amazing. When she could get him away from his family
, they had the life she believed they would have. Cuddling on the couch, mind blowing sex, and hours of intimate alone time that made her forget about all the things she wasn’t happy with in their relationship. Alone they were perfect, but alone time was more the exception than the rule.

Be careful what you wish for, when you get it there was the possibility it just may suck.

The catch twenty two in her life was this
; she wanted what she never had, a family of her own. Once Desdemona received it, ironically she found she wanted less of it. What she believed they needed was less time with her inherited family and new best girlfriend, and more time with the man who made her heart skip a beat.

Maybe things could be different if she could just pry him away from the Blackhawk Tribe.
The hard part to swallow was that Callen Whitefox was attached to his family and even more so, Elizabeth Blackhawk.

Maybe attached wasn’t the right word
to describe the current situation, and what had been unfolding the last seven months.

Her fiancé was in love with another woman.

It was easy to see, since it was visible on his face and in his eyes. Yes, the woman was married to his brother, but it still rubbed her raw regardless. Callen would come home from an assignment, and they’d celebrate his return. Yet before the sweat on their bodies was dry, he’d be dragging them out the door and to his brother’s home to be with them. Let her rephrase that. Not them, but Elizabeth. She was the ying to his yang, the jelly to his peanut butter, the cream in his coffee and frankly it was driving her insane.

Desdemona tried to let it go. Really she did, but it was beginning to make her
crazy. Maybe it was a Native American thing, and family really was that important. Possibly it was because she grew up with just a sister and grand’mere and no emotional bonds whatsoever. Either way, when it all came down to it, that was the big reason why she wasn’t willing to marry him. Not because she didn’t love him. She was overflowing with copious amounts of the emotion for the man, but because she just couldn’t swallow the fact that she didn’t own his heart. When they met he told her his family was paramount, and at the time she was willing to accept that, but now… It was becoming a cross too heavy to bear. They’d had the conversation of the importance his brother and sister-in-law played in his life on day one. Honestly, she thought it was an over exaggeration, and once they came together she could make him love her more. Her plan was to show him that she could be the center of his life. Not another woman, but her and her alone.

Yeah, that was an epic fail. They’d had fights on that one too. Apparently when it came to his job and Elizabeth Blackhawk the line was drawn in the sand. No, make that drawn in the concrete. Her fiancé wasn’t goi
ng to budge on that one either. Elizabeth was off limits to any discussion. Callen adored her and that was the end of it.

Walking into the shower,
Desdemona tried to stop dwelling on it, but every day it became harder and harder to ignore the big pink elephant in the room. It was suffocating her and their relationship. Something needed to be done, but until then she’d plaster the faux smile on her face, and pretend she was happy as a fucking clam. Right now she’d think about the positive just to get her through the day. The only silver to this cloud’s lining was the camaraderie and the friendship that she was so freely offered. Her relationship with Callen was falling apart fast, but at least she still had a friend to call her own.

Despite it all, i
t was hard to be angry at Elizabeth. The woman was like the patron saint of friendship. There was never a moment that she didn’t offer a smile, a hug, or a kind word to lift her spirits daily. Since she was on maternity leave from work, she would come by the lab and have coffee with her. Laugh, tease her and then tell her she loved her.

How could she fault a woman
who was just being kind?

Desdemona tried to blame her for making Callen love her so much, but the logical part of her knew the truth. Elizabeth didn’t do a damn thing to suck him in.
There was nothing different done with him than she did with every other person in her life with the same exact outcome. It became painful to go to the Rez with the family, only to be faced with the incredible love that Wyler and Timothy Blackhawk felt for her. Desdemona only wished the men in the family would tattoo her initials on their bodies too. That kind of power from Elizabeth was awe inspiring and devastating at the same time.

How did a mere mortal compete with that?

Yes, Elizabeth earned their love by saving Timothy’s life with a well-placed bullet, and granted she saved her and Callen too, but she wasn’t going to tattoo Elizabeth’s name on her flesh. Yeah, she was superwoman, and now the friend Desdemona cherished the most was becoming the thorn in her side.

It was all just too much to take in at times
, and for seven plus months, she’d been reminded by watching the Blackhawk and Whitefox men adore a woman Desdemona could only wish to be.

Watching her with her husband, Ethan Blackhawk, she wanted what they had.
Ethan stared at his wife like Elizabeth was the center of the universe for him, and that’s what she needed from any man she was marrying. Until that day, Desdemona was dragging her heels and wasn’t taking a single step down the aisle.

All she wanted was that connection with Callen Whitefox.

And she wanted the family.

And the love they all had.

And the…

Damn it! This was entirely her fault.
This was all on her. When Callen proposed she should have said no, but she was desperate for a family and to be safe. The wild copious amounts of sex distracted her too. Hindsight was twenty-twenty and now she knew that it had all been bad timing. The day he asked her, it should have been her warning that Elizabeth’s name popped up during the proposal. Maybe she should have read the look in his eyes, or some body language for a clue, but now she was aware of the cold hard truth.

Their love wasn’t equally shared.

Let’s face it. She
couldn’t compare to Elizabeth. Desdemona was short, nerdy and played in the dead all day. It was sad that she wore heels in the house just to be able to be relatively as tall as her ‘friend’. Maybe her black and goth-y red hair was initially attractive to Callen, but often it was Elizabeth’s inky curls she’d catch him playing with absently. At one time he’d look into her unusual green eyes and she’d feel lost, but now it was icy blue ones that he shared the secret looks with daily. It was blatantly obvious who owned his heart.

How was
Desdemona to compete? Elizabeth was model gorgeous, tall, lean and mysterious. Any woman who could take out a killer with one shot to the head and not flinch, was badass and beyond. Yeah, body soup didn’t bother her, but she’d never be able to vie against a woman who just screamed self-assured and perfect.

Desdemona
hated herself that she was even thinking these things, but she couldn’t help but be a tiny bit jealous.