Deep Dark Mire (An FBI Romance Thriller ~ book four) (32 page)

Elizabeth Blackhawk loved a challenge. “Do yourself a favor and take the break on this, and don’t make me pull rank. If you think I won’t then you're kidding yourself.”

“I need to do this, and you have to let me.”

“Really?
Rarely am I required to let anyone do anything. As of now, Doctor Adare, you’re on suspension pending termination for assault on two co-workers. You also maliciously lied to your boss, called in sick when you weren’t and tried to persuade your co-worker to propagate more lies to cover for you. Then, let’s have my favorite of all the stupid ass things you pulled in the last week. You transported your gun across state lines and lied, saying it was FBI related when it clearly wasn’t. You will be sitting this one out.”

Blackhawk motioned for
the team to get ready.

“All this because he and I aren’t together anymore?”
She was furious. “Callen dumped me, and now you’re going to road block me from doing my job? You may have managed to get him away from me, but you can’t keep me out of the fucking swamp.” She moved towards the house to get ready.

Elizabeth
stepped in front of her, blocking her way. “Desdemona, take this one off, and this is the last nice request I plan on giving you.”

“Or what?” she demanded, and then
physically shoved Elizabeth out of her way.

The tech team gasped.

Elizabeth was on her so fast, that she didn’t know what hit her. She grabbed her arm, twisted it and brought the ME to her knees in front of her. “Cuffs please,” she said, pushing her flat to her stomach and snagging the cuffs her husband tossed her. “You just assaulted a federal agent. You’re going to jail for a little vacation, darlin’.”

Morgana Adare went to move towards her granddaughter, and Whitefox stepped between them. “
If you touch her, I will restrain you. So back off!”

Desdemona was furious.
“What?” she demanded from her position face first on the ground. “I pushed you. I didn’t assault you, and even you know the difference!”

Elizabeth
walked her over to the Denali and rolled the window down, placed her in the back and buckled her in to the safety belt. “That’s what we here Feds call a technicality. Where you’ve been with the FBI under a year as a medical examiner, I’ve been a special agent for over ten years, and a director. My knowledge of how to skew the rules trumps yours, Doc.”

“This is insane.”

“No this is me pulling rank on someone that’s insubordinate, over the line, and being a damn pain in my ass.” Elizabeth looked over her shoulder. “Anyone here believe I won’t toss the good doctor in jail for putting her hands on me?” she asked the people behind her.

There was laughter
from everyone who knew her.

“
See you when we get out, Doctor Adare,” Now, she was drawling and grinning her big country girl smile.

“Ready Lyzee?” called Whitefox, refusing to even look at the woman
who was once his fiancée. He wasn’t feeling much sympathy for her. Just last night, Desdemona wished him a lifetime of loneliness, and then put her hands on Elizabeth, again. If anything, he was close to losing it himself.

Elizabeth took the assault rifle from
Julian and ignored the stares of the team as she slipped into rubber wading boots. “Come on, let’s get in there and get back out.”

Ethan
walked over to the Denali and looked into the window at the sobbing woman. “Doctor Adare, we will notify you when we find out if we indeed have found your sister. At that time you will be given the standard options.”

“Are you going to leave me here
?” Now the tears were starting to fall even harder. “I get that she hates my guts, and that I’m now the outsider to you all, but you’re generally the logical one.”

“Desdemona, she put you here because she cares about you. What she was worrying about was you having to recover your sister and then see that the rest of your life.
Elizabeth is protecting you, and despite everything that happened between you and my brother, she still cared. When you slapped her the other day she took it and believe me, I’ve seen her punch back. Elizabeth doesn’t slap. She once broke my old partner’s nose for hitting her. She loves you or she’d have knocked you on your ass and did some major damage to your face.”

Desdemona sniffled.

“Now, I’m going to the sheriff’s station to claim jurisdiction on this recovery. If you’d like to join me, you’re welcome to come along and keep me company, or the other option is you can sit here in cuffs. You decide.”

“Can I get dressed first?” she
inquired, looking down at her cutoffs and old t-shirt.

“Yes,” he
answered, opening the door and helping her out of the restraints. “You have five minutes.”

Blackhawk watched her scurry away as fast as she could, and
glanced at his watch. Next on his list of things to do was going to be fun. He loved screwing with the local law that insisted on giving his wife a hard time.

Elizabeth followed Julian into the mire and muck and took it all in. It was thick and ungodly. “Holy shit, this is going to suck on the way out, carrying two bodies.”

“Yeah it is
,” Chris Leonard said, as he ducked under a low hanging branch that had creepy crawlies living in it.

“Director Blackhawk,”
called Christina from behind Elizabeth. “Are you really going to throw Doctor Adare in jail?”

She
started laughing and her ME and anthropologist joined her in the private joke.

Chris Leonard spoke up
and came to the defense of his friend. “You see that take down, Christina? Elizabeth wasn’t even trying. I once saw her take down a drug dealer that had just killed three women in the drug house. He was a brick shithouse, and she slammed him so hard to the ground, he broke out three teeth. That wasn’t even halfhearted back there. I’d bet she’s already out of cuffs and with Director Blackhawk on her way to some frou-frou assignment that doesn’t involve leeches and snakes. Trust me; she’s the lucky one on this.”

Elizabeth
snickered at his choice of vernaculars. “That was a good day with the crack dealer. I needed three sets of cuffs to get his arms restrained. He was huge. I almost forgot about that assignment. It ranks up there with my all-time most enjoyable cases.”

“Tell us more, Doctor,” egged on Julian.

“We were retrieving the women he cut to ribbons, and he actually had the balls to come back to the scene. Elizabeth was trying to protect the tech crew from the knife he was wielding. She slid into his legs, kicking out his knees and barely got out from under him. He never saw her coming. It wasn’t until he called her ‘a sweet piece of ass’, that she busted in his teeth on the concrete floor.”

Callen grinned and wasn’t the least bit surprised that her breaking point was a reference to her ass.

“I’m not arresting her, Christina. I just needed her to snap out of it. You check out my husband’s ass daily, and I haven’t tossed you in jail or slid into you and beat you to a pulp. YET.”

Everyone laughed
, including Christina. “Point taken and don’t think I’m not grateful for that daily.”

“How far do we have to go?” Whitefox asked
. He was quiet the entire time. It wasn’t often he heard stories about Elizabeth’s past, and he hoped the doctors would keep talking.

“A mile
or so.”

“Okay, so what was it like working with Elizabeth, back then
?” inquired Whitefox grinning. “Was she this bad ass when she was younger?”

Elizabeth snickered. She knew they should be focusing, but this was disgusting work, and they needed to keep their minds off what was in the wat
er. She prayed there were no leeches thinking about making her a snack.

“You think she’s bad now
? She was less refined back then. Ethan has mellowed her considerably. She was crass, kicked ass, and was in trouble all the time. I remember one case where she was undercover on the street. We had a killer working the local area in DC with a predilection for hookers and having part of them as a snack.”

Elizabeth laughed
uproariously, knowing where he was heading with it. “Miss Kitty was bad ass. I almost forgot about her too! Thanks a lot for telling my tech team that I posed as a street level prostitute.”

The techs laughed.

“What happens in the swamp…” began Doctor Magnus.

“Stays in the swamp,” they all stated and then laughed
.

Callen was right beside his sister-in-law. “Hooker huh? Does your husband know?”

“I’m sure he will now,” she answered, then held out her arm stopping Callen beside her. “Shhhhhh.” Everyone obeyed and a water snake slid across the water in front of them. “Sorry, I heard the water. Carry on.”

“Anyway, she wore this…”

“I meant with the walk not the hooker stories,” she laughed, watching her two doctors bump fists, getting one over on her.

Chris ignored her and continued,
“I saw her come into work one day. All the men in Quantico tossed money at her. It was a thing of absolute beauty. That day it was red patent leather, and since then I can’t help but love the stuff.”

Callen
could only imagine. She could have his wallet and credit cards right now just to see that.

“Miss Kitty stole a lot of hearts that day
,” Tony said, sighing.

“That was the ongoing joke for about a month after that. I got random presents from me
n in the office. I drove Gabe insane for a long time with that one,” laughed Elizabeth. “HR was worked into a tizzy.”

“I still dream of Miss Kitty,” teased Doctor Leonard. “Really great dreams too!”

“Christ Chris, really? Like I need to know what’s bouncing around in that head of yours. Come on!” Elizabeth winked at her ME, and was infinitely grateful that the two doctors with them were close friends. It made life easier if you truly liked your co-workers.

“I’d love to hear about the leather,” snickered Julian, wiggling his eyebrows at her lecherously.

“New subject,” demanded Whitefox, even though so would he. Something about Julian fantasizing about Elizabeth set him right off.

“Remember the edible undies you put in your partner’s glove box
, and his wife found them and stormed Quantico. All he kept saying were they were yours and it got him punched and knocked out by her purse. It was funny how she didn’t go after you.”

“Smart woman,” stated Elizabeth.

Everyone laughed.

“Hey,
if you’re going to throw down a prank, then be ready to get one back. Keep that in mind, everyone that is privy to this conversation. I play dirty and am not above edible undergarments.”

Julian appreciated the distraction
, as they walked back in and to the site. “We’re here ladies and gents. It’s up in the rock cliffs.”

“I’ll go up first,” she s
tated. “It doesn’t look safe, and I don’t want to have to carry any of you men out of here.” Elizabeth tossed her tactical rifle to Callen, so it wouldn’t be in her way. She cautiously navigated the climb up the rocks as careful as possible. Once to the top she pulled out a pair of gloves to protect any evidence. Moving the tree limbs, Elizabeth saw the bodies.

“Toss me up the camera. I’ll do the shots. The ledge up here isn't big enough for more than two.” Elizabeth caught the camera by the strap and started taking the pictures.

“What do we have, Lyzee?” asked Doctor Magnus.

“
Tony, you have a full skeleton with roots through the body and it’s going to be a bitch to remove. Chris, the other body is definitely woman. I can see breast tissue that hasn’t been eaten away, but a lot of soft tissue is missing Doc. She’s been here a couple days and from what I’m used to seeing on our assignments, definitely over a week.”

Elizabeth tossed the camera down,
giving the ME and anthropologist a good look at the pictures.

“Good pelvis shot. Body in the back is a woman. You can see she has spreading of the hips and had given birth at one point in her life.”

“The corpse is woman too. I concur on breast tissue and …” He looked up at Elizabeth. “Can you pull back the clothing so I can look at her pelvis?”

Elizabeth was sorry she agreed to climb up. “Sure, toss me the camera.”
Then she heard clicking. “I sincerely hope you aren’t taking pictures of my ass from down there,” she said, looking back at Doctor Leonard.

“Sorry
! My finger hit the button. It was nothing but premature flash photography.” He grinned at her, wiggling his eyebrows as he tossed it up to her.

Elizabeth caught it and
reached for the woman’s lower abdominal region. When something moved around in what used to be her guts, she nearly slid off the ledge. “Someone tell me that poisonous snakes do not live here in this bayou.”

“Is it all black?”
inquired Julian. “If it is, you have a water moccasin, and I hate to be the one to tell you this, but they’re not only venomous but deadly.”