Deep Dark Mire (An FBI Romance Thriller ~ book four) (33 page)

“No,
it’s got bands of brown around it and it’s staring at me like it wants to be friends.”

“Come on down, Lyzee,” ordered Whitefox. “Or shoot it.”

“I can’t do either. If I move it’s going to strike, and if I try and shoot it then I’ll destroy the remains. It’s nestled all snug in the second body’s stomach cavity.”

“
Director, I have good news and bad news,” said Doctor Leonard, putting away his phone.

Elizabeth Blackhawk stared at the beady black eyes watching her, when it hissed and she saw fangs, she nearly threw up. “Give me the good news, because I really don’t like bad news on a rock cliff with a snake.”

“I think it’s a banded water snake. You should be safe.”

Callen looked over and wasn’t
happy. “Should be safe? Uh, Doc, we need a bit more than a slight possibilities here.”

“What’s the bad news?” Elizabeth asked, still not moving.

“If it’s eaten or snacked on her, we need the snake with us to be opened up and analyzed.”

“We
ll my disgusting friend is living in her damn body, Doc. I’m betting he’s been snacking on something.”

“Then we need your new acquaintance. Dead is fine.”

Elizabeth was ready to lose it. Maybe shooting the creature was a really good option. That she could probably pull off. Maybe Elizabeth could take it out right between its beady black eyes. “So you’re telling me I’m supposed to grab the possibly poisonous snake and not let it escape?”

“Yes. We need
it.”

“I hate two things in this world
; dead eyes and snakes, Doc. Now I have both looking at me. Correction on that; there’s one dead eye, because the other one’s MIA. You want me to find that too for you? Next fucking ledge I’m not climbing up. ”

Whitefox
couldn’t let her face this alone and he had to do something. “Okay, I’m coming up. Don’t move Elizabeth,” he ordered. If that snake was poisonous, and she was bitten they were going to have a big problem, like death. She was his field partner, and he was going up to face it with her.

“Callen, keep your ass off this ledge. I’m okay,” she lied, but it was her job to keep her people safe, not t
he other way around. “I mean it. I’m fine. Just get me something to catch this snake in, after I grab him.”

Whitefox ignored her
, and before she could protest more, he was kneeling beside her. “Okay, back off the ledge, Elizabeth,” he said quietly, watching the snake. It definitely had bands, but they couldn’t see the entire snake. Most of it was tucked into the gaping hole that was once the woman’s body. “I’ll get the snake; you get your ass off the ledge.”

Elizabeth wasn’t moving. “Sorry Cal, we do this together then. Do you have a knife, we have to kill it to stop the body decomp
if it’s digesting the victim.”

“
Yeah, I do but it’s in my back pocket, side furthest from you. Can you reach it?”

Elizabeth kept one eye on the snake
, and with her free hand reached slowly over to him, sliding her hand across his ass to his pocket. Her breath was held, and all she could hope was that they wouldn’t rile the snake. “I think I can.”

“If there wasn’t a possibly poisonous snake, I’d really be enjoying this,” he said, softly. “Don’t tell Ethan.”

Elizabeth would have laughed, but she didn’t need him getting bit, or her for that matter. “Okay, I think I found it.”

“I wish I put it in my front pocket today.” Now he was just trying to lighten the mood. “I’m going to need you to distract it, and I’ll get it behind the head. Then you need to cut the head off, okay
beautiful?”

Elizabeth nodded
and slowed down her rapid breathing.

“I won’t let it bit
e you, I promise.” He swore. “We have this,” Callen reassured her.

“I’m ready
!” She moved, and the snake tracked her. It hissed and went to lunge for her, and she put all her faith in the man at her side.

Whitefox moved fast
, grabbing the snake behind the head. As it opened its mouth wide, fangs came out and venom beaded on the tips. It wrapped itself around his wrist, as he held it behind the jaw.

Elizabeth moved fast and sliced. The body fell away and they both started breathing. “Evidence bag,” she yelled down and was handed one up. She held it open as Whitefox dropped the snake head into the bag. Blood ran down his wrist.

“Christ Callen, you're bleeding.”

“
It’s a sharp knife, that’s all.” He picked up the body, placing it with the other half.

Elizabeth grabbed his wrist. “That’s a bad cut
! I’m so sorry Cal!” She dropped the snake down to the techs and pulled off her vest and shirt, wrapping it around his wrist as tight as she could.

“Sweetheart, I’m okay. Let’s get down off the ledge, and please put your vest back on, your tech team is getting excited,” he whispered in her ear
.

A
nd so was he.

Elizabeth didn’t care.
Her entire focus was on Callen’s arm.

“
Director Whitefox, the snake didn’t bite you did it?” asked one of the techs from the ground, his eyes never leaving his boss in a bikini top. If he could get to his phone, he’d take a picture to tell the other techs. This was incredible and no one back at the office was going to believe that their bad ass Director was in the field in a bikini top.

“No, I just got nicked with the knife
. The snake didn’t touch me.”

“Good because we were wrong. That’s a water moccasin. And if there’s one,
then there could be more. They find nice warm places to have their babies, and the belly of a corpse is a really great hideaway.”

“It’s like bedding down besides the buffet,” added Chris.

“I want this body sealed in a body bag, and no one pokes at it until we get it flat and can protect the team,” ordered Elizabeth. “Callen, climb down. I want to look at your arm.”

Elizabeth began the descent down, and turned and offered him her hand. She wasn’t leaving him up on the ledge. He dropped the vest to her.

“Please put it on, Elizabeth.”

She shrugged into it and velcro
-ed it up. “Please come down now? The doctors and techs will handle the remains. I need to look at your wrist.”

Whitefox followed her down; the blood was soaking through her shirt. When he reached the bottom, she had a first aid kit out, and pointed to some rocks. “Sit and let me look at
that wound.”

Elizabeth
looked panicked, and he decided to let her play doctor with him. Yeah, he only wished. “Lyzee, I’m good. Really it’s just a little nick.”

When she lifted his wrist the
blood ran across her fingers. She pressed below it and the blood flow slowed. “Chris, before you climb up, come look at this. I don’t think I nicked an artery, but he’s bleeding pretty badly.”

Doctor Leonard slipped on gloves and offered her a pair.

“I'm okay, Doctor. How bad did I cut him?” she asked, genuinely worried.

Chris Leonard looked at his wrist a
nd poked at the cut. “No artery was hit. It’s just a deep cut. You may not even need stitches, but it may scar. You’ll be okay, Callen. Elizabeth, keep pressure on it with the gauze and the bleeding should stop soon.”

Elizabeth did what he said, and was really upset
over the entire situation.

“At least you both didn’t get bit, and Elizabeth, can you make that bikini official FBI apparel because
woo hoo,
” he said, grinning. “That would make coming to work even better!”

Whitefox
glanced over at the man. “In lieu of my brother, think of me as her back up husband, and if you
‘woo hoo’
her again, even in your mind, I’ll be forced to hurt you,” he said, calmly.

“Ahhh gotcha.”
Doctor Leonard backed away, and went back to scaling the rock cliff.

Elizabeth continued to keep pressure on the wound and wasn’t feeling very well. She could have slit his wrist. With her free hand she touched his cheek. “When we get back, I am so going to give you a really big kiss.”

“Because you cut me? If a little cut means that you’ll play ‘Nurse Lyzee’, I really don’t mind.” He winked at Elizabeth and got her to smile. “Think of the story we have behind this one. It’s well worth the injury.”

Elizabeth didn’t
care; she planted a kiss right on his mouth. Everyone watched, and she didn’t give a rat’s ass. The man saved her from a deadly snake, and he was laughing about her almost slitting his wrist.

Pulling away
, he stared at her like she had lost her mind. “Lyzee, they’ll have a field day with that,” he whispered, shocked.

She went back to tending the
cut; the blood was finally slowing down. “I don’t really care. You save the girl you get a kiss. That’s what all the books say. Later you get a better kiss, because I don’t make out with Ethan at the crime scenes either.”

At the words ‘make out’ his body tightened. “There’s a bug on your arm. Let me save you. It looks ferocious.” Then he slapped her and killed it.

Elizabeth started laughing and pulled out gauze and a bandage.

“Body one is bagged,” shouted down a tech.
Not only had he seen Elizabeth Blackhawk in a bikini, but he saw her kissing a man who wasn’t her husband.

Today was a big day to be a fly on the wall.

Elizabeth moved to the ledge to assist with the hand down. When the first body was back on the ground, she glanced over at Julian, who was watching her curiously.

“You okay?” he asked, watching her wipe the blood off
her hand and onto her cutoffs.

“Yeah, why?”
she watched him motion to Whitefox.

Elizabeth knew the man had to be
curious about what was going on but again, she didn’t care what anyone said. “I’m fine.”

“Okay.”

Callen placed himself at her side, looking as calm as her husband usually did. He was scanning the area like he was looking for something. Backup husband was right! The man was taking the role very serious and something inside of Elizabeth tingled at the idea of being protected by him now too.

“I think I have to disarticulate the skel
eton to get it out of the roots. I’ll take samples to ship back to FBI West for a timeline.”

“Tell me what you have so far, Tony,” she yelled up to him.

“She had children. There is definite evidence that she was a mother.”

“COD
, Tony?” she questioned. “I know the standard line, but just give me a guess okay? You need time to examine the bones and do the tests, but yada yada. I know you can’t work under this pressure. I’m being difficult, and you don’t like to make guesses on the spot.”

“Now you're just
taking the fun out of it,” he said, snickering. “Woman was Caucasoid in her thirties and from just ‘guessing’, I’d say she’s been here a good twenty years. Bones show erosion from weather, and I think COD is going to be manual strangulations. The Hyoid bone is broken, and we all know you can’t slip and break your hyoid. Someone had their hands around her throat or a rope.”

“There’s not going to be any DNA is there?”

“Bones need to be cut open but I’d bet no. We have a woman that has been missing for many years.”

Callen
pulled his Elizabeth off to the side. “Desdemona’s mother disappeared twenty five years ago.”

Elizabeth leaned in to his body as they kept it as quiet as possible.
“I need you to tell me anything that you know about that, and give it all to me as fast as you can. If that’s her mother’s body, we have twice the issue here. The killer went after the mother twenty five years ago and now the one daughter. That’s more than stalking, that’s hunting.”

Whitefox nodded and kept his voice low. “All she told me was one day her mother went out looking for roots
for the grandmother, and she never returned. People in the town talked, saying that the mom ran away with a man or got eaten by a gator. Option B was more likely, since no one really goes off the radar forever. Desdemona was ten and her sister older.”

Elizabeth listened. “Okay, we need to find out when she went missing. I need a specific date, but I can’t ask Desdemona. I don’t want her to know about the possibility that the body is her mother’s too. That’s overwhelming.
We need to get a facial reconstruction first before dropping this bomb.”

“Agreed. This is twice the pain
, and Desdemona’s going to be paranoid about her being the next victim.” Whitefox was nervous for her. They may not be getting married, but he still cared. You don’t just sleep with a woman for seven months and not have some emotional attachments. Plus Callen did promise to keep her safe. “We may need to move her into the bed and breakfast.”

Elizabeth nodded. “We can do that. Do you want to share a suite with her?” she had to ask, and she had to let him make that decision.

Whitefox thought about it and this time went with what his heart, mind and gut were telling him. “No. I really don’t, but if I have to babysit, then I will.”