Consumed by Wrath: An FBI/Romance Thriller (An FBI/Romance Thriller ~ Book 8) (9 page)

Elizabeth refused to say anything. She was caught between wanting to weep and wanting to rage in anger.

“Say it,” he stated.

“No.”

He stared out the window. “Then we’re never going to be fixed. I’ll never get back to where I need to be if I can’t rely on you to be my compass. I used to trust you to lead me when I was weak, but now I’m stuck to fend for myself.”

“That’s not fair,” she
retorted, angrily. If anything, Elizabeth had been trying to do just that for the last few weeks. In fact, she had devoted every ounce of her energy to fixing Ethan.

There was nothing left inside her.

“Tell me how you feel, Elizabeth. Help me find my way back to us. This is why I wanted to go away. I want us to find each other once more.”

“This is new for me too, okay?” she snapped. Elizabeth didn't want to let the anger out, but she had to do it.
The fury that she had swallowed for so long was destroying her. “I nearly lost you. I had to live it too, Ethan. I had to trust that I was smart enough, and good enough, to find you. I almost wasn’t.”

It sat between them.

“But you came through.”

“Yeah, but what if I
was a little slower? I would have done the same thing Ares LaFay ultimately did. I would have willingly died, and even Callen knew it. He took my damn magazine from my gun, because he could tell I was that far gone. What the hell kind of mother, or partner for Callen, does that make me? I would have eaten my gun, had I lost you.”

Her words shocked him.

It horrified him.

“Elizabeth,” he began.

“No, shut up, Ethan. You wanted the truth and my real feelings, well here they are. Now, I still feel like I’m losing you. You’re despondent and you just don’t care anymore. How do I put a band aid over that? How do I, the protective raven, fix this? I’m carrying that weight too, and it’s getting heavier each day. You’re not the only one that’s wounded, Ethan. I may be beyond repair too.”

“I need my
Lyzee back. I need the woman who laughed and made me smile. I want the woman who was tough as nails and not afraid of anything.”

If he only knew
what kind of pressure that put on her, he might not have said it.

“She didn't have to face nearly losing you. That Lyzee never had to face the what if’s
, Ethan. She never had to watch you wake up, afraid and broken in that hospital room, and afraid of the dark. It’s hard to be so damn tough when your heart is in fucking pieces. Before you were taken, I was invincible, or I thought I was. Now, I know the truth. There is one hell of a big chink in my armor, and it’s you.”

“Why don’t you touch me anymore?” he asked
, suddenly.

She stared at him like he was crazy. “I touch you all the time.
In fact, I just hugged you a couple of hours ago and was holding your hand.”

Ethan pointed to the side of the road. “Please pull over.”

Elizabeth did what he asked, and turned towards him.

When
Ethan hit the dome light in the Navigator, his face, and anguish, were clearly visible. The demons were chasing him, and he needed an escape route.

“When you run your fingers through my hair, you hesitate. I can feel it. It’s the same thing for my tattoo. You used to love the raven, and now when you look at it, you get a weird look in your eyes. Are you still in love with me, Elizabeth? I need to know so I can decide how to move on with my life.
If you don’t want me anymore, just say it. If you’re going to discard me, let me know so I can brace for it.”

God, he hoped that wasn’t it. To hear those words would drive a stake through his already damaged heart. If he lost her, Ethan was
a goner.

Elizabeth
wanted to be physically sick. “Am I still in love with you? I’ve never loved you more, Ethan. You’re probably the one person on this entire planet that I cherish most. Yeah, I love you and Callen the same, but I found you first. You were my first love, and you don’t forget that, ever. I hesitate before touching you because I’m afraid to put my hands on you.”

He stared at her, trying to understand her words.

When she didn't add more to the conversation, he went with the drastic. Ethan ripped open his shirt to show her the tattoo. “Look at it Elizabeth. It’s not the same. It never will be. Can you live with that?”

She stared at the magnificent bird that was inked onto his flesh. When they first met, she had fallen in love with it. Now, there were scars crisscrossing it, forming a pentagram. With her fingers, she gently ran them over the bird, not the ravaged markings made by a mad man.

“I still love it, Ethan. It’s still us. If anything, it’s more perfect now than before. I just don’t know how to make you see that. You’re too lost in the grief and mourning. I’m afraid to touch you and remind you of what happened. I always think that if I run my hands over your body, especially the tattoos, you’ll think about what he did to you. I hate bringing you pain. I hate that what was once us, is now a bad memory.”

He watched her with emotion filled eyes, as her fingertips lightly caressed the wings and even the scars he’d been forced to endure.
It never occurred to him that even then, she was trying to protect him, sacrificing what was her instinct.

“When we met, it was unmarred, but like everyone
else in life, we pick up blemishes with age. I’m not the same as I was almost four years ago. I’m older. I have scars in both shoulders, and I’ve changed too. To assume that I’ll always be the same size or shape, or have the same hair… it’s not going to be like that. We all change.”

“You’re still as beautiful as you were the day I met you,” he offered. Part of the block of ice keeping him from reaching her was thawing.

His heart was breaking free.

“When I
first saw you, Ethan, I forgot how to breathe. There you were in your black FBI suit and shiny boots. Your hair was pulled back and you looked so serious, and yet I saw so much when I looked into your eyes. They’re the most beautiful blue I’ve ever seen in my life. They’re so dark, mysterious, and sexy. Your eyes are the epitome of the man you still are.”

“I fell in love with you the second I heard your voice,” he offered.
“It haunted me then and still does today.”

Her hand slid up his chest to his hair. “I liked your hair long, but if you want the truth, you’re even sexier with it just like this.”

Her words made him want to weep.

“I don’t ever want it the way it used to be. I want it exactly like it is now. Right now, you’re perfect Ethan. At least I think you’re perfect for the woman I am
, in this moment. I’m forty, and I have three kids. I’m different at this point in time. I don’t need the man you were. I need the man you’ve become. We evolved together on the journey. When we first met, we had no idea what was coming. Now we’re older, wiser, and battle scarred.”

“Lyzee my love,” he murmured. It was as if she just knew what his heart needed to get through
it all. Somehow, he found an odd sense of peace in the knowledge that if he had died, she would have followed. In spoke volumes of the depth of her love. They would have traveled together and that touched him. This is what his heart needed to come back to life.

She was what he needed.

There would be no one else, because he already found the pinnacle of love.

“Do you love me enough to grow with me, Ethan? From here on out, are you willing to
flourish in the now, and not live in the past? I don’t want the man that showed up in the diner that day. I want the man that’s sitting beside me here. He’s my husband and lover.”

He ran the pad of his thumb across her lowe
r lip. “Yes, baby. I think I am, and I miss us too.”

“
I will always love you, Ethan. I just need you to find your way home, so we can move on and start our lives back up. Tell me what I need to do, and I will. Without hesitation, I’d die for you, so tell me how to live for you.”

Ethan stared at her. For the first time in a while, he noticed something. She looked tired. No, make that exhausted. The weeks that had passed weighed heavily on her.
Her eyes weren’t sparkling, and there were worry lines at the corners of her eyes. In fact, she lost weight and looked incredibly pale.

He wasn’t the only one
buried by the pain.

Only before, he was too focused on him
self to notice that she was a casualty in this too. Ethan hated that the killer was hurting them from the grave. He was giving the man, who took him, so much power over them, and that needed to stop.

Here
and now.

For them.

Blackhawk was done hurting the woman he loved.

“I’ll find my way back, I promise you.”
Already, he was on the journey, and it was merely a matter of time. Ethan Blackhawk wasn’t going to be kept down.

Not ever!

She lifted his hand to her cheek and kissed the inside of his palm. “I trust that you will, Ethan. In my mind, there was never a doubt that you can beat this and save us all. I may have had moments of weakness, but I believe in you.”

No one spoke for a few minutes. Before long, he knew what he needed to do.

“Let’s go home, Lyzee.”

Lovingly, she ran her fingers through his hair.

“Absolutely, handsome.”

                        *     *     *

He followed him home and gave him time to relax. After all, he wanted his next meal to be content and happy. If he scared him or startled him, who knew what the endorphins would do to the meat.

What if it made it stringy and indigestible?

That would be nothing but a waste.

So, he waited.

That was always the hardest part
for him. When it came down to it, he wasn’t very patient, especially when he was incredibly hungry. It was like holding a bone out to a dog and taunting him with it.

Right now, he was ravenous
, and it was past his dinnertime.

Watching the man through his window, he tried to find a way to get him to come outside. Once he did, he would take him. Spotting his car, he picked up a rock and threw it through the back windshield.

Suddenly, the alarm went off and the front door opened.

Well, it achieved what he wanted.

The older man ran out the door, a look of surprise and astonishment on his face. When he saw the shattered window, he hit the button on his keychain to stop the wailing sound that was shocking the night.

“What the hell?
” he muttered, staring at the broken glass.

When he
turned to head back inside to call the police, he suddenly heard a sound from behind him. Spinning, he saw the flash and put his hand in front of his face to shield it from what was coming.

Unfortunately, it wouldn’t matter.

The meat mallet smashed into his face, and everything began going black.

The final thing on his mind was that he hoped and prayed that he
had left the town sheriff enough of a trail to find the killer.

Deep in his heart, with that blow, he knew the truth and what it meant.

It looked like he was going to be retiring after all.

Doc Trudeaux was going to die.

                        *     *     *

As they drove up the drive, the cheery house loomed in the distance. The old familiarity filled them both as they came to a stop. A part of her missed the place, and their time away was sad, since this was such a big part of her life growing up. This was in essence, who Elizabeth was inside. She was a country girl, who was raised on these back roads.

Here is where she learned to shoot, cuss
, and be bad ass.

Coming home was going to heal her and the family she loved.
This was her last ditch effort to take a man who was so strong and proud, and give him the same thing that the LaRue homestead had given her.

Healing.

Once before, she’d made this trek here, hoping to patch up her heart. Even before that, Elizabeth’s mother had died, and Charlie brought them here to regroup and become reborn.

They were doing the same for Ethan.

And their relationship…

As she turned off the ignition, she glanced around. The same white rockers were on the front porch. It’s where they sat when she returned from her run. Reaching over blindly, she found his hand.

“Welcome home, Ethan my love,” she said, giving his hand a squeeze. If what they had was fixable, she knew it would be found here. This was such a happy place, and now Elizabeth was gambling it all on this trip.

Getting out, they both grabbed their suitcases. As they approached the porch, Elizabeth ran her fingers over the light post that stood welcoming them. As with all good, there was bad too. She found a dead friend here, and that still weighed on her soul.
The lamp had been replaced, but the lost soul was gone forever.