Sacred Burial Grounds (An FBI Romance Thriller (book 2)) (24 page)

S
he sat beside him, working on her smartphone and tablet, and she didn’t try to initiate conversation at all. Essentially, she was ignoring him, and Blackhawk found that annoyed him too. Granted, she was probably aware that he was over the edge and angry. Any conversation would be detrimental to their relationship, but he really could have used her calm reassurance at that moment. Part of him was feeling incredibly guilty that he was letting the anger build between them, he just couldn’t get it under control. Fear was in charge now, and it had him by the throat, squeezing him tight.

Parking in the garage, Blackhawk retrieved his bag and his papers from the back seat of her jeep and continued into the elevator. More silence
enveloped them. Blackhawk didn’t know how to stop the wall from building between them. All he wanted was for her to stay off this assignment. It was her stubbornness that was keeping her from seeing she was in danger. Ethan Blackhawk wanted to keep his wife and child safe from the killer, and she was making it harder than it had to be. Why didn’t she see that?

Once inside their lobby, Ginny was waiting for them.

“Mr. B, you have calls from the ME, the anthropologist, and then Christina in the lab. They need your attention ASAP. I also dropped the approved personnel files on your desk, and they need your signature. Mrs. B already signed off on them yesterday. If you want the personnel transferred you need to take care of it immediately, so I can submit the paperwork.”

She turned towards Elizabeth.

“Mrs. B, you had two calls from Gabe Rothschild. I tagged them as urgent and you need to get back to him immediately. You have three psych evaluations on your desk waiting for your signature on the three new agents. Mr. B already approved them. You had a call from a Timothy Blackhawk, and I’m assuming he’s a relative; his message is on your desk, along with a number to return his call.”

At his grandfather’s name
he turned and anger flashed in his eyes. There was no reason his grandfather should be contacting her and not him.

“You also have a meeting with six more techs for tomorrow. Do you want me to confirm or cancel?”

“Call down to the lab and have Christina come up to my office immediately. Please specify that she is to meet with me, not him.” She jerked her thumb at her husband. “Then confirm them please.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“I’ll be in my office, Ginny. When Mr. Whitefox arrives buzz me, and until then I don’t wish to be disturbed.” With that she turned, leaving her husband to stand there seething from his anger. Elizabeth wanted to slam her door, but she didn’t want to prove that husbands and wives couldn’t work together. Being petty almost won out for that brief second, but the satisfaction wouldn’t be worth it in the long run. They were the bosses, and they didn’t need their emotional baggage being left in the workplace. She loved her husband, but there were days…

Christina d
idn’t think of herself as timid or nervous around people, but whenever she had to face Elizabeth Blackhawk in a meeting, she was scared shitless. Maybe it was because the woman knew she was checking out her husband. One way or another, being summoned up to her office was very intimidating.

As she knocked on Elizabeth Blackhawks door, her heart was pounding in her chest, and she hoped the woman couldn’t smell her fear. Ethan Blackhawk w
as usually her point of contact, not her, and that was exactly how she liked it. Yeah, she had a crush on her boss, but she’d never try anything stupid. He was just really great to look at and a good guy to work for as a tech. She tried not to stare and drool, but come on. Ethan Blackhawk was definitely a distraction in the workplace.

“Come in,” was the reply.

“Director Blackhawk, you wanted to see me?” she asked, praying the nervousness didn’t sound in her voice.

Elizabeth could sense the fear a mile away
. If she wasn’t so pissed and riled up this morning she would have been entertained by the entire situation. “Yeah, I have some things I need to discuss with you.”

“Okay, what do you need to discuss?”

Elizabeth opened her desk, pulling out the two feathers and the bag with the laminated card. “I need these analyzed. They showed up on my front porch this morning. Find me something on them and do it fast.”

Christina was relieved that it had nothing to do with her husband. “
Absolutely, Director Blackhawk and I’ll work on it immediately,” she took the bag from her boss and was ready to escape.

“You can call me Elizabeth in the office. I don’t generally bite, and I don’t beat the hell out of women that check out my husband
, unless they make a move on him.” She let it hang between them, as she watched her with icy blue eyes.

She swallowed and
apparently it was blatantly obvious. “Ma’am, I’m…”

“Christina, you’re good at your job, and I appreciate the male form as much as the next girl. As long as it doesn’t interfere with work I’m not going to get pissy. The minute it starts to reflect in your work, or you t
hink you can take a shot at him, then we’re going to have a huge problem. Let’s consider this little chat off the record and between two girls- Ethan’s wife and his favorite lab tech.”

“Yes, ma’am,
” she squeaked, believing the woman would do it. She heard about the fight in Salem and how she nearly killed her own brother. Elizabeth Blackhawk wasn’t to be screwed with, ever.

“I have one last thing for you to handle.” Elizabeth almost laughed. She’d played boss long enough to know how to deal with people. By pointing out that she was aware of the woman’s obsession
, it would nip it in the bud. “I have six techs coming tomorrow for interviews for the lab. They can hand me their resumes written in Greek, and I’m not going to know if they’re good or not. I need you to meet with them and pick four of the six. I want the cream of the crop, if you will.”

Christina was genuinely surprised that she was giving her a job with that kind of responsibility. “You want me to interview them?”

Elizabeth sat back in her chair. “Is that something you feel you aren’t interested in doing? I can always ask Doctor Leonard to take care of it for me instead.”

“No! I just didn’t expect you to trust me to staff the lab.”

“You know the kind of personnel that need to be down there and I don’t. We didn’t hire you, Christina. But someone found us a real gem, and we value you. When you moved here with us to work here we were thrilled. We don’t trust anyone’s judgment but yours on the staff to run our lab.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you’ll hire me four techs, and I don’t have to think about it until I sign off on the paperwork Monday.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“Elizabeth. You can call me Elizabeth in the office, and the normal title in the field.”

Christina grabbed the feather and the card, smiling. “I’ll have something for you soon, I promise Elizabeth!”

When the woman was gone, Elizabeth was pleased. Yeah, everyone thought she was the hard one to work with, but she knew how to manage people when it was needed. Next she picked up the phone and dialed Gabe’s private number, returning his calls. Somehow she doubted they were work related. If her husband called him trying to get her booted from this assignment again there was going to be hell to pay.

It didn’t even ring twice. “Elizabeth Blackhawk! You find
out you’re pregnant and you don’t call me to tell me personally?”

“Hi Gabe. I told your wife and
I didn’t think I had to tell you too. I know you’re my boss and the FBI owns my soul, but I didn’t know I signed over the womb too,” she said, laughing.

Gabe snorted
at her comment. “A little call would have been nice,” he said. “Congrats and for the record, when you have the next kid don’t tell Livy until after hours. She called me bawling, and I barely could understand her. I thought something bad happened. I almost rushed home.”

Elizabeth could picture that happening and couldn’t help but enjoy every second of it. “I’m
sorry, Gabe. Now, why are you really calling me?” Why not get directly to the point. “You don’t call to talk babies at nine a.m. I know you better than that, so what gives?”

Gabe sighed.

“Did my husband call you this morning to get me yanked off this assignment? Don’t lie for him. When I find the truth I’ll crucify you both, and tell your wife. You won’t get laid until the youngest is in college. That baby isn’t born yet, Gabe, so that’s eighteen long years of you taking care of yourself. Think about it…”

Gabe believed it and didn’t want to think about it
. The girlfriend code was that powerful. “No, he didn’t call me this morning. We spoke the other day and don’t hold it against him. It was before the pregnancy information.”

Elizabeth wanted to be pissed, but she already knew about the first call. He was under a great deal of stress
, and she knew that the pregnancy and the murdered women were weighing heavily on his mind. She would just let it go and cut him a break. After all this, she was declaring sainthood and wife of the year.

“Please come back to Quantico
. I can call it retraining and then no one will ever know why but us.”

“Gabe, I’m not leaving my husband and my partner alone in the field because I’m scared and pregnant. That isn’t going to happen. I’m sorry.”

“Livy is busting my balls about putting you out in the field, and if anything happens to you, I’m a dead man. Do it for me to save my soul.” The laughter was present in his voice.

“The guilt trip now too? Gabe,” she laughed. “No, I’m staying and you can tell my husband it was all on me, and then you can tell Livy the same thing. I’m not bailing on my partner.”

“Please watch your back, Elizabeth. I’m worried about you.”

Before she could comment, her intercom buzzed. “Yes?”

“Mr. Whitefox is here, Mrs. B.”

“Be right out,” she paused. “Gabe got to run. I’m due
down in the lab and the morgue.” Elizabeth hung up the phone before he could even respond. She grabbed her tablet and her gun, clipping it to her belt and heading out to the lobby. Both men were already there, talking to each other in hushed tones. It pissed her off, but she decided to ignore it and let it go. Striding right past them, she headed to the elevators. She was surprised they even bothered to wait for her. Inside she pushed the basement button and moved over to give them both room.

“Christina left your office fast. Does she still have a job?”
Curiosity had him wondering what she wanted with his lab tech, other than the card and feathers. Somewhere, deep down, he found a tiny bit of control. Blackhawk had tapped into it for the sake of his marriage and tried to ask normal questions.

“Contrary to popular belief, I’m not as big of a bitch as everyone believes,” she
answered, and walked out when the doors opened.

“She’s pissed at you, bro.”

“Yeah, it’s my own fault. I don’t do angry very well. I normally can keep it hidden, but this mess has me all stirred up.”

Blackhawk followed her to the ME’s work area and just let his wife run the show. She was irritated. Maybe the talk with the tech staff would be distracting and calm her down. Plus she tended to spot tiny details he often missed. There was no doubt if the ME had something in the report that peaked her interest, she
’d catch it. This was his wife’s area, and he needed to just stand in the background, retaining all he could to create his profile. 

Doctor Leonard grinned at the three in his presence. He loved working with the Blackhawks
, and he was glad he took the job. He’d worked with Elizabeth before she left the FBI and her husband for the first time when they exhumed Charlie LaRue. Once Elizabeth Blackhawk had offered up one of the best labs in the country, only second to Quantico, he knew he had to jump at the chance and work with them again. 

“Doctor Leonard, what do we have on the woman with flesh?” inquired Blackhawk.

He stood, pulling out the morgue tray that had the remains and pulled back the sheet. “We cleaned her up, she wasn’t too badly decomposed on the outside, but inside she was soupy. The adipose tissue began breaking down with the bacteria and the heat from being below the ground. We found a hot water spring underneath the burial site, so that warmth sped decomp and boiled the inner contents.”

Elizabeth typed on the tablet, hoping she didn’t have to see him lift the dead woman’s eyelids, or what was left of them. Soupy she could do, dead eyes not so much.

“She was definitely with child. I’m giving gestation at about twenty six weeks; bone was in the beginning stages of hardening, and no longer soft like cartilage. She had some debris in her hair that we didn’t find near the site, and she had clay like dirt under her nails. I believe the debris was crushed leaves. I’ve already shipped the samples to the tech lab.”

“Was she dead when he buried her?”

“Yes, she was. Our victim exsanguinated. Very little blood was left in her body, but we had enough to work with to do the normal testing. We also used the vitreous fluid.”

“Great,” Elizabeth answered, shuddering.

Doctor Leonard laughed. “I know. It creeps you out.”