Consumed by Wrath: An FBI/Romance Thriller (An FBI/Romance Thriller ~ Book 8) (68 page)

She nodded at her partner
, and they headed out. At the door, Cyra turned and blew Chris a kiss before leaving. When they were gone, Elizabeth simply shook her head.

“What?” he
asked, grinning.

“You're such a perv,” Elizabeth replied, winking at him.

That made him laugh, since she was shacked up with two men who were brothers. “Hello pot, I’m the kettle,” he stated.

Elizabeth could have made a comment, but instead she checked out her fine Native arm candy. If that was perversion, crown her queen and give her a thro
ne. She was moving in.

“We’re heading out, Doc. Keep us updated if you get anything on the sample the lab is running,” Elizabeth said.

As they walked out, Tony appeared at his side. “Why did she call you a perv
and what was the exchanging of money all about? What did I miss?” he inquired.

Yeah, there was no way in hell he was even going there.
He and Tony maybe friends, but this wasn’t a high school locker room. “I have no idea.”

The man looked at him. “Spill it.”

There was no way in hell he was going there. “Sorry Tony, I’m under a higher authority now.”

“You are?”

“Yeah, I have a wife, and she can make me happy or very lonely. I’m keeping my lips zipped.”

“Traitor,” he muttered.

Hell yeah, he was, because it was well worth it.

Inside the vehicle, the men were a little too quiet and that made her wonder what was going on in their brains. “Okay, spill it, boys.”

Immediately, they both began laughing and offering each other high fives. They had
finally won a bet against her. This one had to go down in the record books. Rarely was she wrong, and especially when she was on her own turf.

“Yeah, yeah. You
both won, and I’m going to play slutty cheerleader for you two wife molesters.”

The men were laughing
and giggling, manically. Even for Elizabeth, it was funny to watch, and she had to fight for composure.

“Do you think we can focus
on the assignment now?” she asked, trying to wrangle them back to reality. She wasn’t bothered in the least that she was going to play dress up for the men in her life. It was a win-win situation. At some point, they’d be naked and she would get the prize too.

“I tell you what,” offered Ethan. “Since you managed to get the truth out of Cyra and Chris effortlessly, I’m willing to give you what you wanted too. I’ll strip down and carry you back to my teepee to have my way with you.”

That piqued her interest.

“Yeah, and I’m willing to abscond the helpless white woman and spend hours ravaging her body in a cabin on the Rez,” Callen offered.

“Oh good one,” Ethan said. “We can take her there and really make her our prisoner. If we take turns, we can prolong it for hours.”

Elizabeth felt her blood pressure shooting up
, and the inside of the vehicle was getting rather hot.

Blackhawk grinned wickedly. “And there are the pregnancy hormones that we love so damn much.
Hello, sex crazed wife, it is good to have you back for the next eight months or so.”

“Yee haw!” shouted Callen. “I love when she’s growing us more tribe.”

She stared at him. “You’re out of damn control.”

Callen leaned forward to kiss her. When he pulled away, he was just as hot and bothered as she was.
“Yeah, I am.”

“Will this fantasy include
war paint and loincloths?” she asked, trying to not giggle. She was giddy at the prospects of playing sex games with her two men.

Ethan kissed her next and could tell that she was all excited. He could feel the pulse in her neck
pounding, beneath his hand.

“Yeah, I think that can be arranged,” he answered, pulling away.
Plus a few other tricks he had planned.

It took all she had, but she made them focus. “Okay, we need to head to
the council now. I’m feeling a little overheated.”

Ethan was too. “Okay, how do you want to handle the council members?” he asked, trying to not think about his wife beside him.

“I want to play divide and conquer. “Callen, do you think that you can handle Terry Carney by yourself?” she asked. “He seems less suspicious to me, and I want Ethan to give me his impressions of Denton Kline, since he was the one that had issues with Jefferson Harris.”

“I can handle it.”

“Okay, then we go in, split them up and ask them some questions. Let’s hope that it nets us something big, and we get a lead.”

They could do that.

“I also need to talk to the mayor. I need to update him, and I need to get him to demote Tony and let him stay on the force.”

Blackhawk glanced over
, and he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that. “You realize that you’re putting your neck on the line for a man that is habitually screwing up.”

She knew it. “Yeah, but he’s a friend, and it took big balls to stand in front of you two scary Native men and declare that he had feelings for your woman.”

Callen couldn’t help but find that funny. “I like when you just admit that you’re ours, almost like property.”

She lifted an eyebrow
, and then reached back to punch him in the leg.

“Ouch!”

“Think it, Cal. Don’t say it out loud,” she stated, grinning.

Okay, Ethan would give
Tony credit for that. “I would have just stole you in the middle of the night and ran away with you,” he teased. “You know, in a loincloth and war paint.”

She punched him
next.

“Shit! Why didn't that work?” he asked
, laughing.

Elizabeth knew that she couldn’t let them get too far out of control. “You never know when it’s going to heat me up or piss me off.”

“Noted.”

“Oh, and I also told him he could be Baby Blackhawk’s Godfather.”

“What?” they said together.

“You offered a man, who openly admitted that he was in love with you and wanted to marry you multiple times, the honor of being our child’s Godfather?”

“Yeah pretty much.”

Ethan shook his head. “Unbelievable.”

“What?” she asked, trying not to laugh.

“We’re going to discuss this later,” Ethan said, as he drove them to the city council building.

“What if I mention that I have a second cheerleader outfit in my closet at the house that we used for away games?”

H
e stared at her. “Are you seriously trying to bribe me with sex, to allow Tony to be our child’s Godparent?”

Everyone in the car stopped moving at the tone in
his voice. Ethan sounded angry and that was enough to give them pause.

“You’re damn lucky, Elizabeth, that I’m easy,” he said, laughing. “But you’re seriously going to have to earn it,” he added, winking.
“One time may not be enough.”

She relaxed immediately
.

True to his words, he was working through the anger like he promised.
Obviously, the call to the doctor the previous night and the morning run were working out in their favor.

Placing
her glasses on her face, she continued, “It’s a good thing that I like a challenge.”

~
Chapter Nineteen ~

Inside, they separated the men. Denton Kline wasn’t exactly happy about it, but honestly they didn't care. Apparently, he didn't like being questioned like a suspect.

Unfortunately for him, that was
too damn bad.

Sitting in one of the offices,
Elizabeth was prepared to ask him some questions, and she was pretty sure that the man wasn’t going to like those either.

God, she loved her job.

“Mr. Kline, what was your beef with Jefferson Harris? We’ve had a few people tell us that you had it in for him.”

Denton Kline fixed his tie
and tried to stay calm. “I did have it in for him. He was syphoning money from the treasury to keep his wife in the lap of luxury.”

“From what I understand, the man
was from old money, so maybe you just thought that he was taking funds. Can you prove it?” she asked, glancing over at her husband. He was sitting there calmly, observing the man with an empty stare. It made her wonder what it would be like to be a suspect facing him across the table. That had to be unnerving.

“No, I can’t. We have our lawyer working through the paperwork, and as soon as we do find something, we’re going after him.”

“Yeah,” she flipped open her tablet and slid it across the table. “He really doesn’t give a shit,” she said, showing him the man’s autopsy photo.

The look on his face was priceless
when he saw the severed head, and the bones that were laid out to resemble what was once a human being.

“Oh my God! I
s that really all that’s left of him?” he asked, and the horror was clear in his voice.

“Yeah, the cannibal ate the rest of him.”

It took the man a minute to grasp that. “What? We have a cannibal that’s eating people in Salem?”

“It appears so. Now, why don’t you tell me why you really hate the man? I get that stealing would upset you, but I’ve been doing this too long to not notice that at the mention of his name, that the vein in your forehead bulged. You didn't just dislike him, you hated him.”

He shrugged. “He was dishonest, sneaky, underhanded and a conniving asshole.”

Yeah, that said more than just dislike.

Then, it hit her. “Are you married?”

His body language gave him away. “I was at one time. I’m recently divorced.”

“How long was Jefferson Harris having sex with your wife?” she asked, taking the long shot.

“That bastard ruined my marriage!” he shouted, jumping up from his chair
, causing it to flip backwards. “He seduced my wife and then gave her an STD, which she then gave to me.”

“Wow, so, your wife cheated on you, with a richer man, picked up pubic lice
, and then passed them off to you? That would make me very angry.”

“It did. I hated his fucking guts.”

“Enough to kill him and eat him and a few other people?” she asked. “Did you kill him, and then like the way it felt to have that kind of power, Mr. Kline? Is that why you killed the others too?”

The man shut all of his emotions down. “You can ask me more questions after I contact my attorney. I have nothing more to say to you.”

“You’re a suspect, sir, so don’t leave town,” she stated, standing up.

“
I don’t understand why you think I did this. I’m not some crazed maniac running amuck on the streets of Salem.”

She rattled it off. “The man stole your w
ife and gave you an STD. That in itself is plenty of reason, but we can toss in that you wanted his position, and to make him pay. That’s called motive. You argued with him at the final meeting he was at, and then he disappears. That’s called opportunity. You have two of the three in the cop’s trifecta. Motive and opportunity I’ve got, but now I need means. If I can find a way to link you to our murder weapon, you’re going to jail for a long time, or an insane asylum.”

He stared at her. “I’m innocent.”

She headed for the door. “We’re watching you,” she said, stepping out. In the hallway, she stopped to look at her husband. “We need to find a way to connect him to the rest of the victims. If we can do that, then we have a way to bring him in.”

Ethan made a note and requested the financials. It looked like they were going to be working on paperwork all night on this one. Someone was going to have to start digging through all the suspects’ lives.

“Let’s head in to see Chris Santana, while Callen’s doing his interview,” she said. “I need to see if I can pull off a miracle.”

Blackhawk kept his mouth
shut. He understood why his wife was doing it, but it didn't make him happy. Tony liked to always use her as his safety net, and that pissed him off. Unfortunately, the man was a part of her past, and he needed to suck it up and take the good with the bad.

“Sure thing, baby,” he replied, placing his hand on her hip as he pulled her closer to his body.

Instead of telling him no touch-y feely, she just went with it, because she needed it, and it felt nice.

“I love you, Lyzee,” he stated, dropping a kiss to her cheek.

“I love you too, Cowboy. Let’s go watch me work my mojo.”

Blackhawk smiled
on the outside, but deep down he hoped that it didn't work.

Enough was enough.

             
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