Darkness Of Truth (An FBI/Romance Thriller~ Book 6) (14 page)

Chris looked up from his organs
, checking out the exposed muscle tissue. “If you look at the cuts, they’re smooth and not choppy. The killer took his time removing the dermis, and from the look of it most likely in one piece.”

Elizabeth thought she’d seen it all.
Apparently, she’d been wrong.

“If you look here and here,” he said, pointing at a line down the front of his body and back
of his arms. Barely visible in the muscle tissue were fissure like cuts. “It appears these were his initial cuts, and then he probably worked the skin off from there. Pulling it back, slicing away the adipose tissue beneath. Since I don’t see anything on the fingers, I’m going to guess he pulled the skin down and off.”

Callen had a pretty gruesome picture in his mind. “You mean like
yanking off a glove?”

Doctor Leonard nodded in affirmation.

Ethan was curious. “Okay, but why?”

“A skin suit?”
Elizabeth offered.

Callen sighed
and rubbed his eyes. “We’re heading back to the Skinwalker theory, aren’t we?” he asked, knowing that was the last direction he wanted to take.

Immediately, he had Tony Magnus’s attention. “Is that what we’re investigati
ng?” The man’s excitement was hard to miss.

“The chief of the tribal council seems to believe that they have a Skinwalker loose on the Rez. Then we had these two bodies pop up without their dermis.”

Tony grinned. “In college I did my dissertation on the Native American beliefs and the relevance to historical fact. One of the topics was the Skinwalkers or the
yee naaldlooshii
.”

“Bless you,” snickered Elizabeth.

Both of the men she was sleeping with got it, the doctors looked confused. That only made it funnier.

“Anyway,” Tony continued, “
Skinwalkers are based on the practice of pre-dated witchcraft.”

Blackhawk jumped in. “We get that part, but we don’t
believe that there’s someone running around absorbing the energy and traits of the dead.”

“It would explain the animal bones we found beside the corpses,” Tony offered.

Elizabeth wasn’t buying the whole thing. “Or some animal could have used that cave before the killer and left some bits and pieces behind.”

“True.”

Callen add that to his notes.

Tony picked up a bone
, holding it in his hands. “We have a problem.”

“I really hate when anyone says that during an investigation,” stated Elizabeth. “
What’s wrong?”

He placed the bone on the palm of his hand and looked at his bosses. “We have a spare bone.”

Elizabeth rolled her shoulder, trying to alleviate the tension that was already building in her body over the doctor’s words. That would be the other thing she didn't want to hear in an investigation. After the last time in Red River, ‘spare parts’ were just something that made her edgy.

Blackhawk was hoping they were wrong.

“Maybe the raccoon had a spare toe
,” Elizabeth offered, saying a little prayer.

Both doctors looked at her like she was crazy.

“Or not,” she stated.

Tony shook his head. “I have a proximal phalange that isn’t from one of the skinless men.”

“Hell!” Elizabeth muttered, knowing that meant there was another victim somewhere, but this one was in pieces.

“If we have bones from a victim,” added Blackhawk, “then that might mean that this killer has been at it a while. These may not be the first two victims.”

Elizabeth placed her forehead on her arms, resting on the back of the chair.

Callen went on alert and moved to her side. “Angel, are you okay?” he inquired, nervously.

“I just got this really bad feeling.”

“Uh oh,” said
Ethan.

Elizabeth glanced up at her men.
“This is going to be a hot freaking mess.”

                                          *   *   *

Tori rode Wakanda down the trail beside Julian. It had been about twenty minutes into their
trek, and no one was speaking. It was probably the first time in their relationship that it was just simply uncomfortable.

This time, Tori wasn’t backing down. Something was eating at the man, and she
deserved to know.

Julian wanted to stop and talk to Tori, but he wasn’t sure what to say. Yeah, her joking rubbed him the wrong way this morning
, but how was she to know? The idea of her cheating crushed his soul. He’d been there once before and going there again wasn’t an option. Maybe that was why he was so overly possessive when it came to Victoria.

Watching her, he believed that every step further into the forest with this sitting between them, damaged them even more. 
“Are you ever going to talk to me again?” he finally asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

Tori still didn’t say anything to him.

Julian hopped down off Weeko and ran his hands over her black coat. Yeah, this didn’t bode well for their day on the trail. It was going to simply make it longer.

Bending down, he
analyzed the grass along the trail and whistled. Wakanda stopped walking. Even when Tori nudged her, the mare wouldn’t move.

“We’re going to take a break. There’s a stream fifty feet from here, and the horses need a rest for a while.”

Tori dismounted from the mare and led her to the water. Pulling an apple out of her pack, she cut it in half and fed it to her mare. “Here you go, baby,” she crooned and let the horse nudge her, as she ran her hands down her neck. “Weeko, you want some apple?” she called, only to have the mare wander to her side.

“Traitors,” muttered Julian
to his horses, as he waited for them to finish eating. When they were done, he led them to the water, dropping their reigns to let them drink. He took a blanket down off Wakanda’s back and laid it beneath a big tree. “Want something to eat?” he asked, pulling out some jerky.

Tori wasn’t really hungry. “No thank you.”

“You’re angry with me.” It was simply a statement.

There was no point pretending. “I am. You lied to me this morning. I find that I don’t want to be in a relationship with anyone that thinks lies are acceptable.” Tori had been down that road before. Because of
falsehoods, the man she was going marry had died in her arms. Deceit only ruined lives and had no place in her life.

Julian laid back on the blanket, unsure what to say to her.

“You tell me you love me, but you lied right to my face. You're keeping something held back, and it’s going to ruin us.”

That was the last thing he wanted to happen. “Before I met you, I was in a pretty serious relationship. Not marriage serious, but living together.”

Tori joined him, lying on her side to watch his face for truth. “And?”

“I came home from work one day, and found her in bed with some other man in my home.”

Her heart caught in her chest, realizing that her teasing him that morning was hurtful. “I’m sorry, Julian. I didn’t know and I didn’t mean to cause you pain.”

He pushed on with his story, despite the ache it still caused in his chest.
“I honestly thought she was happy. There weren’t any signs- none. I thought I’d surprise her and leave early. I got my boss to let me off duty; I drove home and walked in on my girlfriend riding some other man.”

“Oh
Baby,” she whispered, seeing the hurt in his eyes. “I won’t ever do that to you, Julian. I swear.”

“The rational part of me knows you were kidding this morning to be funny. The irrational, jealous, paranoid part of me is looking for the fact in the fiction.” He rolled to his side to and stared into the smoky blue eyes. “If I came home and found you in bed with another man
, I’d lose control and have to kill him.”

Tori ran her fingers down his cheek
, trying to offer him peace. “Julian, I won’t ever cheat on you. I love you too much to sleep with anyone else but you.”

“
Promise, Victoria? Promise me that you won’t break my heart like that? If you want to leave, just don’t destroy me in the process.”

She leaned over his body and met his lips in a kiss, sealing the vow. “I pro
mise, Julian Trenton Littlemoon,” she whispered against his mouth

Everything that was previously knotted slowly released, as Tori
slowly kissed him. Rolling, he placed her beneath him and controlled the mating of their mouths. When her hands slid across his body and started working on the buckle of his belt, Julian was lost in bliss.

It was then that one of the horses startled, and Julian went dead still. “Tori, someone’s here watching us,” he hissed, in her ear. “Don’t move, okay
Honey?”

“My gun is in the back of my pants,” she whispered back, forcing him to roll off her body and to his side.

Slowly, Julian slid his hand around her hip and to the back of her jeans. When his fingers found the grip, he listened to the area around him. “I want you to stay with the horses. If you hear a gunshot, get on Weeko and ride hard and fast. My gun is in the pack. Grab it and get the hell out of here.”

There was no way she was leaving
the man she loved in the woods with an invisible killer.

“I love you,” he whispered, pushing of her body and running towards the trees where the sound had emanated.

Tori raced towards Weeko and Julian’s pack. Grabbing the weapon, she did the only thing her heart would allow her to do. She gave chase, hoping the man didn’t get himself killed.

Losing him would be her demise.

             
                  *   *   *

Elizabeth followed Callen into the second part of the makeshift lab, as he hunted down Christina. What they really needed was something that gave them a clue where to take this entire investigation. All they had now w
ere two skinless bodies, a council that wasn’t cooperating and a would be poacher.

“Christina, what do you have for us?” asked Callen, leaning against the counter with his hip
, watching the woman carefully. Her eyes were darting from Ethan to him and back again, like she was in some sort of sexy Native American overload.

The woman carrying his child was obviously amused by the entire thing
, because she was fighting to not laugh.

The lab tech managed to
reign in her brain, focusing before Elizabeth kicked her ass into next month. “We found the normal things you would in a forest at the crime scene; sap, leaves, tree branches and white feathers.”

That caught their attention. “You found white feathers in the woods?”

Christina shook her head. “Not exactly in the woods per say. We found them beside the bodies in the cave. We aren’t sure if they were left there or some bird was molting. Right now, we have one being tested to find out the species. Once we have that, we can determine if the feathers were dropped or staged.”

Callen didn’t know if she was serious or not.

“Can I see the feathers?” Elizabeth asked, moving towards Christina. Something about white feathers beside a body just seemed too coincidental for the entire thing.

The tech pulled out the evidence bag
, cutting it open for her boss. Pulling one of the two identical feathers out, she held them for Elizabeth until she gloved up.

“
That looks like an eagle feather,” Elizabeth said, taking the one plume in her hand. The only reason she knew that was there was a warbonnet at home in their display case with the same feathers. It had been Timothy Blackhawk’s, and he had to earn everyone as a young man.

“It was
lying on the ground?” asked Callen.

“Yes, beside the bodies.”

Ethan wasn’t getting a good feeling about any of this. “The feather in our culture is very important. An Eagle feather is the most important of all. It’s a treasure to be given one and revered. Like the American flag, you don’t let it touch the ground. That’s how sacred they are to us.”

“And we have a killer handing them ou
t with each kill?” Callen questioned.

Elizabeth placed it back in the bag. “No trace on it?” she asked Christina.

“Nothing at all, Boss.”

Callen spoke up. “You
need to earn a feather. You go off to battle and return, hunt for food for the tribe or…” he glanced over at his brother.

“Or what, Cal?” questioned Elizabeth
, needing more insight into the native traditions.

“
You killed your enemy,” finished Blackhawk. “He’s not leaving the feathers as a calling card. He’s leaving the feathers to tell us that he’s put down his enemies.”

Elizabeth really didn’t like this at all. Any one of the ‘outsiders’ in the FBI could be considered the enemy. “Christina, I want ID’s on these two victims by tomorrow morning. Am I clear?”