Sacred Burial Grounds (An FBI Romance Thriller (book 2)) (17 page)

“Wait, just hold onto it a second.” Whitefox went back in for a clear plastic bag. This just felt all wrong and he was hit with a wave of uneasiness. “Drop it in here, Wyler.” As the man did, he could see the picture covering the front. Painted on the card was a brown and white fox. It was creepy that it was almost the exact same one that he had picked as his tattoo. On the back were three simple words;

                      
Son number two.

“What’s it mean, Callen?” Wyler looked at his son and was confused by the words.

“No idea, but I’ll take it to the FBI West building and they’ll figure it out.”

Wyler nodded, stepping off the porch and walking to his truck. “Just tell your brother I want to see him, if you can.”

“Sure Wyler,” he
answered, waiting until his old man pulled out of his driveway, and he grabbed his keys. There was this sick feeling, growing steadily in his gut. There was no doubt that the note they found was a message. It was one that his brother needed to see as soon as possible. 

Callen Whitefox knew why it was
all happening. This was his own fault. Here he had just thought that the day couldn’t have gotten any worse. It was the kiss of death, and he couldn’t help but think he shouldn’t have even thought the words silently in his head. It was a proven fact that the universe had a way of screwing with you when you let your guard down. 

Elizabeth was excited as she sat in her office and dialed her friend’s phone number. Livy Rothschild, Gabe’s wife, was her best friend in the entire world. They had met in FBI training, and at first didn’t really like each other, but they ended up partnered and became as close as sisters. When you had to trust your partner with your life it was going to happen.

Deep down
, she didn’t want to tell her on the phone that she too was having a baby. She wanted to tell her in person that they were expecting, but she didn’t know when she would get out there to see them. Chances were she’d have the baby before she made it back to the east coast. It made her smile that she and her best friend were pregnant together and didn’t plan it. Although, Livy and Gabe already had a head start with their five other children. Just this little thing made her life seem almost normal, and it gave her so much peace.

“Hello?”

“Livy, my bestest girl do you miss me?”

“Lyzee, you shrew! You haven’t called me in weeks,” her friend laughed. “I’ve missed you, a lot!”

“How are you feeling?” asked Elizabeth, dropping her boots onto the corner of her desk and absently rubbing her hand over her belly, wondering what it would be like to get bigger and feel her child move.

Livy made some noncommittal sound. “I always say how much pregnancy sucks, and yet I keep doing it. I think this is it
, Lyzee. I’m getting too old to be having kids every two years. I may have to draw the line on this one. If we’re having another girl, Gabe is going to just have to suck it up and realize after six kids that we aren’t meant to have a son.”

“Why don’t you find out the sex?”

“You think my husband would let it be that easy? He control freaks everything to death, but he likes to be surprised the day the baby is born. Go figure!”

Elizabeth laughed. “Are you getting fat?” she snorted, unable to stop herself from tormenting her friend. Soon it would be happening to her, and she knew that she’d get even with her. Livy always did get in retaliatory shots.

“Yeah you know I am, and we have to talk. Someone sent me a basket full of donuts and cookies and on the card it said ‘eat up darlin’. You wouldn’t happen to know who did that now would you? Before you try that southern charm on me, remember I know you best in the whole world. ”

Elizabeth laughed and just couldn’t hold it back. At the time it seemed like the perfect prank to pull on her. It wasn’t her fault they were competitive just like sisters.  The only one thing that they never competed for was men.

“For your information, Gabe and the girls ate them, but if you ever have kids I’m am going to screw with you daily. That I’m already promising now my friend.”

“Start screwing with me then.” She didn’t know if her friend would get it, or not.

Livy paused. “Are you saying that you’re pregnant?”

“
That’s exactly what I’m saying,” she answered. “We’re going to be fat together. Well, for a couple months anyway.”

Livy started crying. S
he couldn’t be happier for her friend. “Oh Lyzee, I’m so happy for you and Ethan! Is he absolutely thrilled?”

“Stop crying
or you’ll make me start! He’s beyond thrilled. In fact, I’ve never seen him happier,” she said. “Now, I’ll email you later. I have a meeting in a few, but I had to tell you on the phone. Definitely not email worthy information.”

“I
love you, Lyzee,” she sniffled.

Elizabeth laughed and wiped her eyes. “I love you too.” Elizabeth didn’t know what she would do if she didn’t have Livy in her life.

Ethan Blackhawk sat in his office working on some
personnel files and doing double duty. It was a colossal pain. Now he completely understood why Gabe didn’t work the field and office duty. There just wasn’t enough time in a day.

Not that it was bothering him
today; he was still riding pretty high on the knowledge that he was going to be a father. Before a wife and pregnancy, he would have been working a sixteen hour day and still been thinking about work, but not now. Blackhawk couldn’t help it, he was grinning and sure he looked like an idiot. Nothing was going to ruin his day.

When he heard a knock on his door, he looked up still smiling and there stood his br
other. Immediately the smile disappeared. The lines etched on his brother’s face reminded him of his own when he was stressed.

“Hey, you busy?” asked Whitefox.

“No, come on in,” he answered, looking at his watch. “You’re early and look like hell. What’s going on, Callen?”

“I needed to talk to you, privately about something that’s come up.”

Blackhawk nodded and already didn’t like the way it sounded. “Come in and lock the door.”

Whitefox crossed the room and handed him the sealed bag. “
This was found on my porch this morning,” his brother read it, flipping it over to examine the words and the muscle in his cheek twitched. It didn’t make him happy that he had to dump more of this on the man. “Yeah, I think that something bad is coming.”

“We’ll run it for fingerprints and trace and see what we can dig up. If the creator of the medicine wheel left this, maybe he left us a trail.”

“Yeah, well that’s the other bad news I have for you, Ethan.”

Blackhawk didn’t know where this was going, but he sat behind his desk and motioned for is brother to take a seat. “Go on,” he waited.

“You’re definitely going to get prints on it. Prints from someone we know too. When I woke up this morning, Wyler was waiting for me on my porch.” He knew immediately when his brother registered the name. Blackhawk’s cheek muscle twitched again and lines formed around his mouth.

“What did he want?
” he asked. “Are you telling me Wyler touched this?”

“He wants to see you, and yeah he was the one that actually found it and picked it up. I didn’t have time to stop him.”

Blackhawk closed his eyes and took a deep breath. So much for his good mood. He didn’t want to see his father, but hadn’t he just told his wife he was ready to move on and heal? Now he was faced with the dilemma of healing all the wounds in his past, or just being selective. “Did he say why he wanted to see me?”

“He was in the bar and
heard about you and your wife. She’s the talk there among the women and men.”

Blackhawk laughed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I don’t want him anywhere near her, and I sure as hell don’t want her near any of the women on the reservation. Specifically, the ones
that I’ve had had sex with. She’ll kill them all.”

Whitefox was hoping he was kidding about the last part. “I told him as much
. Wyler wanted information, and I wasn’t spilling it to him,” he crossed his legs in front of him. His body language mimicked his brother’s.

“I appreciate it.”

Blackhawk picked up the baggie. “What do you think it means? I get the fox, but second son. Is that supposed to tell us something?”

“I’m really not sure. If he’s talking about our lives then I’m the second son. But in the grand plan of this all, why is he even bringing up the obvious? Everyone on this reservation knows that you and I are brothers, and I fill that role.”

“Got me. It seems redundant to state the obvious.”

Whitefox wanted to tell him about the dreams and get them off his chest.

“You look like there’s more on your mind. Is something bothering you?”

“I had some wicked dreams last night
, and they have me a little on the edge.” Whitefox scrubbed his hands over his face in frustration.

“You do look like hell.”

He snorted. “Thanks, I appreciate that.”

“What kind of dreams are we talking about?” Immediately, he thought back to his own dreams he had before he found his wife. They were terrifying and emotionally draining, so he could sympathize with the man.

“I’m standing in this clearing and there are four trees and tied to the trees are these women. Each has an arrow piercing their bodies, all in different places. They’re clearly dying slowly, begging for me to set them free and to save their children. I just stand there watching, as if I’m enjoying their deaths and studying them.”

“Wow, that’s disturbing.”

He leaned forward and looked up at his brother. “I know it is.”

“Ab
out a year before I met my wife I started having vivid dreams. As they progressed they got harder to handle. She was in them begging for my help, and I didn’t know her name or how to get to her.”

“How did you find her?”

“Gabe sent me on an assignment and there she was,” he answered. That assignment changed his life, and he would forever be grateful to him. It ended up being the other way around in the end. She was the salvation.

“I feel like I’m missing something,” he admitted, pointing at the note from this porch.

Blackhawk got up from his desk and went to get his wife. “Let’s let Lyzee to look at this. She tends to see what I don’t.” Ethan Blackhawk knocked on his wife’s door and stuck his head in to talk to her. “Lyzee, have a moment to spare?”

“Is Callen here?”

“Yeah, and we have a few issues you need to be made aware of now.” He returned to his desk and sat in his chair, accustomed to how his wife always perched on the corner of his desk. He pointed at the plastic bag with the laminated card. “Callen woke up this morning, and the card was waiting for him on his porch,” he waited, as she inspected the clear plastic baggie.

“It’s a white and brown fox and the words ‘second son’.”

“Yeah that we have, but here’s the problem or problems depending on your perspective. Wyler Blackhawk touched it, so now his prints are all over it.”

“Oh, your father?”

“I prefer donor,” answered Callen, honestly.

“I’m ambivalent,” replied Blackhawk.

“Okay, so he turned up the same time as the card, and he touched it. Well, we can get your girl Christina to work on it,” she said smiling at her husband.

“Lyzee,” he
replied, warning her before she started.

Callen Whitefox looked confused. “Christina?”

“Ethan has this lab tech that is crazy in lust with him. I catch her staring at his ass all the time. If we ask her do work on this she’ll give it five hundred percent for him.” She jerked her thumb at her husband. “In fact, she’ll go above that if he smiles while asking her to do it.”

“Elizabeth…”

“If he winks at her, it would have been done yesterday.”

Whitefox laughed at the look on his brother’s face. It was a mix of horror and
embarrassment that his wife was even saying the words out loud.

“Don’t get her started. Once she gets like this I have one he
ll of a time reeling her back. Elizabeth has been on her best behavior lately, and no one’s had their ass kicked either.”

“You’ll see, Callen. Watch her onc
e we get downstairs, you’ll understand what I mean,” Elizabeth hopped off is desk and leaned down to kiss her husband. “Kissy-face is being allowed because I feel bad for you,” she said, laughing and kissing him gently.  “It’s tough being the object of lust in the workplace. Ever since they saw you shirtless and the tattoos, they’ve been going crazy. Now you're just some man to drool over.” Elizabeth walked out of her husband’s office laughing.

“I have to say,
Ethan. Elizabeth isn't the kind of woman I thought you’d marry,” said his brother, standing.

“Really? What kind of woman did you think I’d marry?”
Ethan Blackhawk was afraid to ask.