Page 113 of Chaos has a Name (An FBI Romance/Thriller #66)

That was horrifying.

She didn’t know that her husbands vetted the people here, but she wasn’t shocked. Callen was pretty thorough. She’d bet Ivan did it for him.

Honestly, the man was getting worked up for no reason. She wasn’t chasing him as a suspect. They’d only been here seven months, but the Stormchasers…they had popped up again in her questioning.

When Jacy came back in, he handed her the paperwork.

“It shows how much came in and went out.”

That was good.

“Thank you, Jacy. Doctor, we appreciate your help,” she said, wanting to look at it outside. Then, they couldn’t ask more questions.

As they walked out, Koda was beside her.

“He didn’t like you.”

She was to the point.

“That goes with the territory. That’s why we hit it fast, give little explanation, and get the hell out of there as quickly as possible.”

Yeah, he saw that.

Out in the lobby, she waved to her husbands, and they all headed outside.

There, she passed out the papers.

It was Ethan who found it.

“I have an in and out quantity. It matches the invoices that Callen has. They aren’t missing any.”

Well, shit.

That shot down her theory that the Stormchaser brothers had ‘borrowed’ it from there.

What was she missing?

From where he stood, Callen had to say it.

“Then, they had to get it from off of the rez, and the chloroform was not taken from here.”

Well, shit.

This was a dead end.

And she was chasing her tail.

* * * The Blackhawk Family * * *

In The Woods

Same Time

Hunting For Prey

In order to teach them all a lesson for bringing the FBI here, and allowing it to happen, something had to be done.

The Hollow was not amused, and that was always a bad thing.

As he crossed into the thicker part of the woods, thinking he was alone, that was a mistake.

He.

Was.

Not.

Oh, that was for sure.

As he headed toward the path, the one that many people used to go hunting, they knew it was time.

Someone needed to be taken.

And made an example of.

So, they approached him, and when he was not focused, they hit him so hard he went out like a light.

Standing above him, they pulled out the drug, and administered it.

This bought them some time.

Time that was needed.

To take him to another location, they began slowly dragging him into the trees, deeper into the shadows where The Hollow wanted him.

Because he was about to die.

And there was no sympathy.

HE.

KNEW.

BETTER.

Because The Hollow would fight back.

Each and every time.

* * * The Blackhawk Family * * *

FBI West

Holding Things Together

Thursday

Three Thirty P.M

For Doctor Christopher Leonard, his day was going quickly. That was all because he was up to his eyeballs in double-checking EVERYTHING that the team had done.

In order to ensure that his wife had all the tools to do the job, it was his only choice.

This was why he ran a tight ship.

If you let the crew run wild, eventually it went down like the Titanic.

When Mass Spec beeped, and he crossed to it to check on the next test that was being redone, he saw it.

Oh, and it was bad.

Not only had they done the wrong test, but the redone test had given them an incorrect answer due to the parameters of the sample.

That meant he’d given Elizabeth wrong information.

God.

Damn.

It.

This was exactly why he didn’t like sharing information before he had confirmation. Giving it to her had meant he’d sent her off on a wild goose chase.

Yeah, he was not loving it here without the techs he’d worked with for the last fifteen years.

Pulling out his phone, he dialed his wife, and she was sitting in the vehicle that was transporting her.

“Hey, Christopher. Miss me already? What’s up?”

He went there.

“Ignore the previous information that I gave you regarding Chloroform.”

She blinked.

Was he kidding?

“Why? What’s wrong?” she asked, genuinely curious as to what brought this on. There was no doubt she’d been drugged.

“I retested, using what was left of your blood, and I reset the parameters to go wider. It was too narrow before and it missed a drug.”

She was waiting.

“Okay, Handsome, what did it miss?”

Chris told her.

“You were absolutely drugged. Only, it wasn’t with the Chloroform. It was with a drug called Halothane. It’s also a drug that’s not used as much anymore, but likely found on the reservation due to cost.”

She wasn’t upset.

“I’ll just go back to the vet clinic and…”

Chris stopped her.

“It’s not used on animals, Elizabeth. It’s used on human beings in clinics, outpatient facilities—or it once was. Newer, safer meds are used now, but if we go by the cost, it fits here.”

She considered what he was saying.

“So a doctor at a clinic would have access to this?” he nodded.

“Also, I’d like to point out that Tony mentioned earlier that the way the latest body was disarticulated, could mean someone with medical experience.”

And there it was.

Each piece of trace was falling into place.

“Thank you, Christopher. Ivan is going to head back toward the clinic. I appreciate it.”

He apologized.

“I’m sorry this was so fucked up. I hate that I gave you misinformation.”

Elizabeth reassured him.

“I understand. We’re all under duress here, and you’re working on the fly with new staff. You still got it to me before anyone we love was hurt or injured. We’re good.”

He didn’t feel good about any of this, or being on this side of the country.

“I can’t wait to get out of here,” he admitted. “It’s like coming back to a place that still haunts me.”

Oh, and that was why she wasn’t busting balls about this. Cyra had been killed and Bethe nearly died in that house fire. That was a whole lot of past baggage.

“Well, you just gave me more information, and I’ll check it out. This might help us blow this wide open.”

He hoped so.

Sitting not far away, next to Gene, Ethan was listening to his partners talk, and his heart sank. When Gene squeezed his hand, reassuringly, Ethan was borderline panicking.

How could he stay here?

How?

How could he tell her he wanted to be here when he knew they were all struggling?

He was so torn over this.

Ethan knew he had to put his family first, even if he felt like he deserved this. There was no way he could stay and send them home.

It would break him.

God.

Why was it always his place between two choices that broke his soul into pieces?

Elizabeth continued her call.

“I love you, Christopher. I’ll check-in. Hang in there,” she said, reassuringly.

Only, no one bought that peptalk.

They were all feeling the same thing.

Hanging up, she focused on her team.

“Callen, who did we hire to work at the clinic?” she asked. “I know we staffed it, and I know they had to have been cleared.”

Oh, well, he had bad news for her.

“We didn’t have a lot of choices,” he said, pulling up information on the tablet as Ivan turned the car around. They’d been heading back to FBI West so she could privately set up her whiteboard and think all of this through.

Now, it looked like she wasn’t going to be doing that, and it was rare she didn’t.

Elizabeth had a process.

Only, this mess was tying Native-to-Native, and it was beginning to be a hot mess. It was akin to that corkboard with red string going all over the place from picture to picture as the investigator tried to connect the dots.

Chaos was winning this one.

For.

Damn.

Sure.

Callen read off some names for her.

“Doctor Sitsi Dreamwalker is the doctor who ended up taking the job. He’s not from this reservation, but instead one from back North.”

She let him talk.

“The head nurse we also hired is Chata Dreamwalker. He’s Algonquin along with his brother, Sitsi. They moved the whole family here. We gave them land and they built their cabins so they could assimilate with the community.”

She stared at him.

Was he serious?

Algonquin?

Wasn’t that where the whole ‘worship the Wendigo’ originated?

“And what did we learn about them before hiring them?” she asked.

Callen was honest.

“They went to medical school and nursing school. They both are in their mid-thirties, and they fit into the community. No one had any history of issues. Nothing came up on the background check.”

Ivan owned it.

“I did the check. They were clean, Elizabeth. They were productive members of society.”

Only, before she could say anything, Ethan went there.

“When we started digging into Wendigo Psychosis,” he admitted, “we found it came from the Algonquin tribes. Axl and I assumed that it was just transferred here when Natives migrated.”

That was exactly what she’d been thinking.

Maybe she didn’t need a whiteboard, after all.

“We also know that Tony said the bones from Thomas Adsila were disarticulated with precision. A doctor would be the top choice. I never considered the medical community,” Elizabeth said. “Simply based on the fact that they haven’t been here as long.”

Gene knew what she was saying.

“Unless they came here, and were taken under the wing of whoever is doing this. When did we hire them?”

Callen shared.

“Four years ago. That was the first thing we did on the reservation in honor of Timothy. We got medical care here.”

And they knew that the one skull had been in the ground for around three years. That fit the timeline as to starting out as a skull muncher.

It also could attest to why there was a three-year gap in between the kills that matched.

Maybe The Hollow was training for the last few years.

That was a possibility.

“I need more than just that. Find me something.”

Callen was still researching the two people, and so was Gene. It was a race to get Elizabeth some of the information. The Clinic was attached to the council house, and they were almost there.

“What?” she asked, when she saw Gene found something.

“They are half-brothers,” he admitted. “Like Callen and Ethan. Their father had multiple children. That might explain why the DNA was showing the percent of DNA match it was.”

Yeah, finally.

Elizabeth liked this.

They were on the right path.

Callen had something else.