Page 34 of Chaos has a Name (An FBI Romance/Thriller #66)

Camping Site

Edge Of The Rez

Wednesday

One P.M.

After leaving the FBI parking lot, being led to the location where the Chief of Police had found the folded clothes, Elizabeth was doing her own research on the situation.

Only, she wasn’t researching the case, per se, but one of the people involved.

Who was she running a search on?

Well, that was easy.

Rayna Running Wolf.

Unfortunately for the reservation cop, Elizabeth had to be very careful. Once you were burned, you learned from that mistake.

The last thing she liked was getting bit in the ass when she was trying to do her job. The unknown was always a huge problem for her, and she was cutting down the chances that she was blindsided.

Elizabeth’s rule of thumb in her life was that she didn’t play nice with strange cops unless she had someone vouch for them, like Gene had for Corbin. Since no one had worked with the relatively new cop, she ran the hell out of her.

As Uriel showed up at the office so that Gryphen could head out to watch over Ethan and Callen, they were running short on protection duty, and they couldn't make mistakes.

It could cost someone their life.

Up to that point, the assholes that were gunning for her, an attorney hell-bent on revenge, and two Russian spies who blended in, hadn’t locked her down.

And that was her goal to stay that way.

All she could hope was the media didn’t get wind of this, and that they still thought she was in DC doing shit there.

What she knew was Gunny was driving her blacked-out ride to the FBI office and swapping it out daily so that the media thought she was just working in-house.

Ivan wasn’t taking any chances.

Clearly.

While she had people gunning for her every single day of her life, there were bigger concerns.

Elizabeth had her children on the reservation.

They came first, as did the men in her life. Elizabeth could hold her own, most of the time.

Currently, she had Ivan and Uriel running roughshod over her and Gene.

“Anything?” Gene asked, knowing exactly what she was doing.

Elizabeth shook her head.

“Not that I can find,” she admitted. “Rayna has a sibling, and lives here on the rez. I’ve dug through her social media, and she’s single, and definitely not mingling with anyone in a relationship.”

Gene listened.

“She has lots of female friends, and a bunch of them are cops in Damascus. There are pictures of her in training and working a beat.”

Gene was making notes so the rest of the team could read them on the drive.

“She went to college, got her degree, and then existed until she went to the police academy later in life. She’s been a cop here for about half a year.”

He was to the point.

“I ran her financials, and she’s not hiding anything. I will say that cops on the rez get paid jack shit.”

Oh, she knew.

Callen had run the reservation police, and had been open about how it had been a struggle with surviving and taking care of Timothy on his income.

Had Timothy hung around a few more years, Callen would have kept him in all kinds of luxuries like all the venison he could eat without having to hunt for it himself.

“So nothing alarming. She passes the background check.”

Gene was to the point.

“She was a bit hostile toward those of us who weren’t Native, but that’s understandable. Other than that, I like her. She’s likely a good cop. You can see it in a person’s eyes.”

That you could.

“Well, let’s hope she holds out. Ethan and Callen are going to have to tell the council she reached out to us. That makes old Natives twitchy. The FBI isn’t their fondest memory.”

Oh, he understood that.

As they were just parking on the rez on some dusty, old dirt road, she was curious.

“Do we have an update on Wyler?” she asked, trying to run both situations at the same time.

It was exhausting.

From his place behind the wheel, Ivan clued her in.

He’d heard from Michael and Demeter about an hour ago. He just didn’t want to stress her out while she was in investigator mode.

“Yeah, he’s contained and not going anywhere.”

Gene laughed.

“Why does that sound absolutely horrible?” he asked. “Is he in a box or a room?”

Ivan clued him in.

“They caught him trying to sneak back into the upstairs of the cabin, likely to lay low. You know how tricky natives are when they are on the prowl. Well, combat Marines are far worse. Michael and Demeter trapped him in the treehouse.”

She laughed.

And laughed.

And laughed.

Honestly, he had it coming.

If he wanted to play hide-and-seek, doing it with Marines and Archangels was a very bad idea.

You’d think he knew that.

“Good. Keep him there until I get back. He and I are having a ‘come to Jesus talk’. Bet on it. I’ll see the scene, and then regroup with Ethan and Callen. We have to get our bearings on this.”

That they did.

“So to clarify, you want us to hold him hostage in the treehouse until you find time to head home?”

She nodded.

“Yes. I don’t care how long it takes. Give him a chair, a pillow, and a jug to take a piss in. I want his ass locked down until I face him. He can be a little uncomfortable for a while. God knows me having to uproot everyone, including half of my team, was damn uncomfortable for all of us.”

As long as that was what she wanted.

Ivan didn’t mind.

Since they’d gotten through that, he updated her. No, he warned her.

“Gryphen checked in. The two men had to go into the council, alone. They made it out alive, and now, they are on their way to a home that’s for sale. They are handling your request.”

She didn’t even flinch.

Why?

She had to cover her bases.

“I hope it has a huge-ass fence around it, along with two, big gun turrets, and a moat filled with piranhas—hungry ones with very sharp teeth.”

Gene was amused.

“Just a week ago, you vetoed the moat and piranhas. My, how we changed our minds on this one.”

She snorted.

“Yeah, well, desperate times call for desperate measures. If I could get someone to put a fence around the whole reservation, at this point, I would. I have to assume that Wyler plays hard to get with coming home. I like a backup plan. Besides, if he buys a house, he’ll just sell it and make more money on it once people find out that Jackson James banged his wife in it. ”

Gene snorted.

“What a tangled bedsheet we weave when we practice to conceive.”

She stared at him.

“Are you sure we didn’t share a parent? Did my dad knock someone else up too? We’re too much alike,” she admitted.

He just winked at her.

Oh, he knew Ethan had a type.

It was them.

“Just stay calm and stick by me,” Ivan said. “We’ll all get through this if you LISTEN.”

Yeah, they knew she was going squirrely over all of this. Elizabeth ran a tight ship, and that meant with her cases. She didn’t like to be focused on anything but work when she was on the job.

This was dividing focus, and that was dangerous in her world.

Now that she knew Wyler was ‘contained’, and Callen and Ethan were safely off looking at the house Callen planned on buying, she could focus on work.

“MATE?”

Her vest hummed, and she heard her AI assistant’s voice. It sounded…pixelated—if that was possible.

Uh, MATE didn’t sound like herself.

“Yes, Director?”

“I just ran the Chief of Police. What did you find?” she asked, wanting a third opinion to make sure what she and Gene found was correct.

MATE clued her in.

“She left the reservation to head off to college at the age of eighteen. She graduated with a degree in Psychology, and then promptly got her POST training to become a police officer in Utah.”

So far, she was only hearing normal things. It was the crazy shit that she needed to hear next, and she was waiting for that skeleton in the closet.

“After that, she worked as a beat cop. She lasted almost two years, and quit. Now, she’s here as Chief of Police.”

Elizabeth mulled that over.

“It’s good to know she had some police training and isn’t flying by the seat of her pants,” she admitted.

Gene agreed.

Granted, most of the crime on a reservation was fairly simple. The FBI handled anything like murders and drug matters.

It was clear that the woman had enough common sense to come to them, ASAP.

“So she was raised here, and left. That’s common. Give me any information on her social life, MATE.”

The system chimed but it was a weird chime she’d never heard before.

“I found nothing that you didn’t, Director. There isn’t anything left on the internet to report.”

Well, that worked for her.

And Gene.

“Did she sound off?” Gene asked.

Elizabeth nodded.

“Maybe we’re losing satellite signal out here,” she admitted.

When her phone chimed, she pulled it from her pocket. It was her husband.

Christopher.

Apparently, he wanted her to call him. That was amusing since he was behind her as they were navigating the bumpy road toward the location.

So, she did.

“Yo, handsome doctor. What’s up?”

He went there. As they were en route, he’d gotten a call from his research and development team in California.

“What if I had good news for my girl, and she owed me about a month’s worth of kisses for it?”

She lifted a brow.

“You killed Tony, and I’m in the clear from his spider?” she asked.

He laughed.

Only…

Tony.

Did.

Not.

“Why do you hate my spiders?” he asked, and he was presently ignored.

She disliked spiders and snakes because she did. One had too few legs, thank God, and one had way too many for her liking.

It was personal preference and honestly, she didn’t have to explain it. This was her team, not Tony’s. When he was in charge one day, after Hell froze over, pigs flew, and the zombies ate her brain, he could do what he wanted to do.

Until then…

He was shit out of luck.

“What am I kissing you about?” she asked.

Chris went there.

“Have you used MATE lately?”

Had she?

Yeah.

“I just did, but she’s off. I think we’re losing the signal from the satellite. We were just talking about it.”

Oh, well, he was going to be able to share with her then, and make her happy.

“Reboot your vest and watch. I’ll wait.”