Page 5 of Chaos has a Name (An FBI Romance/Thriller #66)

Chris was going to be the ONLY ME working for them, since he didn’t like the options at FBI West.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like the doctors…

The devil you knew.

That was his motto.

The two doctors who had been currently holding down the ORIGINAL Autopsy One had replaced him and Zane when they moved to DC to work out of the main office. He’d left FBI West in good hands, mostly.

Until they moved on too.

Now, they were MEs that Chris had hired since it was technically his job to keep both offices staffed. He was the Director of Forensic Medicine for the FBI and the burden was his to follow through on.

He’d staffed the office in Damascus with qualified people. Only, to Chris, qualified didn’t mean he wanted to work with them.

He was a little…over the top when it came to rules and regulations in the workplace.

Basically, he had high standards.

And none of the people there fit them.

Those were his words, not hers.

She didn’t know how to run a morgue, do an autopsy, or get that many letters and titles after her name, so she was deferring that to him.

Chris was going to have to hold up until he could hire out.

That stressed her too, considering his health.

Yeah, they were all under the gun now.

All she could bring with her was the minimum amount of investigators. The rest, if she needed help, would have to be picked from the pool of staff there.

And like Chris, she was…particular.

Those were her words.

Period.

This was going to be rough on all of them. For the time being, until they could both do some hiring, she had Christopher, Anthony, Blue, and Jaxon to carry the brunt of the morgue load.

Unfortunately for Chris, she hadn’t been able to talk Zane or Dalia into moving there—even temporarily.

Oh, God.

She hoped this was all temporary.

Goddamnit.

This was going to suck.

Wisely, and not blaming him, but Zane had refused to return.

Outright refused.

Why?

He had a stalkerish ex there, and there was no way he was coming back to restart that mess.

And she got it.

Really.

Unfortunately, also, Dalia had to stay in DC because someone had to babysit Zane, or it would become ‘the land of speculation and ME’s nightmares’.

Again, Chris’ words.

She also had to stay because her husband was there working on her team to help hold up the other office. Cameron Cooper was a DC kind of a guy.

And another option bit the dust.

The worst of the worst was that Chrissy couldn’t leave because Kane had to work. They were a two-income family, and they’d already lived out here and put down new roots in DC.

So now, they were hoping and praying that their new head tech wasn’t difficult to work with, or incompetent.

Or they were screwed.

Both she and Chris needed a special kind of crazy to helm that boat. The head tech in Damascus was about to have one hell of a time running a lab with two control freaks breathing down their neck.

Would the tech survive?

Time would tell at this point…

As for investigators, she had left the lion’s share in DC. She could always send them out from there. To her, making them move to her was a lot of stress.

Her world had been topsy-turvy the last three days. She not only had to help Coraline with being a new mom, since Livy was gone, but she also had to get her work life under control.

It.

Was.

Chaos.

Honestly, she was one more decision away from institutionalization, and that said a lot considering how well she worked under pressure.

So, it was deliberate choices that would maximize the staff she was bringing on at FBI West.

For investigators, she had Alex Bartlett, who would be teamed up with Corbin Price. He had finalized his time in Philadelphia, and should be there later today.

Or tomorrow.

She hoped.

Alex was the one agent she’d yet to be able to pair up with someone over the many years they’d worked together. It wasn’t that he was a bad agent.

He wasn’t.

He was just a handful when it came to his personal life, and that tended to bleed into his work life.

Noah had been his partner, and babysitter. She needed Corbin to be stable enough to ride roughshod over his partner.

Because Alex needed it.

Then, Duke was swapping partners and now going to be with Axl Thorn. They got along, and Duke was an old hand at working with relatively new agents.

Luckily for everyone involved, Axl was like a sponge. He soaked up EVERYTHING, and quickly.

Thank.

Freaking.

God.

Truth be told, Duke, more times than not, was their Violent-Crimes training wheels. If someone needed to be caught up to speed on how to do their job after Gene trained them, Duke partnered up with them.

That was a helpful one-two punch.

Luckily for the newbies, when there were some, Duke had the opposite personality as her. He was calm like his mother with a spattering of Charlie thrown into the mix to liven it up.

Mr. I Like Flannel was reliable when he was focused. Now, they’d have to see if he could be focused with his wife and kids across the country.

This should be fun until it blew up in their faces. That would be one hell of a clean-up in aisle VC unit.

Next on her team was a surprise.

Well, it was for her.

Apparently, Ian was coming with them to, and not only joining, but going back to work.

The minute he heard Gryphen was on Elizabeth duty from Ivan, he packed up his shit and met his fiancé at the door, ready to go.

And she was grateful.

Elizabeth knew he didn’t want to come back, but she needed someone she trusted to run the office for her in her absence.

Call it a hunch, but she was pretty sure she was going to be in the field a lot.

Back in DC, she had Axelle to split the duties with but here, she was in charge of THE WHOLE PLACE.

And she never signed up for that.

Damn Wyler blindsiding her with this too.

Part of the deal of coming there meant she had to make sure the place was running efficiently and to their standard.

Elizabeth was going to be cosplaying as Axelle Maverick two-point-oh in Damascus.

Yippee.

Ironically, she was now running the office that she ran years ago. She and Ethan created it, and now she was back to be in charge of it.

Oh, the universe was a bitch.

That was for sure.

With Ian’s help, she might just be able to hold it together. The man ran the Secret Service detail at the White House as if he’d been born to do it.

Yeah, this was right up his alley.

She hoped.

This was going to take a village, and she was going to be leaning into Ian’s management skills.

As for other agents now on staff here…

Gene was there, and he would be her partner in the field more often than not.

Callen was going to be helping her, but now that they’d returned, his title as FBI Liaison to the Native Community was back in play.

Tag.

He was it.

There was no way she could do that too. Besides, he was as Native as the day was long, and knew the protocols that needed to be followed.

She.

Did.

Not.

On the reservation, you either loved her or hated her. She was only a Blackhawk by marriage, not by blood. Ethan and Callen had the power there, and she was just arm candy.

More or less.

Granted, she’d birthed them both Native children, but the Shaman-to-one-day-be, and the full-blooded Native were in charge of that.

Thank.

God.

So, she only had three teams of investigators there including herself. She and Gene, Corbin and Alex, and Duke with Axl, and that would have to do for the time being.

Yes, Johanna and Brody had offered to come, and she might put them into play at FBI West if she needed them, but for now, this was it.

This was her ‘full’ staff.

Ironically, she had double that in DC, and couldn’t keep up with the cases that were coming in. This was going to be twice as difficult, and likely a ball-busting time out West.

Axelle had mandated that DC had to stay staffed more than FBI West due to more workload going there.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, they were going to find out.

This was a lesson in flying by the seat of her pants, and that was exactly what she was doing.

With her back to the wall, she’d work with what she had here, and honestly, she’d gone over personnel files on her way there.

A couple agents stood out, but nothing that overly impressed her. It took a special kind of crazy to work VC Unit crimes.

The agent had to be able to work with her.

She was the problem.

HER.

So basically, not knowing how long they’d be there, or if they were going to be out of there quickly, she was back in the ‘do I or don’t I have to hire more people’ mode.

She hoped not because that sucked.

Luckily, she’d gotten sole custody of the two profilers. Axl wasn’t ready to fly solo, as they’d seen on the last case they worked where Ethan was incapacitated, but he was on his way.

They just had to break him of his vomiting on a crime scene, and that would take a little time.

They’d all been there.

Her worry now was that she needed a profiler, and Ethan had yet to get his legs back under him.

Unfortunately, they’d been kicked out when he had to come face-to-face with David Neives—and Javier Hughes.

So…she might be screwed until both men got back on their game.

Time would tell.

Security was even having to play the shift game. Oh, and Ivan…

Not.

A.

Fan.

The man like consistency, and didn’t really enjoy when shit jumped out and bit him in the ass.

Could anyone blame him?

She hated that too.

Back at home, The Fort was surrounded by tall fencing, trees, and German Shepherds to keep them safe from the world and people who wanted to hurt her.

Here, now, she only had Kanje to patrol since he knew the location and was the most unlikely to run away into the woods after a deer.

The other two…

Not.

So.

Much.

Raven and Sungila were back in DC with security, holding down the fort.

Unfortunately for Ivan, he was trying to hold security together the best he could. Only, his reasoning was opposite of hers.

He brought the Marines he considered troublemakers with him so he could keep an eye on them.