Page 50 of Chaos has a Name (An FBI Romance/Thriller #66)

It wasn’t like she didn’t have time on her hands. She needed to keep her mind off of the spiders, the two killers, and whatever else was in that cave.

“Sure.”

MATE shared.

“It said, ‘Hollow keeps the calm’,” MATE offered. “My system isn’t finding any reference to that. You might have to figure that one out on your own.”

Likely.

Only, for now, she’d focus on escaping.

Later, she’d worry about that.

She really hated cannibal cases, and this one was going down in history as her least favorite.

MATE finished her calculations. In front of her, a holographic topography map appeared.

“Here is where you were, and here is where you are,” she offered.

Okay, she could work with this.

“Which way is North?” she asked.

The map spun, so she was facing it, and that would work for her. Worst-case scenario, she knew Timothy’s cabin was due north, and not that far away.

It was a few miles.

If she couldn’t get back to the crime site, she could hoof it back to the cabin. All she needed were markers that she knew.

“Mark the burial grounds. I’ve been there before to visit Timothy’s grave.”

A marker appeared.

“Can you mark the current location of most of Ivan’s team?”

A marker appeared, but MATE warned her.

“I can’t contact them. Communications are down due to damage to your vest.”

That was fine.

Now, she knew where she was, and all she had to do was get to a safe spot.

“Is there a river about a mile from where we are?” she asked, grateful that when they came here, Ethan and Callen had gone hunting a few times, bringing her along.

“Yes.”

A marker appeared.

“I hope you were a Girl Scout, Mother. If not, it’s going to be a long trip back. Oh, and weather is coming in. I can pull up the radar from the satellite if you wish.”

She didn’t wish.

Elizabeth would walk through a tornado to live long enough to see her babies grow up. Some rain? She wasn’t worried about it.

As for her being a Girl Scout…

Oh, she had been one. That was until she got kicked out for conduct unbecoming a member.

She’d learned her map skills because she hung out with Marines.

Thanks to them, she could navigate terrain without any help.

“Apparently, the Girl Scouts wasn’t all about the cookies, MATE,” she joked.

Her vest chortled.

Yeah, it was good to have company.

“We have to get moving,” she admitted. “My badge and gun are gone, and so is my phone. I think I’m up next in the snack fest.”

And this was bad.

Real.

Bad.

For her, Elizabeth couldn’t wait for help to find her. They might not reach her in time.

This time, Elizabeth Blackhawk had to save herself.

* * * The Blackhawk Family * * *

Not Far From

Campground Area

And Crime Scene

Earlier…

If panic had a face, it would be Ivan’s. As he reached the space where they split up while chasing the person who had fired on them with arrows, he couldn’t hear anything.

No more running.

No more sounds.

Nothing was making a noise but animals in the forest, and even they weren’t nearly as loud. Out in the distance, there was a rumbling of thunder, and that was ominous.

Yeah, and that freaked him out.

Immediately, he pulled up tech to find the location device that was planted on Elizabeth. Unfortunately, he hadn’t had time to stick it in the hiking boot, but he put one on the back of her badge when she wasn’t looking.

He’d also tagged her watch—just in case.

One of the signals was reading loud and clear. It was the one that he’d put on her badge. It was sending out a strong signal.

When he saw that showing up on his phone, there was an iota of relief. At least one was responding.

It was live, and the tracker was going off.

Carefully, he followed it, and he wasn’t liking what he was finding.

It was near him, but Ivan couldn’t see her. That couldn’t be right.

Looking down, his heart fell into his belly, and he wanted to be ill.

He found her phone.

It was dropped haphazardly onto the ground in some bramble where it looked like it had been tossed. There was no way Elizabeth would ditch her phone. While they were all wearing vests, her phone was pretty important.

Picking it up, he was sick to his stomach. She’d never ditch her phone.

Ever.

Moving his hands through the tallish bramble, he found her gun next.

Oh, if she wasn’t with her gun, that was BAD.

She would rather eat a bag of rotten eyeballs than leave her gun behind. There were times they had to take it away from her before she went into church.

Yes, they had to pat her down on the steps of the actual building.

The bottom line was that her gun was a fixture on her.

This was officially making him sick to his stomach. Only, he had to keep going. Carefully, he picked it up, and like with her phone, tucked it into his vest.

Next, he found the worst news.

Her badge.

The tech was showing him standing over the beacon, and he knew why.

Someone had taken Elizabeth and ditched her things into the woods.

Now, he had to call in backup to help find her, and he knew that was going over like a lead balloon.

Yeah, he’d lost the deputy director.

AGAIN.

* * * The Blackhawk Family * * *

The Cabin

Same Time

The Call

Michael had just tagged out of Wyler duty when Uriel arrived back at the cabin when he heard the call over his com from their boss.

Ivan sounded frantic, and that was never a good thing.

At first, he wasn’t sure if he was hearing it correctly. The whole thing was…bizarre.

‘The Raven has disappeared. We have a cannibal in the area. I need backup at the scene. Leave some behind. Hurry. Ivan out.’

Was this a prank?

Was he serious?

A cannibal?

Before he could ask if their boss was busting ass, his phone chimed, and he received coordinates to the area where they were to meet.

Uh-oh.

Yeah, it was clearly not a prank. It was official. The shit was about to be hitting the fan.

To get situated, he put the coordinates into his military watch, and got the location of the rendezvous point. Without waiting for backup, Michael hauled ass.

He began his run into the woods to reach the location to help out. It wouldn’t be a long run, but it was a few miles until he reached it.

Before long, Raphael and Saint caught up with him. It was clear they’d gotten the coordinates, too, and had been ordered to the scene.

“She’s missing,” Saint admitted. “Ivan called us out with coordinates.”

This was the worst possible news. While Elizabeth was prone to slip away, this sounded different.

“Is she just off the reservation?” he asked, meaning of her own free will. “Or…?”

Raphael jumped over a felled tree, and landed on the other side.

“Taken,” he stated.

Well, shit.

That was terrifying.

When their coms came on, they were all hoping it was for an update. Oh, well, it was their boss.

But not with good news.

“Hustle up!” he said. “I have her badge, gun, and phone. We need to find her.”

Oh, Ivan sounded big scared, and he should be. Elizabeth carried her gun EVERYWHERE.

It was time to haul ass.

As they ran, they heard a blacked-out luxury vehicle blow by the road not far from the path that they were on in the trees. It was heading toward the same location, just the less scenic route.

That would be Gryphen with Ethan and Callen—no doubt. They had gotten the notification, and were heading to the meet-up location.

As they kept going, Raphael’s phone rang. He tapped his Bluetooth button, so he didn’t have to pull his phone out. They were jumping logs, trees that were in the way, and streams in an effort to stay off of the beaten path as they took the shorter route.

“Go,” he said.

It was Gryphen.

“We’ve arrived at the path to the site. According to your positions, if you go straight, and haul ass, you should reach the location ahead of us. Ivan is alone with Gene and Chris. He can’t search and leave the team. Run it like you mean it!”

Raphael glanced over at his husband and Michael.

“We’re on the right track.”

The information they had only made them move faster. Everyone was scared shitless that they wouldn’t be able to find Elizabeth. Even now, they were scanning the area in hopes she just got…lost.

Not far away, up ahead, they could hear people screaming in the distance.

They were screaming one thing.

Elizabeth’s name.

Raphael was still connected to Gryphen’s com link, so he gave him the heads-up.

“We can hear them. We’re on our way, Gryph. We’ll be there in seconds.”

Gryphen was to the point.

He kept his voice low.

At that moment, he was running the mile trail with the Chief of Police, Ethan, and Callen. While he was trying to get there quickly, he still had to make sure both men were safe.

They were ahead of him and hauling ass.

He’d never seen Callen or Ethan run that fast before while he worked for them. There was urgency, and the other men needed to know exactly why.

So, he shared.

“Ivan found her gun, badge, and phone. She’s somewhere we can’t track her. The beacon was on the back of her badge and her watch. Ivan said the watch is coming up damaged. Unfortunately, she also changed out of her cowboy boots earlier, and Ivan didn’t have a tracker in her military boots.”

Well, fuck.

That was scary.

They knew the bottom line.

Time mattered more than anything at this moment. Getting to Elizabeth was their only priority.

When they reached the clearing, all of the techs were trying to focus, but it wasn’t easy. They were being surrounded by Marines in tactical gear, bursting through the trees.

It was making them twitchy.

Tony, Chris, and Gene were being kept there by Ivan, and it wasn’t easy. The two men were trying to get past him as he was struggling to keep them in one place.

They knew why.

If they got taken too...

Elizabeth had a good chance of survival, but if the killer used one of the men as bait, she’d give herself up for their lives.

“Michael, Saint, and Raph, do your thing,” he said, as he wouldn’t let the two men head into the trees.

Oh, and they tried.

This was incredibly stressful, and Ivan was at the end of his rope.

How did they all know?