Page 47 of Sticks and Stones (FBI Romance/Thriller #65)

“We have NEVER had an ME here at this field office. We always use the city ME. I’m talking NEVER .

I’ve asked, I’ve begged, I’ve pleaded, and each time it was ‘that’s not in the budget’ .

Now, we have a director slashing our agents and budget, and we suddenly get one?

I thought he really just liked you two.”

They began laughing.

And laughing.

And laughing.

Oh, that was a false statement if they ever heard one. Gabe was not their biggest fan. In fact, he rode their asses hard since they annoyed him. The only reason he tolerated them was they were effective at their jobs when it came to solving all kinds of shit thrown at them.

Like this drug problem.

“We need to level this playing field,” Gene said. “We just have to do it in a way he doesn’t see coming.”

Ethan began formulating a plan.

“We need to dig into her past and see what he’s using to blackmail her. If Gabe sent her here, there’s a reason. No sane person willingly takes one of his assignments.”

That was accurate.

His jobs were nightmares.

Case in point, look at the mess they were in.

Ethan was leaning against the wall and thinking.

“We got put here, and she said she did too. Why?” Ethan asked. “If we can get to the bottom of that, we can figure out what he has over her. Turnabout is fair play, and if she burned us, I’m burning her back,” Ethan admitted.

Greyson liked that idea.

It was a good plan.

They were going to spy on the spy, and use that to their advantage.

“We can dig. We can’t do it conventionally because I’d bet my military medals that he’ll be waiting to see if we are figuring it out.”

Yeah, they couldn’t use FBI equipment. That meant it was going to take a little longer to handle it.

Gene was annoyed.

He hated games.

“I don’t like how my relationship is at the center of this,” he admitted. “My sex life is my sex life. Gabe needs to fuck all the way off.”

Oh, they agreed, but with Gabe, you had to play the same game. He played chess. Most of his agents were at the checker’s level.

“So how should I handle her?” Greyson asked. “Because if she didn’t get the hint, and she’s doing this to stay connected, we can bet she’ll keep trying.”

Ethan planned it out.

“No, she won’t.”

They both looked at him as he did the rare profile of one of their own.

“This is how we’ll know if we’re right. If she’s spying on the three of us, you because you run the office, and us because we’re a couple, she’s going to use a different play.

She can’t risk getting in trouble, and if you call Gabe right now and tell him she showed up naked and trying to have sex, he’d have no choice but to pull her. ”

Greyson was listening.

“Go on.”

“She’ll do something completely different if she’s desperate.”

Gene was curious.

“Like be super friendly and want to hang out with us? Maybe pull the ‘let’s be friends’ card so she can watch?” he asked.

Ethan shrugged.

“Possibly, but remember the very first day we met her?” he asked.

Both men nodded.

“Who was she focused on?”

The second he said it, Gene’s skin flushed red.

“Son of a bitch. If she tries to poach my man and sleep with him, I’m going to be feral to the point she runs back to Seattle crying.”

Greyson sighed.

“I’m sorry about this,” he admitted. “She’ll totally try to sleep with Ethan. She’ll downright molest him if she’s desperate enough.”

Ethan laughed.

Gene.

Did.

Not.

The last thing he wanted to picture was the man he was stupid in love with being tempted with a woman. That was his deepest, darkest fear.

It haunted him that the bisexual part of him would swing back the other way to the ladies.

Ethan went there.

“Let’s turn it around on her and catch her in the act.

Let’s let her think you relented, and I’m not saying sleep with her, but let’s give her something false at some point and see if it filters back to Gabe.

If it does, we confront her, all of us, and we scare the ever-loving fuck out of her for playing lackey for Gabe. ”

That worked for them.

Greyson hated spies.

He hated being screwed over by people and stabbed in the back. Loyalty was his one big thing, and people who couldn’t be loyal couldn’t be trusted.

That was his number one rule.

“I mean, Ethan could always go on a date with her and use his profiling skills to trap her while we’re digging to see what she’s done.”

Ethan went to open his mouth, and Gene protested that one vehemently.

“Yeah, no. Ethan isn’t dating anyone because he’s in a relationship with me. I’m not risking it. Come up with another plan.”

Gene was going red, so Ethan reassured him.

“Okay, babe. That’s off the table. We’ll just have to do this in the shadows and see what we can find.”

Gene had anxiety now.

On top of Javier Hughes likely getting sprung on Monday, he now had their boss trying to be in their relationship.

And they didn’t do threesomes.

“Damn it but I can’t stand Gabe,” Gene said, rubbing his temples.

Ethan patted him on the back.

“It’s not him. It’s this job. It makes you hyper-paranoid, and you do things you wouldn’t normally do. He’s hinted at us that he knows, but he hasn’t tried to break us apart. Maybe he’s like J. Edgar Hoover and likes having his own files.”

Uh, he hated to be the bearer of bad news…

“Everyone hated Hoover. He was a dick who all of his agents, and normal people disliked.”

He laughed.

“And that only hurt him in the end. His legacy was that bullshit.”

He had a point.

Looking at his watch, Gene wanted to get some food in him since he hadn’t finished lunch earlier. They were likely going to have a long night.

“What did Alice and John send over?” he asked as he walked into the living room of their condo.

Ethan laughed.

“It might be easier to ask what they didn’t send over. Let’s just say we have burgers, fries, containers of soups, fried fish, stew, and about an entire pig’s worth of pulled pork.”

Corbin wasn’t shocked.

“That sounds about right. Are you guys going to tell me what the secret conversation was about?” he asked, catching them off guard. “I’m battered, not stupid.”

Gene reassured him.

“It wasn’t about you. We think Sasha is a spy for our boss. It kinda just happened in the hall by the door. It wasn’t intentional.”

As Gene helped Corbin up, they headed into the kitchen to get some food.

Once there, Corbin took a burger from Ethan since they were all having burgers and fries.

Corbin kept talking since it was nice not to be thinking about his issues.

“Oh, that’s awkward since she’s sleeping with Greyson.”

Yeah, tell them about it.

“Oh, well, spies get their asses caught every now and again,” Gene admitted. “She’ll get hers, and it’ll be from me if she puts one hand on Ethan’s body. That’s mine,” he said.

Corbin laughed.

“I’ll get him yet, and he’ll be mine,” he teased, trying to be more like himself.

Gene ruffled his hair when Corbin sat down.

“I’ve seen your game. You couldn’t catch Ethan if he was nailed to the ground.”

Corbin snorted.

Plus, Gene trusted the man. His fear had everything to do with the fact that he didn’t know if one day, Ethan would go straight again.

At the table, they sat down, and Ethan had his notebook, his favorite pencil, and notes ready for them.

“We’ll eat and talk. We have to be at that hotel at eight thirty,” Gene admitted.

That gave them two hours to go over everything and get there.

Blackhawk was up to bat.

“Well, I went over the victims, and I cross-checked everything that Corbin did. He was pretty thorough,” Blackhawk admitted. “Good job,” he offered.

Thank God.

It was nice to know he didn’t fuck it up.

“I tried,” Corbin said. “The minute Vice found the three sets of bodies together, they called me in. I had minimal information to go on with them.”

Well, Ethan found more. Granted, that was the difference between a city cop and an FBI agent—one had more time to dig deep. Ethan and Gene only worked one case at a time. The city cops were overwhelmed.

“I thought about the students and ran a few things,” he stated. “What I found was interesting.”

They ate and were all ears.

“What did you find?” Gene asked, knowing if there was something to be found, Ethan would locate it. His partner was damn good at his job.

Ethan explained.

“I started thinking about tuition and how two different colleges could possibly connect to each other.”

That worked for them.

“And?”

“Well, I found a few interesting things that piqued my interest. First, I found that they all shared a common professor. Did you know that Villanova and Temple share professors at times and for certain classes?” he asked, clueing them in.

Honestly, that surprised Corbin. He hadn’t been able to make that happen.

“You found a way to connect them? I couldn’t,” he admitted.

Blackhawk nodded.

“I looked at the third victim, Graham Sinclair, and the classes he taught as a grad student. Sometimes, grad students will help professors out, and he did. He taught an entry-level Political Science class for Professor Harrison Dunne.”

They listened.

“And who was enrolled in that class?” Ethan asked.

Corbin knew.

He’d connected the second and third victims the first few days he was working, after they got ID’d. Only, he couldn’t do the same to the first one, so he assumed they didn’t connect.

He shared.

“The second victim, Wesley Thorton,” Corbin admitted. “He was in that class. That I found out. Were you able to find a connection to the first victim?”

Yes, he had.

“It took some digging, but I was able to. What you didn’t catch was that Harrison Dunne also taught a high-level political science class at Villanova.

You were almost there. It just took a little more digging.

The professor worked at both schools, likely trying to get his tenure locked down somewhere. ”

Gene grinned.

“And in that class at Villanova?”

Ethan pointed at the picture on the table.

“In that class, we have Elliot Graves.”

Hot damn.

Greyson knew what that meant.