Past Will Haunt by Morgan Kelley

meant to settle down, fate will slap me with the cold hard reality of it. If not, I’ll just keep on keeping on.”
    Gabe got it. The conversation was over.
    “Hey! It’s not my circus and not my monkeys. You have to live your own life.”
    “Truth.”
    “Well, thank you, Ethan. Call me if you need anything,” he offered. “I'm heading into a meeting with the director.”
    “Don’t get your ass chewed out too much.”
    He laughed. “From your mouth to God’s ears, Blackhawk. If I had a dollar for every time he grumbled your name...”
    Ethan took that as his key to escape.
    So he did.
    Gabe watched the agent walk away. The man was a handful, but he was a damn good investigator. Between him and Elizabeth, Gabe had his hands full. Blackhawk might be good with profiling, but he couldn’t see the forest through the trees.
    His life was a mess.
    In a way, Gabe felt bad.
    But that wasn’t his job. His agents’ personal lives were just that.
     
    Personal.
     
     
     
     
     
     
                      * * *   B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x   * * *
     
     
     
     
     
    Three Hours Later
     
     
     
     
    They each took half of the neighborhood. Some of the people were more than happy to help, some not so much. You’d be surprised how freaked out people could get when the FBI knocked on their door.
    The second they saw the badge and the questioning began, you’d think J. Edgar Hoover had appeared. People were damn paranoid.
    They apologized for the craziest things.
    Parking tickets.
    Playing their music too loud.
    It was like they thought they gave a damn.
    Honestly, Elizabeth and Livy didn't care if you were in your pajamas at two in the afternoon or if you were growing pot in your grandmother’s bathroom. That wasn’t their gig.
    They had bigger fish to fry—mainly, the ‘Irish Butcher’. He was the one they needed to find. They were concerned with the carved up woman down the block, not the crazy going on in private apartments.
    There were priorities.
    As they asked around, no one saw anything. For a bunch of people setting up a memorial with bears, candles, and flowers, you’d think they’d have known the person who died a little better.
    One man didn't even know her name.
    When he was asked by Livy about Stephanie O’Malley, he simply shrugged and didn't have much to offer. Apparently, the only reason he was there was because Seamus O’Brien knew her to see her. At the local pub, he mentioned that she served beer and was a good egg.
    Yeah, great. 
    They already knew that.
    Livy thanked him, and then headed on her merry way. Hopefully, Elizabeth had better luck with the canvas. She was batting a big fat zero.
    Only, she didn't. When they met up, she, too, had gotten nowhere.
    As the day wore on, they were faced by the cold hard facts. No one saw jack shit. They were going to start fresh in the morning, and all they could hope was the killer didn't take another woman tonight.
    Luck wasn’t on their side, but there could always be a miracle.
    Yeah, right.
    Somehow, they knew that wouldn’t be happening. When it came to this job, luck wasn’t your friend, and fate liked to screw with you.
    When they met back up in front of the dead woman’s home, the media was filming and shouting questions at them. They were asking everything that the public wanted to know, only Livy and Elizabeth didn't have the answers.
    So, they weren’t going there.
    There was no way that either woman was going to give a sound byte to the media without Gabe’s permission. They’d seen him tear agents apart for sharing too much with the vultures.
    Yeah, it was professional suicide.
    So, instead, they moved further away to compare notes.
    “What did you get?”
    Elizabeth laughed. “Not a hell of a lot. The older woman next door said she didn't hear anything at all last night. In fact, she was pretty sure there was no way Stephanie could have been killed in her home. We know that’s total bullshit because the