Salvage: A Shadow Files Novel

by A. J. Scudiere

  He stalked over on four soft feet toward her grandfather, and for a moment, GJ thought her grandfather recognized him. Wade certainly recognized Dr. Murray Marks. His growl was low and deep, and full of such animosity that GJ thought she wouldn't have been surprised if he lunged for her grandfather's neck.

  As he growled, GJ took notes. Wade's brown coloring disguised most of it, but around his mouth, there was a tinge of red. There were streaks of it in different places on his coat, too. She wondered if it was his own blood, though she was pretty certain it wasn't. She could see the barely-leashed rage in her friend.

  Her grandfather, whether he'd pulled the trigger or not, had caused the murder of the man that Wade loved. Though he was still her grandfather and she still wanted to protect him, GJ didn't know if she could or should protect him from this. The man who had taught her to handle her prizes with care and that her actions had consequences, was going to have to learn that for himself it seemed.

  After a few moments of staring at each other, Wade stalked off, definitely the bigger man. Only then did GJ turn and survey the scene with clearer eyes. Then, with things better under control, she and Walter nodded once at each other and, in unison, turned back toward the windows. She wanted to ask, "How can we help?" but she was supposed to be in charge.

  Looking for an open space, she racked the slide on her gun and took aim. There was nothing to shoot at, though. While she could see the shapes in the woods and a few out in the yard, it was difficult to distinguish who were her people and who were theirs. Not all of the de Gottardi or Little family members were able to shift into dogs, so it wasn't as simple as looking at the outline to know who to aim at. Unfortunately, the clear targets came with helmets and Kevlar vests, making it even more difficult to determine until the person was close, but she squeezed off three shots and found one of her grandfather's people tumbling backward. For a moment, she thought, This was the second person she'd killed tonight.

  She emptied her clip one shot at a time into the shadows, and even as she did it, she noticed that the shadows in the woods were slightly lessened. The sun was coming up now, and somehow, this had gone on for far, far too long.

  Behind her then, she heard a struggle and turned. As she looked, she watched her grandfather manage to scoot across the floor and wrestle a spare handgun from where it was holstered on one of the family members’ legs. With bound hands, he stuck the muzzle under his chin.

  51

  There weren't words for GJ's feelings. Shock. Fear. Anger. All riled through her as she made a sudden dive.

  "You will not!" she yelled.

  Though it would make things easier, she understood—even in that split second—that she was not going to allow it to happen. He could not shoot himself and remove all his valuable information from this equation. She'd worked too hard to bring him here, and so she dove onto him not quite thinking about the consequences to herself if he managed to get the shot off.

  He was lying sideways on the floor. His feet and hands were bound, though his fingers had managed to work their way around the butt of the gun and shoved it upward under his chin.

  As she covered him, she jammed the heel of her hand smack down to the floor in the small space between the barrel of the gun and his neck. She used the leverage to push the gun away and the shot went wide. It flew low across the floor and for a moment she had the briefest fear that she'd managed to kill someone else while saving him.

  Heart pounding in her chest, she looked up, trying to assess if anyone else had been hit. She knew that when it happened, the recipient of the bullet often didn't feel it for even the first handful of minutes. They would look around, shocked, having heard the sound of gunfire and wondering who was hit, not yet realizing it was them. So, she looked for what she'd been trained for. Blooms of red forming on clothing. An awkward limp. An arm that didn't hang quite right. But she didn't see any of it.

  Her breathing heavy, she almost wasn't able to get the words out. "Is anyone hurt?"

  Even then she watched as her grandfather managed to gather the gun back into his own grip. She slammed his hands to the floor, once, twice, before he finally groaned and let go of the weapon. GJ grabbed it, taking control and standing over him. She shouldn't be this high in the air. She was a target. She was supposed to stay low, but for the briefest of moments she wrapped her own hand around the butt of the weapon. Her own finger slid inside the trigger guard and she aimed it him.

  "You will not." She ground the words out through her teeth. Never had a family member made her so angry. Never had any person made her this angry before. Even the people who worked with him, those who had been outside taking shots at her and Walter, didn’t do this to her. But this? This was the worst.

  "Get down" Walter hissed. It was a good save and GJ knew it, but she wouldn't get to do anything more here if she took a bullet to the brain.

  Instantly, she dropped to her hands and knees as she heard two more shots come through the house, though she had no idea if they were anywhere near her. They were a sharp reminder of how foolish she’d been to stand. Acting in anger was not what she had been trained to do.

  A woman appeared at her side then. She motioned with a fabric bag, and when GJ was unsure what to do with it, but the woman held it out again.

  “Put it over his hands and zip-tie it down. Make it really tight so he can't flex his fingers. Then he can't grab anything else.”

  GJ recognized a good idea when she heard one, and this woman had every reason to make sure that Dr. Murray Marks was not able to get his hands on a weapon again. GJ was grateful they were willing to help her do what she felt she needed to do, even though this man was the one who had run the entire militia out here and had issued the orders to come after the family.

  "Thank you," she said and accepted the bag. It took several precious minutes to hold the bag taut while her grandfather struggled. The difficulty was making sure his hands remained in closed fists with the bag pulled tight over them. It took several zip ties to get around his wrist, but she made it happen, watching all the while as Art went from patient to patient. As Walter popped her head carefully into the corner of a window, fired off several shots and ducked back over and over.

  Surely, this had to end soon. If nothing else, each side would run out of victims. It almost seemed she was right. As the sun came up, more and more times the doors opened and closed. More and more times, one of the members of the de Gottardi-Little family came back—either walking in as a tired, dirty, or bloody human or the same in the shape of a dog.

  The gunfire died down. The people outside retreated and stopped making rushes on the house, as though they were actually trying to come in and rescue Dr. Marks. It wasn't going to happen, GJ thought. There was no way Walter would let them get her grandfather, nor would she. One or the other of them would shoot him first. He wasn't going back out, and if it came to that, they would have to cut off the head of this organization.

  It seemed the sun controlled the fight. The higher it got in the sky, the fewer and further between the sounds of bullets became. At last, they all looked at each other. Having not heard any gunfire for quite some time nor seen any movement in the woods, most of the outside soldiers had returned to the farmhouse. They crowded inside, stuffing every corner, hiding under every chair and every table. The furniture was overturned and the place looked like exactly what it was—a war zone. Furniture was shattered. Some chairs would never stand upright again, at least not until they had a leg fully replaced or more. Some of the furniture would be going on a scrap pile in the backyard, that was for certain.

  They received word from Alicia and her contingent. They'd managed to get to a place that was unknown and to hide everything. As far as GJ could tell, no-one had breached the walls.

  She turned to Will Little and asked, "Are your documents safe?"

  He nodded. “They didn't even get close.”

  A small blessing.

  The scream coming from the yard changed her mind.


  52

  Though the urge to pop up and look was strong, GJ fought it. It was likely a trap. Send someone running into the yard, yelling, and get everyone to make themselves targets as they came to look.

  Next to her, Art stood to crane his neck out the window. He was barely halfway before Wade grabbed him and tugged him back down. Now fully human looking, he must have changed while GJ wasn’t paying attention.

  Walter, ever the soldier, had rolled from where she’d sat with her back against the wall. Walter had been done. She’d been relaxing just a little, but the screams pulled her taut like a bowstring again. She pressed her face awkwardly to the wall and GJ thought she must have lost her fucking mind for a minute.

  Only as Walter yelled out “Fuck!” at the top of her lungs and popped up, did GJ see that she’d taken advantage of bullet hole in the wall to peek through. It was big enough to see out of and small enough that no one could likely shoot into it. Walter hadn’t lost her mind, she was just better at this than everyone else.

  But she was standing up, square to the window, gun in both hands, perfect police grip.

  She was going to get herself shot. The adrenaline in her system slowed time and GJ thought, Maybe she knows what she’s doing. And if she did, then it was the right thing to do.

  GJ stood up beside her. She mimicked Walter’s stance, though it wasn’t conscious. Only then did she yell, “Oh shit!” as she saw what Walter had seen.

  The man running across the yard was lumpy. Boxy shapes ringed his midsection. As he got closer she saw wires, some of which trailed to something in his hand.

  He was wired to blow. Suicide bomber.

  Who would think these documents were worth that much except the family? This had been a nice, simple gunfight up until now. Though her face frowned with thought, GJ was already cataloging Walter’s shots.

  The man zigzagged across the space, thankfully making it take longer for him to reach the house. Walter pulled the trigger over and over but he didn’t go down. Fucking Kevlar.

  “Get down! Move back!” GJ shouted, twisting as she yelled at all the people.

  Her grandfather, bound on the floor, could not get back. That was his own fault though. She and Walter would not make it back if this man made it to the door and blew the place to hell, but that was her choice. She’d enjoyed being an FBI agent, even if it was for just under a week.

  Turning back to face the yard with Walter, she registered that Walter’s shots had slowed.

  Head shot.

  They needed a head shot.

  Lowering her breathing rate, trying to shoot between heartbeats, GJ pulled the trigger.

  53

  In the end, GJ couldn’t say whether the shot that got him was from her or Walter. They’d been firing pretty simultaneously, and he’d fallen. She didn’t want to know. Walter’s kill number was likely so high that this one didn’t make a difference, and her own was so low that it made all the difference in the world and she didn’t want it.

  She’d been aiming for his head. But she wasn’t sure if she’d made it and the switch had been a “dead man” switch, or if maybe the shot had been off and the explosive had been hit and gone up. She didn’t know what Walter was aiming for. It didn’t matter.

  The blast had rocked all of them back. She and Walter had fallen off their feet. A good thing since the remaining glass in the windows had blown inward with the force. She didn’t want to know what the front of the house looked like, though it had stood.

  Slowly they slid downward, getting out of the line of sight in case this shit wasn’t over yet. It was a full hour later that Walter moved from the window. That to GJ was the best declaration that the fighting was over: when Walter declared it done.

  She sat in the middle of the room. Her breathing still heavy, despite the fact that no one had fired a shot since the explosion. Walter had been on high alert for quite some time and it took GJ a moment to realize that what she saw in Walter also reflected in herself. She watched over Walter's shoulder as once again the cellar door lifted and another nose came through.

  Only it wasn't the nose of a dog. It was the nose of a rifle and it was aiming into the room.

  GJ reacted, certain she was the only one who saw it. She dove, hollering out, "The cellar door!" which probably wasn't very helpful. She tried to avoid the barrel of the gun. Dropping and rolling, she came up on one knee firing into the small space.

  54

  Walter had sat unknowing as a gun came up behind her. She was in shock. How had she not heard it? How had she not known? Her eyes must have been wide with surprise.

  GJ fired into the space of the cellar door and a yelp let them know GJ had hit her mark. Walter turned suddenly, scrambling to her feet with the others, who went and pulled back the cellar door, only to find a fully-armed soldier dead at the bottom of the steps.

  One shot, one kill, Walter thought. Turning to GJ, she said, "That was pretty fancy."

  "I learned it at camp." Her friend shrugged, and Walter almost laughed. She understood the hysterical reaction that most people eventually had to war. She felt it bubbling up in her now. Three different people rushed down the steps, checking for a pulse to make sure that GJ's shot had not only found its mark, but left the victim completely unable to return.

  "What do we do with the body?" they asked. Understandably, they didn't want it in here. They already had a hostage in Dr. Marks. They didn’t need anything more. Blood was pooling on the cellar floor, and Walter looked around suddenly realizing that many things were missing. Furniture, windows, curtains. Also, things were added: blood smears and hand prints along the wall and floor as some people had crawled in wounded. There were spots where others had bled out while Art frantically tried to save them. The good news was, most of the time, he'd kept them alive.

  Walter wasn't sure, but she believed the number of their own people who had died in this fight was in the five to ten range. She could not count the number of wounded, it was way too high. She could not count the number of dogs she'd seen return with blood dripping from their fangs. And though she'd initially wondered why they would go out when they didn't have hands to hold weapons, she wondered now why she'd questioned that.

  Her heartbeat was finally returning to normal. It had spiked again with GJ's amazing roll and shoot. Walter suddenly flashed back to a time—not that long ago—when they'd stood at the range and GJ had picked up her Glock nine-millimeter and Walter had cringed just seeing it in her hands. What a difference a few months made, she thought. It applied even to herself.

  Christina had begun speaking again. Though she hadn't even moved for a long while, she turned, stood, and finally spoke. "They're gone."

  For a reason no one could say—other than they'd been told to trust her, and that she hadn't seemed to have lied to them yet—they all believed her.

  Though Walter envied the knowledge, she didn't envy Christina Pines. The woman seemed sad and alone, and unwilling to connect with other people, which Walter found extremely funny since she was the last person who would want to connect. Now was not the time for raucous laughter though, and she bit her lip to hold it back. It wasn't even that funny. It was just the adrenaline fading from her system.

  With slow hands and heavy hearts, they one by one began the effort of cleanup. Carefully, several members went out to the well and brought in water. Others were sent to scout the outside area, to count dead bodies, and look for specific things.

  Walter sent a team out to find Shray Menon's body and bring it back. Though no one wanted it in the house, but it had to be accounted for. Then she asked if there was anyone else out there that they specifically needed. They had Dr. Murray Marks, they needed Shray Menon. If anyone could find the mysterious Harry, that would be great, too, though no one seemed to recognize the name.

  It was several hours later that Walter had finally eaten a handful of dry cereal. Her body was giving in to exhaustion. She and GJ had been up for over twenty-four hours straight, and she had to
believe most of the people had here too. She was just about to give in when a car drove all the way up to the house and Westerfield emerged.

  They offered up brief introductions, and he spoke relatively freely in front of the de Gottardi-Little family. Perhaps he understood that, because of their situation, the family members were in no position to share information with him.

  "What happened to the two we arrested?" Walter asked when he finished. Because the last she'd heard, he and Wade had been at the hotel, and then Wade was here and Westerfield was at the hotel with them alone.

  "They're in custody," Westerfield said almost as an aside. While Walter wanted to press him for more, it became clear that he wasn't going to offer it. Her Special Agent in Charge didn't hang out and help. He didn't offer information. He simply told them what they needed to do and he took Dr. Murray Marks away.

  "Where is he going?" GJ asked.

  "Into custody," was all Westerfield would offer. Walter could only turn to her partner and shrug. At least her grandfather wasn't dead.

  Walter was looking for a bed when the scouts came back and let her know that they had been unable to find Shray Menon's body. With one simple look between her and GJ, they’d ditched the idea of sleep and gone out into the woods themselves, only to discover the searchers had not made an error.

  Walter and GJ knew, they had her phone. They had tracking locations. Though he'd thrown the tracker from where he’d last stood with Dr. Murray Marks, the spot was very clear from the information on the device. Turning, they traced the steps, knowing which way he'd run. Though they couldn't see an exact position where he’d died, they found the spot relatively easily by looking for blood stains on the leaves.

  As they checked the scene, they found signs the body had been dragged away. Perhaps there were secrets contained somewhere in his DNA, or on his person. The others might not have wanted Walter and GJ to get their hands on the information.