Though it was tempting to leave the compound, Walter felt they couldn't. Christina said they couldn't. And though Wade told them the others would be fine, and that they had a live-in FBI agent in him for a while, they all agreed to stay and sleep in shifts.
For three days, they waited. No more bullets came, and no more shadows flitted through the woods. A pile of furniture stood in the backyard in pieces, ready for flames. Various people came and flashed FBI badges and took away some of the bodies. Walter even helped with the manual labor of burying the dead.
On Day Four, the last of the others began returning home. While Walter hadn't seen them, she understood now that there were tunnels leading into the cellar that allowed the family to come and go. These were the things that she and GJ hadn't known originally, hadn't needed to. She wondered once again where the documents might be. They'd talked to Will several times, and he assured them that all was safe, but clearly something would have to be done. The family needed a new plan, or this would happen again.
On Day Five, they'd heard no update from Westerfield, other than that the right people were in custody and it was time to go home. Walter called Donovan, but he wasn't home either. And when GJ said, "Would you like to come back to my grandfather's with me?" Walter accepted.
55
GJ and Walter had stayed in her apartment for three days. They hadn't spoken a lot. They'd gone in and out on different schedules, and GJ only had the one large bed. They shared it, though mostly in rotating shifts, sleeping for hours on end.
GJ watched stupid TV, and by the second day, Walter was watching stupid TV, too. They ate what the staff cooked—big, extravagant meals that GJ could only imagine fell into a hollow hole created by almost a week of tension at the DeGottardi-Little farm. Her appetite had returned, along with an ability to bend the truth to the staff. They worried about her grandfather, and she told them that he'd been arrested, though not really what for. How could she? Besides, her NightShade directive forbade it.
She'd called her mother and father, told them the story as best she was allowed, admitted she'd joined the FBI, and found the conversation exhausted her almost as much as the gunfire had. Though nobody said it, she heard an edge of blame in her mother's voice, and she understood.
Her grandfather had been better to GJ than he'd been to her mother, and now, GJ had taken him away. At least that's how it appeared if you only counted how the pieces moved, and it was difficult to explain exactly what he’d been doing. So making her mother believe it was that much harder. Still, the wedge was driven in further, and not between Dr. Marks and Shray this time, but between GJ and her own family.
On the third day, after sleeping a fourteen-hour night, GJ had finally woken up refreshed. She found Walter in the small kitchen of her apartment brewing fresh pots of coffee, as she had done for the last several days, almost one right after the other. Without a word, she'd poured herself a mug, and doctored it up with cream and sugar. It was enough to make the once-black liquid not even resemble coffee anymore while Walter silently frowned at GJ and drank hers straight.
"Walter," she said, "we have to go into the basement lab."
Walter only nodded. They'd both known this. It was part of Westerfield's directive. In fact, though her grandfather was in custody, he had not yet been officially arrested. There were no reports of the firefight at the DeGottardi-Little farm. GJ wondered if any nearby neighbors had even heard anything or called any authorities if they had. She found no official paperwork recording her grandfather's incarceration. There were no charges brought, and she wondered if this was just what happened when you were arrested by Nightshade, when you were arrested for hunting werewolves with silver bullets.
She’d thought they might lock her grandfather up for being crazy and put him in an institution. Her worst-case scenario had been a general population prison—she knew he wouldn’t survive it, not for long. But, in the end, it was mostly what she’d expected: a few lies and more normality than not. Instead, her grandfather simply disappeared, along with the others they’d arrested. Westerfield's only answer about any of them had been, "In custody."
Now, she looked to Walter and said, "What were we doing there?"
Walter shook her head.
“I mean, we helped. There was a firefight. We knew the people who were coming. We sorted it out. We managed to bring in the FBI to take away the bodies,” But when she summed up the outcome, it wasn't clear anymore. At the time, they’d fired on the people firing on them. A led to B led to C. That had been easy inference. But, this, looking back? Not so easy.
"We didn't even graduate," GJ said. "I mean, technically, we did. He graduated us, but we didn't finish. He pulled us out and he put two completely new officers alone into that situation…”
It had been gnawing at her from the moment they'd been assigned the case. "Did he know?" she asked Walter point blank.
That was the big question, and Walter looked up, suddenly catching on. Had Westerfield known that GJ's grandfather was the head of the organization they were sent out to fight? Had he purposely pitted GJ against the man who'd raised her? Had he used her as bait?
Walter only shrugged back at her, and GJ found she was somewhat comforted at least by the fact that it wasn't obvious to everyone else, though she was still concerned it had actually happened.
They spoke a little while longer, and GJ waited while Walter offered up a phone call to Donovan. The tones of Walter's voice changed when she spoke to the other FBI agent, and GJ found herself smiling. It was good that Walter and Donovan had each other, but, GJ…she really didn't know what to do.
The house stood majestic with a full staff and a trust fund to run it. Westerfield said it was hers now, and just the day before, she'd opened a courier package, giving her the deed to the house, signing over the bank accounts to her. Much of it was in her grandfather's writing, and she wondered if it had been voluntary or forced and if she'd ever see him again to possibly find out.
She listened as Walter signed off, wanting to wait, unwilling to go into the basement lab herself. Westerfield had told her everything in there belonged to her now. Though she wanted to return it to universities and families, he'd told her a clear and concise No. By doing so, she would create more problems than she solved. It was her job to go into the lab and salvage any information she could. She wanted Walter at her side, if only to be a warm body.
It struck her that for the first time, as she walked down the long hallway and entered the code into the pad, that her grandfather had now given her the digits to open the door in the paperwork. They’d both known that was unnecessary. It was now her job to change it, though she hadn't gotten around to it yet.
This was the first time she'd openly walked into his basement lab, and it struck her again, harder, that it was now her basement laboratory. Wanting to combat the nerves that she felt just walking down the steps, she asked Walter about her call with Donovan.
"Why isn't he home? Is he not on leave?"
"He's out with Eleri. They found another lead on her sister. They're in New Orleans," Walter said.
"Wow." GJ didn't know what had happened with Eleri's sister, though she'd heard hints and pieces. All she knew was that Eleri had become an FBI agent as an adult, after her sister had disappeared from sight in a matter of moments, decades ago.
GJ thought of her own situation and wondered what it might be like to have a sibling like that and to have lost them. She couldn't even handle imagining it right now. So she was grateful that Eleri had Donovan with her and turned back to her own task.
"I'm no forensic scientist," Walter offered on a shrug. "I'm not even a regular biologist, but tell me what to do, and I'll see."
They started by doing a simple inventory of the laboratory, pulling out drawers, and trying to get a grip on every skeleton, every bone without provenance. Walter followed along behind her, asking how she could help.
GJ thought they should also catalog equipment, but five minutes later, Walter said,
"GJ, there's a body in the kettle."
Get Garden of Bone now and join Eleri as she discovers what really happened to her sister.
Or settle in with some great suspense and surprising plot twists. The first twist is: which book should you read first?
About the Author
AJ holds an MS in Human Forensic Identification as well as another in Neuroscience/Human Physiology. AJ’s works have garnered Audie nominations, options for tv and film, as well as over twenty Best Suspense/Best Fiction of the Year awards.
* * *
A.J.’s world is strange place where patterns jump out and catch the eye, little is missed, and most of it can be recalled with a deep breath. In this world, the smell of Florida takes three weeks to fully leave the senses and the air in Dallas is so thick that the planes “sink” to the runways rather than actually landing.
For A.J., reality is always a little bit off from the norm and something usually lurks right under the surface. As a storyteller, A.J. loves irony, the unexpected, and a puzzle where all the pieces fit and make sense. Originally a scientist and a teacher, the writer says research is always a key player in the stories. AJ’s motto is “It could happen. It wouldn’t. But it could.”
A.J. has lived in Florida and Los Angeles among a handful of other places. Recent whims have brought the dark writer to Tennessee, where home is a deceptively normal-looking neighborhood just outside Nashville.
For more information:
www.ReadAJS.com
[email protected]
Salvage: A Shadow Files Novel Page 28
