The NightShade Forensic Files: Under Dark Skies (Book 1)

by A. J. Scudiere

  When she spoke, the voice and the words were real, too, as she asked “It’s not a dream, is it?”

  Emmaline shook her head and hugged Eleri tighter.

  Her sister’s dress was white linen, cool to the touch. She was thin, fragile, but strong, her wide mouth smiling—something Eleri had not expected. Her skin was warm, her blonde hair whipped as the winds played with the strands, and Eleri held tight, knowing even if it weren’t a dream, it was fleeting.

  She fought the tug that worked to yank her from her sister. Grasping tighter, as though she could hold on, stay asleep forever here in the field where her sister was. But in the end, it was Emmaline who ended their hug, pushed Eleri away. It wasn’t mean, but it was clear. It was time for Eleri to go. One step back. Her heel squished into mud and dead hay. The loss of touch was deafening, numbing. Her body convulsed. Waking her. Dumping her here.

  Sucking in air, Eleri now fought the memories. Just here . . . Emmaline was just here. Eleri would have thought she’d be better at this by now. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen, touched, interacted with her sister while asleep. She never got better at it; each waking was as devastating as the one before it. And as comforting.

  Footsteps in the hallway made her shake her head, straighten her shirt, and wonder what was available in the vending machine. She was standing, stretching, and trying to remember which corner of the hospital maze held the candy bars and soda when a doctor appeared in the doorway. Stopping all motion, she looked at him.

  “Are you Agent Eleri Eames, here with Jonah?”

  She nodded. They still didn’t have a last name for the boy and she fleetingly wondered if even Jonah knew it.

  “He’s out of surgery and in recovery now. It will likely be another several hours before he can speak.” The doctor was turning to go before she got a word in.

  “His arm? His leg?” She cared. Jonah might not tell them anything, or he might be jackpot gold. Either way, someone needed to be concerned about the bruises, gashes and breaks he’d suffered. It pissed her off that the doctor assumed she only wanted to pump the kid as a witness.

  “Oh.” As though he was surprised. Maybe he just thought she’d be cold because he was. “Well, we set his arm. He has two metal rods aligning it now.” In his monotone, he went on explaining the basics of the human skeleton to her as though she had no idea what existed inside her own body. Maybe most people didn’t. But he’d get so much further if he’d just ask people to start with. Something like, “How much of this do you already understand?” Eleri would adopt that herself—because there was nothing like listening to Dr. Doldrums here explain that there were two long bones in the lower portion of the arms. Had he looked at her, even attempted to get a gauge on her take of things, he’d have seen the droll expression. Instead, he rolled on.

  “Jonah’s leg was sutured at three layers. He had a stab wound at his hip that luckily didn’t hit anything vital. Another gash on his shoulder—probably caused by the same weapon that laid open his leg, but not a knife. He had seven bruised and four cracked ribs.”

  The more she listened, the less irritated with the doctor she felt and the more concerned for the child.

  The doctor finished his litany and left just moments before Donovan came in. Now he was clean, freshly shaved, and looked rested. Which was more than she could say for herself. “That was about Jonah? Is he going to be okay?”

  Scrubbing her face with her hand, she explained everything. “He will be okay, but for now, he’s really beat up.” That was an understatement. She looked up at Donovan. “Did you see anything? See what he got himself into?”

  He shook his head, a troubled expression on his face. Eleri didn’t wonder about it. They had back-calculated the time. Given when Donovan started out for the night, Jonah must have suffered his beating sometime either right before or during Donovan circling the compound. They must have soundproofing or else Jonah had never screamed. Wouldn’t Donovan have heard something? The path he traced was relatively tight, he wouldn’t have been too far away? Or would he?

  Her brain circled the thoughts, revisiting the same spots in her questions over and over and not reaching any conclusions. Never hitting a moment where two things came together.

  She must have looked as bad as she felt—though not as bad as Donovan had looked earlier—because he dangled the keys to the rental in front of her. “Your turn. I filled up the tank for you, too.”

  Eleri didn’t think she’d ever been so grateful. She only whispered the words, told him the doctor’s name and when they expected Jonah to wake, and she shuffled down the maze of corridors. She should be back before Jonah woke, but she was about past the point of caring. She needed a nap, too.

  It was nearly an hour between the hospital and their hotel in Brownwood. That was a good thing—the staff wouldn’t overlap. The fewer people who even had an inkling into the investigation, the better. They still didn’t know if the City of God people kept to themselves or if they had feelers into the nearby towns.

  She was in her hotel room before she knew it. Shaking off the fear that she’d driven the distance mostly asleep, she hit the shower before gravity could pull her onto the bed. She cranked the heat and scrubbed herself in record time. Not thinking much of anything, she crawled between the sheets and disappeared into the void.

  The noises pulled her out.

  Sucking in air and fighting for reason for the second time in a handful of hours, Eleri was grateful that this nap had consisted only of sleep. This time, it wasn’t her sister pushing her out, but the phone call—Donovan—pulling her.

  “Yes?” She croaked the word out and checked the time.

  Shit. She’d been out for nearly two hours. And she knew what Donovan was going to say before he said it.

  “Jonah’s awake.”

  12

  Donovan looked at his phone. Eleri said she’d fallen asleep, which meant she would be about an hour getting here. That was good. He couldn’t officially question Jonah on his own, and it was probably better if he didn’t, given his people skills, but he could find out some preliminary information.

  Since they now needed to move locations, Donovan had already packed up his room. Now Eleri would check them out of the hotel in Brownwood. It would add to her time. Jonah—although awake now—was still in recovery and had to be moved to a private room before Donovan could talk to him. There might only be a narrow window to ask his questions without Eleri there. He would need it.

  Pacing the waiting room, Donovan was restless and feeling out of his skin. He often felt that way if he didn’t get to completely crash after a good run. He’d burned a ton of fuel and eaten three full drive-through breakfasts this morning. Already it was gone and Donovan was itching for a snack machine. This diet was crap and he knew it, consoling himself that he would eat better at home. Or next time. Right now he needed anything with calories. And a chance to talk to the boy.

  He’d located and consumed a candy bar, a pack of peanut-butter crackers, and a whole bottle of water before he saw them wheel Jonah by. Discreetly Donovan slipped in behind the team steering the bed and boy down the hall and was right there to ask at the desk when he could go in to see the kid. At the last minute he remembered two important things. Flash badge. Smile.

  “Oh!” The nurse almost smiled back. She seemed unsure if he was flirting with her or merely requesting information. He wasn’t flirting. He didn’t really know how—so he couldn’t be doing that. His second expression must have shut her down, because she quickly shuffled papers and then frowned. “Agent Heath, do you have Jonah’s last name?”

  The agent title still threw him some, but especially when he was standing in a hospital. Doctor. In his cells he felt that he should be addressed as “Dr. Heath”. It would take some getting used to, and he turned back to the nurse.

  “No. I’m not sure he even has one.” Putting his hand over the edge of the counter into her field of view, he attempted to get her to look up at him. It worked, and
he kept his expression blank. “It’s best if people don’t think there’s anything unusual about him. We found him on the side of the road, and we’re trying to learn more. If something is wrong, please let us find out before someone else does.”

  He put all the emotion he could muster into his eyes. It must have worked because she nodded solemnly. “From the way he was worked over, it looks like you’d best protect him from whatever did that.”

  “I’m trying.” A beat later he realized that maybe he should have said “ma’am.” He was in Texas. Then again, he lived in South Carolina and didn’t use “ma’am” or “sir” much at all. Well, that might not mean anything since he didn’t interact with live people much at all.

  Standing in the hallway, waiting, Donovan crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, generally letting it be known that he was ready as soon as Jonah was. That he wouldn’t be put off.

  Earlier, when he got to the hotel room, the first thing he did was fish the dog collar out from where he’d jammed it in his pocket. The last thing he needed that night was to explain why he’d duct taped the GPS to it. As it was, he spent a good amount of time cleaning the residue. Though the task had eaten into his nap time, it probably considerably lengthened his stay with the FBI. Now he just had to find out what Jonah remembered. Not that he’d be able to ID Donovan, but . . .

  The doctor came out of the room at such a clip that his coat billowed just a bit behind him. He stopped short with a curt nod. “You can go in now. Please don’t upset him.”

  Donovan only nodded in return. He always wondered why they told people not to upset the victim. If the FBI was there to interview you when you came out of surgery, you had plenty to be upset about, harsh questions or no.

  When he strode into the room, Jonah looked up at him, unsurprised. The kid seemed sad, but accepting, and most importantly, lucid.

  Deciding to go for an easy opening, he asked “How are you feeling?”

  “Lonely.”

  Okay, not an easy opening, actually a stupid one. Physically, the kid was obviously feeling beaten up. He was not in good shape to start and surgery was just another kind of beating. Sure it helped more than it hurt, but first it hurt. Emotionally? Well, Donovan had no education to prep him for any of that. “I’m sorry.”

  Jonah looked out the window, and Donovan was secretly glad the kid ended that part of the conversation. “I was curious what you remember about . . .” How did he put this? “After you went into the woods?”

  The blonde head nodded a little. “My arm hurt and I fell a few times. I automatically put my hand out to catch myself. I didn’t scream though. I had to stay quiet. I think I might have hurt it worse than it originally was.”

  His eyes were vacant at the telling. Donovan found himself biting his tongue to keep from saying, “It’s better than being beaten to death.” Instead he prodded the story along. “Do you remember the puma?”

  It was a loaded question. The Academy taught him to ask a question he already knew the answer to—it was a good check for liars. But Jonah wasn’t one of them. The kid nodded, then looked at Donovan. “There was a wolf, too. It fought the cat and brought me sticks.”

  Well, that was a pretty clear memory. Donovan only nodded and let the kid go on.

  “I thought I was hallucinating that, because I thought the wolf would fight the puma then eat me itself.”

  “Actually, you did hallucinate it. Or at least part of it.” Now was the time to get the story straight, before Eleri showed up. “I saw the puma, I think I saw the wolf, but I brought you the sticks.” He paused, trying to be sure that everything worked before he spoke. “I didn’t have anything on me, no supplies, not even a phone. So I brought you the sticks and ran for help.”

  Jonah nodded, buying it hook, line, and sinker.

  Donovan wasn’t sure Eleri would be as susceptible to minor rewrites in the story. But he needed her to be.

  For the first time in his life it didn’t sit well that he was covering things up. Unsure whether this was due to his age, the lack of contact with his father, the switch in his career, or to Eames herself, Donovan only knew that the change was upon him. As certain as he’d been of anything, he knew he had to form some kind of connection. He was living the life his father had laid out for him—a solitary existence with security for his oddness. It was suddenly crystal clear that this was not the life Donovan wanted for himself, but he simply had no idea how to change it. So he was greatly relieved to hear Eames’s footsteps coming down the hallway and he made a tentative first step.

  Turning to Jonah, Donovan asked something that he didn’t need to, started a second conversation here that would have been easily initiated by his senior partner. But who else to attempt his social skills on than this awkward, downtrodden kid?

  “Agent Eames is on her way in, do you feel up to answering a few questions?”

  TWO HOURS of sleep were not enough for Eleri. Being pulled from the black pit below dreams by the ringing of a cell phone in broad daylight? That didn’t help either. But the frothy, frozen coffee did. She figured she was burning calories faster than she was consuming them, even if she was consuming them at an alarming rate right now.

  She had to be alert, find out what Jonah knew without scaring him. Tease out any answers he might hold back out of loyalty or terror. It was a tightrope, and she did not have enough sleep to walk it well. The question was: did she have enough coffee?

  The phone had woken her, and she’d had the whole conversation with Donovan before she’d fully come awake. Sitting there in the hotel room she’d been confused. Even after she hung up the phone, she thought she was at Foxhaven.

  The bed, the sheets were wrong. They didn’t feel like Foxhaven. The air was wrong, too. But something pulled her thoughts to North Carolina. She expected the familiar tall windows with tiny panes—ridiculous in a beach house, but state of the art when the house had been designed. She expected wide, slow ceiling fans, but found none. She expected salt on the air and breathed in, instead getting a lungful of heat overlaid with Freon. She wasn’t at Foxhaven.

  It took her a minute to place that she’d fallen into the bed just moments after showering. That she’d used the hotel shampoo and something in it smelled just like the beach house. It was a mean trick. She’d slept in wet hair, wrapped in the scent—which she was paying more attention to now that Donovan said he could smell everything—and she’d been fooled.

  Alert now, she wished she was at Foxhaven instead of walking down this long hall, finishing the last of what she would get from this cup. She’d have to throw it away, because that was no way to start an interview, taunting this poor broken kid with what was essentially a milkshake then asking him to relive what was clearly a nightmare so she and Donovan could sieve the details for gold flecks. Tossing the coffee—still half full—into the lone trash can on the corner, she headed for the room the nurse had pointed her to.

  She was surprised to see that Donovan had pulled the chair close to the bed, leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees, talking to Jonah. Eleri expected him to be waiting outside for her to start the interview not voluntarily holding a conversation with someone he didn’t know.

  Immediately suspicious, Eleri tamped down the feeling that seemed to be just part of the job. So she simply smiled and let the conversation go on for a moment without her. Had he started the actual interview? He didn’t have any visible recording device—no pen or paper even—so she hoped to hell he hadn’t. His next words soothed her.

  “Eames is here.” He didn’t use the “agent” part and she wondered if that was on purpose. Given Jonah’s own lack of surname, it might be a good idea. “We can get started.”

  Stepping fully into the room, she offered a smile amid the bleak situation. “Call me Eleri. Please. How are you feeling after the surgery, Jonah?”

  “Like I have metal screws in my arm and enough stitches to become Frankenstein.” He tilted his head as though none of that was any big deal.

>   Since she couldn’t fault his logic, Eleri only nodded. “How is the medicine helping?”

  She could see he started to shrug, then stopped. That was enough of an indicator about how it was working and his words only confirmed that.

  “I had a concussion, so I can’t have any of the good stuff yet. It helps a little, but mostly I’m muddling through.” Then he grinned. “Apparently, the concussion was a doozy because I hallucinated a wolf bringing me sticks and fighting off a puma.”

  Crap. Looking to Donovan, she found there were no better answers there. He must have picked up on the fact that Jonah’s hallucinations prior to surgery made him a less credible witness. She would interview him even though his testimony might need a liberal dose of salt.

  Donovan shrugged. “I saw the puma, and it did try to eat him. And there was a wolf. Then the kid passed out and I brought him the sticks—I didn’t have anything else but to run for help.”

  So the error in memory was minor.

  Still the issue with Donovan “running” for help was still there. Unfortunately, her curiosity was not the priority and now was not the time to address it.

  Settling another chair on the opposite side of the hospital bed, Eleri started as gently as she could. Asking Jonah if they could get him to tell his story. Asking if they could record it. Setting up the small recorder unobtrusively, Eleri tried to make the setting as non-threatening as possible. She’d never upgraded from her old recorder, didn’t want to use the computer. She wanted small, discrete. She wanted an unhackable copy. Old-school. Private.

  Maybe it was the medication or maybe he’d just gotten fed up, because Jonah was a fountain gushing information. He knew the City of God.

  His eyes were round. “Yes, I could take you there. But I won’t. I won’t go back.”

  Shit.