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

by A. J. Scudiere

  “You aren’t going to court, Eames.” Westerfield looked back and forth at them now, pointedly stopping at Eleri. “You’re NightShade division. You tested into this.”

  “Tested?” Donovan had to ask. It sounded like Westerfield was reminding them of something they’d openly done, but he didn’t remember anything specific. He’d been given what felt like thousands of tests, physical, skills-based, knowledge and psychological batteries. Which one was this?

  Westerfield ignored him. Now he leaned forward on his elbows, ever-present quarter still clutched in his hand. “NightShade doesn’t detain and provide evidence for prosecution.”

  “But that’s what the FBI does!” Eleri almost blurted it, her calm starting to unravel a bit at the seams.

  “Not NightShade. It’s part of NightShade’s security clearance. It’s why we don’t exist on the official roster. But we do the good work. NightShade balances the karmic books. Your assignment is to gather evidence and, if warranted, once you are convinced of the necessity, remove Baxter.”

  26

  Although she walked out of the building to all appearances perfectly normal, Eleri was stunned.

  She was trained to gather information under the umbrella of a warrant and to make sure she had all her paperwork in place before she moved. She collected evidence, detained, supported the prosecution, and smiled broadly when the bad guys were locked up. Sometimes people died during the investigation. Sometimes it was the good guys, often the bad, and Eleri tried not to lose sleep over it. But she had never openly gunned for one before.

  Donovan didn’t even question her when she stayed in the car, just sat in the parking lot and stared at the front door for a good three minutes.

  Her voice came from nowhere. “I don’t want to eat steak. I want one of those salad bar places. One of the places with five kinds of soup and a hundred items on the bar.”

  “I don’t think they’ve heard of salad here.” His voice was quiet, as though he understood it wasn’t about the leafy greens. “They do sometimes have vegetables.”

  “Those things are vegetables the way a corpse is a person. And I mean that as a pretty literal analogy.” Other than their mouths, neither of them really moved. She breathed, but she didn’t really understand.

  There was something so seductive about being in charge of the balance sheet. It was tempting to make plans before she even decided if this was all acceptable. Westerfield seemed to think their tests indicated they would be fine with it. She remembered testing; she’d done a bunch of it at the psych hospital. Had it been at Westerfield’s behest?

  NightShade was a subdivision of the overall umbrella of the FBI. They had FBI IDs, FBI rights, and then some. She was so confused that she said the only thing she could think of. “What about Chinese?”

  “What about your friend?”

  “Shit! Wade!” She fumbled for her phone, jerking her conscious brain out of the haze, finally finding something normal to grasp onto. She dialed from the directory on her phone and was shocked how much she relaxed just hearing his voice come through the line.

  “Eleri? Are you finished at the branch?” The cadence of the words righted something, the way the sound of a good friend does. He called it “the branch” because he’d worked for the Bureau, too. Only recently had he “sprung himself” as he called it and after eight years as a Fed went to work in the private sector.

  “Yeah, we’re done. My partner is with me, I can have him drop me off. I’ll meet you for lunch now.” Only as she said it into the phone did she realize that Donovan might not take kindly to being used as chauffeur. She was turning to apologize to him, but he was already motioning for her to hand over the keys.

  Climbing out of the driver’s seat, she popped around to the passenger side while she was still on the phone and gave Donovan directions by hand.

  Feeling a hundred percent better, she found she was able to process things a little more clearly. Ready to ask her partner if he had been prepared for Westerfield’s announcement, she instead wound up fielding a question of a different topic.

  “So, how do you know this guy? Is he an ex or something?” Donovan had one hand over the steering wheel, the other on his leg.

  Her chest loosened with a laugh. “No, not an ex. Old FBI buddy. He was a senior officer on a case, called in to consult. Science nerd. We just hit it off. You’d like him.”

  “Bio-forensics, like you?”

  “No, physics. Amazing brain.” She found talking about Wade allowed her to push Westerfield and Baxter to a compartment she could close the lid on, at least for now. “Wade can stand at a scene and tell you a body was staged, because the bullet couldn’t have hit him from that angle if he’d been standing where it was made to look. And not the usual stuff either. Straight-up physics, trajectories, that kind of thing.” She paused. “One time we were at the aftermath of a bombing. Wade points to one of the victims, says he’s actually one of the perpetrators. That, given his distance from the bomb, and the location of the shrapnel on his body, he had to be turning away before the bomb went off.

  “Wade walked up to the guy—who’s getting treated in the back of the ambulance, acting like a victim—and Wade just pulls the oxygen mask off of him and says, ‘Tell me how you triggered the bomb and we might keep you out of the electric chair.’ I thought the guy was going to start crying right there.” She grinned at the memory. She had been new, a freshly minted field agent, working her first multiple homicide. “I wanted to be Wade.”

  “Did you get there?”

  “Hell no.” She laughed out loud. “I did what I do best and wound up getting questioned as a suspect then thrown in the loony bin.” She paused for a second, the memories changing from funny to somber. “He was the only one I told I was inside. He came to visit every other week. Wrangled me a day pass each time and made sure I got to see the sun out beyond the gates.”

  They pulled up and parked in front of a pretty glass-and-brick building that screamed money and class at the same time. The words “Atomic Measurements Unlimited” graced the façade along with a logo of an atom exploding into a variety of items including alpha and beta decay, viruses, computer code and a handful of other things that even Eleri’s geekiness didn’t grasp.

  Deciding she wanted Donovan to see that she had friends—or maybe at least “friend” in the singular—Eleri motioned him into the building with her. He’d be lost in the lunch conversation, but at least he could meet Wade.

  At the front desk, the woman there greeted them politely if oddly, then showed them into the back halls where she knocked on doors to see which one was Doctor de Gottardi’s. When Donovan asked for the men’s room she flustered for a moment before pointing him in the direction she “believed it was.”

  Just as Eleri was thinking this woman wasn’t the best receptionist, someone popped out from one of the office doors and stuttered, “Dr. Wilson! I am almost finished with that requisition paper. The university did not get back to me until this morning.”

  The panic in his voice indicated that Dr. Wilson was not to be trifled with, despite her easy smile for Eleri and the fact that she was playing receptionist. Eventually they found their way around the back loop of the hall, and the doctor sighed with relief as she knocked on the open door. Her tone let him know she was there, “Wade! You moved on me. I have visitors for you and I couldn’t find you.”

  “New office. Windows!” He pointed at them as he grinned up at Dr. Wilson before taking in that only Eleri followed her. “It appears you also forgot how to count in single digits. Or was it so traumatic you lost someone along the way?”

  “Option number two.” Wilson grinned and turned away before Eleri could thank her.

  Eleri greeted her old friend with a huge smile and, “She’s a crappy receptionist.” Which just made him laugh and pull her into a bear hug Eleri hadn’t realized she needed. She was used to being on her own. She learned quickly after Emmaline’s disappearance not to ask for anything. But Wade didn’t
wait for her to ask and maybe that’s why she liked him so much. Well, that and the whole brainiac/walking-up-to-people-and-pointing-out-they-were-lying/bam!/physics, bitch! Kind of thing.

  He settled back into an ergonomic chair that reclined farther than gravity should dictate and steepled his fingers. “How do you like being back in the Bureau?”

  Wasn’t that the question of the hour?

  “It’s good. When they signed me out of the hospital it was ‘against medical advice,’ but I seem to be holding my own. Even got a new Bureau ID card and everything.” She didn’t know why they’d issued her a new one, but she flipped the small wallet open in an exaggerated movement, like she was a gun slinger or something. She was laughing as she did it, but Wade didn’t laugh.

  Slowly pulling the leather from her fingers he checked out the card, his face pulling into a frown, making her own smile slide off her face. “What?”

  “You’re with NightShade.” It wasn’t a question. “It was Westerfield who got you out of the hospital early.” He ran a hand over his short caramel hair, his gaze pulled off into the distance. His sigh was deep and told myriad things she didn’t yet know but clearly needed to.

  “What, Wade?” Eleri sat her ass down in the very orthogonal-looking orange padded chair—clearly more a marvel of physics than it was of comfort.

  “NightShade’s a whole different ballgame than you’re used to.”

  “How do you know that? How did you know just by looking at my ID?” She reached out for it and grabbed it back to examine it. She didn’t see anything.

  “The line with the diamonds at the end.” He pointed. “Not the standard border. The design is part of the coding for the FBI. If you know how to read it you can sometimes tell units and clearance.”

  Eleri saw the lines but hadn’t realized they were different from her old ID. They must be though, because Wade had simply looked at it and pegged her. “I was told not to discuss the NightShade division, even with other agents. So how do you know?”

  He only looked at her for a moment while her world spun. She was ten easy rotations past dizzy and about one more good turn from projectile vomiting. “Tell me, Wade.”

  He still didn’t. For a moment he sat and stared at the tile “art” he’d put onto his wall. It was about as artistic as Tetris or the Periodic Table, but Eleri never said anything. If she hadn’t known him better, hadn’t known this was his thinking space and that he was better with numbers than words, she would have grabbed him and started rattling him. That wasn’t in her best interests though. He was an ex-agent and she didn’t know if he’d kept up with his training—it was fifty-fifty who would win.

  Eventually he moved his feet, slowly swiveling the chair back to face her as though turning himself was out of the question. “Did it not occur to you that you shouldn’t have been put back into the field so soon after they hospitalized you?”

  Her stomach clenched as though that would stop the blow or at least soften it. She tried not to be hurt by it. Wade either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

  “Are you suggesting that I’m not mentally fit for my job?”

  “Not at all.”

  That helped. His response had been swift and almost shocked.

  But the rest of it he didn’t notice, just kept going. “You should have been let out earlier. You practically chose to stay. I don’t know what went down after the first two months, but they did a one-eighty and kept you longer. It’s not that. It’s the FBI. You were in a mental hospital for a breakdown. They wouldn’t put you right back in the field and certainly not before the doctors officially declared you better. You would be a huge liability.”

  “So why did they?” She hadn’t missed the fact that he still didn’t answer how he knew all this.

  “They didn’t.” The bridge of his nose pinched and the corners of his mouth pulled. It was the exact opposite of the look he got when he was explaining quantum calculators. Those made him happy. Clearly, this didn’t. “The FBI didn’t pull you out. NightShade did.”

  “NightShade is the FBI.” He was making less sense rather than more.

  “NightShade uses FBI IDs, operates under the cloak of the Bureau, interacts with their agents but doesn’t operate as actual agents. NightShade doesn’t follow standard protocol. Or didn’t you know that?”

  “I just got my first inkling of that today.” She sat for a moment, still as a statue, just breathing before she spoke again. “How do you know all this?”

  “Because I was NightShade.” He looked at her oddly, as though he couldn’t figure her out.

  Well, she couldn’t figure him out either. “The whole time?”

  “Yes. I never went into the actual FBI. I didn’t apply, I was recruited directly into NightShade.”

  Like Donovan, she thought.

  No sooner had the thought passed her mind than she heard his voice careening down the hall.

  “Eleri? Eleri!” The sound was restrained but bordered on panic, so she stuck her head out the doorway and smiled at him. Glad for the distraction, she was worried by the look on his face.

  “I’m right here.”

  “Get out.” He said it through teeth that suddenly looked sharper. His shoulders were pushing back and downward and for a flash of a moment she could begin to see how he changed. His stride was purposeful and he was closing the distance rapidly.

  “It’s just Wade and me.” Still she stepped backward, pushed by the way he moved the air in front of him. Propelled by the palpable change in him, his fighting instincts all on alert.

  Donovan shoved past her into the office, turning her as he went by. Already on his feet, Wade stood his ground at the comer. But he stood it slightly forward, almost on his toes. His shoulders also pushed down and back, his head swaying low, extending his neck.

  A deep, soft growl came from Donovan’s throat. It was almost more menacing for its softness. “Eleri? Do you know what he is?”

  27

  Donovan fought the urge to extend his neck, push the center of his face out and really make his teeth useful. His shoulders were already rolling, already moving into place. He wouldn’t look at his arms, afraid the hair had sprung up, changing in appearance from a slightly above average amount of male arm hair to a full, black pelt.

  Eleri’s hand was suddenly flat on his chest, and she was in between the two men before he even knew how she got there. “Can we stop this pissing contest for a second? I’m about to choke on the testosterone.”

  Donovan stepped back, his non-primal brain taking stock that this man was her best friend while Eleri seemed to have no clue what he was. Or maybe she did, she’d certainly figured Donovan out fast enough.

  Turning to look right in her green eyes, ready to assess what he saw, he asked her again, “Do you know what he is?”

  “He’s a physicist and an ex-agent.” She put her hands on her hips, apparently her standard position for anything frustrating.

  Well, Wade was something else, too. “Eleri.”

  “Eleri?” It came at the same time from the other guy in the room.

  Looking up at Wade, Donovan tried to assess what he was dealing with. Slowly he inhaled, testing scent. But nothing had changed. Wade was doing the same, subtly sniffing the air.

  It was the scent that first alerted him. Donovan had smelled Wade from down the hall, then he’d been frantic, running to find Eleri. He was even more stunned to see that the smell led him to the very man she was meeting.

  “He’s ex-NightShade.”

  Startled, his head whipped toward her. Too many disturbing ideas jumbled in his brain, stirring around, trying to link up. Westerfield’s directive to take out Baxter. Obtaining their evidence without warrants. Keeping his own balance sheet in the positive. Now this.

  It hit him suddenly and painfully that maybe Wade was ex-NightShade for the same reason Donovan was currently in the division.

  His heart was beating faster, too hard to just stand down when he felt threatened like this. He ha
dn’t reacted like this since he’d run into that bear in the park out behind his house two years ago. Now was no different.

  Turning to his partner, not sure what to say, knowing—suspecting—that Wade would hear him, he finally confessed. “I’ve never met another person like me. Not except my father and my grandmother.”

  “Okay.” She drew the word out, standing cautiously between the two men who both remained on guard but no longer in each other’s faces. She still didn’t get it.

  “Like you?” At first Eleri was clearly confused. Then he watched as understanding dawned and she repeated her words. “Like you?”

  Slowly, she turned to look at Wade mumbling a whisper to herself. Donovan thought it was “the brown wolf,” but he wasn’t certain. “Wade?”

  She was looking at her friend, inspecting him from feet to hands to hazel eyes. Eyes that were boring a hole in Donovan. Apparently, Wade didn’t like being outed.

  With slow deliberate movements, Wade put himself between Eleri and Donovan, as though he was protecting her. Donovan thought it should be the other way around. He didn’t know who this ass was except that Eleri called him an old friend.

  Shit.

  Eleri called him an old friend. And Donovan—not knowing how to react—had just outed her friend, himself, and who knew what else. Making a conscious decision, he shifted his thinking to trust Eleri’s judgment. After all, she already proved herself worthy in that department more than once. Her gut instincts were spot on, so while she may not have known exactly what Wade was, she probably knew exactly who Wade was.

  They stood that way for a moment. Donovan looking to Eleri, Eleri inspecting Wade, Wade standing his ground against all comers. Which was pretty funny when Donovan thought about it. The glasses, the plaid shirt and khaki pants spoke of thought rather than impulse. Whatever this guy did would be deliberate, but he was making his stand inside the beige box of his office. Unless he could do something deadly with printer paper, the best weapon at hand was a stapler.