“So does this organization have five of these ‘fractures’?”
“That’s what it sounds like.” He sighed. “Most have two or three.”
Donovan joined in then. “That’s what I was about to ask. So we not only have terrorism, we have some of the worst.”
Wade was nodding but Eleri was filling him in. “We were pretty confident there’s a terrorist cell here when we started hearing mutterings of a ‘blond-and-blue’.”
“Oh, God.” He shook his head and started swearing creatively again.
Eleri climbed out, and so did Donovan. “Thank you Wade. For all of this. Get some sleep.”
He cranked the engine hard. “No way in hell can I sleep now. Good luck.”
With that, he reversed out of the driveway and drove off. Eleri was pretty certain she could see him muttering more swear words as he passed by.
Donovan sat at the conference table the next morning nursing a paper cup of coffee. He played with the sleeve as though that would somehow keep him awake. Instead, though his eyes lolled and tried to shut, his brain wouldn’t turn off. It was exactly the problem that got him here in the first place.
Up until about two a.m. washing the dirt from the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands, his brain had raced with Wade’s information.
Five breaks in command from the top of the organization to this point.
If that’s what “fracture five” truly meant. Wade said it like “five fractures” and Eleri later told Donovan that she’d heard it, spoken clearly in Cooper Rollins’ voice, while she’d stared into space waiting for them while they ran. She’d promised she was alert, watching for anyone and anything that would be a threat to two wolves running roughshod on Griffith Park land, but she’d seen nothing.
She’d been contemplating the write up on the pack. She didn’t like having government information on the whereabouts of certain kinds of people. The database she was contributing to all felt very Nazi Germany to her. Donovan agreed that it was first seeds of the same and all. But Eleri also had an opposing point. They’d been attacked, by an organized group. In any other instance they would have written the attack up and included any identifying characteristics of both the individuals involved and the group. This was nothing more than that, except for the fact that it turned her stomach.
So she’d been standing there, leaning against the car, arms crossed, sorting all that out in her mind. She told him the words came to her so clearly, she turned to see if Cooper Rollins had followed her. She’d recognized his voice immediately. She’d talked herself down, told herself it was stupid, and that if Rollins had followed them why in hell would he approach her and say something so out of scope as “Fracture Five”? But then she heard it again.
Donovan, unable to sleep, had rolled out of bed and gotten online. He’d searched the term but the only hit he got was some book.
Now Eleri sat beside him, looking slightly more chipper than he did. He wasn’t sure how she did it, but there were a growing number of things about Eleri that he didn’t understand. His brain became more alert as he remembered the shade her eyes had become as she’d stared down the lead wolf.
Taking a sip of coffee as rich as it was expensive, Donovan hid his thoughts. No plain Bureau coffee today; Eleri had pulled up to the shop without asking him and he’d been too half-dead to say anything one way or another. He’d simply followed her inside and grunted a few words before letting her pay for everything.
Marina Vasquez walked into the room just then. The woman they’d been waiting for had her arms full of files and her clothes a little rumpled. “Is that for me?”
She almost dropped the papers and the tablet to reach for the cup Eleri held out.
Eleri had been awake enough to not only stop for better coffee but to pick one up for Vasquez.
“Thank you.” Vasquez appeared inordinately grateful over the coffee.
Donovan knew he was fully lacking whatever it was he needed this morning. His brain was so many different places. Wade’s comments about the wolf packs. That the women were rarer and often either incredibly passive or highly aggressive. That matched what Donovan had seen. Was that aggression pushing them into pack leader positions?
“—the origins of the term ‘fracture.’” Marina had obviously been talking and he’d missed it.
Pulling himself from the depths of his musings about the gray-haired wolf-woman who looked too young for that hair color, and the things Wade had told him about ‘their kind’ and the fact that there actually was a ‘their kind.’ He again forced his thoughts back to the point at hand. They couldn’t afford to have him not here. Three of them against this. It wasn’t enough.
“So a ‘fracture’ is exactly what I thought it was—a disconnect protecting the upper echelon of a terrorist organization.” She expertly thumbed through a few pages while sipping from the coffee, leading Donovan to believe it was a relatively common state of being for her. “But I couldn’t find anything on ‘fracture five’ specifically. Though I did fall asleep on my keyboard last night, so there might be something out there that I couldn’t find, but I obviously didn’t find it.”
Eleri finally spoke, her voice not giving anything away about the fact that these were nearly the first words she’d uttered all day. “Is it a code word for the group?”
“Maybe,” Marina looked thoughtful. “I’ve heard of the branches being referred to as ‘fractures.’ That would indicate that it’s a splinter group, getting intel and probably instructions from a senior level member—whose name they probably don’t know. They may not even know his location, or maybe only think they do.”
Donovan added his first helpful thought of the day. “I would guess they don’t know who it is—if they’re using the term themselves. Either they understand the meaning like we do, or they’re really in the dark, believing they know everything and not understanding that their passcode is calling them idiots.” He took another sip as the coffee cooled. “I’m guessing it’s the former. I don’t see Cooper as the idiot passing his information off while in the dark about what he’s saying and doing.”
Marina shrugged. “I don’t see Cooper joining an organization where he doesn’t understand the orders coming down the pipe and follows them blindly.”
“So you’re on Cooper’s side?” Eleri asked. “Think he’s infiltrating the group for his own purposes, rather than just joining?”
Marina was nodding even as Donovan asked. “Wait. He was in the military. Didn’t he spend his whole career doing exactly that? He took all kinds of orders and blindly carried them out. This would just be more of the same, but for the other side. I’m not sold on the American Hero aspect.”
Marina seemed to think about what he said for a moment, while they all drank their coffee and each tried to put all the pieces together. None of them succeeded.
Marina opened a different folder. “Here’s more. I think there may be a fourth death. I didn’t find it before, but now with three—”
She trailed off and Donovan saw her worry take over. He filled in the space, hoping to make her feel better. “Each one sucks, but each one gives us more information to help solve it. What did you get?”
“Missing Person. Another woman with a military connection.”
“Any link specifically to Cooper Rollins?” Eleri asked before taking a drink of her coffee and seeming to realize it was gone. Barely even looking, she chucked the cup over her shoulder directly into the trash. A calling she’d missed? Or had she also been the star forward on her women’s basketball team?
“Not directly yet. But enough overlapping places and times that it’s concerning.” Marina closed the file as though it could offer nothing else of use. “There’s no body or residue that’s suspicious though. Nothing about her. Just disappeared.”
“So what grabbed you? The military?” Eleri was leaning forward now, awake and fully involved.
Just then, a knock came at the door. As the one closest to it, Donovan peeled himself from his seat
. Standing was more effort than he was truly excited to make. But it was on him. The three steps to the door felt rough, the interruption rougher.
He found a man in a cheap white shirt with a cheaper tie and a rolling cart. To some extent the old ways were still the best. It was safest to have the mail delivered by a person. People could make decisions, look for anything odd. The mail boy didn’t look like he was any more alert than Donovan, but Donovan could hope.
The kid glanced down at the puffy brown envelope. “Eames, Heath, Vasquez?”
Donovan leaned his neck out and read the address. Exactly as the kid had said. No “Agent,” no first names, just the three surnames in that order.
“Heath.” Donovan said and held out his hand for the envelope. He signed for it and the kid let him take the package before closing the door. Turning back to the two women, he held it up. “Go on.”
Marina did. “There’s just one comment from a neighbor that grabbed me. He said when he went on the back porch to knock the day before, the porch was slippery and there was slime in a few places on the railing.”
Donovan frowned at her. “No one tested it?” The PD should have tested it; this shouldn’t have gone unchecked.
Marina shook her head. “The neighbor commented on it as something weird. He saw that the first day. But didn’t think anything of the neighbor not being home. He didn’t report the neighbor missing until three days later when he realized no one was feeding the cat. By then it had rained and there was nothing on the porch. It’s just a side note.”
Donovan was surprised she’d even found it, and spent a solid minute telling her so. He was beginning to pick up Eleri’s desire to help the woman get ahead. Even though he found it funny. Vasquez had probably been in the Bureau longer than Donovan had. She smiled and thanked him for the praise anyway.
Pointing at the envelope, she indicated she was done with her part.
Indicating the envelop, he asked Vasquez. “Has this been tested?”
“If it’s in the building, yes. You can open it.”
A small burner cell phone fell out. The old flip kind.
No one touched it.
Thirty minutes and a trip to the lab revealed nothing. Not only did the envelope reveal too many fingerprints to count, the phone revealed none. The one thing the lab tech did point out was a mar in the plastic. "See this? It's where someone wiped the phone with a solvent powerful enough to partially melt the plastic. You can leave it with me to test, but I’ll be at least a day, maybe longer. Or you can take my best guess, that there's nothing on it."
So they took the phone with them and powered it on, the screen popping right up with no need for a password. Donovan started hitting buttons. The call log was empty. He’d get that checked.
It seemed the phone hadn’t been used.
But then, in the picture file, he hit the jackpot.
19
Eleri’s phone rang and she considered ignoring it. Standing over one of Donovan’s shoulders, she was pressed full side to Marina Vasquez as all three of them tried to view the pictures on the tiny phone.
They’d voted not to plug the phone into any kind of screen or projector for the sake of time. But the picture size and the attempt to view them on the phone screen, which was low quality by available standards anyway, might have been a bad choice.
So she was focusing on recognizing faces—Aziza, Alya—and cataloging those she didn’t already know, while her phone buzzed at her hip. When it immediately buzzed again, she decided to look at it. Because it was Wade, she excused herself for a moment.
Just heading to the other side of the room, so as not to talk over Donovan and Marina, she was speaking in a low voice before she remembered that it didn’t keep her conversation private from her partner and his wolf-ears. “Hey Wade.”
There was a brief silence on the other end of the line. “Heath is there. Who else?”
She stopped herself before rolling her eyes. Wade had it too, of course. She lowered her voice further, suddenly wondering if Marina had any strange secrets she was keeping from them. “Agent Vasquez, you met her briefly.”
“No one else?”
“No.” Eleri frowned. It was a bit much on the cloak-and-dagger for Wade. Or had he always been this way and she was just a lowly field agent before and so he didn’t let her see any of this? “What did you want?”
“I’m heading out of town.” It was a simple statement, though there was a gravity behind it that she could pick up on but not understand.
“New assignment?”
“No. Just getting out. I’m already unhappy that my name is on a report associated with this case. You called me in for a consult on an explosion. That’s not what this is.”
Eleri frowned again, her chest tightening by a degree. He sounded upset, and she couldn’t put her finger on why. “Are you mad at me?” Then before he could answer, defensive words rolled out of her mouth. “I thought it was just a bombing case when I called you.”
“I know. I’m not mad. I’m worried.” He sounded tense. In a layer of sound behind him, she could make out grinding noises, soft purrs, the occasional odd musical note.
“Are you on the freeway?”
“Yes, I’m literally getting out of town. And you should be, too.”
She’d never heard him like this before. Previously, when Wade gave her advice, it was always mellow, take-it-or-leave it, just-so-you-know kind of stuff. “I can’t get out. It’s our case.”
From across the room, Donovan looked up at her, his eyes questioning. She shook her head and shrugged, having no clue what Wade was really getting at yet. Looking to Marina, she saw the woman hadn’t overheard the conversation, that was just the two men and their supersensitive ears. Unless Marina was playing them.
God, she’d gotten suspicious as hell in just the past thirty minutes.
“Hand it off.” Wade’s sharp tone pulled her back to the phone in her hand and the tension in her ribs.
“To whom?” It was her case. Westerfield wasn’t communicating much. They had sent the information they had up the pipeline to him and he’d said he was ‘working on it.’
“Terrorism. Give it to the task force. This is either a terrorism case or a military treason case interlaced with terrorism.”
His words hit her like a truck.
He was right. Though they’d said ‘terrorism’ a few times early on while talking about Cooper Rollins and the case, it had been very slim speculation. Then they put small pieces together and slowly built the information they had. But they hadn’t stepped back to look at the big picture. There was an FBI group already in place—several in fact—with the training to handle exactly this kind of thing.
Protocol said they had enough information to share. “I’ll loop them in. You’re right.”
“No.” His word came down the line and smacked her before she even finished the sentence. “Don’t loop. Hand it off. You don’t want to be in this.”
Marina’s voice, open, excited and unaware of Wade’s ominous suggestions, called to her from across the conference table. “Come look at this!”
“I’m not a rookie agent, Wade.” Her voice was soft but firm as Eleri worked to not be insulted. She’d been handed this case. Westerfield believed they could handle it. Her boss was up to speed on everything they recovered and even on their speculations. He had not once suggested they hand it off. Even if Wade was right. She should discuss this with the Terrorism Task Force, loop them in, listen to them, act accordingly. But she didn’t need to hand the whole case over.
“I can’t stop you, El.” He sighed. “If there’s anything I’ve learned about you in all the years we’ve worked together—in all the time we’ve been friends—it’s that I can’t stop you from doing anything.”
What was she supposed to do with that? If she let him stop her to prove that she wasn’t illogical, then she was a pushover acting on non-logical suggestions. If she stood her ground, then she proved him right. Eleri held her tongue.
Wade continued, probably realizing that she wasn’t going to answer the challenge he’d thrown out. “I’m getting off the case. I can’t consult any more. I think you should, too.”
Another pause. This time she had no idea what to say. So she tried to reassure him. “I’m okay, Wade. I will be.”
“I don’t know about that, El. I’ll be there to pick up the pieces if it all goes to hell. But you’ve seen what’s been happening. There may be too many pieces to put anything back together.” He paused. “Or no pieces at all.”
The click of the line told her that was all he was going to say. He’d hung up and probably pressed the gas pedal. But as Eleri stood there, holding her silent phone, a chill ran up her spine.
Donovan was concerned about the look on Eleri’s face. He couldn’t hear the entire conversation, but he knew that Wade had not been happy, and that his wariness had transferred to Eleri.
Marina was pointing things out in the photo now. “Is that Ken Kellen?”
Eleri shrugged as she returned to the conversation. They’d never seen the guy but had heard of him through both Cooper Rollins and Walter Reed. Donovan and Marina had agreed that the photo matched the description.
So did Eleri. “Let’s pull a military file.”
“Hahaha.” Vasquez’s response was dry and humorless. “His file is buried. Where Rollins’ records were redacted, Ken Kellen’s are stuffed under so much red tape that I only got them yesterday.”
Eleri looked at the other woman, and Donovan wondered why she hadn’t already at least scanned the file. Vasquez stared back at him, clearly understanding what he was thinking.
“I got three hours of sleep last night. There was no time.”
He’d slept more than three hours last night and hadn’t realized what Agent Vasquez was doing outside of working hours to keep this going. Eleri had seen it. Knew Vasquez was hungry, ready to get out and be tried in the field. Unfortunately, they weren’t the ones to do it. They couldn’t bring her along on half their ops, and while he knew NightShade division was different, with different boundaries, the lines sometimes got fuzzy. Donovan was far too new to push any envelopes.
The NightShade Forensic Files: Fracture Five (Book 2) Page 16
