The NightShade Forensic Files: Fracture Five (Book 2)

by A. J. Scudiere

  But it didn’t stop her from wearing it. She’d slipped the ribbon over her head and shoved the envelope down in to the trash.

  The pre-dawn light cast the city in shades of gray and blue, matching the bleakness of her thoughts. The place was, at its heart, a party town. Inside were enclaves of neighborhoods mostly made up of various groups. West Hollywood was best known for its gay population, but what people didn’t seem to realize was that the area had been settled by Russian and Jewish families long before the fabulousness had arrived.

  As Donovan aimed the car up the highway, traffic built up heading toward them. Their lanes stayed miraculously clear. Quickly the city gave way to bedroom subdivisions, interspersed with clearly older small towns that had been swallowed by development. Their strip malls still standing in testament to the sixties and seventies when they’d been separate places.

  “Old” out here had an entirely different meaning than where she’d come from. At home, “old” meant several hundred years. It meant deciding to air condition a house was a huge deal, as it would damage the history. Here, it was all in varying shades of recent and even that managed to be less well cared for than much older structures back home.

  The home Donovan pulled up in front of was nearly identical to the ones on either side. The only real difference was the feeling of emptiness.

  A car pulled out from the garage on their right as they passed. The houses in this subdivision were garage-front, the drive heading right under the massive, roll-up door they didn’t have a clicker for. They were mostly interested in the back porch, but they’d have to leave the car somewhere. “Walk in.”

  It was the only two words that Eleri had spoken since they left the house that morning. Once again, her hand reached up to clutch the grisgris, but she stopped herself just shy of touching it, leaving the movement as stilted as her day felt.

  Donovan nodded and parked two houses over. Luckily, the lights were still off, and before she could think otherwise, Eleri opened the door into air that didn’t feel right and headed for the neighbor’s open side fence.

  Hastily, she tromped through grass turned brittle and brown. Even she could hear Donovan behind her, crunching with his booted feet. In moments, she was face to face with a pink cinderblock wall about six feet high. She was just reaching for the top, when she felt hands close around her calf and boost her up.

  Grateful, Eleri pushed up onto her palms at the top of the ‘fence’ and threw one leg over then the other. She was dropping down on the other side when Donovan appeared to pop over the top all by himself. Well, he was tall and had upper-body strength.

  She looked across into a back yard in nearly perfect reverse of the one she’d just come from. The sun was hitting a higher note, the air charging and warming around her as she softly made her way to the back porch. When she stood at the base of two cement steps, Eleri paused. Behind her, Donovan remained silent. Good thing. She didn’t want to do this.

  It was never just a movie in her head. When she was honest, she admitted it never had been. In her dreams she’d stood in killers’ homes, seen their magazine collections, checked out their kitchens. But she’d sometimes also felt what they felt, her gut had churned as her chest tightened with desire so strong for small children, for women who fought, for the feeling of someone’s life slipping away through your own fingertips. It wasn’t her desire, but theirs.

  Though they faded, the feelings never completely washed away.

  Donovan didn’t understand that. And she didn’t know how to say it.

  Part of that was because she didn’t want to. There was no one else, and she wouldn’t say no. What if someone else could have seen Emmaline? Eleri would have given anything—anything—to get her sister back. So she walked up the steps, knowing this was someone’s daughter, sister, mother, someone, and she started touching things.

  She trailed her fingers along the railing, but it held no memories for her. She touched the door. The window sill that might peer into the kitchen had the blinds been up.

  From behind her, Donovan’s voice gave her information. “She was fifty-four. A mother, but her children were grown. A widow who lived alone. She was home midday from work. I don’t think she would have trailed her fingers along the railing.”

  What would she have done? But what Eleri asked was, “Why was she home?”

  He shrugged. “The work report said she called in sick. So they didn’t think too much of it when they didn’t hear from her the next day. Maybe she was actually sick.”

  “Pretty convenient that she’s home sick so our bomber can get to her.” Eleri kept her voice low in case the neighbors were up.

  Donovan thought for a moment. “Maybe it wasn’t convenient; maybe it was contrived.” He stood at the base of the porch, all two steps below, the railing hardly necessary. “Maybe they made her sick, to keep her home. So they could get to her.”

  Eleri leaned forward, planting her hands on the railing, looking down at him. Suddenly, a fever washed over her. Her joints ached. Her stomach churned. Then her head jerked back as she heard a knock at the front door.

  Eleri was looking at Donovan, starting to sweat, to breathe through the pain of the illness, when she heard the knob turn as the person let themselves into the house, calling out her name.

  21

  Donovan stared at Eleri as she stood with her hands braced on the railing. At first, she paled and headed quickly into a cold sweat. Just as he was about to ask her what she saw—and it must be bad—it got worse.

  Her head snapped around, and she focused at the door into the house. Donovan stopped dead. His blood cooled at the sight.

  Her body changed, Eleri looked both taller and frailer, and not like Eleri. Even her facial features seemed to have moved so she looked more like the older woman who owned this house. It must have been his imagination. He’d seen pictures of the woman, so he was overlaying her face now as Eleri walked to the door and opened it.

  But was he overlaying the odd movements?

  Donovan knew, better than anyone, just how much a face was capable of change in the right circumstances.

  Eleri walked as if her knees bothered her; she breathed as if the movement took more effort than it should. Then her body lurched, just as she reached for the door handle. Donovan lurched, too, thinking to grab her, stop her from falling when he realized it was a cough. A hard cough.

  Simultaneously, Eleri opened the door and looked down at her hand.

  Clearly, she saw someone in the doorway; Donovan did not. His chest clenched. Did he stop her? Or did he let her get more information? Was the decision even his?

  His own breathing was faster than it should be. His worry skyrocketing as he fought all sides of the issue and still didn’t know what to do.

  Eleri—or whoever she was now—seemed happy to see the person at the door. But whatever was in her hand made her afraid. Very afraid.

  Once again, just as he was getting ready to ask her something, to pull her from the vision she was caught in, she jerked again. This time she stared at the person she saw in the air before her. Donovan’s breath caught.

  This was so much easier when it was him.

  But what had he done lately? He’d gone for a run. When the lobomau had come, Eleri fought them. She’d slept with Ken Kellen’s picture; she was on the porch now, seeing what the old woman saw. His ‘special skills’ hardly seemed special in comparison to hers. It seemed all he could do was get close enough to help if he was needed.

  Just as Donovan hit the steps, he heard and saw Eleri inhale deeply. She seemed surprised, then she scared the shit out of him, by lolling her head back and simply collapsing.

  Gravity was faster than he was, and he didn’t catch her. He could only leap as he watched her fall like a building imploding, like everything holding her up snapped piece by piece.

  Her legs buckled, making the fall awkward and leaving her in a pile of her own bones. The odd angle served to keep her head from cracking against porch bo
ards.

  Donovan didn’t hear his knees smack to the deck. He couldn’t hear her breathe or if she moaned; he couldn’t hear anything over the sound of his own wild heartbeat. Over the roar of the unknown.

  The older woman had died out here. He was convinced of that now.

  Would Eleri die if she lived through the death of another? Why hadn’t he gone into emergency medicine? It would be so much more useful now.

  Things ran through his brain. MASH IITT.

  No. That was the acronym for taking patient histories. ABCs. Yes. But despite ‘Airway’ being A, he pushed his fingertips to her neck and checked for C—Circulation.

  It took three frantic tries, as his own pulse raced beneath the pads of his fingers, and each time he couldn’t feel hers, he grew more worried, his breath more labored, his thoughts more scattered. Once he did find a pulse, he turned his attention to her breathing. Luckily, the small bump of whatever she was wearing on a ribbon around her neck made it blessedly easy to spot the rise and fall of her breath.

  He felt his shoulders drop suddenly, relief replacing the support of his muscle tension with limp worry. Now, he needed to get her awake, get her talking. Make certain she was still Eleri. Donovan was tapping her cheek before he thought better of it. He was a trained physician; he should do better than this.

  Eleri’s first move was to push his hand and simultaneously turn her head away from his obnoxious touch, but she wasn’t fully awake. Her eyes blinked. Her mouth worked but no sound came out.

  He worried about brain damage. Had she hit her head and he hadn’t seen?

  Though her words were clear, they made no sense. “Emmaline? Grandmere?”

  “Do you remember where you are?” he asked. He was getting ready to ask her for the date, to ask who was president, when her head snapped toward him and she stared.

  “They’re coming.” Her now lucid eyes looked right into his as she pushed one hand behind her and the other grabbed at his arm. Using him as an anchor, she was upright before he was, steady on her feet, all Eleri again. Her gaze swept the back yard as she tried to decide which way to go.

  “Who’s coming, El?” He breathed it out, the words low in his chest. He heard things on the other side of the house. One car, doors opening and closing, feet on the ground. More than one.

  She was already down the steps, ducking through the back yard, aiming to launch herself over the six-foot, cinderblock fence as though her adrenaline could make it happen.

  He wanted to call out, but instead he leapt from the porch himself, his feet landing in soft grass, his toes curling in his shoes at the impact, his ankles flexing, stronger for their size than a normal human’s.

  His muscles wanted to change, even more than they did most times he ran. Now, his body was actively trying to transform. The need to flee triggered it. He’d noticed that before—adrenaline pushed the change. Donovan pushed it back.

  He was halfway through the yard when he heard it. Eleri’s hands had just grasped the top of the fence and she was using fear-fueled strength to haul herself up.

  “Wait, El!” He said it loud enough to make her stop and soft enough to not alert the people out front that they were here. “Wait!”

  She paused, awkwardly looking back over her shoulder as she hung there at the top now, perched on straightened arms, ready to throw her leg over and disappear into the neighbor’s yard.

  He sniffed the air. He felt his ears twitch. And he couldn’t help turning his head toward the side of the house. The squawk and buzz of the radio was as distinct as the tone of the voice issuing information in lock-step fashion.

  “El.” He turned his face back to her, wondering if he’d transformed a little bit. “It’s the police.”

  She shook her head and dropped to the ground, her knees taking the impact and making her wobble a little. His first instinct was to race for her, grab her, hold her upright. But she managed it on her own.

  He couldn’t protect her, it seemed, though he felt he should. She didn’t need it, that was certain, but every time he pushed her to do something like this, he felt purely responsible for the outcome.

  She dropped to the ground and turned back, looking right at him, her green eyes worried. He still had no clue what she’d seen, and there wasn’t time for her to tell it. She shook her head. “It’s them.”

  Just then there was a banging on the front door. Her head snapped up, and something about the way it happened, about the way she held her shoulders, focused her eyes, had him asking, “Is it the same person you saw?”

  “This is the police.” The voice spoke loudly, clearly, just shy of yelling. The obviously male timbre had Eleri jerking back as more words came. “Is anyone here?”

  She shook her head at Donovan, confused, but still started walking toward the small porch. She reached around her flank, but not for her sidearm. Instead, she pulled her small, rectangular leather wallet that held her ID.

  Donovan reached for his, too, the movement not as ingrained in him as it clearly was in her. It was a security of some kind for her, a natural move in times of stress. He hadn’t realized quite how much Eleri identified herself as an FBI agent until this moment. And he flashed back to her claims of spending three months in a mental hospital, and thinking she’d never work in the Bureau again. It must have been hell for her. More so because she’d broken down in the first place doing exactly the same kinds of things he was pushing her to do now.

  How was now different? Was it enough that he and Westerfield knew what she was doing? That she could tell people when it went sideways on her?

  He hoped so, because it sure as hell didn’t seem to be any easier on her. Holding his own wallet flipped open and ready to flash, he heard her plant her feet and prepare to identify the two of them through the door.

  She was cautious, the last thing any of them wanted was to make the police upset. They sometimes came with guns out. A finger at the ready was also a finger ready for a mistake. That had been drilled into him at the Academy. As though the gun itself hadn’t felt foreign enough to him.

  “FBI.” She spoke loudly, the sound carrying the three identifying letters first. They never said NightShade. Aside from the diamonds on the border lines on the badges, there were no marks, nothing to associate them with a division of the FBI that most didn’t even know existed. “We’re in the back yard. Our badges are out. Please come back.”

  Eleri stopped moving. She stood in the middle of the grassy space, her ID raised for whomever might see it, though no one but Donovan was back here yet. Slowly, Donovan raised his own badge, though he heard the two men at the front door. They tried the knob, walked across the front porch, probably looking in the window, then went down the concrete steps heading toward the side.

  Two of them. Medium build, boots. Small sounds of weapons jangling on full utility belts. Then the voice again.

  “We’re coming around the side.”

  “Okay,” Eleri called back and turned toward her left, toward the brief wooden fence that separated the front yard from the back.

  The fence swung open and as the first man walked through, Eleri angled herself, but stayed put. “Special Agent Eleri Eames, and this is Special Agent Donovan Heath.”

  The officer looked from one of them to the other, hands resting on the weapons hanging from his utility belt. He was relaxed, his hands positioned in the threat of a threat, but nothing more. Nodding sagely, he didn’t move his hands, but tipped his head as he said, “Officer Harding. This is Officer Davies.”

  The second man moved out from behind the first as he, too, came through the tall gate. Donovan nodded a hello to each of them. Only then did he notice that Eleri had frozen where she stood.

  Eleri stared at a face she’d seen before. Now she had a name. Officer Davies had appeared in the scene she’d witnessed of Ratz in his garage. It had been Davies who had visited Ratz, bringing him the bomb makings, and eventually plunging the knife into him and leaving before Ratz’s final moment. Davies ha
d walked away clean.

  She was standing in front of a man she knew to be a murderer and suspected to be a terrorist, and she had absolutely zero proof. She was also standing like an idiot, staring wildly at a man she should not be giving anything away to.

  Almost able to feel Donovan’s indecision about whether he should take the lead, Eleri shattered the chill holding her back and slapped on a false smile. Luckily she had years of practice.

  Putting her foot forward, she still held her ID up as she approached Harding. “Do you need to see it?”

  “If you don’t mind.” It was a good response. He shouldn’t trust people he found in a missing person’s back yard and she liked him better for it. Though she wasn’t sure if his association with Davies was because he was assigned to the same car, or because he was more deeply associated with the cell. She and Donovan waited while Harding looked at each of the IDs, though if he knew what he should be looking for, she couldn’t tell.

  “Thank you.” He handed both of them back and Eleri pocketed hers, just as he spoke again. “Can you tell us what you’re doing back here?”

  Eleri nodded her head, but her voice said, “Somewhat. We’re simply following up to see if Mrs. Sullivan is associated with a case we’re working.”

  “Is she?”

  She could have told him it was classified, or she could have been a bitch and said it was above his pay grade. Instead she said, “I’m pretty confident.”

  It told them that she and Donovan would be here longer, or more often. But she continued. “Agent Heath and I need to conduct a further search, and I could request police help, but unfortunately, it needs to be FBI.” As though she would want Officer Davies—the murdering asshole—anywhere near her investigation. She tried to look frustrated with her fakely tied hands. “Do you maybe have spare keys? Or have a record of who does?”

  Change the subject, ask for help in a different way than the one they’re offering.