The NightShade Forensic Files: Fracture Five (Book 2)

by A. J. Scudiere

  Eleri was starting to nod. Donovan was trying to figure out if a car bomb was going to go off when the engine started, but Cooper Rollins wasn’t finished.

  “In exchange, I want to know that I won’t get branded a traitor. That I won’t be tried posthumously for treason, not in the public court nor in any other.”

  Eleri looked stunned. If she hadn’t been pinned into the back of the booth, she would likely have jumped up and yelled. “We’re paying you for this information. You don’t get to barter for it.”

  “You haven’t paid me yet.”

  “You haven’t proved that you aren’t a fucking traitor yet!” The accusations were almost harsher for the gentle southern soul that came through on her angry accent. As soon as the words left her lips, she darted her eyes around the restaurant.

  Rollins didn’t.

  Donovan had been watching him and easily concluded that the ex-Green Beret was clearly the superior player here. “I’ll ride. Give us reasons to keep your name clean and we’ll simply support the truth. How’s that?”

  Rollins blinked. Once. Twice. He looked like he was going to turn around and leave. He would take with him intel garnered with the help of Walter Reed and the cars the FBI had rented, the equipment the Bureau had provided. Donovan braced to jump up, to chase a man he might outrun but couldn’t outfight, probably in either form.

  Then, Rollins nodded. “I’m on the right side of this. I don’t know if that’s your side. But it’s the right side.”

  Then he turned and walked away, expecting them to follow. Without looking to the women, Donovan did. But he heard them behind him. Heard the heavy shuffle of Walter’s uneven tread, the light sneakered touch of Eleri’s, the sound of her wallet snapping open and the cash trading places with the ticket the server had put on the table. He was already heading out the door into a morning that was colder than he remembered.

  If he hadn’t heard the car door close, he wouldn’t have seen which one Rollins was in. The man started the engine—the car didn’t blow up—and headed toward the front of the small restaurant to pick them up. Only once Donovan had slid into the passenger seat did he actually consider that Rollins might tell them something real.

  Once they were in, Rollins handed a tablet over to Marina, and Donovan couldn’t help asking about it. He still didn’t quite trust the man. “What’s that?”

  “Tracker I put on Kellen’s car. He’s almost back to his apartment. If he veers we’ll know.” Rollins didn’t look at him but kept his eye on the road as he pulled out.

  “You don’t think Kellen would find it?”

  “I’m sure he will . . . Eventually. That’s why I used one that burns out after two hours. Since he didn’t check before he got in the car and the car hasn’t stopped, he’s on his way home.” He took another turn onto the main road and then off, and Donovan realized he was literally along for the ride.

  Walter reached up from the back seat and put her hand on his shoulder. Probably trying to tone him down, but Donovan had had enough. He needed answers and he needed to be in on his own investigation. “How do you know that he’s the one driving the car? Do you know he didn’t switch the tracker to another car? Can he change cars at an intersection without looking like it?”

  Rollins didn’t flinch. “Well, I watched him get into the car without checking for the tracker. And I watched him drive the car away. The other answer is yes, he could switch out of the car at an intersection with no one really being the wiser, and I’m not dumb enough to mount a camera on his dashboard—because he would find that—so I can’t be positive that he didn’t do it. In the past he has been awake and alert a lot longer than this. But the car is headed to his apartment and a switch-out at an intersection would require a person waiting there and ready to make the change. So my money says he’s on his way home to sleep off the binge.”

  Donovan didn’t want to, but he gave up some grudging respect. The man had training in this far superior to his own. Something that must have come across, because Walter spoke up from the back.

  “This is why I wanted him to do it. He’s the best.”

  “Nope. Kellen’s the best. . . Actually, Freeman was the best at this, but I dragged him back to base from the last op. Ken Kellen shot him in the head. They needed DNA tests to prove the body was his. So now I’m going to be the best.” Though the voice remained calm, the steel under it was obvious.

  “We can’t have vigilantes, Rollins.” Eleri said calmly but firmly from her spot in the back seat. “He may have killed the good guys, but you can’t get him, we have to. There’s a lot more at stake here than your revenge.”

  “It’s not revenge, ma’am.” Rollins pulled to a stop at the side of the road. He spoke to Eleri but looked at Donovan as he did. It took Donovan a moment to figure out that Rollins wasn’t giving away the fact that there were two more people in the back seat. Two people pulling up to a curb and chatting—maybe lost—was one thing. A full car, parked and waiting in your neighborhood would get noticed. Especially in this area.

  The houses were small and came in varying shades of California. There were whites and chamois colors and the occasional salmon or even Pepto pink. A few of the small homes sported Spanish tile roofs and a few others had trim and art deco curves. Donovan looked around. But Rollins wasn’t finished, so he looked at the man as though he were part of the conversation.

  “This isn’t about revenge. I honestly don’t know what Kellen’s up to, though recently the evidence has become pretty convincing he’s on the wrong side of it. I still don’t know about Freeman. Maybe Kellen saved me from him, maybe he just murdered our teammate.” Then he changed the subject. “This is the house where he met with what appeared to be a man of Hasidic Jewish origin. Once he was inside, I got some shots.”

  He took the tablet back from Walter and pulled them up. Donovan checked the tech—a self-contained system like he and Eleri used. No internet. Still hackable—everything was—but harder to get into, at least. A lot harder.

  His respect for the man’s skills were growing. He wanted to respect the man himself, but he didn’t have it yet. Turning his focus back to the information he checked out the pictures. The shots were through several different windows. Like Walter before him, Rollins must have gotten out of the car and aimed the camera through what small window spaces he could find. From the pictures, the shots were taken through wooden slat blinds and maybe a square of glass in a back door. It was hard to identify individual people, but it was clear this was a meeting.

  During normal business hours.

  Not good.

  Donovan slid the tablet back to Eleri, saying, “Hopefully it’s the same people he was meeting the other day, or we’re screwed.”

  “You have pictures?” Rollins asked. Then, once again, without turning his head, pointed out that a man was leaving the house with his wife beside him, her hair covered, her dress swishing around her ankles.

  “No. Just audio of them finding the bug on Kellen.”

  Rollins’ head snapped to the side. “You got a bug on Kellen that he took to his meeting without knowing it?”

  “You’re not the only one with skills.” It was all Donovan could say. In the back of the car he could hear Eleri suppress a snicker. At least she was smiling. He was loosening up towards Rollins, too. He just wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.

  Rollins spoke again, and this time he pulled out a book—an old thick Thomas Guide map of Los Angeles. He started thumbing through the pages while he talked. “I’ve noticed each of the groups has women involved. And several of the women seem to have done something.”

  Another woman came out of the house then. Her blonde hair was flowing long and curling past her shoulders. She wore jeans and knee-high boots. Her sweater was tight fitting and she was definitely dressed out of character compared to the rest of them. She climbed into a sports car and drove off.

  It took Donovan a moment to feel the hand slapping on his shoulder. He tried not to look like
he was looking, just in case anyone saw more than two men struggling with a map. He turned a little, then fully as he saw that Eleri’s eyes were wide.

  “She killed Mrs. Sullivan!” She whispered at him.

  He understood.

  “You know that woman?” Rollins asked, still pointing at the map and flipping pages.

  “She’s a suspect in a murder.”

  “And that’s not the car she arrived in.” He folded up the map book and subtly pushed the car into drive as the sports car rounded the corner. These blocks were small, a few turns and she would be lost to them if they didn’t hug close.

  “We’re on the move.” Rollins announced, doing his job despite the fact that the people who had hired him were in the car and had given no such orders.

  Even Walter was all over it. She unbuckled her seatbelt, put her hand on the door and secured her cell phone and tablet. “Drop me at the corner. I’ll run for the other car so we can trade off if we need.”

  “I’m with you.” Eleri announced, sliding out of the back seat right on Walter’s heels, even before Rollins brought the car to a full stop. She looked Donovan in the eyes as she turned to close the door, staying low and out of sight.

  For the first time that day he felt he understood. Divide and conquer. Keep eyes on Walter and Rollins. Find out the rest.

  He was on top of that.

  Rollins pulled away from the intersection slowly, keeping the car positioned so that the sports coupe would have no line of sight to Walter and Eleri running down the street. “I don’t remember her going into the house. But that car pulled up after I arrived, so I know she didn’t drive it there. Changing cars like that . . .”

  He didn’t have to finish. It was suspicious.

  Rollins deftly followed one turn then another, until he started to fall back. Only then did Donovan spot the small SUV in the back, Walter at the wheel. Rollins let them take point, making it harder for the woman in the coupe to see that she was being followed. This was how they’d tracked Ken Kellen.

  They were on the freeway, moving pretty well, still letting Eleri and Walter take the lead, when a car backfired next to them. Donovan turned his head to look out the window but didn’t panic until his side of the car was within a foot of the truck directly beside them.

  The driver honked angrily and Donovan whipped his head around to see Cooper breathing heavily, hands on the wheel, white knuckled, his arms rigid.

  “Cooper. Cooper.” He tapped harshly on the man, trying to get his attention.

  But the other man didn’t respond. His eyes were glazed.

  Shit.

  He was having an episode and Donovan was stuck in the passenger seat. Reaching for the wheel, he saw that it was locked in Cooper Rollins’ grasp. When he smacked the man’s hand, he finally got a response. It just wasn’t what he expected.

  Between rapid breaths, Rollins forced out the words “You drive.”

  Then he was on the other side of Donovan, sandwiched between the passenger door and his passenger.

  Reaching over, Donovan grabbed the steering wheel and pushed his foot across into the empty driver’s footwell, fighting desperately to control the car heading down a busy L.A. freeway at sixty plus miles per hour.

  35

  The sound of gunfire set him off. Cooper Rollins felt his brain crack and time loop around on him.

  He knew there wasn’t gunfire. Or at least he was relatively confident there wasn’t. The problem was, this was L.A. and there might actually be bullets. His worst nightmares involved him either hurting people because he thought there was gunfire when there wasn’t, or of letting people die, because he told himself it was the PTSD when something real was going on.

  Around him, in a fog, cars passed. His passenger tapped him and said something, but it sounded like an old record on slow speed. Like it was coming through molasses.

  Cooper couldn’t respond.

  The front of his brain had taken over.

  Though it was his worst memory, he was starting to recognize that it was a memory. Probably that hadn’t been gunfire, then. He breathed a sigh of relief and clutched the steering wheel tighter, trying to force his attention back on the road.

  But when the man in the passenger seat spoke again,—what was his name?—and when it again didn’t even sound like words, Cooper knew he was going under.

  Much like sleep for the too-tired, his body went with it. The memory pulled at him, taking him back. It wanted him stuck in the loop. Back in Fallujah, holding his rifle tight up against his body, fingers firmly on the gun but not the trigger.

  A sharp poke. A yell. His hand being grasped too tightly brought him almost into the real world. He was in traffic. Not safe—the only assessment his mind was capable of. So he did what he knew to do and vacated the driver’s seat, leaving it to someone else.

  In the passenger’s side, he pressed up against the window, thinking the cold of the glass would bring him back, anchor him here. But it didn’t. The roar of silence took over as the twelve men crept quietly through the woods.

  His heart had not been calm even when they left. Used to high alert, they trained to stay low and level, react with thought even in crazy situations. On that trip Cooper hadn’t been capable.

  His brain jumped to another time loop, where he pointed out the shipments of arms to his supervisor the day before. Everyone on the team had seen them, signed for them, watched them disappear. After getting little reaction, Cooper’s curiosity sharpened into suspicion and he started an inquiry of his own. So he’d gone into the offices and rifled through the Captain’s papers. He saw evidence of the arms shipments coming in from the U.S.

  He’d seen the paperwork, and saw that, of the twelve men in the group, each of them had signed for at least two different shipments. Because some were signing for extra—Ken Kellen and Benj Freeman among them—there were well over forty separate shipments of arms.

  Son of a bitch.

  Freeman was the one standing watch outside while he snuck in here. Did he know? Was he signaling the captain even as Cooper stood in here thinking Freeman had his back?

  Unable to trust his watch now, Cooper slunk out the back of the tent. The Captain would figure it out later, but maybe he wouldn’t suspect Cooper. When he came up front to talk to Freeman, he spotted the Captain headed their way.

  No signal from Freeman, but their boss wasn’t close. There was no way to tell if Benj was selling him out or keeping him safe.

  “What did you find?” his partner in crime asked.

  “Nothing.” Cooper sighed, lied, and wondered if his friend was doing the same. For the first time he wondered if Benj Freeman even was his friend.

  The time loop jumped again, to the next morning they’d been sent out. All twelve of them.

  Odd.

  Cooper thought about the receiving slips. Multiple signatures from each of them. Indicting the whole unit of the fraud. And where were the guns now? Too many to use themselves. More than just what they needed and definitely not the one Cooper now clutched in his hands as they trekked out to check on the family they were sent to scope. This one was his baby. Not a newer model.

  He looked around.

  Only Ken Kellen held a newer gun. He’d changed his mind on what he preferred to carry recently. Now Cooper saw it with a sinister glint.

  The men cleared the hilltop near the family’s house. Nothing seemed out of place and Cooper wondered about the intel they were working off of.

  This was a rebel family. Father, mother, two daughters—not likely to be insurgents with girl children. But they housed the ones who came through. They fed them, tended wounds, hid the rebel soldiers. In turn, the US fed them, armed them, and maybe more.

  The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

  Cooper felt his heart thump. The men were quiet. War painted. Stealthy in their big boots. They stopped at the forest’s edge and looked back and forth to each other for signals.

  Suddenly, Cooper realized he couldn’t tr
ust any of them. They all had their hands on the disappearing munitions—including him. Any of them could just as easily believe he was behind it. A jury would surely indict him.

  It wasn’t unusual to sign for a shipment like that. It was just that the shipments kept coming and the guns and ground-to-air missile launchers were nowhere to be found in Army stock, but the rebels kept turning up with them.

  As he looked out over the area, he spotted the girls at the back of the house. In his fugue state, he recognized their eyes. Alya and Aziza were now in America. He knew that, but couldn’t pull himself from Fallujah, from this loop that played in his head until it played out.

  He made a noise in his throat and felt the real world change around him, though he couldn’t break out of his own vision. He felt hands on him, heard words around him, not to him. But he was still in the trees at the edge of the clearing. He was still watching the two young women hang laundry, their hair only haphazardly covered because they thought they were alone. They worked easily, ducking between the sheets and clothes flapping in the light wind almost as though they played a game. The heat was a killer, and his gear made him sweat. He only noticed it when he took stock of himself.

  Now he took stock of the faces of his men.

  Who was really with him?

  He looked at each, cataloged previous actions, checked mental histories for suspicious activity, and came up with too much. Zuckman was counting money he shouldn’t have. Ken Kellen was writing in notebooks all the time, notebooks that disappeared and no one could find no matter how they teased him, no matter where they looked. Benj Freeman had a new gun that didn’t make sense. And Cooper had no idea who he could trust anymore.

  He’d trusted all of them, with his life, up until the day before.

  Cooper had looked away from the girls for a moment. When he looked back, he could only see shadows behind the sheets. He frowned, slowly, his brain processing the same thing it had processed at the time—what it processed every time he got stuck in this loop.