The NightShade Forensic Files: Fracture Five (Book 2)

by A. J. Scudiere

  Then she took off in the other direction. She jumped over fallen trees, and the occasional body part, scanning and calling out as she went. She yelled louder than the scream of pain in her leg. “Donovan!”

  Nothing came back. Not a whimper or a bark or a shout.

  She was searching the same area a second time when she almost tripped over him. Not too far from where Cooper Rollins had lain when she first found him, Donovan was farther from the blast center, but a tree had fallen across him.

  She couldn’t call his name. He was the wolf.

  There were too many others here. Too much of a chance of being found out. So she stayed quiet, trying not to alert the agents working the woods, searching, just beyond where she was. Intel was coming in her ear about the other blast sites, but she wasn’t listening. She was on her knees in the dirt and debris, feeling for a pulse.

  45

  Donovan had woken to pain. And he’d woken to Eleri, pushing on him as though he were in bed and needed to wake up. He’d tried to tell her to go away, to shut up. He’d tried to say her name, but his mouth wouldn’t work.

  Then he remembered.

  He was in the canyon below the Griffith Park Observatory, and he’d been out cold. He’d only slept as the wolf a handful of times before. This was not planned.

  “Go,” she’d whispered. “Go.”

  He heard the crunching of leaves as agents approached her. “Everything good, Agent Eames?”

  “Just a dog out here. Maybe belongs to someone.” She gestured off beyond he edge of the woods where there were in fact houses, but they were far away. “Looks like he got caught in the blast, but he’s okay.”

  That was a fat lie.

  Donovan stood up on all fours, looked at Eleri, and walked away. He fought against the sharp pain in his ankle, the deep, dull pain he pulled in with every breath.

  He heard the agent as he turned. “Looks like a wolf to me.”

  “You think?” Eleri’s disagreeing tone followed, always covering for him.

  He made it out of sight before he gingerly lifted the back leg he shouldn’t have been walking on and limped the rest of the probably two-mile loop back to his clothes. He’d had to walk on it while they were watching. He couldn’t afford sympathy. Even more, he couldn’t afford to be shot as an injured and possibly aggressive animal.

  When he got to the place where he’d left his clothes, they were missing. But after a moment of panic he’d spotted the very clear trail in the debris to where Eleri had tucked them under a bush. Somewhere safer, somewhere not crawling with agents.

  So he’d grabbed the clothes and limped away, tucking himself beneath a tree, behind some bushes, up against the wall that led up to the terrace a full story above him. Only if someone looked directly down at him might they see anything. But he simply couldn’t go any further.

  He rolled his shoulders into place, popping his elbows out and finally his fingers. His ribs were cracked. He could feel it, but he pushed through the pain, there weren’t other options. He managed to put his left leg back, but it hurt too much to do both at once.

  Donovan stopped now, almost entirely human, naked and panting heavily from the strain, hiding behind what he hoped was adequate cover of brush. It was the right leg that gave him trouble. If he’d thought the left hurt, he hadn’t accounted for a broken ankle. He tried to push back but couldn’t. He was stuck this way. He couldn’t change it.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he whispered to himself as he broke out in a sweat trying again.

  The muscles wouldn’t pull the leg back. His ankle wouldn’t bend and the tendons wouldn’t slip into human position. He flexed his toes, sending spikes of pain that almost made him scream.

  He couldn’t make noise. They were looking for Donovan Heath. This would not do. So he did the only thing he could think of, because no one else could do it for him. He shoved a nearby stick in his mouth and bit down. The bitter taste of the resin didn’t register as he grabbed the ankle with both hands and twisted in back into place.

  He didn’t scream.

  He spat the stick as he vomited and fought to keep from passing out as nausea set up a standing wave in his system. It was only after he vomited a second time that he was able to sit back and start to breathe.

  “Donovan?” The voice was soft. She’d come. She’d done what she could, and she’d come.

  “Not yet.” He panted it out, still exuding the cold sweat of the tortured.

  “Okay.”

  She waited what seemed like forever, standing guard five steps away. Her blue-green hoodie marked her for all to see. She told them her partner was coming up. She was covering for him. Again.

  Donovan pulled on his shirt, and found his pants to be harder to deal with.

  He managed his socks and his left shoe while Eleri took in details of the day. She was relieved to find him and he was relieved to have her standing guard, but he wasn’t out of the woods yet. “El?”

  She crouched down, finally coming face to face with him, her relief a small shock wave that hit him as she looked him over. “Yes?”

  “I can’t get my shoe on.” He had the left one on. It had hurt, but the right threatened to make him pass out. “Can you?”

  She tried. Three times she tried. But she couldn’t grab his ankle to guide it in or push the shoe onto his foot without nearly making him pass out. Finally, she shrugged and tossed it into the brush. “You lost it in the blast.”

  “I’m ready.”

  She shook her head. “No you’re not. Once again, your clothes are too clean. Can you roll?”

  No. No, he could not fucking roll. But he did it anyway, feeling the cracked ribs all over again. Tree bits, red clay dirt, and pieces of weeds stuck to his clothing and having her brush him off was almost as painful as trying to grind it in.

  “Now,” she declared, and shoved her shoulder into his ribcage as gently as she could. It took him a minute to figure out she was trying to help him up. He accepted. All movement hurt, but it got him where he needed.

  Once they’d made it about three feet, she set up a hue and cry that she’d found him. That he was injured, that he needed medical.

  They had a brace on him in no time, which hurt almost as bad as not having a brace. They felt for broken bones and he winced at each touch, threatening to vomit on the med tech checking him.

  She’d set up forensics at the scene, left the agents to their checking and hopped in the back of the ambulance with him. The EMT couldn’t leave them alone, so it was a while before he got to check in. He’d been admitted to the ER and x-rayed before the hospital made it clear he still couldn’t put his earpiece in.

  Eleri had relayed what she could.

  The Rose Bowl bombs had all gone off, but the Rose Bowl was fortified for something like that. “They were planned strategically where they would do the least damage. From the location of one of them, it looks like the bomber figured that out. He moved to a more structurally important location and tried to inflict some real damage. He did some. But only one bomb, it didn’t kill anyone.”

  “So no one at the Rose Bowl?” Donovan was in awe.

  “There are injuries, but no deaths.” She smiled, her relief again palpable and Donovan wondered if she would run out of it. Just deflate and disappear. “At the Santa Monica Pier, Kellen put them into the Community Center—which is closed today. No one was there that we can tell. It’s almost completely destroyed, but no one was hurt—except the bombers. And at UCLA he turned them to an old theater across the street. It’s getting refurbed, same with the lofts downtown, they were next to the Tower Theater. They destroyed the building and themselves, but not anyone else.”

  He heard footsteps in the hall. His doctor—the man had a slightly uneven gait. Donovan asked quickly. “The bombers?”

  She looked down, shook her head. “All gone. I think Kellen set them up with remotes and then set his own remote. They all went, they must have known—”

  The door opened and Eleri
looked up but finished her sentence as it was meaningless without the rest of the information. “That they would get alternate last minute instructions.” She leaned close to whisper the last part before moving back out of the way. “He planned the whole thing to look like a real attack but then turned them toward each other and detonated all of them, still holding their bags, as soon as they were in place.”

  Donovan almost smiled, but the doctor looked grim. “Dr. Heath.”

  He nodded. It had been a while since he’d been addressed that way. He was almost used to “Agent Heath” now.

  “This isn’t good. But you probably already knew that.” The man was older, white haired, with horn-rimmed glasses. He seemed amiable, but not like the kind of doctor that would do anything aggressive to treat things. Then again, Donovan clearly needed something done. He’d had only a dose of Advil relatively early in the process.

  The doctor posted the x-rays on the light box and flipped it on, seeming surprised when Eleri took a closer look. But he turned his attention back to Donovan. “It’s broken. You can see here.”

  He gestured with the pen at an obvious crack in one of the bones that fit together to make the ankle, then another. “And here. It’s a toss-up between casting it and surgery.”

  Donovan nodded, waiting for what he knew was coming.

  “Son, you’re a physician. You have to be aware that you have some unusual anatomy.”

  Despite the fact that Donovan nodded, the doctor continued to talk, pointing out one anomaly after another. Nothing was horribly out of place, nothing too abnormal, but Donovan knew, one oddity in a bone was just that, an oddity. What he was was something far more.

  “I’d love to write this up in a medical journal. Take more x-rays—”

  “No.” He stated it firmly and wondered if it would hold.

  “You have to know what these things mean to medicine, son. You have a duty—”

  “No.” He stared at the man. “I am a physician. I know exactly what happens when these things get written up. I’m also an FBI agent who is incapable of doing my work if I have physicians wanting my x-rays and writing me up all the time. So, yes, I know exactly what’s at stake.” More than you do. But he didn’t say the last part.

  “It wouldn’t be invasive. People on the street wouldn’t stop you.”

  “I know exactly what it is. And the answer is ‘no’.” He looked at the older man, who still seemed to want to push. His expression at Donovan’s conviction still seemed doubtful.

  Eleri held back, not saying anything, but watching carefully.

  Donovan did what he had to. “If any of this turns up anywhere, even at your dinner table, you’ll hear from the FBI. Do you understand?”

  The man looked a bit dubious until Eleri stood next to the bed, feet planted and pulled her wallet. She flipped it quietly open as if asking the doctor to check her credentials. “Doctor-patient confidentiality requires that you respect my partner’s wishes regarding any dispersal of his medical information. He’s been aware of the malformation for years, he worked hard to pass all the Bureau physical tests—”

  Donovan almost laughed. She was playing the handicapped card.

  “—and you have no right to interfere with any of this. Now, will you treat him as he requests—which is any patient’s right—or will we need to enlist the help of another physician?”

  “I’m good.”

  He finally backed down, assuring them he’d be back to set the ankle shortly.

  Even though Donovan was sure the doctor had gone, he’d still whispered the next line. “Good thing he didn’t get x-rays of the rest of me.”

  She smiled, then jerked. “Oooh. Wait.” She spoke into the air, then to him. “Put your earpiece in.”

  She motioned as though he could will it into his hand from where he lay in the bed, only partially clean after getting blasted and rolling in the dirt. He’d accepted the stupid gown, knowing that not wearing his clothes would make the staff less likely to see the massive discrepancies between the clothing and his injuries. So far, no one had asked and his clothes were wadded in a clear plastic bag, waiting to be burned. The earpiece was down in there and he motioned to Eleri to dig it out.

  Once he finally had it in place, she said, “Go” and information started pouring in.

  Walter was on the line. “So Rollins said he had intel to trade. And I still think you didn’t need to bring him in. I think he’s on our side.”

  “He attacked me.” Eleri protested. “And I only cuffed him, I didn’t arrest him or even Mirandize him!”

  “He says he was just trying not to get hanged for treason—hey! Don’t shoot the messenger.” Walter added the last preemptively. “I think he’s okay. He’s trying to prove it. Eleri already knows this; she gave the go-ahead for the search of his apartment. And we looked exactly where Cooper said. Well, we got a lot of something.”

  “What?”

  “Fifteen notebooks—almost diaries—kept by Ken Kellen.”

  “What!” Donovan nearly shouted, startling the tech who wheeled in the cart with all the supplies for a plaster cast. Donovan looked at the young girl and shook his head no. No plaster cast. “Air boot” he mouthed.

  “The doctor ordered a plaster cast.”

  “Yeah, but I want an air boot.” He told her.

  “What is he talking about?” Walter asked into his ear and he let Eleri field it while he explained that he wasn’t taking a full plaster cast.

  He caught the next part as the girl wheeled the cart out of the room. She probably wasn’t a girl. She was a tech, she just looked young and he was only half focused on each side of the issue, his care and the intel coming in simultaneously. He focused back on Walter.

  “We’re going through them now, but the latest entries document him planning exactly what he executed. Telling his superiors that he was hitting major targets, then, on his own, diverting the locations and blowing up only the cell members.”

  Donovan sat up. “Is Ken Kellen really dead?”

  “Forensics seems to say so.” Eleri answered both to him and to Walter as the doctor walked back in.

  “Air boot,” he said to the man.

  Maybe if he repeated it enough, he could get out of here. He was starting to believed he needed to get out of here. Once the man finally wrote up that the air boot was not his recommendation and had Donovan sign himself out on an AMA—against medical advice—form, he spoke briefly, “I still have to set the ankle.”

  The medical grade brace was coming, along with crutches. Not ideal. But neither was the situation.

  “Can we recover some of the tech from Kellen. From his body? From his place? Can Rollins find it?”

  “Probably.” Eleri looked confused, like she would say more, but he didn’t let her.

  “Kellen was the link to the top of the chain.” Donovan pushed the words out fast, as though maybe saying them quicker meant he wasn’t as crazy. “Maybe we can track who he talked to and shut down more than just this. Ken Kellen was Fracture Five.”

  46

  Eleri wanted to rush into the offices at home base, but she couldn’t. She had to drop Donovan at the elevator and it took a minute for him to operate the crutches and get out of the car without putting weight on the bad ankle.

  Despite his demand for an air boot rather than a cast, he wasn’t going to mess with it. Eleri had no idea how his ankles worked other than his one-off explanation a long time ago that it was “kindof like being double-jointed, everywhere.” But she figured he knew how they worked.

  Donovan had taken a huge risk for the case. She would never get in the way of him being healthy, but she desperately wanted to drop the car and race upstairs. Instead, she parked, walked back to the elevators to find that Donovan was holding the door propped with a crutch and waiting on her.

  Marina had been leading a rapid fire “read and report” from Ken Kellen’s journals. So Eleri wasn’t surprised to find the room ready to update them. What she was surpris
ed by was the cheering and clapping.

  For a moment she was flattered. But she’d been on a team, and they weren’t done yet. She said as much.

  “Have we confirmed cell members at each explosion site? So we have a record of the dead?” Eleri turned to Marina for that. They could cheer later.

  “Yes, for four of the sites. We have three unidentified total there. And we have only Ken Kellen at the observatory. The other three are unknowns.”

  After checking the lists and finding names she recognized—Aziza, Alya, Officer Davies, and more—among the dead, Eleri heard Donovan speak up about the unknowns at the observatory. “I have those.”

  “What?” Some people turned and looked at him. “There was one agent on one woman, and he lost her going around the side. The other agent lost his guy on a dirt bike.”

  “And how would you get the fourth member?” Another agent asked.

  “I was there. I was just outside the circle right before it exploded. I can get you faces, thus names.” He hobbled over to the table and sat down, pulling the head shots—some were mug shots—toward him and he pushed three back. One Indian man, one Calabasas man, one Jewish girl. He pointed to the last. “Her name is Avital. I don’t know her last name.”

  “Ben-Adam,” another agent commented. “I knew you’d been near the blast, but not that close. How did you get away?”

  “I ran. I ran track all through high school. I guess some things don’t leave you.” He put that out there as though it explained clocking forty plus miles per hour sometimes. There were advantages and disadvantages, Eleri guessed. She scanned the faces, finding Cooper Rollins sitting in the corner, still hand-cuffed. He looked at her and leaned back, as though he were pulling away. Odd.