The NightShade Forensic Files: Echo and Ember (Book 4)

by A. J. Scudiere

  “Eleri! Snap out of it.”

  “Snap out of what? Donovan?” She still couldn’t see him.

  He glared angrily at Christina and Dana and tried another tack. “Can you smell the forest? Do you hear the animals? Can you feel the sun on your skin?”

  “What? . . . No. Now that you mention it, the feeling here is weird. I almost feel like I’m sitting, but I’m walking.” She looked around as though trying to find her bearings, simply not seeing the standard, mid-level hotel conference room around her. Wade was conducting experiments on himself—plugging and unplugging his ears, touching his skin with different pressures then reaching out as though to press the back of his hand to something. He then reached out to Eleri.

  “Eleri.” He turned, his eyes finally seeing her. She looked at him and he spoke again. “You’re the only thing real here.”

  That was it. Donovan almost dove across the table to strangle Christina. At least he hoped that would make her stop. It was Dana who held up a hand, signaling everyone to be still.

  “What?” Eleri sounded startled, but this time when she looked at Donovan she saw him. She reached out to him, touching his arm as he watched Wade knock on the table, then slide his hand across the surface until he ran into Eleri’s hand. She grasped his, the three of them now making a chain.

  “You might feel a very, very slight buzz in the back of your skull. But that’s what Christina can do.” Dana said it as though she’d slid a quarter across the table without touching it. Donovan had seen their boss, Westerfield, do exactly that, but this took the cake.

  “That’s not okay.” Eleri glared, her eyes darting between the two other women.

  “Which is why I don’t do it unless I have to.” Christina started back.

  “No. No wars. This is on me.” Dana held a hand out between them as though they were junior high girls fighting over a boy. Somehow it still worked, though Donovan was holding his jaw in, fighting the intense urge to roll his shoulder blades and pop them into his alternate form. He saw Wade was breathing heavily, too.

  Dana spoke calmly and clearly. “She’s done it to me, too. I know it’s scary as fuck to realize you’ve been played, and that it worked so well. But it’s important that you understand it, too.” She made eye contact with each of the three of them, clearly in charge. “If the time comes that she has to use this to subdue a suspect, you need to know what’s happening. What that person sees and hears, how much they believe it, so we can all act accordingly.”

  There was a pause. Since no one else said anything, Dana filled it in. “We need to get to these cases. I’m sorry that had to happen, but you needed to know. Trust me, Christina has the utmost integrity. She doesn’t use her ability unless she must. And she’s only used it on me to show me what it was like, just like with you. She’s never done it again.”

  Donovan felt the words escape, though he knew he shouldn’t say them. “That you know of.”

  5

  Eleri still felt her body buzzing by the time they broke for a late lunch, though she wasn’t sure if that was an actual physical after-effect of being mind-altered or if it was psychological from trauma.

  Dana was smart enough to split them up for the meal. She and Christina went off their own way, as though Christina might need comforting. As far as Eleri was concerned, she could just zap the two of them into a magical forest with a unicorn.

  The other two left Eleri, Wade, and Donovan sitting at the table to determine what to do. Eleri couldn’t decide.

  Wade grumbled under his breath, “Christina can suck a bag of dicks,” and Donovan exploded into belly laughs the likes of which Eleri wasn’t sure she’d ever seen before.

  Was it real?

  She reached out and touched him even as he jerked away—a consequence of tear-forming guffaws. He wiped at his eyes and looked up to Wade. “That’s exactly what I said.”

  Her stomach turned and her nerves buzzed. Eleri had seen a lot. Most cops and agents had. So had paramedics, firefighters. There were professions like hers where the daily plan was to see the worst of the worst. She hadn’t thought she could still be flipped upside down. Hell, she was in NightShade. Nevertheless, Christina Pines had done a number on her with a forest and a path and a beautiful dapple of sunlight shining down.

  Did it matter that the forest was the one the house was in? The house she’d been dreaming about for months. Small, square, with the door set at an angle into a porch at the corner of the front room. Had Christina pulled that from her head? Surely, she couldn’t have just invented the exact same place . . . then again, maybe Eleri’s memories had been altered. Maybe the house was different, and her mind was simply putting these things together now . . . She didn’t know and couldn’t even figure out how to figure it out.

  “Eleri.” Donovan’s hand waved in front of her face.

  “She needs food.” Wade chimed in.

  “I don’t want to eat.” She felt muzzy. Her lip curled at the thought of food.

  “You need it. It’s beyond disconcerting.” Donovan told her as he pulled her up by the hand, brooking no disagreement as they headed out.

  She probably did need food. At least she should have it nearby if she changed her mind, so she tagged along. Her voice stumbled over itself as she tried to put the pieces together. “It’s not just that it’s strange, it’s that it’s violating.”

  “That’s it.” Both Donovan and Wade said together. Their stereo responses were starting to get on her nerves. Clearly, she needed food.

  Not fifteen minutes later, each of them was feeding their faces with what must be a one-pound burrito and she was at least somewhat eating a salad she’d composed herself. It was a burrito salad, maybe not the best food option for someone who didn’t want to eat, but neither of the guys seemed to notice.

  Her stomach had settled by the time they returned. Christina seemed her usual reticent self, not contributing much. Was that all she did? Hang around and wait to override someone else’s senses?

  Okay, that was mean. Clearly, Christina had at least passed all the coursework at Quantico, just like the rest of them. She’d also started as an analyst and worked her way to agent. She must have some redeeming qualities.

  Eleri pulled the second half of her salad out and set it on the table with the plastic fork and paper napkin she’d grabbed. Dana gave it one glance then decided to ignore it. Eleri ate.

  “Are we ready to dive back in?” Dana looked pointedly at each of them, even her curls didn’t move when she was in boss mode.

  Eleri nodded and took a defiant bite. She was embracing her inner pre-teen but she didn’t care enough to quit. Besides, they were already divided, Christina and Dana on one side of the table, Wade, Donovan, and herself on the other. Plenty of space between them and us.

  They tried to discuss various files each of them made a case for, but the conversation was stilted. Dana put her face in her hands. “Look. I know it’s awful when she does that, but she won’t do it to you again.”

  Before Donovan could do more than lift his eyebrows, or before Eleri could huff out a breath, Dana spoke again. “I know it for the same reason you do. Her Extrasensory Altered Reality Projection isn’t complete. There’s always a sense or two missing. You can always identify it. So she can’t trick you anymore. If you ever doubt reality, you can test the environment. Hers won’t hold up.”

  The silence grew awkward. Again, Dana filled it. “And she’s a damn good researcher. What’s your next file?”

  The conversation got better; Eleri could feel it becoming a little easier as they moved to a common ground—scientific analysis. Never mind that the analysis was of dead bodies, non-object-linked strangulations, fire, and a singular missing person under arson circumstances.

  Her salad bowl empty hours later and her ass asleep, Eleri tried to sum up what they had. A handful of cases overlapped and deserved further research.

  Body Number One—according to the original files—was Leona Hiller. She’d been burne
d. The fire had not stayed around her. But she also appeared to have been strangled. The odd thing—well, one of many, Eleri mentally commented—was that she had no hand marks on her neck. No ligature marks, no mechanical marks at all. The burned flesh made it difficult to tell and she’d later been cremated. But the M.E. on that case had gone above and beyond—finding a broken hyoid—crushed in five places. Which was odd as hell. Her findings indicated that Leona Hiller had been strangled by something like a corset for her neck. It put perfectly even pressure all the way around her throat—unlike, say, a hand or a garrote. And this thing slowly and uniformly cut off her air until she died. Her lack of smoke inhalation was what led the ME to check.

  “She’s good.” Donovan had said of the report with an air of respect. Eleri had agreed, thankfully. The report was all they had with the body in ashes.

  One of the “possible” cases had no fire but had a very suspicious and similar strangulation. It made the pile.

  They also had four deaths with suspicious fires. What clearly looked like accelerant use but with no accelerants found at the scene in three of the cases. In the fourth, the fire was deemed to be caused by flashover—when the room became so hot that multiple pieces of furniture and walls just burst into flames—but it achieved flashover without the arson investigator being able to pinpoint the initial fire. He left it as an unknown, because no start point wasn’t possible.

  Dana rubbed her eyes. “We need dinner. I’d like to have it together. And with no work—not this case anyway.”

  It wasn’t what Eleri would have chosen. She was looking forward to locking herself in her room and ordering room service. She hadn’t planned on even talking to Donovan, but they had to make this team work. Using “Extrasensory Altered Reality Projection” on them was not the way to team build. Maybe Dana had missed that memo. Still, Eleri didn’t feel she could say no to dinner. If this team fell apart, it wasn’t going to be her fault. “Sure, but I have one more I want to put in the pile.”

  “Okay.” Dana sighed. “Last one.”

  Eleri pulled out her paper file, enjoying the weight and objectivity of it. “No bodies.”

  “Then why . . .?” Wade asked.

  She noticed Christina stayed mostly silent.

  “Fire. Bookstore. Blazed through the place. Downstairs, upstairs, it started at the front door, though witnesses say no one was there to start it. Only the bookstore owner and two patrons were trapped inside.”

  “But no bodies.” Donovan supplied. “Honestly, the neighbor’s sun catcher could have focused light inside the front door. It would be just like burning ants. Boom. Fire. It was full of books and the people had time to get out.”

  “It’s believed the patrons all made it out the back door, but everything was ash in a matter of minutes.” Eleri commented.

  “I don’t get it.” Dana looked at her oddly. She shook her head, the curls bouncing now, her authority having dissipated. She blinked as though her brain didn’t work well.

  “Books don’t burn.” Eleri said.

  “Paper burns and burns well. Of course, books burn.” Donovan sighed.

  Wade’s hand lightly slapped the table. “No, they don’t.” He was looking around the room, his eyes darting with the speed of his brain. “Fire is carbon based compounds plus oxygen. The book is paper, but you know—” he looked at them now, “when you kindle a fire with paper, you crumple it. You give it oxygen spaces.”

  Eleri nodded along. “A bookstore has books shelved side by side by side. Tons of paper, but no oxygen. The covers or the spines that show will burn. But if a book is closed, even if it’s the only book on the table, it will be a long time for the middle to burn. Many books are even denser than wood and burn slower.”

  “But the place went up in a matter of minutes.” Dana reiterated.

  Eleri nodded. “Not a single book salvaged.”

  “Add it to the pile.” Dana motioned to the “pile.” Some of the files were just scraps of paper with the name of an e-file. Some were actual folders with documents and pictures that Eleri and Dana had brought. Christina—who had scribed most of the meeting on her laptop—gathered the “pile” and put it in her computer bag as they cleared out.

  Dana told them where they’d be eating—didn’t even put it up for a vote, but maybe that was smarter with five people. Eleri tried not to be petty. It didn’t completely work.

  This time she ate a burger with fries covered in parmesan and garlic. Normally, she tried to stay healthy, but between the last case and this one, she was ready for red meat and fried food, because fuck a good diet. If this was what this case was going to be like, she was eating burgers and burritos the whole time. She’d supplement with biscuits and mac’n’cheese. She was going to need comfort food.

  She cursed Westerfield for setting them up this way as she dragged her fry through ketchup. Quickly realizing she was starving, she’d eaten most of the burger at record pace. Apparently, sitting in a conference room and arguing about ways to die was heavy work. She smiled as Dana told about her childhood, growing up in a nice trailer park outside a town outside Knoxville, Tennessee. “My brother taught me to catch salamanders and frogs. Then he went into the military and I got a scholarship to the state university. I kept getting scholarships and by the time I hit grad school, the TA money was the best I’d ever lived. I kept at it.”

  “How’d you wind up in NightShade?” Wade asked as though she and her partner hadn’t brain-whammied them earlier.

  Dana talked about getting recruited as an analyst and doing that for several years before Westerfield approached her. Eleri was getting a picture that her boss carefully constructed his team, finding some odd skill and chasing the person down before convincing them they needed to be an FBI agent under his department.

  She took another bite of the burger, the tail end of it dripping barbecue sauce on the plate. She’d never eaten so many burgers as she had since she met Donovan. She then dragged another fry through the ketchup and the pieces in her brain clicked.

  She looked Dana in the eye. “We have to go to Burt Riser’s house tomorrow. I need to see the scene. With the arson investigator. I finally figured out what’s bothering me about the fire.”

  6

  Donovan stood in the living room of what had been Burt Riser’s home. It was still identifiable, but only barely. The overwhelming scent of wood, ash, and mildew almost forced him back, but he fought it. So did Wade, he could tell.

  He opened his mouth a little. Though it helped, it wasn’t quite enough. There were onions in the trash—now burned, wet, and rotting. Synthetic fibers had been used in the carpeting; they weren’t mildewing, but remained acrid even after this time. The house had once been nice, if a bit over-designed. Not anymore.

  Dana turned around to look at him, her eyelids blinking rapidly. She whispered, “Do whatever you need to do when the arson investigator isn’t paying attention.” She looked to Wade, too. “We’ll cover for you.”

  He nodded, huffing out his breath as though that would help. It didn’t. His sinuses still burned, his eyes teared, and he could taste some of it in the back of his mouth. Eventually he gave up and pulled the front of his shirt up over his nose and mouth though it only offered a little respite.

  Dale Dickens, the self-proclaimed “arson guy around here” led them through the burned-out shell of a house. He took point, automatically assuming that his job here was to give the agents a tour. He jabbed a fat finger at various burned pieces of wood, wall, and furniture as they passed. “These markings show the fire burned really fast. Strange one, that.”

  Donovan wasn’t sure exactly what he was looking at, but he nodded dutifully.

  At the end of Dickens’ little presentation, the arson guy asked what questions they had, what they were looking for specifically. He stood there, facing them in what used to be Burt Riser’s living room. Dickens put his hands on his hips as though convinced they couldn’t possibly have any questions, he’d done such a thorough job.


  Dana went first. “Why can’t we go upstairs?”

  “Well, ma’am,” he started, but Donovan heard the tone of “little lady” slathered on thick. “The structure isn’t stable enough to hold us.”

  Dana offered a slick-sweet smile in return. “Oh, I’m much lighter than you.”

  Apparently, she didn’t like the “little lady” attitude either. Donovan grinned under his shirt.

  “Heh.” Dickens brushed her off again. “It’s not about weight, honey. It’s about stability of the structure.”

  “Yes, that’s actually why I asked in the first place.” She turned and pushed on a load bearing wall. “The construction here is sound. I can see the drywall has been burned away, but in all cases, the center of the studs is still untouched, yellow wood. Also, if you look up, you can see all the burn marks on the ceiling, and it’s disturbingly uniform—not a standard fire, even with accelerants or flashover—and you can still see that the original joists in the flooring are intact. So, I’m not sure why you didn’t take us up there.” She stared at him, her eyes boring holes in his soul, her lips forming an almost sugary smile as she dared him to speak to her as an educated human.

  “You wanna risk your life and go up there, you just go ahead.” He finally waved her by and Dana marched up the stairs, sticking to the edges of the steps where they would be stronger and avoiding the railing. Above them, she took a few tentative steps that Donovan could hear very clearly, then she began jumping.

  “Totally safe!” she yelled down. “Not even fully burned up here.”

  But they’d known that from the report.

  Donovan looked at Dickens. “What do you think was the source of the fire?”

  For the first time, the man’s arrogance drifted away. “I honestly don’t know. It’s gotta be some new accelerant. You can see the multiple start points.” He jabbed his finger toward the floor, marking a darker ring where he appeared to be showing how the fire started. “But nothing shows on any of our tests. I notified the commission that we have something new in the game and we need to figure out what it is. I sent in carpet samples.” He jabbed his finger another direction where several squares of charred carpet had been cut away.