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

by A. J. Scudiere

“If you leave, it will be against medical advice.”

  “I’m a physician. I’ve got plenty of medical advice.” He grinned to cover the fact that he was done with this place.

  Eventually, she made him sign out of his own accord, muttering how “doctors make the worst patients,” then muttering more when he asked about the morgue.

  It took thirty minutes to get down there. He needed a wheelchair—the medical team insisted because of the cut on his foot and that he was still on hospital grounds. But at last he, along with their badges, got the four of them down to see Dana.

  He stood on one flat foot and the ball of the cut foot. He hurt everywhere. But maybe not as bad as the center of his chest. Donovan told himself it was smoke inhalation and pulled back the sheet.

  He blinked as he spotted the plastic coming out of her throat. “I forgot you trached her, Eleri.”

  “I tried.” Though her voice was relatively calm, he could hear how hard she fought to keep it that way. “Obviously, I did it wrong.”

  “No,” he hopped and grabbed gloves, then hopped back. Feeling around the cuts Eleri had made and the makeshift tube she’d put in, he asked, “Is the other end chopped like this?”

  He didn’t want to pull it out. He’d be pissed if someone played with a body in his morgue like that, though Dana would be shipped to an FBI location for a more formal autopsy.

  Eleri shook her head. “The other end was already open. It was smooth, so I put the raw end up. Didn’t want to cut or snag anything inside. Not that it helped.”

  He looked at his partner. “You did it right.”

  Then he decided, screw it. He was going to claim this body anyway. Any FBI medical examiner could ask him what he’d done. And he’d tell them. Let them come at him. He pushed on her chest. Nothing. He grabbed a scope and looked down her throat. Nothing was out of the ordinary.

  He looked to Christina. “Could she have overridden Dana’s thoughts enough to make her think she was choking? And Dana believed it enough that she died?”

  Christina shook her head. “I can’t. I mean, I can make your skin feel like there’s a fire, but I don’t think I can do more than you can do with your own brain. I don’t think so!”

  He hadn’t meant to make her so distraught. But he’d needed to know. Hopping over a bit, he put the scope down the jury-rigged tracheotomy Eleri had devised on the fly in a burning house. And she’d done it well. He’d be proud if he wasn’t standing over Dana’s body.

  He stood up. “Her lungs are completely collapsed.”

  Christina started crying in earnest. As he watched, Eleri put her arms around the other woman, but Christina’s sobs didn’t lessen. Her voice wasn’t even scratchy when she spoke—which Donovan chalked up to the fact that she’d been standing right behind Grace Aroya, probably the cleanest air in the house. But it was Christina’s words that haunted him.

  “I was overriding her. I don’t know how she did it. Because I was pushing her to let go of Dana. Even after she passed out, Dana still couldn’t breathe. Whatever she did, it was more than I can do.”

  44

  They’d driven out here into the middle of the desert. Wade drove. Christina rode in the back with Eleri, even more silent than she usually was. Eleri wondered if she was plotting revenge, or at least regretting that Grace Aroya was still alive.

  For Eleri, the drive reminded her of heading out into the desert looking for the Atlas compound. Strangely, the case wouldn’t seem to let them go. This girl was the odd result of the Atlas Defect and whatever the Russian government had done to her mother. The only thing that kept her from sinking into bad memories was Donovan.

  “Stop it,” she told him. “You can’t take the bandage off. It’s a third-degree burn. It might get infected.”

  Jesus, the man had the letters M and D after his name. You’d think he’d know that.

  “I know.” No, he didn’t. “I just want to look at it though. It’s not third degree anymore, Eleri.”

  She’d seen it that morning. There had been a package waiting for Donovan when they arrived back at the hotel the night before. Though comfortable, the hotel hardly qualified as the home she was desperately in need of. Dana’s death was weighting in her down. On the one hand, it should—her boss and partner had died. On her watch. On the other hand, she couldn’t afford to have her mind distracted. Eleri had looked at the box and recognized it, handing it to Donovan to open.

  Christina and Wade had nearly knocked it out of his hands. They started in on What if it’s a bomb? and we have no idea who it’s from! But Donovan recognized the writing as a return address of sorts even if there was no formal one.

  “It’s from Grandmere!” As though she was now his Grandmere, too. Eleri decided she didn’t mind sharing.

  Wade and Christina had still gone through the standard procedures, only to produce a small, recycled plastic pot with a slightly foul-smelling brown poultice in it. Though the pot had originally belonged to some face cream, that clearly wasn’t what was in it now. Grandmere had scrawled in sharpie across the white cap “ARM.” Donovan hadn’t waited any longer, he’d sniffed it hard, pulled his bandage off, and slathered that crap on. He rebandaged it and then told Eleri she should stay with him, in case it made him hallucinate or something.

  She was pretty sure he just didn’t want to sleep alone. Neither did she. So she’d headed back to her room, changed, then fallen on the other twin bed, comforted by his already steady breathing, and she’d passed out.

  She’d woken to the harsh reality of Dana being gone, but also to Donovan’s excited cries about his arm. Though his burn had technically walked the border between second and third degree, he was now calling it a light second degree burn. He said it hurt like a motherfucker, but he smiled when he said it. Eleri assumed he was happy because he could feel.

  She reminded him to keep it sterile, then rolled her eyes because he’d just rubbed a random, slick, gross-smelling sludge on it. Who knew if it was sterile anymore. He’d declared, “I love Grandmere!” and gotten on with his day. So she had, too.

  Eleri saw the small, squat, square building come into view through the front window of the SUV. Armed soldiers stood guard at the door. One stood on the roof, too, constantly scanning in all directions. The building had a Faraday cage built into it and the frequency was hopefully jamming any mental signals the girl was putting out.

  As they parked and piled out of the car, Donovan putting only ginger pressure on one foot, Eleri asked, “Christina, are you okay with this? You won’t be able to override her.”

  Though Christina nodded in response, Eleri kept going. “We can turn the Faraday cage off while we’re in there. Wade and Donovan can smell her, I can find a way to see her. If you want to try it.”

  “Why?” Though the other woman spoke this time, Eleri didn’t find the sound comforting. “I did it yesterday. It didn’t work. I don’t see what the point is of letting me override her if she can still kill my friends.”

  As Christina visibly got herself back together, Eleri saw that she and Dana had been close. They were partners, had been long before Eleri and Donovan had even met. While Christina hadn’t spoken much, she and Dana had a strong bond. While Eleri had lost a boss and someone she respected and worked closely with, Christina had lost the equivalent of Donovan. Eleri couldn’t fathom it. Even having lost her sister, she’d still seen her sister in some form. Emmaline had visited as she’d grown. Dana was dead.

  At the hands of the small killer in the cell.

  Eleri nodded her understanding and led the way in. With Christina in the early stages of grief, and Wade only a temporarily reinstated agent, she was now the ranking officer. This clusterfuck was now her dog and pony show. But Dana had handed it over with the suspect in custody. All Eleri had to do was figure out how to keep Grace Aroya incarcerated and put a bow on it.

  She breathed out. She needed this interview.

  Inside, they looked through the two-way mirror and found the girl handcu
ffed to a table with thicker than usual cuffs. The kind reserved for the most dangerous escapees. Electing herself and Wade to go into the room with Grace while Donovan and Christina watched and stayed in touch through comms, Eleri girded herself. She wasn’t looking forward to this.

  As she walked into the room, she watched the young woman perk up from her abject boredom by a little bit. Eleri was starting to introduce herself, when Grace Aroya spoke.

  “Let me go.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll let myself go.” She shrugged, her expression as deadpan as if she were in detention for not turning in her homework.

  “You can’t get out,” Eleri told her, not liking the disturbingly placid calm behind her eyes.

  “Watch me.” Grace Faith Aroya, took an audible breath, but not a big one and blinked up at Eleri. Then she looked at the bar that held her right hand cuff to the table.

  As a high security suspect, she was cuffed separately to two separate bars welded to the table top. Her feet were cuffed to the chair which was welded to the floor and also to the leg of the table. The furniture was designed to be too heavy to move with any ease. Certainly not for a person of Grace Aroya’s size.

  But as Eleri watched, the point where the bar contacted the table surface began to spark and melt. Grace Aroya stared at it harder. Then she yanked up with her wrist, trying to bend the hot bar. It didn’t work.

  “It’s steel, honey.” Eleri said it as calmly as she could. She was wearing fire retardant clothing, no sprays or other products in her hair, but this girl could probably still set her on fire. Eleri could only hope the precautions would work. “You’ll have to get the bar molten enough to pull the cuff through. I don’t think you’ll get that to happen. Or get it to bend.”

  Nothing here was standard issue. Neither was the suspect.

  “Can we talk?” Eleri asked, pulling out the other chair—it was nowhere near as heavy as Grace’s—and waiting while Wade did the same. She listened to the slight hitch in his breath, but he didn’t give her the signal.

  “Sure. It’ll give me something to do until I break out.” Grace Aroya offered a small shrug.

  “Why did you kill Dr. Benjamin Kellogg?” Eleri left it open.

  “There are two of them.” Grace Aroya stated as though she were talking about cars or toys. “The older one tortured my father when he was kid. The son tortured my mother—”

  “How?” Eleri interrupted.

  “You really want to hear this?” It was the first time Grace Aroya even looked interested in the conversation. “Fine. He told her he could cure her.”

  “Of what?”

  “All the bugs and glitches in her system from the experiments done on her as a kid. She saw murders as they took place. She knew who was molesting their kids. Everything bad? She saw it. She had to live with all of it.” Grace Aroya leaned forward over the table top as though sharing a secret. “He told her he could cure her. But he forced her to have sex with him as some sick payment. It went on for years. And he never fixed her. He didn’t do shit. Then he threatened to tell my Dad.”

  Eleri felt her eyes narrow. “You’re fifteen. Your mother’s been dead for at least three years, how do you know all this?”

  “She’s been gone for barely a year!” The young woman snapped back.

  Eleri reacted with feigned surprise. She’d been looking for a more exact date. Grace didn’t seem to catch that she’d been duped. Eleri nodded at her as though understanding.

  “I had to stay hidden. When we were little, we got to go to daycare and have teachers come. But when we moved, when the good Dr. Kellogg started coming around, we couldn’t have that. They kept us in a room under the floor. There could be no toys, no trace of us in the house. We had to stay hidden so that monster didn’t find us. Who knew what he’d do if he did. And none of it mattered, at the end, he found us anyway.”

  That matched to what Eleri remembered from the small house. There was no trace of a child at all. She nodded along at the story, trying to look like it was all news to her. She zeroed in on one part. “Us?”

  Grace huffed slightly, her wrist tugging at the cuff inadvertently. There was a beat. “I had a sister. She died very young.”

  The baby had been a girl. “Was she Dr. Kellogg’s baby?”

  “Maybe.” Grace shrugged. “She was my sister.”

  So she had some feelings about some things, Eleri thought. “Did you kill the baby?”

  “No.” It was fast and clipped. A lie. Grace flipped her hands palm up, as though to show she had nothing in them.

  “Did you kill your mother?”

  “No!” Another lie.

  Holy shit. This girl had killed her infant sister and her own mother.

  “Did you kill your father?” Eleri didn’t add “too,” didn’t want the girl to know they knew she was lying.

  “No. Kellogg did that.” She sat back. “Dad came home and found him coming after Mom. Though he didn’t see the worst of it. He and Dr. Kellogg fought. Kellogg hit him, pushed him. Shot him, then shot him again, just to be sure he was dead.” Her jaw set.

  “You sound like you saw this.”

  “I did. We came out of hiding at all the noise. He told mom she had to help him bury Dad.” She made a move as if she would cross her arms but the cuffs stopped her.

  Eleri nodded and switched subjects. “Burt Riser?”

  “He was an asshole.” She looked between them, waiting until she seemed to catch on that they wanted more. “My Mom went out with him a few times. He made a move on us.”

  “On you and your baby sister?”

  “Sick, huh?”

  But it didn’t ring true. It wasn’t that the information wasn’t right. It was sick, and Eleri knew it could happen. There was something in Grace’s intonation; it was off. But once again, Eleri nodded. She threw out another name.

  “Leona Hiller?”

  “She was a bitch.”

  Well, it wasn’t an out-and-out confession, but damn, Grace Aroya was a killing machine. “How did you know her?”

  “She watched us.”

  “So you killed her? How?” Eleri saw that her questions were now irritating the girl. She seemed to have more emotion over being questioned than she did over killing a man her mother dated.

  “Strangled her. Burned the house around her. You couldn’t figure that out for yourselves?” She turned to Wade. “And you don’t talk?”

  “I talk.” He smiled softly, again inhaling. Eleri wondered if the girl had figured out what he was doing. If she had, she was Oscar worthy, she didn’t show it.

  Grace Aroya shrugged. She seemed irritated, but not like she’d caught on to Eleri’s tactic of questioning her on things they already knew, trying to gauge how much the girl was lying.

  Seeming to have had enough, Grace Aroya made her demand again. “I talked, now you let me go.”

  “I can’t do that, Grace.”

  “I’m going to get out.” She stated with the confidence of the young.

  “I don’t think so, honey.” Eleri tried smiling, but Grace was already lifting up out of the chair.

  “Let me go or I’ll kill you all.”

  Wade had sniffed the air and was signaling frantically. Grace Aroya was going off. The room was heating around them.

  Eleri hoped that Donovan and Christina had seen Wade’s signal from behind the glass. Her life depended on it.

  45

  At the hotel again, Donovan threw himself back onto the bed as though he would relax, but he couldn’t. Eleri was pacing in front of him, washed but still wet.

  They’d all known the plan. Wade would sniff, look for that hint of hydrogen that seemed to indicate Grace Aroya was going off. He would signal if he found it.

  The girl had answered Eleri’s questions calmly enough until the end. She’d started getting antsy. It had been a game of chicken then. Get enough answers but don’t push so hard Grace explodes in a fireball. Make sure Wade is on his game, and that Donovan neve
r blinks while watching for the signal.

  Then, Wade signaled.

  Donovan didn’t think his heart had raced as badly even the day before with the house fire. Though the fire had started unnaturally, fire itself was a normal thing. This was not. This would be an explosion. The split second it had taken the system to deploy had stopped his heart for an eternity. He and Christina should likely be safe behind the bulletproof glass, but he didn’t doubt Grace Aroya’s power. He was not ready to have saved Eleri from a burning house one day only to watch her die the next.

  But the sprinklers had come on.

  To call it a sprinkler system would be to call a tornado a light wind. The intent was to douse everyone in the room with freezing cold water, making it harder to light them up. Grace had clearly shown she was capable of burning human flesh directly. It was also designed to be a deluge that would blur Grace’s vision, making it more difficult for her to identify her target. Also, it should give Eleri and Wade the half-moment they needed to dive for the door and get out.

  They’d made it. Soaked and shaking, but alive.

  Grace Aroya had stayed shackled to the table, screaming as the water came down. The floor had drains, but still it puddled around her sneaker clad feet.

  The four of them had bolted the room shut, checked the Faraday system, checked in with the armed guards, and gotten the hell out.

  Eleri and Wade had sat in the back seat, dripping wet but not complaining, the whole ride back. Once back at the hotel, she’d showered and Donovan had laid face up on the bed, willing his heart to slow down.

  She’d come out, dressed but still with wet hair, and started pacing.

  “It’s wrong, Donovan.” She shook her head to herself.

  He watched her, wondered what Christina and Wade were doing, and listened. He’d love to pace, too, but the deep cut in his foot wouldn’t allow it. He considered checking in on his burn, but Eleri was in need of a sounding board, so he sat up and tried to participate. “About killing her mother?”

  “Yeah, did you think so?”