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    Fracture Five: NightShade Forensic FBI Files, #2
    Fracture Five: NightShade Forensic FBI Files, #2
    Fracture Five: NightShade Forensic FBI Files, #2
    Ebook559 pages9 hours

    Fracture Five: NightShade Forensic FBI Files, #2

    By A.J. Scudiere

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    About this ebook

    Eleri and Donovan are back! Nightshade's newest agents are in LA to bring down a burgeoning terrorist cell.

    To make matters worse, it's not just one terrorist cell, it's two. Or is it three? There is little to go on, only links between missing Army munitions and a veteran named Cooper Rollins. With his special ops training and severe PTSD, it's impossible to tell what kind of game Rollins is playing.

    Eleri and Donovan will have to use their unique skills to stop the attack before it happens. But in the crowded city, there are too many people who might reveal what Donovan is if he dares to make the change. And Eleri is starting to show signs of powers she didn't know she had, and can't control.

    On the surface the cells seem unrelated, each with separate perpetrators and different motives. But they are all linked by Rollins and the very disturbing passcode:

    "Fracture Five."

    Fracture Five is the second book in the NightShade Forensic FBI Files series by USA Today bestselling author A.J. Scudiere. This book can be read as a standalone, but readers who love paranormal investigations and FBI thrillers will want to read the entire series!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGriffyn Ink
    Release dateMay 12, 2016
    ISBN9781937996437
    Fracture Five: NightShade Forensic FBI Files, #2

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      Book preview

      Fracture Five - A.J. Scudiere

      For we are the granddaughters of the witches you could not burn.

      --author unknown

      We stopped checking for monsters under the bed when we realized they are inside us.

      --author unknown

      1

      burn hole

      Cooper Rollins figured he knew how to say goodbye.

      His son didn't. Christopher had sticky fingers and a wandering attention. He squirmed a lot.

      You're holding him too tight. His wife's voice was sharp as she stood over them. Alyssa Rollins knew better than to pull Christopher away from him, but she didn't have any patience either. Cooper!

      Lately it seemed her voice only grated. Was the change in him or in her? He couldn’t be sure. Cooper didn't trust his own senses anymore.

      Still, he abruptly scooped the toddler up tight and whispered in his ear. Daddy loves you, more than anything. Then just as abruptly, he let his boy go.

      Come on, Chris. Alyssa reached out with baby wipes and cleaned the sticky fingers. She didn't offer any to the man who was still legally her husband.

      Didn't matter. Cooper could wash his own hands.

      She didn't say goodbye to him either.

      Also didn't matter. She hadn't said goodbye to him since she'd said it in the grand sense six months earlier.

      For a moment, he watched the two of them walk off together—his son's tiny stride not quite keeping up with Alyssa’s. She was patient with him. She'd turned to sandpaper where her husband was concerned, but she was always soft with their boy. He'd give her that.

      Cooper had no legitimate complaints against her parenting. He just wanted to be a part of it—and not an every-other-Sunday, if-he-was-feeling-up-to-it kind of part. Unfortunately, it seemed he wasn't good for much more.

      He'd slept through their initial meeting time, so she was right to be pissy. He just wished she wouldn't be so sharp.

      Cooper turned away, unable to watch any more. Unable to wonder—as he always did—if this goodbye would be the last one. He'd been to too many last goodbyes. He’d missed too many of them, too.

      Inside his skull itched. On the right side. Above his ear.

      He was used to things rattling around in there—thoughts bouncing randomly, voices that wouldn't shut up, friends saying goodbye over and over—but the itching was bad.

      Someone was going to die.

      He felt his stomach turn and for a moment he wished that someone else could be him so he wouldn't have to have this feeling again.

      His skin grew cold, his breathing shallow, and he started to sweat.

      Noises came rushing back from his memory, putting him somewhere else. He couldn't tell if it was real. Not the noises, not the words, not even the gut-deep certainty that someone was almost done.

      Had he said goodbye?

      Would it be Christopher? Or Alyssa?

      Cooper felt the curb under his ass, though he didn't remember sitting down. A cigarette butt taunted him from the dirt in the gutter. A hand came down on his shoulder and a voice, louder than the others, asked, Are you all right, man?

      The sound that exploded from his throat was primal and out of his control. The hand shouldn't have been there. They shouldn't touch him. He curled away and didn't pay attention as the Samaritan muttered and walked off.

      A popping noise made Cooper look around, but he saw nothing other than beautiful, sane people walking down the street. They gave him a wide berth. The sun was out. A shadow from the puff of a palm tree brushed the ground next to him. He scooted away, his breath still coming in short gasps.

      It was too late.

      The popping noises, the wet color.

      He could see it, the awfulness of the vision creeping around the edges of reality, though he knew both worlds were real.

      It was already over for someone. He just couldn't remember who.

      2

      burn hole

      Eleri Eames looked out the window at the Pacific below her. The flight pattern took them out over the water, then swung back before landing at LAX. She felt as though she'd just been plucked from the opposite ocean and plopped into this plane.

      It was almost literally true. Her beach vacation had been ended early. Thoughts of returning to the office and waiting for another case to come along had been banished as quickly as she'd hung up the phone.

      She blinked, the world she was in now so different from her days with the profilers. Then, she'd worked at the FBI home office, each night she'd returned to her own apartment, left alone with her dreams. Now she was being thrown from one end of the country to another, a field agent under odd circumstances at best.

      Next to her, Donovan Heath flipped through a newspaper, his long face set off by dark eyes turned downward to the print. His jet black hair fell over his brows, slightly longer than the usual nearly-military style favored by so many agents. He looked like the nerd he was, not FBI.

      Then again, he looked completely human, too—which was also a bit deceptive.

      He flipped another page and Eleri pulled her shoulders to the side to get out of his way. First class. Wider seats. A magazine would have fit comfortably, but the man found a print newspaper. Where did he get that thing? Couldn't he e-read like everyone else?

      Biting back a sigh, Eleri reminded herself there wasn't much that Donovan did like everyone else. And besides, who was she to complain about a little oddity?

      Okay. A lot of oddity.

      She turned her gaze out the window again. Public access plane. No reading classified files. She was left turning the case over in her brain.

      Two bombs.

      Two people, practically vaporized in their own space—one at home, one at a rented office only he used.

      Connected by not much more than their method of death.

      And the hint of terrorism.

      She wondered if Donovan had ever seen anything like it in his ME days, and she wanted to ask, but did not want to start a discussion of bombs on a plane. Besides, would a medical examiner even get the body when there wasn't one? Likely anything similar in the past would have gone straight to forensics, or maybe odontology for a dental identification. If any teeth could be found.

      She wanted to ask him not to take up so much space, but she couldn't. He'd switched seats with her after she’d suffered a panic attack upon first sitting down. The sudden fear of flying wasn't her own, but the result of the seat's occupant from the previous flight. Three hours of near hyperventilation had permeated the upholstery and leached out into Eleri's conscious. Donovan absorbed no such feelings from the seat and traded places without comment.

      Eleri quickly shifted right, closer to the window, to avoid the edge of the wide newspaper as Donovan flipped the page again.

      Disturbingly, her stomach lurched as the plane began its descent into L.A. Not because of the dip in altitude and not even because she was headed to see bodies that were merely a collection of remaining bits of tissue in sealed plastic bags. Her stomach rolled because she was excited.

      She'd survived her first assignment and been given a second. She'd survived her partner despite great oddity, and he'd survived her. Eleri almost smiled.

      Leaning toward him this time she asked, Does the change in altitude hurt your ears?

      His expression stayed flat, his body going still. He only softly replied, No.

      He didn't like to talk about it, but she did. He was remarkable. While she wouldn't put him under glass, or cage him, or even call him a freak, she was going to study him. Hmmm.

      His ears were so sensitive. Then again maybe not so much when in human form. Not that she could say such things on this plane.

      People around her were putting their things away, pulling out their earbuds, and starting to look around as they approached the runway. Eleri didn't have much to gather—her bag at her feet, her firearm checked in her luggage. There had not been a Sky Marshal on this flight, but she hadn't wanted the gun, could think of no situation where it would be better than what she had. Or rather, what Donovan had. She almost laughed.

      As she studied him and he ignored her doing it, he slowly folded the paper with nerd-like precision and tucked it under his arm. Then he leaned back and stared straight ahead for a moment before saying, What?

      Nothing. She shook her head and looked out the window as the ground came up.

      Fifteen minutes later, she stepped off the ramp and into the chaos that was LAX airport. Even inside, the air felt different. People pushed past them as they made their way to baggage claim. Despite not having to fight the crowd at the carousel—due to the badges and checked guns—getting their things was still a bitch. They still had to hit the lower level and weave their way to the office.

      No one paid them any attention. What a change from the small Texas towns they'd been in for their last case. There, they'd stuck out like sore thumbs, just because no one knew them and their family histories for about three generations back. Here, people bumped into her and didn't say 'excuse me.' They didn't seem to care that she carried herself like a cop. She stopped for a moment and someone bumped into her back.

      Shit.

      Donovan had moved on ahead, almost to the floor-to-ceiling window that was the baggage check. If he hadn't been so tall, she might have lost him in the effort to reclaim their bags, get a rental car, and find the local Bureau branch.

      The logistics were a struggle.

      Though she'd driven in L.A. before, it was always a struggle. Even the traffic patterns she remembered from before seemed to have changed. Wilshire was more crowded, 3rd Street less so. By the time they got to the office she was ready for a nap, though she didn't think that was very agent-y of her.

      It seemed the two of them didn't rate any special treatment. It meant she still had her carry-on slung over her shoulder as she pocketed the envelope and the address to a small house then followed Agent Vasquez down the hall to a conference room.

      Marina Vasquez was the only one who sat down with them and after a moment, Eleri became convinced she was the only one who was going to. On top of that, Vasquez was irritable. I've been on this thing since the first death, six months ago.

      Ahh. Finally, something Eleri understood. You finally caught something and you have to hand it over to us.

      Vasquez didn't answer, just pushed the slim file across the table, her eyes showing a rough combination of anger and acceptance. Eleri fought the urge to apologize.

      I found Rollins. The words were flat, just a self-acknowledgment that she'd uncovered the one break there was.

      No one found him yet, I thought. Donovan spoke before Eleri could, but she felt her own frown forming. Had something happened while they were in the air?

      No, Agent Marina Vasquez backpedaled on her choice of words. I mean, I found the connection; apparently I'm not qualified to find the man.

      Eleri couldn't tell the woman that it may have less to do with Vasquez and her qualifications than the fact that the case had been handed over to the NightShade Division.

      Not her fault, Eleri reminded herself and watched as Vasquez visibly swallowed her bitterness and became a professional. Here's what we know, and what you need to know.

      Flipping open the file, she began spreading out pictures by feel. You've seen this one, but these are worth looking at and knowing. He'll be hard to find.

      Her fingers deftly sorted through shots from various angles, some with sun-bleached hair that was nearly blond, some with beards and without.

      His eyes. Eleri reached out a finger and touched a photo.

      He's not above using contacts, but you're right. His eyes are a bit unique. Vasquez tipped her head, nearly black hair sliding off her shoulder in thick curls.

      Her brain churning, her gaze checking each picture for what she could pull from it, Eleri wondered if his eyes would look as bright all the time or if that was an effect of something else. But Vasquez was already onto the next topic.

      This then was the issue with the new job. Someone else started things and handed them over. Often reluctantly—most people didn't like having their project taken away. But the low-toned, female voice pulled her back.

      Here's his military history. I suggest you memorize it. It's quite varied and has likely played into why no one can find him. This time she looked directly at each of them, her eyes conveying the seriousness of the case and her attachment to it. They weren't supposed to get attached, but if anyone understood, it was Eleri.

      How did you find the connection? Donovan broke in again.

      This time Vasquez looked at him. Too much reading. First victim was just a retired man. Turned out he was retired military. Second was a psychologist in his own office. Cooper Rollins is the only name that showed up twice. It's tenuous at best, but the fact that no one can find him to question him is concerning.

      He knows you're trying to question him?

      Vasquez answered to Donovan again as Eleri watched like a spectator at tennis. He must. I told people to tell him we'd like to meet with him.

      This time Eleri added her own two cents. Military history like his, highly decorated, why wouldn't he come in?

      Exactly. Vasquez's face held that same disturbed look.

      Is he dead?

      This time the woman shrugged, once again disturbing the curls that wanted to stay on her shoulders. Could be. But there's no body. I've checked every death record, every morgue, every John Doe and every body that was ID’d but could have still been him. Nothing.

      As Eleri stood gathering the file, she assessed the other woman. Vasquez was young, at least occasionally irritable, and so far very good. When did you graduate the Academy?

      Donovan rolled his shoulders and felt the city pressing in. Eleri may have been happy to leave the beach house behind; she seemed to be dreaming of her sister more often there than when they were out.

      He, on the other hand, had loved the place with unadulterated joy. It was big, airy, beautiful, and stocked. Maids changed the sheets and brought food. Eleri cooked sometimes. There was sand on the beach and no one much around in the off season.

      Now, in the city, his skin felt like it wanted to stretch and pull. Just the thought of being surrounded by all these people made him itch. He'd been offered a Medical Examiner's position here once. He was good at what he did. Though the pay had been crap, that hadn't been the deciding factor. No, he'd turned down even the idea as soon as he heard Los Angeles.

      The rental house assigned to them was small, and he wondered how rich-girl Eleri handled coming from such a privileged background to this. For him, it was a step up from the trailers and one-bedroom apartments of his youth, but a step down from his own home in South Carolina. A far cry from a large backyard and a gate that opened onto a National Forest.

      His sensitive nose felt the pollutants moving up through his sinuses and down into his lungs. His ears picked up on traffic and the horns that people here seemed to apply as liberally as they should have applied sunscreen.

      Setting his bag in one of the two small bedrooms, this one at the back of the house, he wandered out to see where Eleri had gone.

      With the small square footage of the place, he could easily hear her in the front bedroom. A drawer rolled along a runner, and a slight whisper of fabric told him she was actually putting her things in the drawers. They would be here a while.

      Given the last case in Texas, then FoxHaven, and now this, they'd been in each other's pockets for over a month. And he didn't know when he'd get home again, get alone again. His chest pressed in, and he guessed the sooner he got the case solved the sooner he could run in his forest and breathe clean air filtered by trees. What he wouldn't give for a single dead body laid out on his table from a suspicious death.

      But it wasn't his table now. The job had gone to someone else. Now he had a soldier to find and two dead bodies that weren't bodies anymore.

      Eleri called out, seeming to know he was standing in the hallway. Maybe she wasn't quite human herself; he had been pretty quiet. What do you think of Vasquez?

      He paused. There was something more, something Eleri wanted, but he didn't know what. So he just listed his impressions and hoped that helped. She seems competent, but she was unhappy about having to hand the case over to us. She seems young. She's well put together, well spoken, pretty . . . Why?

      Alyssa Rollins is Alyssa Gutierrez Rollins—Hispanic and young. You and I don't have an initial visual connection to her . . .

      Click. Eleri's gears were now obvious. But Vasquez does. Even the name Marina Vasquez might appeal to Alyssa Gutierrez Rollins. As long as she didn't figure out she was being psychologied up to. You want Vasquez to run the interview? I got the impression she'd never been out of the box.

      I don't think she has either. But she's young, ambitious, and . . . This time she appeared in the doorway, her slim fingers holding some underthing he couldn't readily identify. She didn't seem to notice. Honestly, right now she knows this case and knows about Rollins better than we do. And she wants it.

      So we let her in on the case and we'll be her heroes?

      Eleri shrugged. Doesn't hurt anything.

      He agreed with her until an hour later when they were all standing on the doorstep of a row townhouse in Los Feliz, one of the areas east of town. The place was an old, two-story with outside entrances to the units.

      Donovan knocked, and the door to one unit over opened up. An older woman stuck her head out and immediately pulled it back in.

      Shit. Despite the t-shirts and casual pants, the three of them practically screamed 'feds.' He’d agreed with Eleri on every point about Vasquez coming along, but none of them had thought about the fact that they were massively outnumbering a young woman with a small child.

      He was hoping the woman wasn't home, that they hadn't screwed this all to hell already, when the door in front of them finally opened.

      Alyssa Rollins was easily identifiable from her file pictures. Even there her expression had been wary.

      It was Vasquez who introduced them. Names first, then FBI credentials, then an oh-so-soothing reassurance that her husband wasn't wanted for anything but his help.

      I don't know where he is. Alyssa Rollins looked over her shoulder, presumably at the child Donovan could hear in the background, but she didn't open the door any wider. What is this about?

      Vasquez surprised him. She was a master in action. Her eyes darted left, then right, then she leaned forward, whispering to Alyssa Rollins. It still took a few back-and-forths to get the woman to let them come in. They could have insisted, but even Donovan knew that wasn't in their best interests.

      He ended up sitting politely on an old couch that didn't quite distribute his weight and he watched the small child playing just out of reach. The kid stacked cheap plastic blocks and babbled occasionally as he threw them. Right on developmental target, Donovan thought.

      He listened for noises coming from the back rooms, as though maybe she was hiding her estranged husband back there. But the only thing that came out was a cat. It slipped down the hallway, stopping in the door, and stared beady-eyed at Donovan, before hissing and running off.

      Ignoring the conversation up until now, he was pulled back in by Eleri's voice. Less soothing than Vasquez's 'let's-be-friends' tone, hers clearly took the reins. Where Vasquez was asking open, general questions about Rollins, Eleri Eames brought focus.

      He was previously in the care of a Dr. Walton Gardiner . . . Eleri let it hang and Donovan cringed. That name. No wonder he'd gone into psychology.

      Mrs. Rollins didn't seem to notice that Eleri knew the name from memory. Yes. But not for a while now.

      Dr. Gardiner has passed away. She waited. So did Donovan.

      Nothing happened. There was nothing odd, no fear smell, no strange twitch from the wife. I'm sorry. I didn't know him.

      Clearly she didn't. The doctor wasn't an old man. His death would be a surprise. The fact that he'd blown up suddenly while sitting in his office chair was even more shocking. Alyssa Rollins didn't seem to have any idea about any of it.

      Donovan took over. The wife looked like a dead end. Was your husband seeing him regularly?

      He was supposed to, but he quit . . . About eight months ago.

      That was when it hit him. The smells here matched her and the child, but there was nothing indicating a man had been in this unit other than him. Does your husband live here?

      No. She looked down, We're separated.

      This time, Eleri jumped in again. You haven't filed paperwork.

      No, ma'am. Her voice was starting to get nervous, though Donovan couldn't read if that meant she was lying or was just a regular person unused to being questioned by three FBI agents in her own home. I don't think we'll reconcile, but we haven't started any proceedings or even filed any papers. She looked down at her hands.

      His partner offered a tight smile and leaned forward. They were almost done. One last question. When was the last time you saw him?

      Alyssa Rollins shook her head. I haven't seen him in six months.

      Donovan shook her hand, as did Eleri and Marina Vasquez before they left. They thanked her, Eleri left their number, and it was all a very by-the-book dead end. Cooper Rollins had not been in that apartment. Alyssa and the child had lived there a while. As had the cat. He'd smelled all of it. While he could tell Eleri that, there was no repeating that kind of knowledge in front of Agent Vasquez, so he held his tongue.

      Good thing, too.

      As soon as Eleri pulled the rental car out into traffic, Marina Vasquez announced from the back seat, She's lying.

      3

      burn hole

      Eleri stuck her gloved hand into the box and pulled out another zipped baggie. A series of broken and re-taped seals revealed who had been handling the remains of Dr. Walton Gardiner.

      Of course, a good part of the remains were already disposed of. The ME's office couldn't keep a nearly liquefied man for very long. They did, however, keep many samples. In the bags were small clear bottles filled with a DMSO and formalin mix to preserve the tissues. Tiny pinkish or yellowish blobs or even strips wafted under the surface as she looked at each.

      Eleri lifted bag after bag to the light, sorting them as she went. Adipose tissue. The tip of a finger. A larger jar with a strip of skin that had survived intact. A partial lower jaw bone with a small handful of teeth still anchored. It was cleaned of any clinging tissue and sat alone in its marked bag. She set it aside and kept sorting.

      Her mother, the perfect elite Southern wife, had never understood Eleri's need for the science. But after she'd been questioned repeatedly at age ten by FBI agents trying to glean information regarding her sister's abduction, Eleri had known what she would do. This was where it had all led her—holding the last piece of this man's jawbone and trying to balance dignity for him in death with justice.

      Eleri didn't test the tissue samples. They'd been tested already. DNA tests had been run on the adipose tissue and matched to a sample provided by the therapist's wife.

      It should have been enough. The L.A. County Coroner's Office had matched one of the pieces they'd cataloged, but they hadn't checked odontology. They hadn't checked several other things. If this was as big as her Senior Agent in Charge Westerfield thought it was, then Eleri needed more certainty than one small sample and a DNA match brought in by a family member.

      More effort than that had gone into simpler things like defrauding insurance companies. If this was a conspiracy, she wasn't going to trust a lone test.

      But the fingertip did look like Walton Gardiner's fingertips in the pictures she'd been given. She'd checked the face in the photos against his legal California ID. Eleri didn't doubt that could be faked—she'd heard tales of the California DMV. Right at this moment, Donovan and Marina Vasquez were at the Gardiners' home collecting more samples for their own cross check.

      The match they already had was from a root ball on the end of hair plucked from a hairbrush the wife claimed was the husband's. So easy to fake.

      Setting aside the fingertip, Eleri pulled the jaw out of the bag it was in, breaking the seal before signing and dating the attached record. She flipped open the file Vasquez had gotten from the man's dentist and set to work. Pulling the most recent dental x-rays, she set to matching the teeth on the side of the jaw she had left to work with.

      Luckily, Dr. Walton Gardiner had fillings and some relatively extensive dental work on the molars. No implants—which would have really helped, but she had a lot to work with.

      By the time Donovan and Marina showed up with their collected samples, Eleri was convinced she was in possession of the jaw of one Dr. Walton Gardiner, psychological therapist.

      She held it up as the others came in through the doorway to the lab. Donovan also showed off his baggies as he entered, but Marina gave away her newbie status by clenching a smile. She didn't seem to be able to fight turning a pale shade of green.

      Eleri didn't pay much attention to her. This is Dr. Gardiner's lower right mandible.

      Marina slapped down the baggies she'd been holding as though they burned her, while Donovan came in for a closer look. At home holding portions of dead people in his hands, he almost didn't seem to notice that his partner for the day looked to be on the verge of vomiting. Vasquez’s color change was growing more pronounced the longer she was in the lab.

      If that's Gardiner's jaw, then he's definitely dead.

      Donovan turned to Marina, still not seeing her distress. There's virtually no way to get that portion of the jaw from an otherwise intact head. Thus, this is evidence that his head is no longer functioning. And if his head isn't, nothing is.

      As Eleri watched, Marina Vasquez turned away and started puffing short breaths through her nose. She offered a short glare at Donovan, who only now seemed to realize what he'd done. He shrugged back, like 'how was I supposed to know?'

      Suffice to say, his skills lay with dead people, not live ones.

      Eleri didn't put down the bone. She called out to the younger woman before she could exit the lab. Grab some gloves, then grab a trash can to barf into. You need to come handle these samples.

      Why? You've got it covered. Vasquez started to push the door open.

      Eleri stopped her. Because you won't get far in this job if you can't handle the evidence with your own dignity intact. So come handle this now, it's some of the worst you'll see—tissue wise—and you'll barf and you'll learn.

      Marina hadn't turned around yet. Maybe I'll do it later.

      You'll do it now. Eleri kept her voice soft, but firm. I know you want to be on this case and I know we're better with your help. But I can't have you vomiting on my evidence or ruining our credibility at a scene. There’s a high possibility that we're going to come across a fresh case just like this one.

      Marina Vasquez did not leave the lab. In fact, she turned around so rapidly that Eleri was surprised how fast she'd committed. Until she realized that Marina was only committed to making sure her vomit made it into a waste bin.

      Donovan frowned and looked away, finally setting down the samples he'd been holding. Maybe he was trying to ignore the heaving woman behind him or give her some space, Eleri didn't know. He snapped on gloves and took the jawbone from her hand. You certain on these?

      She showed him the x-rays and talked over the sounds of the younger agent losing more of her lunch. She showed each of the points she'd compared and when she'd felt confident to call the odontology a match.

      Just about then, Marina Vasquez reached out and pulled a pair of medical gloves from one of several handy boxes, then grabbed the trashcan and walked over.

      Eleri looked at her. Are you ready? She didn't wait, just held up one of the bags she'd set aside. This is skin. We're going to test it against the DNA you and Donovan gathered today.

      Vasquez turned green and buried her face in the can while more sounds emerged.

      That's it. Eleri tried to be a little soothing. Donovan and I won't tell anyone. Get it out of your system now.

      Pale-faced, the other woman looked up at her, You mean literally.

      Eleri busted into a laugh at that one. Yes, I guess I did.

      I think Vasquez is right. Donovan bit into the burger he'd ordered from takeout, mayo and juices dripping down into the Styrofoam box as he ate with one hand.

      Vasquez wasn't here to either confirm or deny his appraisal. She'd left after Eleri had made her scrape several of the tissues to gather cells. Eventually, he'd had enough of the younger agent squirming while she held the samples at arm’s length and just blurted out, They aren't going to bite you. They're dead!

      He wasn't normal. He knew that.

      Eleri wasn't either. And he wasn't certain he was completely on board with his partner's 'barf-til-you-make-it' training plan. Still, she was the senior partner, even if she was a solid five years younger than him. She was also right that an agent who couldn't hold their shit together on scene wasn't much of an agent. They couldn't bring Vasquez along if she couldn't keep her lunch down.

      Donovan had no such problems. He loved red meat, nearly bloody, and even rotting body parts didn't stop him from getting hungry. His sensitive nose smelled everything, but was offended by very little.

      He looked up to find Eleri watching him. Her words startling. You're like a dog.

      I'm not a dog. It felt like his lungs compressed when she insulted him that way, and he remembered why he didn't like having friends. He stared.

      Dogs have very sensitive noses, but they sniff each other's butts. She took a bite of her own burger, then said almost exactly what he'd been thinking. You clearly have a fantastic ability to distinguish and catalog smells, but nothing offends you. Even I'm offended by some of it. But not you. It's like you have good smells— she pointed to his burger, —and neutral smells, but no bad smells.

      There are bad smells.

      Like?

      He sighed. Did they have to talk about this? When I mention them, I remember them. I'm eating.

      Oh. She nodded and dropped the subject. She hadn't washed her hair this morning, he thought. He could smell yesterday's scents on it and wondered if he should tell her.

      His own hair was thicker and slicker than normal and smells didn't absorb into it the way they did most people's. If he'd had Gardiner's whole head, he might have been able to sniff the hair to detect where the man had been recently. But he didn't have it. The man was mostly pink mist.

      With the parts they'd ID’d and tested, he and Eleri had confirmed that the dead body and all the parts they checked had indeed belonged to the therapist. So he turned the conversation back to the documents he was trying not to drip his burger onto.

      Vasquez is right about Rollins’ bank records. His military benefits are still going into their joint account, and the wife is spending them.

      How do you know it's her? Eleri asked before spearing a spice and olive oil covered broccoli. Her own sandwich was grilled chicken on some gourmet bun. He'd quit trying to figure out her eating habits a while ago.

      Expenses at Target, Ralphs grocery store. Vasquez managed to pull her store code and got print-outs of all her grocery purchases. He pushed a list toward her. Look, generic diapers, canned fruit, the occasional pack of disposable sippy cups. All at the store right down the street from her condo.

      Eleri nodded and seemed to be enjoying her vegetables. Her own papers were radiating farther and farther out on the table as she worked.

      Look, Donovan pushed another paper forward. There are withdrawals for cash at regular intervals. Big sums. At least big for what she's living on.

      So? Lots of people get cash. She took a delicate bite of her frilly sandwich and waited. He liked that she asked the questions, but didn't seem to expect he'd screwed it up. She was simply awaiting details. She trusted his expertise. Maybe that was why he stayed even though she sometimes said things like the 'dog' comment earlier.

      This withdrawal is downtown. He spun the tablet he'd pulled up a city map on and pointed near the ATM address for her.

      She can move around. Eleri watched him.

      Donovan smiled. Not this fast. He pulled out her credit card records. She checked out at her neighborhood grocery store—using her store card, just ten minutes earlier than the downtown withdrawal. The grocery purchase is for a decent sized cache, including milk. She probably went home and put them in the fridge.

      So it's definitely two different people. This time Eleri grinned. Didn't Vasquez say she canvassed the neighborhood with Cooper Rollins' picture?

      And no one claimed to have seen him. Donovan nodded. So he didn't buy the groceries at the corner store. But he is taking money out of their account on a regular basis. Or someone is. He's the only one who makes sense. But . . .

      But none of this makes any sense yet. She pushed back from the table. What do Cooper Rollins' therapist and his old commanding officer have to do with each other?

      If there had been an easy answer to that, he and Eleri wouldn't be here. He was getting the impression that their division of the FBI—NightShade—wasn't called out unless the case was really tough. He wasn't sure yet if he liked that or not, and he sure didn't have an answer to Eleri's question.

      What he did have was another question. Why doesn't Alyssa Rollins know that her husband was Special Forces?

      This time Eleri moved forward, the last piece of her sandwich set into the Styrofoam with a thunk that said she was paying all her attention to him. What do you mean?

      When we talked to her, she mentioned his time enlisted. But she said several times he was a 'specialist.' That's a rank. She seemed to think he was in Afghanistan the whole time he was enlisted. But our records say he was at Fort Benning and even in North Korea for some of it.

      She frowned. Shit. We need to find out what she really believes. Why wouldn't she know?

      So he was a Ranger, then quickly promoted and trained as a Green Beret. His unit reported to the CIA's SAD—Special Activities Division, Donovan moved his finger, reading from the notes he'd put together. He didn't know all these pieces and wasn't even positive he had it right. But it was a start. "And at the end he was discharged quickly. Very quickly from what I can see. That's unusual. But that's just what I put together. What gets me is that the benefits getting deposited into their account each month are for a Specialist with nine years’ service. Not a former Ranger and medically discharged Green Beret. And Alyssa Rollins doesn’t seem to know that."

      Cooper Rollins climbed the fence. It was ten feet tall, chain link, with barbed wire at the top. Put there for the express purpose of keeping him and his kind out.

      The fencing here was still pretty, clean and silver, the links still mostly intact on this side. Ozzy had wire cutters, and he’d managed to split the razor wire in one spot on each of the four sides of fence that separated this one perfect square of dirt from the streets that defined it and the cars and people passing by. Cooper gently pushed the sharp edges apart and threw a leg over the top.

      This area of downtown L.A. was an odd mix. It housed various districts—a block or two of one kind of business or another. This particular block was bracketed by the jewelry district on one side and fabrics and textiles on the other.

      It was a new spot for the veteran group, their old fenced-in square having recently been built on. Five blocks over, it had been next to the floral district and had smelled a bit better.

      Cooper landed in the dirt with a puff of gray concrete clay rising under his boots.

      Rollins!

      He lifted his head at the sound and spotted Ozzy's hand up in the air. Making his way toward the man was a task completed by practice and Special Forces training.

      The tents this group slept in dotted the ground. Some were bright and new. A small blue pop-up dominated his left, an old brown version was staked too close to the corners to gain any real stability. The ground was littered with makeshift personal areas. An old mattress covered with a smattering of dirty sheets and a blanket crossed what should have been a walking path. The owner was absent, but the things weren't touched.

      Ever watchful, Cooper counted about eight people currently in the area. About forty sleeping spaces, protected from the passing business people and shoppers by the ironic chain link. Insurance companies made the property owners install it.

      Though Cooper didn't live here like most did, and though he was cleaner and better fed than them, he was welcome. Almost everyone in this particular area was ex-military. They had their own code, which included greeting Ozzy upon entry. But that's who Cooper was here to see anyway.

      A woman he'd never met sat next to the man, and Ozzy introduced her right away. This here's Walter Reed.

      The nickname should have been funny, but was likely a nod to her prosthetic leg and hand. It didn't seem to get in her way though and she nodded at him then went back to eating some fried chicken. She would have been pretty if she were clean.

      Ozzy grinned. Walter's MARSOC.

      Cooper felt his eyebrows rise. She'd been Marine Special Forces. He didn't know a lot about it. But that lost leg and hand made more sense. It also meant she was trained in Unusual Combat—something he knew more about than he wanted to.

      Not knowing what to say, Cooper only nodded.

      It was Ozzy who picked up the conversation. You find that fracture?

      No. Just chatter. He'd finally gotten some of the key words he was looking for. But it came from down here. He pointed at the ground, but meant the downtown area. He'd picked up chatter once before, but it had been closer to Alyssa and Christopher.

      He knew that shit was all around, but it didn't make his heart race as bad when it wasn't as close to the two of them.

      Can you join up?

      I think so. He nodded to Ozzy. Can you keep your ears peeled? He gave the man some information, noting that Walter Reed was memorizing it, despite looking like she was just eating chicken and ignoring the world. He decided to address that straight up. Turning to her, he added, If you get any of this. Send it back to me? It's important for my family.

      She gave a small nod, maybe assuming that if he was a friend of Ozzy's he was a friendly.

      There are two women in the group that I can tell. Cooper mentioned.

      Ozzy gave a small start in surprise, but Walter didn't. Definitely MARSOC. Ozzy's reaction was the normal one. It was unusual to find women on the chatter. It made them valuable.

      Walter's eyes narrowed as she figured out what he was doing. Why would you join? Her voice was harsh.

      It's where the money is. It was all he could say.

      Walter Reed clearly couldn’t tell what he was up to, but she was suspicious and right to be so. Cooper couldn't say more—not in this tiny tent community surrounded only by chain link. Ozzy's spot was near the middle, prime territory.

      Shit. Walter's voice was soft, disturbingly feminine

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