The NightShade Forensic Files: The Atlas Defect (Book 3)
The NightShade Forensic Files: The Atlas Defect
Book 3
A.J. Scudiere
The NightShade Forensic Files: Atlas Defect
Copyright © 2017 by AJ Scudiere
Griffyn Ink. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN: 978-1-937996-67-3
Contents
Foreword
Also by A.J. Scudiere
Introduction
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Introduction
About the Author
A big thank you goes out to all my beta readers . . .
You all are the ones who help grapple these stories into shape and remind me when to twist my readers up and when to let them breathe.
A huge thank you is reserved, always, for my family. My husband and kids are just all-around awesome. They make this possible more than they could ever get enough credit for.
This book is dedicated to Jack and Christina Pines.
An author could not wish for two better fans. They showed up at conventions, told their friends about my books, and eventually invited me to their home for a writing retreat. After making sure they weren’t huge Stephen King fans (Misery, anyone?) I booked a flight.
This book was partly written in their home. We started as writer and fans but are now true friends. I cannot wait until I see you guys again!
Thank you for everything. This one’s for you.
Want a free story?
Go to www.ReadAJS.com/free-book to get free short stories.
Look for other novels by A.J. Scudiere.
Available in bookstores, online, and at AJScudiere.com.
The NightShade Forensic Files
Book 1 - Under Dark Skies
Book 2 - Fracture Five
The Sin Trilogy
Vengeance
Retribution
Justice
Resonance
God's Eye
Phoenix
The Shadow Constant
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"There are really just 2 types of readers—those who are fans of AJ Scudiere, and those who will be."
-Bill Salina, Reviewer, Amazon
For The Shadow Constant:
"The Shadow Constant by A.J. Scudiere was one of those novels I got wrapped up in quickly and had a hard time putting down."
-Thomas Duff, Reviewer, Amazon
For Phoenix:
"It's not a book you read and forget; this is a book you read and think about, again and again . . . everything that has happened in this book could be true. That's why it sticks in your mind and keeps coming back for rethought."
-Jo Ann Hakola, The Book Faerie
1
Eleri looked around, unable to deny the prickle at the back of her neck but not seeing anything.
She high-stepped through the snow, sinking up to her knees more times than she cared to count. Though she was carefully wrapped up, the snow came above the top edge of her boots each time she sank in. It was just a matter of time before it snuck inside.
Following Donovan’s tracks, she tried to catch up, but her partner was nowhere to be seen.
Trees stuck out of the landscape, snow weighing branches and muffling sound in the stillness around her. Everything else was a blanket of thick white. All her senses told her she was alone. Only two things denied this clear fact. One—she knew Donovan was out there, ahead of her, sniffing out what needed to be found. And two—the prickle at the back of her neck.
She pulled her foot out from the hole she’d sunk it into and climbed once again onto the surface of the snow, hoping it held. She could see farther, hear just a little better from this spot about a foot and a half higher.
Donovan’s tracks went out of sight, a straight line of holes and drags where he, too, kept breaking the icy surface and then bounded forward.
She had all his clothes in her pack, as well as a blanket and emergency gear for both of them. Which was all well and good if they didn’t get separated. It was always a gamble: outfit him with what he needed and make his oddity more obvious or send him out unencumbered and bank on him returning safely. He hadn’t always. Eleri thought about the last time he’d been taken out, how she’d had to rouse him, cover for him, make up for the fact that he’d gone missing in the middle of a crowd.
Lifting her hand, Eleri checked the GPS. Donovan was headed off in a different direction from the coordinates. She frowned.
He wouldn’t go that way if he didn’t smell something, right? She’d have to catch up before she could ask.
Surveying the area once again, she spotted tracks in the distance. Not Donovan’s. She had flags in her pack, ground flags—which she now laughed about, she hadn’t seen ground since she got here—and tall flags. She pulled one and marked where she stood. Then for good measure, she grabbed a pink ground flag and used the weight to toss it up ahead, near where Donovan’s tracks shot off in front of her.
Just the thought of marking her trail sat uneasy. The national forest they were in was closed to the public now. The signs at all the entrances said it was due to weather, but Eleri knew that wasn’t true.
Some college professor had reported the human bone found in the forest, in this area. The initial filing triggered an FBI alert for a missing man, which hadn’t panned out. Whatever they had found, though, got through to her boss. Special Agent in Charge Derek Westerfield decided he needed his people on the case, and the next thing Eleri and Donovan knew they were headed to the Huron-Manistee National Forest.
Eleri veered off the trail, heading for the tree line and the other tracks she thought she saw. Had she been taller, she might have been able to look down enough to distinguish them, but she wasn’t. She managed three steps before she hit a weak spot and crashed through the thin skin of ice on top of the snow.
It didn’t hurt; it would just be embarrassing had she been trying to impress anyone. There was a sound, but she was pretty certain it had come from her own throat as her foot suddenly dropped out from under her. Still . . . something was off.
She should have climb
ed back out and headed on. Honestly, she couldn’t stay on the surface for all that long any way. Every handful of feet, she would crash through, then climb up and continue on. But right now, she stayed low, peeled her arms out of the pack as quietly as she could and scanned her surroundings.
The bulky clothing hindered her; she was no Donovan, that was for sure. For a moment, she considered leaving the pack, searching the area. But if she was caught away from her things, then what? She wasn’t fast even without them—the coat, the boots, the ski pants, nothing moved well enough for an easy escape. So she surveyed.
Nothing.
Eleri sighed. No evidence at all to back up what she was feeling.
In her old life, she’d occasionally followed her hunches and eventually found specific support. Since joining NightShade, those hunches had been admired rather than thought odd. She’d been pushed to develop them, use them, and believe that they weren’t just the occasional blip on her radar that may or may not be true. In NightShade, sometimes she was the only evidence.
Three years ago, even just one, she would have brushed this feeling off, told herself she was making it up. Now she knew better.
But there was nothing to support her odd feeling.
Slipping the straps of the pack back over her arms, she stood up. Waiting a beat for a shot that didn’t come, Eleri gave a mental shrug and headed again toward the tree line. She fell through the ice a handful of times, making the journey slow and probably getting her even farther behind Donovan.
The ranger had offered them both snow shoes. Donovan had, of course, declined. He had no need for snowshoes when he was going to do that weird double-jointedness/werewolf thing he did—that he still hadn’t let Eleri see him do—and go off bounding through the snow as his bad wolf self. Eleri, on the other hand, had read up. This time of year, the snow would have an ice layer on top of it, and at her weight, she wasn’t that likely to go through.
Well, she did. A lot. But she really couldn’t say if that was better or worse than sludging around in snowshoes—which she’d never used before. The rangers asked if she’d been in snow before. Of course, she had. Her family had homes in Kentucky and Virginia, both of which saw what she thought was decent snowfall. Especially Bell Point Farm, just outside Charlottesville. These past years, as the weather had gotten wonkier, they’d seen even more of it. So she said yes, she had seen snow. She’d ridden her pretty horsies through it. It sounded just as dumb in her head now as she crashed through one more time.
She was in great physical shape, dammit. Her heavy breathing was more the result of sighing than lack of stamina, but she felt like that kid in the Christmas movie, the one whose snowsuit was so bulky he couldn’t put his arms down.
As Eleri approached the tracks, she became more worried.
“Son of a bitch,” she muttered as she got close. Probably cougar. Looked like a big one, too.
She wasn’t worried about herself; she was hardly bait-worthy in all her winter gear. But Donovan was a threat, and he was heading right through the territory. Surely he could smell the big cat?
She told herself he would, then set about examining the tracks a little more closely. Had she not known what she was seeing it would have looked like only two feet hit the snow, but many big cats were known for stepping their back paws directly into the tracks of their front ones when in deep snow. The method was more efficient and meant the cat probably hadn’t just hopped down from a tree and gone for a stroll; it was definitely conserving energy for something.
“Son of a bitch.” She muttered it again. The tracks headed in the same general direction Donovan had. There was nothing she could do about it. She had a gun, but the ability to pull the trigger on anything but the flare gun was questionable in this get-up.
She headed back to her own tracks, to the path Donovan had laid out as he bounded happily ahead. At least the pink flag she’d thrown saved her from backtracking.
Maybe the cat was what was watching her.
The thought didn’t make her feel any better.
Picking up her pace, Eleri followed Donovan’s tracks still not seeing him. She did find a spot he’d marked for her.
The snow had been dug up in a neat paw-marked pattern, tossed back into a pile, revealing a singular neat bone. Eleri came to a dead halt. Tracks forgotten, she stared down at what Donovan had revealed.
It was a humerus. Her first thought was bear, the bone was so thick, the two pieces revealing that the marrow was long gone and the bone itself made to support more weight than the human version. Pulling out her camera, she snapped off a series of pictures before she touched anything. Then she grabbed a forensic scale and brushed away parts of the snow before laying out the marked ruler and taking more pictures.
In her previous cases, evidence was usually brought to her. One time, she and Donovan had searched a yard for pieces of bone, but there would have been no court case, no need to catalog it.
Now she just might need some of her skills. Or not. It might be an animal bone. She was cataloging it anyway, because Donovan dug it up. There were surely tons of animal remains out here. So why would he have dug it up if it wasn’t pertinent? She took another picture, then stared at the site, thinking.
Looking around, she saw nothing of use. Normally, she would find north with a compass, lay out a line or a grid if she wanted. Mark the site by GPS coordinates and triangulate the remains to several immovable objects. She sighed. Well, one out of three would have to do.
She looked down at the GPS and marked the spot. She would have liked a paper document but her gloved fingers were too fat to work a pen with anything better than kindergarten skill. This would have to do, the hair on the back of her neck was prickling again. She wouldn’t take the time to map it full out. Donovan wasn’t here and there wasn’t the option to call in more people.
She dug out the spot more, still not sure yet what she was looking at. She’d be more careful if it turned out to be human. But she kept her eyes open. Donovan marked it as something important. It wasn’t just that he’d dug it up. Small x’s marked the snow, a signal they’d worked out before he ran off. So she kept digging.
The pieces were scattered, but she found a radius and ulna—the lower arm. She moved the scale, took more pictures. Now she was equally convinced it wasn’t bear and it wasn’t human.
Forty minutes and seven bones later she was more confused than ever. What had Donovan found?
Down near the ground, she was practically soundproofed by the snow piles she’d added to the one Donovan had started. She peeked her head up and looked around, still seeing nothing but white. The sky was a little overcast, keeping the snow from glaring, but that didn’t make much difference.
The snow huddled in lumps that could hide rocks, bodies, or a plant that created a stop, building up a drift. The trees formed the edges of the white expanse, but beyond the first line lay only a dark tangle of branches, trunks, and undergrowth. Unless something came out onto the snow, Eleri wasn’t going to see it.
She rolled her shoulders, wondering why she still felt watched. They’d been out here for hours, separated, each with a task and she was following hers. Maybe it was because she’d learned some interesting facts on their last case. Donovan and his direct line weren’t the only ones of his kind. They could smell each other and they could smell something on her they didn’t seem to like. So maybe her paranoia was founded but not real, not here.
Eleri dug further, following where the bones pointed. There was every possibility the skeleton was scattered and she wouldn’t find any more, but she had a little more time before she had to go after Donovan, before the light faded. At least the day hadn’t been a wash. She got to dig up some animal.
With the break in the humerus, she’d made an educated guess about which way to look next, hoping for a shoulder, spine and skull. Instead she found the lower arm and some finger bones. That’s what had convinced her it wasn’t human. The fingers, too, were thicker than human hand bones should
be. But she was pretty certain—had the body decomposed intact and not been scavenged by other animals, hacked by hunters and tossed, or worse—she was aiming toward the skull now.
She stopped, stood up, took a drink of water while turning a full three-sixty and seeing nothing but the same trees and snow staring back at her. This time she set her timer. Forty-five minutes then she was done here. She’d have to come back. Normally, she would flag the site, but honestly, she didn’t trust this place. This spot was marked on her GPS and that would have to be good enough.
Eleri looked into the tree-line, uncertain if she saw a glint of light there. She didn’t take the time to cap her water bottle, just tossed it to the side and reached for her binoculars. As she held them to her eyes she saw nothing but trees. Dark patches in the woods that could conceal anything. She felt nothing but paranoia. There were three creatures out here that she knew of: herself, Donovan, and that cougar. Two humans—well, in both their cases there were arguments against full status—and one animal. She was certain there were other animals out there, but none that she could specifically account for.