Salvage: A Shadow Files Novel Page 3

  So, she'd spent a reasonable amount of the first few weeks feeling bored. The good news was, they had some other classes that challenged her. While GJ took copious notes, Walter tried to sit back and listen and understand.

  There was coursework on psychology, on victimology, and an amazing amount of information to be absorbed and fully understood on legal issues. As a serviceman, Walter had been told, "Shoot whoever they tell you to shoot." Apparently, that was no longer the case. Now she was going to be put out into the field.

  She would not only have to read people their rights and cuff them instead of shooting them, she would now have to make decisions about who she could and couldn't shoot. If she did shoot somebody, she was going to have to be able to defend that decision in a court of law. This was more than she had bargained for. And so was GJ.

  She’d expected to be dragging her new partner along behind her for a good part of training. Though she’d understood that from the start, it wasn't any easier than she'd expected. Now, having filled her own magazine to capacity, she turned and looked at GJ. Taking the piece out of her partner’s hand and grabbing a bullet, she pushed it down into the clip.

  It was an art form, she had to admit. One GJ had yet to master, or even get close to passing level on. Walter pushed another bullet into place with her left—fake—hand. She’d spent a long time in rehab, and then she'd spent a longer time learning to use her prosthetic. The prosthetic itself was a modern miracle. It could grasp with amazingly inhuman strength.

  Using the muscles in her arm and flexing or not, she could twitch the first finger. This allowed her to actually hold and fire a gun with her prosthetic left hand.

  By a series of movements ... twisting, pushing with her whole arm and using the flexion that was granted from the prosthetic ... she was able to push the bullets with relative ease—if not human-like movements—into the magazine that she held in her right hand. She pushed in a third bullet and then handed it back to GJ with a hard stare.

  "Okay," GJ said. "That was nice. But you have to admit that your metal finger doesn't hurt. In fact, it doesn't even squish. I'm pushing and pushing and my finger’s going to break before the spring at the bottom of that stupid magazine gives."

  In answer to this, Walter picked up the magazine in her prosthetic hand and used her human hand on the right side to push more bullets in. GJ was not amused.

  "Look," Walter said, "you have to do it yourself. It's not my job to do these things for you. You have to pass. I guess I could do it for you now, but I can't load your magazines for you all the time. You just have to get stronger fingers."

  "Yeah, I just have to lose the nerve endings in my fingers," GJ muttered under her breath. Then, louder, she said, "Since you're bitching about this, maybe you don't borrow my notes after class today or tomorrow or ever again."

  They'd been sniping at each other like this for days. It didn't help that they were together almost twenty-four/seven. In the end, Walter only watched as GJ managed to get the last two bullets down into the magazine. Her junior partner took a break between each one and she swore a bit under her breath.

  By the time the instructor made it around to check on them, Walter had been sitting with three full magazines for quite some time. GJ had just barely finished getting the last bullet into hers. Apparently, her precious fingertips were bruised.

  Then their firearms instructor said the one thing that could make Walter happy. They were going to pack up all the guns they'd assembled and all the magazines they'd filled. While they wouldn’t get to use a wide variety of firearms today—only the nine millimeters they'd been assigned by the FBI—they finally got to go to the range.

  They were started off on paper targets, something Walter knew well. Once you were in the field, once your targets were moving, that was a whole different game. And if your targets were human, that was another level she wasn’t looking forward to repeating.

  She was petrified as she watched as GJ picked up a loaded gun and aimed for the target. She wasn't sure that GJ was physically strong enough to handle the recoil on the nine-millimeter. But her little partner put both hands on the gun and held it steady. Walter had to admit that she was impressed when GJ emptied the entire magazine right into one small hole through the paper man's heart.

  "Good work," Walter said.

  GJ turned and looked at her. "You weren't expecting that, were you?"

  "No, I wasn't.”

  GJ shrugged. "It's not my first rodeo. I've shot before."

  "Clearly," Walter replied. She didn't say anything else.

  GJ was a little slow on the trigger, especially when compared to Walter, who’d trained herself to shoot first and shoot fast. Walter emptied her magazine in a quick, steady rhythm. GJ had paused to take a breath between each pull of the trigger. When each NAT finished, they set the gun down, turned, and stepped back, waiting for one of the instructors to come and inspect their work. Even GJ earned praise. Walter thanked the gods. Each thing she didn’t have to drag her junior partner through was a blessing.

  It was part of the training to watch the other NATs fire, to listen and learn as the instructors helped others. Honestly, Walter was surprised when she got several corrections herself. Apparently, the way you killed people as a marine was not quite the same way that you needed to kill people when you were an FBI agent.

  But she took the corrections and easily changed her stance, shifted where she was shooting, and did as she was told. She and GJ made several comments to each other about how to improve their own shooting. Then, when their next round came, they were placed side-by-side again.

  "All right," the instructor said in his firm, clear voice. "This time, I want a head shot. If possible put it right between the eyes. Go."

  Though she had ear protection on, Walter heard as gunfire echoed from the positions next to her and down the line. She fired two bullets, leaving two neat holes in her paper man’s face: one in the middle of the forehead, and one just at the top of his nose.

  Having heard the shot on her left, she moved her eyes over to check out GJ's target.

  "Shit," she heard from the next aisle over. "I parted his hair."

  Sure enough, it was hard to see at this distance, but the tiny bullet hole ran right across her paper perp’s skull according to the picture.

  "One more," GJ muttered. Then she pulled the trigger and left a nice neat hole between her picture’s eyes.

  5

  GJ raised her hand in class. As a perpetual student, the gesture was natural. As soon as she received the nod, she began speaking. Her instructor—she always thought of them as “professors” though technically they weren’t—did not have correct information.

  Looking around, she informed the class at large, "There's new technology that's able to break down the protein complex in a human hair. Hopefully soon we'll be able to do it with a single human hair, but right now we need several from the same subject to do the testing. Soon, that protein breakdown will be able to identify an individual person just like a DNA electropherogram would."

  The instructor eyeballed her. "That technology hasn't come to full testing scenario yet. It doesn’t yet meet the Daubert Standard.”

  "Actually, it does," GJ corrected him and went on to describe which phase of testing current trials were in, what the likelihood of a multiple protein match was being found to be, and so on. “They’ve identified over a thousand unique proteins that can be isolated in the hair shaft—no rootball or DNA necessary. Statistics alone says that should be able to reveal a single human individual. Though, yes, it would be important to be scientifically certain there isn’t too much overlap in profiles before it was admissible in court. But I suspect that day is soon coming.”

  Apparently, the instructor was not keen on her new information. Well, too bad. She had a brand-spanking-new degree in this. She'd been trained by the best in the business, and she'd been partly raised by her grandfather, the esteemed Dr. Murray Marks. She'd been fed forensics since she was an i
nfant, and she wasn't going to let any FBI instructor tell her what science did and didn’t exist.

  When she finished explaining the new stages of hair analysis, the instructor over-politely asked her to cite her sources. Apparently, he thought he was going to catch her. She cited them. She’d done scut work in the lab that was performing the initial trials. But she just listed the university where the studies were being performed, information about results of current trials, and the names of the three lead professors on the case, as well as another university where repetition studies were already well under way.

  The students sat in neat rows at long tables, taking copious notes during class, though they’d all stopped writing when this “current state of the science” debate broke out.

  She was opening her mouth to speak again when Walter elbowed her in the ribs. Though GJ didn’t care that she’d started something, she did shut up for the rest of class even though she really wanted to tell the instructor that he needed to be more forceful about emphasizing the care with which an evidentiary skeleton should be removed from the ground. When they walked out at the end of the hour, Walter turned and said, "That wasn't your smoothest move."

  "Oh, really?" GJ quipped. "But explaining yesterday to the instructor how to build a firing pin out of a paper clip, when he'd just said it couldn't be done? That was your smartest move?"

  Walter at least had the decency to shrug.

  They were supposed to have the upcoming weekend off. GJ had never looked forward to a weekend more. Generally, weekends were for studying and sleeping in and eating pancakes and capping the day with a drink. She had plans to do all of it—except the damn studying—in spades for two whole days.

  She found herself wondering again if anyone at her grandfather's house noticed that the power never went off when she wasn't there. More than that, she found herself wondering what had been in the kettle when she left several weeks ago. And she wondered if anything else—any new skeletons—had shown up in her grandfather’s home lab.

  She and Walter talked for a while. Though they didn't really like each other, they'd been thick as thieves out of necessity. While GJ was explaining the procedure for pulling protein from hair using chemicals and a breakdown process, she heard footsteps behind her. She didn't need to turn to know that Brian and Hank were following them down the hall.

  The two guys had been gunning for top position amongst recruits. Though there were no official awards, it was an honor to graduate at the top of their class. To GJ, it wasn’t an honor she was expecting to get anywhere close to achieving. Her physical abilities were at the barely-passing level. Academically? Well, that’s why Brian and Hank had come after her. Walter was out-ranking them physically. They’d been bitching about her having an unfair advantage. GJ didn’t think there was anything less attractive than bitching about being outperformed “by a girl”—their word, not hers. And Hank and Bryan did it while wearing preppy uniform khakis and blue polo shirts.

  To be fair, all the NATs wore them. It was required. But GJ and Walter were both convinced it was a test to see just how badass you could be when dressed like you worked the door at a big box store. Brian and Hank were rocking the look with their preppy haircuts and whiny asses. Their goal was to take everyone out on the way to their final showdown, which they naturally assumed would be against each other. Walter clearly did not appreciate their confidence.

  "So, ladies," Brian said as he came up on one side of them, Hank on the other. Each man was taller than even Walter's 5'8" frame, which made them exponentially larger than GJ's tiny form. The flanking maneuver was straight out of class. GJ almost called them on it, but Walter offered a subtle nod of her head.

  "Ladies," Brian said again, and then he turned to GJ. "Do you care to explain how one might extract these proteins and why, since in the past no one has been able to do anything more than identify a hair as being consistent with those found at a crime scene. So why do you think you can now identify a person, from all of the world's population, by a single human hair?"

  GJ gave him a dirty look. This was juvenile. She was an adult, despite the fact that she might look eighteen a lot of the time, especially with her hair pulled up. So naturally, that was the way the NATs were made to wear their hair during all days of training. She was going to wear it down this weekend, just because—but in the meantime, she was glad that Brian wasn't able to yank on her pigtail.

  "Actually," she said, smiling sweetly at him, "we know this from a cool thing called science. It’s always improving our world!” She adopted an overly-excited tour guide voice. Then she continued with more trepidation in her tone. “I already cited my sources. You're more than welcome to go and read the papers yourself. Or are you not able to remember the sources? Or maybe it's that you can't read. You can get your AI to read them to you!" She offered it like a sincere suggestion.

  Beside her, she heard Walter smother a sharp giggle under her breath. Holy shit, Walter Reed had just giggled. Giggled. It was almost worth the harassment from Brian and Hank.

  "Now, Arabella Jade, that was unkind." Of course, he insisted on calling her by her given name. While she'd once thought Walter wasn't going to handle being called "Lucy" very well, it turned out it was she who had the problem. She didn't go by her birth name either. Her grandfather had called her GJ, for Grandpa's Joy, and though these two had teased her mercilessly over the weird, random-seeming combination of initials, she'd never told them what it stood for.

  Finally, Walter managed to get her expression back in order and she turned and looked each of the men in the eyes for just a moment. "Are you trying to intimidate us? Are you suggesting that we back down and not do our best? That’s against the code. Or do you just want us to not try to graduate at the top of our class? Because that would insinuate that you weren't actually able to beat us by any other method than intimidation.” She put her hand to her chin as though she were thinking. The men had them boxed in, but Walter wasn’t afraid of them.

  GJ decided she wouldn’t be, either. She stayed silent while Walter continued.

  “I would like to point out that we just sat through the exact same series of courses on maneuvering, intimidation, and psychological tactics that you did. And I'd like to remind you that my partner here outscored everyone else in the class."

  This time, Hank's fair coloring showed off the lovely shade of red creeping up his neck. Walter apparently had had enough, and GJ decided she had, too.

  Walter was the one who turned to her and said, "Do you think they underestimate us because we're female, or do you think it's because we're cute?"

  Hank guffawed. "Actually, you're neither."

  He had barely gotten the words out when he suddenly slipped and fell, or at least that's how it appeared to GJ, until she realized that Walter had snatched his hand and was squeezing one knuckle between just two of her fingers.

  That move alone had taken Hank down. It happened so fast, there'd been nothing Brian could do to defend his asshole of a buddy. Hank was on the floor, and while he should have been getting up, the hold that Walter still had on the knuckles of his right hand kept him there, squirming. He looked to be in some serious pain. GJ worked not to smile.

  "Hey," Brian said, "Don't ... Hey!"

  He apparently hadn't yet been taught the technique Walter was using. Neither had GJ, but she was grateful that her new friend knew it. After half a moment—too short a time for anyone to really see what was happening, or for anyone to gather incriminating evidence against Walter—she let go.

  Hank scrambled to his feet, and Brian turned and looked at her. "What in God's name?"

  GJ stopped. She looked at him, tipped her face a little bit to the side, and said, "Brian, I finally figured it out."

  "What are you talking about?" he sputtered, unable to keep up with the conversation change. She was seriously beginning to wonder how these two had gotten into FBI training in the first place. Maybe on an asshole scholarship.

  She peered at him as though
investigating his face. "It's the eyes and the mouth. Look, Walter. See the wide set of the eye sockets, the slight downturn at the outside edges? Do you see how his mouth is a little bit wider set, too? That's in the bone, not just on the skin and the musculature over it. That's a defect from birth. And if you look, too, you can see how the lines of his face don't follow the golden ratios. This is indicative that his mother imbibed a large quantity of alcohol while she was pregnant with him. Did you know about that, Brian?"

  Brian didn't respond, and for a moment, GJ stood stunned, realizing that she had hit the nail on the head. Whether or not it was true, Brian was afraid he had a touch of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.

  It was Hank who muttered under his breath, "My fucking hand!" and turned, taking his friend down the hall. There were threats issued under their breath as they walked away, but for the first time, GJ and Walter had stood up together and acted as a team.

  6

  They hadn't been able to leave the Academy yet. They were stuck at Quantico one more night before the weekend, but Walter was counting down the hours.

  Right now, she wasn't too far from where Donovan lived, and he was between cases at the moment. Though that might change before she made it to his place tomorrow night, she kept her fingers crossed.

  He told her Eleri had found something that might lead to information about her missing sister and was researching that. Though Walter didn't know the whole story behind it, she was hoping to hear some nice, leisurely updates from her boyfriend this weekend. It had been far too long since she'd seen him.

  She'd been lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking sleep would never come when an alarm sounded and woke her from the deepest dream possible.

  Shit. They'd been told this would happen. One of the NATs had heard this was a common drill and asked about it in class. The minute their instructor shook his head as though he had no idea, the rumors had begun flying. There would be midnight drills. Of course there would. FBI agents were often called on a moment’s notice to go immediately to a new location to start or join a case. They always had a go-bag prepared. Walter understood this, but that was not what a midnight drill was like.