"Grandfather, turn around and put your hands behind your back." Though he lifted his hands at about the same rate as her gun game up to aim at his chest, he did not put them behind his back. He did not agree to her demands.
"GJ, you don't want to do this."
"You're right," she told him. Anything less would have been so blatantly, obviously a lie that it never would have passed. "I don't want to do this, so don't make it difficult."
"Then stop. Come with me. You don't know what they are."
This again, she thought. " I know exactly what they are, Grandfather. I've been in your lab studying them. Did you let me down there to try and indoctrinate me?"
He didn't answer, but the blank look on his face said it all. Then, with no warning, he started to step backward.
"No," she ground it out, the harsh sound pushing its way out of her lungs on its own.
He took more steps away from her. When he turned, GJ lifted her gun and moved her finger to the trigger. She watched as the red bloomed in his shoulder and he fell.
49
"Grandpa!" GJ screamed as his older body crumpled in a way that Shray's younger version hadn't quite done.
He fell into the leaves and the debris on the forest floor, face forward. She waited for the sting of recoil from her gun but didn't feel it. As she turned and looked around, she saw Walter coming from the other direction, her own gun clasped in her hand and lowering.
Had Walter shot her grandfather? Had she done it? GJ wouldn't know until she counted her bullets. But at this moment, it didn't matter. She'd intended to arrest him and now he was dead. Her racing brain reminded her she did not want to explain this to her parents. Though why that was her primary thought right now, she didn't know. What she did understand was that the brain coped in any way it could and this must be her way.
If her grandfather had been able to tell her mother face-to-face what he'd done, then GJ might have been let off the hook a little bit for this. Bad enough that she'd joined the FBI, worse that she'd told nobody. Worse still that for her first assignment, she'd arrested her own grandfather. But if she killed him, she would be the one left explaining to her mother. She stood there in the dark woods knowing that that would make everything she'd done up until this moment so much worse.
She fell to her knees on the ground beside him, feeling for a pulse, lifting his arm and looking for the wound. That was when he turned over and looked at her, startling the crap out of her.
"Get the fuck off of me," he said.
Holy shit, he was alive and kicking. Walter was standing over the both of them. "I aimed to wing him. I think I did it."
Oh my God, GJ thought. She'd never been more grateful to Walter than she was at this exact moment. Walter admitted to shooting him and she admitted to a nonfatal shot. It was not how they'd been trained. If you pulled the trigger, you did it with the intent to kill. If you pulled the trigger, your aim was always center mass. Always the place you were most likely to get the kill-shot. Walter had just violated all that training and had probably saved her grandfather’s life.
Now, GJ's anger returned as the old man spit and cussed at her, obviously in pain and blaming her for every second of what happened, even though he'd done what he'd done.
"Grandpa, I'm fucking handcuffing you." She pulled out her zip ties and yanked his hands behind his back even as he let up a howl far noisier than anything the wolves had done earlier in the evening. Walter stood guard over the two of them as GJ finished up the ugly work.
In the distance, she heard an answering cry from one of the de Gottardi or Little people howling in the distance. Another wolf voice joined in until finally there was a chorus responding to her grandfather's cries of pain. It was almost fitting.
Hauling him to his feet, she continued looking for where the blood was coming from. While it was staining his shirt, it did not appear life threatening. In fact, it didn't gush. It barely oozed. Whatever Walter had hit, she'd done it right, and GJ was grateful.
"We've got to check Menon," Walter said. GJ had a stunning moment where she suddenly remembered there'd been another man here. Watching her grandfather fall had erased everything from her mind and she had a very strong understanding of why she should have recused herself from this case. However, Westerfield hadn't let her and she was still questioning that decision.
With her grandfather on his feet, Walter in front of them, she watched as her partner leaned over and checked the other man. He lay prone, a good number of yards away, face down in the debris and leaves of the forest floor.
"He's dead," Walter declared. They didn't have the means to carry him and they were bringing her grandfather in. For a moment, the two of them looked at each other and—under the cover of the old man's growling, snarling tirade at his own capture—they made a plan.
GJ held her grandfather in front of her. Taller than she, he shielded her well; her own face barely peeked over his shoulders. Cranking her arm around and up, she held the barrel of her gun to his cheek. Not a very good spot, probably not lethal if it came down to it, but it made for a good show. Walter stayed behind them, her back to GJ's, sweeping the open space for anyone who might come up from the other direction.
With GJ in the middle and her grandfather in the front it was hopeful they could make it back to the house alive. As they looked around and saw no one in the nearby vicinity, though they knew their shots would likely bring people and fast, Walter pulled GJ's phone out of her pocket and GJ listened as Walter contacted the house, quietly texting in a message. Unable to read it, GJ’s educated guess was that Walter mentioned they'd captured her grandfather, killed Shray, and were on their way back.
They went a good fifteen yards before they heard the first rustlings of other people in the woods. The problem was, they couldn't shoot first and ask questions later. They had no idea if what they heard were de Gottardi and Little family members who were still out, still coming in, and still not doing what they had been told to do—or if they were members of her grandfather and Shray's unit still here to kill as many wolves as they could and likely to get at the documents that the unassuming little farmhouse concealed.
"Stay back," Walter commanded the shapes in the night.
GJ reiterated the claim. Only she added, "I have Dr. Murray Marks. I have my gun to his head. If you fire on us, he'll be the first to go."
She could only hope that he was as valuable to them as he had been to her. As they slowly made their way back, though no shots were fired, they heard wolves in the distance again. Hopefully, more members of the de Gottardi and Little clan were safely arriving at the borders and making it into the farmhouse.
But halfway back, bullets zinged by. Instinctively GJ tried to drop—not easy with her grandfather in her command. Walter returned fire, but GJ couldn't afford to. She couldn't remove her gun from her grandfather's face because that was their bargaining chip. She couldn't allow him to possibly make a move.
With her free hand, she steered him and occasionally attempted to check the blood seeping from his wound. She called back to Walter, "Are you okay? I don't think any of them got close."
Knowing Walter, she'd probably aimed high since she didn't know what she was aiming at. Walter wasn't one for crazy shots. Unless people were hiding up in the trees, they were likely in no danger from Walter—but the warning had been clear.
As they got closer and closer to the farmhouse, the rustlings in the woods around them became more obvious. GJ even noticed as she looked off to her left or her right, she could see the shadow people coming nearer, getting bolder. She'd seen at one point the ever-so-slight glint of moonlight off a rifle bore aimed directly at them.
She'd taken the opportunity to swing her grandfather wildly, using him to put a human barrier in between herself and Walter and the rifle.
"I have him! Shoot us and you shoot him.” She issued the warning in her best FBI agent voice. “Shoot me, and immediately—even as I die—my hand will squeeze this trigger and he will die too.
If you want him to stay safe, you will let us move."
Slowly, still unable to see clearly, she swung her grandfather’s tense form back, directing him toward the farmhouse again, and pushed him another couple of steps. She fully expected at any moment to feel a bullet slicing through her side. Then again, she was also starting to get a little cocky. She’d expected to get shot since she walked out of the house this evening and so far, it hadn't happened. Though she'd felt all kinds of other things, all kinds of other knives in her back, and other shots straight on, she had not felt that one.
They finally hit the most dangerous part of their little walk: the last thirty yards where the trees cleared and there was open yard up to the farmhouse. Luckily, as they arrived, they saw Wade and Art and Will standing in the doorway. And that was when GJ's ears rang with the first retort of open fire.
50
Fuck, shit, damn, crap. Walter uttered one word for each time she pulled the trigger, firing back on someone who was closing in on her. But, in the dark, an outline of the shape, a bit of movement here or there was all she got.
Her instinct was to duck, to make herself a smaller target, and to run back into the woods where there was natural cover. None of this was an option with GJ at her back.
"Get down, GJ," she snarled. Luckily, her partner was her partner. Together they dropped low, GJ yanking her grandfather to his own knees even as he protested. Walter didn't care. He could protest until the cows fucking came home. She got off a few more shots, aiming at the people around her, knowing her shots likely glanced off of helmets and tactical vests. There wasn't enough light to get good aim on an open piece of skin.
She managed to hear three satisfying thuds followed by wails, cries of pain, or just the tiny sound a person made when they'd been shot down and fell to the ground. It was disturbingly satisfying.
Old war wounds, Walter thought, that she actually enjoyed that sound right now.
"We have to keep moving forward," GJ whispered.
Walter understood. To her, that meant backward, but toward the farmhouse. She crab-walked a little, firing as she went, and she felt the difference in the slide of her gun even as she counted it off. Last bullet. She squeezed the trigger. The slide came back, sticking. Shit. Three, two,…she was ready to go.
Yanking the slide, she swung wide for the person who rushed her as she was reloading, trying to take advantage of the less than three seconds where she wasn't actually releasing bullets. But as he came closer, she had the opportunity to aim.
His shots were going wild and she'd learned to stay calm, to keep her heartbeat low while others drew a bead on her. She cited statistics to herself, that even police on the job long term had less than a forty percent accuracy rate in live fire. All she needed to be was not the forty percent that got hit.
This time, her luck succeeded, and her steady hand earned her a shot that left her quarry flailing his arms up into the air as he tumbled backwards, presumably dead. From the way he didn't move, she chalked it up on her kill sheet for the night.
GJ somehow managed to have hands everywhere. In short motions, Walter felt her partner grabbing for her back and pulling her along until they established a pace that somehow worked. That was when Walter heard it behind her—GJ offered up a sound that could only be the noise a smile would make.
The light that flooded the yard told Walter that exactly what she thought had happened had actually happened. The family had opened the front door. She heard the footsteps, some of them sounds she recognized from when she stayed with Donovan. Paws, maybe. Pads of dog feet coming in sets of fours on the wood, down the steps, and then at last she saw them around her. Several dashed by in streaks; one of white, one of brown, one more silver, as they darted into the woods. Sometimes their legs stretched so far as to look like they leapt and flew into the night as they passed into the shadow of trees, nearly disappearing. But Walter heard their short, dark barks, and the growls as they encountered their quarry, then several screams as people went down. She wondered if a single wolf took on a single human or if, like the wild animals they appeared to be, they were more likely to hunt in packs.
She and GJ, suddenly no longer the only targets in the yard, scrambled inside, pushing Dr. Murray Marks in front of them. Walter, though she still held her gun and swept it, was no longer shooting into the woods. Some of her own people were beyond her now. And like in a game of hockey or basketball, there was always a certain point that you weren't allowed to get in front of. Walter was behind the line.
They tumbled through the doorway as a group. Dr. Murray Marks, though in his seventies, was doing his level best to make the job as hard as possible for them. He too was swearing a blue streak, though Walter imagined he didn't know as many colorful words as she did. She was tempted to challenge him. Instead, she had other more important things to do.
They shoved him to the ground and she listened as GJ hollered for someone to bring gauze and look at his wound. Hunkering down low, GJ whirled away from her grandfather, either trusting that the people in the house had it covered, or having decided that she'd simply had enough and she had to hand him off, because she couldn't deal with any more on her own. Walter understood both options as valid decisions. Wade was nowhere to be seen and Walter imagined that he was one of the dogs she’d seen racing through the yard beside her. She thought she'd seen him specifically, but in the low light, with bullets flying around her, she hadn't been sure.
Art de Gottardi came forward to work on GJ's grandfather with his medical kit in hand and gloves already on. He applied pressure, making the old man squirm and scream. No one cared. Art, in all his medical wisdom, ground out, "Shut up."
Walter thought for a moment about keeping her weapon out, finding a position at a window and taking up her charge. But the fact of the matter was she didn't know the area anywhere near as well as these people did and they were now outnumbering those who came in. It didn't appear any more troops had joined GJ's grandfather's militia and Walter was counting that one in their favor. She wasn't sure she'd be useful. Besides, she needed to catch her breath.
They'd been out for well over an hour, tracking, following, talking, and dragging the old man back. She reported to the others, to everyone and no one in general, to Art De Gottardi, and to Burt, who watched over the area, his gun out the window. Walter let her voice carry to Christina Pines, who clearly wasn't paying attention as she sat on the hardwood with her hands pressed flat against the flooring and occasionally tensed her fingers, squeezing as though she could dig in. Again, Walter had no idea what she was doing, but she still made her announcement.
"Shray Menon is dead. GJ shot him." She wasn't sure quite why she added that last piece. Maybe to let them know that GJ was on their side, that she wasn't going to let the hunters get away simply because she was one man's granddaughter and the other man's god daughter.
It didn't appear that the family had any doubts about her partner, but Walter wasn't sure how she would've dealt with it, or how she would deal with it, if they did turn on GJ. So she worked to quell any antagonism now, before it happened. Though the words had basically fallen out of her mouth, she was glad they had.
GJ sat on the floor near the center of the farmhouse. Staying low, she worked to keep her full body beneath the line of fire. Occasionally, though not often, bullets came through the windows, zinging through the air, and anyone who wasn't down was definitely in harm’s way. She could see Walter's decision play out on her face—join the fight at the windows, or to stay low, and watch their quarry? That's what he was now, her grandfather, and she, too, had the same thoughts. Like Walter, she’d decided to stay low.
Her grandfather was moaning and complaining, and why not? He'd been captured by his own granddaughter, and now one of those probably-werewolf-people was pushing on his side, directly on the bullet wound that Walter had inflicted on him. He yelled, as if anyone outside might be able to hear him, above the din of bullets and screaming.
"I'm in here. It's me, Dr
. Marks. Come get me."
GJ almost laughed. If she hadn't been about to cry, she would have. “Shut up, Grandfather."
He turned and glared at her, indicating he actually did have all of his faculties in place, and GJ decided it was time to let him in on it. "You're only alive because Walter pulled her shot, and Walter only pulled her shot because you're my grandfather. So you can shut the fuck up."
It was shocking, even to her, swearing at her grandfather like this, but it was far more shocking that he was here trying to kill people, that he'd been researching this all along and never told her, that he’d lied to her about being at the Sorbonne. She shook it off. She had to get rid of these thoughts. She was an FBI agent now, and this was her job.
It took only a few moments to take care of her grandfather’s wound. That may have been because Art didn't feel he had any more moments to spare on this man, but GJ understood. He quickly had her grandfather bandaged and was leaving him to attend to another patient. She could hear doors opening and closing in the back. She watched as someone else was dragged in through the front door, wounded—only this was one of their own people, or one of their own dogs.
Art rightfully turned his attention to the newcomer. A gash was open down the furry leg and a second bullet wound marked his upper torso. To GJ, it looked serious, but if he could get adequate medical treatment soon, probably survivable. She only hoped there was adequate medical treatment here, but the more she watched, the more she was beginning to believe that these people could do just about anything. A feat learned out of necessity, unfortunately.
Wade came in next. In full wolf form, he nosed his way up through the cellar, just as he had done earlier. The cellar door creaking made every head turn in that direction. People dove to help lift it, to help the newcomer come in, but it was just Wade.
Salvage: A Shadow Files Novel Page 26