It didn’t hurt, but it could. Mostly, he felt the pressure of his bones and muscles moving. But the itching faded away as he went through his normal routine. He shifted his hips, rolling first one then the other. He continued the rolling, feeling down his legs the way he had down his arms, until at last he was on all fours on the ground.
It smelled different down here. It smelled different with his nose open. With the hair having pushed out all over his body—a much thicker version of the way ordinary people got goosebumps—the corn stalks were less of a menace. He took off trotting through the stalks, weaving in and out, letting the sharp leaves grab at his fur. His mind finally wandered, the urge finally quelled as he wound his way through the cornfield.
Though he'd managed to escape the physical confines of his body, he hadn't quite managed to escape the thought processes that had been plaguing him for days, and still they lingered there at the back of his brain.
As he loped through the fields, far away from the case, it nipped at his heels. What was it that he wasn't seeing?
42
Donovan pushed his way through the corn stalks. They didn't leave much room for a nice, long-stride run, the kind he'd been hoping for. Still, he wound his way in and out. The walk was enjoyable and he managed a good jog most of the time.
The shift in his physicality was welcome, a remembered feeling, something he’d gone too long without. The runs did him good, and while his brain never shut down, he let it wander the same kinds of meandering paths his feet did.
What was it here in Nebraska that kept the wolves from gathering? Was it the lack of running land, like he was discovering just now? Given his issues today, that was a distinct possibility. It was something he hadn’t considered before, that geography, both physical and human, played a role in where his kind ended up. If they got the itch like he did, they would need more space, and apparently specific kinds of space. This one wasn’t really cutting it. South Carolina had drawn him for the national forests, the open land, and the trails where he could run and be himself with relatively little, if any, interference.
He hadn't known any of these things—not before coming into NightShade. He'd known what he was, but not truly what it meant. Being friends with Wade—whom he'd poached as a friend from Eleri—had opened his eyes wide.
Some families raised their children this way. Some of the kids had understood, from early on, that they might or might not change later. Eventually, some became like him and some didn't. It seemed to be some combination of recessive genetics. But more than just the change, the ones like him also experienced a handful of other traits: the excellent sense of smell, the acute hearing, the superior vision.
While those changes were always present at some level, they were particularly apparent in this phase, and he let his nose open up. He smelled fuel on the ground in between the corn, from where the harvesters had come by. It was very faint, but it was there. Something else tickled his nose, and he could only figure, not being able to identify it directly, that it was a fertilizer or a pesticide of some kind. The corn itself was the backdrop, almost overwhelming to all the other scents. Every once in a while, he passed a spot where he smelled a human, and it got him thinking.
In New Orleans, he'd smelled something very, very familiar. He hadn't known it could happen like that—not before then, not before he'd asked Wade what he'd scented—but he'd known it instinctively when he smelled it.
Brother.
The word had shot into his mind, even though at the time he was throwing some punches and taking more. He later told Eleri it was family, but he only said maybe a brother. It was possible that he was just looking back on it and over-remembering it, but he remembered that word, brother, being so clear in his head at the time. And the smell—he'd not ever smelled it before but, on some instinctual level, he’d recognized it.
On the one hand, a brother shouldn’t be possible for him—not a full-blooded brother, anyway. His mother had come from Calcutta. His father traveled, found her there, married her, and proceeded to drag her all over the US. To call his father abusive would be a bit of an understatement.
Aidan Heath had been an asshole, a white man who believed that his whiteness and his maleness gave him some kind of superiority. . . Or maybe he believed just his very existence conferred it. Maybe it wasn't tied to any kind of racism or sexism. Maybe it was just plain old narcissism, but Donovan’s father believed the world owed him.
He believed he deserved promotions. Aidan Heath didn’t believe that his family deserved better than others. None of his wishes spread to anyone else, no matter how close. He didn’t believe Donovan had any value. And, as he looked back, Donovan could see the man had thought even less of his mother.
Aidan Heath made it clear he deserved more out of life than he earned. Donovan didn't remember the first time he questioned his father's self-belief of superiority. But it had been early enough that he no longer remembered when it first happened, only that it had always been there. When he was seven and his mother died, his father had only gotten worse.
So the question was—given that time frame, from his father meeting his mother in India to his mother's death—how could he have gotten a brother? He was an only child, something he'd both regretted and lauded. He'd wished he had another person to share his time with, someone to talk to, anyone in this world who understood the experience he'd been through. But that didn’t exist, and he was grateful to his parents at the same time, for not having brought another child into what Donovan had endured.
In order for him to have a brother, his mother would have had to have given birth before having Donovan. Then … he didn't know. Had she given up the baby? Misplaced the baby? As Donovan thought about it, though it might be plausible for his brother to have been given away, he did not think Aidan Heath would have let a male child go.
Another option was that the brother was younger. During the fight when Donovan had first smelled that brother scent, he had not stopped throwing his punches to ask, though the man did look plausibly younger. That meant Donovan’s mother would have been pregnant while Donovan was alive.
He had no memories of the sort. It would have happened when he was very, very young—and once again, the baby would have been lost, given up for adoption, and the same rules applied as before. Aiden Heath would not have gone along with that. His child was an object that was supposed to improve his life. He wouldn’t have given one away, not a male child.
Given all the tremendous unlikelihoods Donovan was encountering, a half-brother seemed more plausible. Imagining his father cheating on his mother was far too easy. The man had no morals in any other ground, so why would he have any about his marriage? Donovan didn't know what had gone on between his parents, given that he was so young when his mother died. He'd never really considered their relationship as an adult. Looking back was something he’d not done, and he wouldn’t be doing it now except for that smell and the clear knowledge of brother.
He paused in his thinking then, as he came to the edge, where the field met a gravel road. He peeked out, looking warily both ways down the road, before dashing across the street. The gravel was prickly under his feet, but the pads masked most of it. Only once he was between the stalks again did he feel comfortable enough to slow his pace a little. But a turn revealed the lineup of the cornstalks, and an open lane to run down.
He went for it, picking up his pace, and running full out. He hit the other side of the cornfield much faster than he had intended, and he stayed inside the boundary this time. He ran back, turning, pushing his way through the stalks, feeling the sharp edges brush up against him, and heading to another aisle, not wanting to run back exactly the way he'd come. He was taking diagonals across the field, the longest single shot without running into anything.
This time, he pulled back, launching himself into an all-out sprint, his front and back legs reaching wide, the feeling of stretch in his muscles. This. This was exactly what he'd wanted.
For a mome
nt, he forgot about his brother, about his father possibly siring other children all over the US. He forgot about his mother, and the loss that still ached, as she was the only one who'd been kind to him, and then, suddenly, she'd been gone.
He ran until he was tired. The tracker, the elastic that had been a struggle to shove his paw into, had stayed on nicely. That was pleasing. He was panting heavily by the time he'd made five runs back and forth, grateful for the experience.
It was getting close to time for Eleri to come and get him, and he headed back the way he’d come. Carefully, he crossed the road, not wanting any humans to spot him. He’d already seen a raccoon out in the fields and a handful of mice, and he’d smelled many more creatures who’d passed through. He loped through the other field, aiming for his clothes and his meetup point with Eleri.
He hoped she had been successful in her meeting. Maybe the Burke family could shed some light on her sister Emmaline’s case.
His clothes were easy to find, his sense of navigation strong from time spent running—and besides, his clothes smelled like him.
He’d changed back, once again feeling the stalks try to cut his almost normal human skin. Getting dressed was harder than getting undressed had been, and he heard the honk of Eleri’s arrival before he had his feet in his shoes. Still, he was content. He’d finally gotten his run and he was breathing deep, taking in the scent of the field around him even though the smell was dampened with his nose smaller.
As he stepped from between the stalks and onto the gravel of the road, a thought twitched in his brain. He remembered his brother's face, and it didn't just look like Aidan.
The coloring, the tilt of his eyes, the shape of his face … The man had looked partially Indian.
43
Donovan woke up finally feeling more like himself the next morning. The run the day before had done him physically more good than he could count. Mentally, he’d been left with more questions than he started with.
His brother's face had looked like his mother’s, and like his own, and that's where Donovan struggled to put the pieces together. Still, now was not the time. This was a mystery for a later day. How his mother had died, what she’d been like—other than being his mother—was something he had avoided thinking about for decades. The last thing he wanted to do was follow up on his father or his mother, as he’d hoped all along that he’d left that life behind. But maybe it hadn't left him.
He and Eleri had gone to Jivika Das's home the night before, exactly as planned. They'd showed up late and sure enough, the woman was nervous by the time they arrived. She gave them the same answer she always did: she had learned nothing that day that would help them figure out who’d killed Marat and Johanna. But this time, they gave her a specific task. Her nothing answers helped no one, and despite professing to want to help, her attitude hadn’t changed. If she was the killer or she wasn't, she needed to find them answers. They would all have a better chance of learning anything if she could be useful.
Donovan understood. If Jivika was involved, she was working with someone. It had been a male who had fought with Johanna Schmitt. They’d not told her they knew this. Though they pressed her a bit, they treated her mostly like a helper rather than a suspect. The more free she felt, the more she’d be likely to slip up. Their interrogation strategy was a delicate balance of pressure and release.
This time, they’d also asked her if she felt she was in danger, if she'd noticed anyone following her, if anyone had been in her home. She told them they were crazy. The killer had been after Marat and his work. Jivika thought that was obvious, though Eleri let her know that they would keep an eye on her. It was only half sincere. The other half was designed to intimidate.
They were keeping better tabs on her than they had on Johanna. He and Eleri would not be making the same mistake. In addition to the tracker on her car, they’d hidden one in her purse and they believed she’d not yet found it.
So they pushed while they were here, face to face. Donovan decided to go ahead with two pieces of information. First, instead of asking her if she had any idea why Marat might have been killed, he told her, "Here. On this piece of paper, I need you to write down Marat's top five things he was working on. Or anything in his life that you think might have gotten him and Johanna killed for knowing about it."
It had taken the woman a good twenty minutes. He and Eleri had sat idly by, a skill taught at Quantico training. They waited both outwardly patiently and impatiently and as they did, they gathered what information they could.
Once she'd written the list—putting down only four things—Donovan folded it up and put it in his pocket. He didn't look at it. If they needed more information, they would ask her about it when they came back tomorrow. The show of not even glancing at the list was designed to put the two of them in a position of superior knowledge. They would see how Jivika handled it when they came back tomorrow. They would be back every day, until either she was arrested or the killer was found.
The second thing he told the woman was part of what they understood about how Marat and Johanna had been killed. “It appears they were drugged. And that's why they lost their struggle.”
"I figured as much." Her knees were pressed together and so were her lips. Her hands perched on her lap as though she were at an unpleasant tea.
Good.
“Why are you telling me this?" she asked.
"Because you broke into Marat Rychenkov's home. There are very few reasons for you to do that. And because you link back to Marat, then it's reasonable to conclude our killer will link Marat to you—just as we did."
That last part had been a lie. The killer would likely not do it the same way they did, but he or she just might figure it out. "Don't accept any drinks or food from anyone. Buy the snacks you eat out of vending machines, and don't make a habit of buying the same thing every day. If you go out, walk into a restaurant and order, don’t linger, don’t give anyone the time to alter something for you. And never let your food go unattended."
"I know all of these things," she said, her lips pressing together even harder when she finished her small statement.
It was Eleri who jumped in with the smallest dose of sympathy. "I understand. But I've noticed the people in Curie don't quite keep their doors locked. And maybe it's time you did."
Donovan had planted a listening device in the house, but of course he didn’t mention it. They'd left it at that. The next night, he intended to give her a sterner warning, in hopes that with her eyes more open, she'd see something—anything. He only hoped she’d be able to tell them who the killer was, or at least steer them in the right direction.
He wasn't due back to the clinic for several more days, and he was grateful for the break. It gave him a push to try to solve the case before his next shift, though he wasn't sure that would happen.
While Eleri spent her morning researching, and he didn't ask what about, he spent his own doing much the same. It was slightly after lunch that he tapped on the table in excitement and said, "Eleri! Eleri, come look at this. I think I may have found something."
"What?" She slid her chair over so she could scoot in next to him and look at his screen.
As he looked, though it made sense to him now, he was relatively certain it didn't make sense to her. And why would it? He'd gone down a rabbit hole, and it had paid off. "So here's what I was thinking. Marat, at least as far as we know, hid two things."
"He might have hidden more," Eleri commented, “and we just didn’t find them.”
"True. But we know he hid those two. And those two pertain to the same exact thing."
"His drones," she said, catching on.
"Exactly," Donovan answered. "And we don't understand what we're looking at. It's been nagging me that we were looking at the right thing, but we didn't understand it. So, instead of continuing to look at the thing that we didn't understand, I tried to understand the thing we were looking at."
He wondered if that made sense to her. Luck
ily, she nodded.
"So I began studying drones."
"That sounds ever so exciting," she commented, her voice deadpan.
"I can't begin to tell you. I mean, it was interesting, and some of it was really hard to untangle. I don't program computers or operate drones. So I had to go back and do some of the basics. But I think I found something, Eleri."
"What?"
"Mapping."
"What?" she repeated.
"Unknown space mapping. It's one of the things that people are looking for drones to be able to do, but the issues haven’t been fully solved yet."
"So?" She was frowning at him, and Donovan struggled to explain the culmination of his morning of digging.
"I think that may have been what Rychenkov was doing in those videos. Remember, he took his drones out. And he flew them around the room, and then they landed. The first time he did it, they seemed to almost run into things. They bobbled a little bit. They found the backs of chairs and fell because they couldn’t back up. Or the chair was too wide for them to rearrange their course and get around it quite fast enough and down they went. But for the second video—remember, we said it looked almost identical to the first?—he set up the drones the same, and the room was the same. But this time, they flew the entire space, without running into anything."
"Oh yeah," Eleri said. "The videos looked so similar, but the second run seemed like he’d done a better job with them. I assumed he'd improved his programming."
"So had I, but I now think it's plausible that the two runs were on the same day. Nothing had changed. The first run was a mapping run. What he was demonstrating on the second video was that the drones were fully able to map the space and come back and work within it while using the map from the earlier run. That’s a relatively basic operation, but if the drones are data sharing in a new way, then it might be something valuable."
The Camelot Gambit Page 25