"It’s safer now," Eleri told them, “because the FBI has this information, too. It is officially designated as belonging equally to your family and LeDonRic James."
It was Kaya who nodded.
"Don will share it with the girls."
Donovan thought it only fair to warn the Mazurs that part of the difficulty of the decision was that the FBI wanted it shared between more than one family, for security purposes. LeDonRic and Marshawn had both known Marat and Johanna. But while Marshawn had killed for the information, LeDonRic had not. However, that meant the information would likely wind up—at least in part—in the hands of the children of the man who’d murdered for it.
Donovan didn’t share that Marshawn had enlisted Madisyn to break into Johanna’s home and try to find the notebooks and video. The young girl was seeing a court-ordered therapist and it would be decided if she needed to face juvenile charges. That was out of his hands.
Eleri picked up the ball. "I don't know how you want to handle this, since you're moving, but we recommend that you stay in touch. I don't know if you want to go public with this information or not. If anything goes wrong, you're welcome to contact either of us. We're certainly not in any position to mediate into any intellectual property disputes, but we'll be happy to help in any way we can."
Donovan found it interesting that, for the first time, he truly felt the meaning behind those words. It wasn’t about finishing up the case. It was about the fact that he liked the Mazurs and would gladly give his own time if they needed it. They were the family he wished he’d had, and nothing like the one he'd been dealt.
They talked a while more and after they left, Eleri persuaded Donovan into going to the Up N Atom one last time. He ordered an E=MCsquared with the recommended shot of Dopamine and smiled as Eleri ordered her own drink like a seasoned Curie resident.
Of course she did.
They didn’t stay in the shop, though. It no longer was a place to stop and linger. Instead, they headed back to the Frank Lloyd Wright house and their last night in Curie.
But as they left the shop, Donovan felt the old familiar itch under his sore skin. It was creeping up on him again. He needed to go for a run.
66
Donovan had been home for a week, running almost daily in the cold, crisp air of the South Carolina woods as winter approached. He would head outside, switch forms, stretch out long, and lope through the woods.
With his reshaped nose, he'd inhaled the forest air. It smelled like home. Not just comfort, not just familiarity, but for the first time, he was calling it home, and he felt it down in his bones in a way he hadn’t felt since he’d been small and his mother had waited for him after school.
As he trotted up to the back gate, four paws gripping the hard-packed dirt to the trail that led directly toward his back yard, Donovan heard the screech of brakes and the click of his mailbox before the mail carrier drove off.
Slowly, under the cover of the trees—much less now that the leaves had begun to fall and litter the ground, crunching beneath his feet—he rolled his shoulder blades. Lifting to full height, he stretched against the fence, twisted his ankles, and slowly rolled out his fingers, regaining his full height in human form. As far as he knew, no one had seen him on these runs, and he hoped to keep it that way.
Reaching up and over the gate, he undid the latch that he had hooked before he’d changed and gone off on his run. He walked naked through his back yard, opened the back door, and headed directly to his shower.
Only when he was fully dressed again, his wet hair toweled off, his shoes slid onto bare feet, did he head out the long front driveway to his mailbox, where the country road passed by. He pulled down the door and found an assortment of junk mail, a magazine he'd never subscribed to—though his name was on the sticker—and a small box. It was maybe big enough to hold a shampoo bottle or something similar. He wondered what he had ordered. It wouldn't be the first time he'd needed something, placed an online click, and received it days later, not remembering what he'd done.
But as he pulled the package out from underneath the letters, he almost dropped the whole lot right there on the stone pathway back to his front door.
The box had his address, though it lacked any return label. And the black Sharpie was addressed merely to “Brother.”
His breathing quickened, and he looked around. Though he had heard the familiar brake and squeal of the mail carrier who came to his home six days a week, whoever had sent this was not here now and had not been here at all.
Sniffing at the air, just in case, he detected only the faint drip of water from the undercarriage of the mail truck. He sniffed the box directly and found nothing strange, though he held it tight in his hand as he walked back through his front door, almost in a daze.
He didn't notice the buzzing of his phone until it quit and immediately started up again. Flipping it over, recognizing the importance of that second call, he saw Agent Westerfield's face. It took still another moment for him to shake out of the haze the package had plunged him into.
He'd mentioned the possibility of a brother to Eleri once, maybe twice, but he’d not told her the idea had lingered in his thoughts. He hadn’t told her he truly believed he had a brother.
Now, with the package, all doubts were gone. The other man had smelled him and recognized him as well.
But Donovan said none of this to Westerfield and had no intention of saying it, at least not until he had to.
So he answered the call and tried to put his best professional voice forward. "Heath," he said by way of greeting.
"I need you and Eames on a plane yesterday," his boss barked out. The stress in his voice brooked no argument, leaving no time to wonder about mysterious packages and possible brothers.
Shit, Donovan thought, he wasn't even going to have time to open the box.
But as he pulled his focus back to the phone conversation, Westerfield's voice sharpened it even more. "We have a death of an oceanic researcher on a research rig off the Gulf.”
Donovan shuddered at the thought. He did not like water. But Westerfield’s next words stopped him cold.
“It’s someone Eleri knows.”
You just met the Mazur family in Curie. . . can they survive when humans are no longer the dominant species?
Mutation - Black Carbon #1
The FBI doesn't know its most wanted killer is just a girl. Can Lee and Cyn take out the Kurev crime family, or will they kill each other first? Find out in The Vendetta Trifecta!
About the Author
AJ holds an MS in Human Forensic Identification as well as another in Neuroscience/Human Physiology. AJ’s works have garnered Audie nominations, options for tv and film, as well as over twenty Best Suspense/Best Fiction of the Year awards.
* * *
A.J.’s world is strange place where patterns jump out and catch the eye, little is missed, and most of it can be recalled with a deep breath. In this world, the smell of Florida takes three weeks to fully leave the senses and the air in Dallas is so thick that the planes “sink” to the runways rather than actually landing.
For A.J., reality is always a little bit off from the norm and something usually lurks right under the surface. As a storyteller, A.J. loves irony, the unexpected, and a puzzle where all the pieces fit and make sense. Originally a scientist and a teacher, the writer says research is always a key player in the stories. AJ’s motto is “It could happen. It wouldn’t. But it could.”
A.J. has lived in Florida and Los Angeles among a handful of other places. Recent whims have brought the dark writer to Tennessee, where home is a deceptively normal-looking neighborhood just outside Nashville.
For more information:
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