The axis legacy, p.1
The Axis Legacy, page 1
NightShade Forensic FBI Files: The Axis Legacy
Copyright © 2023 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
CONTENTS
Books by A.J.
A.J.’s Renegades
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
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
About the Author
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Look for other novels by A.J. Scudiere.
Available in bookstores, online, and at ReadAJS.com.
THE NIGHTSHADE FORENSIC FILES SERIES
Book 1 - Under Dark Skies
Book 2 - Fracture Five
Book 3 - The Atlas Defect
Book 4 - Echo and Ember
Book 5 - Salvage (A Shadow Files Novel)
Book 6 - Garden of Bone
Book 7 - The Camelot Gambit
Book 8 - Dead Tide
Book 9 - Sabotage (A Shadow Files Novel)
Book 10 - Vanishing Point
Book 11 - Beneath Memory
Book 12 - The Axis Legacy
NightShade Vol 1
NightShade Vol 2
NightShade Vol 3
NightShade Complete Series
THE BLACK CARBON SERIES
Book 1 - The Hunted
Book 2 - The Surface
Book 3 - The Tempest
Book 4 - The Swarm
Book 5 - The Taken
Book 6 - The Night
Black Carbon - Vol 1
FORTUNE
FORTUNE (Mia)
FORTUNE (Rafe)
FORTUNE (Mia & Rafe)
THE VENDETTA TRIFECTA
Vengeance
Retribution
Justice
Becoming (short story)
Inheritance (short story)
The Complete Vendetta Trifecta
STAND ALONE NOVELS
Resonance
Dissonance - a companion novella to Resonance
God's Eye
Phoenix
The Shadow Constant
The Landa Landa & The Aellai
Dumb Blonde (short story)
Twisted (short story)
Stand Alone Novels by A.J. Scudiere: Resonance, God’s Eye, Phoenix, The Shadow Constant, Twisted, Dumb Blonde
A Collection of Blogs
Smart Chickens - Deliver Us From Email
Smart Chickens - We’re Not Like Other Families
Smart Chickens - Tele Me More
Smart Chickens - Omega Dog
Join A.J.’s Renegades here: www.ReadAJS.com
"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
For God's Eye:
"I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading - it's well-written and brilliantly characterized. I've read all of A.J.'s books and they just keep getting better."
-Katy Sozaeva, Reviewer, Amazon
For Vengeance:
"Vengeance is an attention-grabbing story that lovers of action-driven novels will fall hard for. I highly recommend it."
-Melissa Levine, Professional Reviewer
For Resonance:
"Resonance is an action-packed thriller, highly recommended. 5 stars."
-Midwest Book Review
1
Donovan pressed his back against the wall. Both hands clutched the nine millimeter tightly.
Across the closed door from him, Eleri quietly nodded.
Reaching out with his left hand, the gun still firmly in his right and aimed down just outside of the range of his own feet, he slammed the door open.
His entire body tensed not knowing what was on the other side. Hearing the door hit the wall, he smacked one hand out just far enough to stop it from swinging back and clicking closed.
They waited for a scream. A shocked gasp. A volley of bullets.
Nothing came. But that didn't mean the room was empty. It only meant that whoever was on the other side wasn't surprised by their entrance.
Slowly the two agents looked to each other. Swinging his gun in an arc in front of him, avoiding the spaces where he might shoot off his own toes and following the protocols he had been taught at Quantico, Donovan swept the gun downward then up into the now open doorway.
Leading with only his right eye, not giving anyone on the other side enough of a target hopefully, he saw nothing. As he moved back and shook his head, he watched as Eleri next did the same from the other side. Luckily, her height was radically different from his. If anyone was taking aim using him as a reference, they would miss her by a decent margin.
She too, cleared the doorway. As the second person, she immediately moved inward. Steps fierce and tight, her gun aimed out, she swept the whole room before announcing, “Clear!”
Despite the staccato of the word, she sounded disappointed, and he knew her well enough to read her.
“Nothing?” he asked as her shoulders dropped. He'd hoped for something. Not someone shooting at them, not like that, but . . . something they could use.
She shook her head, lips pursed tight, posture slumped.
“That's the whole place, right?”
This time she nodded.
This had been the very last room. They'd come back to the Huron-Manistee State Park—thankfully without multiple feet of snow to traipse through—and relocated the abandoned buildings.
They'd first stumbled across this place several years ago on an unrelated case. Or were there any unrelated cases? Donovan was beginning to wonder.
When they arrived, crime scene tape that had once been strung across the doors hung shredded and blowing in the slight breeze. Though whether that had been because somebody had ripped it down, or because the passage of time had simply loosened whatever held it there, he and Eleri hadn't been able to tell.
The place looked just as abandoned as the first time they'd seen it. But anyone worth their salt making use of a place like this would absolutely cultivate that appearance. So they'd gone in, having no idea what was behind any given door.
“There's nothing here.” Eleri glowered into the empty air. Her gun clicked back into its holster, hands thrown up into the air, irritation growing.
He felt her frustration though he didn't quite express his the same way. Stepping into the middle of the room, Donovan turned a full three-sixty. Metal barracks-type windows lined one wall. If he remembered correctly, there had been desks in here the last time.
Long before they’d ever set foot here it had been a school room.
He looked to Eleri. “I guess the team that came through after us to clear things actually cleared everything. Doesn't look like anyone's been here since either.”
Her tight nod told him she didn't like that any better than he did. He'd had hope, and now he didn't.
“There are only two more places on the list,” she told him, irritation blooming in her expression. Somehow, her frustration transformed him into the positive one.
“The list can always grow, and often does,” he reminded her.
“True.” But she didn't seem to take the positivity to heart.
Jen Crunk had worked her way through the archives at the de Gottardi/Little farm, just outside of Bull Shoals. She had actually managed to find two more pieces that looked like they'd fit with the first piece of parchment.
They'd pulled the first glimpse of it from the lining of a duffel bag. Again, he’d thought it was part of an unrelated case, but it was related now.
The torn page was clearly part of a larger piece. GJ had worked on the one they had, trying to match it to known languages then common codes. Several of the people at the de Gottardi/Little farm had some expertise and they, too, had tried decipher it. So far, no one knew what it said.
They'd added the pieces that Jen had found. One didn't match. One lined up to one torn side.
He'd seen the picture Jen had sent—encrypted, of course.
It was beautiful. It was extra information, Donovan had thought when he saw it. But it was clear that three was far from the total number.
With no cases directly assigned to them, he and Eleri had been on a quest to find the remainder.
Miranda Industries had clearly wanted the one from the bottom of the duffel bag. The money had been of no consequence. It was the bag itself they had been more than willing to kill for—or at least the torn paper tucked and carefully stitched inside the lining was what had interested them.
So now he and Eleri were interested, too. Hence their travels and searches on their own time. From their own pockets, too. Eleri had offered to pay for it all, but Donovan hadn't reached the point where he was willing to say yes.
He loved her, maybe more than any other human he'd ever known. He trusted her, too, though he still didn't know if either of them understood just how huge that was. But at his core, he was never willing to be beholden to anyone. Not if he didn't have to be. By now, he and Eleri owed so much so many different directions between and around them, that Donovan didn't feel right adding yet another knot to the mess.
“Westerfield is going to figure us out if he hasn't already,” he told her as they slowly turned around and made their way out of the compound.
They would make their way out of the state park and then out of the state itself.
“Why? I've been pinging in my reports through my home computer. He has no reason to suspect we are anywhere other than sitting at home, doing our paperwork.”
“Oh, I think he always suspects it.” Donovan listened to the sounds of his footsteps down the old hallway. Dust and time didn't mute the echo. “I'll bet he's got flight alerts on all of us.”
“We drove most of the time,” Eleri countered.
“True. But both of us flying into the same airport on or near the same day? It had to send a flag to him.”
“We're not on duty today.” She was right behind him. Her voice sounding larger as it bounced back to him from the empty walls. He didn't think there was anyone here to hurt them, but the history of the place made him think that if the children here didn't haunt the place then the building itself was a horrifying reflection of the past. He'd be glad when they left.
Donovan replied with a question of his own. “Do you trust him to only track us when we're on duty?”
“Fair.”
Just then Eleri's phone rang. She fished it out of her pocket and held it up even as she said, “I can't believe I'm getting signal out here.”
Then the line connected and she smiled out the name. “GJ!”
Donovan leaned in close even as Eleri automatically hit the speaker button. It wasn't as if there was anything out here that could hear them except maybe the occasional scrap of wildlife.
GJ's voice cleared the miles cleanly. “You're not going to guess what Westerfield has asked me to do.”
2
“He wants the bones?” Eleri stopped dead in the middle of the abandoned hallway, her eyes flicking up toward Donovan's. Her partner looked as shocked as she felt. Then as the realization settled into her own core, she could see the same happening to him.
“Yes.” The voice over the phone assured her.
“All of them?” Eleri was just trying to clarify, because the request seemed out of left field.
GJ's grandfather, the infamous Dr. Murray Marks, was a well known anthropologist. He'd made a good amount of money charming the public at lectures and garnering invitations to some of the hottest new discoveries. The basement of his rural mansion housed a collection of human bones from a variety of different kinds of humans—the ones most of the world didn't know, or wouldn't admit, existed.
Perhaps the good doctor had written his last will and testament, leaving the entire estate to his favorite grandchild, before he realized that she was on the opposite side from him. Either way, it all belonged to GJ now. The bank accounts, the broken trust, and the bones.
"All of them,” GJ confirmed.
“And you said . . .” Donovan pressed as Eleri still held the phone out between them, frozen in place.
It was a private collection. Like many collections, both private and public, chances were it wasn't entirely on the up and up.
“I said no,” GJ was stunningly firm. Possibly with the exact same slapping tone that she had used with their boss, because GJ would.
“What did he say?” Eleri asked, fascinated that Westerfield would claim the FBI wanted GJ's collection, and trying to figure out why.
“That was it. That was what was so weird. He didn't say anything about my answer, just changed the topic of the conversation.”
“Then he's either going to keep asking until you give in or he's going to find leverage to make you give in.” Eleri hated the conclusion.
“Do you really think so?” GJ asked.
“I don't know for certain. The problem is I wouldn't put it past him. Are you willing to lose your own personal collection to blackmail?” Eleri didn't like making GJ think the worst, but she needed to keep her friend safe.
GJ didn't quite answer the question. “Well, most collections have stolen pieces and given what I learned about my grandfather toward the end, I’m confident that this one does, too.”
Eleri wasn't going to take that bet, no sane person would.
“I've been talking about repatriating what I can.”
“That's quite the project,” Eleri commented. She'd been there, down into the bowels of the house, through long hallways, the secret doorways, down into the large room. The vaulted ceilings showed off some specimens on display, but most were housed in boxes, labeled with tags from digs all over the world. Some were ancient, but some were recent enough to have belonged to people that Dr. Murray Marks had met in the flesh.
