Chapter 1

The tiny arachnid descended from the ceiling, its silky web trailing behind it and glistening in the sunlight shining through the window. The creature had no destination, it simply took a leap from its anchor position, trusting that the web would hold it up until it found a place to rest and could begin building its entrapment.

A heavy file folder smacked it out of the air before it could find any landing, pinning it to the wood of the desk. It was not dead, and it made an attempt to scurry away once the pressure from above was relieved.

Only a few inches away from the edge of the desk and the safety of some dark corner, a heavy glass came down on to the tiny creature, trapping it in place. Just a bit of pressure, and the spider was dead, crushed against the wood surface.

Agent Hank Gallagher did not bother to lift the glass again. If the pressure had not killed his victim, the heavy vessel would suffocate it eventually. He had more important things to tend to. More significant bugs to squish. One of those bugs would hopefully lead him to his true prey.

Pushing a loose strand of graying hair out of his face, he turned his focus back to the case at hand, opening the file folder he had just used as a spider swatter. Tucked inside of the folder, stapled and clipped together, were printed photos of Warehouse 144. Or rather, what was left of Warehouse 144. It was mainly pictures of scorched earth. A million dollars worth of rare and unique collectibles, set to be auctioned off in a few weeks, gone in moments.

The job had been thorough. Too thorough. Toeing the line of overkill, or even reckless. Agent Gallagher liked recklessness. Recklessness left behind clues. Hints. Trails. The moment news of the explosion had reached his office, he had dispatched his field team to follow up on it. With his other hand, he sent word to his media team to get a cover story to the news and secure the site. Local law enforcement would only muddy the trail. He needed them cleared out as soon as possible.

Gallagher was no fool. While he would lose no sleep over seeing a few gold plated jute boxes blown to smithereens, it was the players behind it all who he wanted to crush beneath a heavy glass if he could. Unfortunately, there were a lot of weak little spiders along the path. Criminals, useless members of society who could get out on good behavior with the right lawyer. Nobody would miss them. Squeezing them hard enough to get some information about the chain of command might kill them, but crushing a few spiders meant nothing if he could take down the enormous scorpion at the top of the web. People did not care about criminal scum, they cared about the millionaires ruining their country, and that was who Gallagher planned to find. By any means necessary.

They had a few suspects to deal with. One had been hiding out under a bridge near the explosion. Her name was appropriate. Rose Spiderwick. A long list of assault charges. Homeless. A background full of twists and turns, with lawsuits around every corner. A menace to society more than anything. Nobody would miss her.

Getting up from his desk, Gallagher adjusted his tie and took the thick folder. It was time to get to work.

---

He was always more at ease in the lower levels of the building. Sound proof walls, no cameras, it was quite nice. Today he was shadowed by one of his personal interrogation assistants. Agent Reyes was a man of few words, and that was exactly the type of person Gallagher preferred to have at his side. Much unlike Agent Harvey, who came up beside him, a stack of files in his hand.

“What is it, Harvey?” he asked, not sparing the smaller man a look.

“I was just wondering which suspect you would be interviewing first. I was able to get all of the files on the male suspect we brought in.”

“I’ll be dealing with Spiderwick. What is this other man’s name?”

“Winston, sir. Dale Winston. There isn’t much on him, but there’s enough to work with.”

“Previous criminal record?”

“A few breaking and entering charges, but nothing else.”

“Then I doubt he has anything of use. Get what you can out of him, but don’t push too hard. He may just end up being used as leverage against Spiderwick. How has she been the last few hours?”

Harvey let out a sigh of frustration. “In a word? Violent.”

Gallagher nodded. “I’ll handle her. Go take care of Winston.”

“Yes, sir.” Harvey nodded and turned to go back the way he had come, leaving Gallagher and Reyes to walk the length of the hall alone.

Eventually they reached Interrogation Room 99. He had spent quite a bit of time in this room. Fun times. Reyes unlocked the door and let him in.

With one hand in his pocket, the other hand holding the suspect’s files, Gallagher stepped inside. It was not a large room, just big enough to have a table with two chairs on either side and a single light up above.

Her hands were handcuffed in front of her, resting on the table. All he could see of her was hair. Mouse brown hair, greasy, unevenly cut, and falling all over the place. When the door opened, she remained rigidly still, staring down at her clenched fingers.

Gallagher approached and dropped the heavy file in front of her. She did not move. He pulled back the empty chair and sat across from her, getting a better look at her features from the lower vantage point. Her face was just as dirty as her hair. Thick eyebrows remained furrowed. Deep set, bloodshot eyes did not even flinch to look at him. Dark circles and heavy bags made her eyes look even more soulless and sunken than they already did.

Gallagher did not say a word as Reyes shut and locked the door. The large man then took his position, standing almost like a referee at the end of the table, an equal distance from Gallagher and their suspect.

Still, nobody spoke. Nobody moved. Gallagher took the opportunity to look over her again and make some assumptions. Since she had not been admitted into their system, having been brought in under the radar, she was still wearing the clothes they had found her in. He took inventory of it all. A white collared shirt with vertical stripes, sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Long black fingerless gloves on her forearms that could not manage to fully hide the burn scars creeping up her knuckles. A black apron-like dress made of a thick canvas material. A choker necklace with a fake diamond pendant, tight enough around her neck to suffocate her. His conclusion, she was an odd woman. The filth made sense. Her file did not have any current residence listed. She was homeless.

At last, Gallagher broke the silence. “Do you know why you’re here?”

She snarled before answering. “Most people don’t need a reason to bring me in.”

Her voice grated on his ears. It was scratchy, struggling to make every sound, damaged by years of smoke inhalation. According to her file, she was only twenty-two. There was no sign of a nicotine addiction. Something else had ruined her throat and lungs.

“You do tend to give people a lot of material to work with.”

Now she lifted her head to glare at him through strands of hair, upper lip still curled in a snarl. “Then you tell me why I’m here.”

Gallagher opened the file on the table. “You have a lot of pending charges against you. You’re actively wanted by thirteen counties. You really get around. A lot of aggravated assault.”

“Maybe if people didn’t treat me like a sewer rat, there wouldn’t be so many charges,” she spit at him.

“Oh, yes, it’s society’s fault for not wanting anything to do with the human equivalent of a rabid opossum dunked in acid.”

She slammed her fists on the table, standing to her feet and leaning forward to hiss at him. “Say that to me without these cuffs on, punk.”

Gallagher did not glance up from the file. “Yes, I just have no idea why people keep treating you like a trashy sewer rat.”

Before she could sling a retort at him, Reyes grabbed her by the shoulders and shoved her back into the seat. She was not a large woman at all and Gallagher had to marvel at how much rage was contained inside her malnourished body. It was always the short ones that could so easily turn psycho.

“I’m not here to trade insults with you, Spiderwick,” he told her once she was in her seat. “You have some information that I want.”

“Tch. Well, you’re not getting it.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.” Gallagher removed a piece of paper from the folder and slid it in front of her. “Does this university look familiar?”

She did not even glance at it, keeping her heavy glare trained on him. “Emerson University of Science and Technology.”

He smiled. “So you know what I’m getting at?”

Finally breaking eye contact, she looked away. This was more than a sore spot. It was a festering wound, left untended, unbandaged, open to the elements, garnering infection and poisoning her entire being. Gallagher always loved finding those.

“You were kicked out your first year and subsequently banned from every single science campus in the state.”

She said nothing.

He learned forward on the table, interlacing his fingers. “A reckless experiment, wasn’t it? How many people died?”

“None,” she snapped, finding her voice, as raspy as it was. “Nobody died, there were four of us that were part of that experiment and I took the blame, you know why? Because I was the only one who didn’t have a rich family and a truckload of lawyers to support me!”

Gallagher watched the anger and acid ooze off of her. No matter how many times she had likely been poked and prodded about the situation, she would explode every time it was mentioned, convinced she had never been allowed to speak her truth, speak her mind. She had been drowned out by the leagues of families who did not want such a scandal to touch their precious children. Rose Spiderwick was the weak link and the university devoured her to appease the masses. It was a beautiful display of the food chain; Gallagher almost considered it a work of art.

“Those mean, rich families, how dare they,” he told her with a shake of her head.

“Don’t patronize me,” she hissed, snarling once again. “I don’t need sympathy.”

“But they took from you the one thing you always wanted.” Gallagher pulled out another file. “To be a scientist like your father.”

He placed the paper in front of her. It was a photocopy of the front page of American Science magazine, with Dr. Liam Spiderwick on the front cover, the esteemed chemist in his white lab coat, stern gaze, and pristine hairstyle. Gallagher watched carefully, seeing her dark eyes take in the picture and slowly begin to tremble with a rage twice as violent as anything she had so far displayed.

With one cuffed hand, she crumpled the piece of paper and threw it to the ground, immediately stomping on it with the heel of her boot. Gallagher held up a hand to Reyes, keeping the man from subduing her. He wanted to see how long she would go at destroying the piece of paper, releasing more of the uncontrolled wrath that stormed beneath the surface of her dirt smudged face.

When the heel of her boot could not further destroy the paper she picked it up and used her teeth to tear it to shreds, unable to use her hands to rip it with the cuffs around her wrist. Eventually the paper could be destroyed no more and she spit out a few wads that had gotten caught in her teeth. Gallagher clicked the end of his pen on the table, watching her shoulders heave.

“Feel better?”

She turned on him again and growled, intent to charge at him, but Reyes was faster. She was slammed back into her seat before she could blink.

“In order for Dr. Spiderwick to maintain his standing among the scientific community, he unfortunately had to disown you.”

“He chose them over me,” she growled, her voice strained from all the yelling she had done during her destruction of the photocopy.

“Then why do you still pursue the sciences if it’s what destroyed your family?”

“Science is a fact! It’s a part of the world we live in! It doesn’t change! Why get mad at science when I can get mad at the piece of garbage who picked it over me!”

Gallagher hummed, leaning back in his seat, secretly smiling at what she had unintentionally revealed about herself. At his question of pursuing science, she had not claimed an inability to do so. Having been banned from all research facilities, she should have no way of pursuing the sciences. Unless someone had provided her with an unsanctioned lab… in return for a bit of dirty work. After all, large explosions gone wrong were her specialty.

“He didn’t just pick science over you,” Gallagher told her. “It wasn’t just blowing up a lab and nearly ruining his reputation.” Taking another paper from the file, he slid it in front of her. It was a death certificate.

Still heaving from her earlier rage, Spiderwick looked down at the certificate. Rather than the name across the center sparking the fire inside of her, it seemed to put it out and the soullessness returned. Her shoulders slumped and every bit of energy was sucked from her. The circles around her eyes seemed to darken, her complexion lost all color. With a dead stare, she looked through the paper, through the table, through the floor into the depths beneath.

“Elizabeth Spiderwick,” he told her, reading from the certificate. “Deceased. Cause of death… smoke inhalation.”

In the heavy silence that hung between them, his phone vibrated in the inner pocket of his suit jacket. The only notification currently active on his device was the one for Harvey. His subordinate needed to speak with him. Gallagher inwardly huffed at the interruption, but realized that leaving Spiderwick to sit in her despair for a bit might work to his advantage.

Without giving any explanation for it, Gallagher got to his feet, instructing Reyes to remain in the room with the suspect while he stepped out into the hall. Reyes nodded silently.

Once he was out in the hall and the heavy door slid shut behind him, Harvey came from around the corner, running to speak with him, tablet in hand. Gallagher had to admire Harvey’s enthusiasm. It would fade out eventually as the reality of his line of work set in, but for now it was at least amusing to see his naivete. He let none of this show on his face as Harvey reached him and came to a stop, offering the tablet.

“What is it?” Gallagher asked without taking the device, waiting to hear if it was worth his time before he focused on another line of questioning with an altogether different subject. Breaking his victims took precision and attention, he could not simply hop from one to another and expect every job to be thorough enough to show decent results.

“We dug into his personal life a bit and I had one of the office workers trace him back to some old websites he used to run.” Harvey scrolled on the tablet and once again offered it to Gallagher. “He shadowed and stalked a lot of female celebrities a few years back, broke into their houses to take pictures, sometimes he’d take belongings. He’d sell them all to fans for a pretty penny.”

Gallagher scoffed at the pathetic lifestyle. “Is that where the record is from?”

Harvey nodded. “They’re unresolved charges. He was never caught. The sites aren’t active anymore, haven’t been for the last two years. He seems to have been trying to distance himself from it, clean up his life.”

A rare smile touched Gallagher’s features, one which Harvey mistook as approval for what he had found. “Two years is not nearly long enough to break away from the type of pathetic emptiness that burrows deep enough in a person to have them seeking out fulfillment in the lives of others by breaching privacy.” Without touching the tablet, Gallagher turned away from Harvey and made his way back to Room 99. “Break him with it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Now that the less interesting suspect was being dealt with, Gallagher turned his attention once more to Spiderwick. Upon re-entering the room, he found her still staring at the death certificate in front of her, or rather, staring through it, unfocused. He took his seat again, pleased to see how deeply she had dissociated in the time while he was out.

“No explosive anger with this one?” he asked, scooting his chair in further to rest his elbows on the table.

There was no response at first, but eventually she closed her eyes and gently shook her head. She had no defense to give. No side of the story that had not yet been revealed to the public. Nothing to clear up and set straight. The facts lay before her. Her mother’s death was her fault.

Gallagher allowed the silence to rest between them, looking away for a moment as if speaking on this subject was heavy, even for one such as himself, disconnected from their lives as he was. When he spoke, he knew just the right tone to use, the perfect balance of moderate and sympathetic to make her think he was concerned for what she had gone through.

“You were too young to be convicted, weren’t you?”

Again, she only gave a slow, mournful nod.

“Your brother stood up for you, said you were just trying to show them what you had learned at your father’s lab.”

She closed her eyes and looked away, as if that would somehow keep the tears back.

“But that didn’t matter, did it? It didn’t matter what anybody said.”

She shook her head.

“Long before the incident at Emerson University… long before all the scandal and controversy… that moment… in your own house… that was the real moment your father disowned you, wasn’t it?”

At the mention of him, the anger returned and she clenched her fists, hard enough he was surprised her palms were not bleeding, yet she managed to keep it in for the moment, erect a quick wall to contain the explosion.

Gallagher easily broke through the wall without having to exert an ounce of energy. “He no longer considered you his daughter. You were the person who took his wife from him. A murderer.”

She slammed both of her cuffed fist onto the table, looking up at him with wild, enraged eyes. “I was ten! It was an accident! You don’t disown a child for trying to do what you taught her to do in the first place!” The tears escaped, falling down her face and leaving streaks in the dirt and soot.

Gallagher watched her trembling form, and marveled at just how much anger she was still holding back. He allowed some false concern to touch his features. “You just wanted to be like him…”

“I’d been to his lab before. I’d done it with him so many times.”

“The rainbow flame experiment, is that correct?”

She sank back in her seat, the need to express her anger relinquishing for a moment to explain the experiment that she likely knew like the back of her hand at this point. “You… you put different types of salts at the bottom of a row of beakers… add some ethanol to each one… then light them and they’ll each burn a different color.”

“What type of salts?”

“Lithium chloride, sodium chloride, potassium chloride, anhydrous calcium chloride, hydrated strontium chloride, hydrated barium chloride, and hydrated copper chloride.” She rattled them off without needing to think about them. “Hydrated barium chloride is one of the more toxic ones. So is hydrated copper chloride, a bit more irritant than toxic, but pretty toxic to aquatic life.”

“So you knew this experiment well.”

“It was my favorite. It… it still is… somehow…”

Even in the face of it causing her mother’s death, the science still amazed her. She was a fascinating woman.

“Getting kicked out of that university… that must have proved it to your father. Confirmed the theory, so to speak. The theory that you would always be a terrible scientist.”

It was insensitive and callous and had exactly the effect he expected.

“I… am not… terrible!” she screamed, on her feet, leaning over the table to get as close to him as possible. “I’m good at what I do! But my mistakes have stained his precious reputation! I ruined everything and he’d happily ruin me, but it’s easier to pretend I don’t exist! I’ll never set foot in a legitimate lab again because of him!”

There it was again. She could not even tell she was doing it. Her anger clouded her judgment. “You have no place to learn,” he said gently. “No place to figure out how to do it properly. They don’t want you to learn. They think you’re too dangerous. You blew up a whole lab.”

“I wasn’t. The only person. In. That. Lab!” It was the worst voice crack out of all her cracking and screaming, unable to hold up the years of emotional damage that had taken their toll on her.

“It doesn’t matter,” he told her with a shake of his head. “The rich won that round. And yet you’re still fighting. In every possible way.”

“I don’t quit,” she hissed. “I don’t care what they do to me, I don’t quit. I don’t need him. I don’t need them, I’ll be a scientist without them, they’re not gonna tell me what I can and can’t do.”

Gallagher hummed and looked down at the files. “That’s a dangerous commitment. How far are you willing to go?”

“As far as I need to.”

He nodded. “I mean, I see your record here, you’re clearly not above breaking the law.”

There was no response, but this time it was not because of the weight of her actions over the years. Gallagher did not have to look up to see it. He felt it. Hesitation. She was suddenly realizing how much she had said without regards to the implications. So she was not a total emotional idiot. He continued on, regardless of her lack of a response.

“If someone were to… let’s say… offer you a means of pursuing the sciences under the radar… and in return you just had to do them a little favor…” He left the sentences unfinished, giving her a curious look.

“What are you getting at?” she asked, steadily watching him through strands of greasy hair.

Her genuine confusion surprised him a little. There should have been more suspicion in her tone, or at the very least a refusal to respond the closer he got to the truth. Was it possible he was on the wrong track?

He seriously doubted that. His investigation team had been thorough. The explosion was a deliberate attack, an attempt to destroy the auction products of a rival company. At the moment, there was only one company who had a stake in the auction business who would act out like this, one company who would go so far as to hire someone like Spiderwick. One company who he had spent years trying to destroy.

One name. One family. The Salvatore Family. Untouchable throughout the decades. Private. Secretive. Rich. Dangerous.

To eliminate their competition in a single blast was child’s play for them. Hiring a homeless crazy woman to take the brunt of the fall was exactly their speed. He had to be on the right track.

Before he could further pursue, he felt his phone buzz in his pocket again. Harvey needed to see him. Normally he would have ignored it and continued his line of questioning, but with concerns about the direction he was headed coming into play, he decided he could use a brief moment to rethink his moves before he forged ahead. He could not, however, let her know his line of thinking.

“It’s just a question. You said you were willing to go pretty far, and I’m curious to know how far. In fact, let me grab something I think you might want to take a look at.”

Having smoothly segued into a need to leave the room, Gallagher picked up the file folder, got up and went to the door, sliding it open to find Harvey standing directly in front of it. Annoyed, he stepped out into the hall and waved the man back as he closed the door behind him. “This had better be good,” he snapped.

Harvey could hardly contain himself, once again shoving the tablet almost into Gallagher’s face. “It got to him. He seems to be willing to talk a bit. But that’s not what was important, we were able to trace one of his purchases on the day the warehouse exploded.”

Gallagher did not accept the tablet, only leaned forward to read the screen that was showing items bought under the name Dale Winston. He raised an eyebrow and looked at Harvey. “An oversized gummy bear…”

Harvey had the decency to look a little embarrassed. “Right… right, that probably leads to nothing, but the more important thing is the bank that this card was part of. Millard and Norton Banking…”

Now Gallagher did take the tablet. “A Salvatore bank… the average celebrity stalker wouldn’t have the means to an account at a bank like that.” This put him in an odd predicament. Both suspects had tracings that led back to Warehouse 144. Spiderwick had been in the area on the day it happened, covered in soot, with burn marks everywhere. This character, Winston, had initially been picked up because he was hanging around every day after the explosion for no discernible reason, looking nervous and concerned. Spiderwick was the more obvious culprit, but now they had a direct connection between Salvatore and Winston. There was always the possibility that these two were a team of some kind, but in every team, even of just two people, somebody was always higher than the other. Gallagher needed the one who would give them connections to Salvatore. If Spiderwick was just a useless pawn who did not know she had strings attached through Winston, she was not likely to have much information.

“What is this Winston character like?”

Harvey huffed and shrugged. “Like he’s going to fall apart and have a panic attack any minute. He keeps saying, that’s not me anymore, that’s not me anymore.”

Spiderwick was not panicking. She was determined, angry, and smarter than she might look at first sight. If anyone was the brains of the operation, it had to be her. Winston could still prove useful to him as a way of getting Spiderwick to talk. At the moment, neither suspect knew the other had been taken in. They would either rat each other out, or try to protect one another. Either way, it worked to Gallagher’s advantage.

“Panic attacks don’t exactly help me,” he said, giving Harvey back the tablet. “Keep working with him, but don’t push too hard towards the breaking point just yet, I need to see where this trail leads me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Harvey.”

“Sir?”

“I need him able to talk,” Gallagher explained sternly. “Don’t lean too hard until I give the word, understand?”

Harvey nodded. “Yes, sir.” He turned and went back down the hall, confident that he could do what his superior commanded.

Gallagher was not so confident. Harvey had yet to learn the finer points of bending the law. He would either play the role of good cop too easily and get played by the criminals, or shove them so far over the line that they became hysterical and useless. Gallagher already had two suicides to cover up this year thanks to his subordinate’s incompetence. If Harvey knew what was good for him, he would come around.

Returning to Spiderwick’s room, he found her more calm and contained, and certainly more alert. She watched him closely as he made his way into the small room and took his seat behind the table once more. He laid open the folder, pretending to look at the new files he had claimed to have gone out to retrieve.

“So, you haven’t had a proper place of residence since the incident at Emerson University, correct?” he asked, intending to steer the line of questioning in a new direction.

“Tch. Didn’t exactly have any money to live anywhere else once I was kicked out of the dorms.”

“And you were fired from every part-time job you tried to start… because of aggravated assault.”

Only a growl in response. Even when she was openly cautious, it was physically impossible for her to put a full cap on her anger.

“Where have you been living?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Wherever I can.”

“You’re rather well-dressed for being homeless. As filthy as you are, most homeless people don’t have the means to wear an outfit like that.”

She leaned back in her seat, cuffed hands resting on the table as she studied him, likely trying to figure out where he was leading. “I know how to trade my skills for what I need.”

He smiled. “So you are still pursuing science.”

“When I can.”

“A homeless scientist, I think that’s a first for me. I don’t have a lot of firsts in this job, you tend to see everything in my line of work.” He tapped his finger on the table, humming quietly before posing another question. “If someone were to request that you do something illegal in return for what you need, would you be willing to do it?”

She shrugged. “Depends on what it is.”

“You don’t seem to have a problem telling me this.”

“You’ve got my files right there,” she countered, pointing at the papers in his hand. “You know everything about me that’s worth knowing. You could throw me in jail right now and be done with it, but you haven’t. You want something out of me that the public doesn’t know.”

Gallagher smiled, a genuine one this time. “You know, you’re quite clever when you’re not acting like a drooling, raging Tasmanian Devil.”

The snarl returned. “Get to the point, monkey suit.”

A violent, yet clever woman who was prepared to bend the rules as revenge for how the world had treated her… Gallagher could have fun with this. “All right… I’ll be blunt. Do you know the Salvatore Family?”

It was a leading question more than anything. Everybody knew the Salvatores. An old Italian family, residing in upstate New York, away from the bright lights and heavy traffic. They did not flaunt their wealth, as some families did. Their fame did not flash across tabloids and news articles every other week. Only the two younger sons had the media even seen in person, but they were celebrity status, young blood, caring more for image than the integrity of the country’s most powerful Italian family that was proud to say it had no connections to the mafia. They stood on their own power.

This week, they used that power to ruin their competition in the world of auctions and antiques.

There was the rage again and she hissed her answer at him. “Who doesn’t know them?”

“Oh, sounds like there’s a personal issue here.”

“Their family paid for the lab at Emerson University. They weren’t exactly happy when it went up in flames.”

“Did they contact you personally?”

“Of course not!” she snapped. “They’re cowards, they hide behind their giant houses and piles of money and influence, but they weren’t above demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars from the ‘person responsible for the lab blowing up’, didn’t even have the decency to call me out by name. And because they demanded that, every single company and business and corporation and organization even slightly connected with Emerson College came down on me like a pack of vultures to squeeze as much money out of me and my father as possible, because when the Salvatores ask for something, everyone goes rushing off to get it done.”

So she knew them well, but again, that was no surprise. It did not take much to see how powerful they were. Their web spread far and wide, so well structured that they only had to tug on this end to influence an election, or deal weapons overseas. Perhaps they were in the mood to open a new underground gambling house, or were feeling generous enough to launder money for whatever dirty billionaire managed to entertain them for a few months.

“Your father did end up paying for most of the damages, didn’t he?”

She slammed her fists on the table again. “And then immediately and publicly disowned me!”

Gallagher hummed. “He didn’t want to have to be responsible for any more expensive future blunders. Thanks to the Salvatores, any hope of impressing your father is gone.”

Her shoulders heaved, a hurricane of fire stormed in her eyes. Gallagher almost wanted to hand her another picture of Dr. Liam Spiderwick so she could get some of the anger out in destroying it. “The Salvatores have been a partial cause of this position you’re in. So if they offered you a means of pursuing the sciences, would you turn them down?”

“Why would they do that after I destroyed their lab?”

Gallagher did not show it, but he was beginning to think he really was on the wrong track. There was not a hint in her posture that he was getting anywhere near what might have happened for her to be involved with the Salvatores, but he wanted to be sure before he abandoned the train of thought. His team had been thorough, following every trail and every lead, providing him with these two suspects. Random people off the streets, it would seem, but there was a lot more to them than that. They were connected to the web. They had strings attached that would eventually lead him to the nest. “Suppose they wanted to use you, and they knew that pursuing science was a way to keep you under their thumb.”

She reached across the table, and with her hands still cuffed, managed to grab his tie and pull him forward. Gallagher had to admit he was not expecting such a reaction, but he allowed it for the time being, wanting to hear what she had to say. Reyes backed off.

“I am under nobody’s thumb, monkey suit,” she growled, spitting in his face with how intensely she pronounced each word in her gravelly voice. “The only reason I’d accept such a stupid deal would be for the chance to murder the first Salvatore I could get my hands on.”

Unfazed by how she held him, Gallagher regarded her with the look one would give a small child who was determined to become a superhero and save the world, a child with all the passion and drive that one could possibly have, but a complete lack of understanding how the world actually worked. “Little spider, if it was actually that easy to murder the Salvatores, it would have happened a long time ago.”

A discreet hand motion told Reyes he had heard enough. The silent agent grabbed Spiderwick by her shoulders and forced her back down into the seat. She allowed it with minimal resistance, but still glared through her hair at Gallagher.

Once his tie was straightened, Gallagher took a page out of the folder and passed it to her, as if nothing had happened. “Do you recognize this building?”

She kept her steady glare on him for a long moment, wanting to communicate her dislike of him for as long as possible before she at last looked down at the page. For the first time, she gave a completely neutral reaction and shrugged. “No.”

“Not at all?”

She shrugged again. “I mean, the area around it looks familiar, it looks like it’s around the north part of Coopersburg.”

“You’re familiar with Coopersburg, I see?”

“You gotta know how to get around when you’re homeless.” Her responses were even, but the resentment was more for his previous statements, not the current questions.

He nodded. “Well, this is Warehouse 144. Were you anywhere near these places in the last week?”

With a scoff, she leaned back in her seat. “You’re asking if I had anything to do with the explosion, aren’t you?”

“Oh, you know about it?”

“It rocked about fifty blocks in all directions, of course I know about it, dumbo!”

Gallagher chuckled and took the picture back. “Well, with your track record and all, and you having been in the vicinity, we had to ask.”

“Tch. Well, I had nothing to do with it.”

A blatant lie. Based on her previous reactions to untrue accusations, she should be leaping out of her seat again, yelling at him for daring to accuse her of blowing up a building. Spiderwick was certainly involved, but that did not guarantee that the Salvatores had put her up to it.

While Gallagher still believed the Salvatores did arrange for the warehouse to go up in smoke, they were masters of using pawns without the pawns knowing they were being used. If Spiderwick had been placed at the scene to cause chaos, not knowing her job was to throw suspicion off of the real culprit, she was useless to him. Dale Winston might really be the man to pursue, given his direct connection to a Salvatore bank.

Despite all that, Gallagher was a man of instincts. Instincts told him that there was something to Spiderwick. There was something beneath all the layers of pain and hate and anger and violence. It was her truthfulness that was throwing him off, making him think maybe this was the wrong track. Most people who had something to hide were deceitful, and while she was certainly deceiving him about the destruction of the warehouse, everything else she had spoken of was true. Raw emotion. Straight from the heart. Nobody could be that good of an actor.

If his instincts were saying that she had a direct connection with Salvatore, he was going to dig and dig and dig until he found what his instincts were detecting.

Every agent he had ever worked with told Gallagher not to bother with it, and his superiors tired of his exploits. Going after the Salvatores would only leave him humiliated and empty. That family navigated the loopholes of the law all too well and had teams of lawyers in just about every country to help keep the walls around themselves. There was too much red tape criss-crossing every direction, the webs were sticky, and if you were caught, they made an example of you.

In Gallagher’s twenty-four years in this work, he had learned that allowing red tape to deter him meant that he was a good agent. And good agents rarely got the job done. Being nice did not get him far at all, and once he saw how much farther he got when he bent the rules, it was not long before he was breaking them and severing ties with anyone who held him back.

Spiderwick was the key to getting to the Salvatores, and it did not matter to him how deep of a gouge he left within her. Society had declared her a menace already. Her family had disowned her. The older brother that he had briefly mentioned earlier was nowhere to be found in the many interviews involving the lab incident. It was safe to say, now that the man had a wife and children of his own, he had distanced himself from her and her destructive tendencies. She was alone, but not yet vulnerable. He needed to get her vulnerable, and that would start with getting her to admit that she had destroyed the building. It was time to use his leverage.

“I think you did.”

“You can think that all you want to,” she said, not breaking eye contact.

“What materials did you use?”

“I don’t have the money to buy materials right now, how could I have had any?”

“Somebody had the money.”

It worked like a charm. Her eyes became slightly less narrowed. Concern. She was right to say she did not have the means to buy materials. Somebody else had to. Spiderwick was unaware that they already had Dale Winston in custody. It looked like she was about to cover for him. Gallagher doubted that the oversized gummy bear purchase had anything to do with blowing up a building, but just knowing that he had access to a Salvatore account was enough.

With a huff, she told the truth, mixing it in with a lie. “Fine, so I nabbed some money to buy a few things, I had an experiment in mind and I didn’t care if the building went up in flames or not, not like I hurt anybody, there were no people in there.”

“So you looked inside of it. And probably saw all of the expensive things in there. Was this a bit of revenge on some rich people who ruined your life?”

She huffed again and sat back in her chair. “Maybe it was.”

Back to vague answers. He needed truth. He needed her passion and anger, she spoke truthfully when she was angry. “What was the experiment?”

She scoffed, but could not resist the urge to explain. “It was to test just how fast you can burn calories.”

He raised an eyebrow, not following. “You were… exercising…”

“No, I was physically burning calories. Calories are a measure of heat energy. When you eat something high in sugar, your body decomposes it and uses the calories for energy, or it stores it as fat to be used later. That happens within your body at a relatively slow speed, but it’s possible to demonstrate how calories are measures of heat energy by literally burning something high in calories.”

Like… an oversized gummy bear. Gallagher did not say that out loud, afraid that if he revealed just how much information they had about Winston she would clam up, but this case was certainly full of firsts for him. The more she explained, the more her anger and tension subsided. She spoke with her hands, motioning as much as her cuffed wrists would allow, describing each step of the process.

“So what you do is you get something that you can heat up that has explosive qualities, like some sodium chlorate—but potassium chlorate also works and is a whole lot more fun—and you heat that up to at least above two-hundred sixty degrees Celsius. That’s when it turns molten and releases its attached oxygen molecules easily. Fire needs that oxygen. Then you feed something high in glucose to the chlorate. Not just raw sugar, you need something that’s contained so it’ll melt.”

Like a giant gummy bear. Again, he had to resist the urge to reveal what he knew, simply because it was too ridiculous.

“Once it begins to melt and the sugar meets the oxygen, it starts to burn it at lightning fast speeds and in seconds you literally have a tower of flames shooting up into the air!”

“But the building didn’t just burn down,” he said, fingers up to the side of his face. “It exploded.”

“Yeah… that wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Menace to society was not a strong enough word to describe this woman. He decided to go ahead and push on his leverage a little more.

“You… accidentally… blew up a warehouse… with a giant gummy bear.”

“Yep. It was honestly pretty cool if it didn’t hurt so much.”

It took only a second for her to realize what she had confirmed. Her eyes narrowed and she snarled at him again. “You knew…”

“Of course I did,” he said, closing the file and setting it aside. He no longer needed it. “Now, if you want to protect whoever bought all of your materials for you, you’ll tell me who put you up to this.”

Her thick brows furrowed, adding to the sunken look to her eyes. “What do you mean, who put me up to it?”

“You blew up Warehouse 144. A warehouse full of a lot of expensive things. Why?”

“Because I felt like it.”

“Sorry, little spider. That’s not good enough.”

She growled at the nickname, standing up in her seat. “Look, punk…”

Gallagher waved a hand. She had revealed all that she would give him voluntarily. It was time for Reyes to do what he did best. The niceties were over.

Chapter 2

Spiderwick only got those two words out before she was grabbed by the shoulders and once again forced into her seat. This time, however, Reyes pushed the chair so close to the table, it was pressing into her ribs. She jerked in the chair to loosen the pressure, but Reyes was so much larger than her, the struggle was pathetic.

Gallagher clasped his hands in front of him and leaned forward. “Salvatore put you up to this. I want to know everything they told you.”

She glared at him from between strands of hair falling in her face, that burning fire in her eyes. “I’d chew my own arm off before working with a Salvatore,” she spit at him.

He chuckled, resting his chin in the palm of his hand. “I don’t know about that. You’ve proven that your pursuit of science is worth a lot. It’s a good thing you don’t have children, you’d treat them just as callously as your father treated you in the face of scientific progress.”

She jerked in her seat even more as the hatred was re-ignited. Gallagher did not yet know for a fact if she had been directly in contact with a Salvatore or not, but if she was, he planned to get it out of her. Behaving like he was confident in the information he sought out did wonders once his playthings were broken.

“It’s in your best interest to work with me. I don’t play fair.” He waved his hand at Reyes.

Taking a fistful of her hair, the agent slammed her head down into the tabletop. His control was immaculate as he exuded enough force to break her nose, but not enough to kill her. The pain spread and her reaction, though slightly delayed from the shock, came out as a scream.

The sound was impressive, a guttural and grating noise that communicated more hatred and anger than pain. Her vocal chords were basically fried, but she knew how to conjure up the sound needed to express her visceral fury.

Reyes pulled her back up to a sitting position by her hair. Blood dripped down her face and tears filled her eyes from the force of the blow against the table. Gallagher was done with conversation and banter.

“Which Salvatore contacted you?”

It took a few moments for her to focus through the pain and dizziness, her chest and shoulders heaving. Once she was able to pinpoint exactly where he was, rather than answering his question, she spit blood at him.

“You’re a tough little spider, aren’t you?” It was hard to tell with these types if she was actually able to endure this much pain, or if she was just too stubborn to give in. Whichever, he knew he could wear her down eventually. Nobody left Room 99 without spilling their guts. “Let me give you a little reminder of the Salvatores in question. I know neither the patriarch or the matriarch spoke a word to you. They’d crush you beneath their heels before giving you the time of day. That leaves the children or the uncles. Shall I go through the names?”

Shoulders still heaving, Spiderwick responded with a gruff, “Knock yourself out.”

“Very well, then.” He did not need a file to start going down the list. The names were embedded in his memory from years of study. “Matteo Salvatore, younger brother of the Salvatore Patriarch.”

She did not respond. Gallagher waved a hand.

Without hesitation, Reyes grabbed her by the chin to keep her head in place before backhanding her across the face hard enough to send her out of her chair. Before she had hit the floor, he picked her up by the shoulders and returned her to her seat.

“All right, nothing there, let’s keep going,” Gallagher said with a shrug. “Marco Salvatore, older brother of the Salvatore Matriarch.”

In too much pain to answer, Spiderwick could only give a short yell as she tried to brace for whatever else he would do to her. Reyes hit her again, knocking her head to the side.

“Narsciso Salvatore, oldest son of the Salvatore Patriarch.”

Another silent reaction, another hit to the face, this time with a closed fist. Blood stained the front of her shirt and her lip began to swell. Gallagher continued down the list, not even looking up as he said each and every significant Salvatore name.

“Luna Salvatore. Giovanni Salvatore. Belladonna Salvatore. Diego Salvatore.”

Reyes did not let up, and to her credit, Spiderwick remained conscious, taking each hit as her face turned black and blue and her white shirt was soaked with red. Gallagher took a break from the names as he got down to the younger children in the family, looking across the table at her.

“You’re really gonna hold out for them? They would kill you in an instant. Just you being here has signed your death certificate, you may as well backstab them so you can get some feeling of revenge, because I can be here all day.”

Spitting more blood out onto the table, Spiderwick lifted her head, trying to get her eyes to focus through the tears and blood and greasy hair.

“Jump… off… a cliff…”

There was no way the Salvatores had promised her anything that would keep a woman as bitter as she was silent about her involvement with them for so long. Pain must have made her feel alive. Or she really had no connection to them.

His phone buzzed in his pocket again. Gallagher got up to go speak with Harvey. “Don’t let her pass out,” he instructed Reyes before going to the door and stepping out. In the hallway, Harvey was more giddy than any male over the age of thirty should ever be.

“He admitted it, sir,” was all he said before shoving the tablet at Gallagher.

Annoyed, Gallagher took the device and held it at a more reasonable length, looking at the video that was playing. On the screen there was a redheaded man sitting in a chair, hugging his stomach as he rocked back and forth. He was the most harmless and pathetic looking person Gallagher had brought down here in a while, wearing an oversized striped sweater, suspenders that were falling off at this point, muttering to himself. Gallagher brought the tablet up to his ear to listen to what he was saying.

“Mr. Salvatore said I don’t have to answer these questions… Mr. Salvatore said I don’t have to answer these questions.”

So Harvey had managed to break him in just the right way, and he didn’t need to draw blood to do it, though that was hardly a surprise, given the look of this Winston character. Blowing too hard in the wrong direction might have scared him into talking.

“Well done, Harvey,” he told him, handing back the tablet and ignoring the shocked look on his subordinate’s face at the verbal affirmation. “Try to get him to admit which Salvatore spoke with him. I’m still trying to see if the one in here was directly involved.”

“Yes, sir.” Harvey took the tablet and made his way back down the hall, doing everything in his power not to skip.

Returning to the tiny room, Gallagher closed the door and sat down across the table from Spiderwick, who was fighting unconsciousness as hard as she could.

“Now, where were we?”

“You’re… not getting anything outta me…”

Gallagher raised an eyebrow. “Really? You’ve given me a lot more than you think. I’m just trying to figure out why you’re so stubborn. How far do you think loyalty to a family like the Salvatores is going to take you?”

“Who says… I’m not… playing them?”

“Oh… oh, you poor little spider…” he said, reaching across the table to rest his hand over hers. “You don’t play with the Salvatores to win.”

She tried to shove his hand away, but was too discombobulated to do so successfully. Instead, he held her hands tighter, pulling back part of her half-gloves to look at the burn scars underneath, how the stretched and melted skin had tried to regrow as best as it could.

“These are from the house fire, aren’t they?”

She did not answer, her head lolling to the side as she tried to manage a glare through her injuries.

“I would have assumed that your little… what was it… rainbow flame experiment? Yes, I would have assumed that several beakers of ethanol bursting into flames in your hands caused this, but that’s not the case, is it?”

She did not respond. When he looked up at her, he saw the tears falling quickly, and they were not from the broken nose, busted lip, or black eye. The snarl fell away. Thick eyebrows turned up in a pained expression that no amount of tension could help her endure.

“They were from trying to put out the flames on her clothes… before you passed out.”

She did not pull away. She had no strength. Any mention of her mother ripped the life out of her, tore the fight out of her, just like he had seen earlier. Just as he had planned. Spiderwick likely felt big and tough, enduring all of this, convinced she could take it for as long as needed, but she had already revealed this wound early on.

“The firefighters got to you and your brother first… children first…”

She dropped eye contact as he gently caressed the burns on the back of her hands.

“They tried to bring her back, but they couldn’t. She died outside in your front lawn. She died and you lived. Nothing you ever say or do will bring her back.”

Something akin to a sob seemed to break through all the pain. Gallagher leaned across the table, dropping his voice to a whisper.

“When you play with me… you don’t win either, little spider.”

She went limp in her seat, dropping her head down on the table. Gallagher sat back as she let out a scream from the depths of her soul. There was no anger in the scream this time. Only pain. He would wait a few moments, let her get it all out.

When her vocal chords could not take anymore and only trembling sobs were left, Gallagher nodded to Reyes. Reyes grabbed her by the hair and lifted her to face him.

“Now… which Salvatore was it?”

The hopelessness… the lifelessness… she stared straight through him, tears mingling with all the blood and sweat.

“Get her attention, Reyes.”

Her entire body managed to tense up just a bit in preparation for another hit, but it never came. Reyes instead took off her cuffs, dropping them aside. Confused, Spiderwick looked down, then up at Gallagher.

Gallagher shrugged. “So… how many fingers can Reyes cut off before you bleed out?”

Her eyes widened and finally, finally, her face flooded with pure fear. Gallagher loved that moment. It had to be perfectly crafted with these stubborn and angry types, but he still had it. He could still bring them to this point. Terrified. In horror. Brought to the edge, pulled back just a bit from it, and then thrown off with only a thin rope keeping them dangling above the abyss. That little moment of accepting death had to be snuffed out. He wanted her awake and alive, he wanted her to kick and scream, because that meant she would do anything to breathe, to get back to solid ground.

Spiderwick watched as Reyes put her hand on the table, palm down, and pulled out a knife. Her breathing quickened and she looked desperately at Gallagher, hoping this was a bluff, hoping that he did not truly intend to go this far. Superiors would notice an injury like that, which meant that he did not plan for her to ever see the light of day after this moment. She would die, but it would not be quick. It would be slow and painful, one day at a time, until she begged for the end.

Gallagher interlaced his fingers, resting his chin on them. “I will tear down the Salvatore family, and I don’t care how many little insects I have to smash in the process.”

The words were on the tip of her tongue, the admission, ready to get it over with, ready to say anything, ready to give it all up just to avoid that torture. Gallagher had been here so many times, and most people broke right here. Yet somehow, something inside of her turned the key and rushed the engine back to life. The flames returned, more vibrant than ever. The hardness came back full force, her lip curled up in a snarl and she spit blood across the table one last time.

“Spiders… aren’t… insects.”

If he was not so annoyed, he would have smiled. But this was no bluff, like he knew she had hoped. Gallagher waved a hand at Reyes. “Cut off her pinkie.”

The sheer terror that enveloped her was delicious but he only got to enjoy it for a second when the door slid open.

“What!” he exploded, standing to his feet to face Harvey, who was never supposed to open the door on his own.

“Sir, we got a name!”

The anger subsided almost instantly. “You did?” He turned back to the table, seeing that Reyes had paused in bringing the knife to her finger. Spiderwick collapsed onto the table in a brief moment of relief. With a huff, Gallagher faced Harvey again. “What name?”

“Dante. Dante Salvatore.”

If it would not have been a bigger mess, Gallagher would have pulled his gun and shot Harvey in the chest for being so stupid.

“There is no Dante Salvatore, you complete idiot.”

Spiderwick began to laugh. Gallagher turned around to look at her.

“Winston… Winston said Dante… huh?”

She knew. She knew they had her partner in crime. Gallagher stepped back over to the table. “Start talking, Spider, you’ve got ten fingers and I’ve got all day.”

“You said… there’s no Dante… you didn’t look hard enough.”

“You’ve got no place to talk down to me, little girl, I have spent fifteen years tracing every single Salvatore in this country.”

She lifted her head and gave him a blood-stained grin. “You should have gone back farther.”

Unable to stop himself, he backhanded her, which was rare. Gallagher did not prefer getting his hands dirty, but as his hand made contact with her swollen face, the light swinging above their heads began to flicker.

Reyes stood straight, reaching for the gun on his side. Harvey did the same, stepping out into the hall and looking both ways.

Unimpressed by what was surely a coincidence, Gallagher held eye contact with Spiderwick, keeping his hand out to tell Reyes and Harvey not to make any moves yet. It was a bluff to distract them. There was no off-the-wall distant Salvatore relative that would have the means to reach Room 99 without him being alerted to it. This basically confirmed that she knew none of the family and was only trying to prolong her time here, hold their attention so the real culprit could get away. A mistake on her part. Gallagher did not allow useless informants to just walk free. A staged accident was in order, and it involved a lighter and gas.

The light above them went completely out. Gallagher stood up straight and turned to face Harvey, who was cautiously stepping into the center of the hall, looking up and down. The heavy metal door slammed closed.

“Harvey!” Gallagher snapped, running to open the door. It did not budge. With a hiss, he pulled his keys out of his pocket, but a scream from the hallway made him go rigid. Reyes moved away from Spiderwick, letting her go completely limp and slump over in her chair while he made his way to the door, putting his back to the wall beside it, weapon up. They were in complete darkness now, and something was in the hall.

Nobody could get down here without Gallagher being alerted. He knew that. The Salvatores would not waste resources on the beat up pyromaniac behind him.

Winston. Had he marked the wrong suspect? Was it the meek and timid redhead, struggling to move beyond his days as a stalker and low-life creep, who had the deeper connection to Salvatore? But there was no Dante Salvatore, Gallagher knew there was no Dante Salvatore on file, and he had even the illegitimate children marked.

Reyes was waiting for his orders. Gallagher had not yet unlocked the door, his key hovering by the handle as he listened for any more noise from the hallway.

A loud thump caused both men to point their guns at the door. Gallagher was not the type of agent who usually found himself in the direct line of danger, but that did not mean he was useless if it came down to it.

Signaling for Reyes to stay where he was, Gallagher made his way to the table, picking Spiderwick up by her upper arm and dragging her to her feet. Once he had positioned her in the direct line of the door, keeping her between himself and whoever might want to come in and get her, he leaned down to whisper in her ear.

“I won’t hesitate to shoot you in the head, spider. You’d better not try anything.”

She did not answer, her body limp, relying on his vice-like grip to keep her from landing in a bloody heap on the hard floor. With his thumb, Gallagher found the switch for the flashlight mounted on his pistol and turned it on, illuminating the door where his gun was pointed. Reyes remained to the right of the door, his own gun pointed at it, waiting for another order.

The handle jiggled but the door did not open. Gallagher slowly moved the barrel of his gun to rest against Spiderwick’s skull. If they wanted her back this bad, she could become the leverage.

“If they’re here for you,” Gallagher told her, trembling with ire over this turn of events, this shift in the power dynamic, “you’d best call them off. The minute that door opens and it’s not one of my agents, I’m shooting you.”

Something in the corner cackled.

Reyes spun to face the corner, trying to figure out how on earth anything got inside this sealed room.

A strange voice spoke, even more scratchy and inhuman than Spiderwick’s.

“Can’t shoot if no gun…”

Gallagher moved the gun away from Spiderwick’s head to point the flashlight at the corner. What he saw sent terror flashing through him. A small, shadowed figure with glowing white eyes and a jagged smile. Startled by the creature that looked ripped from a children’s horror cartoon, he backed up against the wall. Once the light was away from the corner, the creature cackled again and Reyes cried out in pain.

Adjusting his hold on Spiderwick so that he held her like a shield in front of him, Gallagher ignored his rapid breathing and shined the light and the gun around the room. Reyes was kneeling on the ground, gripping his wrist. A thick, black substance dripped from his fingers and stained the metal floor.

Another cackle. “Yummy gun!”

Whatever it was, it was not human. Gallagher found it with his light just as it swallowed Reyes’s handgun in a single gulp.

He fired at it four times in a row. One of the bullets had to have hit it, but that did not slow it down. It cackled again and bounced around the room. Trying to keep up with it and avoid shooting Reyes, Gallagher dashed to the adjacent corner, pulling Spiderwick with him, looking all around for where the creature had gone.

“Ooh, ‘nother yummy gun.”

Something cold, sticky, and wet enveloped his gun and the light was doused. Gallagher cried out and tried to jump away, flinging his hand to get rid of the gross sensation. He was now in complete darkness with only the sound of that creature slurping and swallowing his weapon.

“What on earth is going on, spider?” he snapped at her, shaking her as he moved to another corner. His heart was pounding beneath his chest in fear, wondering what disgusting science experiments the Salvatores must be involved in.

The door slid open at last, letting in a harsh glow of light. Gallagher shielded his face and immediately regretted the action as more of the black goo dripped from his hand down on his suit, but what made his heart sink to the bottom of his stomach more was the figure in the doorway.

Tall. Broad. A full shadow draped in a thick cloak with a tall collar. The figure nearly enveloped the entire door frame, and the shape of the shadow had defined horns at the top of his head. Two eyes, blood red and narrow, stared directly at him, a hovering embodiment of dread. Gallagher’s mind tried to find some explanation for the unnatural being that stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the light from the hall behind it. No human could be that much of a shadow. One part of his mind tried to insist it was an illusion, a trick of the mind, an elaborate deception. He tried to look through the figure, tried to search for the parts that would give it away for what it was, an apparition.

Any hope that the figure was there only as a silhouette to frighten him was dashed when he saw the slumped figure leaning against it. Winston. The redhead was almost entirely unconscious, but awake enough to cling to the shadow, his hands gripping the darkness as if it were material. The figure was real. A person.

Kneeling on the floor, Reyes was just as petrified as Gallagher, clutching his injured hand, staring up at the eerie form that blocked the door.

The figure entered the small room, gliding rather than walking, with Winston following behind it, holding tight and trying to hide his face. With no gun to defend himself and no idea where that smaller creature was, Gallagher held Spiderwick closer to protect himself with her body. All of the blood drained from his face as the shadow seemed to grow in size and hover over him.

A black hand grabbed Gallagher by the neck and squeezed, constricting his breathing just enough that he had to struggle for air but could still manage to breathe. Gallagher tried to pry the hand away while still holding Spiderwick, but the grip was like iron. The shadow did not feel human in his grasp. It was not skin, nor was it material. It was thick and solid, and felt like it would swallow his hand if he held onto it for too long.

Eventually, the shadow spoke in a deep, rumbling voice that made the walls tremble.

“Release her.”

Unable to speak or free himself, Gallagher let go of Spiderwick.

She dropped to the floor and landed in a heap. The smaller creature appeared again and grabbed her arms. “Gotcha, Spider, come on.” It cackled and ran out of the room, dragging the unconscious woman with him.

Gallagher held onto the shadow arm with both hands now, desperately hoping that the grip would get no tighter. He tried to focus on the figure that held him, searching the darkness for some sign of humanity, some hint that it was not as terrifying as it tried to appear. There had to be some explanation, some message from whoever had sent this person, some understanding of how it had gotten down here through the deepest levels of security.

The creature said nothing. Once the sound of Spiderwick being dragged down the hall could no longer be heard, Gallagher was released. His trembling legs could not hold him up and he found himself on the floor, coughing and wheezing for breath, trying to wipe away the black ooze left behind by the shadowed hand. Lifting his head, expecting to see some weapon that would end his life, Gallagher only saw the large shadow pick up Winston in its arms. The full grown man looked like a child when being held by such a creature, but he had no fear and seemed to hold tighter to the shadow.

Rather than go out the door as the smaller shadow demon had done, this figure lifted his head and disappeared in a waft of smoke and wind that was so strong, it sent the chairs flying up against the wall of the room, scattering the paper files everywhere. When the wind died down, Gallagher and Reyes were alone in the room.

In the silence that followed as the papers and photos drifted to the floor, Gallagher’s mind caught up with him. Ignoring the pain in his neck, he scrambled to his feet and ran to the doorway, looking up and down the halls. They were empty, except for the unconscious form of Harvey slumped against the wall, his clothes streaked with black goo.

This had to be the work of the Salvatores. None of it made sense in his mind, none of it had any explanation. He was a man of logic, unwilling to believe that whatever had just stolen his prey from under his nose was some inhuman creature. Whatever game was being played, the Salvatores had changed the rules to get the upper hand. For some reason, Spiderwick and Winston were important to the family, vital enough to send a power like that to retrieve them.

A power that, for some reason, kept Gallagher alive. To toy with him. To laugh at him. It was all a game to them, the world was their board, and they saw him as little more than a pawn.

Turning to face the small room again and the chaos littered all around, Gallagher silently steamed over how close he had been. If only he had focused on Winston first, he would have gotten so much more information in a shorter time frame. Of course the stupid, useless, pyromaniac wannabe scientist would have nothing important to give him. The wimpy and pathetic redhead should have been the target. Already his superiors were on his back about how many resources he put toward keeping an eye out for Salvatores. If they heard about this failure, he could face suspension, or worse.

With a short yell, Gallagher kicked over the heavy table and marched out of Room 99. That helped release some of the anger, but not enough of it. He adjusted his tie and began to plan. Damage control was the most important next step. First of all, Harvey and Reyes had to go. He would not miss the younger agent in the slightest, but it was hard to find an interrogation assistant like Reyes. The man was quiet, thorough, and knew how to think on his feet. Finding a replacement would be a nightmare, but it was a sacrifice he had to make. Nobody else in the agency needed to know about what had happened down here.

The things that took place in Room 99 were always kept confidential, if they were recorded at all, but today he needed to erase any evidence that he had even been down here today. Harvey and Reyes would be transferred somewhere else, and then be scheduled to meet some untimely demise at different times. Nobody could know what had happened until Gallagher knew what had happened, knew what had come down here, who had outsmarted him, why Spiderwick and Winston were important, and who on earth Dante Salvatore was.