Dark Deception (DARC Ops Book 11) Read online

  He opened his eyes and found himself staring up at white ceiling. Daylight. The accident had happened at night. God, how long had he been here? His gaze swept across buttercup-yellow painted walls, a framed print of a rustic covered bridge . . . then down, to the hospital bed. The bed in which he lay, groggy, thirsty, and confused. He was in a hospital, lying in a hospital bed. How badly had he been injured? And what—Ellie!

  The steady beeping sound from nearby accelerated, and he turned his head to find a vitals monitoring machine mounted to a stand beside the bed, its yellow, green, and red lines assessing his heart rate, his blood pressure, and oxygen levels.

  Ellie! It all came back to him with painful clarity. The accident. No, the trap. The ambush. He tried to sit up, wincing at the pain busting in his skull and ricocheting into his left shoulder as he struggled. The machine went bonkers. Seconds later, a nurse appeared in the doorway.

  “Mr. Marshall!” she gasped, rushing to the bedside. “You mustn’t move around like that. You just got out of surgery!”

  Asher froze, sitting up now, sort of, slumped forward. He stared at his knees under the sheet and thin blue blanket. “Surgery?”

  “You were shot. In your shoulder. No vital organs hit, but there was bleeding due to a nicked vein. You’re going to be fine, but you can’t be moving around like that. You could start bleeding again—”

  “Where’s Ellie?”

  The nurse frowned. “Who’s Ellie?”

  Asher shook his head, instantly regretting it as pain stabbed through his skull like someone had run a hot poker through it. After several slow breaths, the sharpness settled to a steady throb. He lifted his hand to gently touch his bandaged skull, wincing.

  “Another bullet grazed your skull,” she informed him, placing a gentle hand on his right shoulder. “Please lie back down. I’ll help you.”

  He wanted to protest, to get out of bed, but he didn’t have the strength. Not just yet. She gently pressed his good shoulder, prompting him to lie back. He did, breathing hard with the slight effort. Shit.

  “That’s good. You lie still, and I’ll have the doctor come in and talk to you.” She hesitated. “The police are here, too.”

  “Send them in,” Asher croaked, his voice thick and gravelly. “Send them all in.”

  He lay in the bed, forcing his breathing to slow, to assess the levels of pain wracking his body. Bad, but not impossible to endure. Then again, he didn’t know if he was under the influence of pain killers. He had to get out of here. Had to find Ellie. He needed to know what was going on. He had to help Ellie, find her. He needed to call Jackson. He should have—

  A middle-aged man wearing a white coat and with a stethoscope draped around his neck strode into the room. “Mr. Marshall—”

  “Where’s Ellie?”

  Despite orders, Asher flung the sheet and thin blanket off his legs and sat up again. God, it hurt like a bitch, but it felt easier this time. He tried to swing them over the side of the bed, but every muscle in his body protested any further action on his part. A groan rumbled deep in his chest, and he sagged back on the bed. His body was drenched in sweat, thrumming with pain, his chest heaving with exhaustion that just triggered more intense throbs of pain deep in his left shoulder.

  Another man entered the room, older than the physician, wearing the uniform of the sheriff’s department, followed by a man in a suit. Asher immediately nailed him as a feeb. Which meant what? Confirmation that Ellie had been kidnapped? Multistate crimes? What?

  “Where’s Ellie?” he ground out.

  “Mr. Marshall, I’m Sheriff Bryan Vickers, sheriff of Cheshire County. We need to ask you a few questions about your accident—”

  “Wasn’t an accident,” Asher said, his gaze shifting between the sheriff and the feeb. “You with the FBI?”

  The tall, lanky, dark-haired man nodded. “SSA Jared Hemmings,” he said, gesturing toward the sheriff. “We found signs of another passenger in your vehicle. The sedan you crashed into had been pulled or pushed, or maybe even driven off the road . . . tucked into a cutout in the woods. Mind telling me what happened out there?”

  Asher told them. Not how he was connected to Ellie, not why someone was following them. Not yet. He wasn’t sure whom he could trust. He needed to call Jackson. He tamped down his fears, forced his heartbeat to slow, the machine at the side of the bed mechanically broadcasting his emotions. Finally, the beeping slowed.

  He had failed her. He had failed his mission to watch over and protect Ellie. While it all started as an effort to protect their own group, Asher wasn’t sure just how much—

  The FBI agent exchanged a glance with the sheriff and turned toward the doctor. “Can we have a few moments alone with your patient, Doc?”

  The doctor frowned, looked at the three of them, and then offered a hesitant nod before turning back to Asher. “You stay put. You just got out of surgery. You lost quite a bit of blood, you’re weak, and if you move around too much, you’ll pull those damn stitches out or cause internal bleeding, and then I’ll have to go back in and fix it again.”

  Asher said nothing, waiting impatiently for the doctor and nurse to leave the room. They did, albeit reluctantly, closing the door softly behind them. The sheriff and the FBI agent stepped closer to the bed.

  The agent spoke first. “I got an interesting call this morning—”

  “How long have I been here? What time is it?” Asher interrupted, dreading the answer.

  The sheriff gestured toward the clock high on the wall opposite the bed. “The ambulance brought you in last night about seven-thirty p.m. It’s now, as you can see, three o’clock in the afternoon. You’ve been here less than twenty-four hours.”

  “I need to go, need to find—”

  “Ellie Jespersen, yes,” the FBI agent said. “Like I said, I got an interesting phone call this morning from a Jackson . . .”

  “You know Jackson?” Asher frowned. What the hell had happened while he’d been unconscious, in surgery, lying on his ass while Ellie—

  “Look, Mr. Marshall—”

  “Asher.”

  “Asher,” the FBI agent sighed. “Please, let me finish.”

  Asher kept his mouth shut.

  “I got a call this morning. I don’t know Jackson personally. He contacted the county sheriff when you failed to check in with him. Apparently, he was able to track your vehicle, found sitting out on the road for a few hours after the accident. While the state deputies and first responders took care of you, the sheriff here contacted me about a possible abducted victim. Not long after that, I also got a call from Jackson, and he filled me in on what you’ve been up to. While the state patrol conducted their investigation of the accident and took measurements . . .” he sighed. “Well, I’m sure you’re aware of what your own team can do.”

  The sheriff continued. “We found indications that whoever attacked you had set up a fake detour . . . they took down one of the road signs and tossed it into the woods. Unfortunately for you, that road is rarely traveled by locals at night this time of year due to wildlife versus car accidents, plus it’s pretty ragged and in need of repairs.”

  Asher nodded. He was glad Jackson had gotten the ball rolling with the locals while he’d been apparently unconscious, but he’d still failed Ellie. His Jeep had been sitting out there for hours. Tansy or one of the others had probably been monitoring it through GPS, or whatever. “And?”

  “Jackson . . . he refused to give me his full name, though I’ll find out eventually . . . told us that he runs a security firm and that you were acting as a bodyguard for Miss Jespersen.” He glanced at the sheriff, who pulled a small notepad from his breast pocket, flipped a few pages, and showed it to the agent. “Ellie Jespersen, originally from Boston.” He raised his eyebrows at Asher. “You’re a long way from home. So was she.”

  Was . . . no, he refused to believe that Ellie was dead until he had a body to confirm it. He had no idea what Jackson had communicated to the FBI agent or the
county sheriff, and Asher didn’t want to sink his feet deeper into the shit than they already were. “That’s right,” he nodded, again winced, and then sighed. “Somebody’s been trying to kill her.”

  “Who?”

  “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Look, did you find any signs? Is she . . .”

  “She isn’t dead,” the sheriff said. “At least, we didn’t find a body. We searched a hundred yards north and south of the accident and fifty yards into the woods on either side.”

  “Blood?”

  The FBI agent offered a small shrug. “A little. Not enough to be life threatening.”

  His stomach roiled, and Asher forced himself not to throw up. He’d fucked up. Big time, and now Ellie was paying for it. The beeping of the monitor at the side of his bed accelerated again. He forced himself to breathe evenly until it returned to normal.

  “We believe, as you, that she’s been kidnapped,” the agent said. “Want to fill us in on some details? There are a lot of missing blanks here.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know much more than you do. I need to call my boss. That okay with you?”

  The FBI agent shrugged. Both he and the sheriff continued to stare at him. They didn’t like this one bit. Neither did he.

  Ellie. He had to find Ellie. The sooner the better.

  21

  Ellie

  Ellie lifted her head, attempting again to peer into the darkness surrounding her. It smelled musty and dank. She couldn’t see a dammed thing, except for pitch black.

  Her heart pounded with dread. How many hours had passed? Or had it been days? She’d lost all track of time. Did it matter? After she’d been tossed in the truck bed, everything had gone blank. She’d woken up only to find herself bound upright to a wooden chair, hands still zip-tied behind her, shoulders aching from the tension, burning, like they were being pulled out of their sockets. Her feet had been tied to the chair legs. At least that awful gag had been removed. Which meant only one thing.

  Even if she screamed and called for help, no one would hear her.

  She’d carefully moved what she could and determined she hadn’t been seriously injured in the car crash. At least, she thought so. She might be slowly bleeding to death for all she knew. She ached, there were definitely a few bruises, but as far as she could tell, no broken bones. Overwhelmed and with ears ringing, she had come close to hyperventilating before she got herself under control. Think! What would Asher do? She tried not to think the worst, to believe that Asher was dead. Not Asher. But that gunshot . . .

  The room was so black. Not just dark like a room at night, with even the faintest glow of moonlight shining through window, but pitch black. Solid. So dark that even if she could lift a hand in front of her face, she wouldn’t have been able to see it. No matter how hard she tried, no matter how much she squinted, looked up, down, and to the sides, she saw nothing.

  “Is anybody out there?”

  Her voice didn’t sound like her voice. It sounded scratchy, filled with fear and resignation. She didn’t expect an answer. She hadn’t heard anything except her own movement as she’d tried to struggle, to escape her bindings, the only sound the soft brush of her clothing against the wooden chair. Could the sound of her voice tell her anything about the size of the space? Hard to tell. Wherever she was being held, it was bigger than a closet, but smaller than a garage or basement. Maybe. Where the hell was she?

  She heard no sounds, no footsteps, no voices. Not even outdoor sounds like crickets, roadways, or an airplane passing overhead. Like the darkness, the silence felt deafening. She tried not to think the worst, that whoever her captors were had left her here, tied up and alone in the darkness to die of starvation or thirst. Or to go mad with the silence and the darkness.

  The room smelled old and musty. Maybe she’d never be found, her flesh left to slowly decay and rats or other night creatures to feast on it, leaving nothing but her bones behind. She didn’t want to die like that. Lost forever. But how could she escape? She didn’t even know where she was.

  How many times during the past hours had she promised herself that if she got out of this, she’d be done with hacking for good? If. A big if. And Asher. She still didn’t know who he worked for, but one thing she couldn’t deny was that he’d risked his life for her. He’d done everything he could to protect her. He’d likely died trying to save her. Grief, remorse, and pain swept through her, prompting a warm flush of tears. Her shoulders shook with silent weeping. What had she done? Whose toes had she stepped on that were worth someone’s life?

  How could she—

  A dull thud sounded . . . from above, but not close, followed by another. Her heart leapt into her throat and she stiffened, every muscle tense with horrified expectation. Were they going to kill her now? What did they want from her? Whoever they were . . . Footsteps from above echoed hollowly down into the chamber or wherever the hell she was. A door squeaked open, a heavy metal door protesting, followed by an echoing bang as it made contact with the wall behind it. The sound reverberated through the . . . wherever she was. Echoing. A large space. More footsteps, coming downstairs. How many? Two? Three? She couldn’t tell. They still weren’t particularly close. Suddenly, so suddenly that it took her by surprise, a row of fluorescent lights lit up along the ceiling, one at a time, from the far end of a room to directly above. They were so bright she gasped with pain, closed her eyes, and lowered her head against it.

  Nevertheless, in their brief instant, she had seen enough. She was imprisoned in a large chamber filled with jail cells. Cement walls were on the sides, iron bars on the front. Her chair was situated between two bare metal bunks bolted into cinderblock wall covered with graffiti. She couldn’t see what was behind her, but had a feeling it was an open toilet. A prison? She was being held in an abandoned prison?

  Voices. Male, talking softly among themselves. Oh, God, where they coming to kill her now? To—

  “Close your eyes.”

  The command came from a deep male voice. She didn’t recognize it as being from the men who had been at the scene of the crash. This one had a slight Southern accent. Without thinking, she obeyed. Where was she? Was she still in New Hampshire or—

  A key slid into a lock on the barred doors before her. She waited with bated breath, her mouth so dry she thought she’d gag, her heart pounding so hard it was a wonder it didn’t burst from her chest. If her hands and feet hadn’t been tied behind her, surely they would see her wild trembling.

  Footsteps came closer and moved around the chair behind her. She smelled aftershave and felt the brush of fabric against her shoulder. A blindfold was placed over her eyes and secured tightly against the back of her head. The footsteps moved away. Even through the blindfold, she felt eyes on her. She wanted to ask who they were and what they wanted, what they were going to do to her, but she forced herself to remain silent. A sense, a very brief sense, of bravado took over. If they wanted something from her, they were going have to work for it.

  “You’re good, Ellie, or should I call you Dysmonia?”

  That was Southern Guy asking. She didn’t answer. Footsteps approached. She felt warm fingers touch her jaw. She jerked, biting back a yelp of surprise. Her heart raced, forcing her to clench her jaw, to prevent the whine from escaping her throat.

  “You just don’t know when to stop, do you? Then again, we have more than one way to stop you from meddling. But the thing is, Ellie, you found something else we’re interested in, and we want to know more about it.”

  Again, she said nothing. Southern Guy hadn’t asked her a question. It was a comment. Silence filled her jail cell. They waited for a response, but she said nothing. She had no idea how she was supposed to respond.

  “I can be patient, Ellie, but only so much. We want information from you. If you give it to us, I’ll consider letting you go. If you don’t, you’ll soon regret your lack of cooperation.”

  Finally, she spoke. “What information?” She cringed at the hoars
eness and fear in her voice.

  “Your snooping around in our database caught our attention, but eventually we were able to follow your digital trail. Someone’s helping you. You came across an operative. Who is he, and who does he work for?”

  An operative? What the hell was he talking about? Asher? Asher wasn’t an operative . . . was he?

  “Cat got your tongue? We’ve been following you. One step ahead of you. All the way from your apartment in Boston to Keene, New Hampshire. You see, we’re pretty good, too. While we’re none too pleased that you accessed our database, you can be assured that we’ve taken steps to make sure that doesn’t happen again. Right now, we’re more interested in the DARC program.”

  “Dark program? I don’t understand,” she said, confused. “What kind of dark program are you talking about?”

  “Don’t waste my time, Ellie.”

  “But I don’t know anything,” she insisted. What was a dark program?

  “The guy with you. He works for the DARC group.”

  Dark group? She didn’t understand what he meant. “He didn’t tell me anything about who he worked for, just that . . . just that I had found . . .” Should she tell them? Was this guy telling the truth? Was Asher a bad guy, just like this group? All these private security agencies, some legitimate, some not so much. How the hell was she supposed to know who was who, especially when she didn’t know much about either of them; the Guardian Knights or this dark group that Asher supposedly worked with.

  “We’ll make you a deal, Ellie. You do something for us, and we’ll let you go, even provide you with a completely new identity. You don’t know who we are, what we look like, and believe me, no matter how good you are, you won’t be able to hack us again. We’ve made sure of that. So, you really don’t have anything to lose, unless . . . well, what do you say?”