Dark Web (DARC Ops Book 2) Read online

  “Ma’am?”

  The voice came without warning. No footsteps. No jingling of keys.

  “Are you hurt?” The officer, who sounded anything but sympathetic, was back at the driver’s side window.

  “Yes. I’m hurt.”

  “Do you need an ambulance?”

  “No.”

  “Are you able to step out of the vehicle?”

  “No.”

  The officer cleared his throat and asked, “Are you Carly Barlow?”

  She thought for a second. And then said, “No.”

  “Can you get out of the car?”

  “No.”

  “Step out of the car, please.”

  “No.”

  “Ma’am, I don’t care how hurt you are. If you don’t step out of this vehicle, then I’m—”

  His voice was suddenly drowned out by the piercingly loud wail of a police siren. She heard the officer’s footsteps thudding away, and then the sound of voices, yelling angrily. A moment later, it was the sound of the driver’s side door opening, someone landing hard in the seat, the weight rocking the car, the engine turning on.

  “Hang on.” It was Tansy.

  Before she could understand what he meant, Carly’s head was forced back against the headrest and held there by the g-force of Tansy’s quick acceleration, a screeching burnout, and then a quick speeding through the gears.

  “Is he following us?” she asked, straining her voice over the revving engine. He either didn’t hear or chose not to answer, which could only mean there was a police car hot on their tail. “Tansy!” she yelled, coughing from the effort. “It’s not worth it!”

  “We’re good,” he said calmly.

  “We’re good!?”

  “Yeah. Can you hear his siren?”

  “All I can hear is this fucking car.” That was a lie. She could also hear the pleasant melodies of a Debussy concerto accompanying the hundreds of horses which thundered and powered their getaway. “Tansy? As you might recall, I can’t see anything. So can you please tell me what the fuck is going on?”

  “I hacked into his patrol car.”

  What the fuck? What had she missed in ten years?

  “How?” Asking a hacker for a secret was almost as bad as asking a magician. They were the same thing in the end, she supposed. “Were you even inside the car? I thought you needed to plant a dongle or something.”

  “He did it for me. I’ve got secret software embedded into my driver’s license. And as soon as he swipes the card, I can start sending messages with my phone.”

  She was impressed. But for how ingenious it was, the hack was probably only made possible through a significant budget and countless development hours. Cracking police security codes and faking a government-issued ID were no cheap and easy tasks.

  “That’s the upside to developing cybersecurity for law enforcement,” said Tansy. “You get paid to fuck with everyone’s shit. For the cop back there, I started with his siren, drew him back to his car. And then I just made a run for it, like I said.”

  “And you deactivated his car or something?”

  “I messed with the starter. It’ll probably take a few days to get it running again.”

  “So there’s one behind us?”

  “No cops. No.”

  “Okay. Do you have a hack for turning a Civic into a minivan?”

  “We might be stuck with doing that the old fashioned way.”

  “What’s the old fashioned way?”

  “Carjacking.” He paused, maybe waiting for Carly to freak out, before adding, “Just kidding.”

  “Okay, but what’s our real plan?”

  “We’ll have to ditch the car at the compound,” he said as he swerved hard. “And then hunker down there for awhile so we can work on getting your story straight.”

  “Which means what, exactly?”

  “Well, you’re obviously in some trouble. Maybe we can bargain with the Feds.”

  Bargaining with the FBI was never in her playbook. But neither was getting kidnapped and almost killed by an assassin. Or getting rescued by someone with whom she hadn’t spoken in years.

  “Are you okay with that?” he asked. “I think they’re more interested in dealing with a militia right now than whatever little indiscretion you have from the past.”

  “Tansy?”

  “Carly?”

  “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said with a laugh. “I’m doing great at that all on my own.”

  “Why?”

  His laughter died down.

  “I mean—” she fumbled with her words. Maybe she shouldn’t be asking such impulsive questions. “Just don’t get in trouble for me. Okay?”

  “I don’t know why,” he said, suddenly serious. “I honestly don’t.”

  He fell silent and Carly searched her brain for something worthwhile to say. An apology, maybe? Nothing good came to her, and then Tansy spoke again.

  “But it is what it is,” he said. He turned up the radio and didn’t speak again.

  16

  Tansy

  He felt safer once they got off the interstate. And as the back roads increasingly narrowed and they ventured through increasingly dark little towns, he could finally ease up on the throttle and on his white-knuckled grip of the steering wheel. Finally, in the quiet of the desert, he let the car—and himself—breathe again. As time wore on, Carly’s silence began to grate on him. She hadn’t spoken since she’d admitted she was in trouble, finally letting him in just that little bit. She was probably grateful for the continued silence. She’d had a lot to take in all at once.

  In lieu of conversation, Tansy would occasionally check whether she was awake. He knew enough about head injuries that any lack of response from Carly could mean a serious brain injury and he was reluctant to let her lapse into sleep before Jasper had checked her out. He’d say her name and she’d respond with a faint little, “yep” before falling silent again. A few times, he could hear the sleep in her breathing, the slowing and deepening of her breaths. She sounded so peaceful that he hated having to force her awake. Concussion protocol aside, she needed the rest.

  “I want to let you sleep,” he said, “but I also want you to wake up after.”

  “I know, I know.” She sat up straighter in the seat. Carly wasn’t arguing with him over that, which he took as a good sign.

  Then again, sleep could be good. They had some driving still ahead of them, and the possibility that he’d have to spend it talking with her was a little scary. This girl scared him more than any war zone ever had. He had many questions, but real questions, hard ones. Not the kind of small-talk they’d skirted around with so far. There was only so much of that he could muster, which was another good reason to stretch out the silence until they got to the compound. Talking could get them into trouble.

  Maybe silence could, too.

  It was haunting. The questions left unanswered, the sound of her breathing slowing again as he pulled up the long driveway leading up to the ranch house.

  “We’re here,” he said, despite the relative meaninglessness of “here” for someone who couldn’t see. But even for Tansy, there wasn’t much to see. The ranch house looked desolate even during midday. At well past midnight, it was like driving up to the set of a dystopian horror movie.

  After hiding the car in the Quonset hut, Tansy helped Carly to the front porch. He warned her about the rotting wooden steps, the various unpleasant odors she might find in the abandoned ranch house, and how she shouldn’t touch anything. God only knows what had caused the stains covering the floors and walls. “Keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times,” he joked as he navigated a dark hallway with his flashlight. He found the basement door in the kitchen, carefully descended the stairs with Carly, and then punched in the access code at The Silo entrance.

  The door unlocked and he pushed it open. After its heavy clang behind them, Carly finally spoke again, “It so
unds like you’re admitting me into a jail.”

  “I’m actually a bounty hunter,” he said with a smile, helping her down the long, spiraling staircase. “Is that okay with you?”

  His joke was returned with a sharp poke in the ribs. Yeah, she hadn’t lost her style. “Sure. I’m just happy to be alive.”

  The whole time he’d been helping her navigate the labyrinthine entry, he’d tried his best to touch her as little as possible, and only as professionally as possible. A firm grasp at her elbow, sometimes a hand at the small of her back. But after several steps into the protected room, Carly wobbled out of exhaustion or disorientation and her hand had suddenly found his, her fingers gently squeezing into a tight and warm lock. Her touch felt soft, different, and he was glad for once that the compound had such a long stairway.

  Tansy skipped her introduction with the team and instead brought her straight to the lower-level sleeping quarters. He’d arranged a private room for her ahead of time, a sanctuary more than a hundred feet below the surface, where she could finally be safe from cops, assassins, and mountain lions.

  “Home sweet home for now,” he said, patting her bed. “We can meet up with your friends later and get your things. But, I think really think it’s best for you to stick around here for a while until we figure out our game plan.”

  “I want to keep working,” she said, sitting on the mattress. “At least pretend we’re working. That way we can buy some time to plan some kind of sabotage.”

  “Exactly my thoughts. You just set it up and I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Actually,”—she made a face and continued—“I was thinking that I would still work on it.”

  “How?”

  “When my eyes clear up tomorrow.”

  “Oh. . . .” He remembered saying something about her eyes clearing up, something out of desperation. “Well, of course.”

  “I think it might be getting better,” she said, trying to force a smile. Damn, she looked so tired.

  Any improvement might have just been from the fact she was finally in a brightly lit environment, but there was no need to dampen her spirits just when they’d finally risen a little bit. “Well, let’s see what the medic says.”

  “Is that what you’re still doing here?”

  “He’s on his way,” Tansy said, checking the time on an old analog military clock above the door. But then he remembered Jackson’s assertion that, in the bowels of The Silo, time did not exist. The clocks in each room were just painful reminders, a tease of normalcy. Tansy imagined that at that exact moment, just a few floors up, on the operations level, there was probably a small army of hackers working the night away. If it was still night. If the clocks could be trusted. “But anyway,” he said, turning his gaze back to Carly, “I just want to get you situated. Are you comfortable? Do you need anything?”

  “Could I get situated on the . . . situation?”

  “The militia situation? Of course. I was just going to show you the showers and all that. But, uh. . . .” An image of Carly in the shower, naked in the shower, flooded his mind and the rest of his sentence fell away.

  “Do you know what they were trying to get me to do?”

  “They have a few different attacks going on at the same time. That’s what we’re following here. With you, it was actually quite benign. It looks like they’re trying to dig up some dirt on an FBI Assistant Director. Tax stuff. Spending. Embezzlement. Probably blackmail him for some other purpose. This group, this Sagebrush Militia, they’re very good at organizing and leveraging assets.”

  “I can attest to that.”

  “I bet. They plucked you out of obscurity.” Crap. He hadn’t meant for it to sound like an insult. Flustered, he tried to backtrack with “Er, I mean. . . .”

  She waved it away with her hand. “No, no. Obscurity is the right term.” She gave a sour grin. “I was playing in a punk band in West Wendover, for God’s sake.”

  “Yeah,” he said, smiling. “That’s you leveraging your talents.”

  Her smile faded quickly. “What do you think of my latest work?”

  “Huh?” He had no idea. What else could there be after hacking and rocking out in a trucker bar?

  “They told me that I’d be working in stages, and that this tax thing was just a test. They keep wanting me to prove myself and then they’ll offer more high-ticket jobs. More sensitive stuff.”

  “Hmm,” said Tansy. “And probably more illegal.”

  “I don’t know much about it yet. I haven’t really started. But it definitely sounds a little fishy. They want me to deactivate an air-gapped server. But not one belonging to a financial network or server farm. One that controls the security for an actual brick-and-mortar building.”

  “Oh, shit.” Any time the hacking work went from abstract to real world was always a concern. He was a little surprised that Carly hadn’t put the pieces together herself. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to see it.

  “What?” she asked.

  “And you didn’t think that was alarming at all?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “And now you know they’re a militia. . . .”

  “Once I figured out what they wanted, I . . . I’d already backed out, put the brakes on.”

  “Do they know that?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not.”

  “Jesus.” He stilled, trying to collect his thoughts, and trying not to alarm Carly further while he was at it. “Okay, let’s . . . let’s keep that to ourselves. Okay? Keep them thinking that you’re on board, still working.”

  “Okay,” she spoke quietly, her unfocused eyes looking across the room as her forehead creased. What was she thinking about so hard?

  Finally, up close and in a well-lit room, Tansy could take in and fully appreciate her beauty. Even through all the dirt and the dried blood and the unfocused look in her eyes. Through it all, she was able to muster such a pretty, natural smile, her white teeth and the edge of her plump bottom lip gleaming in the harsh florescence. It wasn’t exactly the most romantic of settings, but just her being there warmed it up considerably. He could see the details that he’d missed in the darkness of the desert, or when she was up on stage. Her healthy, rosy cheeks. Button nose. Lush green eyes. How a few strands of hair kept falling over her eyes. And how she’d brush it back and tuck it fruitlessly behind her ear. It was a practiced gesture she performed with the polished certainty of a baseball player throwing to first base.

  “Tansy?” Her voice broke his concentrated adoration. “So, I’ll keep working then? And you’ll monitor?”

  “Yeah. Yes.” Was the room hot? A dotting of sweat had covered his forehead. “Are you sure you’re comfortable? Do you find it hot in here? Stuffy? It’s a little stuffy, isn’t it? The air? They have to pump it in here.” He felt himself rambling away. “If the power ever goes out long-term, we’re screwed.”

  He stood and walked over to her mattress, fussing with the bedding, making sure it was freshly cleaned and folded properly. After so many years in the military, it seemed like no civilian bed-making was ever up to snuff.

  “So does that happen often?” she asked, moving out of his way. “The power going out?”

  “Oh. Not that I’m aware of. Although your little attack sure knocked our system out of whack. This place can withstand a nuclear detonation and its EMP blast, but not the wrath of Cscape.”

  “Sorry,” she said, laughing.

  “No, don’t be. It was exciting.” After fixing up her sleeping arrangements, he sat back in a chair with a sigh. “They flew me out from across the country, and I finally get down here and start working and right away I get my ass kicked.”

  She laughed again. She was so sexy when she laughed. The sound made him smile.

  “And that’s how I knew it was you,” he said.

  “Yeah, well, I had no idea it was you.”

  “That’s what happens when you drop out of contact.” He was only half-joking this time. “I mean, you don’t k
now if I’m suddenly an FBI agent, or an assassin, or. . . .” He trailed off after seeing a flash of discomfort cross Carly’s face. “What’s wrong?” he asked, this time definitely not joking. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” she said, but her tone had changed, the laughter gone. “I’m okay. Why?”

  Even to Tansy’s defective ears, she did not sound okay. But why? It had been her choice to drop out of contact.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “Of course.” She tried to smile, but it was forced. “What could you have meant?”

  Tansy looked around the room, hoping to come across something off-topic to talk about. When nothing jumped out at him, he simply slapped his thighs a few times and casually asked, “So is everything okay? Are you comfortable?

  “You already asked me that.”

  He couldn’t take it anymore.

  “I’m sorry,” said Tansy. “I need to address the elephant in the room right now, but I know you’re tired. I don’t want to stress you out or argue or anything.”

  Right on cue, there was a quick knock at the room’s door. Tansy didn’t have a chance to open it, or even call out a response before the door swung open and Jasper poked his head around the frame. A former Army Special Forces Medical Sergeant, he’d gotten Tansy through multiple high-risk DARC Ops missions with him and the rest of the team all still alive. If he couldn’t take Carly to a hospital right now . . . well, Tansy trusted Jasper with his life and by extension, now Carly’s, too.

  “So,” Jasper said with a singsong casualness. “Head trauma. Blunt force.”

  “Yep,” Carly sighed like it was just another medical checkup.

  “Vision problems?”

  “Yep.”

  Tansy sat back in his chair, biting his lip. It was bad timing, Jasper and Tansy’s question. The poor girl hadn’t had a chance to decompress from almost being killed. She needed medical attention, and perhaps psychological therapy, not some stupid question about unimportant events that happened years ago.