Dark Enemy (DARC Ops Book 9) Read online

  When the elevator arrived for the second time, the doors opened to the same drink cart that Johnson had left behind. It looked untouched, in the same place he’d left it.

  “Well,” he said. “Get a look at that.”

  “Yeah, the cart,” she said with barely any intonation. “I’ll see you later.”

  She knew later would be the retirement party—something she would have to attend purely out of her love for Mr. Clayton. But she needed a little break first, an opportunity to collect herself. To go over what had happened, what Johnson had said.

  And what he didn’t say.

  She zoomed toward the stairwell, this time taking them up and not down, fast and energized. Her legs were no longer tired. It was not five o’clock in her brain. It was time, perhaps, to consider a career change.

  This one would never be the same.

  Upstairs, on the fifth level, the quiet was suffocating. She could only imagine the festivities below, the cocktails, the music, everything so unlike the normal office work environment. The laughter down below . . . The idea of laughter almost sounded strange.

  Up above, in her own private hell, Holly hunkered down over her desk, going over again the list of assignments she’d had backed up for weeks. Looking for the deadlines and comparing her estimates to finish. It was enough to make her sick, even back when Clayton was in charge.

  She’d made the solemn promise to herself to catch up, months ago, when it was manageable. When it made sense to her. Get back on track and up to date before the new boss rolled in. At least start with him on good terms. It was the least she could do for herself, not give Johnson such a reason to be his usual prick self.

  Watching her screen and worrying and catastrophizing, Holly was a little glad to see an email pop up in real time. She saw the bolded text, which meant new. But then she actually read the text. It was from her aunt. And it said, Call home ASAP please.

  It was her aunt’s way of breaking through security to get through to her niece. Not very ingenious, and she supposed it worked occasionally. Today it worked quite well. Holly was actually looking forward to an outside distraction.

  She was on the phone a moment later. “Hi, Terri,” she said. “The house isn’t on fire or anything, right?”

  “No, we’re all fine here except for your cousin,” Terri said with a sigh. “Well, we’re actually not fine because of what she’s done to us, making us worry like this, you know.”

  “I don’t,” Holly said. “What do you mean?”

  “Beth hasn’t been around for days. Her phone’s off, voicemail full.”

  The bit about the phone, especially, seemed like classic Beth. Either that or she forgot to charge her phone, or misplaced the charger, or just misplaced the phone entirely. Beth was flighty, but otherwise lived a very “safe” lifestyle. She might travel at the drop of a hat, but she always stayed in her lane—unlike Holly.

  “You know,” Terri said again. “No answer from emails, no nothing.”

  “How many days?”

  “A couple.”

  “So, two?” Holly said. “Two days?”

  “Yeah, a few, two and a half. I wanted to see if you’ve heard from her since Tuesday.”

  “I haven’t,” Holly said. “I haven’t heard from anyone.”

  “I know you like it like that when you get busy,” Terri said, “but it can be hard on the rest of the family.”

  Holly sighed, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. “I bet I know what happened. Beth went on Phish tour.”

  “Fish what?”

  “Phish, Aunt Terri. The band?”

  “Oh,” Terri said, seeming to understand better now that she was properly addressed.

  “You know how she gets up and goes, especially going without telling anyone. And she’s also a grown woman, so . . .”

  Her aunt’s tone changed when she huffed and said, “You can be a grown woman and actually act like one, and not disappear off the face of the planet anytime the mood strikes you.”

  “Terri,” Holly said, “She’s a grown woman in college.”

  “It makes no different where she is.”

  There was a little truth to that statement. Beth could be deep in the stacks of her university library, or mopping the floor at her part-time barista job, or right up on stage at a Phish concert, and once the mood struck her to flee, she would spring into action and never look back—phone in hand or not. It didn’t matter where she was, who she was with, or what she had with her once the need to migrate set in.

  “So Beth went to a concert thing, then? Is that what she told you?”

  “She didn’t tell me anything,” Holly said.

  “Is that your guess, then?”

  “I’m just saying it’s Beth being Beth.”

  Terri said, “I wish she could be a little less like Beth, then. Maybe a little more like you.”

  Any normal person—perhaps any normal, non-self-hating person would have thought of that as a compliment. But to Holly, it sounded like an unjust punishment for a younger cousin that had done nothing wrong—yet. Holly’s biggest mistake, so far, was to listen to a dare, and then listen to that stubborn part of her spirit that couldn’t back down, and then follow through with a challenge of hacking into the government’s classified files.

  It didn’t seem like a mistake until agents showed up to her dorm room the next morning. That little mistake, three years back, was good enough to somehow land her a job at the very place she broke into, a job with the CIA in trying to stop the same thing she’d just done. And despite the illustriousness of the position, and how cool it sounded, and how nice the paychecks were, she still felt in some way that she was in fact paying for that mistake in some long, drawn-out psychological torture experiment. And perhaps now that Johnson was in charge, she’d be suffering a lot more.

  Terri spoke again, intruding into Holly’s walk down memory lane. “Can you try to convince her to be more like her big cousin? Can you give that a try?”

  “I really wish you wouldn’t say things like that.”

  “What, too much pressure?”

  Holly stayed quiet. She definitely felt pressure, but it wasn’t from her aunt. But what was it that she was feeling so strongly?

  Shit. Terri was still talking. “Is it too much to ask of my daughter to not disappear so much? Is it too much to want her to follow a path like yours?”

  “Terri . . .”

  “You refuse to call me Aunt Terri, but at least you don’t vanish into thin air!”

  Holly spent the next two minutes talking her aunt down off the ledge of paranoia regarding the “disappearance” of Beth, soothing her with easy rationales about Beth’s flighty nature. She’d even set a deadline when they could all be officially worried together. “In a couple of days.” So, by her aunt’s calculations, that would make it roughly a week. A week of no word from Beth wouldn’t be out of the question, but it would at least be enough for Holly to begin donating some of the time and effort away from the work she so sorely needed to catch up on.

  Either way, whether Beth turned up or not, Holly would have the weekend to herself. Well, to her work. Herself alone with her work. It sounded like a truly miserable weekend.

  Hanging up from the call, Holly started the effort to pull herself out of the beginnings of a minimal spiral into depression, envying the freedom of Beth and anyone else not tied down with a job like CIA intelligence analyst and Gary Johnson for a boss. Although she’d been better than Beth at hiding her flights from her family, Holly was once a free spirit who would also whisk herself away at a moment’s notice. She’d done so all through college, and right up to her hiring on three years ago with Mr. Clayton.

  The flying all came to an end, obviously. And she was fine with that. That was the price she paid for not going to jail, for getting bailed out of some major trouble, and for being offered a job that even she at the time thought she didn’t deserve. Holly supposed that a temporary break from life on the road was the least of h
er sacrifices. Now the question was how could she explain that to Beth, so her younger cousin would act in a way that would result in a few less panicked emails and calls from Terri. Perhaps she could take that on in the weekend homework as well.

  Being an analyst, Holly couldn’t deny she loved getting her hands on up-to-the-minute, bleeding-edge info and tech, but what college grad wouldn’t want to slink back into the haze of those dorm days, even if only for one weekend? Even better, in the basement of the residential hall, where she’d had the most fun. Late nights and even later days, taking turns on and off with alternate teams of student hacktivists. Her little collective there was where she first got serious about the possibility of it being “work.” She just hadn’t known then what side she’d be working for. The good guys or the bad. The Man or the criminal underworld.

  It turned out Mr. Clayton made that decision for her. What was Johnson about to do?

  Of course, Holly could maybe have one last-ditch effort to save herself by convincing Mr. Clayton to stay on board and not retire at the end of the day. That wouldn’t be too hard, right? She could do it at the party. Perhaps get him drunk enough to forget his age and to forget hardships that go along with heading their department.

  Better yet, she could convince Johnson about the opposite. It would be too much for him. Too much work and not enough pay or recognition. Surely, he could find some better private-world job out there, like used-car salesman.

  On the way back down to the party level, Holly did everything she could to block out her last conversation with Johnson. Forget it all. Forget that he’d be there tonight at the party. Just go and enjoy the twenty minutes or so that she’d allow herself to stay. There was so much work to be done...

  Downstairs, the big oak double doors of the boardroom were propped open, sounds of a good time wafting out. The smell of alcohol, too. Holly would have to make a dash for the bar and grab whatever she could. It hardly mattered so long as it would blunt her consciousness. It might also blunt her tongue, but that was okay. Maybe she could get liquored up enough to not care how she went about convincing Clayton to stay and convincing Johnson to go ahead and fuck off.

  She spotted Bill right away. He was sipping on a bottle of beer instead of a paper cup of water. He seemed to avoid eye contact with her. Holly went back to the bar to turn her single into a double, some kind of whiskey in some kind of cola. The only thing that mattered was the effect it had on her. After the first few sips, she had half a mind to make a stop on the way home at a liquor store, get something to make working till midnight worth her while. Get something to help her actually sleep when she was finished for the night. Staring into the screen, her brain working overtime, it was hard to turn off at the end of the day.

  Out of the corner of her eye, while taking a nice long sip of a too-strong drink, Holly saw Johnson again. He seemed to move around the periphery of the party like a shark arriving to a school of fish, his eyes darting around, his smile turning on and off like a light switch. That always seemed to be his M.O., turn it off and on when necessary. He’d tried doing that with her moments before, near the elevator. He’d tried being the nice guy. Holly watched again as his smile quickly faded, thinking back and imagining how fast it left him after their conversation ended.

  Was he smiling when he left?

  Likely not.

  Another long sip. It was starting to feel warm and good. She wondered how many she’d need to stay even ten minutes there. She wondered where Clayton was. The sooner she could find him, and desperately cling on to and hug him, the sooner she could leave and begin the process of moving on. Closure, then preparation for her upcoming battles that would begin in a merciless forty-eight hours.

  There were no official events or speeches planned, thank God—or so she assumed. Even if there had been a speech from Mr. Clayton, the man himself, she could see herself crying in hysterics before he was through.

  Fuck it . . . drunk yet or not, Holly needed to find Clayton and say hello, kiss him on the cheek, set a date to actually have some time to speak with him properly, and then leave this whole mess of a Friday and be done with it.

  After her first drink, she didn’t need another. She just needed to find him and leave. But it was a difficult task, finding the most sought-after man in the room. She looked for the biggest cluster of people and guessed he’d be at the center of it. She saw her kindly boss through the outside ring, his head nodding as if to accept another compliment, another elaboration of how much he’d be missed. Before Holly could sneak in, her phone rang through her purse. Her private cell.

  The number was local but unfamiliar. She answered while watching Mr. Clayton smile, him seeming to tell some long, drawn-out story now. She heard the distant laughter of his crowd, and then a Russian accent in her ear. A man asking for Holly.

  “Who is this?” Holly said.

  “A business contact.”

  “What business?”

  “Human trafficking,” the man said, slowly, and definitely Russian.

  Had she misheard? Had he really said that? “Excuse me?”

  “We’ll need you to listen carefully, and to act carefully,” the voice said.

  She stiffened. “Do you have a name?” “No.”

  “You don’t have a name?”

  “We have your cousin.”

  Another laugh from the crowd. Holly could see Mr. Clayton’s eyes on her now, but it meant nothing.

  2

  Logan

  Through the scope on his rifle, and through a second-story window above a busy street on the outskirts of Cordoba, Mexico, Logan watched the scene unfold with decreasing patience. At first glance, the black van with white smoke billowing from the hood looked like some sort of minor disaster. With the van’s side doors slid open and the occupants milling about, it looked like the scene of a family vacation gone awry. The young parents, with concern burned into their reddened, sun-cracked faces. The way they leaned against the van, blocking doors to keep the kids inside but the fresh air moving. It was hot day in Cordoba. And it was midday, the worst time and perhaps place for a breakdown.

  If they were any other stranded family, a guy like Logan would have been first on the scene to offer whatever help he could. A check under the hood, for starters. As far as he could tell, no one had even popped it open. It was the sign of either a bigger problem or car-repair incompetence.

  Logan moved his eye out of the scope, reminding himself that it was an even bigger problem. One unimaginable to tourist families. A problem unimaginable to even the scrappy locals who’d just about seen it all.

  The biggest problem, for those three kids in the back seat.

  Logan took a deep breath and brought his eye back into the rubber ring of the scope. When he opened that eye, he was back with them again. Tight up close through the heat. Inches away from the misery on their young faces.

  He swung to the left and focused on the woman. Then the man standing near the front of the smoking van. They wore a different kind of misery on their faces.

  A blur of fur appeared at the bottom of his line of sight. It was a stray dog limping alongside the van, right by the parents, the open door, the waiting children. No one seemed to notice. No one felt inclined to help the animal. Not even the kids leaned over and reached for the poor creature.

  No one seemed inclined to help the stranded family, either, and Logan was glad about that. He wanted to keep his targets away from bystanders and in the clear.

  It wasn’t supposed to go down like this. That black van was supposed to be in Veracruz in an hour, along an already established route, to a place where Logan had more teammates waiting to do their part. Watching everything, the eyes and ears back at central command, was Logan’s boss, Jackson.

  Logan leaned over to speak quietly into his radio. “I’m still in visual,” he said.

  There was a quiet radio click in response to note the affirmative. Message received.

  Logan waited for further instructions, but there
were none. No more radio clicks. No words. No Jackson.

  At times, Logan wondered if they’d be better off without these damn radios. And, perhaps, without Jackson watching over their shoulders. There were instincts to go on. Timeliness and opportunity to be seized and acted upon. At times, watching the roadside developments of his target suddenly made vulnerable, Logan wondered if he should take the initiative. Take the shot.

  He thought about the words, take the shot, wishing they had instead come through his radio, from Jackson and not his own head. Take the shot and end this, save the kids so everyone could go home early and happy. Have that extra week of sandy beach R&R in Playa del Carmen. Have as many margaritas and carnitas as humanly possible and gain some of the weight he’d lost through all the recent training and the waiting around not eating. Maybe have a girl somewhere in there, sometime before the carnitas.

  Or maybe be sensible and stay in his luxury hotel room with the book that he’d brought and hadn’t read.

  Or maybe just take the fucking shot right now.

  He could feel his pulse through his trigger finger. It rested along the side of the gun, not even close to the trigger guard. He had caught it inching closer before the last message to Jackson. Inching even closer now when the woman moved left just enough away from the kids. Just over and clear enough that he’d feel confident. Just enough to be clear for the shot. Two shots. And that would be it.

  Like usual, it felt as if Jackson had been listening in to Logan’s internal dialogue. Jackson with his latest tech toys perhaps implementing some telepathic technology through the radio. Something to do with the mysticism of radiation and Jackson’s need to know every single damned thing.

  The radio crackled twice, and then Jackson whispered in his ear. “We’ve got Delta Two en route. Hang tight.”

  Delta Two was a party of three DARC operatives headed toward the scene, likely speeding there in their own black van or helicopter. Hanging tight meant Logan’s wait time to be anywhere between ten minutes and two hours.