Dark Control (DARC Ops Book 4) Read online

  “But we made arrangements for—”

  “Hey, Laurel. Who cares? We don’t have to talk. We don’t have to interact at all. Just come and grab your shit and go.”

  Yep, that was a much better idea.

  She walked through the kitchen, pacing quickly to her study at the back of house. She couldn’t help noting with some sadness the emptiness of each room. The place looked so much bigger without furniture, and without her and Jason. Without the dog, too. Laurel was still so used to their little dachshund rushing in to greet her.

  “Where’s Yoda?” she called.

  “He’s at home.”

  His new home, his new place across town with Jason.

  When Laurel reached the study, she found that it had already been cleared out. So on her way back to the kitchen, she asked. “Where is it all?”

  “In the garage.”

  “Why is it in the garage?”

  He sighed, still scrubbing. “Did you come by yourself?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, who’s gonna help you?” He tossed the rag aside and turned around, leaning back on the counter top. “Let me guess. Me?”

  “Is it really that heavy?”

  “Is your Mom’s ol’ chest of drawers heavy?”

  Laurel looked at the empty kitchen. The empty spot for her toaster oven, the rice cooker, where she’d once had her wine rack. The empty hooks for their pots and pans. Even the fucking juicer no one used, all of it gone and split up forever.

  Damn it. It shouldn’t have been so sad . . . But she used to love cooking there, washing vegetables at the sink while staring out that big bay window, looking over her carefully tended garden. Or mornings sipping on coffee, the dew still fresh on the dark greens of kale. Mornings he’d wake up after her, slipping into the kitchen and coming up behind her with that healthy morning wood of his, wrapping his arms around her waist and just standing there without a word.

  It hadn’t been all bad.

  It was hard to imagine that now.

  Laurel turned away from the window, and this time he was staring at her with a defeated frown. His eyes a little red from the cleaning products. He’d always been sensitive to the chemicals. Or had he been crying?

  “Do you mind?”

  He shrugged and leaned off the counter, walking past her to the garage.

  They worked together for the first time in what felt like an eternity, loading whatever furniture and bankers’ boxes they could fit in the back of her old wood-paneled minivan. The drawers were the heaviest, and after that, when it was apparent that his services were not absolutely necessary, he shrugged at her again and disappeared back into the house.

  She had a few more boxes to schlep into the back, and a few garbage bags of old clothes— mostly things that no longer fit her. They were the dead remains of her previous life, her old body. Slimmer, younger. Through all their discord, the only one true constant was her emotional eating. And the worse their relationship got, the more dependent she became on the chips, the ice cream, to see her through the increasingly rough times, until even the eating itself, became an issue between them.

  Still, Laurel had no heart to throw the clothes away. She liked and missed them almost as much as she liked and missed the old body that could fit in them. But maybe she could still make it work, somehow. Maybe it wasn’t too late.

  It wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t.

  When everything had been packed away in the minivan, she returned to the kitchen to find Jason half submerged in the oven. He was scrubbing at the old blackened burnt bits of over-spilled lasagna. Scrubbing hard with something that was making a rough, scratchy sound.

  “Thanks again for doing all that,” she said.

  “Why? I’m keeping all the money.”

  “I don’t care about the money.”

  “Well, whatever. You’re welcome.”

  “How’s Yoda doing?”

  “He’s good.”

  That’s all he would say these days. One- or two-word answers to her sincere questions, her sincere attempts to at least end things on a civil, respectable note.

  “Well,” Jason said, getting back to his oven. “Have a good one.”

  She tossed the keys on the counter and walked out to her car.

  Before leaving the bathroom, she did that one thing she had trained herself against for so long. She looked in the mirror, that same mirror that she’d spent staring into and struggling with for almost twenty years, since her childhood. It was a place of battle, of anguished judgment, the daily speculations on how many pounds she’d not only failed to lose, but how many she had gained.

  Staring in the mirror of the bathroom in her old childhood home, Laurel sighed heavily. Then she grabbed at her mid section, pinching a roll through her shirt, holding it out and staring at it with contempt.

  Outside the bathroom she heard her mother again. “What, Mama?”

  “I said, you brought this here ’cause I have room for it. But pretty soon I won’t have any.”

  “Well that’s the last of it.” She left the bathroom and found Mama in a lawn chair on the screened-in sun porch, a window fan blowing onto her face, a cat stretched across her feet.

  “I’m not a storage unit here.”

  “I know,” Laurel said. “It’s just temporary.”

  “How long is temporary? And how long have you been at that new place now?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “Working on what? Laurel, it’s all nice stuff here.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t see why you can’t just bring it on over to your new place already. Don’t you need furniture there?”

  “I do, but, not that furniture.”

  Mama sighed, folding her hands in her lap. “What’s goin’ on with it? Bad memories?”

  “I just don’t want to see it.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “I know,” Laurel sat on a small bench against the wall. “But I just can’t see it right now. I can’t wake up and look at it every day.”

  “So you’d rather wake up and look an empty apartment?”

  “It’s not empty.”

  “Baby, I seen it. It’s empty.”

  “I’m buying all new stuff, Mama.”

  “With whose money?”

  “Well, I just got that promotion. I told you. And I’ll be selling all this stuff. I’ll take care of it.”

  “You’ll take care of it, huh?”

  “Yeah,” said Laurel. “In a little while.”

  “Ha!”

  “I just can’t deal with it right now.”

  “Well you’re gonna have to some time. Can’t leave it all up to your Mama to deal with. ’Specially since I never told you to move in with that man and buy all that new stuff anyhow.”

  “Stop it.”

  “I’m just sayin’.”

  “Can you not?” Laurel rubbed her temples. “Please? I’m so tired.”

  “Lordy.” Mama looked around at her already cluttered sun porch. “Well, I’m tired, too.”

  Laurel sat behind the wheel. How the hell had it all ended up like this? Although her new apartment wouldn’t be tainted with the artifacts of her old life, it was still empty. It was hard to decide which was worse, though she usually ultimately sided with the old stuff being a little more mentally poisonous than a few bare rooms and blank walls. She could deal with bare rooms. They were her rooms, and her small collection of things. She tried to imagine the empty rooms as potential spaces for new, good memories.

  Still, she wasn’t too excited about going home and facing it. She wasn’t up for making new memories tonight. She was too exhausted for that. Work had been tough all week, and instead of making new memories, and making a new life at home, she would probably just return to her apartment like a zombie, going through the motions, from a microwaved frozen dinner to a cold, empty bed. For now, she would have to go through some more motions—like turning the key and starting up her car, despite her just wa
nting to finally break down and weep in her Mama’s driveway all night.

  Okay . . . It was time to go home. . .

  Home?

  Laurel checked her phone before turning over the key. She found one new message from an unfamiliar number.

  Please call back to set up a meeting tonight. Important question for you. Your pal, Abe Hudson.

  3

  Matthias

  Getting the hell out of Washington, and doing it in style—all 849CCs worth—had seemed like the cure he’d needed. A cure that no doctor or pill could provide. It was the best way imaginable to put as many miles between him and the site of his injury as he could. So far, he’d put in a day’s worth, about seven hours between him and that hospital. Six hundred hot miles, most of them spent at speeds well beyond the legal limit. How else could it be done on such a beautiful piece of machinery? And with a group of Vets, no less. Natural thrill-junkies. Men who’d survived death for the very purpose of staring it down again, in their own country, and on their own terms. The terms today were two wheels and no roll-cage. And a fearless compulsion to ramp up the speed around each bend of tight, twisty scenic highway, over each crest of the rolling foothills as they delved deeper into the Appalachian mountains.

  Although he seemed to have all the time in the world, he had none for bad memories or flashbacks. In the open air and under a cloudless blue sky, his thoughts settled on his destination. His future. The plans he’d set in motion.

  He’d already started, with the doctor’s help, a short list of attainable goals. The first was to get off his anti-anxiety medication completely. He’d already weaned down to a fraction of a dose and took it only occasionally. Meditation was helping with that. The next goal was to reach out to old friends, and the new ones he’d made through everything, the people who helped him. And to thank them all.

  He knew it sounded pretty sappy. It was just the sort of cheesy idea one would think up during a cross-country bike tour or through the sudden clarity of his dissipating depression. The shift inside Matthias grew with the crossing of each state line. A clarity of thought and vision, like the hundred-mile view down a flat stretch of interstate, where the distance blurred not into some mirage, but of . . . the bright red light directly in front of him.

  It was the single brake light of his friend’s motorcycle. Like a growing swarm, more brake lights began flickering across the rears of his two-wheeled brethren.

  Matthias checked his speed, falling in line with the new, slower pace. And then it became clear, the cause for everyone’s concern. An undercover police cruiser. It had been playing possum for half a mile, but now its true nature had revealed itself in a bright blue and red flickering.

  Busted.

  Fuck.

  They had all been speeding, as usual, and they were about to overtake just another random car. But now there was a ripple of hesitation flowing through the group, some slowing, some even speeding up, everyone’s helmets rotating around to check on everyone else. They were brothers in the Army and on the road. A decision had to be made, and it had to be stuck with by all of them.

  A thought occurred to him. How could a single cop car pull over twenty bikers? And then an even better question. How would it even catch them if they decided to make a run for it?

  It seemed he wasn’t alone in asking no-brainers. Some of the riders were revving their engines now, others waving their hands and pointing down the road. Come on, let’s go! They communicated like this for a few seconds before their plan was set in motion, the unanimous decision coming in the form of popped wheelies and burnt rubber as the entire group of riders buzzed by the police car and notched up through the gears.

  The speed of Matthias’ acceleration made the car look as if it were parked. And while the scenery rushed by, he checked his mirror to see the blue and red lights growing smaller and smaller until it was a speck of light. And then nothing. Just open road.

  They regrouped about five miles later, Matthias laughing madly through his mask. And now, all of them clustering together and with their engines having cooled and quieted, he could hear other similar childish yelps and hollers. So childish. So stupid. And dangerous. But fuck it, it was fun.

  It was living.

  To celebrate their well-earned freedom, several of the guys started to get a little crazy. Show off time: standing on the backs of their bikes, lying on the side or straddling the front, all while traveling seventy mph. Even if Matthias hadn’t just recently been shot, he wasn’t about to try that. He’d been riding for years and was just happy enough to never have him or any part of his bike that wasn’t rubber or kickstand touch the ground.

  After the frenzy and celebration of doing something illegal had subsided, they were back to their cruising ways. In formation, two-abreast, each rider on either side of the lane and in the rubber marks. It was some of the first bit of riding advice he’d ever received, to avoid the middle oily lane. He watched another guy practically stand while taking a corner. Some other good advice would have also been to avoid a bunch of crazy vets with death wishes. It might save him his life, or an epic driving record. Or even freedom. Group ride or not, evading the police, especially in Tennessee, would come with a stiff penalty.

  Matthias forced himself to relax. He was there to relax, not build more anxiety. He sped up to the front of the group and pointed them toward an off-ramp. It was time to get on a different, smaller highway, before the cop could radio other units. Throw them off track a little bit. Maybe find a place for a lunch stop.

  He watched in his mirror as the rest of the group followed his lead without deviation, the whole group in a tight uniform, like a soldier’s march, all of them taking the exit and then curving around a narrower, curvier highway. They were thick in the hills now, with hardly any visibility behind each curve. Something that might come in handy in case they got any more unwanted attention.

  After a few more curves and a gas station that would be too obvious a place for a police check, Matthias had his bike armada pull into the parking lot of Betty’s Roadhouse, circling around the building to the rear lot. A nice, quiet, hidden parking spot. He parked his bike, pulled of his helmet, and smiled. The day couldn’t have gone any better. The location, Betty’s, was a throwback roadhouse serving up cold mugs of beer and hot entrees soon after. The boys finally got their chow time, the chatter quieting down as the work of refueling got serious. And it was the type of burger Matthias could get serious about. Blue cheese, avocado, and bacon. Something that could help him seriously forget about his diet.

  And why not? He was on vacation.

  “So how does it feel to get back on the road?” someone asked him.

  “How’s day two treating you?”

  “Knocking out the cobwebs yet?”

  Matthias’ answer to all the questions was just a big grin. They knew what that meant.

  But that grin quickly melted away. And then it was the opposite, a mouth hung open. A quiet gasp escaping out of it.

  “What the fuck?” they asked.

  “What’s up? What’s wrong?”

  Matthias had been staring at the window when it happened, when a familiar-looking police cruiser pulled up into the driveway in a hurry, and then racing around to where he couldn’t see it, to the rear, to the bikes. And he felt the fear again, the hot waves of it washing over him. Motherfucking fuck . . .

  “Relax,” they said to him. “We got this.”

  “Yo, we’re good. Have a sip of beer.”

  He finished the glass.

  By now a few others had joined in the anxiety, asking if they should go out back. If they should talk to the officer. Maybe talk him out of it.

  “No,” Matthias said, wiping the beer froth from his mouth, slowing his breathing down intentionally. “We’re here. We’re eating. Let him come to us.”

  The wait was much longer than he’d anticipated. He also anticipated the arrival of backup cars, a string of flashing lights pulling into the roadhouse to assist in the mass ar
rest of what they’d probably call a biker gang. But while he and his boys downed their food and drinks—some even ordering seconds—and with his eyes peeled to the window, all was quiet. The backup cruisers never showed up. The scene was still quiet when some of his boys went back to order dessert, with not even a peep from the rear door. He kept staring at the door that opened onto the parking lot, waiting for that lone highway cop to finally come strolling in.

  “Maybe he drove off?” said Willy, an old, white-haired Vietnam vet.

  “Why would he do that?” said Matthias. “He knows we’re in here. He’s just playing with us.”

  For Matthias, some of it was an act, the tight restraint of his emotions, of the fear, and trying to keep it out of his voice. Fake it ’til you make it.

  Since the “encounter,” it seemed like any type of confrontation, or even the anticipation of such, would mark the beginning of a slight trembling of his hands. It was so embarrassing. And no matter how hard he tried hiding it, there was no stopping the shakes once they began. Doing so would only make him feel even tighter.

  Matthias tried thinking back to his therapy. The breathing exercises. He tried imagining how the doctor would describe this as an opportunity. The more stressful situations he could encounter, and overcome, the faster he’d recover. He had to relearn and to rewire. And maybe today would be a big step in that direction.

  But then the back door opened, casting a burning ray of sunlight over their table. Matthias felt almost blinded, flinching from the glare, and from what could be possibly be a highway patrol officer.

  “Aw, shit.”

  “Is that him?”

  “Shh . . .”

  Matthias stood up from his chair, asking on the way, “Can I help you, Officer?”

  The visitor walked in, and to Matthias’ delight, it was no officer. Though he had a militarized look. Clean shaven with short hair, black tactical clothing, the man came clunking in on military boots.

  “Yes, you can, Matty,” came the voice of Jackson, founder of DARC Ops.