Dark Discovery (DARC Ops Book 8) Read online

  “I almost blew up with it,” he said. “You keep forgetting that part.”

  “Annica wouldn’t ever forgive me, huh?”

  “You’re lucky it was just a flash bang,” he said. “Wouldn’t really do too much unless I was really unlucky with the placement.”

  “That’s what I mean about Annica.” Kalani laughed. “Isn’t she supposed to come down here and do our stories?”

  “No,” he said.

  Kalani felt another tinge of disappointment. “Oh.”

  “I think they’re putting Ethan on it.”

  She perked up. “He’s coming out here?”

  “They’re trying to convince his editor. It’ll be his first big story on his own.”

  Yes . . . Yes, it would be a big story. And it would be nice that he was on his own. She had a favor to thank him for.

  2

  Kalani

  It had only been a few weeks, but Kalani had already come to the conclusion that she’d never be comfortable with being followed. Others she’d talked to, particularly those in DARC Ops, had been used to having a little extra attention laid onto them. They had learned to shrug off the paranoia, the cars that followed by coincidence instead of malice. The odd telephone ring in the dead of night was nothing, nor was the sound of the barn door when the wind kicked up enough for it to rattle. These were the things that Tucker, their current guard, knew to discern. “I’m on it,” he’d say from his bed, the sofa. Whether it was real or not, whether or not it was worth his getting up to go investigate, he was on it—or at least he said so. She supposed that just his saying so, the fact that he’d always know when she was nervous, was good enough. Maybe.

  She supposed that the old pickup truck currently following two car lengths behind for the last ten miles was just a coincidence, too. Maybe. There had been a few turns, a few variations in speed. And still it was there. The same thing happened last week, a growing tension in her shoulders until she’d pulled the car over at a gas station, waiting until she saw that the latest trailing car continued on. She breathed a little easier, then.

  This time, she wasn’t so lucky. The truck had followed her off the road, into a small shopping plaza.

  She kept driving, speeding up again and re-entering the highway, not caring how strange or how suspicious she looked. Not caring how scared it made her look, also. She only cared to put as much distance as possible between the two vehicles. She punched the accelerator after a tight bend in the road and raced downhill, bouncing in her seat at the little humps in the road. It felt good to be weightless and fast. It was how she felt speeding away with her rescuer in Hawaii, in a little fishing boat, in Ethan’s arms, and in the throes of something she still couldn’t quite understand.

  Her latest lack of understanding centered around not knowing where the hell he was. Why wasn’t he here? Ethan wasn’t exactly a DARC guy, so it perhaps explained why he hadn’t been to her current home or assigned to guard it. But he was certainly more than capable. He’d shown that in the past, at least. Tucker was capable, too. But he was no Ethan. But how could she explain that to anyone?

  She’d tried to stop talking about him with Tucker. She had already been doing too much of that with everyone else, and everyone else had probably been thinking too much that there was indeed something “going on.” It was perhaps a little too apparent back in Hawaii, but since they separated and tried going their own ways, and into their own professional missions, a little gap of silence had opened up. Whether or not it was genuine was still to be decided.

  She sometimes wished Ethan would come visit and decide for himself.

  But even if she wanted to tell Tucker, she couldn’t. He wasn’t answering his phone, either. That bothered her even more. Maybe he had taken Lea somewhere?

  Kalani parked her car at the end of their long and winding wooded driveway, right behind the house in her usual spot. Two tire tracks treaded up through the grass to get closer to the house. She parked and groaned herself out of the car, stretched, and then looked across to the parking space next to her: another set of tracks. Tire tracks, but no tires, no car, no Tucker. She called out to her sister, “Lea.”

  No response.

  Perhaps no Lea, too.

  It wasn’t exactly the best way to return home after thinking she’d just been followed again.

  Kalani called her name again, wondering if she should pop open her trunk for a little heavier artillery. The weight of a tactical shotgun would make her feel a little better. But when she got no answer through the usually open windows, the sense of urgency propelled her forward instead. A handgun was good enough. She felt fresh and warm with it from all those hours that day on the training ground.

  Kalani glanced at it sitting snugly in her side holster. Her eyes moved past the black metal to the grass beyond. She glanced at the tire tracks. They were a little darker and wider than normal, a heavier vehicle, something to darken the tracks closer to mud. Not Tucker’s usual compact prints.

  A noise from the barn spun her around, her eyes sweeping along the green of the taller field grass until the faded red wood. It was more of a tool shed than barn. A place for storage, a place for her and Lea to mess around with an old pottery wheel. What was it offering now? The door had come loose again, but there was hardly breeze enough to move her hair, let alone the door’s weight.

  In the still, calm air and her deafening internal silence, Kalani heard something else: The tinny sound of a television program back at the house, something like canned applause wafting out from the upstairs window. She moved toward the sound, swiveling her head back and forth from house to barn until she silently lifted herself up the steps with soft and slow footfalls.

  The door was unlocked, and it opened far too easily, like there had been some type of pressure vacuum in the house. But she didn’t hear the kitchen fan. She heard nothing but the TV, which grew louder with each step into the house, and with each room she painstakingly cleared. It was a familiar skill, made even stronger from her fresh lessons from the DARC camp. She tried to tell herself it was just another exercise, that she was walking through another of Matthias’ simulations and not moving closer to whatever was waiting for her somewhere in the old house. Her sister, or what was left of her.

  No. It was just an exercise. It was nothing. Certainly, nothing had looked out of place in the kitchen. In fact, it was normally quite messy. Despite Lea’s old job as a secretary, keeping the order of someone’s office, maintaining a similar order with their dishes had become a sore spot between them all. For some reason, Lea had assumed it was Tucker’s job to pick up after them. Their manservant. But he had a more important job to worry about: keeping her alive. Kalani, moving through the eerily still house, wondered if he’d done his job that day.

  She called Tucker’s name, saying it twice. And then her sister’s name again, saying it a little too unsteadily. A little too quietly. She felt like she was walking through a dream, everything cloudy, cottony, and distant.

  Up the stairs, the gun held backed up to her chest, the sound of a daytime news show echoing down. The vapid talking points and the cheesy music at each commercial bumper. It came from the room Lea slept in, and when Kalani turned through the doorway, she expected to see her lying in the bed, and she hoped she would be alive and sleeping. But the bed was empty and unmade. The rest of the room was empty as well. She checked the bathroom, behind the curtains. She checked the mirror to remind herself how silly it had all been.

  Back downstairs, the rest of the house was still empty and quiet. With the TV turned off upstairs, the only noise was her shoes tapping across the hardwood floor. And then down the front steps and back into the gravel, and then grass, Kalani making her way to the barn and hoping to find some sort of clue as to what happened. They weren’t supposed to leave the house without letting someone know about it. Jackson and the DARC guys had made sure that careful planning, as well as encrypted communications regarding that plan, had been put into every move. Nothing was
ever rushed or left up to chance—which was why it was so odd to be returning home to such an empty “safe house.” It suddenly felt very unsafe, the barn especially, with the door having swung open again—that time by Kalani’s weakened hand. Some of the strength had left her. It had been a long day, and the latest dose of adrenaline had been little too taxing on her system.

  She crept inside, the familiar grinding sound of the pottery wheel finally reaching her ears. It was somewhat of a relief, the sound of normalcy. But there was nothing normal about what she heard next: The sound of Lea’s scream filling the barn.

  Kalani rushed around a blind corner, several stacks of antique chairs, her gun suddenly aimed at the back of her sister. She called out to her again, which only made her scream once more—that time more out of fright. Her hand tightened around the grip, until she rounded the final corner and saw what had caused the first: a pancaked piece of wet pottery lying on the ground by Lea’s feet.

  Her sister’s face, when she made eye contact, that split-second look of whitened shock. And then some composure returned to both of them. No more shock, no more drawn weapons. Just Lea’s eyes widening for another reason besides fear.

  “Lani! What the fuck?!”

  “What’s going on? Where’s Tucker?”

  “Why are you pointing a gun at me?” her sister cried as Kalani slipped it back in the holster. “What the hell kind of greeting is that?”

  “A scared one,” Kalani said.

  “What the hell are you scared about?”

  “Where’s Tucker?”

  Lea paused a minute and then said, “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I think he just slipped out.”

  “He’s not supposed to slip out,” Kalani said, rechecking her holster again. “Did he say where he’s going?”

  “Why?” Lea turned back to her mess, a big glob of wet clay that looked like it might have been a bowl. She swore at it again, crouching down near it but looking unsure about what to do with her hands. She moved to pick it up, but then stopped herself. “Look at this,” she said, her voice filled with disgust.

  “What is it?” Kalani asked. “I mean, what was it?”

  “Very funny . . .”

  “I’m not trying to be funny.”

  Lea left the glob where it lay and stood up, taking a deep breath. “Alright, so what’s going on? You came home and saw that Tucker was gone, and—”

  “And you,” Kalani interrupted.

  “And me, I guess, and so you got all worried from that? Thinking we left you or something?”

  Kalani’s mouth still felt a little dry.

  “Worried enough to point a gun at me.” Lea said.

  “Not you, but who you might have been.”

  “I might have been in here with Tucker. Ever think of that? Maybe you shouldn’t come barging in here with a gun like that.”

  “But you hate Tucker.”

  “So? He’s hot.”

  “And he has a girlfriend.”

  “So?”

  “And he’s not even freaking here right now. Where is he?”

  “I told you, I have no idea.” Lea had walked over to a center beam, reaching to unplug the power cord from its outlet. There was a strange snapping sound as the power cut off to the old—perhaps antique—pottery wheel. The center wheel spun slower and slower until its scraping sound finally quieted to silence. In place of the scraping wheel, Kalani could hear the distant frog song from the woods behind the barn. Some dark and cool place in the mud, no doubt. Probably the same place where all the mosquitoes come from each night. Kalani heard one of them, a quiet buzzing around her ear until she smacked the side of her head. Silence returned.

  “I’m wearing bug spray to be out here,” Lea said.

  “So why are there two sets of tire tracks at the driveway?”

  Lea blinked a few times and said, “Excuse me?”

  “Next to where Tucker parks, there’s another set. A fresh set of tracks, like someone had just pulled up and maybe even sped away after.”

  A mosquito hovered in front of Lea’s face until she waved it away. “I don’t know.”

  “No one else came here?”

  “No.” Now there were two mosquitoes near Lea.

  “No other car?”

  “No.”

  Kalani stared at her sister for a moment, and then stared at the mosquito around her hair. “Why do I get the feeling you’re lying about the bug spray?”

  “Why would I lie about that?”

  “Exactly. Why would you lie?”

  “I’m not,” Lea said.

  “Okay.”

  Lea sighed. “Why don’t you get started on dishes, and I’ll see what’s in the freezer for us.”

  Kalani studied her sister’s face one last time before walking out of the barn, struggling sore and tired back up toward the house. She followed the other set of tire tracks.

  3

  Ethan

  “Can you stop that?”

  Ethan looked up to his boss, the editor of Daily National. The old man’s eyes had narrowed. They narrowed even closer to the pen in Ethan’s hand, which had stopped its tapping, and now, fell flat on the most recent scribbly page of his notebook.

  “One of his bad habits,” Annica said.

  “What are the other ones?” the editor said.

  “He’s always on,” she said. “Too perceptive. And he works too hard.”

  “Those are bad habits?” the editor asked.

  “Not for a journalist,” she said. “But for a partner, on the other hand . . .”

  “I care less how he is as a partner,” the editor said. “Maybe you should, too.”

  Annica asked “Why?”

  “I’ve been hearing the rumors.”

  “What rumors?”

  “Unless you plan to take him away with you at the end of the month . . . ”

  Ethan looked back to Annica, his partner. She’d also been his mentor for the last year, bringing him in from journalism school and helping him learn the ropes under her watchful eye. Sometimes her annoyed eye instead, but the simple annoyances of his idiosyncrasies like pen-tapping seemed to fade away now that the editor had brought up the elephant in the room.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Annica said.

  “It’s just a side project, then? Something to do in your free time?”

  “Are you talking about The Homeland Report?”

  Ethan watched silently as the two people he’d looked up to the most took the starting shots in a battle that had been simmering just under the surface for months. Rumors that Annica, the Daily National’s star reporter, was about to jump ship and head her own news agency.

  “It’s not a competing interest,” Annica said. “It’s a niche market. Super, super niche.”

  “Your Tripoli DARC Ops story was niche, too, and look how that blew up. It single-handedly rescued your old paper from obscurity.” The editor laughed and said, “It pretty much saved those DARC guys, too. Where would they be? Hell, it made them.”

  “So, you’re saying I’m a good reporter. I get that.”

  “I’m saying I’d hate to see you go.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You’ll be our competitor,” the editor said, “whether we like it or not.”

  Ethan felt the editor’s eyes on him again. He looked up from his page and watched him say, “And how about you?”

  “I wish you’d leave Ethan out of it,” Annica said. “It’s got nothing to do with him.”

  The editor asked him, “Are you jumping ship, too?”

  Ethan, very calmly, said, “No.”

  “I’m not poaching him from you,” Annica said.

  “I feel like you already have,” the editor said. “That damn Hawaii thing . . .”

  Annica said, “That damn Hawaii thing gave you the down-payment on a house.”

  “Yours, too,” he said. “And now it’s giving you an out from me.”
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  Annica crossed her legs and sat up straighter, shoulders firmly back. “I don’t see why we have to have this type of conversation with Ethan here. This went from an editorial meeting to a witch hunt.”

  “Then let’s put an end to it,” the editor said. “Okay?”

  Ethan picked up his pen again, ready to move on. Ready for anything else but bickering.

  The editor held his hands up. “Okay? So that’s it, then. Witch hunt adjourned.”

  Annica was first on her feet, collecting her things off the desk while standing. Ethan was about to leave his chair until his boss said, “Hold on. Why don’t you stick around?”

  Annica spun around and said, “For what?”

  The editor’s eyes were locked on Ethan. “Stick around?” And then to Annica he said, “Give us a moment.”

  Ethan waited for Annica to slam the door behind her before he finally said, “I think you’re making a huge mistake with how you’re dealing with her.”

  The editor’s face made no change, like he hadn’t heard any of it. Ethan wasn’t known for talking like that. Was he in shock? “She’s loyal to you. She’s loyal to your paper.”

  “Do me a favor,” the editor said, “and tell me how to run my office one more time.”

  Ethan realized he’d been tapping his pen again. He dropped it.

  “Really,” the editor said. “Tell me about Annica and how I should deal with her. Because I haven’t been in the business all my life. And I haven’t been her boss for six years. And I haven’t been in a college classroom in a few decades. You, on the other hand, you’re still fresh from journalism school. You know it all, right? About how to run an office?”

  “No,” Ethan said. “I don’t.”