Dark Lies (DARC Ops Book 6) Read online

  “I’ve got some really strange news for you guys,” Kyle said. “I’m not sure what to . . . what to do about it.”

  “What is it?”

  “You know how I moved the wife and kids to Luanda?”

  “Yeah,” Jasper said, motioning for Kyle to take a seat.

  “Luanda’s nicer. And a shit-ton safer. It’s actually one of the most expensive cities in Africa.”

  “What about it?”

  “I got a phone call . . . Well, my wife got a phone call from someone. Said they knew me from Syria.”

  Jasper frowned, crossing his arms across his chest. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “I know, right?”

  “Who was it?”

  “And then she calls me in Soyo. I have no idea how she found our numbers.”

  “Who?” Jasper’s eyes sharpened, staring at his brother.

  “She says she’s a CIA agent and that she was almost whacked by the team I was training.”

  A loud silence filled the room.

  “You know what I mean, right?” Kyle said.

  Jasper’s shoulders dropped. “How could I not?”

  “Excuse me,” Tansy interjected. “But that’s pretty fucked up.”

  “Trust me, I know.”

  “But what does she want?” Jasper asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Maybe she wants to get even,” Tansy said.

  Jasper turned his head and squinted at Tansy.

  “All I’ve been able to figure out,” Kyle said, “is that she somehow traveled from Syria to Angola. I have no idea why. Maybe to find me? But why me? What’s the point?”

  “She’s been on the run,” Jasper said. “Probably afraid to come back to the US after what happened to her.”

  “It’s been over two years,” Kyle said. “Jesus Christ.”

  Jasper said, “But who are we talking about? What’s her name? We all watched the news about it.”

  “Her name’s Macy Chandler.”

  Tucker couldn’t help himself from bolting straight up out of his chair. His face felt numb. His jaw. He felt it falling away and leaving his mouth gaped open. Through an open mouth and dry lips he said, “I knew it.”

  “You know what?” Tansy said. “You know her?”

  “I know a Macy Chandler,” he said. “Well, I did. Back in St. Louis. We were both cops.”

  Kyle said, “You know her?”

  “I know a Macy Chandler. And I know she worked overseas in the intelligence community. There were rumors she’d got caught up in something. But that was it, though. I never knew she was part of that whole . . . clusterfuck.”

  A large rock settled in Tucker’s gut. Could it really be his Macy, his old friend—burned by the CIA and being chased across the world? For three years, she’d been essentially exiled from home. Who knows what kind of condition she’d been in. Her mental state . . . How the hell did she get to Angola? And why?

  “I need to see her,” Tucker said.

  Jasper said, “Wait, wait. Let’s not get—”

  “No, I have to.”

  “And we have a mission.”

  “I’ll leave after the briefing,” Tucker said. Images of a younger Macy ran through his head. Macy, the woman with the pretty smile, the woman he was once stupid enough to reject. “No, I’ll leave tonight. I’ll leave right now.”

  “Slow down,” Jasper said. “You need to talk to Jackson first.”

  “When he finds out that it was one of the Syrian agents . . .”

  “He still won’t be okay with you leaving half-cocked.”

  “I’ll come right back with her.”

  “And then what?”

  It didn’t matter to Tucker. He needed to see her.

  “What if it’s not the Macy you know?”

  “Then whoever it is still needs our help,” Tucker said.

  Kyle was nodding. “I think it’s why she’s in Angola.”

  “Jasper,” Tansy said. “Think about what happened with us in Tripoli, those people we got killed. God, I think about them every day.” Tansy swallowed hard. Tucker wasn’t used to seeing him so serious. Emotional, even. “I think about what it would be like to help them,” Tansy said. “Wouldn’t you want to help someone like that?”

  Jasper was looking down.

  “I’ll talk to Jackson,” Tucker said.

  Jasper took a deep breath. “Okay.”

  3

  Macy

  She watched her intruder, an elderly woman, the hotel maid, slowly and cautiously creep around her room. She was frail and moved like a ghost, being careful not to touch anything while her strong beady eyes scoured over Macy’s belongings.

  Macy felt only a little relieved that it wasn’t the tall, gun-toting shape from the decoy room. If it had been, she would have already popped off a kill shot from behind the shower curtain. Now Macy only watched through a small hole she’d ripped through it. Her porthole.

  An elderly maid seemed innocent enough, but Macy knew better than to loosen her grip on the Beretta. She knew better than to trust appearances. So far, through her travels in Africa, expecting the unexpected had saved her life more than once. The laundromat worker in Calabar who tried to lure her to the back room where her clothes had somehow disappeared to. The bus driver in Cameron who took too long talking to the traffic cop. And while she wasn’t worried about the maid being strapped, she watched with suspicion as the maid’s spindly fingers carefully probed through the contents of her purse. The woman moved with the sureness of a seasoned criminal. But this was more than a simple theft. It was someone ordering her to find Macy Chandler’s passport.

  The maid still got the money, though. That, along with a driver’s license, the woman pulling it out and reading it in the lamplight. Macy knew better than to leave her passport anywhere but her front pocket. She’d already felt stranded as it was.

  The countdown started as soon as the maid left the room. There would be a small window of opportunity, not too soon after she’d left, but not too late, either. Macy tried to imagine the maid walking back downstairs to the office, how long it would take for the hallway and the flight of stairs with the foul-smelling carpet. By the time she imagined her tip-off girl returning to her desk, Macy had packed up her small collection of things and bolted out the door. She needed to get the fuck out of Luanda.

  Macy had almost forgotten how hot and humid the nights were at the sweltering seaside city. She’d almost forgotten the narrow and dark streets surrounding the hotel. They were more like alleys, but with a constant flow of two-way traffic. Cars, scooters, pedestrians walking in the middle. There were no lanes. No sense of order, just everyone drifting somewhere at their own pace and by their own set of rules.

  A rule Macy had set for herself was to never be on the streets after dark unless it was absolutely necessary. It turned out, fleeing a deathtrap hotel met that criteria. Another necessity was to pay the old man to keep an eye on his phone, and to haul ass to her location if she’d contacted him. Kick out whatever fare he’d had at the time. She’d paid him decently. But it went beyond money.

  They met in Soyo, an oil town several hours north along the coast. He had a head of white curls that dipped around his chin. It helped with the impression of a kindly grandfather. He’d acted that way, too, taking what seemed to be a genuine liking for the lost American. He wasn’t fooled by Macy’s tanned skin and her attempts to dress local: ripped jeans and a Nike shirt. He knew from the jump that she was an American, and that she was in trouble.

  “Jy is nie Angolese,” he’d said right away in a heavy Afrikaans dialect. “En jy is nie toeriste.”

  Translation: She was neither a local nor a tourist.

  “Jy kort hulp,” he’d said.

  Translation: She needed help.

  And then the old man proceeded to laugh his ass off.

  She didn’t completely trust the man. She didn’t completely trust anyone. But he seemed nice, and potentially useful. They’d talke
d a bit in choppy Afrikaans on the drive south to Luanda. He passed a few tests that way. And when they’d stop, she would get out and watch him from the windows of service stations. He’d pass a few more tests, and then Macy could know that he could at least be a paid getaway driver—at least for two nights. Any longer than that, someone might “get to him” . . .

  She found his beat-up Honda parked behind the hotel. It was next to a row of shipping containers, sitting in deep shadows. She couldn’t make up her mind if the lack of any light was good or bad.

  Someone was sitting in the driver’s seat. There was no light to glisten against his white curls. No way of knowing who was waiting for her.

  Macy’s hand was at her holster as she approached from behind. She gave four small knocks on the trunk lid, and then waited behind, safe in cover of the car’s rear end.

  Nothing happened.

  She drew her gun and knocked again, her arm reaching up and over and then slipping back down into safety. She waited again for the signal. The old man was supposed to lean across and open the passenger-side door. But he did nothing.

  Macy, still squatting, waddled around to the passenger side and reached up to the rear side door handle. It lifted, the door swung out, and she stood and pointed the gun at the back of the driver’s head.

  Nothing.

  The interior light had flicked on when she opened the door, the white curls now visible. She lowered the gun and said his name. His head stayed resting against the frame of the car. She said his name again and then waited for him to wake. He didn’t. Behind her, there was the noise of a scooter, a small-engine whine coming closer. Macy slipped into the back seat and patted the old man’s shoulder. Then she shook him, and his head slumped down.

  She pulled her hand away, her fingers wet.

  Behind her, a set of headlights popped on and everything was bright. Macy hadn’t heard any car pull up. A sick feeling bloomed in her belly. For a moment she froze in the lights, her eyes stuck to the back of the old man’s head. It was lit up, and smeared in red.

  4

  Tucker

  Tucker sat in the backseat of a Johannesburg taxi, one arm propped up on the duffel bag next to him. He leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes, and thought of Macy.

  Memories of her were bittersweet. They took him back seven years, to St. Louis Police Academy. He thought of the way she’d inadvertently—or perhaps not so inadvertently—got him kicked off the police force. It happened while he was still on probation, a few months after he’d turned down her invitation back to her apartment. He’d since forced himself to think the two events had nothing to do with each other, with a differing degree of success.

  He had since missed her, sometimes terribly so. His emotions varied, including a dulled anger, and remorse. But through it all, even her culpability, and through all the years since St. Louis, he’d always missed her.

  “Going somewhere special?” the taxi driver said, his head tilted up from the road. “I don’t think any of the majors fly out at this time of night. Not from your airport, anyway. It’s real small time.”

  “Just going to meet an old friend,” Tucker said. “Angola. Ever been there?”

  “I’ve never left the south.”

  “This is only my second time outside the US.” He thought back to the first time in Iraq. His latest mission in South Africa was a cake walk in comparison.

  “Well, you’re better off someplace else than Angola,” the driver said. “From what I’ve heard from tourists, it’s the most boring country in all of Africa. Must be some friend you got out there.”

  “I like boring,” Tucker said. It was true. In Africa, you could do a whole lot worse than boring. “And yeah, I like my friend, too.”

  Was she still his friend? Tucker wasn’t so sure. It had been a long time. They’d both moved on from St. Louis, in different directions, with different agencies and different missions. His time in Iraq was nothing compared to what Macy had been through. He couldn’t imagine it, what it would feel like to be hunted down by both your enemies and your own people. No matter what she’d been accused of doing, it was the ultimate betrayal—considered guilty without a trial. There had been no trial, but there was very almost an execution. That was what Kyle’s unit had unknowingly been put up to. Who knew how many other attempts there’d been throughout the two years of her cross-continental escape?

  But why Luanda? Had it been a destination, or just another stop on her way to . . . where? There was no way to know until Tucker sat her down somewhere, gave her a hug maybe, and then asked her.

  Would he hug her? Would she even let him touch her?

  What the hell would he do? He had no idea how she’d felt about it—or him—after St. Louis. She most likely assumed that he’d hated her for her part in his dismissal. And for a while, he was angry. But going to war, rattling around in the back of an MRAP and thinking about old friends and old enemies back home, it had a way of settling grudges on its own. Iraq had a way of wiping the window clean, of washing away the grime so that the fundamental truth of things could shine through. He just hoped Macy felt the same way.

  5

  Macy

  She was in a car with a dead body. Macy lay in the back, underneath a dark sheet that once lined the seat. The old man was slumped and bleeding in the front. She’d hid from the headlights quickly, ducking down under the sheet and then writhing into cover. She focused on her breathing, not wanting the sheet to be so obviously huffing and puffing, but the adrenaline made it hard to breathe slowly. The material was thin, and when the headlights shone into the car, she could press her eye against it and see through. She could see the light inside the car. Thank God that was all she could see.

  It must have been a head shot. Execution style. The old man probably hadn’t seen it coming, her only half-trusted friend out here, the good and kindly grandfather dutifully responding to her call.

  The guilt made her want to vomit all over the sheet.

  There was fear, too. She supposed it was fear that kept it in, a fear that kept her catatonic in a car with a corpse.

  After a while, the headlights turned off. She waited there in the dark, straining her ear for any sound of an opening door or footsteps over the crushed stone. For now, she could only hear her heart pounding.

  As long as she heard nothing else, she’d have to stay there and try not to lose her mind. The men who’d been pursuing her had taken out the old man. And then what? Had they gone back inside the hotel? Would they give up looking for her at some point and return to the car? Maybe it helped her to be stuck in a crime scene. It might ward the bad guys away. But if the gunshot was reported, the police might show up. Police could be bad guys, too. In her experience, they usually were.

  When she was on the force in St. Louis, she’d met plenty of bad cops. She had worked alongside them. She supposed she’d been a bad cop in a way, too. Early on, she had taken part—foolishly, naively—in some questionable operations. Little money-making schemes, kickbacks. At first she hadn’t even figured it out, how she was helping cover for other people’s corruption. That was the original sin, starting up like simple favors. She was the rookie. And she was not only new, but a girl. The new girl. It was hard for her to imagine now how she could ever have been so “new.”

  It infuriated her.

  Fear had turned to anger, also, for what those fuckers had done to the old man in the seat in front of her. It turned inside her, under the sheet, a hidden transformation.

  She almost wanted them to come back to the car, to check on their handiwork and get blasted away by her Beretta. She hadn’t used it in three weeks and she welcomed the practice.

  Damn. She had to slow her breathing down again. She was getting too worked up thinking about revenge. She was still lying under a goddamn sheet.

  Twenty minutes passed and still no sounds from the car behind her. Was it even still there? It had come silently. Maybe it left the same way. Could she lift up the sheet and pea
k out above the headrest and out the rear window without being spotted?

  It was entirely possible, too, that the car was filled with innocent people that had nothing to do with the old man. Not everything in Luanda revolved around her and her problems.

  Before she could slide the sheet off, the sound of her car’s door opening froze her in place. Another door, both of them at the front. And then voices like teenagers, speaking something like Portuguese. Quick, nervous voices. Macy peeked above the sheet to find two kids looking into the front seat, and looking, with increasingly horrified expressions, at the bloodied driver. They touched him and then recoiled when the corpse moved like a corpse. And then they came back and touched him again, this time at his pant pockets, their little hands searching through, most likely for cash. The boy on the passenger side reached into the center console, where a taxi driver would keep his fare money. These little punk kids robbing a dead man. The dead old man.

  Macy whipped off the sheet and pointed her gun at them. “Freeze!” It came out like a cop.

  They had nothing to point back at her, so Macy sat up and then lurched out of the car, spinning around the opened rear door and then fixing her gun sight on the eldest kid. They were both scared, but the eldest had now gone white. She could see the color of his face in the dark, his face was almost crying. “What the fuck are you doing?” Macy said.

  He had wads of pastel-colored bills in both hands.

  Maybe she shouldn’t have left the car like that and made it so obvious for her killers. Maybe she should have worried about herself rather than the honor of a dead man. But here she was, acting like a cop with these kids in a dark lot behind Hotel Topenka.

  They stumbled over each other and then rushed to a scooter parked in front of the car. The engine was still running. Macy chased them to it, into it, one of the kids tripping over the bike and spilling onto the ground, the money billowing all over in the wind like confetti.