Dark Web (DARC Ops Book 2) Read online

  “See?” he said again.

  She hoped she’d never have to get used to it.

  “And that’s a stationary target,” Tansy’s voice was becoming slightly irritating, buzzing in her ear like a sand fly as she tried concentrating on her target. Maybe that was on purpose, too. An added distraction.

  Carly aimed and fired once more, this time exploding an empty jar of pasta sauce. She looked back to Tansy. He deserved a little smug smile.

  “Okay,” he said. “Time for another lap.”

  They spent the rest of the day prepping for their meeting with the Sagebrush Militia. For Tansy, that meant going over images of what the hard drive looked like.

  “Just keep going through those images,” she said, pulling up more images of it on Tansy’s computer. She was able to identify the exact type of drive that Bryce Johnson had used. And now it was her turn to be instructive. “Let it burn into your memory.”

  “Yeah,” he mumbled, pulling back his chair, returning to his images.

  The average person wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. But for someone like Tansy, hard drives were imminently distinguishable.

  “I’d rather be memorizing you,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Shh. . . .” Carly felt her face redden. Were they really alone? She turned in her chair to check the room again. Yes, alone. But what about the hallway? Or the rooms next door?

  “You wanna do that real quick?” he asked. “Let me burn you into my memory?”

  “Haven’t I already?” she said quietly.

  “It was too dark.”

  She flushed hotter. “You better stick to your work and memorize that hard drive. If it gets in the wrong hands, then a memory is all you’ll have of me. How long would you be able to go on that?”

  “Five to ten,” he said, sounding amused with himself.

  “How flattering.”

  Tansy muttered a few other things, unintelligible, and returned to work. After a few minutes, out of the corner of her eye, Carly saw his head turn. “What?”

  “I hope it was worth it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The cover-up. All this crap we’re mired in. Bryce Johnson.”

  Hearing that name put a knot in her stomach. She instinctively looked away, as if turning from some bright and painful light.

  “I mean. . . .” Tansy trailed off uselessly.

  How long would she have to listen to him utter that name? Their time at the hot springs, feeling him move over her—inside her, for God’s sake!—had meant everything to her. Had she read Tansy wrong? Did he return any affection at all, or was she simply a handy way for DARC Ops to win their latest war?

  Carly had no idea. For now, Tansy fell silent again. Carly forced herself back to her security system research, for a few seconds. And then she gave up, clicking off the screen.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I get it.” She turned back to him, but wouldn’t meet his eyes. “You have a point. You have a right to be—”

  “No,” he interrupted. “I don’t have that right. I don’t even—”

  “Yes, you do. And you’re mad. It’s fine.”

  “I’ll stop.”

  “Fine.”

  She didn’t want to be mad at him. Not after they’d just found each other again. It had always been an easy trap for her, especially lately, to feel negative about anything and everything. What had there been to feel good about?

  Tansy made her feel good.

  But with each mention of that name, with each subtle jab, she could tell that even her feelings for Tansy would sour. Even that would get ruined somehow. How could it not?

  “I’m willing to talk about the future with you,” she said, watching a surprised—and maybe even scared—expression cross over his face. “But in order for that to really happen, in order for us to talk about it, and maybe even do it, I need you to forget about the past. Or at least forgive me.”

  It was his turn to look away. He nodded slowly.

  “Can you do that?” She wanted to hear it. She wanted to know it.

  He looked up, snatching her gaze and holding it. “Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

  Under his stare, the room started to feel very warm. Maybe it was all the computers, their fans blowing out heat. She rubbed her forehead. It felt grimy.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  “Me, too.” She reached out to touch him but stopped, stiffening in her chair at the sound of approaching footsteps.

  One of their hackers, a woman in her mid-twenties with a shaved head, entered the room. “He wants to meet tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? Where?” asked Tansy.

  “Vegas. Just outside city limits.”

  “In the desert?”

  She nodded.

  Before Tansy could speak again, a loud analog ring came from the red 1960s phone at the far end of the room. He sprung up out of his chair to answer it, his face looking ashen gray in the fluorescence. When he got off the phone, he looked even sicker.

  “What is it?” Carly asked.

  “The Feds,” he said quietly. “They’re heading to Vegas tomorrow to raid one of the militia’s operations centers.”

  “Can we beat them to it?”

  Tansy stood silently for a moment before turning to his hacker assistant. “Tell them to get the van ready. All the toys.”

  23

  Tansy

  Back to Las Vegas.

  Goddamnit.

  Approaching Vegas at night was like driving toward an early and uncanny sunrise, the horizon aglow with the thousands of megawatts that kept the neon glowing. The actual sunrise was still a few hours off, and Tansy was glad to have made such good time on the drive down from the compound. He was even gladder about there not being a roadblock to turn him around or to check the occupants in the vehicle. The occupant and contents—Carly and his wide array of tools and weapons—might have raised a little too much suspicion.

  He looked over to his new partner. She was as alert as ever despite not sleeping a wink during the ride. She’d had the opportunity to sleep, several hours’ worth. But she’d refused, and, instead, offered to drive. Tansy countered that with a warning about how boring things might be during their wait in the car once they got to their destination, but how it might not be a very convenient time to finally fall asleep.

  But she was fine. She was “wired.”

  Despite the lack of real-world familiarity, Tansy was confident rolling into battle with her. She was a little harder than he expected, a little rougher around the edges. And she had a chip on her shoulder. It was a big contrast to her innocent, girlish looks. A potentially very useful contrast.

  Maybe they’d be a good pair after all.

  Tansy could already hear Jackson teasing him about her, as if his boss could be the only one to not only fall in love with a beautiful, talented woman, but get to work with her on a daily basis.

  Yep, love. You’re done.

  But even if there were a limit to such employees, it wouldn’t matter to Tansy. After this mission, if they survived—and if they weren’t in jail—he would ask Carly to join him in their own team. Their own business. Maybe call it a renaissance for the hacking collective. Anything. He’d let Carly name it. He just wanted to work with her again, this time legally. And in person.

  His daydreaming was interrupted by a mileage sign for Las Vegas. They were 14 miles out of Sin City, where his trip had started. DEFCON. His police car presentation. It all felt like it happened months ago, not days.

  “Should we hit up the Bellagio real quick before we get started?” Carly asked with a crooked little grin.

  “You feeling lucky?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Save it for the mission.” As much as he’d like to find a hotel room and fuck her for hours, he couldn’t. Not yet—not if he wanted to save them both. Tansy took an exit off the interstate and began following a lonely desert highway. When they came to an aban
doned gas station, he pulled over and parked. The two support vehicles that had been following came up on either side of the van.

  “We’ll do it here,” Tansy called to the driver of the van next to him. He put his van in park, cut the engine, and then looked over to Carly. She was definitely wide awake. Maybe even . . . scared?

  “How are you doing?” He tried to sound casual, like there was nothing at all to worry about.

  “Okay,” she mumbled, her chin pressed down to her chest.

  “That doesn’t sound very convincing.”

  She laughed. “You’re right. It doesn’t.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Well, come on, shake it up. Get loose.”

  “I’m loose, alright. I’m fuckin’ crazy. This is fuckin’ crazy,” she said, laughing again.

  “There you go. That sounds better.”

  “It just hit me,” she said, her laughter fading. “It hit me that, you know. . . . That we’ve gotta separate now.”

  “Not really. We’ll be watching you the whole time. And listening. Eyes and ears.” Tansy handed her a plastic pen. “You press this into anything, and it leaves a micro-dot tracking device.” He waited for her to take hold of the pen. “Test it out on yourself. Anywhere.”

  Carly made a dot on the inside of her wrist. And then Tansy showed her another dot, a corresponding blinking spot on his tablet that denoted her location. “See? It’s like radar. As long as we can see this dot, we’ll see where you are. Try to make other dots if you can, on his clothes, on his car. But only if you can do it safely, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, still inspecting the tip of the pen.

  “Hey,” he said softly. “Look at me.”

  She looked at him with those beautiful, doleful eyes. Without saying anything else, Tansy leaned in to kiss her softly on the mouth. It wouldn’t be their last. He would make sure of it.

  24

  Carly

  She wasn’t alone. . . .

  She kept telling herself that.

  Not alone.

  She had Tansy. And Tansy had her tracker and an SUV full of DARC Ops mercenaries.

  In the best-case scenario, neither would be necessary. In the best case, the deal would go smoothly. Her militia contact wouldn’t suspect anything. He’d hand over the hard drive. And then she could leave.

  Leave.

  She could almost hear herself scream the word in her head.

  Turn around and leave.

  But she kept driving, her borrowed car bouncing across the potholes of an old dirt lot. It used to be a drag strip in the sixties, some signs of it still left. An old snack bar hut that was shuttered and falling apart. A wood pile for grandstands. Old crumbly pavement stretching into the horizon. Carly drove through the large gap in a chain link fence, avoiding more potholes and old tires, and pulled onto the drag strip proper. The pavement.

  She was told to drive to the end, to the finish line.

  But that voice came back, telling her to turn around immediately and drive anywhere else but that creepy, abandoned drag strip. Drive straight to the FBI. Confess. Who gave a fuck? At least she would survive.

  She looked down at her wrist, at the tiny tracking dot, hoping that her faith in technology would prevail and maybe even brighten her spirits. She could depend on it. Right? Technology was how she made a living. And it was how she found Tansy. It might have already saved her life.

  The ride was a little smoother on the racing surface. Carly powered up the engine and sped toward the finish line. She didn’t have time for suspense. By the time she began slowing down, she spotted a motorcycle parked next to a ramshackle wooden structure. It was a Harley Davidson, its chrome exhaust pipes and handlebars shining in the early-morning light.

  She slowed and parked next to it, giving a quick scan of the area. She expected to see some clichéd looking biker. Jeans, a leather vest, long hair. But the guy who stepped out of the shadows was clean-cut, a military type with short hair. He even dressed like Tansy, with his black compression shirt and tactical pants. But his face certainly didn’t look like Tansy.

  “Nice mask,” she said, trying to fight the shakiness in her voice.

  “You, too.”

  She wasn’t wearing one.

  Asshole.

  His voice was muffled, vibrating through a Bill Clinton mask. It was horrible looking, with a big, red, bulbous nose.

  “Where’s the hard drive?” She stepped out of the car, slamming her car door shut, her voice straightening out as her fear turned to anger. This was the son of a bitch who wanted to ruin her life.

  “Take it easy.”

  “Where is it?” She leaned back on her closed driver’s side door, her arms crossing. “I don’t have to time to fuck around with some guy in a mask.”

  “I’m not just some guy in a mask,” he said. “I’m the arbiter of your freedom.”

  “Then I’m the arbiter of your life.” She pulled up her shirt to expose the grip of her revolver on her hip.

  “Take it easy.”

  “Don’t fuck with me.” She dropped her shirt back down over the gun, turning her hip to make sure the outline still showed.

  He stood there casually, hand on his hip. “You don’t think I have friends, too?”

  She couldn’t tell if he was referring to the guns he armed himself with, or his militia buddies likely hiding nearby. Both were problematic. But she had that all covered by Tansy and his men, or so she hoped.

  “So whose car is that?” he asked.

  “Mine.”

  He laughed under the mask, the plastic moving up and down. “You’re a bad liar.” He pulled a phone from his pocket. “And you’re sloppy. That’s why you got caught in the first place.” He dialed a number and held the phone to his ear. “Okay, Marty, how’re we doin’?”

  Carly looked around, trying to spot any of his militia cronies, any sign of a trap. Aside from the dilapidated wooden structure and a few clumps of Joshua trees, there weren’t many hiding places available. It was open desert all the way to Nellis Air Force Base. The lights of flight control twinkled in the distance behind the masked man.

  “If that’s what he says, then I’m happy.” He ended his call and looked at Carly. “Okay. I’m happy.”

  “I’m so glad.”

  “You ready to do this?” Bill Clinton cocked his head to the side. “Or are you gonna keep coppin’ attitude?”

  “Let’s do this. Where is it?”

  He laughed again. “You expected me to be carrying it right now?”

  “Well, yeah, I expected an exchange. What the hell else are we doing here?”

  “We’re making sure you’re alone.”

  “I’m alone,” she said, rubbing at the small raised dot on her wrist.

  “No, you’re not.”

  She let go of her wrist.

  “Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you to where the hard drive is.” He walked over to his motorcycle and waved his hand over the seat. “Ever ride on one of these before?”

  “Where are we going?”

  “My place. It’s not far.” He grabbed a helmet from its holder behind the seat. “Come on. Slip on your brain bucket and we’ll go.”

  “Where’s yours?”

  “That is mine. And I’m offering it to you.”

  She made her way slowly toward the bike. Toward him. “What’s your name?” she asked, as if they were having some normal conversation, some normal exchange like two people in line at the supermarket. Just two unarmed people. No tracking bug and no Bill Clinton mask.

  “My name?” he said after a pause. “I don’t know . . . Kendall?” He shook the helmet impatiently. “Come on, let’s go.”

  She slipped the helmet over her head. It was too big and it slid around with every movement.

  “Come on.” He straddled the motorcycle and patted the seat behind him. “Hop on.”

  Carly hopped—rather, slid hesitantly onto the bike behind Kendall.

/>   “You can touch me, you know. It’s okay.” He fired up the engine with a low guttural roar of bwap bwap bwap. He revved it higher, louder. “If you don’t want to hold on to me, that’s fine,” he shouted over the engine. “It’s your neck to break.”

  The motorcycle started moving and Carly had no other choice but to accept her fate, the repulsion of wrapping her arms around the driver. It made her arms and chest feel sick, as if she was holding on to death itself.

  Why couldn’t she be on vacation with Tansy somewhere? A cross-country tour, this time not in a rented carpet-cleaning van, but on Tansy’s plush touring bike, her arms wrapping around his sculpted torso and not around the hateful pudginess of this masked idiot.

  They drove back to the interstate, turning onto it and speeding toward Vegas, their sweaty hug already becoming intolerable. Quite a few times during the ride, Carly wondered what in the motherfucking fuck she was doing. Why was she allowing this to happen? Her hugging on to this disgusting pig, her breasts pushed up against his back. Why was Tansy allowing this to happen?

  And where the fuck was Tansy?

  She focused back on her situation, wondering how much danger she’d just put herself in by leaving with Kendall. The one bit of good news was that he seemed unarmed. At least, he had no sidearm strapped to his waist. She would have noticed. She tried looking elsewhere, where the cuffs of his pants met his boots, leaning over to look at each in turn, but she found nothing.

  Kendall—or Bill Clinton, or whoever the hell this militia guy was—finally veered off the interstate at the outskirts of Las Vegas, taking a bypass road that was seldom driven by tourists to a considerably less-touristy part of town. They turned away from all the glitz and glamour, away from all the money, and safety, and instead headed toward the run-down environs of North Las Vegas.

  Carly stretched her back while they waited for a red light, and for a disheveled homeless person to hobble across the intersection. The reprieve from constant contact with Kendall was woefully short. She’d almost worked up enough courage to pull out her microdot pen when the light changed and they continued on, delving deeper into what appeared to be a nearly vacant neighborhood. Along one side of the road were houses without tenants, hell, without windows. There were piles of mattresses all strewn about. Cardboard. Shopping carts. On the other side of the road was a large parking lot. It was brightly lit but empty, with sun-baked weeds growing through the cracks. It was the most depressed-looking strip mall she’d ever seen.