Touching Darkness

by Jaime Rush

  The pain of the memory was etched in her face, and he saw something else, too: fear. “They left in tears. I told Audrey I’d sneak them into my bedroom. It sounds ridiculous now, but I wanted to help them. In the end, I couldn’t do a thing.”

  “Where are they now?” Nicholas’s mind was already working.

  “The last address I could find was in California. I wrote a letter but never got a response.”

  “Do you want to find them?”

  She looked at him. “In a way, yes. But it would open a can of worms with my family.”

  He nodded to the portrait. “I’m surprised they didn’t hang it in the bathroom.”

  She didn’t laugh this time.

  “You’re afraid of that happening to you, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “I don’t have a portrait they could hang in the bathroom.”

  “That’s not what I meant. You’re afraid to be ostracized. I don’t think your loyalty is as much out of love as it is out of fear.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  It all made sense now. Her mother had abandoned her. Olivia probably thought if she disobeyed, her father might abandon her, too.

  “That’s his job as a father, you know,” he said in a low voice. “Raising and loving you wasn’t doing you a favor.”

  She turned from the portrait. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  “Do you want me to find Audrey and Carol? I can do that.”

  She looked at him, her head tilted. “How?”

  “Let’s just say I’m good at finding people.”

  “Is that your special skill?”

  He gave her an impish smile. “We’re not supposed to talk about our skills to the staff. You wouldn’t want me to break the rules, would you?”

  She seemed surprised by that revelation. “You don’t care about the rules.”

  “But you do. I’m good at finding things. Do you want me to put my skill to use for you?” It was that need rising in him again, to complete someone by finding something that was missing.

  Her eyes filled with both hope and conflict. “Yes. No. I don’t know, let me think about it.” Her expression changed to a slightly sheepish one. “I saw you this morning, throwing that ball into the maze, jumping off the balcony and finding it, climbing as agile as a monkey back up to your room.”

  “I climbed a lot of trees when I was a kid. We lived on a hundred acres of woods. There wasn’t a tree I couldn’t climb.”

  She was regarding him with curiosity now. “You found the ball, and you found your way out of that maze within seconds. No one does that. The smart ones eventually find their way out after, like, two hours. Tops. How can you do that? Is that your skill, too?”

  He touched her chin and let his finger slide down the front of her throat until it reached the sweet hollow at the base of her neck. “That’s just one of my skills, Livvie. But if we’re following the rules, the only one I can share with you is finding your cousin. Let me know if I can assist in that.”

  She sucked in a breath at his touch and his implication, and her shoulders slackened when he lifted his finger away. “You’re an evil man, Nicholas Braden.”

  He gave her a devilish smile. “Indeed I am.” He started to walk away, a fine exit if he didn’t say so himself, but she grabbed his arm to stop him.

  After glancing around to make sure no one—her father—was around, she pulled him down a hall to a part of the mansion he’d never been in before. She led the way to a sunroom that was decked out in flowers, imprinted on the fabric of the sofas and chairs, and even on the wallpaper.

  “My grandmother decorated this room,” she said. “Try not to gag.” She closed the door and walked right up to him. “I’ve decided to have an affair with you. Affair, is that the right word? Does that apply to assignations between people who are not married to each other?”

  Affair…assignation…the mere words brought his body to life, especially when faced with a flushed Livvie standing so close their bodies nearly touched. “You’ve decided this…just now?”

  “Yes. No. Sort of.”

  “What about the rules?”

  “They’re still in place, I’m afraid, but it seems you’re game to flout them, and so am I. Life is short, and I want to grab it and suck all the juice out of it.”

  She might as well have put her mouth on him with those words, the way his body reacted. She wrapped her arms around his neck, snugged her body against his, and kissed him crazy. She was devilish, too, rocking her body ever so slightly, and she sure as hell couldn’t have missed his erection. He took what she offered, plunging in, running his hands down her backside, the indent of her lower back, and sliding over the curve of her ass. Every bit as fantastic as he’d imagined.

  She was hungry, no starved, it seemed. She moaned softly at his touch, pressing even closer.

  She was too hungry, and he remembered her innocence, and the reason behind that innocence. As much as desire engulfed him, he could not, would not, hurt her. He pulled back, bracing her face, slowing the kisses and nearly losing it again at the sight of her eyes drenched in the same desire.

  “Livvie, do you know what having an affair means? It means temporary. It means that at the end we both walk away, and no one’s hurt. Can you do that?”

  She nodded, leaning forward to kiss him again, and, he was sure, not really hearing his words.

  “Livvie,” he said against her mouth, “wait. I want to make sure you know what we’re doing here.”

  She finally stepped back, hands on her hips. “Well, we would be kissing if you’d stop talking. I’m throwing caution to the winds, and now you’re the one who’s being careful.”

  “I have rules of my own. I want to make sure you know that when my assignment is over in a short time, you will be perfectly okay that I walk out of here and never see you again.”

  “Why never? We can call, write. Visit.”

  That’s what he was afraid of. “Never.”

  She pushed out her lower lip in contrast to her words. “Okay, fine. Never. I’m talking about an affair, not marriage. And if you want to cut all ties, then we’ll cut all ties.”

  He tipped her chin up. “You’re young. Too young.”

  “Too young for what? I’m only three years younger than you.”

  “Twenty is young, sweetheart. Have you ever been in love before?”

  “Plenty of times.” She paused. “Okay, once, when I was sixteen.”

  “Just once?”

  “I haven’t met anyone I wanted to feel that way about. Until you.”

  He felt a punch in his chest. “Tell me about him.” It was a test. He wanted to know how she let go of someone she’d been in love with. Because he already knew if they took this further, it was going to go deeper than any of the shallow “affairs” he’d had. He saw it in her eyes, felt it in his gut. He was willing to endure the pain of the loss, but he wasn’t willing to put her through it.

  She shifted her gaze away. “I don’t want to.”

  “I need to know you can handle this. The last and only time you were in love was four years ago. That doesn’t reassure me.”

  “Fine. His name was Liam. He was the gardener’s son, and one summer he helped out at our estate. He was sweet and devastatingly good-looking and tan and he kissed…well, almost as well as you do. He was my first kiss, the first boy I ever let touch me.”

  He didn’t like the thought of her being in love with anyone, and especially anyone touching her, a bad omen for him. “I’ll bet your father loved that.”

  “You’d bet right. He got wind of the relationship and told me to end it. No daughter of a Darkwell was going to date a gardener’s son. I hate conflict, and I knew it was pointless to argue, so I acquiesced. But being a teenager, and feeling the first bite of rebellion, we merely took the relationship underground. Unfortunately, my father forced the truth out of me one stormy afternoon. Then he went down to the shed where Liam and his father were waiting out the sto
rm.”

  Her eyes glazed as she sank back to that distant day. “When he returned, he told me he’d fired the gardener. A man had lost his job because of me.” Her expression darkened. “But that wasn’t the worst of it. Though my father told them to leave after the storm, the gardener packed his things, and they left right then. He lost control of the car and went off the road into the river. They both…drowned.” She looked at him, hurt and anger in her eyes. “There, are you happy?”

  No, he wasn’t happy at all. He pulled her against him, rubbing her back. “I’m sorry. But I had to know.”

  She looked up at him. “Know what?”

  “Whether you could handle taking this a step further and not be hurt when I leave. I don’t think you can. And I can’t risk hurting you even though I want to make love to you so bad my body aches with it.”

  She stepped back, obviously hurt by his rejection. “You must think an awful lot of yourself to assume I won’t get over you when you’re gone.”

  All this time he’d thought her placid, compliant. Her feistiness pulled at him. He put his hand against her cheek. “I know enough about you to know you could never love lightly. And maybe I’m afraid I won’t get over you.”

  She was beautiful, delicious, like one of those fancy desserts in the bakery case that he knew would crack to pieces after the first bite no matter how careful he was.

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Why do you have to leave? At least tell me that. You make it sound as though you’re leaving the planet when you finish your assignment. I know you’re not married, or at least no wife showed up on the background check. Is my father sending you overseas? To some volatile place?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “I know you did salvage work before you came here, and that was dangerous. I read in your dossier that once you were a hundred feet below the surface looking for the remains of a shipwreck, and your air tank malfunctioned. You dive in caves for fun.” She shuddered at that. “You’ll go back to doing that when you’re done here?”

  “I’m hoping to start my own business where I can take the assignments I want.” Was hoping.

  “Like what? Treasure?”

  “Things that have historical or sentimental value. Shipwrecks, but for museums. Lost jewelry, family heirlooms…family.” He gave her a pointed look.

  “And bones,” she said, changing the subject.

  “Yeah, I’d like to help Bone Finders without having to beg for time off.”

  “So you might die on some salvage mission. Or you might not. Does that mean you can’t get involved with someone?”

  It seemed overly dramatic to tell her he was going to die, even if he made up some logical and believable reason, like a fatal disease. “I’m just not the kind of guy who can be in a relationship, that’s all. I date women who aren’t interested in anything long-term and who won’t be hurt when I go off on some mission and don’t call or write or visit or promise to think about them every second. I’m one of those jerks who can’t commit. And you, Livvie, are a woman who deserves a man who makes love to her every night and fixes her breakfast in the morning and talks about his day while cleaning up after dinner.”

  It was a nice picture, but she wasn’t smiling. “You’re not telling me the truth, Nicholas.”

  “That is true. And what is even truer is that I will not hurt you.” He turned and walked out of the room, the hardest thing he’d had to do in a long time. And that was saying a lot.

  CHAPTER 6

  Monday morning, Nicholas walked to the French doors that led out to his balcony. Jerryl approached Darkwell, who was standing in front of the maze’s entrance. Nicholas had seen the two of them out there before, talking, laughing…bonding. Jerryl was definitely the golden boy of the program. Nicholas had no idea what Fonda’s skills were. He’d never been friendly with either her or Jerryl.

  Nicholas stepped into the hallway. Olivia’s door was open, but she wasn’t at her desk. Graceful sculptures sat on the shelves of her credenza, and classical music wafted out. What a dichotomy she was, subdued on the outside, feisty with him. It drove him crazy, that he could have her, and yet, he couldn’t.

  The dark bronze doorknob on Darkwell’s office door softly reflected the light. Like a mysterious object in the bottom of the ocean, it called to him. His fingers wrapped around the cool metal. He held his breath and turned the knob.

  He glanced in both directions and stepped inside. The pressure in his chest warned him to back away. He realized what had always bothered him about the man: the sense of darkness he glimpsed in his eyes.

  A quick in and out, find something that would either corroborate what the Rogues had told him or negate it. He pulled open a drawer and started riffling through the folder tabs. Nothing. He opened another drawer and in the back was a section of red folders with dates from the eighties and initials on the tabs. He grabbed one and opened it. At the top of the sheet on the left was a name scribbled in writing he recognized as Darkwell’s: Francesca Vanderwyck.

  Lucas Vanderwyck was one of the Rogues Nicholas had been tasked to find early on. He’d been shot during the assault at the hospital. Francesca had to be his mother. Then Nicholas’s dad would be there, too, if he was part of the program. He found the folder—and heard a sound at the door.

  Olivia stood there, her face a mask of disbelief. “What are you doing?”

  He pulled out the folder and closed the drawer. “Trying to get the answers Darkwell won’t give me.”

  She eyed the folder in his hand. “I can’t let you take that.”

  He walked to the door. “This is about my father.” And whatever substance Nicholas might have inherited from him.

  “You can’t just steal something from his office! That’s classified information. If he finds out…”

  “What? Will he kill me?” He’d seen Darkwell’s anger. Not loud, but a sinister calm. “I’ll make copies and get it back to you.”

  “I thought you had integrity.” She glanced down the hall. Voices drifted from the vicinity of the stairs: Darkwell and Jerryl.

  While he was looking in that direction, she snatched the folder and ran to the drawer. He reached her as she stuffed it back into the drawer.

  “Get out of here, Nicholas, before he comes.”

  He made a grab for the drawer handle, but she blocked him in a move so fast it surprised him. No time for more than that. Damn her. Was she trying to protect that data or him? He and Olivia walked out just as Darkwell and Jerryl came around the corner.

  Darkwell’s gaze narrowed. Of course, he thought they were socializing again. He gave her a withering look as he went into his office, closing the door soundly. Olivia closed her door the same way. Like father, like…

  No, she was nothing like her father.

  Jerryl eyed Nicholas. Why had they come back inside so quickly? Had Jerryl remote-viewed Nicholas in Darkwell’s office? The air thickened with a dark tension.

  Jerryl rubbed his palm over hair barely longer than a five o’clock shadow as he walked over to Nicholas. “Gerard said you were asking about my skills. Any particular reason?”

  “Just curious.” It’s Gerard now, is it?

  “This is important shit we’re doing here, Braden. There’s stuff we have no business knowing. Our job is not to question but to act. And if that means killing, we kill.”

  “I joined DARK MATTER to save people, not target them for killing.” He’d seen the result of killing: smashed bones, dismembered skeletons, and shattered families. His own family, too.

  Jerryl sneered. “You can keep your hands and your conscience all squeaky-clean while I take out our enemy.”

  “How are you going to do that? Remote-view them to death?”

  His laugh was more of a rumble as he backed toward his door. “Yeah, that’s what I’m going to do. And I’ll do the same to anyone who threatens the program.”

  Sam Robbins paused outside his boss’s door and listened. He could barely hear through th
e thick wood, but what he could hear made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Darkwell was making arrangements to transfer Sayre Andrus out of prison. In rare instances, CIA could transfer prisoners who had specific value to the government into their custody.

  Andrus was an Offspring Darkwell had recently discovered. Sam had read some of Andrus’s file. The prison warden would probably be happy to see his troublesome prisoner go. Several accusations had been filed, ranging from “voodoo spells” to unexplained deaths, none proven.

  The door opened, and Darkwell stopped at the sight of Sam.

  Darkwell’s voice was terse. “Come in.”

  Sam walked in and closed the door. “You’re trying to get Andrus out of prison? He murdered a woman.”

  Darkwell sat at his massive desk. “The evidence was circumstantial at best. Besides, that has nothing to do with what I want him for. If he has murdered someone, at least he’s not squeamish.”

  Sam couldn’t get past that statement. “You know that Andrus is a cold-blooded psychopath.”

  “Yes, I do.” Darkwell’s black eyes glittered. “But he’ll be our psychopath.”

  The truth hit Sam like a wave of ice-cold water: He’d been working for a psychopath all along. Instinct said to play along. “I suppose you have a point. But I thought Andrus wasn’t interested.”

  “I must have piqued his interest. He called to set up another meeting. He wants out of prison. I just got off the phone with a judge I know in Florida to find out what the process entails. I need permission from the court, and a judge authorizes the release. Should be easy enough. Andrus will work here with us for four months, and I’ll let him think it could go on longer. He’ll have to go back, of course. I’ll blame it on red tape, regulations, whatever. If he escapes, or if word gets out to the public that he’s been released, it’ll create a media frenzy.”

  Sam approached the desk. “Does the director know?”

  “I’m not involving him unless and until I have to. He’s very impressed with the information I’ve already given him. We just got word that the information Jerryl gave us last week led to the capture of a terrorist cell hiding out in London. If I need to approach him, I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”