Gone Dark

by P. R. Adams

  “Consulting with. They offered one-tenth what we agreed upon. Anything more would look like they hired me to steal it, and apparently that’s illegal.”

  Duvreau rolled her eyes. “It’s good to know where you draw the line.”

  “Well, I have no incentive to give something away. As you know, people died for that data. So what we’re going to do now is you’re going to transfer the money to the account I provided you. When we see the money in the account, we’ll transmit the codes to unlock all the storage.”

  “And what if we decided to kill you instead and take the code generator off your corpses?”

  I sighed. “That would be very unfortunate for both parties. We had really been looking forward to wrapping this up without more killing, especially of us. But the bigger problem is that you won’t know who has the code generator. I mean the real one. We all have one. Maybe each one of us has one associated with a particular device. And since failures could end up transmitting data to the FBI after all—” I smiled. “Oh, did I forget to mention that?”

  Duvreau stuffed her hands inside her coat pockets. “All right. Simultaneous transfer.” She waved, and one of the guards took the backpack from Sally.

  Sally pulled her computing device out and said, “Ready!” Strangely nervous.

  The guard pulled his mask up, then took one of the devices out.

  I turned to Chan. “Check the account.”

  The glow of the computing device lit up Chan’s face. “There. Half of it.”

  The guard straightened. “Got the code.” He read it out, and Sally repeated, then connected. It took a couple minutes, but they connected to all devices and confirmed the data was present.

  Sally let out a laugh that sounded relieved. “It’s all there, Miss Duvreau.”

  Duvreau said, “I wish I could say it was good doing business with you, Mendoza.” She turned, and her security team fell back to the air limos.

  Chan said, “The money! Gone!”

  I shook my head. The banking cartel, doing the unthinkable. Apparently, there was no honor among thieves. “Better than being corpses, I guess.”

  Duvreau smirked as she took the backpack from the security guard but immediately grunted beneath the weight. “Shit. I guess you really did care about these not breaking.”

  “I’m not one to take chances. Except for trusting you, I guess.”

  “You didn’t really have a choice, did you? Don’t worry. I don’t need to kill you, Mr. Mendoza.” She slung a strap over a shoulder and climbed into the rear air limo. “You’ve already made more enemies than you could imagine.”

  “Yeah,” I whispered. “Why leave loose ends out there, right?”

  The doors lowered, then the limo rose into the air with a deafening whine of fans.

  Sally shrugged and waved at me. “Sorry about that.” She ducked to enter the other vehicle.

  Then Duvreau’s vehicle erupted in a blinding fireball.

  Sally and the rest of the security team were thrown to the ground. Bits and pieces of the air limo frame rained down with a fiery clatter.

  A rifle crack echoed in the distance, and one of the security team went down.

  I ran forward, pistols drawn, and shouted, “Face down! No need for anyone else to die!”

  The security guard next to Sally brought his weapon up.

  I put a round through his gas mask.

  Blood spurted out through the entry hole and Sally shrieked.

  The rest of the weapons clattered to the ground.

  Huiyin and Ichi ran forward, kicking weapons away.

  I offered Sally a hand and said, “I’m really glad you weren’t in the other limo, or it wouldn’t have been as exciting. Explosives can be indiscriminate, but I don’t like loose ends.”

  “Oh!” She laughed—nasal, kind of a nervous hysteria—then she doubled over and threw up.

  I patted her back. “That’s okay. Get it out of your system. Chan? Can you help her?”

  Chan rushed forward, took Sally’s hand, but froze. There was a look—guilt or fear—in the magenta eyes staring at me, as if the realization had just hit that something needed to be said but couldn’t be. Not without help.

  I holstered my pistols. “What? Chan, what is it?”

  “Jacinto.” Chan shivered, pulled a fountain pen out of the hoodie. The fountain pen from the data center. Pointed toward Huiyin. “She wants Jacinto.”

  I spun on Huiyin, who had just tapped her jacket with a wrist.

  Another explosion lit up the night. My eyes widened at the fireball rising from the data center rooftop.

  Danny.

  “Don’t move!” Huiyin. On edge. Like someone whose career was at stake.

  I did my best to stand perfectly still. “Should I raise my hands, or is this just about you executing us?”

  “Just don’t move.” Her voice shook. “Like you said, that’s enough killing.”

  “So we just let you take Jacinto back to China, and that’s it?”

  “My country needs this technology to keep up with the changing world. That’s all it has to be. No need for everyone to die.” Stronger now. More confident, more distant. “You’re a mercenary, remember?”

  “Yeah. This was never about Dong, was it?”

  Booted feet scraped—Huiyin moving toward the air limo. “Chan, bring it to me.”

  “She’s just using you, Chan, same as she did all of us.”

  Chan took a step, stopped. “No.”

  Huiyin sighed. “I could kill you all and take it from you.”

  “Would you?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  It was the answer I’d always expected. “I’m sorry.”

  The distant crack of a rifle filled the night air, and something thudded to the ground.

  I bowed my head. “Thanks, Danny. I’m sorry you had to do that.”

  He snorted. “She tried to kill me. I think we’re even. Told you she couldn’t be trusted.”

  “Yeah.”

  Sally whimpered and swooned; I barely caught her. Her eyes rolled around, unfocused, and she mumbled, “So much killing.”

  I set her to the ground gently and turned, trying not to see Huiyin’s body. She had been wrong, of course.

  There was never enough killing.

  Chapter 32

  Water lapped against the side of the yacht. It was a steady, gentle beat—not quite enough to really rock something so big. I didn’t own the largest boat in Costa Rica. Hell, I didn’t even own the largest boat in Marina Pez Vela, but the hull had a fresh coat of paint and had been scraped free of barnacles. And I was an hour away from testing the motors I’d finished rebuilding the day before. The boat was a patchwork mess that was probably just dangerous enough to take on the Pacific Ocean. I knew I was.

  I padded up to the flying bridge, grinning at the squeak of my deck shoes on the steps. The grin spread more when Ericka headed up to the prow with a bucket. Her caramel skin was warm against a white bikini. She untangled a bright-colored rope wrapped around the handle and lowered the bucket into the water with a soft splash, then breathed in the cool, salty air. Her ample chest expanded. As if psychic, she looked up at me with dark brown eyes.

  “Ola!” She chuckled as she raised the bucket. Her voice was raspy and worn as the yacht had been when I’d discovered it, but her accent was manageable, and her personality was a light in my darkness. “You are a dirty old man.”

  “How long did it take you to figure that out?” Eight years older. I guess I qualified as old. There was no question about the other charge. I checked the instruments, tapped the fuel gauge, then glanced back down at her. She had a hand cupped over her eyes, still looking up at me. Her dark brown hair whipped lightly in the gentle breeze.

  “When did we start sleeping together, huh?” The raspiness in her voice turned into more of a bedroom huskiness,

  “Two days after I arrived?”

  “In Quepos, that is not so bad.” She waved and took the bucket below, a
dding an extra sway to hips that were fine without it.

  Taking the Margo out for a little shakedown suddenly seemed much less important. In the two months since buying the boat and hooking up with Ericka, I had spent about as much time learning how she worked as I had the boat. She often kidded I had done more for her motor than I ever would the boat’s engines. The truth was, she had helped me forget about a life I never thought I could leave, a life I never wanted to know again.

  It was that life that taught me the skills to notice the glint of light off to the north. A small motorbike sped through the town toward the marina, coughing white exhaust into the empty street. I could make out a slender form, dark helmet, and an almost mustard-brown skin.

  When the engine grew louder, Ericka came back up. She watched the bike rattle across the pier for a moment, then looked up at me. “You are expecting someone?”

  “Go below.”

  A troubled look highlighted the scar on her right cheek, a scar left by an automobile accident a few years earlier. Losing her husband in that accident had left worse scarring where no one could see.

  The motorbike came to a stop where I was moored. Male, for sure. I dropped down the steps to the deck, sliding down the rails on hands that could crush bone. The rider wore a battered backpack over a light cotton shirt. Mud stained the hems of faded jeans. He pulled the matte black helmet off, revealing a narrow face with long nose. Beady eyes danced from the boat to the surrounding vessels.

  Danny.

  I felt underdressed in Bermuda shorts and oil-stained T-shirt. “What brings you to Costa Rica?”

  Danny shrugged. “Payday.” He unbuckled the backpack and set it on the bike’s gas tank. “Been a while. I wasn’t even sure you were down here anymore.”

  “I’ve been a little caught up fixing her up.”

  He looked the boat over from stern forward. “Forty feet?”

  “Forty-four.”

  He turned back to the transom. “Margo? Um, you think that’s going to help you forget?”

  “I don’t want to forget.”

  “Yeah, okay.” He opened the backpack and papers rustled as he dug around inside. “There are other people who can’t forget, you know. Ichi asked about you. And Chan…”

  “How is Chan?”

  “Sweating it out. It’s rough. Missing you. Lots of…emotions. We all are. Missing you.” The rustling stopped, then he pulled out a brown envelope, heavily taped. “That’s a mix of cash and cards. Mostly cash. Five thousand. Half as much on the cards. If they take those down here.”

  “They do. Running water, electricity…it’s amazing.”

  He snorted. It was our joke after Biloxi. “Okay. Well, you went silent.” His eyes drifted down. “You’ve got another fifty in your account. Chan’s still trying to figure out all the connections, how they moved the money around and, um, how you knew.”

  “That they’d rip us off? You knew that just as well as I did. The only thing they were going to accept would be us dead or broke.”

  “But what if they didn’t give us any money at all? You had to suspect they were going to, or you wouldn’t have had Chan upload the code capture. Most of those transactions are long gone and irreversible, but even walking away with a half million is good.”

  I settled against the port side and patted the wood I’d re-stained with Ericka. “Good enough. Look, Danny, I know you guys want another crack at Stovall, and there’s nothing I’d like more than to see him go down, but I’m tired of the business.”

  “Tired now or tired forev—” Danny’s eyes shot past me.

  I barely heard the door to the belowdecks open.

  Ericka. “Sorry. I’ve been rude. Ericka, I’d like you to meet someone.”

  The door opened the rest of the way slowly, and Ericka stepped out, all smiles, but clouded. She knew what I had done before meeting her and had made me promise I was through. Danny was persona non grata to her. “Ola!”

  “Ericka, this is Danny Chowla, an old friend of mine. Danny, Ericka Arbenz, a very close friend of mine.”

  “We are very close, Danny.” She danced across the deck to my side, then slid a hand along my back. “Why did you come to Costa Rica? Stefan is a fisherman now. We have tourists lined up to take Margo out to the beautiful sea!”

  Danny glanced at her, at first with the hungry look she typically drew, then with sadness. “I’m just worried about him, I guess.”

  Ericka’s fingernails dug into my back. “Why you worry about him?”

  “Well, everything’s changing, I guess. It’s only in the US for now, but it won’t stay there. And the people who want us dead, they aren’t going to stop.”

  Her eyes flipped up to mine. “You said—”

  I pulled her tight against me. “They aren’t going to come after me, not anytime soon. The last time they did, we gave them a black eye.”

  A smile flashed across Danny’s face, then was gone. “Killing Duvreau was—”

  “She was just an executive, not even a significant one. Only idiots believe suits have any value. They’ve replaced her already, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  I kissed Ericka, tasted bacon on her lips from breakfast, felt drawn in by her smile. “You see? It’s dealt with.” I looked back to Danny, needing assurance to calm her. “Right?”

  “I guess so.” Danny closed the backpack and strapped it back on. “I’ve got a plane to catch if I want to get back to…the others.”

  “You give them our best.”

  Ericka waved. “Goodbye, Danny!” Implied: Don’t come back!

  Danny slid his helmet on and started the bike. “See you around, Stefan.”

  I waited until I couldn’t see the bike or any sign of its passing, then handed the envelope to Ericka and hurried back up to the flying deck. She followed me as I brought the motors online. When I focused on the instruments for too long, she took my left arm and wrapped it around her waist, then curled against me so that it was impossible to ignore her.

  She rapped the envelope against me. “What is this, eh? Blood money? He bribed you to go back?”

  I ran my hand over her hip and belly, then pulled her in for a long kiss. “I’m not leaving you. This war I had, it’s over. That’s money they owed me, that’s all. Go hide it belowdecks, then cast us off. We don’t head out now, we’ll never get this old gal tested.”

  She headed down, once again making a show of every move. It was enough to keep me distracted from the storm brewing out over the ocean, but only for a little while. We would be heading into choppy water.

  Just like the rest of the world.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you so much for reading Gone Dark. I hope you had as much fun following Stefan’s cyberpunk adventure as I did. It took me a couple weeks jumping back into the world because it was such a radical change from the Burning Sands work I was doing—tone, going from third to first person, and setting.

  It took me even longer leaving Stefan and his world.

  As much as I love living in this setting and telling Stefan’s tale, I’ve had to rely on friends to push through. It’s impossible to overstate the value of a support network.

  If you enjoyed this book, please leave a review. Tell a friend about it. Word of mouth is critical, and people trust fellow readers far more than ads.

  * * *

  For updates on new releases and news on other series, please visit my website and sign up for my mailing list at:

  http://www.p-r-adams.com

  About the Author

  I was born and raised in Tampa, Florida. I joined the Air Force, and my career took me from coast to coast before depositing me in the St. Louis, Missouri area for several years. After a tour in Korea and a short return to the St. Louis area, I retired and moved to the greater Denver, Colorado metropolitan area.

  I write speculative fiction, mostly science fiction and fantasy. My favorite writers over the years have been Robert E. Howard, Philip K. Dick, Roger Zelazny, and Michael
Crichton.

  Social Media:

  www.p-r-adams.com

  pradams_author@comcast.net