Dark Discovery (DARC Ops Book 8)

by Jamie Garrett

  She was kneeling next to him, her face marred with concern.

  Ethan could only sputter out the word. “What?”

  “What is that?” Kalani said.

  “What,” he said, watching her walk crouched to a thin strip of wire that had been kicked loose and was exposed in the air. He could see its straight edge in the moonlight. “Kalani,” he said. “Don’t.”

  But she was already pulling on it, with both hands, exposing more and more of the wire from the rocks and the dirt.

  “Stop!” he shouted to her.

  And she stopped, freezing in place, then directing her wide-eyed gaze at him. “It’s a wire,” she said.

  “I know,” Ethan said. “So stop pulling on it. We don’t know where it goes or what it does.”

  “I saw the same kind of wire under the house in the cellar. Didn’t Matthias tell you about that?”

  “He needs to know about this.”

  Kalani’s eyes grew wide. “He thinks it was . . .” She trailed off and turned back to the wire, slowly dropping it.

  “Tonight,” Ethan said. “He needs to know tonight.”

  “We need to go back.”

  He stood, dusting himself off. “Let’s go back. Now.”

  Walking together, their pace quickened.

  Until Ethan spotted two dark silhouettes at the cave entry. Two human shapes. Two men, standing there, watching.

  Kalani saw them, too, both of them stopping at the same time. They squeezed each other’s hand as Ethan’s thoughts were knocked reeling for answers.

  He struggled, in that millisecond, to assess the danger. Just how much of it he was in.

  The millisecond was long enough for him to realize he’d left his gun with his clothes on the other side of these two dark figures. He’d squeezed Kalani’s hand so tightly that her other hand had come to wrench it off hers. Then she took a few steps backward, not saying anything.

  Ethan wanted to go with her, silently, moving along her side deeper into the cave. Deeper into the safety that it provided.

  But there was no safety anywhere. Especially unarmed and surprised like this.

  He felt the typical urge to press forward, unthinking and bold and just doing. Ripping it off like a Band-Aid. Unmask it. Quickly.

  Before could take the first step, a commanding voice said the word “Stop.”

  19

  Ethan

  Ethan squinted at the light, a harsh brightness spilling into the cave from where he’d last seen the two shapes. In his blindness, all he could think of doing was grabbing Kalani’s arm, making sure they were at least together. For better or worse, together.

  The muscles on her slender arm tensed under his grip.

  The light moved away, off his face, and now he could see again. Barely. Squinting and moving sideways with Kalani, making sure to stay moving targets, he could just start to see again where the glowing blots of blindness had faded. He could see them again, the two shapes: closer.

  The voice, even closer: “Hold it, guys.”

  Hold it?

  “Just relax,” said the voice. “It’s us.”

  Us?

  Kalani spoke first. “Matthias?”

  Matthias and Sam . . .

  If it hadn’t been for the wave of relief, Ethan might have felt a little foolish about it. Maybe Kalani had been around Matthias more, and had grown more accustomed to his voice . . . but the fear he’d felt, the deer in the headlights. Ethan hated that he’d allowed himself to feel that way for even just the briefest moment in time. It was something he wasn’t used to. However, there were a few new things about himself that he’d discovered through the course of his relationship with Kalani. Like how every threat was infinitely scarier when it threatened the woman he loved.

  “Ethan?”

  Fuck. He had to protect her. He had to get his fucking mind right.

  “Ethan,” Matthias said again.

  “Yeah, I’m good.”

  “You’re good? You don’t look good.”

  “We’re good,” Kalani said.

  “We found something,” Ethan said, feeling his mind clear up and take another aim at the target, at their real reason for being out there. “A wire.”

  “A wire?” Matthias said. “Like the one we found in the cellar?”

  “That’s what it reminded me of,” Kalani said. “We tripped over it back there, in the dirt, and then we pulled it up out of the dirt and exposed more of it.”

  The four of them stood in a semicircle at the mouth of the cave, more light, moonlight, more faces. He could see the confusion on Matthias’ furrowed brow. Sam’s face, calm and collected, quietly analyzing as always.

  “So, you finally had a thought or two about us,” Matthias said with a smirk. “I’m flattered.”

  “More than a thought,” Ethan said. “We’re going to have to call in the big guns here. I think we’re ready to blow the lid off the—”

  Matthias cut him off, asking, “So that’s what you guys snuck out for?”

  “We didn’t sneak anywhere,” Ethan said.

  “No? Off into the night?”

  “No,” Ethan said, feeling mildly indignant.

  “So where are your clothes?”

  Ethan could see, even in the dim light, the faintest trace of Sam’s smile.

  Kalani piped up. “We went for a swim.”

  “Oh,” Matthias said. “Here in this . . . quarry?”

  “Yeah,” she said, “Right here in this quarry.”

  “And then the cave,” Matthias said.

  “What about the cave?” she asked.

  “How’d you end up in the cave?”

  “Forget the cave,” Ethan said. “What are you getting at?”

  Now both of the DARC Ops men were smiling.

  “What about you guys,” Ethan said. “You left Lea all by herself?”

  “Lea’s fine,” Matthias said.

  Kalani asked where her sister was, and Sam smiled again and finally opened his mouth to say, “She seemed rather medicated tonight, after you left.”

  “Medicated?” Kalani said.

  “After you left,” Matthias said, “during the movie, she fell asleep. We tried to wake her, but we just barely got her upstairs.”

  “She’s fine,” Sam said. “She’s stable. But . . . medicated. Do you know what kinds of things she’s been taking, Kalani?”

  “No,” she said. “Like, pills, you mean? I didn’t even think she was taking anything.”

  “I suspect she is,” Sam said.

  “We tried looking around for it, for anything, bottles, bags, old crushed-up pill caps.” Matthias shrugged. “Couldn’t find anything. But we’re starting to think there’s a lot of stuff hidden back there at the house. Do you know anything about that, Kalani?”

  “I only know about the wires we found in the cellar,” she said. “I swear, I haven’t come across anything that would make me think that . . . that she was, you know . . .” Kalani made a sound like her words had been choked off with a swallow, her head tilting down, chin down to chest. She shook her head quietly. Finally, she muttered, “Sleeping pills.”

  “What?”

  “I know she takes sleeping pills,” she said. “Sometimes. I don’t know where she gets them from, but I know she needs them sometimes for sleep. I don’t think she abuses them.”

  Ethan watched carefully how the two other men exchanged quick glances.

  “Lea has been through a lot, obviously, and she used to be on much harder stuff. Way worse stuff than just sleeping pills. I think it’s her way of, I don’t know, coping? She also just has sleeping trouble, plain and simple.”

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone about this?” Matthias asked. And then he looked at Ethan and asked him the same question.

  “I didn’t know anything about it,” Ethan said.

  “And neither did I,” Kalani added, “until recently. But is it really such a big deal?”

  Ethan was looking at her, at how soft and frag
ile she’d become. She could take the ice-cold water and the lustful abuse that followed. But getting beaten down to the revelation about her sister seemed to be too much for her to bear. Before he said anything, he could almost see her squinting in fearful anticipation. “I think what they’re concerned about is . . . not so much the sleeping pills themselves. But where she got them from.”

  “I have no idea where she got them from,” Kalani said.

  “That’s the concern,” Ethan said.

  “Our problem with that,” Matthias said, “is that it’s proof that she’s been having some sort of outside access. Socializing, branching out of the safe house, getting into trouble, whatever. Some place, some people, to find her fix.”

  “Well, so have I,” Kalani said, “Branching out, like today, for example, getting my car looked at. I mean, we have to still live our lives and interact with society at least a little bit. Right? Like, what do you expect?”

  “Interacting with day-to-day needs is one thing,” Matthias said, “But having a drug connection? It’s too close to her old life. It’s similar, and with similar people.”

  “What are you really concerned about?” Kalani asked Matthias. “What is it? What have you found besides sleeping pills?”

  “The equipment,” he said, “in the cellar.”

  Kalani huffed. “That’s hers?”

  “No.”

  “Theirs?”

  Matthias crossed his arms over his chest. “They, as in, her old crew, possibly.”

  “So you think they’re spying on us?”

  Matthias took some time to think it over. Ethan, meanwhile, asked him, “Did you get back to work on the equipment? Do you know their source?”

  “They’re looking at it from Washington,” Matthias said. “But right now, we’ve got to be as careful as we can. My hunch is that Lea’s in connection with the old crew. It’s not official, but it’s a hunch. A strong one.”

  “That’s why you came looking for us?” Ethan said.

  “Partly. We’ve also discovered some more wires, oddly enough.”

  Ethan had almost forgotten his own wire discovery. The word reminded him of a trip and fall, of Kalani wanting to rip the whole thing out of the dirt. He wondered again where it led to, deeper in the cave, and why.

  He wanted to turn around, to wipe the growing suspicion of someone creeping up behind him from where the wires led to. Some secret lair for Blackwater. He shook off the sensation finally, and said, “So they’re more than trip wires?”

  Kalani laughed for a split second, and then quieted very abruptly.

  Matthias had a smile on his face. “You’re not that naive are you, Ethan?”

  “No,” Kalani said, “he’s just clumsy. Can we go back and check on my sister?”

  Matthias and Sam, who had once been two ominous silhouettes, turned around without a word and led them out of the cave. They said nothing when Ethan stopped at his pile of clothes on the rocks. They said nothing, watching him affix his holster, how he adjusted it as quickly as possible. Though he could almost feel Matthias’ cold glare. It felt colder than the water.

  There was clearly more to the story, some details they’d left out—likely for Kalani’s sake. Or because they didn’t trust her. The silence became heavier and louder as they walked through the forest, and began to gnaw at Ethan, telling him that something had definitely been wrong. Something was wrong with the girls—Kalani included.

  The more they didn’t tell her, the worse it felt.

  The worse it could be.

  The worse his whole life could become.

  Arriving back at the fork in the trail, Ethan stared at the two options in a whole new light. Still moonlit and murky, but now more poignant than ever.

  Ethan looked at Kalani, who wore a hard look of resolve over her face. Then he glanced at the two men, who seemed ready to select their path and start the march back to a location that had previously and almost absurdly been known as the safe house. “I feel like one or two of us should hang back. Go back to the cave and wait there.”

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Sam said.

  “That’s exactly what I’m thinking, Sam. You don’t need to be a psychologist or a behavioral analyst to figure it out. I just said it.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Matthias said.

  “You think Tucker is back there,” Sam said, “Don’t you? Deep down inside. Back in the cave, deep down in there, too, tied up, maybe with . . . wires.”

  Ethan watched Matthias give a little inquisitive glance to Sam, but Sam kept going. “We can’t rush things, Ethan. And we can’t jump to conclusions.”

  “It sounds like you’ve been jumping to a lot with Lea, and things back at the house. Things with me.”

  “No,” Matthias said. “Not with you.”

  “Guys, we’re armed,” Ethan said, his voice almost pleading. If someone didn’t relieve the stress growing between them, there was going to be trouble with more than just Lea. “We’re trained. All of us. We’re capable.” He looked at Kalani, who nodded back to him. “We should do this now, we can do it. We can handle it.”

  “We will handle it,” Sam said.

  “Just take a deep breath, Ethan,” Matthias said. “We’ll come back.”

  They took the path that led to the safe house. No more talking the rest of the way. No more forks or indecision, either.

  When things got particularly dark, Ethan reached for Kalani’s clammy hand.

  20

  Kalani

  She could still hear them talking outside, their voices coming up and through the kitchen window. Good. Kalani was glad that they were staying outside—at least for a while. She needed the empty silence of the kitchen to gather her thoughts. To try putting to rest a few of the spirals that had begun anxiously turning in her brain, the churning paranoia. Kalani had always found that if she got to them sooner, concentrated hard enough, and actually took a few full breaths, she could make the churning stop. At best, she could slow it all down. But there, alone in the kitchen, the tempo had only increased.

  Her pulse quickened to the same rhythm as she stood up from the kitchen table, marching as quietly as possible to the window and listening to Matthias explaining something to Sam and Ethan. She couldn’t tell what exactly. She listened harder, her ear pointed out to the cool night air. The words were still unclear, but the low murmur of his voice began to mix with the churning sound inside her.

  Kalani moved away from the window, looking at the kitchen table, then moving off that and finding herself at the sink, washing her hands for some reason. Soap and warm water, though she’d already done so—at least twice—after all the different types of messy excitement she’d run her hands through during her and Ethan’s wild escapade outside.

  She turned off the water and ran her hands through an already damp towel.

  If she really wanted to know what they were talking about, she could just walk out the door and join them without a word. She didn’t have to ask permission. And it was stuff she deserved to know about. It was her life.

  But maybe it didn’t matter what they were talking about.

  Maybe it was time to start taking some things into her own hands. She still trusted Ethan completely, and she sorta, kinda trusted her sister. But she also trusted her own ability to get to work and uncover some truths. Or at least to find and kick the ass of the people who’d been hiding that truth from her.

  Kalani twisted away from the sink, scanning around a kitchen still cluttered from dinner. On the floor next to the fridge was a little two-step foot stool. Lea’s ladder. She would slide it around the floor and use it for the various high cupboards. But mostly for the two little doors above the fridge.

  Lea would climb up for those doors, often, and for a reason that Kalani never bothered to discover. She’d use the ladder there, climbing, and then kicking it away from the spot whenever she was done. Hiding evidence, perhaps. Perhaps giving off the impression that she really didn’t use tha
t certain cupboard all that often. Sure.

  Or perhaps because it was right in the fucking way of the fridge.

  That cold realization came on like a slap to her ego, her intelligence. And to her and Lea’s relationship.

  Still, Kalani wanted to know.

  She slid the step ladder over as quietly as she could, its plastic feet making a groaning sound across the tile floor. She climbed up and swung open the cabinet doors, expecting to see a stash of pill bottles, some full, some empty. Expecting to see a collection of handguns, all fully loaded.

  But there were just a few rolled-up ends of chip bags. The sad remnants of a professional snacking session.

  Lea, it was guaranteed, had a snack habit. And perhaps a snack “connection” in town, despite how slim she managed to stay.

  Kalani moved on, determined to find more of her sister’s surprises—as horrible or benign as they turned out to be.

  The bathroom upstairs, in the cabinet space under the sink, nothing but ancient-looking cleaning supplies. Plastic bottles and paper labels eroded by corrosive chemicals. A horrible caustic smell that lingered in her nose long after Kalani had shut the door.

  Behind the mirror, after swinging it open to reveal the actual place a “normal” person would store their medication, she saw that it was bare—save for bits of rust and an old toothbrush that should have been tossed away on their first day there.

  Since she’d begun the search, Kalani had noticed a growing frustration. She’d overturned a rock and found nothing, and she wanted very badly to find something. At least something, good or bad.

  The next rock would be overturned behind the door of Lea’s bedroom. Kalani waited at it for a moment, listening inside, trying to at least hear her sister’s typically laborious sleep-breathing pattern. But all that she could hear, in her mind, were the quiet murmuring voices of the DARC Ops men. Their voices all talking about Lea, simultaneously, their unintelligible tones filled at last with distrust. With . . . disdain.

  Perhaps disdain for her, too.

  She almost couldn’t blame them.