Dark Discovery (DARC Ops Book 8)

by Jamie Garrett

Ethan had been unconscious for the last two hours. Lea had even slapped him to check if he was still alive. He may have been alive, but there was hardly a response. After that, Kalani had insisted that her sister check his breathing regularly. That had continued uninterrupted, at least.

  But there they were at the airport, at their destination, and he was still asleep.

  “I’m worried,” Kalani said.

  “I know it’s scary, but we’re almost done. We’re almost done with all this shit, Kalani. These guys are here to help us.”

  Lea was talking about Blackwoods. Kalani was thinking about someone else. “I’m worried about Ethan. What do you think’s wrong with him?”

  “Nothing,” Lea said. “It’s a perfectly normal reaction to the medication.”

  “Medication?”

  “Fentanyl,” she said.

  “Fentanyl!?”

  “I slapped a sticker on him. Three of them, to be exact.”

  Kalani, in various forms, had been around drugs most of her life. Some of it through work, some of it from watching the various poor decisions that Lea had taken through the years. But she had no idea what “a sticker” was, or how much or how little of it was needed to do some serious harm to Ethan. All she knew was that people died every day from Fentanyl.

  “I see you’re confused,” Lea said. “I believe, in the industry, they call it a transdermal patch.”

  “You fucking drugged him . . .”

  “For his own safety, of course. And ours.”

  Despite the insanity of the situation, the irony rang through loud and clear. Instead of Lea being the sedated one . . . she’d just saved up all her fucking goods for Ethan.

  It occurred to her how alone she really was. Despite having her sister with her. So utterly alone.

  Despite the shell of Ethan’s body.

  Kalani felt the radio with her hand, to make sure it, at least, was still there.

  “We’re already late,” Lea said. “We need to get a move on. They might even be out on the runway by now.”

  “What are we doing? I mean . . .” A glimmer of hope blossomed through her chest. “I mean, we’ll just leave Ethan here in the car?”

  “Not exactly,” Lea said.

  “But he’s sedated. He’ll be out for hours, right? Where’s he going to go?”

  “We can’t take chances like that.”

  “Then I’ll stay back to watch him?” She felt herself hoping for all the different improbabilities of such a plan to actually work out. The radio. Time alone with Ethan . . .

  Except Lea was too smart to allow any of them to happen. Instead, she chuckled quietly and said, “No, you’re coming with me, Lani. That’s why I brought you here. Did you forget they want to talk to you? Face to face?”

  “Can’t you just relay the message to them for me?”

  “But then I can’t relay theirs,” Lea said.

  “What’s theirs?”

  “An invitation aboard. A trip across the country. It’s a nice plane. And a brand new start with the witness protection thing. Only we’ll be doing it Blackwoods style. So, it’ll be more fun. Less jail time.”

  “Sure . . .”

  “Ethan’s invited, too.”

  Kalani didn’t like the way she’d said that. The only way Blackwoods would let Ethan would accompany them would be in an even less conscious state than Lea had already left him in.

  “This is happening too fast,” Kalani said, needing to slow it down. Slow her thinking down, too. And her breathing. “So, you stuck a patch on him . . .”

  “When I first pushed him in the car. I had it ready. Pushed him in, slapped a triple dose on the small of his back, used the muzzle of the gun to hold it there in place. Obviously he didn’t feel anything. Look at him right now, Kalani. He’s sleeping like a baby. He’s in heaven.”

  Not heaven. Kalani wanted to keep him out of the afterlife at any cost. The only life she wanted for Ethan was the one they could create together.

  “Is he really okay?” she said, turning around in her seat to look back. Under the lights of the parking lot, she could see drool out the side of his mouth. At least his face hadn’t turned blue. No vomiting, either. So far, so good. She knew some of the symptoms of an overdose, having lived through a few by proxy. But Ethan looked otherwise okay, for a first time heavy hit of fentanyl.

  “You want to trade spots and come back here and snuggle with him?” Lea said. She smiled. “He’s cute, by the way. I never told you that. He actually probably is a nice guy.”

  “So then why are you going to screw him over?”

  “He’ll be fine.”

  “Really? Blackwoods isn’t upset with him for . . . rescuing us in Hawaii?”

  “They don’t care about that. You know who they’re after.”

  Kalani thought about it for a half second before the faces came to mind. Tucker and Macy. Cole and Annica. Ethan, on the other hand . . . Maybe he might just skirt by. Blackwoods already had enough enemies. Enough mouths to silence. Lea’s actions proved they were making a desperate attempt to consolidate and kill as many problem people as they could before the trails back to their head of operations could start.

  There would be no way that Lea would really let them wind up on the wrong side of the ledger. Right?

  Maybe she and Ethan could sit this one out after all. And Lea was a smart girl. And not entirely evil. She couldn’t be, not her sister. Maybe things could work out after some minor adjustments. She could make adjustments; she’d done that all her life. Now it just had to be seen if Ethan could adjust, too . . . wherever they ended up.

  “So what’s your plan with Ethan?” Kalani finally asked, her mouth going dry just thinking about it. “Should we tie him up with the seat belts so he can’t escape?”

  Lea tapped the gun against her hand. “Hmm . . .”

  “They might not even be necessary,” Kalani said. “He might not even wake up at all by the looks of it. You sure he’s breathing?”

  “He’s fine. He’s probably having the best sleep he’s ever had. You might want a similar dose when we get up in the air.”

  When Kalani heard Lea rummaging through her bags in the back seat, a flash of a memory came to her—a straitjacket. The idea she’d been waiting for.

  “Anyway, I was thinking about sending you in there to go find them. I can stay here with Ethan.”

  Kalani hated that idea, but focused instead on the new possibility. Tie him up, leave him to his own devices. Hope to God he woke up.

  Even more hopeful that he could actually pull through with one of his magic tricks.

  “I got it,” she said.

  “You got what? An idea that could help us out? An idea, finally?”

  “There’s a straitjacket in his bag back there.” She forced herself to make a face. “God knows why he’s got that. We can tie him up in it.”

  “That’s an interesting idea,” Lea said.

  Kalani wanted to give her no time to think about it, a tactic similar to what Lea had done. Steamroll over the opposition. In this case, any idea other than Lea’s false sense of security that Ethan would be held at bay in the jacket.

  Of course, the success of the whole scenario was riding on Kalani’s perhaps false hope that Ethan could actually get out.

  A drugged-out-of-his-head Ethan.

  But it was better than nothing.

  It was better to just trust him and his skills that had saved them in the past. She just had to trust him.

  29

  Ethan

  . . . traveling through a network of sewer pipes, the walls closing in harder around him. The light at the end took him through miles of an increasingly narrow length of pipe until, finally, he was stuck. No movement at all. No light, either.

  He felt so slow and small.

  Stuck. Dead.

  Ethan tried moving, but the pipes were too tight around him. He tried rotating himself around for a better angle, and still nothing.

  The world began to ma
terialize into a light. A small, steady beam. Blinking. A distant red dot.

  It was coming closer . . .

  Ethan strained his eyes, staring at the dot through the darkness of the car, a tiny blinking red light at the dashboard of Kalani’s Honda.

  He was sore and dry-mouthed and a little dizzy. Ears ringing, fading. His ribs hurt. Someone had stuffed a pound of packing pellets into his head and left it there.

  His arms were tied tightly around his torso. Quiet sounds of leather and metal as he moved. The sounds were coming from behind his back. Some kind of strap was digging in around his crotch. Tied. Bound up and almost completely immobile.

  A mild panic began forming around his heart.

  He was in his fucking straitjacket.

  30

  Kalani

  “Oh, good,” Lea said, “they’re already here.”

  Good? Kalani felt the molten lava of fear collecting and burning at the pit of her stomach. They’d been walking toward Hangar 10A, and with each step, Kalani was more inclined to do something drastic and stupid. Reach for the gun that Lea had tucked into her jeans, maybe point it at her, maybe just run away with it. Run back to the car, back to Ethan.

  She should have taken that gun a long time ago, certainly before walking onto the tarmac. Certainly before walking so close to the hangar where Lea’s “contact” was waiting.

  “I don’t think we’ll be too long,” Lea said. “They’ll want to come back with us and see Ethan.”

  “It’s been too long already.”

  “I guess it sort of feels that way,” Lea said with a laugh, “when you’ve got a guy like Ethan tied up in a straitjacket in the back seat, coming off a pretty wicked dose of fentanyl.”

  “I thought they wanted him on the plane,” Kalani said.

  “They do,” Lea said. “We’re just waiting for them to open the gate.”

  More lava at Kalani’s stomach. An overflow, reflux up her throat. She almost stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the open hangar door, the small prop plane waiting inside. A man in a suit and tie walking slowly down the stairs from the cockpit.

  “Well, there he is,” Lea said, her tone wistful. “The man himself. Mr. Dunhill.”

  “Is that your contact?” Kalani had never seen him before.

  “That’s the boss of my boss,” Lea said.

  “The boss of the captain?” Kalani had met the captain. She wished she hadn’t. She wished that Lea hadn’t, either, but nothing in her world had ever been perfect.

  “Think he’ll be mad?” Kalani said. “About Ethan?”

  “No, he’s a bonus.”

  Now Kalani really wanted to take Lea’s gun. Take the gun and maybe punch her in the face.

  Patience . . . See it through . . .

  “He won’t be hurt or anything, right?”

  “They’ll just want to ask about Jackson. They want Jackson, not Ethan. They don’t even want Tucker. He’s just bait.”

  “Bait for Jackson?”

  “Who do you think?”

  “And Tucker’s partner? The CIA agent from Africa?”

  “Lani, stop.”

  She couldn’t help asking the barrage of questions. The closer she got to the hangar, the fewer answers she’d ever get.

  She could back out. She could just turn around and run back to the car . . .

  “We’ll be out of here fast,” Lea said. “What they won’t like is Ethan just sitting in the car . . .”

  They walked inside the hangar. Mr. Dunhill’s smile looked horrific under the old and discolored fluorescent lighting. No amount of nice clothing and close grooming could take away the motley effect of the random gaps in his smile. Missing teeth. The ones he did have were yellow, with or without the yellow lighting above.

  “So glad you could make it,” he said. “And with company, too.”

  “Yeah,” Lea said. “This is Kalani. Kalani, meet Mr.—”

  “No, I mean in the car,” he said, his smile suddenly fading. “I’ve been told you have some extra cargo. Another one of Archer’s lackeys?”

  Grab the gun, point it at his horrific smile and—

  “We’ll get to that in a minute,” Lea said. “First, let’s go over the deal with Kalani here. She’s more important than any lackey.”

  “I suppose.”

  “How did you know about the lackey?” Kalani said, staring into Dunhill’s eyes. She refused to look away, despite his smiling leer.

  “Pardon me?”

  “How did you know about Ethan?” Then Kalani looked at her sister. How was it possible? She hadn’t seen Lea make any phone calls . . .

  “I’ve got eyes,” Dunhill said, “everywhere.”

  His voice sent shivers down Kalani’s spine. Mr. Dunhill was in charge of one of the country’s largest—and now most criminal—private security companies. Their sheer size made DARC Ops look like an after-school club. But it also made Kalani feel incredibly stupid for going along with her sister to the hangar. The air there had a still quiet about it, like in a slaughterhouse at shift change.

  “Is he in there?” Lea said in almost a whisper. “Tucker?”

  Kalani jolted. She’d known all along. When would that stop surprising her? She pictured him hog-tied. She could almost feel the ropes around her body.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dunhill said with a smile.

  “So, what’s this deal you were talking about?” Kalani said. She had to figure out how best to play the game. Right that second.

  “You’re in quite the hurry.”

  “Well,” she said, trying desperately to feign a state of calm. “We’ve got someone sleeping in our car right now. I think it would be best to figure this out as fast as possible.”

  “What do you think of the plane?” Dunhill said.

  “It’s a nice plane.”

  “It’s our escape,” he said.

  Kalani thought about radar and air traffic networks. How did he plan to escape anything up in the air? But she didn’t ask that. Instead, she pressed on about the deal. What the hell was this deal?

  “I already told her about DARC Ops,” Lea said. “And what they’re planning to do.”

  “DARC Ops is not your friend,” Dunhill said to Kalani. “But the more of their fish we can scoop up into our net, the more they’ll have to start working with us.”

  Kalani looked at her sister, trying to read from her expression just how wide the net had become. And just how much of a role Lea had played in helping people like Tucker and Ethan into that net.

  Was Kalani in it, too?

  “The more the merrier,” he said.

  “So you do have Tucker,” Kalani said.

  “I meant figuratively speaking,” he said. “I meant convincing them that they should mind their business elsewhere.”

  “Like where? Like what?”

  “Like blackmail,” Dunhill said. “Let’s just say that I’ve gotten pretty good at finding blackmail material on almost any kind of person.” There was that grin again. She shivered. “It doesn’t matter how outwardly righteous they are. In fact, the more righteous, the better.”

  “I’m not righteous,” Kalani said. “And still you’re—”

  “People like Macy. Have you met her? She’s another one of the DARC Ops lackies. Or should I say, floozies.”

  Macy’s name struck Kalani quiet. Was she safe? Surely Jackson would have told her if . . .

  No. He wouldn’t have told her a damn thing.

  “Don’t be a floozy,” Dunhill said.

  “Or what?” she said. “You’ll blackmail or kidnap me?”

  He shrugged and said, “You’ve got choices.”

  Her mouth fell open at the casual sentence. She looked at Lea and said, “So that’s what this is? This is what you’ve led me into?”

  “You brought yourself here,” Dunhill said, “by getting involved. We never force any of our targets to get involved, but they do, and they find out what happens to targets.”
<
br />   She was still staring at Lea. “So I’m a target?”

  Lea didn’t say anything.

  “You could be a friend,” Dunhill said. “We could all be good friends.”

  “What’s in the plane?” Kalani said. She started walking toward the little set of stairs that led into the side of the plane.

  “Just some passengers.”

  “Who?

  Dunhill started moving, too, positioning himself between her and the plane. “No one you need to concern—hey!”

  Kalani bolted for the stairs, slipping past Dunhill’s grasp. Lea hadn’t moved an inch. Neither did she speak when Kalani climbed the steps two at a time, her face hot and flushed with adrenaline, her feet scrambling to the top, where she turned the corner quickly into someone’s wide chest and pair of hands. A tall man pushed her back without a word. An older man, wrinkled and gray. Crew cut. Where had she seen him before?

  “Where you goin’, Missy?” he was pushing her back with a strong smell of alcohol, and then with his hands, Kalani’s feet tripping over themselves on her way back to the door, the stairs. She panicked at the thought of him pushing her down the stairs. She collected enough power and will to give him a solid push back, the plane filling with the satisfying thud of her hands slamming into him.

  He smiled.

  Over his shoulder, Kalani saw it, a man lying on the floor, bound with rope. A big black bag over his head. He was motionless.

  She’d seen those boots before.

  She knew them.

  She knew him.

  Tucker . . .

  The sturdy frame of the man in between filled up her line of sight, and Tucker disappeared again. He disappeared like he had before, without a word. But now she knew who was responsible. She’d be next if she didn’t find a way out of that hangar.

  Any hope of that fled when she saw Mr. Dunhill standing at the bottom of the stairs. A length of rope lay in his hand.

  Kalani barely had time to notice that Lea had almost backed up into the wall of the hangar, near the entrance, backing away from the scene as much as possible. She didn’t seem to be helping either one of them.

  The image of Lea like that burned into her mind.