Dark Memories (The DARK Files Book 1)

by Susan Vaughan

  “As for your current status, let’s see if I recall exactly what DARK is.” A sly gleam lit her eyes. He suspected where she was headed, but couldn’t stop her. “An agency in the Homeland Security Department. It’s an elite corps made up of talented people from other agencies, like the FBI, CIA, ATF and DEA.”

  “Also military intelligence and Border Patrol,” he added.

  “General Nolan has never told me what the acronym stands for. Division of something? Or is it secret and if you told me, you’d have to — never mind.” She flushed as she realized what she’d almost said.

  “No secret, but the director prefers we not broadcast it. Domestic Antiterrorism Risk Corps.”

  “D-A-R-C?” she spelled.

  “Yup.” He ran fingers through his hair. “The general thought DARC didn’t seem um...” He searched for a term that matched Nolan’s but wasn’t obscene.

  She smiled sweetly. “Clandestine or dark ops enough?”

  “That’ll do.” He’d remember that next time.

  “So you must have been in some other alphabet-heavy agency before DARK.” Her eyes shone with curiosity and something like respect. This was the way he remembered her best, her passionate intellect focused. Breathtaking and beautiful, she tied him in knots. But passionate was an unfortunate word. Passionate conjured up other images, memories of naked limbs and love-scented sheets.

  Damn. He said nothing.

  Her smile hit him like a laser beam. “I’m impressed. You never had any breaks as a kid. You had dreams, but not goals. The striking success you enjoy you’ve earned on your own. That’s quite an accomplishment.”

  He’d achieved more than he ever thought possible. His heart swelled at her praise. “Hard work paid off.” But then he got it, and he deflated. She was placating him for her desertion, for being the unattainable princess. Whatever the biker bum did made no damn difference.

  “I believe the CIA sends officers as advisors to Afghanistan, and both the CIA and DARK are in Colombia. Or were until recently.”

  “Is that right?” He groaned inwardly. She’d already inferred more than he should divulge.

  “And let’s see. You excelled in Spanish in school. I remember hearing you chatter away with the Guatemalan boy in our class. Esteban, I think, was his name. And is it Pashtun they speak in Afghanistan?”

  “Pashtun is an ethnic group. Their language is Pashto.”

  She smiled, a slow, knowing curve of lips that streaked blood to his lower body and had him squirming. “I see. Remember, I’m the daughter of a diplomat. I know when to stop asking questions.” She slid the soda can from the refrigerator and reached for a glass.

  “Can’s fine. I don’t need a glass.” He ambled over to lean against the sink.

  “You never would let me tame you. You haven’t changed too much.” A smile crinkling her eyes, she wiped off the can with a damp cloth, then handed it to him.

  As he accepted the drink, his fingers brushed her elegant ones. Fiery tingles leaped from her touch and darted up his arm. She spun away nearly as fast as he did. Had she felt the electric awareness too?

  “You’re wrong there. We’ve both changed.” He raised the can to her. “What you did to escape Markos’s thug after losing so much blood took more grit than I’ve seen in many leathernecks.”

  Her chin lifted. “I did what I had to do. I couldn’t let someone else be killed because of me.” She looked away, sorrow darkening her eyes. “That poor policeman. He didn’t deserve…”

  She’d once told him that when she was a child, at the embassy where the family was stationed, a Marine had been killed preventing her from being kidnapped. And she’d witnessed the violence. No wonder she fled from Markos. And no point in telling her now that the Feds could’ve protected her.

  He shook his head. “Your bloodstained clothing was police evidence. What did you hit the road in after you ran away from the hospital? Not a bare-butt johnny.”

  “I gave an aide money to buy some things. A pair of jeans, a shirt and sneakers.”

  In the middle of the night, she’d slipped away and disappeared. Bandaged. Weak. The image of this elegant, vulnerable woman on those dark streets running for her life chewed at his gut. “How did you manage? Did you see a doctor about your wounds?”

  She licked her lips, and his traitorous gaze followed the sweep of her pink tongue. “I suppose I should have. I’d have been in trouble if infection had set in. But it didn’t. I removed the stitches myself.” She reached up to close the collar over her scarred neck.

  Why couldn’t he just do his job and not care about her? Why was she making this so damn hard? The pain in her eyes made him ache. Enough. She shouldn’t have to endure more. Maybe he could convince the general that a safe house was the better plan.

  “Setting a trap for Markos could backfire. Maybe I can wangle something else. Let me help you. We can go to a safe house. You won’t have to look over your shoulder anymore.”

  Chapter 5

  LAURA TURNED TO the sink, her shoulders tight as if clamped by steel bands. She ran water and scrubbed at a stain on the worn porcelain.

  Her battered heart thudded at the prospect of running again. She’d have to leave in the fall anyway, when the resort closed. That prospect loomed over her too. How long could she keep up the pretense, the lies? Always being someone else, finding anonymous work? And how much longer could she hide on her own before Markos found her?

  Emotions tangled in her soul. She pivoted back to Cole. “Enough running, enough hiding. If you must protect me, you’ll have to do it here. I’m going nowhere with you or anyone else.”

  Cole froze, his features turned to stone. Before she could develop a Medusa complex, he shook his head and swore.

  “Dammit, that amounts to setting a trap — with you as bait. When you wouldn’t go with me yesterday, my contact informed me DARK would prefer exactly that. But a trap is damned dangerous. Let me get you to safety. Even without you as bait, we should snatch up Markos soon.”

  “You lost him before. They let him out of jail.”

  His mouth flattened. “Hell. A high-priced lawyer sprang him soon after the cops arrested him.”

  “He called me in the hospital. He threatened me and my family. That’s why I ran.” Bruised, with broken ribs and stitches on her stab wounds, she’d ached more from terror than her wounds. If she was wise, fear would guide her now.

  “I figured as much. Before the agency picked up on his New Dawn ties, he vanished. Kovar too, the pit bull he sicced on you. So when a Yamari illegal washed up at Great Falls, dead of strangulation not drowning, the cops could find no suspect and no witness.”

  Discussing this with him seemed so strange. But tough as he’d been — still was — he’d always had little patience for injustice or bullies. She remembered— No, I don’t want to remember.

  “In or out of jail,” she said, “his contacts and money give him an advantage.”

  He stared at her hard, as if the power of his gaze could change her mind. “We think he’s hired someone to silence you. A professional.”

  A professional. The monster she’d mostly banished crept out of the closet in the back of her mind and clawed at her soul. But she would not allow Alexei Markos to win. Or to chase her around the country anymore. If he found her once, he could find her again. She had to convince Cole of that.

  Shutting herself up in a safe house with him would be beyond torture. He filled a room with his sensuality, his male power. Larger than life, he was a warrior and the honorable man she once knew he could be. The attraction that had spiraled into lust still tugged at her. The touch of his big, capable hand jolted her with awareness. Attraction meant too great a risk to her heart, too great a risk to her secret.

  Telling him the rest of what happened would mean reliving the agony and grief, ripping open her scars and bleeding on the floor. Could she trust him?

  She trusted him in one way. He would protect her
with his life in spite of their past. But their past would be another trap too great to chance. Remaining here in Maine gave her some measure of freedom, some power over what happened.

  And some distance from Cole.

  She clenched her hands into fists and glared back. “A professional. But the thug would then lead you to his boss, wouldn’t he? I want this ended. I saw Alexei Markos strangle a man because the artifact he offered was a fake. I see that poor little man’s bulging eyes, hear the horrible gurgling sounds in my nightmares. Markos must be punished.”

  “We’ll roll him up. Soon. We have a lead.”

  “Because of me. You’ll need bait. Me.”

  “A trap is too risky, too unreliable. I’ll convince Nolan to hide you, not set you up. Come away with me. We have places he’d never think of.”

  She shuddered. “And do what? Pace the floor like a mouse in a maze? No, thank you.”

  “And how is what you suggest different?”

  Heart clattering, she tamped down the panic threatening to paralyze her. To have survived so far, she’d learned to be smart and alert. She needed to think clearly. Cole’s nearness fogged her brain.

  “I want to do something. For nearly seven months, I walked, hitched and drove all over the East Coast. I chopped vegetables, packed fish and delivered pizza.”

  His mouth dropped open. If it hadn’t been attached, his jaw might have fallen on the floor. “You, street savvy? Working menial jobs? I can’t picture it. How’d you get the jobs?”

  “I had one reference, the director at the community center in D.C., where I’d volunteered. Stan Hart, the resort owner here, was the only employer who bothered to make the call.”

  Cole shook his head. “That director kept your secret well.”

  Pleased she’d covered her tracks well, she said, “In that part of D.C., people keep what they know close to the vest.”

  He flicked a finger at the designer logo on her shirt pocket. “I didn’t know pizza delivery or tennis lessons paid well enough for Ralph Lauren.”

  She’d always taken pride in her appearance, and she wouldn’t allow his sarcasm to diminish that. She learned a lot in her time on the road — about going without and about herself. And she didn’t mind admitting how she managed. “You’d be surprised what bargains one can find at Salvation Army and Goodwill thrift shops.”

  “You beat all. I already knew your determination and self-confidence. You’ve had a damned tough time.”

  She looked away from the unnervingly tender look in his eyes to the jar of flowers on the table and the living room of the small cabin. “Teaching tennis and sailing here is the best job I’ve had. But Hart’s Inn Resort isn’t home. I achieved a meaningful career. Markos stole it from me. Turning the tables on him will help me get my life back. I’ve played his game of cat and mouse for eight months. I want to be the cat for a change. You have to build the trap.”

  “When you’ve made up your mind, you’re rooted like a Maine birch tree. Setting a trap is easy. Catching the rat when he goes for the cheese means the cat doesn’t sleep. Make no mistake, Laura. You’re the cheese, not the cat. And you’re not going to shake this cat —” he jabbed a finger at his sternum “— loose until I know you’re safe.”

  His acquiescence came too quickly to allay all her suspicions. She didn’t used to be cynical or skeptical of people’s motives, but that seemed a long time ago.

  In the filtered light through the scratched window, he reminded her of a predator. He stood with his legs wide, his arms hanging loosely at his sides, ready for action. When she’d first known him, he kept a distance, some barrier between them. It was like befriending a wild animal. One did not cross his line of acceptance. Not a cat, though. In a wildlife magazine photo she’d seen, a huge timber wolf’s eyes stared into the camera with frightening effect.

  Cole had the same piercing gaze, mesmerizing, patient and acutely perceptive.

  Although he might never be domesticated, he was civilized enough to be a federal officer. But she couldn’t take a chance that intimate proximity and his perception might cut through her protective shell to the secrets and pain inside. Space, she needed space.

  “If you’re arranging a trap, you can do your job at a distance. We’ve cleared up the misunderstandings of the past, but your skills are all I want from you. Keep away from me until this is over, and everything will be just fine.”

  He didn’t reply, merely fixed her with his wolf’s stare.

  She whisked to the door and held it open. “Don’t you have to go report in or something?”

  Sighing in an exasperated manner, he closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, his face was a neutral mask. He’d changed from the bad biker, more than she wanted to admit. The control and protectiveness didn’t surprise her, but who was the man with the official face and aura of cool worldliness?

  “You can complain all you want about my presence,” he said, “but distant doesn’t cut it. I can’t protect you if I don’t know what’s going on, who’s who around here and what you’re up to. Markos’s man is already in place. And I don’t have to answer to you. I have to answer to—”

  She put up her hand. “I know, General Trent Nolan. Tell it to him.”

  He started toward the door, but something halted him in his tracks. His nose twitched. “What’s that I smell? Gas?”

  “Oh, probably.” She waved a hand dismissively and crossed to the gas heater against the wall. “This thing seems to have a loose valve.” A little like her.

  “You should get that fixed.”

  She gave him a saccharine smile. “Wouldn’t want me to do Markos’s job for him, would we?”

  “He came close today. You were lucky that old junker got you down the mountain in one piece. You never were big on maintenance.”

  He had his nerve. Her chin shot up. “And you’re still as arrogant as ever.”

  “I’ll check the outside tank before I go.” He grinned as he ambled to the door. “See you later.”

  “Don’t bother. I’ll be perfectly safe. I have an early sailing class. I doubt my eleven-year-olds will attack me.”

  “No problem. I’ve always wanted to learn to sail.”

  A sudden thought skittered panic down her spine. “Cole, what about the children? Will my staying here endanger them?”

  His brows drew together in a fierce scowl. “If I said yes, would that change your mind about a safe house?”

  She cocked a hip at him. “You’d have to convince Nolan as well, wouldn’t you? The truth, please.”

  He heaved a sigh. “I doubt this hit man would try something in a crowd. The kids are safe. Just don’t take a couple of them for a hike without escort. That means me and my team’s surveillance for backup.” He tossed the key onto the table. “Lock up behind me.”

  The teakettle whistled to end round two, and she wanted to throw it at him. But, acknowledging reluctantly the wisdom of his advice, she did as he’d instructed.

  Not instructed. Ordered.

  Her heart still pounded from their confrontation, and she sank onto a chair. She stared into space and hugged herself. She’d long ago cut him from her heart, from what was left of it after she believed he tossed her away. She believed Valesko’s lies and ran away. Cole saw her actions as abandonment, and he ran away too. Neither one trusted the other enough to weather their first storm. Without trust, love could not survive.

  She’d barely survived. Hiding the truth from Cole and protecting her heart from his sensuality and strength might use up another of those imaginary feline lives. After today’s crash, how many did she have left?

  She wouldn’t — couldn’t — allow Cole to touch her again. Her eyes and chest ached as tears flowed. She would keep her distance. He might crash her sailing lesson tomorrow morning, but he wouldn’t know about tonight’s stage-crew work session at the theater.

  ***

  “What possible reason could I have for murder?”
the quavering soprano said.

  “Exactly the right amount of indignation, Doris,” boomed the director. “Now Martin. Comforting but anxious.”

  Actors and stage crew scurried around backstage at the Hart’s Inn Barn Theater. Three children played tag among the heavy curtains and backdrops. Paint smells and the cacophony of hammers and voices caromed through the stage wings and up the stairwell at the rear. The stage manager swept through, sprinkling “good job” and “not that color” as she went.

  Laura shoved up the sleeves of her Hart’s Inn sweatshirt for the fiftieth time. Slapping golden oak stain on the wooden back of the diner booth, she tried not to clench her teeth with every hammer bang behind her.

  Cole.

  The blasted man had somehow found her. Not only did the bad penny turn up again tonight, he joined the stage crew. Only in her cabin could she escape him.

  Not a bad penny, a loose cannon. Why did he have to be her protector? She couldn’t bear it. His very presence unearthed painful memories she habitually kept buried.

  And since he’d raised the specter of a hit man, at every step she looked behind her, around her, expecting an attack. Maine was safe. She’d never given a thought to walking alone from her cabin along the wooded path to the rambling inn and the theater beyond. But tonight at the first scrabble in the murky twilight shadows, she sprinted for the theater’s stage door.

  Good sense told her she needed Cole’s protection, but why did it have to be at close range?

  “If that man’s eyes had laser beams, you’d have a hole in your back. You and our new hunk have a problem?” an amused feminine voice whispered.

  Laura recognized the redhead about her own age. An inn guest, she too had recently joined the stage crew. “Vanessa, oh, hi. No, no problem. We … knew each other in high school.”

  The friendly woman smothered a laugh with the blue-checked curtains she carried. “Why do I have the feeling that’s as complete as saying Romeo and Juliet met at a party?”

  Vanessa’s laughing green eyes and warm candor invited sharing. Laura could use a friendly shoulder, but she had hit the wall with what she could divulge about Cole. “Romeo and Juliet about says it.” A tragedy. She’d rather not think about the ending. “Let’s leave it at that.”