Smoke Screen (The Darcy Lynch Series Book 2)

by Elin Barnes

  Saffron shook her head and opened the wine menu. “Nah, I feel more like a Petite Sirah.”

  After she ordered, Saffron leaned back in her chair. “Long day?” Aislin asked.

  “Long frigging month.”

  “I’m glad you’re not dating that loser boss of yours anymore,” Aislin said.

  “He’s not my boss,” Saffron protested. “We’re not even in the same organization.”

  “Whatever.” Aislin smiled a perfect smile.

  “Have you talked to Mom and Dad lately?” Saffron asked. “Yep, just yesterday, and they’re expecting both of us to come for Thanksgiving. Oh, and they want you to bring your hot detective boyfriend.”

  “What? You told them about Darcy?”

  “What do you mean? We’re all excited that you’re finally dating somebody decent. And besides, he saved your life, so we all want to meet him.” She winked.

  “Oh, shut up. I’ve had plenty of nice boyfriends,” Saffron said, avoiding the other topic. She shivered and worked hard to push the memories away. But every night when she closed her eyes, she felt the same cold she’d felt trapped in that basement with all of those people whose common fate was the most terrifying seppuku one could ever imagine. She shook her head, and focused on Aislin again.

  “Right. Like the one who wanted to move in after dating you for a week because he hated to commute. Or the one who kept telling you how much he missed his ex-wife. Oh, no wait. My favorite was that lawyer who always had to be right and got into pissing contests with everybody—”

  “Oh my God, look who’s talking. What about Sean?”

  “I was fifteen,” Aislin protested.

  “Yeah, and Dad had to pull all kinds of strings so you wouldn’t be sent to juvie for shoplifting at Nordstrom.”

  “He was pissed.” Aislin said, laughing. “And who was the other one? Oliver?”

  “Oscar. Yeah, Oscar was bad news, but you know I have a soft spot for bad boys.”

  “And that, girlie, is going to get you in real trouble one day.”

  “Okay, enough.” Aislin raised her glass. They clinked.

  “Changing subjects . . . I can’t believe what you did to Aunt Jenny and Uncle George,” Saffron said, recalling the prank and almost snorting her wine.

  “Was that my best yet or what?” Aislin asked.

  “How many people ended up showing up at their house?”

  “At least twelve or thirteen. You should’ve seen their faces.” Aislin cracked up. “I swear they were getting redder and redder the more people they had to turn away.” She put the glass to her lips but didn’t drink. “Can you imagine slinky-dressed couple after couple knocking on the door, expecting a swingers’ party and finding Jenny and George opening the door with increasingly more horrified faces?”

  “You should have videoed it.” Saffron shook her head, wishing she could have been there to see it.

  “I tried with my phone, but I was too far away. I didn’t want them to spot me.” She moved her long bangs away from her eyes and flashed a big rock on her middle finger.

  “What’s that?” Saffron asked, almost blinded by the gorgeous solitaire.

  Aislin pulled her hand out of sight and looked away. “Nothing. I have to return it tomorrow, but it was too beautiful to not enjoy it for a couple days.”

  “What do you mean you have to return . . . ?” Saffron stopped herself. She felt her face tighten as she started frowning.

  They both looked away. Saffron breathed in and out slowly, trying to convince herself that it was better to drop the subject. The last time she’d seen her sister, it didn’t end well for the same reason.

  “Listen, Saffron, can we just not talk about it?” Aislin asked, holding her stemless glass of wine with the hand that had no jewelry.

  “Fine. Whatever,” Saffron said, but then she added, “But you promised.”

  “I know, and I will, okay? It’s not the right time right now, but I will stop soon.”

  Chapter 8

  Ethan Mitchell looked down at the inert body of Ben Walters. Two of his men undressed him less carefully than they could have. Ethan looked around. The basement had gray concrete walls and some wet marks on the uneven floor. It was humid, almost muggy. A couple men laughed, bringing Ethan back to what they were doing. Walters was now lying on the cold floor, fully naked.

  “Hey, Bishop, he’s ready for you,” Toby yelled over his shoulder to summon them around the body.

  Ethan watched the seven men look down at Gunnery Sergeant Ben Walters. A couple giggled, elbowing each other.

  “Who’s gonna do it?” Toby asked.

  “You signed up for it.” Bishop slapped his neighbor and started cracking up.

  “No fucking way. I’m not touching that thing. Have you seen how huge it is?” Toby took a step back, as if that would get him off the hook.

  A few others made similar comments, all laughing like teenagers.

  Finally Ethan left the group, walked to the table and grabbed the sharp shaving razor that was lying there. “Fine, you fucking pussies. I’ll do it, but somebody has to hold his dick for me.”

  Bishop knelt down and grabbed it, extending the penis as far as it would go. The razor flashed under the light as Ethan drove it down to Walters’ crotch.

  Chapter 9

  After pulling into the station’s parking lot, Sorensen headed up to the office, leaving Lynch behind. Sorensen got to his desk and started going through the evidence Sergeant Marra’s men had dropped off. Backpacks, laptops, wallets, phones, notebooks, a couple textbooks. There was nothing special.

  Jon appeared in the bullpen.

  “Hey, is this all the evidence from the coffee shop?” Sorensen asked.

  The intern looked at the table. “I don’t know.”

  Sorensen huffed and picked up the phone. Dialing Marra, he asked, “I don’t see any Panasonic Toughbook in the evidence you gave me. Are you still collecting things?”

  “Nope. What you have is all there was.”

  “Are you sure?” Sorensen pressed.

  Marra didn’t respond.

  “Okay, okay. We may have a situation.”

  “Marine’s computer missing?”

  “Possibly.” Sorensen sat down and rubbed a beefy hand over his sweaty forehead while he cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder. “Let me make a couple calls before we start panicking. I’ll keep you posted.”

  Sorensen searched his contacts until he found the number he was looking for. He dialed one more time.

  “First Sergeant Loren, how’s life?”

  “Sorensen? Son of a bitch. What the hell do you want?” There was no humor in his voice.

  “Hey, hey, what kind of greeting is that?”

  “I’m hanging up now.”

  But the line didn’t go dead.

  “I can’t believe you’re still mad at me for something that happened when we were in college,” Sorensen said, only slightly surprised.

  “I got suspended, and it took me another year to get into the Marines. And I had to do a full year of community service because you made me take the fall for the bar fight.”

  “But I’m sure the streets looked a lot cleaner.” He had a hard time picturing Loren picking up garbage.

  “You’re an asshole, and I’m hanging up now.”

  “Wait, wait,” Sorensen said, knowing he’d gone too far. “We may have a situation that involves a Marine.”

  Loren sighed but remained on the line. “What’s going on?” he finally asked.

  “You heard about the gas incident at the coffee shop? We think a Marine was abducted from there.”

  “Who?”

  “We only have a first name: Seth,” Sorensen said without looking at his notes. “We also know he used to go there with his computer, but we can’t find any Toughbooks among the evidence we recovered.”

  “Let me find out if he’s one of our guys. I’ll call you back as soon as I have something.”

  “And First
Sergeant, please keep it quiet for now. We don’t want to start a panic.”

  “Understood.”

  Chapter 10

  Darcy Lynch reached out to CSU to see if they were done collecting evidence at the VTA stop. Mauricio confirmed that they’d wrapped up and he was going back to the lab to process what they had, which wasn’t much. The other techs were heading to the coffee shop. Darcy got into his car and drove to the light-rail station to take in the crime scene on his own.

  The orange SJPD tape still protected the area, which was flanked by a uniform standing at each end, keeping curious civilians out. Four high-powered halogen lights, almost brighter than daylight, illuminated the site.

  Darcy flashed his badge and stepped into the perimeter. He looked at the platform, the benches, and the rail tracks. The LED panel announced that the next train to Alum Rock would arrive in less than a minute. He walked slowly to the other end of the platform. There was nothing. No gum wrappers, no discarded cans or empty plastic bottles. He knew CSU would have collected whatever was there, just in case it led somewhere. Darcy peeked into a trash can and saw that it was also empty.

  “That’s a lot of pointless work,” he said out loud, shaking his head. He’d watched the video enough times to know that these guys were professionals and hadn’t left any evidence on the platform or in the cars.

  The train came. Two wagons. It didn’t stop. Darcy saw a man by one of the doors. His face showed surprise when he realized the VTA wouldn’t be stopping. The train disappeared, foliage twirling in its wake, leaving Darcy alone, in silence.

  His phone vibrated in his pocket. It was a message from Officer Wilkins: “First VTA victim just woke up. Coming back to interview her?”

  “OMW,” Darcy texted back. He checked the time. Just after 7:00 p.m. Wow, they must have used a lot more gas in this one, he thought, surprised that it had taken so long for the first victim to wake up.

  Before leaving, Darcy turned his back to the rails. It took a bit of time for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He scanned the empty lot. He imagined the field in front of him to be dry, the tan earth dusty behind the wire fence. He wondered when they would start construction on another Silicon Valley office building.

  Darcy walked to the edge of the platform. There was a ditch. He couldn’t see the bottom of it. He turned on his flashlight and checked. It was about four feet deep. The men must have hidden there until the train came. There were no cameras pointing to that side of the platform, so there was no way to know. He jumped down and almost slipped.

  I really need to start wearing shoes with better treads, he thought. He walked back and forth, every once in a while looking back at the platform to figure out where the men must have been to enter the train so effortlessly. When he got to the middle of the platform, he figured he was close—close to where the first set of doors would have been.

  Darcy took one more step, trying to get aligned, and then pointed the flash back toward the ground. Right before he was about to plant his foot, he saw it. Almost losing his balance, he managed to step to the right of the boot print. He bent down and looked at it. It was very similar—if not the same—as the one he had found at the coffee shop. He took a couple photos and sent them to Lou.

  After he’d walked the entire ditch a couple times, finding nothing more than a few other blurred boot prints, he knew it was time to go. He headed back to where he had come from and said good-bye to the officer before he drove to Good Sam.

  A few minutes later Wilkins met with him by the ER entrance.

  “Feels like déjà vu,” the officer said.

  Darcy nodded, patting him on the shoulder.

  Wilkins started talking, this time checking his notes. “There are seventeen victims. They had to double-bunk them, since they’re running out of space. Most of them are still passed out, but alive. The first one who woke up is Mrs. Ramirez. She doesn’t speak a lot of English unfortunately.”

  As they got closer, Darcy saw that the curtain was already open. A full-figured woman in her fifties huffed and puffed and waved a hand in front of her face, trying to fan herself. Before they reached Mrs. Ramirez, Darcy turned around and walked back to the front desk.

  Almost startling the nurse behind the counter, he asked, “Can I have a manila folder?”

  She stared at him for a minute but didn’t move or say anything.

  Darcy pulled his badge out and said, “Sheriff’s Office.”

  The nurse nodded and turned around, opened a drawer behind her and gave him an empty yellow folder.

  “Thank you,” Darcy said, and walked back to his witness. When he got there, he opened the curtain all the way, and after introducing himself he said, “Buenas tardes, Sra. Ramirez. Cómo se encuentra?”

  “Ay, Dios mío, que calor.”

  “Quizá ésto le ayude.” Darcy offered her the manila folder, which she took and immediately started fanning herself with.

  A faint smile lit her face, and she closed her eyes for a few seconds.

  Darcy asked her in Spanish to tell him what happened at the VTA. The woman explained what she remembered and got more agitated with each word, until she reached the part where she passed out. With a long sigh, she ended, “Y lo siguiente, es que me desperté aquí.”

  She locked eyes with Darcy and crossed herself twice, blinked a few times and passed the folder to the other hand. The black permed curls around her head moved back and forth as the folder did its job.

  “Gracias. Le agradezco mucho su ayuda.”

  Darcy shook her hand and left her, taking Wilkins with him.

  “That’s some serious Spanish. Please tell me you learnt that from Rosetta Stone.”

  Darcy laughed. “No. I lived in Spain for a couple of semesters when I was in college. Then I took salsa lessons when I lived in Seattle.”

  “I never liked dancing.”

  “Me neither, but it kept me in shape and my Spanish fresh.” Darcy translated what Mrs. Ramirez had told him. “She basically corroborated what we saw on the video. A bunch of men came in, gassed the train and then she woke up at the hospital.”

  “Anything about the missing man?” Wilkins asked.

  “Nope. She doesn’t remember anything about him. Can’t even say whether she saw him or not.”

  They visited the rest of the victims as they woke up. All had a similar story. Nobody remembered the man who had disappeared, not even those sitting around him.

  Chapter 11

  Sorensen was glued to his computer. From the corner of his eye, he saw his partner enter the bullpen and walk straight toward him. Lynch didn’t say anything. Instead, he grabbed one of the three open Red Bull cans off of Sorensen’s desk and shook it, weighing the contents.

  “What are you doing?” Sorensen asked, wondering why Lynch had to touch his stuff.

  “I bet these are all half-full.”

  Lynch reached down to check another one. Before he could touch it, Sorensen snatched it and gulped the rest of the liquid. It was warm and gross.

  “I bet they aren’t.” He crumpled the can and dumped it in his recycle bin.

  “I can’t believe you have your own recycling,” Lynch said. “You know, it wouldn’t hurt to get off your ass occasionally and use the one in the kitchen.”

  Sorensen flipped him the bird and said, “I’m not fat, I’m big boned.”

  Darcy laughed and went to his desk. Powering up his computer, he asked, “What have I missed?”

  Sorensen told him about the possible missing Marine equipment.

  “Do you think we have a national security threat case?”

  “I don’t know. I’m waiting for my buddy to confirm that the guy’s actually a Marine and that he had his gear with him.”

  The phone rang. He picked it up. “Sorensen.”

  It was his wife.

  “I just wanted to let you know that I left your dinner in the microwave. Macaroni and cheese.”

  “Oh, yum. I wish I’d been there for dinner,” he lied. T
hey were only in the first week of his mother-in-law’s month-long visit, and she was already driving him crazy. He was thankful for the long work hours.

  “We all missed you. Maybe this weekend it will be warm enough to fire up the BBQ.”

  “That’s a great idea. We may even invite Lynch,” he said, glancing over at his partner, who looked up, arching the eyebrow of his good eye. It often amazed him how undetectable Lynch’s fake eye was. “Okay, honey, I have to go. Don’t wait up.”

  “Love you.”

  “Love you too.”

  As soon as he hung up, the phone rang again. “Did you forget something?” he asked.

  “First Sergeant Loren.”

  “Oh, sorry. I thought you were somebody else. What do you have for me?” He put the phone on speaker.

  “I got good news and bad news.” Sorensen and Lynch exchanged glances.

  “Your missing guy, Seth, is definitely one of ours. Seth McAuley. He was last seen this morning. He was supposed to have reported back at the 4th LSG, the Logistics Support Group, at 1700 hours, but he didn’t, and nobody can reach him.”

  “What’s the good news?” Lynch asked. Sorensen shook his head, but it was too late. “Who’s that?”

  “My partner. I have you on speaker.”

  “I gathered that. Next time let me know before you do that.” His voice was strained. “Anyway, I’m not done with the bad news.” He paused, probably for effect. “We’ve been experimenting with a prototype of halothane gas. It’s nonlethal and has no side effects. A case of grenades has gone missing in transit.”

  “Is there a way to test if the gas used at the VTA and Red Bean came from that case?” Darcy asked.

  “I don’t know, but I will find out.”

  “So what is the good news?” Sorensen asked. “All McAuley’s equipment is in his bunker.”

  Sorensen let out a long breath, releasing the air he’d been holding in since he picked up the phone. He saw Lynch do the same thing.

  “Has McAuley ever disappeared before?” Sorensen asked.

  “No. He has a stellar record: two tours in Afghanistan and about to be deployed again in a few weeks.” First Sergeant Loren paused before he continued. “Sorensen, you have to find my man.”