Shadows (Black Raven Book 1)

by Barcelona, Stella

  “There are power bars and snacks,” Sebastian said, gesturing with his head in the direction of the plane’s galley. “You should eat something.”

  As she shrugged off the advice, he frowned. Although she hadn’t eaten since Sunday night, she couldn’t. Not now. Not until she figured out what to do next.

  “At least have a soda.”

  The idea of a sugary drink made her stomach twist. His frown deepened when she made no move towards the galley, but instead of saying anything, his eyes drifted back to his iPad.

  Waiting one more minute was going to kill her. She walked up the aisle to where he was sitting, folded her arms, and stared at him until he gave her his full attention. “I’m ready to go. I need to get to Firefly Island.” She stamped her foot on the soft carpet. “Now.”

  “Not yet,” he said, looking up at her, his blue eyes stern and unflinching, “the advance team will be there in a few minutes, and we’re not leaving here until they give us an all clear.”

  “But I told you from the beginning. I need to get there and I need to do it now. I can’t wait. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have given you the location.”

  He glanced into her eyes and gave her a slow headshake. “We’re not going until we get the all clear. What are you not understanding about that?”

  “And I can’t wait. What are you not understanding about that? I’ve got to get there, and I’ve got to do it now.” She gasped as she looked into his unreadable eyes. “You tricked me into talking, while you had no intention of taking me there-”

  “No trick. Not at all.” Sebastian interrupted with lethal curtness, sounding like a man whose internal powder keg had exploded. “For once in this oddball, paranoia-fueled world your father is now dragging all of us through, can you stop second-guessing me? The only reason why you’re not going there right this second is because it’s too dangerous. Do you have a death wish? Please. Just. Stop. Second-guessing me. Right. Fucking. Now.”

  Skye flinched, as absolute stillness filled the jet.

  The pilots had turned and were looking at the two of them. She could feel the eyes of the agents burning into her. Sebastian’s tone, the words, the depth of his irritation, when he was normally so cool and controlled, broadcast to all who were present and listening that there was something going on between the two of them that wasn’t about finding her father, and it had nothing to do with protecting her.

  The news coverage that she’d seen earlier in the morning had hailed him as a man who had built a company out of thin air into a leading, world-wide private security contracting force. She guessed that such unprofessional outbursts were rare for him. Like he’d said earlier, she got to him, and not in ways that were all good.

  The shocked silence of the others that met his outburst confirmed what Sebastian said earlier, that he had crossed a line with her that was taboo within the company. As the silence became prolonged, the agents and pilots, thank God, started focusing on other tasks. One cleared his throat. Another coughed. Sebastian wouldn’t look at her. He stood, turned his back to her, and walked to the galley. In a low voice, presumably to Ragno, Skye heard him say, “I’m fine.” After a few seconds, he said, “Don’t worry. I can handle this.”

  What Ragno and the other agents didn’t know was that whatever happened between them amounted to nothing, because that was all Sebastian was capable of delivering. Sebastian had been right about her. Deep down, somewhere about twenty feet below the fibs she delivered to men, when she assured them all she wanted was casual sex, she wanted more than casual dalliances. Whether she’d ever break out of the cycle of setting herself up for disappointment was an open question. In contrast, he was a lost cause, because he’d long ago given up on wanting anything more. Why she even cared, she had no idea.

  Dear God. I’m going crazy.

  Twenty minutes passed, as the agents and Sebastian worked and she fidgeted. She sat, she stood, and she paced the aisle. The jet was spacious, but not large enough to accommodate her restlessness. She sipped sparkling water and tried to eat a power bar, but almost choked on the tasteless fake chocolate and peanuts.

  They should have news by now.

  “Say that again.” Sebastian had been sitting. He stood. The other agents were all suddenly still and, for once, quiet. “Ragno, drop the other calls, but open your lines to my team. We all need to hear Zeus.” Now, his tone was abrupt and deadly serious, and, when she looked at him from her vantage point in the galley, near the cockpit, his eyes were on her. He cupped his ear with his left hand. “Zeus. Go.”

  Sebastian pressed his lips together. His team tensed as they listened to words that she couldn’t hear, through their own earphones. The news wasn’t good. She knew it, even before he said anything. After long minutes, his eyes rested on her.

  “Skye.”

  She stood still, folded her arms, and braced herself. His eyes were sympathetic, the set of his jaw solid and grim. “I need you to sit down.”

  Her heart pounded. Oh God. Now what? “What’s going on?” He walked down the aisle to her, gently took her by the forearm, and sat her in the seat that he’d been using. He sat directly across from her, in a seat that faced her.

  “Just tell me.”

  He sat on the very edge of his seat so that his knees were on either side of hers and leaned forward, getting closer to her, as he said, “Your caretakers have been killed.”

  She shook her head, for the moment incapable of believing the truth of what he was saying. “No. No one knows that they’re associated with us. No one. Even you didn’t know.”

  He nodded. “We’re guessing it happened in the last twelve hours. We’ll know more soon. Either whomever did this found the place on their own,” he paused, “or your father told them about it.”

  “He wouldn’t, unless he was pushed to the breaking point, and that wouldn’t have come unless he believed Spring and I were in trouble. Or Jen. They must be using Jen against him.”

  He frowned, not verbalizing his thoughts. His hands rested on her knees, as his somber seriousness told her he agreed with her assessment.

  “Or he’s trying to give them what he wants. He’s giving them the backup, so they stop pursuing Spring and me. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have sent them there. As far as he knew, Spring and I were going there. That’s where his message from yesterday morning was going to send us. Don’t you see, if he,” she drew a deep breath, and another, barely able to exhale, or pull fresh air into her lungs, “if he told them about the lake house, he was potentially leading them, whoever they are, to us. He gave them what they wanted to try to get them to stop hunting us. Do you know how desperate he must have been to do that?”

  “We don’t know how they found the lake house. We just know they did. Where is the backup and the device on which you were to receive a message? Zeus will secure the items, if they’re still there.”

  “What do you mean, if they’re still there?”

  “The place has been ransacked.”

  “I’ve got to go there. I’ve got to check.”

  He reached for her hands and gripped them, calming her and keeping her still. He seemed to have abandoned the notion that he should keep a professional distance from her, as he pulled her closer, tightening his legs on hers and bending his head to her. They were both on the edge of their seats now, as close as they could be without her being on his lap. She reveled in his closeness, finding strength in his warmth, as he looked at her with a look of sympathy that told her he recognized her anguish. “I can’t let you go there.”

  “I’ve got to see them – the house.”

  Frustration and sympathy in his eyes combined into the intense look of someone who desperately wanted things to be different. “Listen to me. Their deaths were just as horrific as the deaths at the safe house. I don’t want you to see it. You will never be able to get it out of your mind. Please,” he said, drawing a deep breath, running his fingers across her forehead, pushing back hair that had fallen out of her hastily assembled pony
tail. “Please trust me on this. There was an arsenal there that your caretakers didn’t get to use. Just like my men at the safe house and the marshals, your caretakers didn’t stand a chance. ”

  His closeness felt right. As he gripped her hands, she realized that she needed his comfort. “I can handle it. I’ve got to go there.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t sanitize it for you. I can’t cleanse the site until the marshals get there. Can you just, for once, take my word on something, without pressing for details?”

  No. No she couldn’t. He should know that about her by now. “Tell me what happened to them.”

  He drew a deep breath, as though weighing how much to tell her. “She was hung from a tree, cut repeatedly, and he was tied to the trunk. He was forced to watch whatever those cock-sucking sons of bitches did to her.”

  The jet seemed to lurch forward, then sideways. She glanced out the window. No. It wasn’t moving at all. She was spinning, though, like a child’s top. Round and round and round. She closed her eyes for a second, trying to stop the sickening motion.

  “Skye. Come on, honey.” He bent closer to her, now kneeling in the aisle, at her side, holding her close against him, whispering, “Stay with me. I need your help, okay? I know you’ve been through hell, but I’ll figure a way out of this. For you, for Spring, for your father.”

  She nodded, leaned into him, breathing deeply as he closed his arms around her. He smelled like the outdoors, of forests, of musky, powerful male. She opened her eyes, and saw worry and yearning in his eyes. In his arms, she knew that as long as he held her, she had a chance at succeeding. She didn’t know how it would happen, but with the kind of certainty that came from being a female who had never felt complete until he held her, she knew she had to trust him. Completely.

  “You’re the only person who can put a stop to this, you know that, right?” he said, his voice a low, raspy whisper. “Help us shut these people down and find your father.”

  She gave a small nod.

  “That’s it,” he said, still holding her close. “As much as I hate to do it, we have to at least let the marshals know how far we’ve gotten with this lead. Unless you want us to broadcast the real reason we were going there, we need to get your father’s backup off the island, and we need to do it now.”

  Whatever emotion had been in his voice disappeared. In its place was the matter-of-fact certainty that came from a man who was confident that every thought he had was the right one. “Please cooperate. If your father’s backup is there, if he left a message for you, I don’t want the marshals to know this at the same time we do. So far, Zeus and his team have found three safes, and two lockboxes.” He paused, pressed his hand against his ear, but kept the other arm around her back. “And a hidden room behind the bar in the living room. In which there are three more wall safes. All were open when Zeus and his team arrived,” he paused, listening, but his eyes were on hers. “Contents are gone from all of them. Hell. The place is huge.” There was another pause as he listened. “Tell me where Zeus needs to look. Tell me where you’d have looked, if we had taken you there.” He paused. “And please, no games. Tell me. Honestly.”

  She drew a deep breath. “There are two places. One with a burner phone, one with the backup. For the phone, second floor, bedroom with the queen-size bed. There’s a hideaway space, under the third floorboard from the wall, back north corner. He’ll have to move the bed.”

  He repeated the instructions to Zeus. “For the backup?”

  She shook her head. “It isn’t in the main house. It’s in the caretaker’s cottage. Second cabinet to the right of the refrigerator. The back of the cabinet comes out, if he puts pressure at the very top. It’s a false back. There’s a metal box.”

  Sebastian repeated Skye’s instructions. As he waited for information from Zeus and the advance team, his attention focused on her. He smoothed her hair, and said, “You okay?”

  She nodded. The feeling that the world was spinning had passed. In its place, were numb misery and trepidation, as she waited for news from Zeus.

  He looked doubtful as he studied her. “You sure?”

  She nodded, realizing that the four agents were waiting, just as tense as Sebastian was, for word from Zeus’s team. Their eyes were focused on Sebastian and Skye.

  After a few more seconds, Sebastian tensed, at the same time one of his agents mumbled, “Damn.”

  Sharp blue eyes focused on her. “Whatever was there, isn’t. Both locations are empty.”

  He stood, as she put her forehead down into the palms of her hands, not wanting to look Sebastian—or anyone else—in the eye, as her father’s world crashed around her. After long minutes, she looked up. Five pairs of eyes were on her, but she focused only on the cobalt-blue pair of the man who was standing next to her. “I need to get to Charlotte, North Carolina.”

  Sebastian drew a deep breath. “What’s in Charlotte?”

  “Another set of backup. The next burner phone, where my father would let me know if the cataclysm scenario is still in play. There are two safety deposit boxes, in two branches of the First American Bank. One is a downtown branch, another is about ten minutes away. I need to get there. Now.” She drew a deep breath and stood. She gripped his biceps, holding on to him, needing his solid strength. “Please. Take me there now. We can’t wait. The second one was timed for twenty-four hours. But the third one could come at any second. Hurry. We have to go now!”

  He reached for her hands. “Listen to me. Breathe,” he said, his voice velvety, smooth, and calm. His tone was so commanding, so controlled, she had no option but to focus on him and watch him draw a deep breath, as though willing her to do the same.

  She took a deep breath, even though her world was falling apart.

  “Chances are whoever has gotten to the lake house, has also gotten to Charlotte.”

  Calmness crashed around her, like glass shattering. Even though what he said made infinite sense, she shook her head as panic seized her. “It can’t be.”

  “I can send agents there faster than we can get there,” he paused, his voice steady. “Just tell me whether we’ll be able to access the boxes and how.”

  “There’s code, formulated off of passwords.”

  “You don’t have to be there in person for access?”

  “No. My father set these up so that he could direct others to access it.” She paused. “In case of an emergency, and he or I couldn’t get there.”

  “The access codes,” he arched an eyebrow. “This is information that only your father would have given them, right?”

  She nodded. “Or me.”

  “And you haven’t given the information to anyone else, correct?”

  “No.”

  He frowned. “Would Jennifer Root have known the codes?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Ragno. Charlotte, North Carolina. Where are our nearest agents?” He paused. “Check their status.” He waited for her answer. As the minutes ticked by, his eyes never left hers. “I can have agents there in under an hour, which is faster than we can mobilize and get there ourselves.”

  She started to say no, but reduced the word to just a headshake.

  He gripped her hands tighter, but his voice remained calm. “Look, even if I agreed to take you there, we won’t have an answer for at least two hours. We have to get mobilized here, the pilots have to file a fight plan, we have to get in the air, we have to land there, we have to have secure transportation, and we have to get to the two destinations, which have to be secure before we get you there. Even with all of that effort, it’s likely a futile endeavor, with unknown risks. If you give me the codes my agents need, we’ll have an answer in half the time, without putting you at risk.”

  What he said made sense. But still, she hesitated.

  “Skye? I know that this is a lot for you to trust me with,” he said, “but we have no option.”

  She nodded yes, appreciating that he used ‘we’ and not ‘you.’


  “Ragno. It’s a go. Alert the agents to mobilize,” he said. “Skye, give me the codes.”

  “I need paper. Spring can do this kind of stuff from memory,” she said, “but I need prompts.”

  Sebastian glanced away from her, to an agent who passed them a tablet and pen. She sat and he sat across from her, resuming his position on the edge of his chair, his knees on either side of hers. Her hand shook as she wrote down the alphabet, assigned numbers to letters, then wrote three words that her father had assigned to the Charlotte bank box. She translated those words to numbers, did mathematical equations, and came up with three sets of thirty numbers. She ripped that piece of the paper from the tablet, and handed it to Sebastian. “This is for the downtown branch. Where the phone is.”

  She started over, formulating another code. When she had three additional sets of thirty numbers, she handed it to Sebastian. “This is for the branch where the backup is.”

  As he rattled off the numbers to Ragno, he held out his hand for the other half of the paper. He took it just as she was relinquishing it. He studied it, arched an eyebrow, and shook his head.

  She shrugged. “That’s how my father communicated with us, with the world. Everything is a puzzle to him. Even his words.”

  “And he set this craziness in play, counting on you to be able to drive from Louisiana to Tennessee to North Carolina,” irritation evident in his voice, but also an underlying sympathetic tone, “with God knows who after you, all the while keeping yourself and Spring safe?”

  “He doesn’t always think through the practical ramifications of his plans,” she said, automatically defending her father, but unable to come up with more than a half-hearted attempt.

  He handed the piece of paper back to her. “What’s his end game?”

  “What do you mean?” She knew exactly what he meant, but needed to buy time. She needed to collect her thoughts before laying that bomb on him.