Town at the Edge of Darkness (The Excoms Book 2)

by Brett Battles

  No, what she’d just experienced was the first decent night’s sleep since waking up the previous week aboard the Karas Evonus, where she learned she’d been “recruited” into an elite team of operatives, by a committee represented by a man known to her and the others only as the Administrator. Oh, and there was also the small matter that she and most of her new colleagues had all been excommunicated from their previous professions.

  Since then, her life had been moving at a whirlwind pace. With the promise that their names would be cleared, she and the others had agreed to take on the job the Administrator presented them, and spent the next couple of days tracking down and rescuing a group of kidnapped school kids.

  That alone would have justified sleeping in, but on the heels of the rescue, she’d received a call from Jonathan Quinn, a highly respected associate she’d worked with in the past, asking for her help on a personal matter. Hence the quick trip to London, on which she’d brought three of her new friends—Rosario, Liesel, and Dylan.

  As with the kidnapped kids, Quinn’s mission had been a success. At least, Ananke thought so. The targets had been neutralized, but there was some personal fallout between Quinn and his partner Nate that still needed to be sorted out. That was their business, though, not hers.

  She’d arrived at her place in Boulder, Colorado, around 7:30 the previous evening, and by 7:45, she was asleep.

  With a satisfied sigh, she rolled onto her back, thinking maybe she should spend the whole day right where she was. She could read a book, peruse the internet on her laptop, and if she became hungry, order food.

  She frowned.

  She would have to figure out a way of getting said food from her security gate to her bedroom without getting up. And then there was the issue of the bathroom, which she’d have to visit soon.

  Dammit.

  She really didn’t want to get up.

  She groaned, threw the covers back, and shuffled across the bedroom to the bathroom. As she entered, her phone buzzed back on her nightstand, but now that her bladder was so close to the toilet, the phone would have to wait.

  After Ananke finished her business, she decided a shower would be a good idea. She was hesitant to do the math, but it had been more than twenty-four hours since her last one. She’d meant to wash off last night but her bed had been too inviting.

  By the time she finished getting clean and returned to her bedroom, nearly forty minutes had passed since her phone last buzzed.

  “Ugh. Really, Shinji?” she said. Shinji was Ananke’s personal information specialist. He worked from the comforts of his apartment in the San Gabriel Valley, east of Los Angeles, coordinating whatever she needed. The call she’d heard before her shower was his ninth one. Four last night and five already today.

  Double ugh.

  Well, he’d waited this long. Might as well wait until she’d had some coffee.

  In the kitchen, as the brown liquid filled her Emma Peel mug, she looked across the living room, out the large windows at the Rocky Mountains, and sighed in contentment. There really was nothing like being home.

  Once Emma was filled, Ananke carried her across the living room, pulled open one of the sliders that opened onto the deck, and stepped outside.

  A perfect day—temperature seventy-two, maybe seventy-three; sunshine and blue sky; and the glorious mountains reminding all who saw them who the real boss of the planet was. It didn’t get much better than this.

  As she took her first sip, her phone rattled in her pocket.

  She kept her gaze on the mountains and took another sip, letting the call go to voice mail.

  No matter how long she lived here, she never failed to be captivated by the beauty that surrounded her. It was like she was in a whole different world. Like she’d been given a special ticket to Earth’s—

  Her phone rang again.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  She put Emma down and pulled out the damn thing. Shinji again. She poked ACCEPT. “What? What, what, what, what, what? Why are you calling me so much?”

  “Oh, my God. Are you all right? You are, right? You’re all right? Please tell me you’re all right.”

  “What do you mean, am I all right? Of course I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be all right?”

  “B-b-because you didn’t answer your phone.”

  “Maybe I was sleeping!”

  “For more than sixteen hours?”

  “Look, I was tired.”

  “You can’t do that to me,” he said. “I thought someone took you again!”

  It was a fair point. When the Administrator’s people had “extracted” her from a tricky situation—by drugging her and keeping her unconscious for nearly a week—Shinji had had no idea what had happened to her.

  “I should have checked in,” she admitted. “Sorry. I, um, haven’t been getting much rest lately.”

  “It’s…it’s okay. Sorry I was so…whiny.”

  “No problem. I’m used to it.”

  “What does that—”

  “Shinji, let’s focus. What’s so important you’ve tried calling a dozen times?”

  “It hasn’t been a dozen, it’s been…never mind. The Administrator called and wanted me to tell you to expect a package.”

  “The Administrator? He called you?”

  “He did.”

  “Why didn’t he just call me directly?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he knew you were sleeping.”

  Ananke glanced back at her house, her eyes narrowing. Had the Administrator bugged her place while she was away? She had systems in place to prevent that, but it would be worth doing an electronics sweep, just in case.

  “When’s this package supposed to come?” she asked.

  “It should have been there first thing this morning.”

  “I didn’t get anything.”

  “You mean, while you were sleeping?”

  She grimaced, silently conceding the point. “Hold on.”

  She set the phone down next to Emma Peel, crossed through the house, and out again via the front door. Between there and the fence fronting her property lay a six meter-wide strip of grass, with a stone path cutting through it to the walk-in security gate. She scanned the lawn for the package, in case it had been tossed over the fence. Nothing but a few leaves and an errant pine cone. Farther to the left, another gate closed off the driveway that led to her garage, but she didn’t see anything there, either.

  She walked over and pulled the gate open. No note stuck on the other side, and nothing on the ground. Either Shinji had gotten the time wrong, or the Administrator needed to find a better delivery service.

  As she stepped back into her yard and started to close her gate, she heard a car door open.

  She looked back at the street and spotted two men who had exited a sedan half a block away. They crossed the road and started down the sidewalk toward her house.

  Shinji hadn’t been wrong after all.

  They were a mismatched pair. The trailing man, dressed in a gray suit, was a head taller and half a person wider than the guy in front, and had the barely noticeable bulge of a weapon under his left arm. The smaller guy was more casually dressed, in jeans and a green, V-neck T-shirt. No visible bulges on this guy, but he was carrying a briefcase.

  One of Ananke’s biggest pet peeves was people coming to her house for business. This was her sanctuary, not her office. Not that she actually had an office. One of the few things she disliked even more was an armed man walking down her street. What would the neighbors think?

  When the men were five meters away, the small guy smiled.

  Ananke let them approach another few steps before she said, “That’s far enough.”

  Both men stopped, and the small guy said, “I have a package for you.”

  “What is it?”

  His eyes clouded. “Um, I don’t know. No one ever tells me what I’m carrying.”

  “I mean, show it to me, idiot.”

  “Oh. Right.” He started
to open the briefcase, but when he almost dropped it, he turned to his companion. “I could use your help.”

  The big guy, who had been staring at Ananke, gave the small guy a sideways glance. Then, with what could only be described as bored reluctance, he took a step forward.

  Small Guy said, “Arms out.”

  When the giant complied, Small Guy set the case on the big man’s outstretched arms and popped it open. He extracted a nine-by-twelve manila envelope. Black and yellow striped tape ran along all four sides. He held it so Ananke could get a good look.

  She gave it a beat before waving him forward. “Just you.”

  The courier brought the package over.

  “Did you try ringing the bell?” she asked, nodding at the button next to her gate.

  “Several times. I assumed it’s broken.”

  “Yeah. It…is. Just give me the package.”

  He handed it to her, said, “Have a good day,” and turned back to his partner.

  Ananke watched them return to their vehicle. Once they drove off, she closed the gate.

  On her way through the house, she grabbed a pair of scissors from the kitchen and returned to the deck. She tapped the speaker function on her phone and heard rapid tapping of computer keys and action music. “Are you playing video games?”

  “Oh, hey,” Shinji said. “No…I mean, well, yeah. Just killing time.” The music cut off. “So, package or no package?”

  “About to open it. I’ll check in with you later.”

  “Wait. I’d kind of like to know what’s inside, too.”

  “Was it sent to you?”

  “Um, no.”

  “Good-bye, Shinji.”

  She hit DISCONNECT and sat back down on the patio chair.

  As she took a drink from Emma Peel, she glanced at the envelope, half thinking she should ignore it. But after a few seconds, she set the mug down, slit one end of the envelope, and slid the contents onto her lap.

  On top of the stack was a mobile phone. At least the Administrator hadn’t forgotten her previous work phone had been lost during the last mission.

  The papers consisted of printouts of three news articles, two photographs, and a receipt for an airline ticket with a notation reading BOARDING PASS ON PHONE. At the bottom of the stack was a second envelope, which contained a Texas driver’s license with Ananke’s picture, several credit cards, a Triple A card, and two insurance cards—one health, and the other for a 2015 Ford Mustang. Everything was under the same name: Shawn Ramey.

  Ananke set the IDs aside and looked at the ticket. Apparently Ms. Ramey was due to fly out of Denver to Seattle, Washington, that very night.

  Ananke wasn’t sure she liked where this was going.

  The articles were next. The first was a feature on a town in northeast Washington State, a place called Bradbury near the Columbia River. It had apparently undergone a renaissance over the past few years, transforming from a dying former logging village to a growing tech hub. Not that it rivaled Seattle or Silicon Valley or big-city places like them. Still, according to the article, nearly two dozen, mostly small firms had made Bradbury their home. The companies were all “looking for alternatives to the congestion-filled environments their competitors were mired in.”

  Sounded like a nice place to work. Like Boulder, only smaller.

  The next article was about a revolutionary new solar panel that worked at near capacity even when not pointed directly at the sun. According to a spokesman, the product also worked at the same rate on cloudy days, making it an ideal device for locations where traditional solar panels were less effective. The device was still undergoing testing, but all indications were it would hit the market within the next couple of years. The company was called Scolareon and already produced a popular, efficient model, but “what’s coming next,” the spokesman said, “is going to revolutionize the business.” Scolareon was located in—surprise, surprise—Bradbury, Washington. The head of the company was a man named Kyle Scudder.

  Scudder + Solar = Scolar, then eon for the cool factor, she guessed.

  The last article was from a business news site and dated nearly ten months earlier. It was a typical PR release, announcing Scolareon’s hiring of a woman named Natasha Patterson as their new CFO. According to the article, Patterson joined Scolareon from Davos Home Fortress, one of billionaire Scott Davos’s many ventures. Though Scolareon was nowhere near the industrial force of Davos’s empire, Ananke figured the CFO position would have been a step up. Patterson was clearly a woman with plans.

  Ananke flipped the paper over, hoping there was something on the back that would let her know why the woman was important, but no such luck.

  She turned her attention to the pictures. The first was the headshot of a man in a crisp black T-shirt, smiling at the camera. He was in his early forties at the most, and exuded a confidence that some probably found intimidating.

  In the white border at the bottom of the picture was written KYLE SCUDDER.

  Mr. Scolareon himself.

  Okay. And?

  The second photo also had a name at the bottom. NATASHA PATTERSON. The new CFO. Like Scudder’s picture, it was one of those business headshots—high school yearbook, only in more expensive clothes and taken by considerably better photographers. Patterson was Caucasian, with long sandy brown hair tucked behind her ears. She appeared to be in her early to mid-thirties, and had that ambitious, I’ll-get-it-done aura Ananke appreciated.

  Ananke set the papers down and leaned back, thinking. The Administrator had told her, Rosario, Liesel, Dylan, and Ricky after they completed their mission that there would be more projects for which his organization would like to use the team. She hadn’t realized the next one would come up so soon.

  Did she really want to work for him again? She hadn’t had much of a choice on the first job. Sure, she and the others had been promised the Administrator would do everything necessary to clear their name, whether they accepted that initial mission or not. But given the nature of what the Administrator had wanted her and the others to do—the aforementioned saving of the kids—she would have taken the assignment no matter what.

  To accept this second assignment from the mysterious committee felt like she’d be moving down a path that would become harder to extract herself from the longer she stayed on it.

  But would that be so bad? If all the jobs were about providing help where none was previously available, wouldn’t that make them worth doing?

  For years, she had this vision of herself, like Marley from Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, wandering the afterlife, lugging a chain even longer and heavier than the one awaiting Scrooge. Until recently, she’d been an assassin by trade, and a good one to boot. Perhaps doing some good now and then would remove a few links from her post-life burden.

  She picked up the new mobile and tapped the pre-entered number for the Administrator, still unsure what she would say.

  “Ananke, I’m pleased to hear from you,” the Administrator said.

  “Sorry for not calling earlier. I was…”

  “No explanation necessary. I had no expectations of a time. I assumed you’d call when you were ready. Did you look through the information I sent?”

  “I did.”

  “Then I’m sure you’ve gathered we’d like to send you and your team to Bradbury.”

  “Yeah, I got that part. It’s the why I don’t know yet.”

  “Of course not. The why is that we think there’s something suspicious going on there.”

  She snorted. “I didn’t think you were sending us there on vacation. How about a detail or two?”

  “Natasha Patterson is missing.”

  That hit Ananke harder than it probably should have. She’d liked what she read about the woman. “What happened?”

  “I will be happy to elaborate, but only after you accept the job.”

  Naturally. “So, the missing woman, that’s the something suspicious? Or is there something more?”

  Silence
.

  She took a deep breath. “And I’m betting if there’s indeed a problem that extends beyond just this woman being missing, and we don’t do anything about it, people will get hurt.”

  “I don’t know. But it seems likely.”

  She closed her eyes. Why, oh, why, couldn’t she have had a few more days hanging around her house before he reached out to her again?

  Gritting her teeth, she said, “All right. I’m in. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Thank you,” the Administrator said, sounding relieved. He told her about the mystery surrounding Patterson’s disappearance more than two weeks earlier.

  “The police don’t have any leads?” she asked.

  “The police are unaware of the situation.”

  “She’s been gone two weeks and no one’s called the police?”

  “It’s our understanding that most people are unaware there’s anything wrong.”

  “Hold on. I have an article right here that says she’s a bigwig at this Scolareon place. Someone’s got to have noticed she’s not coming in to the office.”

  “Late on the evening of April fifth, an email was sent to both Kyle Scudder and the Scolareon HR department, ostensibly from Natasha Patterson.”

  “Ostensibly?”

  “In it, she says she needed to take an immediate leave of absence due to the unforeseen hospitalization of a family member on the East Coast. She apologized for the suddenness and promised to be in touch. She has since responded to several work emails, but when any personal questions are asked, her replies have been brief and vague. Calls made to her mobile phone go straight to voice mail. No one has talked to her.”

  “Then you aren’t even sure she’s missing. I mean, she could be telling the truth, couldn’t she?”

  “She could be, if we thought she was the one writing the emails.”

  “But you don’t think that.”

  “We’ve been in touch with someone who knows her well. In fact, he’s the one who brought the case to our attention.”

  “Couldn’t he be wrong?”

  “His name is Scott Davos.”

  “Scott Davos? The Scott Davos?”