Gone to Dust

by Liliana Hart

  “My house,” Miller demanded. “Ask about my house. Is it destroyed?”

  Deacon relayed the question and she breathed a sigh of relief when she heard someone on the other end say there was minimal damage.

  “Don’t worry,” Deacon said. “The Shadow will have things back to normal before too long. The local cops will think it was a burglary attempt gone wrong and that will be that. You’ll need a cover story to feed the sheriff once he starts looking for you.”

  Miller cut her eyes to Deacon and pursed her lips. “Like what?” she asked. “That I’m escaping for a long weekend with my Latin lover after we met on Facebook? I guess I picked a hell of a time to have a social life. I’m sure the sheriff won’t notice that at all.” She made sure the sarcasm was thick.

  “I told you to stay off Facebook,” Tess said, clucking her tongue in disappointment. “Nothing but creepers and old flames. Neither one is good for you.”

  “Thank you,” Miller said dryly. “That’s very helpful.”

  “It’s easy enough to create a cover story,” Deacon said. “A night out on the town. A weekend secluded away with no cell or internet so you can finish your book.” He shrugged. “Just pick something.”

  She tapped her fingers nervously on her leg, the full meaning of Deacon’s conversation sinking in. “Those men were going to kidnap me?” she asked.

  “Looks like it,” Elias said. “But we’ll confirm once we get the Tango in for questioning. Levi will break him in no time.”

  “Levi,” Miller said, sound barely coming out of her mouth. Little pieces of the puzzle started clicking together and she turned to Tess with a startled gasp.

  “Ohmigod,” she told her friend. “How could you have kept this from me all this time? You’re like freaking M from James Bond. You’re using the funeral home as a front and then you have all these ridiculously hot agents pretending to be your employees. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. We’ve known each other since first grade. How did I not know you became a spy? When did they recruit you? College? Is that why you changed your major to mortuary science instead of sticking with premed?”

  “Again with the questions,” Elias said.

  She felt like she’d just had the rug pulled out from under her. It was as if everything she’d ever known had been a lie. Added to what she’d already found out about her brother and that her parents’ plane had been found, she was thinking this day in particular would go in the books as extra shitty.

  “Whoa,” Tess said, wide-eyed. “I think your imagination is running overtime. I’m not a spy. And I’m not like M from James Bond. That would be an incredibly scary lady named Eve Winter. I’m sure you’ll meet her. She’s going to hate you, so be prepared. The rest of it you’re pretty much right about.”

  “Are we going into the Bat Cave?” Miller asked.

  “How many movies are you going to mix together?” Elias asked.

  “It depends,” she said. “Do any of you have a big hammer or turn green when you’re angry?”

  Elias snorted out a laugh. “You left yourself wide open for big hammer jokes. I’m not even going to take the bait.”

  Miller scowled as they picked up speed along the one-way road. Rocks shifted beneath the tire treads and Elias seemed as if he knew exactly where they were going. He came to a sudden stop, and she started to reevaluate that opinion. They were in the middle of nowhere, and there was nothing to be seen from her viewpoint.

  “Tess, if you weren’t sitting right beside me I’d be a little worried about being taken out in the middle of an empty field by men who are clearly armed and dangerous.”

  Tess patted her on the arm and said, “Don’t worry. They probably won’t kill you.” Miller’s eyes widened and Tess said, “I’m kidding. Take a breath.”

  The men got out of the car, and Tess followed, so Miller opened her door and stepped out into the chilly night air. The rocks crunched beneath her feet, and she shivered as the frigid night air snaked down her shirt. She looked around at the bleakness of the area—the tall winter grass that shushed eerily with the wind, and the starless sky that had no beginning or end. And when the truck’s headlights went off, they stood shrouded in blackness.

  She felt someone touch her hand, and she jumped at the contact. There was a reason she wrote romance instead of horror. If she didn’t keep her imagination in check, she’d be jumping at every shadow. Her heart pounded and the blood rushed in her ears, and then she took a deep breath and mentally told herself to get a grip. Tess would never lie to her. Except about being a spy, apparently, but other than that, she trusted Tess with her life.

  “You’re safer here than you’d be anywhere else,” Tess said. “I can promise you that.” A high-powered flashlight flicked on and she felt herself relax. “If you need help finding your brother, you’ve come to the right place.”

  Elias snorted again, but it wasn’t with good humor this time.

  “Listen, buddy,” Miller said, turning only to realize he’d been standing close behind her. She’d almost walked right into his chest. That ridiculously hard, chiseled chest that had taunted her dreams for weeks. Too bad it was attached to a real horse’s ass.

  “I’ve about had it with your attitude,” she said. “You barged into my business and now my home, breaking a window I might add, after you had the nerve to leave me half-naked on my front porch. The least you could’ve done is let me have an orgasm first before you ran off, you big jerk. There weren’t enough batteries in the universe to fill that order.”

  His eyebrows rose almost to his hairline and he opened his mouth to say something, but she poked her finger against his chest and he shut up.

  “I don’t need your stupid attitude or your stupid machismo. I need someone man enough to help me find my brother without running off with his tail tucked between his legs at the first sign of impending orgasm.”

  Tess snorted out a laugh, but Miller was too mad to care about the fact that they had an audience.

  “I don’t need a grown man baby right now,” she continued. “I need someone who is trained. Someone who can understand my brother and his thought processes. And someone who’s going to give me good advice and support so I don’t die in the middle of some godforsaken island. I need freaking John Cena. So unless you can provide those things, kindly shut up.”

  He reached up and calmly took her finger and removed it from his chest. She could feel the vibrations coming off his body, and his eyes looked like hard, black marbles. She swallowed hard, but didn’t back down. Never show weakness. And if you feel weak, at least bluster your way through it so no one knows the difference.

  “Actually,” Elias said, “I can provide those things. I’m trained. And I know Justin’s thought processes better than all but a few people on this earth. He was one of my SEAL brothers. Still want my help?”

  If Miller had been a teapot, she figured that would’ve been the moment where steam would pour out her lid and she’d start whistling.

  “Umm … maybe the two of you could do this inside,” Tess said. “I’m cold and I’ve had to go to the bathroom for twenty minutes.”

  Miller was so mad she could barely see through the haze of her anger, so she turned her back to Elias, deciding it was probably best to pretend he wasn’t there. He had to be lying. How could Elias have been a SEAL? There was no way he could know Justin. And if he did, why hadn’t he told her?

  Her temper still boiled, but she watched with fascination as Deacon parted the tall grass and a palm plate came into view. He placed his hand on the metal plate and then it lit up with a bright white light beneath his palm, eventually turning green as his hand was scanned.

  The ground rumbled beneath her feet, and she took an involuntary step back, directly into the hard chest she’d been avoiding, and the ground rose into a hill in front of her. She quickly took a step forward to break contact.

  “Holy crap,” she said, heart pounding in excitement. “That’s pretty much the coolest thing I’ve eve
r seen. Can I take pictures? That’s going into a book. Where does this thing lead? Please tell me you have the Batmobile in here.”

  “Sorry to disappoint,” Deacon said. “Just a couple of GEM cars and a three-mile stretch. And no, pictures would not be a good idea. And you really can’t put this in a book. In fact, I need you to swear to secrecy that you won’t speak about anything you’re about to see to anyone. If you don’t, the consequences won’t be pleasant.”

  “Yikes,” she said. “What about Tess? Can I talk about it with her?”

  Deacon’s hands were on his hips and he just stared at her a few seconds and sighed. “Yes, you can talk about it to Tess.”

  “I’m good, then,” she said. “I never confide in anyone else anyway. No one can keep their mouth shut in this damned town.”

  Lights came on in rapid succession all the way to the end of the tunnel. Miller wasn’t sure what a GEM car was, but by process of elimination she figured it was the two space-age-looking golf carts. They each had seats for four, and when Deacon got in the driver’s seat and started the engine, she realized it was electric. She couldn’t even hear it running.

  “We’ll leave the other one for the others,” Elias said. “They’re right behind us. Get in and hang on.”

  She wasn’t left with much choice. She got in the backseat next to Tess and took hold of the grab bar just as Deacon pressed the accelerator. They took off with a speed that had her teeth snapping together.

  “Definitely going in a book,” she said.

  They came to a stop with the same jaw-snapping motion, and Deacon and Elias were already out and up the small ramp that led to a large metal door before she could get her wits about her.

  “Come on,” Tess said. “This is the cool part. You’ll like it.”

  “It gets cooler than what I just saw?” she asked. “You realize my mind is exploding right now. I just thought of about forty-two new book ideas as we were driving through the tunnel.”

  “I figured as much,” Tess said. “You always tap your index finger on your thigh when you’re thinking. Or when you have a good poker hand.”

  Miller looked at Tess in shock. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Nope, you’ve done it since we were kids.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me? No wonder I never win at poker.”

  “Now you know,” Tess said encouragingly.

  “I haven’t bothered to ask,” Miller said, “but is this one of those moments where if I know and see too much I’ll end up dying peacefully in my sleep or my car will accidentally run over a cliff with my charred remains inside?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Tess said. “You know as well as I do there are no cliffs around here.”

  “Not very reassuring, Tess.”

  Tess patted her on the shoulder and they walked toward the door. She decided to ask the question again later, just to make sure, but she couldn’t imagine Tess pledging to spend her life with a man who’d snuff her out if she walked in on the wrong thing. It was all bizarre. And for anything to make sense, she decided she needed some coffee and sleep. In that order.

  There was an embossed gold trident in the center of the solid metal door, and she watched in fascination as Elias typed in a code on the small keypad next to the door. A screen popped out, and much like the one they used to get into the tunnel, a palm plate slid out and Elias put his hand down for the scan. But the door didn’t open. Another section of the wall slid open and what looked like a fancy version of military-grade goggles came out of the wall. Elias stepped up to them, and Miller realized it was a retinal scan.

  “See? I told you,” Tess said.

  “I hope this high-tech factory has coffee and a bed,” she whispered. “I’ve got to get a few hours’ sleep before I can think of the best way to get to Justin.”

  “You’re the only person I know who uses coffee to help her get to sleep. It’s not normal. And I keep telling you, you don’t have to figure out what to do about Justin on your own. You’re in the same room as some of the best trained agents in the world. I promise, their ideas are probably going to be better and more efficient than yours at this point.”

  “What do you mean by some of the best trained agents?” Deacon asked his wife with an arched brow.

  “Stop fishing for compliments. You and Elias are classified as some. The rest of the best trained agents in the world are a few minutes behind us. And wherever the hell Dante is. I notice you didn’t mention him.”

  “It’s his weekend off, but I called him back in,” Deacon said. “He’s not going to be happy.”

  There was a series of clicks as locks were undone, and the metal door slid open with a smooth whoosh. Miller didn’t realize how cold she’d been until she walked into the warmth of a sterile white corridor. There was a set of stairs that led up to another metal door, this one without the trident. But they didn’t take the stairs.

  “What’s up there?” she asked Tess.

  “The carriage house,” she answered.

  Miller’s brows rose. “The carriage house at the funeral home?”

  “Yep, that’s the one.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re telling me we just took a twenty-minute road trip to end up three blocks from where we all started.” And then it dawned on her. “Oh, wow. So this is what they were doing when they did the renovations a couple years ago.”

  “Yeah, pretty incredible, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll say. I can’t believe you found contractors to work that fast and keep it all a secret. I couldn’t get my contractors to show up on time or stop peeing in my rosebushes. I tried to see behind those big tarps they put up every time I came over.”

  “I know.” Tess grinned. “The Shadow aren’t like regular contractors. They get things done, and they get them done quickly and quietly.”

  “Good. I hope they can find matching hundred-year-old windows to replace the ones that were destroyed.”

  Elias led them to the other metal door to the left end of the hall, this one with the same gold trident as the one they’d just come through. The security ritual was the same, and she wondered if you had to go through the same process to get out. She didn’t like the idea of being stuck at the whim of another person, especially if that person was an overbearing alpha male who held a grudge against her brother.

  “Y’all have mentioned The Shadow a couple of times. Who are they?” she asked Tess.

  “It’s hard to explain. But they basically get shit done. They’re both prep and cleanup. And sometimes there’s a hell of a lot to clean up.”

  “Not a very original name,” Miller said, wondering how she could tweak it for a book.

  “I’ll make sure to pass that along,” Tess said, rolling her eyes.

  “The logistics of all this is blowing my mind. No one in town has a clue what’s going on right under their noses. I can’t even imagine the headache of trying to dig a basement in Texas.”

  “That’s part of the reason they picked Last Stop,” Deacon said. “The soil here is different from all the limestone that’s found in surrounding areas.”

  “I can’t believe I never figured this out,” Miller said. “I’m usually so observant. And Tess is horrible at keeping secrets.”

  “To be fair,” Tess said, “you’ve been on deadline, and you tend to not pay attention to anything else when you’re buried in a book.”

  “I notice how you didn’t disagree with me about you keeping secrets,” Miller said.

  “Which is why I’ve also been glad you’ve been on deadline and not so observant. It made it easier to keep it from you when you stopped coming around the funeral home a few weeks ago.”

  “I stopped coming around the funeral home so much because you’ve clearly been training for the newlywed sexual Olympics, and I was never quite sure when you were in competition mode, so to speak. But from the frequency of the ‘Closed’ sign on the front door for long lunches and the amount of unexplained broken furniture around
the house, I figured you’d at least made the semifinals.”

  Elias choked on a laugh.

  “Shut up, both of you,” Tess said, her cheeks flushed red. “We’re not that bad. And we only broke the one chair. And it was an ugly chair, anyway.”

  “Well, in that case …” Miller said.

  Locks clicked on the door, and then with a quiet whoosh, it slid open. There was a gold insignia of the trident on the white tile floor, but as soon as she turned the room opened up into a large conference room. The carpet was industrial-grade blue and the walls a soft ivory. There was a wall of monitors to her right as she walked in, and she noticed the different images from around town and inside the funeral home.

  There was a large conference table in the center of the room surrounded by leather office chairs, and then there were individual workstations spread around the perimeter of the room with multiscreen computers. On the far wall, facing the conference table, there were three large screens.

  “You might as well come on in and get comfortable,” Deacon said. “There are drinks and snacks in the little kitchen area off to the side. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long night.”

  “Why do I feel like I’m about to face a firing squad?” she asked.

  “You’ve got good instincts, sweetheart,” Elias said, pushing past her to make his way to the small kitchen.

  “Don’t call me sweetheart,” she said automatically, and followed him. The kitchen was long and narrow, but everything was top-of-the-line, especially the coffeemaker. She could put up with anyone for a good cup of coffee, even Elias Cole.

  “Right,” he said. “After that tongue lashing you just gave me, ‘sweetheart’ is probably the last thing I should call you.”

  He moved in a little closer, and she could feel the heat of his body, even though they weren’t touching. She tilted her head back so she could see directly into the depths of his green eyes. The slow flush of arousal heated beneath her skin as he moved his head toward her, his breath feathering against her lips.

  “You know what I think?” he asked softly.

  “Not a clue,” she said, her gaze dropping to his lips for just a split second.