Darkest Night

by Megan Erickson

  This one was unlike any other, though. He was ice cold, and for once in his life so fucking terrified that he had no idea what to do about it. So he didn’t move. He only stared at the screen as the red dot made its way to Virginia. Fiona had been nabbed two hours ago, and Marisol was currently barking into the phone with her FBI contact, giving him directions. Meanwhile they all sat in the van, on their way to the location. Because fuck if Jock was going to sit with his thumb up his ass when his woman was in the clutches of sick perverts.

  He’d told her he loved her. He’d said that to her face, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d said that to fucking anyone. Maybe his mom. Or Jonathan, but never a woman he’d had in his bed. He wasn’t sure he’d ever fucked a woman other than Fiona who actually knew his real name; that was how much of a secretive bastard he was.

  And he’d stayed that way with Fiona for too damn long. He’d held everything close to his damn vest like a stubborn asshole. He closed his eyes for one brief minute as pain sliced through him—hot and sharp, worse than the bullet he’d taken to the hip back when he served.

  Then he opened them again and focused on that damn dot.

  “They’re in some old Virginia neighborhood near the hospital. These houses are old as shit and huge—they call it Doctor’s Row,” Erick said. “Makes sense because people don’t casually stroll through these streets. Some of these houses are renovated and some not. Mostly old money lives there now, not new blood.”

  “Which means they close their blinds if they see shady shit and don’t make a peep,” Roarke said.

  “Rich white people,” Marisol muttered. She’d hung up the phone after shouting at the agent and throwing so much attitude at him that Jock would have been amused on any other mission.

  “The tracker hasn’t moved for a half hour,” Erick said. “She’s gotta be there. Has to be it.”

  “Markham’s on it,” Marisol said about the agent. “He’s calling every fucking judge he knows for a warrant now that we have proof Fiona got nabbed. Not to mention all the digital evidence.” That had been a hard sell. The code these assholes used was hard to break—names, locations, sex acts, money exchanged. It was all there, but not in plain speak. Dade had broken it because he had the skills, but convincing the FBI was a whole other thing. These men—Darren’s friends—were big players in DC. The FBI couldn’t just go storming in and disrupting their lives. But these women had been taken over state lines, and Dade had been able to document this, at least in code.

  Jock was still nervous. What if they didn’t get to Fiona in time? What condition would he find her in? He remembered when they’d first met, after she shot him, when she’d collapsed in his arms, nearly unconscious. He remembered how long it had taken to earn her trust, for him to get to the point that he could touch her at all. How much would this shit set her back in her own head?

  “We’re half an hour out,” Roarke announced. “Remember we can’t go storming in there. All the big players are here; the FBI gets ’em, shit gets shut down. This is over.”

  Jock had one gun at his back and another shoved in his boot. He’d give the agents about ten minutes to bring out the girls, including Fiona, or he was going in there guns drawn, prepared to shoot some motherfuckers in the face. He’d killed once for Fiona and had no regrets. He’d do it a-fucking-gain in a heartbeat.

  And he planned to bury Henry Chamberlain II. Jock wasn’t fucking around. That guy wouldn’t just be in jail; he’d be so fucking ruined that he’d never lift his head again. Jock had made that man his own personal mission as soon as he’d heard that Chamberlain had a special inclination toward Fiona.

  When they drew close to the mansion with the tracking signal coming from it, Roarke—who was driving with Wren in the passenger seat—slowed the van and turned off the headlights. He crept closer, about fifty yards away, at the corner of the block. They could see the house but were far enough away not to draw too much suspicion to their presence.

  Jock squinted past the windshield and into the night, able to see dark figures, rifles drawn as they converged on the house.

  “Markham and the Feds pulled through,” Erick muttered, peering into the darkness along with Jock.

  “I’m a tiny terror,” Marisol said. “He knew I’d kick his ass.”

  Screams pierced the night, rich and full of absolute terror. Jock’s heart picked up, beating double-time, so damn loud all he could hear was the pounding in his ears. More figures flowed into the house. Soon after he saw the first woman, a tall one with braids, followed by more—all covered in blankets and being led out the front door toward ambulances which were now screeching down the street.

  Jock turned, ignored Roarke calling his name and Erick grasping at his arm, and stomped toward the back of the van. He shoved open the doors and hit the ground at a sprint. Fiona, he had to fucking find Fiona. She’d be terrified, and these women…As he drew closer he could see what they were wearing under the blankets. He saw red. Fucking red like a charging bull. Only the terrified faces of the women made him slow down and fix his face so it didn’t look like thunder, because he didn’t want to scare them any worse than they already were.

  There were more FBI agents still inside, but through the open door Jock could also see men in suits, cuffed and lined up on the floor. He looked for Fiona, waiting to catch a glimpse of her blond locks in the moonlight. He spotted a blonde and made a beeline for her, but when she turned around he stopped dead. She wasn’t Fiona. He whirled around but everywhere he looked were women in lingerie, huddled under blankets, and none of them were fucking Fiona.

  “Fiona!” he yelled like a raving lunatic, but fuck, he’d lost his cool. The ice was melting, and all he felt in his veins was lava, so fucking hot he thought he’d claw his skin off. “Does anyone know where Fiona is!”

  The woman with braids padded toward him on the plush grass in her bare feet. She eyed him warily. “Who’re you?”

  “I’m…” Who was he? What was he to Fiona?

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jock.” There, he could answer that.

  She cocked her head. “What does she call you, honey?”

  He swallowed and said thickly. “J.”

  Her face immediately changed, sympathy sweeping over her features fast in a way that made his heart slam into the ground. She reached up into her braids and tugged and then pulled out the tracker. “I’m Tianna. She made me take this out of her scalp. Made me keep it. Because they took her somewhere else and she wanted the rest of us to be saved.”

  He didn’t want to believe it. The loss hit him so swiftly that his stomach contracted as if he’d been punched. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, could only stare at that goddamn tracker in her palm.

  He slowly lifted his gaze to her. “Where the fuck did they take her?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. Harvey came and got her with some pasty-faced, slicked-hair asshole.”

  Chamberlain. He knew it.

  “Can you get her back?” Tianna was asking. “You have to. She saved us. They were going to kill us, just erase us like we were nothing.”

  He was going to throw up. His Fiona had done that. So fucking selfless. Now the problem was that if Chamberlain found out there’d been a raid, Fiona would be seriously fucked. Jock looked Tianna in the eye and said the words he felt down to his marrow, the determination sweeping everything in him clean, flushing him out. “I’ll get her.”

  He turned on a heel as the FBI agents began leading the cuffed men out of the mansion. He didn’t spare a glance at them. Not fucking one. He walked, then jogged, and then went into an all-out sprint to the van.

  The doors opened and Wren peered out with a concerned look. “Where’s Fiona?”

  Jock leaped into the van, brushing past her, and sat down at his laptop. He had work to do. “Chamberlain took her somewhere else.”

  “The tracker—” Erick began.

  “She had one of the girls rip it out.” Jock lifted
his head and met the gaze of every single crew member so they understood what Fiona had done. “She ripped it out because she knew Chamberlain was taking her somewhere and she wanted to save the other women.”

  “No.” That came from Marisol. Her eyes immediately glistened in the dark. That was Marisol. Tough as shit, but when you messed with her crew, she got angry and pissed and with that came tears. She’d work through it, though. She always did.

  Jock didn’t acknowledge her. “I’m sending all of you Chamberlain’s file. All his properties, his aliases, everything. We comb through this shit, make calls, find out where the fuck he is. My thought? He took her to one of his places. His turf. We don’t fucking rest until we find her.”

  They all murmured their assent. Marisol was crying softly, angrily, swiping at her cheeks. “I will fucking kill that asshole for touching her,” she growled. Yeah, Marisol was protective. Jock knew the feeling.

  He focused back on his computer because he couldn’t let the lava in his veins burn him from the inside out. He had to focus, get through this. Get Fiona.

  A hand landed on his shoulder. He’d expected Roarke, but instead he saw Erick. “We’ll get her back, man. No one else in this crew loses someone.”

  Pain flashed through Erick’s eyes. Jock knew he was thinking about Flynn. Erick covered the pain with a small smile and turned back to his laptop. Jock took a minute to absorb that pain before he began to work.

  * * *

  Two minutes after Fiona had been shoved in the back of a car and driven away from the mansion, she’d regretted her choice to rip out the tracker. Then she changed her mind and was happy she’d done it, because she knew that right about now the crew would be storming the house with the FBI. The women would be safe. Tianna and Gita and the redhead with a kid. They’d be okay.

  Fiona, on the other hand…well, her nightmare was just starting. They’d given her a robe but they’d also gagged her. The tinted windows assured no one would see her inside, trussed up and dressed like a lady of the night. Or whatever. God, she fucking hated this. White kept his hand on her thigh the whole time, while he talked on the phone and Harvey drove. Sometimes he’d slide it higher, tease at the hem of her panties. She refused to squirm.

  She stared out at the window and tried to think of happy things, like pizza in a hotel with Jock, and Sundance’s fur, and Wren’s laughter. But that all made her chest get tight, and she didn’t want to cry in this car, not in front of White and Harvey.

  He ended the call and immediately shifted his weight, pressing close to her side. She closed her eyes so she didn’t have to see him. His breath coated her face, and she breathed through her mouth around the gag to avoid the smell. “I wasn’t supposed to take you away. To have you to myself. But fuck them. I’ve waited years for this.”

  She didn’t get it, honest to God. She wasn’t that special. Sure, she had blond hair and blue eyes and knew she wasn’t ugly, but she couldn’t understand what it was about her that drew White to her. She gave him nothing in the car. No tears, no eye contact. Fucking nothing. He wanted to use her? Whatever; she’d lay there like the dead, and no amount of fists would make her do anything else.

  “Now I have you back,” he whispered as he loosened her gag. “And when I’m done, no one will ever have you again.”

  He was going to kill her. She’d known this would be a possibility going in, but now she knew for sure. She wasn’t getting out of this. White didn’t want anyone else to have her.

  He was too late, though. Jock had her. He always would.

  It hit her then, sitting on the pristine leather seat in the back of this ritzy car, about to sacrifice herself in Henry’s hands—she hadn’t told Jock she loved him. She hadn’t said it back. And Jock fucking deserved to hear it. He needed to hear it.

  She opened her eyes and looked out the window, ignoring White’s breath at her ear, the feel of his hand slipping farther up her thigh. She was going to fight. She’d spent ten years telling herself she’d never be a victim again. That strength and determination welled up inside of her, pumping hot blood into her brain. Think, Fiona. Think. She had to get back to Jock. She had to tell him she loved him, and then she’d arm herself with a shovel. She’d dig and dig until she was goddamn bloody and wouldn’t rest until Jock was clean inside.

  She didn’t have her gun, but she’d taken self-defense classes and was strong-ish. Strong enough to take on Henry, who was pasty and thin in a sickly way. He looked like he’d be out of breath running fifty yards. Looks could be deceiving, though, so she had to play this smart.

  They were heading toward the coast. Salty air wafted through the vents, and seagulls circled overhead. He must have a beach house. Damn it, she wanted a damn beach house, too, but she wanted to be there in her bikini, drinking a Corona, her only worry deciding which excellent restaurant to order takeout from.

  She hadn’t wanted to live for ten years. Well, she had wanted to live, but she hadn’t wanted to live. It’d taken all of this, ending up sitting in the car with fucking White, for her to realize how goddamn badly she wanted to live life to the fullest.

  They didn’t reach the ocean. They were close; she could tell by the smell seeping through the vents in the car, but she didn’t see water. She watched the road, careful to observe how to get back to the main highway.

  Finally they pulled down a gravel drive, which led to a small cottage. It had clearly been upgraded from what it originally was, and the additions stood stark and bland against the original quaint house.

  Right. Forget about the stupid building. If she played her cards right she’d never have to set foot in it. The car rumbled on gravel which would be hard on her feet, but just beyond that was plush grass and a dense forest. She might cut her feet getting away, but she couldn’t let herself be led into that house.

  She’d been working to untie the knot on her hands the entire drive, and she was pretty sure she had it loose enough to make it come undone with a solid yank. The men should have used handcuffs, but they must have thought the women were so cowed that they wouldn’t try to break knots.

  Harvey had to go down first, Fiona concluded. He hit harder and could run faster. This could all go bad, honestly, because if she failed, they’d wreck her. But what did it matter if they planned to kill her anyway?

  She’d go down fighting. Fuck this lame bullshit. Jock would want her to fight. Even if he ended up having to identify the defense wounds on her dead body. She shuddered as the car rolled to a stop. She couldn’t be that pessimistic. Not yet.

  She gathered her wits and waited as Harvey put the car into park and shut off the engine. He withdrew the keys and slipped them into his pocket. As suspected, White reached for the door beside him, and Harvey slid out of the car and opened up her door.

  This was it. Now was her time. She placed a foot on the gravel, testing it for sharpness, and was relieved to feel they were smooth paver stones. Then, while White was half in and half out of the car, she pointed over Harvey’s shoulder and used the oldest trick in the book. “What’s that?”

  Harvey turned to look over his shoulder, and she brought her knee up as hard as she could and slammed it into his balls. He didn’t even curse, didn’t say a word, but followed a pained grunt with a high-pitched whine and bent over. He was on his way to tipping over to his side when she ripped her hands apart, shedding the rope, and took off at a dead sprint. A shout went up behind her—White’s—followed by Harvey’s breathless, “Fucking cunt!” but she was already in the grass, pulling the gag down to her chin to inhale more oxygen. She made it to the tree line just as a gunshot ricocheted off a trunk near her head.

  She didn’t even let herself scream, not wanting to waste the air, and kept running, kept going. She took a hard turn as she heard a body crashing after her. She needed to make it out to the road. Someone had to see her there, or there’d be another house…goddamn, she didn’t know. This was the only plan she had, and it might suck but she refused to let White touch her, refused
to die, damn it. This was not her time. She still had so much to do.

  The stupid robe she wore kept snagging on branches and she knew the fabric was ripping, probably leaving a lacy breadcrumb trail, but nothing could be done about it. Then she heard an engine in the distance. Faint but getting closer. A motorcycle. Not a car. But it was something—a person, civilization. She just had to make it to the road to flag them down.

  She ran toward the sound, her feet slipping on the roots and rocks. She tripped and fell onto her hands and knees, pain slicing into her somewhere as liquid trickled down her chin, but she ignored it and got back up. She could see a clearing in the trees. It was there, and even though the footsteps behind her were closer, even though she swore she could hear breathing, she kept going, going, going…

  She saw the shoulder of the road and had one foot in it, had caught the sight of the motorcycle rounding a bend and threw out her hand to signal the driver, when something viciously tugged her hair and yanked her back.

  “Noooooo!” she screamed, and her hands immediately went up to grasp the fingers tangled in her hair.

  “Goddamn fucking bitch!” Harvey snarled in her ear as he pulled her back into the woods, away from the road, away from safety. She didn’t stop struggling and kicked her feet, but he wasn’t letting go this time. Tears burned hot and fresh in her eyes as the motorcycle revved its engine and drew closer. It’d pass them soon. In another few seconds, it’d be out of sight. Harvey dragged her farther and farther from the road like she was nothing, like she was a dead woman walking.

  The motorcycle picked up speed and she closed her eyes, not wanting to see it pass. Except it didn’t. She saw the sleek black body of the motorcycle for one second before it turned on a screech of the back tire and the smoke of burned rubber and crashed into the trees. Right. Toward. Them.

  “What the fuck?” Harvey shouted, and shoved her to the ground to draw his gun.

  She rolled onto her side, and that was when she saw the driver. He was wearing a black helmet but she’d know those broad shoulders anywhere. He drew a gun from his waistband, aimed it right at Harvey and fired.