by Vicki Hinze
“Hello.” He sounded fuzzy.
“You’re still sleeping?” She thumbed the blinker, stroked the steering wheel.
“We were up late, Darcy,” he reminded her. “You okay?”
“Not exactly.” Her fear of getting on the road and collapsing into a full bore attack prompted the call to him. She couldn’t risk it. She could hurt someone, or be totally vulnerable to being hurt. With Kunz inside the building in front of her…
“What’s wrong?” Fully alert now, he went on. “Where are you?”
“Traveler’s Inn.” So far, so good. She swallowed hard. “Ben, can you get over here now?”
“Sure. I just need to call Bobby Meyers and see if he can come in a little early at work. What’s up?”
Calmer, she talked, hoping what she was saying was what she thought she was saying. “Thomas Kunz is here. He’s meeting now with the two guys Santana was with last night. The FBI agents are here, too, but I can’t listen in—Kunz might recognize me. May already know who I am.”
“Is it really Kunz, or is it one of his body doubles?”
“Good question.” Unfortunately, it was also one she couldn’t answer. “But it doesn’t matter. They do his dirty work. I need for you to be my ears.”
“On my way.” He grunted, obviously rolling out of bed. “Did he see you there?”
“No. I’m not sure. I don’t think so. He was too focused on Santana’s men. If he’s pegged me or the FBI agents, he could scrap the operation.”
“If he seems suspicious, replace them. That’s all you can do.”
“As soon as I’m off the phone with you, I’ll call and get their take. If they’ve been outted, they’ll know it.”
“Use the cell Wexler gave you. I want you to stay on the line with me until I get there. General Shaw briefed me on Kunz. He’s beyond dangerous.”
He was. At the present time, he was hands-down the United States’ most dangerous adversary. “I’ve worked dangerous missions most of my career.”
“Not since the fire. Not up close and personal.” He sighed. “I know you’re tired of hearing that, and I mean no offense, but things are different now and backup is a good idea.”
He was right. Being asked constantly if she was all right and being reminded of the fire irritated the spit out of her—worse, it undermined her confidence—but he was totally right to state the obvious. His neck was on the line, too.
“For the record, you amaze me, Darcy. Not just your memory, but the scope of your skills. You’re better now than before the fire. Then, you were doing what came easy to you. Now, you have to do those things in spite of your mind and body putting on the brakes every time you turn around. It’s tougher work. But you do it anyway.” He talked in spurts, obviously brushing his teeth. “Hold on a sec.” Spitting noises, then gurgling followed.
The normalcy in his actions calmed her, and what he said made her feel great about herself—something she’d not felt, she realized, in a long time. Since the fire, she’d become a shadow of her former self—at least in her own eyes—and not a force for doing what she did despite the hardships. Why hadn’t she given herself credit? Why hadn’t she even seen what she’d been doing? Instead of looking at what she could no longer do, she needed to look at all she was doing anyway.
Once again, Ben brought things into focus by shifting perspective. He calmed her, helped her focus. He intrigued and excited and attracted her. Wow. A thought entered her mind and stuck. She just might be falling in love.
“You did sweep the phone Wexler gave you, right?”
“I’m not a rookie, Ben.” She’d discovered the bug before leaving the parking lot, but left it intact so Wexler wouldn’t know she was aware of it.
“I know. But it doesn’t pay to consider him a lightweight. Not when he’s keeping such heavyweight company.”
Static filtered through the line. “What’s that noise?” She tilted her purse and pulled out Wexler’s phone.
“Power lines. I’m on my way over. They always screw up the phones and radios through here. It’s a shortcut that shaves off half the time. I’ll be there in about two minutes.”
She snapped off the back of the phone. It was bugged. “Ben, are you talking on a Wexler-issue phone right now?”
“No.”
Relief washed through her. “Don’t.”
“Gotcha.” He paused, then added, “Wanna know what I was thinking when the phone woke me up?” The shift in his tone from professional to personal was blatant.
“Maybe.” She was teetering on the brink of love. If it was bad, she didn’t want to hear it. “Am I going to like it?”
“Good question,” he tossed her words back at her. “It was quite pleasant from where I sat. Want to risk it?” If he found it pleasant, it couldn’t be awful, could it? “Why not?”
“I was thinking I liked falling asleep on the sofa last night with you at my side.” He dropped his voice, deep and rich and tinged with a hint of uncertainty. “I was thinking I’d like to do that again.”
Her heart felt full, expanded, and she smiled at the dashboard. “Me, too, Ben.” Them, together, felt so right.
“Ah, good.” He let out a sigh that crackled in her ear. “That’s good.”
“I need to ask you something personal,” she asked. “Okay.”
“I know you had a god-awful experience with Diane—”
“Yes, I did.”
“So since then, has there been anyone else—seriously, I mean?”
“No.”
Now what? Did she push? Right or wrong she was going to; this was her heart, and she needed to know whether to try to protect it or open it to him. “So you’ve turned against love.”
“Yes,” he said quickly. “Well, no.” Frustrated, he cursed. “The truth is, I thought I had, but I’m not anymore. It was what I wanted, but recently I discovered that it just doesn’t work for me.” Exasperated, he sighed. “It’s personal.”
“What’s personal?” She’d need a map to track his thoughts this morning. “Your feelings about love?”
“You and me, Darcy. This...thing...between us. It’s personal.”
He loved her. Or he thought he did. Or he did and he didn’t want to love her. Something.
Movement beside her had her darting her gaze through the car window.
Ben pulled into the parking slot beside her, cut the engine and looked over. “It’s very personal.”
Even through the glass, the look in his eyes warmed her. Defining very personal could wait. For now, that look said more than enough. “We need to switch phones.” Hers transmitted to Home Base and had been equipped with a more powerful microphone.
He got out of his Jeep and came around to her car window.
She opened it. He reached through, grabbed her and kissed her hard. Darcy let him, then returned his kiss, replacing commands with tenderness, raw emotion with compassion. Revealing his feelings, as much as he had, rattled Ben.
He pulled back and stared at her, a little speechless and a lot off balance.
She resisted the urge to giggle—of all things. But Ben Kelly off balance, star struck by her kiss was an empowering feeling, a magnificent feeling. “Sit near them, eat breakfast and just put my phone on the table.” She passed him her phone. “I should be able to pick up what I need.”
Without a word, he dipped his chin and turned to go inside. At the door, she heard his voice. “You amaze me, Darcy.”
Her heart skittered, her breath caught in her throat and she got that unspeakable “he’s everything I’ve ever wanted” feeling that makes women think and act crazy.
Okay, she admitted it. She was a little amazed, too.
Forcing her mind back to work, Darcy filtered out the background noise and focused on the conversation between Kunz—or his drone—and the two men from Broken Branch.
Quickly, frustration built in her stomach. They were discussing weapon specs, hunting, fishing and the history of the festival, which was a typical celeb
ration of harvesting crops. There wasn’t a rhythm or a cadence or any other signal detected that the men were passing coded messages. In her experienced opinion, this was exactly what it sounded like—a normal conversation.
Which meant they’d already done what they needed to do.
The planning was complete.
The players were all in place.
And the shipment would be moving in through Los Casas tonight.
Chapter Seven
Within minutes, the FBI had replaced the two male agents with two women and reassigned the men to new locations. A third agent, a lone male who looked more like a nerdy kid than any kind of government employee, was tasked with tagging Kunz. He arrived on a skateboard, wearing baggy shorts, a worn-out T-shirt and a black baseball cap. Its brim rested at his nape.
Long after they were all in place, and the FBI agent on Wexler reported he’d gone to Los Casas, Ben headed to work to help cover him. Technically, Wexler wasn’t due at work until 10:00 p.m. His showing up at 3:00 p.m. didn’t do much to put Darcy’s mind at ease.
Since it was her day off, she cruised around Devil’s Pass, looking for any other known GRID members. By 5:30 p.m., she’d run into plenty of excitement about the July Fourth festival but no other known terrorists. That both heartened and disturbed her.
In the past, GRID members had worked in teams, and so far, she’d only identified Needle. Kunz, of course, was outside the team. But maybe things were different on this leg of their current operation. They certainly could be. GRID could be just traveling through Los Casas on the way to another destination. Yet all Kunz needed was a safe place to park the firework bombs until time for his minions to set them up in their designated locations and then detonate them. No better place existed than Broken Branch Redemption’s compound. Unfortunately, the place was a perfect holding warehouse for any contraband—bombs, other arms, drugs, human-trafficking.
Her skin crawled. It was remote. It was secure. It functioned under the protection of the religious-freedom edict, and all that made her job not only difficult, but nearly impossible. There was no way aside from insertion or infiltration that she or any government authority could legally get in to look around, and Colonel Drake would never approve of Darcy making an illegal attempt. Not with these stakes.
Irked at being hamstrung, Darcy left the open-air theater where an opera troupe was rehearsing for a performance scheduled for later tonight. Dozens of eager people ready to party now took to the streets in a pre-festival celebration. Ben had warned her that half the county would start celebrating today and be in the streets until midnight on the Fourth. Darcy couldn’t imagine anyone in their right mind intentionally partying for four days and nights straight. But more than a few were already three sheets to the wind and the stench of beer and booze was strong on the street.
She stopped at the grocery store, picked up a few items and then took them back to the cottage.
After storing them, she fixed herself a sandwich and grabbed a soda from the fridge. Too many honchos were in town for a simple pass-through. Santana and Kunz.
And Kunz had broken the cycle. He had not been wearing a red shirt.
Did that mean he was authentic, or a Kunz-clone? Did it mean anything at all?
Feeling her anxiety level spike, she sat down in the middle of the living room floor and meditated. There was nothing left for her to do but wait until dark, then stake out Los Casas and observe the shipment.
At 8:00 p.m. Ben phoned.
“Time must be getting close,” he told her. “Wexler just shut down two lanes going in each direction and gave me the rest of the night off. He said he’d take the incoming.”
“Can he conduct your inspections?” Darcy mentally reviewed Wexler’s dossier. His expertise was in management, not specific to entomology, like Ben. With the amount of food imported, someone with Ben’s expertise as a chief inspector should always be on duty.
“Normally, if he runs into anything suspicious, he just calls me in to come take a look.”
It was what he wouldn’t call Ben in for that worried Darcy, and judging by his tone, Ben worried about that, too.
“I’m on my way there.”
“Better let the colonel know.” Ben sighed. “This feels like it and Wexler’s got a narrow window. He’s only scheduled to work until 11:00.”
It did feel significant, but then often when the instincts were on high-alert, an operative got that sensation and it proved false. She’d contact Home Base on the first hard sign. They had already been given a heads-up, and with the FBI being on-site, that’s really all she had to give them at the moment. “Why did Wexler really want to work tonight?”
“He said he didn’t want to take Elizabeth to the opera. It’s true that he hates it, Darcy. He gripes every year.”
He had mentioned it to her as well. “But he goes.”
“Normally, yeah.”
“So why not this year?”
“I don’t know.”
She couldn’t imagine Lucas Wexler liking opera. So without Needle’s decoded segment—which Langley had not yet verified as decoded accurately—Wexler’s working tonight really didn’t prove a thing. To avoid the opera, if they had one, he’d likely volunteer for a stint in the Foreign Legion.
Darcy scanned the Jeep for listening devices or explosives—just in case Kunz had seen and/or recognized her—but found none. She pulled out her hotline-to-Home Base phone and put it on the seat beside her. Her nerves stretched tight, preparing for what could come. She cranked the engine and blew out a long, steadying breath.
Watch it, Darcy. You don’t have much wiggle room on the nerves. Keep it cool and calm. Just observe, and if they bring anything across the border, hang back and see where they go with it.
She turned right and pulled onto the dirt trail that led to Los Casas, her tires kicking up a dust devil behind her.
Every instinct in her body warned her the last of the fireworks would come in tonight and that Kunz’s GRID goons would take them to Santana at Broken Branch Redemption. It was the logical place for the other two shipments to already be stored. Kunz certainly hadn’t been in contact with anyone else around here, and it’d be atypical for him to wait until three days before he intended GRID to use the bombs to position them inside the States. That left just too little time to flex if their plans hit a snag.
Former missions proved Kunz liked lots of flexibility and always had at least two backup plans.
About a third of the way to Los Casas, Darcy heard her phone ring and answered.
“You almost here?” Ben asked. “Wexler is acting really edgy. I’d say they’re due to arrive.”
“I’m on my way. Watch him closely. Whatever is done, he’ll be in the middle of it.” She swept a windblown lock of hair back from her eyes. “Who else is working tonight?”
“Mick. Bobby Meyers is on the schedule now and coming in later.”
Bobby Meyers had been at Los Casas for about five years. His dossier was clean. “Did you say Mick? The Oasis’s Mick?”
“Yeah. He fills in when someone’s out sick. James Grady was on the schedule until nine, but he’s down with the flu. Frankly, I think he wanted an excuse to miss the opera, too.”
What was wrong with these men that they just couldn’t say no? “Is Mick qualified to be there?”
“He’s been filling in since long before I got here, Darcy. No clue what his qualifications are, but when I’ve worked with him, he’s always been on the ball.”
Something didn’t feel right. Just didn’t feel right. Ben was saying something but he was breaking up. She was hitting a dead zone. Probably trouble on his end. She was on satellite—good almost anywhere. “You’re breaking up, Ben. We’ll talk when I get there.”
“No, Darcy! Land...”
“What? I didn’t get that.”
“Land...”
The line went dead.
What had he been trying to tell her? She hit a rut that jarred her teeth and dialed him bac
k. Her phone was dead.
Landline. Ben had been talking on a landline. It was her phone that was out—and now it was dead.
She checked the phone. It appeared to be fully operational. So why was it dead?
Her chest went tight and blood pounded through her temples. She hit the ledge of a deep rut—
And the rear right tire went flat.
You’re going to miss the shipment, Darcy. You’re going to fail. Colonel Drake blew it, trusting you with this. Thousands are going to die...just like Merry.
Darcy fought the voice inside her head, fought the bitter memories that had spurred so many nightmares, but they wouldn’t go away. Darcy with Merry in their dorm room at college. Darcy standing as maid of honor at Merry’s wedding. Merry showing up unexpectedly at Darcy’s house right after Darcy had been pulled by emergency extraction from a mission that had gone south. Two FBI agents had died and Darcy had gone home to mourn. In her mind, she saw it. Merry’s silhouette shining through the windows, leading the terrorists to believe she was Darcy. The bomb crashing through the window, shattering the glass, landing at Merry’s feet. The explosion that killed her instantly. Darcy, running into the thick smoke and fire to try to save her, only to realize that she was already dead. The huge wooden beam falling, hitting Darcy in the head, knocking her out.
The darkness.
The fury.
The guilt.
Tears flowed down her face. “I can’t fail again. I can’t...fail again.” She fumbled for Wexler’s phone, tried Ben, but couldn’t get through. Her phone was still dead. This phone of Wexler’s was dead. Dead like Merry. Like all the people who would be killed with GRID’s bombs.
“I can’t fail!” she screamed.
You can do this, Darcy.
Ben’s voice. Ben’s calm, quiet, gentle voice.
You amaze me. Then, you were doing what came easy to you. Now, you have to do those things in spite of your mind and body putting on the brakes every time you turn around. You can do this....
