Covered in Darkness

by Heather Sunseri

  “I’m glad you were there,” I said. “I never got a chance to truly thank you for saving my life. Declan told me that you knew I was grateful, but I wanted to say it. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said. “That was not an experience I like to think about.”

  I angled my head, studying him.

  “Does that surprise you?” he asked.

  “A little. You didn’t even know me.”

  “I didn’t know you, but I’ve known Declan a long time, and the idea that I would have to tell Declan that you were dead… Well, I knew he was—is—madly in love with you. He wouldn’t have called me to help otherwise.”

  “So, you got close to Romeo. Declan said his trail dried up after the cottage fire?”

  “More accurately, the trail dried up when you holed up here in this house and decided to quit your job with the FBI.” He tilted his head side to side. “But now that you appear to be chasing another case, Romeo has decided to get involved again.”

  “It’s interesting, isn’t it? I don’t hear from Romeo in weeks, and then the night of the thunderstorms—before I even knew I had another case—Romeo shows up and messes with one of Declan’s horses at Kensington. Then he shows up here on the farm twice. Why?” I wasn’t even looking at Dimitri as I spoke; I was just thinking out loud.

  “You don’t know?” Dimitri asked.

  I shifted my gaze to him. “Should I?”

  “What did he give you tonight?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The slip of paper you were holding when we found you on the road… That was from Romeo, was it not?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You’re observant.”

  “So is Declan. He saw it as well.”

  “Why didn’t he ask about it?”

  “He trusts that you’ll tell him. I, on the other hand, am only available for a short time, and I don’t really care for cowards who go bump in the night and threaten my friends.”

  “Are you and I friends?” I asked. He had been hired to follow me around, essentially—even if Declan hadn’t wanted to admit it. Of course, by following me around, he had been in the right place at the right time to save my life. But did that constitute friendship?

  “We will be. As you learn more about Declan’s past and my own, you will come to count on me much the same way that Declan does. Now, what was Romeo up to with that love note?”

  I stared at Dimitri for a couple of beats before I found myself saying, “It was an email between Ryan Saltzman and the CEOs of two other power companies on the east coast. The CEOs are meeting Ryan Saltzman for breakfast in the morning. I’m guessing it has something to do with the malware that was used to take out the electricity in Louisville.”

  “So you’ve proven it was malware?”

  “We have.”

  “Do you know what kind?”

  “My analysts are still researching it. We found a signature embedded in the code: Spider Lightning III.”

  Dimitri’s eyes widened, and he sat up straighter.

  “Does that mean something to you?” I asked.

  “Yes.” Dimitri squeezed the bridge of his nose. “It means you’re dealing with some serious shit.”

  “That’s it? Serious shit? That’s all you’ve got.”

  “For now.”

  I sighed. “And how do you know this?”

  “I’m paid to know things. I take it you’re planning to go to this meeting tomorrow? I’ll go with you.”

  “What? No, you’re not. This is none of your business.” I stood and let the towel drop to the ground. “Serious shit or not, you’re not coming with me.”

  Dimitri stood as well. “We’ll talk about it in the morning. Get some sleep. If you’ve truly accessed a malware with that signature, the people behind it will know that you’re on to them soon enough—if they don’t know already.”

  He brushed past me as if we’d just had a conversation about the weather, and entered the house without so much as a glance back at me.

  I wasn’t sure what had just happened. I wanted to be irritated with Dimitri—with his arrogance—but Declan obviously trusted him, and he had saved my life. So maybe I would hear what he had to say in the morning. Or maybe I wouldn’t.

  I knew one thing, though: I would be going to that breakfast meeting.

  Chapter 15

  Declan

  Sun poured through the east-facing windows as I entered the kitchen and found Dimitri grinning over a mug of coffee. “I thought I heard Brooke’s voice,” I said, studying his expression.

  He crossed an ankle over the opposite knee and leaned back in his chair. A newspaper lay untouched in front of him, which told me David had already come and gone.

  Dimitri smiled bigger. “Oh… you did.”

  “And furthermore,” Brooke said from the living room as she entered the kitchen.

  Dimitri lifted a hand and moved it through the air as if directing a choir.

  “Ty’s on his way—Oh, good morning, Declan,” Brooke said in an upbeat tone that seemed forced. She stood on her toes and kissed my cheek. “Would you please tell your very arrogant friend that I have no need for his involvement in my case? And that I am very good at what I do.” She walked over to the coffee maker and poured herself a travel mug.

  Though she was obviously irritated at Dimitri, there was a spring in her step this morning. And did she say “case”? Since when was this her “case”?

  I met Dimitri’s stare. He lifted both brows as if to say: She’s all yours.

  “I’m going to need more information, I think.”

  Brooke sighed. “No. You don’t.” She walked back toward me, but looked straight at Dimitri. “I am the director of Homeland Security. I have a partner and a team that are highly competent. My fusion center analysts are already in the office working on what we need. We are prepared to bring the FBI in if necessary. I don’t need you”—she nodded at Dimitri—“interfering in a case you know very little, if anything, about.”

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. Apparently Brooke’s did as well, because she pulled hers from her back pocket. “Ty’s here,” she said. “I have to go.” She kissed my cheek again, then turned and headed for the door.

  I snaked an arm around her, stopping her forward motion. “As soon as you walk out the door, Dimitri is going to fill me in on whatever it is you’re not telling me.” I spoke with a gentle tone so as not to send her into an outburst of anger. “What are you not telling me?”

  “I don’t have time. Like you said, Dimitri can fill you in.” She slipped out of my arm and strode to the front door. “I’ll call you when I’m done in Louisville,” she called over her shoulder.

  “Louisville?” I yelled as the front door closed.

  Dimitri took a lazy sip of coffee. “That girl of yours seeks out trouble, mate. And apparently Romeo likes to lead her straight to it when she can’t find it on her own.”

  “What does Romeo have to do with this?”

  Dimitri picked up the newspaper and started to read the front page.

  I took the paper from his hand and tossed it to the other side of the table. I leaned in, placing my hand on the back of his chair. With my opposite hand, I grabbed a handful of his shirt and forced him to keep eye contact with me. “Why is she headed to Louisville?”

  He wrapped his fingers around my forearm and forcibly shoved me backward. “Relax. I said I would help you.” He picked up his empty mug, went to the coffee pot, and lifted it. “She took the last of it,” he said. “Unbelievable.”

  I smirked.

  He set the mug in the sink. “Those analysts of hers pulled a piece of malware from Louisville Power’s servers last night.”

  “Malware? She didn’t say anything. What kind was it?”

  “The kind that enabled hackers to take down the entire portion of the grid run by Louisville Power.”

  “So hackers caused the citywide blackout?” Brooke had been right. The storms weren’t responsi
ble. “Did Brooke tell you this? Is she sure?”

  “You really have lost your touch.”

  I ignored Dimitri’s condescending tone. “Does this mean that Louisville Power could have stopped the blackout?”

  “There was a time when you automatically assumed the worst. Question everything. Why not now?”

  “In our past life, the worst was usually accurate. This is Kentucky. Nothing happens here.”

  “Says the person who nearly lost his girl in a fire caused by a motorbike thug concocting deadly synthetic heroin. And need I remind you that you met this girl when she stopped the governor of Kentucky from using bioterrorism to kill the very people he was supposed to be serving?”

  “Good points. So, what? Are you trying to tell me that this was more than hackers?”

  “The malware had a signature: Spider Lightning III.”

  “Spider Lightning? Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

  “It would have if you’d stayed in touch.”

  “Stayed in touch? What are you talking about?”

  “We don’t have time to get into this right now. Just know that if the malware was, in fact, from Spider Lighting, then the Russians are behind the attack.”

  “The Russians.” I narrowed my eyes. “Did you see this signature or malware yourself?”

  “No, but that’s what Brooke told me by the pool in her silk nightie at three a.m.” He waggled his brows, his dark expression temporarily gone.

  “Did you tell her what Spider Lightning meant?”

  “No. But I did tell her that if she and her analysts accessed anything with the Spider Lightning signature attached to it, then the group behind this attack already knows who they are.”

  “Why is she going to Louisville?”

  “To track down a group of electric company CEOs having breakfast. It’s where the investigation is taking her. That is to say… it’s where her stalker sent her after he blew her tires last night.”

  “Dammit!” I shoved a hand through my hair. “We have to go to Louisville. They have no idea what they might be walking into.”

  “We don’t know that they’re walking into anything. The Russians are probably hiding behind their computers in some dark hole in Belarus or Latvia.” Dimitri tilted his head side to side. “However…”

  “What?”

  “I might have bugged your girl.”

  “You put a trace on her? She’s never going to trust me—or you—when she finds out you’re tracking her.”

  “You want her to stay alive, don’t you? Look, mate, I realize that you want her to think you’re trusting her to do her job, and I get that she’s good at what she does, but she’s in over her head this time. I don’t know who this Romeo is or what his part is in your girl’s life, but I do know enough about the creators of Spider Lightning to know this is not a simple attack on a tiny portion of the power grid.”

  “And you think that’s why these power company executives are getting together. Louisville Power was just the first target of something bigger?”

  “Something like that,” Dimitri said. “Maybe they’re attempting to fight this without alerting the intelligence community. Which would be a huge mistake. They haven’t the foggiest idea who they’re dealing with.”

  “Well, let’s go then. We’ll let her crash this meeting, but she needs to know that this is bigger than she’s aware.”

  Chapter 16

  “That’s the place. On the left. With the green awning.” I pointed to the entrance to Thompson’s.

  Traffic appeared to be back to normal in downtown Louisville, but with some traffic lights still on the outs, police officers and National Guardsmen were still directing traffic at scores of intersections and patrolling the areas hit by looters.

  Ty parked in the parking garage adjacent to Thompson’s, and we walked up to the front door.

  Ty stopped. “This is a gentlemen’s club. Members only.”

  I stared at the gold plaque to the right of the door. “Well then, we’ll have to improvise.”

  I pulled open the door, and we walked into a foyer decorated with dark woods and rich, ruby-colored walls. A single hallway stretched away on the other side, with a couple of doors on one side and an elevator on the other.

  A man in a three-piece suit stood behind a podium built of mahogany. His hair was thinning, and wire-rimmed glasses perched on the tip of his nose. Without moving his head, he lifted his eyes at us for several seconds. Then he looked back down, made a note with a pencil, and set the pencil down.

  “May I help you?” he said, and I almost laughed out loud at how snooty he sounded. I had to forcefully suppress the hilarious memory of the obnoxious waiter from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

  “Yes, we’re here to see Ryan Saltzman,” I said, smiling sweetly.

  He pursed his lips, and his eyes traveled from my face down to my shoes. It made me glad I hadn’t put a ton of effort into my attire that morning. I wore jeans, a blouse that covered my sidearm, and comfortable flats. They were nice flats, designer even, but I could run in them if necessary.

  “Mr. Saltzman has guests for breakfast and is not receiving further visitors.”

  I lifted my brows. “How do you know he’s not receiving anyone? Have you asked him?”

  “Because when I seated him with his guests, he said, and I quote, ‘Thank you, William, please see that we are not disturbed once our food is served.’”

  “That does seem clear,” Ty said beside me.

  “So it would seem,” I agreed. “Then we would like a table.”

  William looked at Ty. “Only members and guests of members may dine at Thompson’s on a Sunday. And since I know every member, and I do not know you, I must assume you are not a member and therefore may not dine here today.”

  “What if I told you that we are FBI,” I said, “and that we demand to speak to Mr. Saltzman?”

  William’s lips lifted into a grin. “Then I would kindly show you to the door, tell you that this is a private club, and not to return unless you have a warrant.” He removed his glasses and leaned into his podium. “Look, Miss…”

  “Fairfax.”

  “Look, Miss Fairfax. I am paid very well to make sure the members of this club can dine and gather in peace. And when people threaten to disturb the peace of the club on my shift, I get a little antsy. I might not look tough, but I have no problem picking you up and tossing you on the street if that is what’s required.”

  I squared my shoulders and leaned closer. “Are you threatening me, William?” The door opened behind me; I ignored it. Ty touched my arm, but I shrugged it off. “I’ll have you know—”

  “Good morning, William.”

  William straightened. “Good morning, Mr. O’Roark.”

  I spun around. “Declan.”

  Declan stepped up beside me. “Looks like you’ve met my breakfast guests, Miss Fairfax and Mr. Jamison. We would like a table in your main dining room this morning.”

  “Certainly, sir,” William said. His confused eyes shifted toward mine. I rewarded him with a smirk. His lips thinned into a straight line as he grabbed three thick menus, then turned quickly on his heel.

  “That was fun,” Ty said. “I assume we’re supposed to follow.”

  Declan gestured for me to follow William.

  “Of course you’re a member of this elite men’s club,” I said.

  “It’s called networking, dear Brooke. Business.”

  “Why are you always showing up?” I asked as we walked.

  “What you mean to ask is: How am I always there when you need me?”

  “Isn’t that what I said?”

  Wainscoting, wallpaper, and brass sconces decorated the hallway. We passed several open doorways on the right, and I spotted stairs and an elevator farther down the hallway on the left. Ryan Saltzman and his guests could be anywhere. They certainly weren’t in the main dining room, which was where we were led.

  “Angela will be right with you,” Wi
lliam said as he handed us menus.

  Declan pulled out a chair for me, and he took the seat to my left. Ty sat to my right.

  It was a large, open banquet-style room. I looked around the room for entrances to additional dining rooms, but saw none.

  “Is there anything else I can do for you today, Mr. O’Roark?”

  I couldn’t stop from rolling my eyes.

  “As a matter of fact, William, my good friend Ryan Saltzman is dining with some out-of-town executives that Miss Fairfax and Mr. Jamison need to speak to. If you could see to it that Ryan knows I’d like to speak with him, I would appreciate it.”

  “Of course, sir.” William cast a dark look at me.

  I hadn’t made a friend in William the maître d’, that was for sure. When he was gone, I turned to Declan. “Want to tell me how you knew where I was?”

  He leaned in. “Check the left back pocket of your jeans.”

  I stared at him wide-eyed, then reached into my pocket. I felt something small, hard, and square. I pulled it out. It sat on the tip of my forefinger and was smaller than my pinky fingernail.

  Ty whistled. “You put a trace on her?” He shook his head.

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “Dimitri,” I said. That sneaky little… How had he managed to slip that in my pocket without my knowledge?

  “Oooh. That is not going to score points.”

  I dropped the device into my water glass, then flagged down a server. “Can I get another glass of water? There seems to be something in this one.”

  “Oh, goodness. I’m so sorry, miss. Right away.” The server hurried off to fetch a clean glass.

  “He meant well,” Declan said.

  “Yeah? Well, hell is full of people who mean well.”

  Declan cocked his head. “Have the two of you thought about what you’ll say when you get the chance to speak to Ryan Saltzman? Are you just planning to flat out demand to know if he knew his entire grid and computer system were going to be compromised by hackers?”

  “Do you have a better idea? If he knew in advance, he should have called the authorities immediately and gotten help with the situation. This affected nearly a million people. And an attack on the US electrical grid—”