Covered in Darkness

by Heather Sunseri

  “Now, Brooke, you wouldn’t want to make Igor angry. I’d like to propose a deal with you. If you’ll go with Igor now, I promise I’ll let your friend Sam go after we collect our money. She’s proven to be far more interesting to us than the whore in the wig.”

  “Why don’t you just let her go now, and then I’ll go with Igor.”

  “You’re in no position to negotiate.”

  “Why did you kill Jewel?”

  “She bored me. I believe you’re more my type. Besides, I wanted you to understand what I do to people who double-cross those I care about. And you see, I care about you. I would have had you if not for Jewel. She paid the price for getting in my way. Now, I’m asking you nicely to please go with Igor. Or I will kill Sam next.”

  My hand shook as I handed the phone back to Igor.

  As Igor spoke Russian with Yury, I took a slow step backward. I was on the verge of making a run for it, but Igor ended his call and stuffed the phone in his back pocket.

  “Take another step, and I drop you dead,” Igor said. “Now either open the gate, or climb over.”

  I was out of options. I glanced over my shoulder, hoping to see a glimpse of Declan or Dimitri hiding behind a tree, ready to come out shooting.

  No one was there. I was all alone.

  Igor racked the gun.

  “I’m coming.”

  I moved to the side of the gate so that I could grab the alarm on the fence as I climbed. Sure enough, as soon as I placed my hand on the top fence plank, I felt the wire.

  And all I could do was pray I had tripped the alarm.

  Chapter 33

  Declan

  I drifted in and out of a restless sleep. When I felt beside me and found Brooke’s side of the bed cold, it bothered me that I hadn’t noticed her gone for so long. I was just about to slip out of bed and go look for her when my phone pinged with the sound of the perimeter alarm.

  I grabbed my phone off the nightstand, and pulled up the camera feed of the location of the breach—the back gate. “What the hell is that?” I said out loud. Something was draped over the gate. I couldn’t make out what it was, but I had a really bad feeling.

  Brooke’s phone wasn’t on the bedside table, so I assumed she had it. I immediately called her, but got no answer.

  Dammit, Brooke, pick up.

  I called Dimitri.

  “Did you get any sleep at all?” he asked. He didn’t sound like I’d woken him.

  I ignored the question. “The perimeter alarm just went off, and there’s something slung over the back gate. It’s too dark for me to make it out, and I can’t find Brooke.” My voice stayed amazingly calm, though I had the sickest of feelings in my gut.

  “What do you mean, you can’t find Brooke?”

  “She had a nightmare, and she got out of bed—said she needed some air. Can you just go check the back gate? Give me some peace of mind? Go armed.” Of course I didn’t need to tell Dimitri to arm himself, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. “I’ll stay on the phone.”

  I put Dimitri on speaker while I pulled on yesterday’s khaki pants and an Elkhorn Reserve polo shirt.

  “Okay, I’m outside,” Dimitri said quietly. “Walking toward the back gate. There’s definitely the shadow of something over the gate. It looks like a saddle blanket or something. No, it’s… Oh my God.”

  I snatched the phone from the bed and took him off speaker. “What is it?”

  Dimitri didn’t say anything. I could hear him breathing hard. He was running.

  “Dimitri! What is it?”

  “Oh, thank God,” he breathed finally. “It’s not her. It’s not Brooke.”

  “Brooke. What do you mean by that? Tell me what’s there!”

  “There’s a woman’s body hanging on the back gate. She’s dead.”

  “Who is it?”

  “No idea. Wait—” Dimitri’s voice cut off abruptly.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Shhh. I can hear a phone.”

  “Brooke’s? As in it’s ringing?”

  “Sounds more like an alarm.”

  I climbed the spiral staircase and checked to make sure Brooke hadn’t fallen asleep on the couch upstairs, though surely she would have heard me panicking below her. “Brooke,” I called anyway.

  Nothing.

  I went downstairs and circled the main floor, calling her name.

  Again, nothing.

  “I found Brooke’s phone,” Dimitri said.

  “I hear it. That’s the perimeter alarm. Her phone is set up like mine to receive alerts from the various gates or when the perimeter alarm is tripped. It will stop after several minutes.

  “She was here, Declan. Near the back gate. What the hell was she thinking going out in the middle of the night?”

  I squeezed my eyes closed. “She was thinking she needed some air, and that she should be able to walk around on a secure farm.” I massaged the back of my neck. I would analyze her motivations later. Right now, we needed to focus on figuring out what happened. “Start tracking her. I’m on my way.”

  I ran back upstairs, unlocked the safe where I kept my firearms, and strapped on a holster that would hold two guns and extra clips. I grabbed the lightest jacket I owned to hide the weapons from plain sight.

  Once in the SUV, I sped to the back of the farm. Dimitri was waiting, dressed and armed with his laptop and, if I had to guess, his own collection of weapons.

  He climbed in the car, opened his laptop, and began typing. “They’ve only got a slight head start on us, but they’re moving quickly.”

  “What direction?” I asked, attempting to keep panic out of my voice.

  “Toward Louisville.”

  I pointed my vehicle at the back gate, and my headlights illuminated the figure draped over it. It wasn’t Sam; it was probably the girl from the spa that Brooke had been worried about. “We have to call the police—but they’re going expect to talk with me, and I don’t have time for that right now.”

  I slammed the heel of my palm against the steering wheel, did a quick U-turn, and sped toward the main gate. I saw that my barns were coming to life. Employees would soon be tending to the needs of the horses, including Brooke’s new colt. I couldn’t risk any of my employees witnessing the terrible sight at the back gate. I called David.

  “Declan?” I had woken him.

  “I’m sorry, we have trouble. I need you to make some phone calls.” I explained the situation and instructed David to call everyone necessary on the farm and to instruct them to stay away from the back gate.

  “Police or FBI?” I asked Dimitri.

  “If you call the police, they’re coming in hot,” he said. “At least you have a friendly connection at the FBI. Not to mention you’re sleeping with the director’s daughter, who is now in the hands of Russian terrorists.”

  “Good points.”

  It wasn’t my first choice to get cops of any type involved. Too many agents or officers speeding in might tip these thugs off, push them to take action out of desperation. I’d rather they take down the grid than hurt Brooke. And I had no idea if Brooke was expendable to them.

  I hoped Jack Waller and I could get on the same page quickly. I dialed his number.

  “Director Waller,” Jack answered, alert.

  “Jack, someone took Brooke.”

  “How the fuck did that happen?” he boomed.

  Dimitri cast a glance at me. I was sure he had heard Jack’s voice through the phone.

  “Was it Romeo?”

  “No.” Though had the girl not been draped across my gate, I might have suspected Romeo myself. “It was the Russians.” I found myself gripping the steering wheel tightly out of a desire to hit something. “I’m going to get her back, Jack.”

  “I’m already assembling a team.”

  I didn’t ask how he was doing that. Just assumed he was at a computer. “We have another problem. They left the body of a young woman on one of my gates.”

  “Was it Samantha C
lay?”

  “No. The girl from the brothel, I think.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “No, I called you.”

  Jack let out a string of curses. “If we call the police, they’ll be all over you. If we don’t call the police, everyone will wonder why. FBI could handle it—tell the police it was part of the ongoing investigation into the attack on the grid.” He was thinking out loud.

  “I don’t really care,” I said. “I just need you to buy us some time. And I need someone to process the scene and remove the girl. I don’t have many neighbors, but someone is going to see a body draped over my gate.”

  “I’m sending a team to your farm. Will someone be there to let them in?”

  “Of course. My broodmare manager will meet the team at the front entrance and show them to the back of the farm.”

  “Great. Now let’s talk about how we’re going to get my girl back. Which is going to be difficult, since I have a team preparing to raid the house where we believe the Russians are operating.”

  “You know where these guys are?” I put the phone on speaker for Dimitri.

  “We didn’t until last night when you guys put tracers on their cars. We intercepted the signals.”

  Dimitri and I traded a look. He was clearly even more shocked than I was that the FBI had tapped into his signal.

  “We already had agents in the area where they went,” Jack continued, “because we’d tracked the LP computer activity there. So when your tracers approached the gated community, we were ready. The Russians led our agents straight to the estate they’re occupying. We’ve been monitoring it ever since.”

  “So your agents could see Brooke being taken there this morning.”

  “I’m surely going to check.”

  “Why haven’t you stormed the house?”

  “Because we know how to do our job,” Jack snapped. “We’re waiting for verification that none of the malicious software is capable of crashing the substations without a hacker manually taking control of their systems.”

  “You can’t do anything until we get Brooke and Sam out of there,” I said. Surely he wouldn’t put his daughter in harm’s way.

  “I’m going to text you an address. I want you to meet me outside Glenview.”

  Chapter 34

  Igor sped along the Kentucky interstate toward Louisville. Unlike Yury, Igor did not instruct me to put a black hood over my head. He did, however, zip-tie my hands behind my back and force me to lie down across the back seat. Still, I could see upward out the window, and every once in a while I caught a familiar road sign.

  An hour into the trip, we exited the interstate, and I saw a sign that told me we were headed in the direction of Glenview—exactly where FBI had traced the suspicious activity.

  “So, Igor,” I said. “You and your friends have been staying in a house in Louisville?”

  “Don’t speak,” he ordered.

  “Why? You’re obviously taking me into a very nice neighborhood. The least you can do is tell me if you’ve enjoyed my lovely state.”

  “Kentucky is… how do they say… hillbilly country.”

  I laughed. “Have you ever been out of Russia before?” I was surprised at how easily he was talking after nothing for sixty miles.

  “I’m not from Russia. I live in Moldova.”

  “So you live near the country where you guys took down the first grid?”

  “Yes. Boss says he likes to see the grid go down in person. Feel the fear. See people panic.” He glanced back at me. “Boss will like you.”

  “Who? Yury?”

  Igor’s grin made me shiver. “No, not Yury. Real boss arrive last night.”

  He slowed the vehicle and made a hard turn. Trees lined the road on both sides of the car, and they looked awfully close to the car. We were either on a long driveway or a thin neighborhood street.

  I shifted on the seat. My shoulder had begun to ache with my hands tied behind me. “You mean Sergei,” I said.

  He looked back. “How did you know this?”

  “Igor, it’s my job to know who’s threatening my state. I don’t know why you guys chose Louisville, but that was your first mistake.”

  He laughed. “We no make mistakes.” He stopped the car, shoved it into park, and shut off the ignition. I sat up and saw that we were at a house twice the size of Declan’s—and his was ridiculously large.

  Igor opened the door and jerked me out by my left arm. I cried out from the pain to my injured shoulder, and he yanked his hand back like he’d touched a hot skillet with his bare hand. “What is wrong with you?”

  “Seriously? I hurt my shoulder when you assholes blew up my friend the other day, and now you have my hands tied behind my back.”

  He scowled. “Let’s go.” This time when he grabbed my arm, he jerked it extra hard, bringing on an eruption of searing pain from my shoulder to the tips of my fingers.

  As he led me to the front door, I scanned the area. No one was outside the house, but I spotted men in two front windows on the first floor, both of them packing automatic rifles, and two windows were lit on the second floor.

  “So, you guys are actually planning to take the grid down from right here inside this house? Seriously?” I asked.

  “I didn’t tell you that.”

  “True. And that’s absurd anyway. There’s no way a bunch of cowardly terrorists took down our grid from right here in America. There’s more of you, right? More cowards, hiding behind computers in Moldova?”

  He turned on me, took a step, and towered over me. His hot breath washed over my face as he spoke. “We are not cowards. We outsmarted you stupid Americans right from… what do you call it… right from your own back yard.”

  “In there?” I asked, lifting my head toward the house. “Seriously? Well then, I stand corrected. I completely underestimated you.” I shrugged. “You did say that your boss likes to be near the action.”

  “Stop talking.” He grabbed my arm tighter as he opened the front door and shoved me inside. “I don’t say more,” he said as I nearly tumbled to the floor.

  “Miss Fairfax,” said a voice above me.

  I looked up. I was in an expansive foyer framed by stairs on each side, with a hallway balcony running up above. Yury looked down at me.

  “So nice of you to join us,” he said.

  “Like I had a choice.”

  He walked down the stairs on my left. “Now, Brooke, darling, you’re going to have to stop with the rude comments if you’re going to last very long as Jewel’s replacement.”

  “Replacement for what?”

  He smiled. “Oh, you’ll see.” He eyed me from head to toe. I still wore only a pair of running shorts, a sports bra, and running shoes. “Let’s see if we can get you some clothes first.”

  “I’ll pass. Where’s Samantha Clay?”

  “You’ll see the girl soon enough. Come.” He looked at Igor. “Please get our guest some breakfast. I’m sure she didn’t have time to eat before her morning run.”

  “You know you’re not going to get away with your big plan to take down the grid, right?” I said. “The FBI is already close to shutting you down.”

  He reached out to touch my cheek. I jerked my head out of his reach, but he was on me so fast. He took my jaw roughly in his hand. “Let’s get this straight. When I warned you to stop with such rude comments, I should have also asked you to refrain from insulting me and my men. Because, dear Brooke—” He stepped closer. I nearly gagged at the smell of coffee on his breath. “You are our guest. And guests are not rude, or they end up like Jewel.”

  I didn’t hear anything he said after the words “dear Brooke.” If I had, I wouldn’t have chosen to do what I did next. The words “dear Brooke” repeated in my head for a few seconds, and on reflex, I kneed Yury right between his legs.

  He squeezed my jaw tighter for a moment, before the pain of what I had just done set in. Then he doubled over and fell to his knees.

  I s
tood over him. “Don’t ever call me ‘dear Brooke’ again.”

  Two men carrying automatic rifles appeared out of nowhere.

  Yury looked up at me; his face was blood red. If he could have stood, I think he would have wrapped his hands around my neck and choked me to death.

  “Throw her in a cell downstairs,” he barked through gritted teeth. “We’re going to need to teach her some manners before she meets Sergei.”

  The two men flanked me and nearly lifted me off of my feet. I looked over at Yury. “You don’t really think you’re going to get away with this, do you?”

  Yury managed to stand, but he stayed far enough away from me that I couldn’t touch him again. “As a matter of fact, dear Brooke—I actually think your government will encourage the utility companies to pay when the director of the FBI finds that his daughter has been taken hostage.”

  I laughed. “Then you don’t know my father very well.”

  “Then maybe your boyfriend—the one who, I presume, is allowed to call you ‘dear’—will pay up.”

  I angled my head.

  “That’s right. I know who Declan O’Roark is. I also know that he probably thinks he can outsmart us, being former spy.”

  He wasn’t a spy, I wanted to say. Instead, I grinned. “You’ve overestimated my worth, I’m afraid. You won’t see a dime from the federal government, or from Declan O’Roark.”

  “I think you’re wrong.”

  “Really? Well, I think this operation will be obliterated before this day is through.”

  His jaw hardened and his smile disappeared. “Take her to her cell.”

  At the bottom of the stairs, I stopped in my tracks. Six men sat at computer workstations, hammering away at keyboards. Was this where they were doing everything? From a residential house in Louisville? From six lousy workstations?

  And why would they let me see this? Either the plan was for me to end up like Jewel, or—and I wasn’t sure if this was worse—after their attack was complete, they were planning to take me with them.

  The room smelled of men who hadn’t showered in days. As I was led past the workstations, I tried to read what was on the computers, but it was either in code or in Russian, or both.