Violet Darger | Book 8 | Countdown To Midnight

by Vargus, L. T.

  She swung her head back and forth like she might be able to shake the images off, get them away, get them out of her head.

  And fresh doubt poured in. Doubt about all things in her life.

  Doubt about Owen. Doubt about Luck.

  Doubt about whether she’d ever have kids, have a family.

  Doubt about the course of her life.

  She knew it was the exhaustion. Lack of sleep did something to the mind. Made everything good in the world seem suddenly distant. Out of reach. But she just had to go a little longer.

  Her eyes went to the clock. What horror would happen if they failed this time? What new grim image would haunt her nightmares?

  Her hands balled into fists. Muscles flexing and shaking.

  No. There was no room for ifs. They had to see it through and solve this thing. Had to.

  It was like Loshak had said. They couldn’t let Huxley win.

  Darger crossed the room, past the line of evidence bags holding the originals. She connected her phone to the projector and brought up one of the photographs of the most recent clue. Maybe seeing it blown up twenty times its normal size would reveal something they’d missed before.

  She rested her rump on top of one of the tables and just stared at it for several minutes. Scanning back and forth through the pages. Hoping something would jump out at her.

  I’m just a hopeless romantic, I guess.

  Darger smirked when she read that line. First, because only a psychopath would think terrorizing the public and blowing people to bits was somehow romantic. Second, because there was a bit of glare in the photograph that obscured the “p” in hopeless, so she always read it as “homeless romantic” before correcting herself.

  When someone misheard the lyrics of a song, it was called a mondegreen. Darger wondered if there was a name for misreading a line of text in such a way that changed the meaning.

  Loshak strode into the room with coffee and donuts from the place across the street.

  “You want some fresh coffee?”

  “God no,” Darger said, shaking her head. “If I drink any more caffeine right now, I think my heart will explode. I doubt it’s helping me much at this point, anyway.”

  Her eyes went back to the hopeless/homeless romantic line projected onto the wall. She was about to tell Loshak about her text-based mondegreen when she froze.

  She’d just noticed another subtle splotch of glare, similar to the one on the word “hopeless.” It was further up the page. Not quite as noticeable. Her eyes scanned back and forth across the page. There was another one. And another.

  Darger hopped down from the desk and snatched up the baggie containing the original. She opened the bag and flipped around to the page she’d been studying on the projector, angling the paper toward the sun slanting in through the window.

  Yes. There was definitely something there.

  “Hey, you really should be wearing gloves,” Loshak said, his mouth half full of donut. “I mean, we already know who the perp is, and he’s dead. But still. We’re professionals here.”

  Darger ignored him.

  “Did you hear me?” he asked. “Gloves, Darger.”

  She stuck out her hand.

  “In a minute. Give me your coffee.”

  “What? You just said—”

  Darger took a step toward him and snatched the cup from his fingers.

  “Hey!” Loshak glared at her. “I can get you your own cup, you know.”

  Darger set down the sheaf of papers and dumped the contents of the cup over the page from Huxley’s journal.

  “Holy Christ, Darger!” Loshak’s voice came out in a hiss, and he glanced over his shoulder toward the door as if he was afraid of making a scene and attracting the attention of anyone else. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “No,” she said and pointed at the page. “Look.”

  His eyes went wide and the expression of incredulity on his face vanished.

  “What the fuck?” he whispered.

  The brown liquid of the coffee had thoroughly saturated the page, tinting it a muddy tan color. But not all of it. In the center of the page was a clear outline of a large number “2” written in something that resisted the dark stain of the coffee. Wax, Darger thought. Huxley had left a hidden message in wax.

  CHAPTER 47

  The full wax message read: Mountain home of the 2 Gunslingers. Look in the latrine. This time the clue required very little puzzling.

  Everyone knew that the director of the epic western and best picture winner, Two Gunslingers, was Lucio Mancini. Everyone also knew about his mountain home in upstate New York where he edited all of his films himself. The cherry on top was that the house’s street address was 2 Hideaway Lane, presumably the reason the number 2 was numerical in the clue unlike the movie’s official title.

  The Mancini mansion was one of many luxury homes nestled in the foothills near Lake Placid — a tranquil community in upstate New York which had once hosted the winter Olympics. The Adirondack Mountains formed a circular dome about 160 miles wide and a mile high, engulfing this region of the state with scenic forested peaks and lakes.

  They’d hit the road in the CIRG van as soon as they knew the Mancini house was the target location, but the ride from the city out into the upstate mountains would take hours, even with the driver speeding the whole way.

  The second wind of solving the clue had perked Darger up, and the nervous chatter as they embarked kept her up early on. Her molars once again gritted along with the jerky spasms in her jaw muscles, whole body gone strangely tense.

  About twenty minutes into the ride, however, the conversation petered out. Everyone got quiet. A creeping sleepiness settled over all of them — they’d been up all night and then some by now. Outside, the sun ducked behind the clouds, rendering the sky dull and gray.

  Something about the flitting green of the trees racing by on the sides of the road only served to enhance the tiredness, all that gibbering intensity of the urban sprawl falling away to nature, to acres and acres of untouched land.

  The drone of the tires on the asphalt resolved into something steady as soon as they got out of the city. It seemed to lull Darger, pull her thoughts slowly down that drain at the back of her skull. The exhausted weight on her neck and shoulders grew and grew, made her feel like a marionette with the strings slowly going slack.

  She gave in eventually. Slept in fits and starts as they chewed up ground. Her chin dipped, tucked against her chest, stayed there. The thinnest line of drool dripped down the crease at the corner of her mouth and pooled on her chin.

  The security vehicle slowly and steadily mounted an incline. Climbed that tilting asphalt. Sleep pulled Darger deeper and deeper under.

  And strange dreams opened in her head. Vivid. Nonsensical.

  In one she was in the lobby at a McDonald’s, waiting in line, gazing up at the menu now and again, though the words were all so blurry she couldn’t read any of it. She realized that the back of the head in front of her in line was Tyler Huxley’s.

  He whirled on her just then, a pump-action shotgun in his hands. She recognized the weapon right away — the Mossberg Persuader they’d found in his basement.

  The other customers screamed and dove out of the way, belly-smacking the gray tile floor and skidding over it on their torsos. The workers ducked behind the counter. Exaggerated facial expressions made all of them look surreal and cartoonish. Disturbing.

  Huxley lifted the gun as though to point it at Darger.

  She pulled her own gun. Aimed. Fired. Fired again.

  Again. Again. Again.

  The gun bucked like some thrashing wild creature in her hands.

  She had him dead in her sights, close enough range that she almost couldn’t miss, but somehow all her shots went high and wide. Tore holes in that blurry menu.

  Huxley backpedaled from her. Moved closer to the counter. Still bringing the shotgun up.

  He swerved the barrel toward himself. Opened his
mouth. Settled the metal under his palate.

  His hand flexed. Squeezed the trigger.

  The shotgun boomed. His head burst. Exploded. Red flung in all directions.

  Skull vanished. Head reduced to a stump of chin.

  And his headless body fell. Settled into that awkward final position, sprawled with the shotgun resting on his chest, just like they’d found his corpse.

  Darger shook herself awake then. Heart pounding.

  Her eyes swiveled everywhere. Took in sunlight, an orange glow replacing the gray beyond the windshield. She knew somehow that they were almost there.

  She took a breath, ribcage shaking a little. Loshak watched her out of the corner of his eye, but he didn’t say anything.

  The sun glared overhead as the CIRG truck turned onto Hideaway Lane. Beams of that orange afternoon light filtered through the splayed limbs of the eastern white pines that dominated this section of the Adirondacks.

  Chunks of gravel littered the dirt road, which had been rutted into a washboard by rain and runoff. The truck juddered and crunched its way up the slope. Almost there now.

  Darger rubbed a knuckle at her right eye. Felt the sandy sting there and made herself stop.

  Loshak slipped on a pair of aviators next to her. The mirrored lens covered his red and puffy eyes. He took a slug of coffee, grimaced a little.

  “Cold?” Darger asked.

  “Worse. Gritty. How does that even happen? I’ve been making coffee for forty years. Never had it come out grainy like this.”

  Dobbins was all suited up again, his body swaddled in bulky Kevlar, though he kept his helmet off so he could guzzle down one of Fitch’s energy drinks. The pungent bubble gum stench of Monster filled the cabin as soon as he cracked the top. Now he tipped the can back to shake out the last drizzle.

  “I can’t believe you guys can drink that shit,” Alvarez said.

  Dobbins shrugged and smiled.

  “Keeps me frosty.”

  “I like that Ultra Purple flavor, man,” Fitch said. “Tastes like purple Kool-Aid mixed with Fruit Stripe Gum. Fucking incredible.”

  “Hey, if it keeps you from zonkin’ out on the job, you guys can drink zebra piss for all I care,” Alvarez said. “Smells terrible, though.”

  Dobbins chuckled. Then he pulled on his helmet and started going through his warm-up routine — stretching, rolling his head from shoulder to shoulder to the extent the suit would allow, fiddling with the settings on the cooling system again.

  Darger took a deep breath. Checked her phone.

  Unlike the scenario heading into Dirk Nielsen’s penthouse, they would have a comfortable amount of time to disarm the bomb in the Mancini mansion. Over an hour. This building, too, had already been evacuated and secured by local law enforcement. On top of that, the New York State Police had sent their own bomb squad into the home already and located the explosive package — an Adidas shoebox nestled under a bathroom sink. Look in the latrine.

  Somehow all of these positive developments didn’t stop a plague of locusts from swirling around in Violet Darger’s gut, stirring up a nervous froth. She wouldn’t relax until it was over and done.

  Even if there was some suggestion of this being the last bomb, they would need to search the place thoroughly once the device was disabled. This would be a much bigger building to sift through, of course. Googling the address had turned up an old Zillow listing for the property from years back. According to that, the square footage checked in at just over 11,000. Immense. Darger had flipped through some of the pictures, looking at, among other things, a spa room, a sauna, and a lot of taxidermied animal heads mounted on the walls throughout the house. It reminded her of an Aspen ski lodge decorated by someone who went on a lot of safaris.

  She shook her leg again as she went over these thoughts, the cylinder of her calf flexing and throbbing, expending energy.

  “Here we go,” Alvarez said, looking out at the road ahead where the Mancini estate took shape.

  The massive lodge-style house sat atop the hill ahead of them. Windows bracketed the stonework of the hearth and chimney, making about two-thirds of the front of the mansion glass panes veined with thin strips of wood, and the other third colorful rock and mortar clearly hand-built by a master stonemason. The glazing went right up to the roofline, too, revealing the vaulted ceiling beyond.

  The CIRG truck climbed the last bit of road and then curled onto the driveway. The blacktop ramped upward at an even steeper grade, coiling around trees and shrubs. It took the house out of view for a few seconds, and then a final sharper curve spilled them directly in front of the detached garage with a steep staircase leading up a rock face to the main house.

  The trees parted here for the house and yard, and that made the sun shine brighter. Darger squinted. Felt that sandy sting in her eyes.

  Dobbins did that I’ve-gotta-pee jog in place again. Then he pogoed straight up and down a few times. Darger had to give it to him — he seemed more alert than any of them by a wide margin, and that was a good thing.

  “OK. Go time,” Dobbins said, adjusting his helmet one last time. “Let’s do this.”

  CHAPTER 48

  The door of the truck glided open, and Dobbins stepped out onto the paved driveway. His exaggerated footsteps almost made him seem like an astronaut stepping down onto the surface of the moon.

  He jogged in place again, the bulky suit bobbing along, and then he bounced on his feet and threw a flurry of punches into empty space. Shadowboxing seemed to be his go-to method of getting some adrenaline going.

  Darger jumped out next, wanting to stretch her legs. She stopped just outside the van and noticed several New York State Police cruisers clustered on the other side of the sprawling driveway — they seemed to want to give the CIRG team their space. After a beat, she moved on.

  The blacktop felt almost soft under her feet, as if the heat of the day had melted it a bit. Her ankles cracked and popped as she crossed the tilted ground, footsteps choppy, joints a little stiff from sitting for so long.

  Then she moved off the driveway and into the grass, moving toward the tree line at the edge of the property. The fresh mountain air swirled around her, and the details of her footsteps faded into the background. She sucked in a big breath, held it for a beat, then let it out slowly. Even being a little warm the air felt somehow crisp after sitting in the stuffy confines of the CIRG truck for hours. Refreshing.

  She closed her eyes and took a few more deep breaths. It smelled nothing like the city out here. Clean air in place of garbage and car exhaust. The vaguely sweet aroma of cut grass.

  She turned then, let her gaze drift up the sloping land to the house.

  The mammoth home seemed more imposing up close. A hulking structure at the top of the hill that seemed to lean over her. Threatening. Sunlight glared off all the windows, made the whole thing shimmer around the dull rocks of the chimney.

  The others circled around Dobbins again, chanting positivity, doing that shoulder pat pump up again. From a distance, they looked like children, Darger thought, preparing for some game, some sporting event. These couldn’t be the adults who kept citizens safe from the violent creeps of the world.

  And yet… she had to admit that the CIRG guys seemed loose. Even now, Dobbins, Alvarez, and Fitch were laughing. That calmed her some.

  They were pros. They seemed so goddamn competent. Had this streak of cockiness or pride without being obnoxious. Probably something they had to develop in order to do the job.

  It reminded her of the innate confidence she’d observed in some medical doctors, particularly surgeons. A belief in themselves beyond what seemed reasonable, for people’s literal lives were in their hands every day.

  By the time she rejoined Loshak and the others, Dobbins was halfway up the staircase to the house. He turned back. Gave a thumbs up. Then he moved for the door.

  Darger watched Dobbins head in. She yawned and stretched as he disappeared inside.

  Then she reluctantl
y climbed back into the CIRG truck to watch on the cam feed. It seemed darker inside now, her eyes having quickly grown used to the sunlight.

  By the time she sat down in front of the console, she realized that it smelled vaguely like a pet store inside the vehicle — the stench of exhausted human bodies secreting adrenaline in a confined space. Bodily and acrid. The stench was oddly familiar — like some kind of soft cheese, she thought. Baby Swiss.

  Darger wrinkled her nose. Tried to focus on the screen.

  The camera jounced along with the gait of Dobbins’ footsteps. Glided through a rustic living room with exposed wood everywhere. Turned left into a back hallway.

  The light grew dimmer and dimmer as the agent walked away from those windows on the front of the house. Shadows thickening. Bleeding the color palette to grayscale.

  Dobbins moved toward the place where the bomb lay waiting.

  CHAPTER 49

  The camera passed through a doorway — the pale wooden border of the jamb framing the screen for a moment. Dobbins knelt then. He’d reached the guest bathroom where the explosive device lay.

  A brass faucet and sink slid past on the monitor in the back of the CIRG truck. Then the bomb swung into view.

  The camera held there for a beat. Rose and fell in time with Dobbins’ breath. Then the lens edged closer and closer to the device. For the moment Darger couldn’t really tell what she was looking at.

  It was housed in an Adidas shoebox. Tucked in the cabinet beneath the bathroom sink. The murky shadows there swathed the package, rendered the footage a little grainy.

  “Shit,” Dobbins said. “Looks like I’ll be working in tight quarters here, so… uh… yay.”

  “We can’t really see what you’re looking at, Dobber,” Alvarez said into the headset, his voice more subdued than before, just taking on that raspy edge of exhaustion. “Want to talk me through it or maybe get a little closer?”

  Dobbins swallowed audibly, the sound strangely clicky through the tinny console speakers. He leaned forward, the camera pushing into the dark place underneath the sink.