DARC Ops: The Complete Series

by Jamie Garrett

  Except right now, when she focused on the sounds outside the hut, the footsteps drawing near. It was an unfamiliar sound. Unfamiliar footsteps. A pair of them.

  35

  Macy

  She froze.

  From outside, a woman’s voice called, “Tucker?”

  And then a man’s: “Macy?”

  Neither of them was familiar.

  She scrambled back near a small table beside the bed. There was a small drawer underneath that held her loaded Beretta. For the first time since she arrived at Hawaii, she thought about using it. Her hand moved automatically, drawing it out and steadying it on the doorway.

  She stood silently, fixing her gun sight to entry, her hands deadly still.

  When the footsteps came closer, she forced herself to take a deep breath. And to hide the gun. She lowered the Beretta to her side, and then tucked it behind her back. “Who’s there?” she called. It was her best attempt at a calm and pleasant voice, and not the ravings of a gun-toting paranoid delusional. She didn’t always have to greet strangers with a gun. That wasn’t normal. And it definitely wasn’t healthy.

  “Hello?” she called again. But no one answered. The footsteps had also gone quiet. She moved the gun over to one side, so she could reach it even faster, and made her way out of the hut, moving slowly and listening to every sound. Over the waves, she thought she heard voices again, muffled and indistinct. When she stepped down into the breezy darkness and into the sand, she saw three figures standing at the edge of the campfire light. They were bathed in dark orange and barely recognizable. But she recognized Tucker’s voice.

  That was all she needed.

  She felt safe again. She felt normal.

  For a moment, she thought about returning back to the hut, at least to slide the gun back into the drawer. She could then return to greet their guests as a normal, unarmed person. But Tucker’s voice reached her, calling her over cheerfully. “Come on,” he urged. “Get over here.”

  A man and woman stood next to him. Macy had never seen them before, but they stared back at her with familiarity, and with warmth. All three were smiling, walking now into the light of the fire, everyone warming up together as they met, introduced to her and shaking her hand. The woman first, Mira. And then Jackson.

  “I guess you could say he’s my boss,” Tucker said, “checking up on my vacation. Isn’t that right?”

  “That’s inaccurate,” Jackson said.

  “What is? You’re not my boss?”

  “No, you’re not on vacation.”

  Mira grabbed Jackson’s arm. “Come on, play nice.”

  Jackson pulled his arm free and wrapped it around her, pulling her tightly against his side.

  “I’m on vacation,” Tucker said, walking over to Macy.

  “Damn right he is,” she said, first smiling to him, and then looking suspiciously to Jackson. “You didn’t come here to take him away, did you?”

  “Only sort of,” Jackson said.

  “How’s that?” Tucker was now standing behind her. Macy leaned back against his chest. Both couples staring down the other.

  “I’m not taking him far,” Jackson said.

  “We’re in the middle of the Pacific,” Macy said. “Everywhere is far from here.”

  “Not the mainland. That’s pretty close.”

  “Mainland USA?” Tucker said.

  “No,” Jackson said. “Hawaii. The big island.”

  Macy and Tucker, at the same time, breathed out a relieved, “Oh.”

  “So the vacation can continue,” Mira said, smiling at Macy. “I know that’s what I’m doing. He thought he could come here without me.” Another dirty look to Jackson.

  But Jackson kept his easy smile. “See? It’s perfect.”

  Macy hadn’t ever met the man, but from what he’d heard from Tucker, whenever Jackson said something was perfect . . .

  “It usually isn’t,” Tucker said, laughing. “Perfect to you was almost a death sentence in New Orleans. Remember that?”

  “I remember New Orleans was what got you your stripes.”

  “Guys?” Mira said.

  The subtle command was quietly understood, Macy enjoying the efficiency of Mira getting them to shut up about work. She smiled again at Macy, shrugging her shoulders.

  “You’re right about me not being the boss,” Jackson said, pointing to Mira. “That’s the one you’ve got to look out for.”

  Finally, they laughed as a group. Real laughter. They were still strangers to Macy, but somehow, just through two minutes of knowing them, they felt a lot less strange.

  “So,” Tucker said, throwing the last log onto the fire. “Are you ever going to explain what the hell you’re doing here?”

  They sat on blankets in the sand, the two couples on one side of the fire, the blackness of the ocean on the other. And for a while it was silence, everyone seemingly mesmerized by the sound of the waves, the crackle of the fire. Macy could understand; it had hit her particularly hard when she’d first arrived: the feeling of peace.

  Jackson and Mira, coming all the way from the nation’s capital, must have felt similarly.

  “Part of what she said is true,” Jackson said. “If I ever had a reason to come back here, we wanted to be sure it was as a couple. The other part, the reason, is for work.”

  “A mission?” Tucker asked.

  “Maybe not a mission, per se. But there’s something going on at Hilo Harbor. Smuggling. Something you guys know a bit about.”

  Leaning against Tucker, Macy could feel his body shake with a chuckle as he said, “Someone’s trying to smuggle American fugitives through shipping containers?”

  “Something like that,” Jackson said.

  Tucker frowned. “And you need Macy to go, too?”

  She pulled away from Tucker. “Who said I wanted to go?”

  “Right,” Tucker said, laughing. “Who said we wanted to go?”

  “I thought,” Jackson said, “that you might be interested in this particular mission. Given it has certain connections.”

  Tucker’s gaze sharpened. “What connections? Is it something to do with Macy? I thought she’d been completely pardoned.”

  Jackson smiled. “Of course. She’s completely safe. The key for that whole thing to work was to get the government on board. In return, I promised them I’d check something out.”

  “Wait,” Macy said. “I thought it was—”

  “They did,” Jackson said. He smiled at her and laid a hand on her arm. “You’re safe, truly. I just may have had a hand in making the right people get off their ass and do what should have been done years ago. I owed you that.”

  Macy fell silent. She needed a moment for that. Jackson had been key in saving her ass the first time, when he’d stopped a corrupt mission commander sending in the team that was slated to kill her. That he’d intervened and saved her life again was almost too much to wrap her head around. “I thought it was an initiative from the new president.”

  “Maybe to an extent,” Jackson said. “But I may have given him your name. Told him a few hard truths about exactly what fucked-up crap had been done to you in the name of the USA.”

  Macy didn’t know how to feel about that. Just when she finally thought she’d found her feet, her world had been tipped on its end again. How was it possible that someone she barely knew cared enough to save her life? Twice?

  Jackson shrugged. “It’s what we do. Plus, even if I didn’t owe you, I would have done it for Tucker. DARC Ops is more than just a security business. We’re family.” He looked over at Tucker. “Figure that out yet?”

  Tucker grinned and raised his hand, saluting Jackson. A small gesture, but one that she could tell said everything. She supposed she should thank Jackson, too. For now all she could do was stare at him, still shocked that he’d done so much, that he’d pulled so many strings just to help her. Little, insignificant, fugitive Macy.

  “As you know,” he said, “our situations were linked. They
weren’t the same, of course. But we’re on the same side. We’re fighting the same people.”

  “And we’ve just had a major victory,” Tucker said.

  And that was the last anyone really said for a while. The rest of the time, before their guests returned to a hut down the beach, it was just the sound of waves, wind, and the silence in between.

  36

  Tucker

  Tucker closed the mosquito netting around their bed before leaning back into his place alongside Macy. The moon, full and bright, had caught a break between clouds and was now pouring through the open window. Its pale blue lit up their bed and glistened on Macy’s bare, lotioned body. She looked perfect, so much so that he’d dared not touch her. He wanted to take in the moment, his eyes fully absorbing her before they closed finally for sleep.

  “Seems like a compromise,” Tucker said, his head resting back on his pillow. “Doesn’t it?”

  “Doesn’t what?”

  “Staying in Hawaii, Hilo Harbor.”

  “Staying together,” she said, yawning. “And staying working.”

  “You too?”

  “I think I’ll go, if they need me.”

  “It might be good for you. Do a little work. Easy stuff.”

  “You’re good for me. If my goal was to do what’s good for me, then I’d keep you here in this bed, in this net.”

  “We can do that,” Tucker said. “Voluntarily, without the net. They don’t need us for another week.”

  “Another week in paradise.”

  “Well, the main island is nice, too.”

  “Not as nice as our net.”

  “We’ll bring it with us.”

  “We’ll get in trouble.”

  She was doing it again. Getting him started. Tucker reached for her, his hand grazing across her stomach as it crumpled with laughter.

  Macy squirmed, fighting his hand away. “You’ll get in trouble, if you keep doing that.”

  He had learned about her ticklishness. A weakness he tried not to over-exploit. He had his whole life ahead to learn more, her strengths and her weaknesses. The real Macy. And he was going to love every single second of it.

  She curled into him. “It’ll be hard to get back to work, though. Real work.”

  “I know.”

  “Not only that, but I almost forgot what it’s like to do work that wasn’t directly responsible for my day-to-day survival.”

  “You can start with the coconuts,” Tucker said “I’ll show you tomorrow. Climbing, splitting them open. There’s a trick to everything.”

  “You’re right,” she said, taking a deep breath against his chest. “There’s a trick to everything.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her smooth forehead. “I love you, Macy.”

  Her eyes stayed closed, but a smiled drifted across her face. “Love you, too, Tucker. Always have.”

  He pulled her close, closing his own eyes and let the feeling of her lying next to him just wash over him. She was here, safe in his arms, for good. It felt so good to know each other’s tricks. It felt so good to have what he’d wanted, to have Macy next to him while not feeling an urgency about doing something—or not doing something—to keep her there. Gone were the deadlines, the killers, the need for rescue. Gone, also, were the ulterior motives. Especially those between them. Instead they’d had a shared goal, a need to stay together. To be together. To finally, just be.

  Thank you so much for reading Macy and Tucker’s story. Cole's killed in war, but he'd never take the life of an innocent. So how the hell did he end up in the kill room with a gun to Annica Lawson’s head? Find out here.

  Dark Discovery

  1

  Annica

  The room was spinning again.

  Annica sat up in the bed, swung her legs over the edge, and placed her bare feet flat on the floor. She needed the stability, a sense of ground she’d lacked for days. Her own senses had been knocked astray since the afternoon, when things had gotten really bad. Really since that last glass of wine. Annica stared at it, the plastic cup sitting in a ring of sweat on her nightstand, the white Zinfandel inside slowly waving from rim to rim.

  Who was she kidding? It wasn’t the wine.

  Still, she could barely stand the sight of it, her stomach almost curdling with each wave of glistening liquid. It sloshed back and forth like a pendulum, the little waves in the glass symbolic of what was happening outside her room’s porthole. If she had stomach enough to get up and walk over to the tiny window, she’d have an unfortunate view of the angry Pacific, its horizon bobbing up and down. The line would move above and below the porthole with sickening exaggeration, the sky and the water trading impossible heights and depths.

  Another wave of nausea swelled through her. She had to stop thinking about the ocean. Instead, she tried to think of a cure, an escape . . .

  What was that trick for seasickness? Staring at something that wasn’t moving? She’d been staring for an hour at the insides of her cabin with no relief. If anything, it made everything worse.

  Or was the trick to stare out the window at the horizon itself?

  Just thinking about moving made her stomach heave.

  And then the most ingenious idea came to Annica: chugging the rest of her wine, then downing a few more glasses after a handful of anti-nausea pills. Maybe she’d get some sleep that way, waking up sixteen hours later, clear and refreshed and on calmer seas . . .

  Damn. While the idea of an overmedicated escape seemed enticing, it would mean she’d miss her appointment. That was the whole reason for taking this slow boat hell ride to Hawaii: an interview for what could possibly make her next big story. The idea was to meet with several cargo ship deck hands covertly, squeezing as many details as she could from their interviews. They would be her insiders, the whistle-blowers on what might be an international smuggling ring scandal. The crewmen might also be hot, and sex-deprived, in case one of her sailors ended up not having any useful information.

  It sounded exciting and romantic when she’d first thought it up. But that was back in the continental United States, and on solid ground. Were it not for the story she was supposed to chase down across the Pacific, Annica would have been flying in style. First class. Through the air, she’d reach the big island in a fraction of the time. And if there was turbulence, a fraction of the nausea.

  But here she was, on day four, the second to last before she reached the big island of Hawaii. It was also the day of her biggest interview. If she could hold her lunch long enough, Annica would be meeting with someone known as Cole, a member of the private security team that watched over operations at Hilo Harbor. He was the first to come forward, and what he had to say would be perhaps the most damaging. Cole would be the juice her story needed. Without him, all this would just be a free trip to Hawaii, and a crappy one at that.

  She took a deep breath, steadying herself. She had to think positively. Worrying about the possibility of Cole’s interview being a bust, and of the pointless and unnecessary seasickness she’d suffered through for it, well, that would do her in completely.

  She took a few more breaths, pushing the nausea away with her mind. She was fine. In a few minutes, she would get up and get dressed, and then sway out into the hall. She didn’t need pills or alcohol, or any cheap tricks against the ravages of seasickness. She needed a clear mind. She needed her story. Everything else was unimportant.

  It almost worked. Faking it till she made it—a usual go-to that had gotten her through any number of sticky situations in the past. Nausea, in comparison, was hardly a problem at all.

  She was almost good enough to stand, when the ring of her phone sent a shock wave of bile-churning anxiety through her stomach.

  It amazed her how quickly things could go wrong, how disastrously close she was to the edge of—

  No. Don’t throw up.

  Her mouth was met with a rush of saliva. She swallowed it away and answered the call to the best of her ability.

  “
Just checking up on you,” Jackson said. “I was getting a little nervous. It’s been awhile since you checked in.”

  “Yeah,” she said, trying to get reacquainted with the process of speaking. It felt so foreign.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “I hope so,” Jackson said, suspicion edging into his voice.

  “Busy interviewing, writing notes, writing. Working.”

  “Are you okay, Annica? You sound . . . drunk or something. You’re not on a cruise ship, you’re—”

  “Seasick,” she said, blurting it out. “It’s really bad. We’re in this giant fucking storm and I can barely move.”

  “Oh.” Jackson sounded almost relieved about it. Bastard. “We’ve just had that storm here on the island. Can’t imagine what it would be like on a boat . . .”

  Annica desperately wanted him to shut up.

  “High waves?” he asked.

  She swallowed again and said, “What do you think?”

  “Yeah, they sound pretty high.”

  Annica made the mistake of looking out her porthole again. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but a deep-seated reaction to her sudden pressing urge to escape.

  “I can almost hear them from here,” Jackson said.

  “Can we talk about this later?” Annica turned away from a rising wall of ocean outside her porthole.

  “Talk about what?” Jackson said. “The waves?”

  “No.”

  “I just wanted an update.”

  “You’ll get one,” she said. “After I throw up.”

  “How long will that be?”

  “I don’t know. I also have to talk to Cole at some point.”

  “Wait,” Jackson said. “You waited four days, until you’re almost at the port, to talk to Cole?”

  “Yeah. He’s been trying to change his mind.”

  “You mean he’s trying to change yours.”