DARC Ops: The Complete Series

by Jamie Garrett

  “You’re perf—”

  Cole silenced her with a kiss.

  “Okay,” Annica said, “I guess I like shutting up when you give me such a good reason.” She reached out from the hammock to an external mini fridge. “This is sorta perfect, though.” She brought out a bottle of champagne.

  “Oh,” Cole said, sounding pleased. “Look at that. Moet?”

  “I think it was supposed to be for everyone, but they’re not here.”

  “I’m glad they’re not.”

  The radio crackled again, sputtering out a few words in Ethan’s voice. And then, more clearly: “Team X with two en route.”

  Annica seemed to let out a breath Cole hadn’t known she was holding. “I’m glad Ethan’s okay,” she said.

  “Did you hear what he said? Two en route?”

  “Kalani and her sister? Sounds like they’re okay, too.”

  More talking on the radio. Jackson now telling Mira at the base, the “nest,” the kind of preparations that were called for when receiving a live suspect. The captain. He mentioned the words “chair” and “rope,” among others.

  “Wonder what they’re going to do to him?” Annica said.

  “Nothing illegal.”

  “No torture?”

  “I wish,” Cole said, chuckling. “But I guess I got him pretty good in the nose.”

  “And he’ll probably get it someplace else where he’s going.”

  The both stayed quiet for a minute, letting this last statement and its profound truth ring out fully.

  And then Annica said, “Where are we going?”

  “Not there.”

  “But where?”

  “Not Hilo, either,” Cole said. “Let’s not ever go back there.”

  “The pole house, then? Should we anchor off the beach?”

  Cole kissed her forehead. “Let’s just anchor here.”

  “Okay.” Her hand had slipped under his shirt, playing up his chest. “For how long?”

  “As long as you can stand it.”

  She liked feeling the vibration of his voice through her body as she lay on top. “I can stand a lot of you,” she said.

  She felt his face, the tip of his nose moving and smelling through her hair. And then his lips. She felt him kiss her there as the boat tilted, swinging back sharply. Cole’s body tensed up underneath her.

  “Oh, shit,” he said.

  Another wave.

  She’d forgotten.

  “Shit,” he said. “Hold on.”

  She was already holding on. It was all she wanted to do, tsunami or no tsunami.

  They fell off together, sliding off the side of the hammock and landing against the wall of the yacht as the deck tilted back even more steeply. And then leveling off, tilting down so that Annica rolled back over Cole, who caught her in his arms.

  “That wasn’t so bad,” she said, staring down at his smiling face. The ocean rolled gently underneath them, rocking them from side to side. Cole copied the motions, rocking his hips into her. Annica moaned as his hardening cock came into contact with her clit, sparking her arousal all over again. The man was fucking insatiable, and she loved it. She grabbed the sides of his head, pulling his mouth toward her.

  They’d survived. The bad guys had been rounded up—Captain and Tommy both being held by DARC Ops for interrogation in the coming days. Everyone was safe, back at the nest, and she and Cole were safe out here. Out in the middle of the ocean, in their own little world. Somewhere they were staying for a little longer. The rest of the mission could wait. They’d survived it so far, and they would survive whatever was coming next.

  Right now, all that mattered was Cole’s lips and hands, brushing against her skin, and his body, rolling over hers and pressing her into the deck. They’d survived for this, and Annica was never letting go again. She was ready. She was safe. The future would sort itself out. DC, San Diego, or even staying here in Hawaii.

  It didn’t matter.

  She was home.

  Thank you so much for reading Annica and Cole’s story. Click here to be the first to know when the next DARC Ops books is published.

  Dark Enemy

  1

  Holly

  Bill had been lingering over her shoulder a little too long in the leather-furniture-clad mocha-lounge-themed break room in a Virginia CIA office. The phony trendiness of the room was so artificial it almost pained her to stay hiding there, a place she was told once held the photocopy machines. She could almost taste the toner in her coffee. Bill was still lingering, but now he stood by the water cooler, taking another paper cupful and then slurping it empty. Finally, she had to say it. “Hi, Bill,” she said, with maximal effort to keep the words from sounding as nasty as she felt. He didn’t deserve it. The way she felt had nothing to do with poor old office Bill. She also knew better than to make eye contact, moving her gaze back to her laptop screen whether he responded or not.

  “It’s Friday,” he said. “So, what the heck’s wrong with you?”

  Through all his slurping and lingering, the man had a point. Even an office drone like Bill could sense something was wrong with her. Something on a human level. A rare breakthrough. And a rare slip of emotions for Holly.

  “Unless you’re working the weekend . . .” he said.

  “It’s not the weekend,” Holly said. “It’s what’s about to start in twenty minutes.”

  “Yeah. It’s the weekend in twenty minutes.”

  “It’s also the party,” she said, imagining the scene of Jim Clayton’s retirement party already taking shape on the floor below them. Cake and Chinese food, Mr. Clayton’s favorite dichotomy. The two poles of his personality, salty and sweet. Holly had mostly known him as sweet. For so long, she’d had her cake and eaten it, too. But now the future spanned out in trays and trays of spicy Szechuan Chinese. That was what he was leaving her with. A salty, spicy new boss. She felt the heartburn coming on just thinking about it.

  All Bill could say about it was, “Oh.” And then another slurp.

  Some days, Mr. Clayton was the only person she cared about at the field station. He was her beginning, the man who got her intelligence career started. Through his tutelage, he’d rescued and reinvented Holly from the techie equivalent of a street thug: an unrefined basement hacker who became a blip on the radar after hacking a little too whimsically one night in college. A case with law enforcement that went away after a nod from Clayton, from the CIA. A nod that became a handshake. Then an offer. He’d made Holly an offer she couldn’t refuse.

  “I liked him, too,” Bill said, talking of Clayton as if he’d passed away. Holly hated funerals.

  This party was a funeral.

  “Like,” she said.

  Bill sputtered and said, “What? Like what?”

  “You like him, not liked. He’s still with us.”

  “Well, for twenty more minutes, I guess.”

  Holly finally turned away from the laptop screen, her work equivalent of minesweeper, to observe Bill’s latest linger: standing next to a tall office fern, and then caressing it softly. She asked why.

  “Just checking if it’s real,” Bill said, turning back to her. “So, I take it you’re not too excited about Mr. Johnson.”

  Just the name itself got her started. Gary Johnson was the horrible excuse for a man who’d be replacing Clayton.

  “He’s actually a good guy,” Bill said. “I mean, if you just give him a chance.”

  She gave him a chance. She was still continuing with those chances. It was he, rather, who seemed to have closed the door. He’d started in management of their department with his mind already made up, introducing a negative bias from the onset. It didn’t help that he had personally stuck his neck out to insist that Holly not get hired. She assumed that it helped him that their boss was out of the way for the second in command, Johnson, to take the reins. And now to possibly take Holly’s future in his hands, and crush that future with a merciless vice-like grip.

  “Have
you ever spent any time with him outside work?” Bill asked. “He’s a completely different person.”

  “Different in what way?” Holly said. “You mean, less spiteful and hateful?”

  While Bill frowned, Holly imagined in what universe Bill and Gary Johnson had spent any time together. At work, they were pretty far removed on the totem pole. She couldn’t imagine Gary Johnson hanging out with the lackeys.

  There was no need to explain it to Bill, however. She figured the less said, the better—especially if he’d known Johnson socially outside work. She made a mental note of that.

  “I know I can’t convince you,” Bill said. “But he’s actually a—”

  “Don’t,” Holly said, interrupting the beginnings of another try at persuasion. “Don’t try, it’s okay.”

  “Well, you’ll see . . .”

  “Right, I’ll see.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Bill said.

  “Right,” Holly said. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “Finer for you right now, since you’re off soon. Since it’s a real Friday for you. I’m sticking around late, and then all day tomorrow.”

  Holly wanted to make a snarky comment about what kind of scanning work he’d have to do, or what router issue had kept him so occupied. But instead she smiled and nodded and said, “Good luck.”

  “You, too,” Bill said.

  Another clock check, the red digital characters signaling the end of her work day, one of the few days of the week where the clock actually mattered. Holly folded down her laptop screen and followed Bill out of the break room, him heading east and her west, images of her kindly old boss smiling and waving moving through her mind. He’d smile and wave and step aside for his replacement, Johnson, and then there would be no more smiling from anyone.

  She opened the stairwell door, half expecting to see the grimaced scowl of Johnson smoking in the stairwell, leaning back on the handrail, waiting for her. He’d nod for her to come in, close the door behind.

  Her knees suddenly felt weak, making the idea of stairs, and certainly her new boss, highly problematic. Holly let the door shut, remaining on the near side of it, still in the hallway. She turned around and looked back to a small service elevator. Should she really use an elevator for a single floor?

  You bet. She pressed the button without any further hesitation, and the door slid open with even less. Then she saw his smile. Johnson was smiling. Why was he smiling?

  Gary Johnson was alone in the service elevator with a mail cart topped with various chilled plastic bottles of soda. He nodded for her to come in.

  She stood in place, frozen, but beginning to warm. The warmth started in her face.

  “Going down?” he asked.

  She sure as hell felt like it.

  “Let’s go,” he said, saying it softly. It scared the crap out of her. She didn’t like the soft pleading tone he’d use for commands. His passive aggression, the seething hatred felt under the surface the whole time Mr. Clayton had been in charge. She’d seen enough of it to know Gary for exactly the kind of man he was. Someone she wouldn’t be surprised to learn had “a problem with women,” especially a woman student. Especially a woman hacker.

  “You’re going down,” he said, “because you pressed the down button. Otherwise—”

  “Actually, sorry,” Holly said, her brain misfiring a few times before providing the answer. “I think I need the exercise.”

  “You need one floor of exercise?”

  “All I can get.”

  Johnson held the door open as it closed on him, the reflective metal sliding back into the wall. “Hey, just a second,” he said. “Are you alright?”

  “What do you mean, am I alright?”

  “I know, you’re sad. Right? I know . . .”

  “Am I sad Mr. Clayton is leaving?”

  “Yes,” he said. “You are. And it’s okay.”

  “Yeah.”

  Johnson said, “I’m sad, too.”

  The door began to slide shut again, and it was his foot this time, kicking over fast and knocking the door away as if he’d done it millions of times. As if it was his job, hard and swift and without thought.

  She half wanted to get it over with, finally just walk in the elevator and endure the fifteen seconds of awkwardness on their trip down. Or she could turn around and walk away. Deal with him another day when he actually was her boss.

  She supposed he was already, in some small way. He was a superior. It was almost inexplicable and horrible, but it was the truth. It was the reality, staring right back into her face.

  Johnson stepped forward, this time not to knock the door back, but to leave the elevator entirely, still smiling at her, so damn polite and snarky. “Let’s hold on a minute,” he said.

  Holly backed up a few steps, a cold tingle rushing down her spine.

  “Let’s just hold on,” Johnson repeated.

  “Okay... What about the drinks cart?”

  “We don’t have to hate each other,” he said as the door began to shut. It made a slight scraping sound as the door came closed against the wall frame, and then a solid thunk, followed by the deeper mechanical groaning of the elevator dropping away from their floor.

  What was he talking about? Hate? Of course she didn’t hate him. It was the other way around.

  “Do you get what I mean?” he asked.

  “No, sir,” she said politely.

  “You don’t have to call me sir. But thanks.”

  “How about in twenty minutes?” Holly said. “Will I have to, then?”

  “You mean ten? No thanks.” He stood in place, still, thank God. In the silence, Holly wondered about the sad drink cart, alone in the elevator, maybe rolling slightly to one side as it dropped down through the dark toward the party below. She imagined the doors opening up to some delightfully surprised guest. She imagined the warmth on the other side. Life down there, so far away.

  Johnson brushed some lint off his shoulder and said, “I actually don’t start until Monday.”

  Holly nodded.

  “And you’re off till then, anyway.”

  Holly nodded and said, “Yeah,” but left out the thank God. Johnson was on a need-to-know basis with pretty much every single bit of non-work-related information, especially in this last weekend of him not yet existing as her boss.

  He nodded his head a little, plus a little youthful cocky smile. “We should get some exercise together.”

  Holly couldn’t quite register the reason for her repulsion, but she felt it strong and growing.

  “Take the elevator down to the bottom and then race up the stairs,” he said. “Race to the top.”

  “Not in these shoes,” she said quickly.

  “Fine. So what can you do in those shoes? Can we be friends? They’re nice shoes, by the way.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So what do you say?”

  “I say . . . sure.” She paused. “Gary, were you ever aware of a time or a place or reason that were weren’t friends? I mean, I’m trying to put it all together here.”

  “Put what together?”

  Holly said, “I’m trying to figure out what we’re coming back from to now be friends.”

  “Oh.”

  “Weren’t we always friends?”

  He smiled and said, “Of course.”

  “Right? I thought we were good.”

  “Of course, we were and are,” Johnson said. “But any time you want to get real with me, and have a real discussion, you know where my office is. I’ll be moving into Mr. Clayton’s on Monday morning.”

  Holly instantly wondered if she could get through her entire CIA career without having to step foot into that fucking office. Not a single time. Not once. No.

  “By the way,” Johnson said, “I’ll be evaluating you on a day-to-day basis. Not on some bullshit that went down in the past. Okay? Not on some old grudge.”

  “Bullshit like what?”

  “Huh?”

  Holly
said, “What’s the grudge?”

  “How you got hired. It doesn’t matter that you were his pet project. It doesn’t matter how I thought we should have left you to rot in jail. None of that matters anymore. Got it?”

  She could hear the words and see his face contorting ever so slightly as he said them, but she couldn’t feel out the true intentions behind it all. At least not yet. She’d learned not to take anything he said or did at face value. She knew not to get lazy and assuming about him, or to take her eye off the target when Gary was around. He’d shown enough evidence that he was a master manipulator, among other things. Until that moment, she’d been able to coast along, avoiding him, and that had continued to be her plan, up until the elevator doors opened. It might not be possible to coast much further.

  She could stick it out.

  Could she believe him?

  No. But she could stick it out. “Thanks,” Holly said, “for your honesty and frankness.”

  “It’s the least I can do. And I’ll be honest again: I’m more or less doing this for me. Not you. You know what I mean? It’s been awkward. Right?”

  Holly waited to see where he was trying to take her before saying anything.

  “You can admit it,” Johnson said. “It’s been extremely awkward, all this time. All this tension between us. You knew I didn’t like you; you knew I didn’t trust in your ability.”

  “You still don’t.”

  “Which one?” Johnson said.

  “Like and trust. I don’t think it’s possible to just gain those overnight because you want to take the awkwardness away.”

  “I’m doing it because I’m your boss and it’s the right thing to do. Turn over a new leaf.” He smiled coyly. “Dare I say, a new beginning?”

  “This is a lot.” Holly took a moment to think it through, trying not to sigh too loudly. It was definitely a lot to take in. Especially right now. Johnson had a habit of cornering his opponents, of hitting them hard. Part of that killer’s instinct is why he was in the position to take over command in this little boutique branch of the CIA. And a good part of that scared the crap out of her.

  She took another breath, and held it.