“I’m already fucking armed,” Logan yelled.
“Hold on,” Jackson said. “We need to fully evaluate the—”
“What’s there to evaluate?”
“Hey,” Jackson said, slipping out of the professional radio tone. “Hold your position.” He said it as firmly as the voice that buzzed in his ear back in Mexico. Logan didn’t listen then, and now with there being so much more on the line, it would be next to impossible for him to hold any position that wasn’t already inside that building, following closely behind Gary Johnson.
Fuck it. He didn’t need permission to rescue his girl.
Logan moved fast, just under the speed of a jog. It felt good to use his muscles for something other than jaw clenching and gripping the radio like it was Gary Johnson’s face. It felt good to be doing something actually productive other than watching and waiting. He’d waited too long with their last mission, not charging in and helping Holly out of that horrible situation in the warehouse. Not being there to break the hand that had slapped her.
It felt good to have a purpose.
He moved with this purpose, sleek and fast, following Johnson as the CIA boss entered the building from the side entrance. A service entrance that DARC had already cased out as their safest and most clandestine entry point. It bothered Logan even more that the station chief was using it, too.
Logan also wondered if Gary knew about the maintenance crew and their ongoing project at the door. It would have been unlocked for just this time frame. DARC saw that as a perfect opportunity to sneak in, of course never imagining it would be used to tail the chief.
Just before Johnson opened the door, Logan saw it. An imprint on his jacket. A distinct shape. A voice in his head screamed the word. Gun.
21
Holly
Holly glanced at her watch. Crap, she was way over time. Spending too long in a database that wasn’t part of her current workload would definitely raise red flags. It might be so suspicious that even Johnson could figure things out. She rushed to copy the files of the folder onto a USB of her own before switching to the DARC USB, uploading Tansy’s files onto the CIA server. A dialogue box opened, displaying a small status bar scrolling across to completion.
Please hurry . . .
Johnson’s computer was a high-performance machine, and the file wasn’t supposed to be very large. So what was taking so long?
As it neared completion, she heard the ding of an elevator from behind the workplace, down the hall of the otherwise silent office floor. Panic set in, her shoulders stiffening with the deep freeze of winter.
Why isn’t she alone? Why hadn’t they warned her?
She had DARC eyes all over the building, and yet they were silent.
And then she remembered. The earpiece was still lying on the table. It wasn’t silent. It was still screeching, matching the same alarm tone in her head as she snatched up the USB stick and stood from the desk as quickly and quietly as she could.
Whoever she was about to meet in the hall, no matter how it went down, her job in that office had been completed. The files had loaded. She just hoped Tansy had everything he needed.
She also hoped she’d see Logan when she left the room, turning down the hall. It was improbable, illogical, and perhaps would be a bad sign if she did see him there. But she wanted to see him. Better Logan than someone sent by Godev. That Russian bastard probably had a mole working on the inside, someone who could get around without raising too much suspicion. Maybe that’s how they’d tracked her down. Maybe one of the construction guys tonight was—
“Oh, hey, Holly. Hi.”
The freeze deepened down her spine. Holly stopped awkwardly in mid stride. The voice was familiar, American. Not Logan.
“Holly?”
She turned to find Gary Johnson smiling at her like it was just another midday workday exchange and not some shady after-hours break-in. Everything normal.
Bullshit. His folder, his photos . . .
He probably knew about her break-in from the beginning, watching remotely from his own private command center.
“Where are you going?” he said, looking puzzled when she tried to slink past him.
“I’m sorry. I can’t do this right now.”
“What?” Gary said. “Do what?”
She had to bullshit right back. She had to come up with something at least approaching “normal.” She tried with, “You know. I’m upset about losing a good friend. A good boss.”
“I know,” Gary said.
“Do you know what makes a good boss?”
“No,” he said. “What makes a good boss?”
“When they treat you like family.” She watched him, but there was no change. “It’s like I lost a member of my family.”
“What were you doing in there?” he said, motioning to his office. “Do you need to tell me something?”
She thought she just did.
Gary said, “You were in my office.”
“I needed to get some work done, but my machines are down.”
“Your machines?”
“My computer. My laptop stopped working, so . . .” She looked past him to the exit sign, wondering how long it would take before she saw one of the DARC men rushing in. “So,” she said, “I gotta go.”
“No, you don’t. Hold on.” When he side-stepped to block her way, she noticed the familiar bulge of a holstered gun at his side. He turned his hips away from her, gun away as if realizing she’d seen it.
How the hell did he sneak an unauthorized gun inside the building? She could barely get a box of pizza in for the guards.
Then she remembered. The weapons trade they’d broken up, selling parts and plans for 3D-printed guns that could bypass the metal detectors. This one here, under Johnson’s coat, had definitely not missed Holly’s own internal danger detector.
While the fear still shot through her, Holly wondered when the last time he’d fired it was. Who he had aimed it at and where they were now. If they were still breathing or not. Reliability of the final product varied.
“Gary?” she said.
“Yeah?”
“What are you doing?” She tried to squeeze past him and the wall and then stopped, took a step back. “You’re blocking me. What are you doing?”
“Slow down,” he said. “Can we talk before you go rushing off like that?”
“No.” She made a move again, and now he pushed her backward, his face contorting with the effort. “Stop it,” she cried, feeling more alone than ever in her life. Even more so than she had in the warehouse. Feeling like Logan and his DARC agents were millions of miles away. Feeling on her own, millions of miles away from Beth.
Gary shoved her back and then drew his gun, training it on her steadily, barrel aimed at her face.
It was all over if she died here. Beth would have no one left to help.
“Don’t worry,” Johnson said.
“Don’t worry?”
“Just relax and don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll take good care of your cousin.”
Could she kick him in the balls and crumple him that way? Could she do it and get it off without him having time to shoot her?
She remembered hearing once that there were always a few seconds between a groin strike and the proceeding debilitating pain.
“You’re actually pretty stupid,” he said with a laugh. “It’s worse than I thought. You went and blabbed your stupid little mouth for outside help, and then you screwed things up even worse for yourself. If you just could have played along, we’d all be fine. Beth would be fine. You’d have her back with you, safe, instead of having a gun pointed at your face.”
It was still fucking pointing at her . . .
“And that little stunt you pulled in there. In my office.” He walked up close to her, his hand gripped hard around her throat. “That was great. Did you realize that you just unleashed the Russian code?” He squeezed her windpipe, and it became even harder to breathe. She was already having t
rouble with the gun pointed at her. She felt faint.
She tried to struggle a few words out, “Stop, please.”
“You should have stopped while you were ahead. You should have just taken the fall like a good little lackey. That’s what you were, from the beginning. A fake. I tried telling people that. I tried to warn them about you. You’re an idiot, Holly. I don’t know how else to say it.”
He shoved her against the wall, hand still around her throat, his face moving in so close to hers that she could smell the stale medical waft of an old breath mint.
“All along, I’d said you were unfit. You don’t even know what you did tonight.” He laughed again. “I’ll guess I’ll finally get some sort of recognition for killing you. They were always a lot nicer to me than you and these other suck-asses here have been.” Then he backed away from the wall, grabbing her arm and taking her with him. With another push down the hall, he said, “Go ahead, let’s go back to my office and see what you did.”
There was no point saying anything. Holly was glad she’d kept her mouth shut. But she wondered for how long she’d be able to hold back the anger. Or fear. Or pain.
She moved slowly on her own before the gun stabbed into her back. Holly stepped faster, thinking of Logan, needing him more than she’d ever needed anyone in her life. But it was probably too late for that. She supposed there was at least a consolation prize. She closed her eyes and thought about it, Logan at least having chance to finish what Holly had started, to save Beth after she was gone.
22
Logan
He took a deep breath and waited for them to enter Gary’s office, his eyes tracking past Holly and instead focusing on the gun that trailed behind her. The gun pointing to her back. The wrist that held the gun. Logan swung his arm down with all of his might, trying as best he could to break that little computer-nerd-sized wrist that held on to the gun.
Something at least broke free, the gun flying and then sliding across the tiled floor. That wrist held for a moment by the other hand, Gary Johnson in pain and doubled over for a split second before getting his fists up and ready to meet whatever punishment Logan could dish out.
It began with a combination of punches to his jaw, the gust of wind puffing out of him as Logan then focused on pummeling his midsection. There had been no chance for a return of blows, let alone an adequate defense for the barrage of abuse he’d just received from a Holly-fueled Logan. He was fighting not for himself but for his love, for Beth, for all the mistakes he’d made in the past. Mistakes with Holly, and mistakes with the military.
He didn’t need military duties anymore. All he wanted now was to physically destroy this vile man as a private citizen. He pulled back his fist to get ready for another savage right hook, but then noticed Holly from the corner of his eye. The soft blur of her moving in to engage with Johnson, her fists flopping and slapping into his face as best she could. Compared to what Logan had done, Holly’s effort was nothing. Johnson brushed it off and then swept around her, grabbing her with his arm around her throat, a headlock, swinging her into the exploding particle board of a desk.
Logan growled and pushed forward, putting himself out of position by stooping down to her on the ground, to shield her from any more blows. But now it was both of them who were receiving Johnson’s attack. Still, Logan was happy to be between them. He’d just as well take as many shots as Johnson could dish out, if that meant none of them could touch Holly.
She was crawling away now, scampering. Good girl. Just get farther and farther away from him and—
A fucking LCD monitor cracked over Logan’s head, the top half of his skull going through the screen, the flakes of plastic smashing around him. An odd chemical smell hung in the air, mixed with the grunts of his continued exchange with Johnson, grunts turning into a tight, wheezing struggle to breathe. Logan struggled, his breath fading around Johnson’s arms. Now it was his turn for the headlock. Vision fading out, sound going away.
And then it ended.
The pressure was gone.
Logan stared at Holly, at the gun in her hand that had come down to strike the back of Johnson’s head. He collapsed on top of Johnson’s limp body, letting his senses filter back in. As the last of the haze left his vision, Logan rolled Johnson onto his stomach, folding his arms behind his back, then grabbing the zip ties from his waist and tying up his wrists. He did all this before looking back at Holly, grinning. “Good job. But why didn’t you shoot him?”
“He’s useful,” she said, her face and voice stone-cold serious. He could tell she wanted more, maybe another few blows with the butt of Johnson’s gun.
“You want me to prop him up so you can slap him around a few times?”
A small spark returned to her eyes. God, he was glad to see that. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
23
Holly
“We’ve got Tansy handling the job that Holly couldn’t finish in the office.”
She couldn’t believe Jackson said it like that. She started at him with wide eyes. “What do you mean, exactly?”
“Through no fault of your own,” he added.
“And no lack of effort,” Logan said.
Jackson agreed. “Of course not.”
Holly was rubbing the side of her body, the area that had taken most of the impact of the desk deeply bruised. Her fingers were sore and half jammed up, and her throat hurt to swallow. She’d waved off DARC’s medic, Jasper, when he’d tried to assess her. She was fine. She didn’t want to think about Beth and how worse off she must have been. Especially now.
Instead, it was better to think about Gary Johnson. When he’d woken up half an hour ago in the back of a DARC Ops panel van, his agonized cries were music to her ears.
Now in the headquarters’ briefing room, all was quiet. Until Tansy barged into the room, out of breath somehow from hacking. “The Russian virus doesn’t wipe out Andrei’s sex-trafficking ring records.”
“What?” Jackson groaned
Holly fought the urge to make a familiar sound. Instead she waited for more data from Tansy.
Tansy went on, saying, “Although he’s in the surface files, the encrypted code is slicing through their agent databases. I don’t know what they’re doing.”
“What are they looking for?” Logan said.
Holly hated feeling this way. The nagging sensation that she was and had always been five steps behind Godev and his plans. Tonight had made that quite obvious, despite them now having Johnson in custody for questioning.
“The stakes are even higher now,” Holly said, her mouth still dry. “One wrong move could fuck everything up.”
She was overtired, sure. She was overstressed. There had just been another physical altercation. She had just had sex with an old ex-lover only. . . shit . . . had it already been a day?
And then there was Beth . . .
There was no way she could be analytical about that. About any of it. She collapsed in the chair, sinking her face into her hands.
24
Logan
“I should just tell you now,” Logan said, pacing around Jackson’s office, “in case you haven’t guessed it already.”
“I think I can take a guess,” Jackson said.
“I’m not against employing some of the most sadistic torture on this guy, whether he talks or not.”
“No comment.”
“How long do we have him for?”
“Not long. We’ll have to cough him up to the Feds by the end of the night.” Jackson took a seat behind his desk and turned on one of monitors along the back wall. Black-and-white security footage of Gary Johnson appeared, a real-time feed from the interrogation room. He sat alone, his head bobbing low to his chest and then jerking back up as if fighting sleep. Fully awake now, he began talking with someone off-camera.
“What’s he doing?” Logan said. “Did you dope him up with something to make him talk?”
“No. He’s just . . . sleepy.”
; Logan watched him for a moment, thinking of how he’d like to give him a real reason to be sleepy. A reason to be unconscious, or maybe something more permanent.
“We can’t get too rough with him. He’s still technically CIA. If we go about this wrong, Gary could go free, and then we might have an even bigger problem. Another war with the deep state. You remember Macy? You remember that war?”
“The problem with me, Jack, is that I want to go to war.”
Jackson frowned at him. “You better start taking your personal feelings out of this. I know it hits close to home, but this is no longer just you doing some favor for a friend. It’s a DARC job now. And more than that, it’s a matter of national security.”
Jackson’s door opened without a knock, and in walked Sam, the famed behavioral analyst. “He’s talking,” Sam said.
Jackson rolled his eyes. “I can see that. But is it anything actionable?”
“Just the location. Beth.”
Logan turned back around to see Sam’s serious expression. He watched the professor find a chair next to the desk, sit calmly, and straighten the wrinkles out of his suit pants.
“So let’s hear it,” Logan said.
“He coughed up Beth’s location,” Sam said. “She’s been taken to a property owned by Andrei, a place central to his sex-trafficking operation.”
“Where?” Logan sat up so straight that he almost fell out of his chair. “Did he say where?”
“No.”
Jackson asked, “So he’s playing games? Why is he talking?”
“I don’t know what he’s doing yet,” Sam said. “He also made it clear that Beth isn’t the only one being held.”
“What else?”
“And that we’re all as stupid as Holly,” Sam said. “And that we’re apparently missing something right before our very eyes.”
DARC Ops: The Complete Series Page 160