Dark Threat - A DARC Ops Christmas Novel

by Jamie Garrett

  “Molly?”

  Her struggle ended, the force of it fading into a look of annoyed confusion. And now she looked exactly how he felt inside. That was the difference of thirty-seven years of maturing on this planet, the ability to hide such volatility behind at least a sheen of adult insincerity.

  There was nothing insincere about her backing off him with her little waddling steps, her little mouth hung open and staying that way until another adult ran up behind and grabbed her. Molly seemed unfazed by this latest impact, clutching and then holding on in a bear hug to a young, college-aged woman. Not an older professional. Not the stenographer Sam had been wanting so badly.

  “It’s him!” Molly cried into the woman’s chest.

  Sam took a few steps forward, hands stretched down and pleading for calm, saying, “Alright, let’s just—”

  “Stay back!” the woman cried.

  “What? I’m—”

  “It’s him,” Molly said again.

  The woman backed up with her little bundle of Molly still attached to her waist. “Who are you?”

  Molly spoke first. “It’s Sam.”

  “Sam?” She stopped walking backward, yet her eyes had squinted up. “Clara’s Sam?”

  God, yes. He was Clara’s Sam. That was exactly who he was and at that moment, nothing else. He wasn’t Jackson’s Sam. He wasn’t criminal psychologist Sam. He wasn’t Sam from Washington. He was hers.

  “I came looking for her,” he said. “Right when I heard.”

  Molly had freed herself and was staring at him. “Where’s Mommy?”

  “I don’t know.” He hated saying it. “I’m sorry.”

  Molly spun around, looking through the crowd.

  “Hey,” her caretaker said firmly. “You stay right here.”

  “Are you . . .? Um . . .”

  “I’m Bren.”

  “I’m Sam.”

  “Any news?”

  He tried thinking about what he could tell her, anything that would make even a little sense. But even he was so left in the dark about this.

  “What the fuck,” she muttered, her face looking increasingly horrified. “I guess there was a bomb?”

  “And maybe some kind of . . .” Sam looked at Molly.

  “What? Some kind of what?”

  “Some kind of gas or something.”

  “Gas?”

  “I didn’t see any obvious injuries, but some people . . . a lot of people have collapsed. I was able to check, but I couldn’t find her.”

  “What do mean collapsed?”

  “It’s possible that Clara could already be on her way to a hospital.”

  Bren, seemingly, was having trouble comprehending the situation, her eyes glossing over like she’d just taken a huge hit of hashish.

  “We have to start calling around.” Sam scratched his head, trying to warm up his brain a little. It was time to start working out a solution. “I’ve got so many calls to make. Back in Washington . . .” He looked up at Bren with hope resounding in his voice. “Have you heard from her at all?”

  “No. That’s why we’re here.”

  Sam pointed to Molly. “Is she . . .?”

  “I picked her up from school.” Bren wrapped an arm around Molly, who was beginning to look a little restless, like she was about to make a run for it. She kept wanting to squirm away and look around through the crowd herself, searching for Mommy even though her line of sight ended at the tops of everyone’s legs.

  “Wait,” Sam said. “Do you know where Clara parks? Maybe she was able to get out and now she’s . . . Has she called you?”

  “No. You?”

  “No.”

  “Fuck.”

  Sam checked his phone again anyway, just to make sure.

  “Anything?” Bren asked. She asked quickly, without even giving time for the screen to load up. Sam could understand her impatience.

  He was growing impatient, too. Why hadn’t anyone heard from her?

  His message box flicked on. Empty. Without his even saying anything to Bren, she muttered, “This is bad.”

  “What?” Molly said, fear creeping in her voice.

  “We’ll find her, Babe.” Bren said. “We’ll find her. Everyone’s just really confused right now, that’s all. It’ll be fine. Like, remember that one time you got lost at the mall?” Bren looked back at Sam. She spoke with a little hint of anxiety that was, thankfully, too subtle for an eight-year-old. “It’ll be fine, right?”

  Sam nodded. “We’ll find her.”

  12

  Sam

  His hotel was a lot closer than Clara’s house. But distance wasn’t the only factor in his inviting Bren and Molly over to the five-star Grand Marias. By now, the city’s narrow roads and on-ramps heading out of from downtown had become clogged with a combination of rush-hour and informal mass-evacuation traffic. The news reports had everyone too scared to wait around for “what’s next.” The mayor had even declared a state of emergency, and for people to stay off the roads so as to allow room for emergency and defense vehicles. Sam didn’t want to be another asshole stuck in traffic, another car potentially blocking Clara’s ambulance ride to the hospital.

  It was beginning to look more and more likely that she had been in one of those ambulances. Between Sam and Bren, there had been zero contact from her. No calls, texts, or emails. No posts on any of her social media profiles. There was no word, also, from her extended family. Bren had been on the phone the whole time, sitting cross-legged in bed by the nightstands, the phone becoming almost part of her face. She had called as many contacts as she knew, and then even asked them for further contacts to try, each time her ending the call in a big huff before several seconds of recovery. Sam could hear her motivation wax and wane, the speed of her fingers’ dialing getting slower with each futile call.

  Molly, meanwhile, was sprawled at the foot of the bed. Bren had given her free reign over the movie rental screen, free reign to charge Sam with as many animated features as her little heart desired. But despite the candy and a new stuffed animal picked up in the lobby, despite all the shows she’d blown through, and having a queen-size bed all to herself to watch them from, she was absolutely, and quite understandably, fucked up. If anything, the movies helped Bren and Sam not hear her every little sad sniffle. Her groans, her restless rolling around. Sitting up, lying down, rolling on her side, and then the other side, kicking around, and then sometimes even breaking down into hysterics so that Bren would have to leave her call and come over and do her best to head off the meltdown with another of their long, rocking embraces.

  Through all of this, Sam was stationed in front of his computer. Working with the guys back in Washington, he had requested and just recently received an edited video file containing all of the news footage from the attack. Someone had stitched together a highlight reel of all of it, from a dozen different media outlets, as well as the latest uploads of independent footage on YouTube and social media sites. He started with the independent stuff first, all of it raw and unfiltered. What he saw was goddamn horrific. Several videos were shot during the height of the attack, shaky footage of a swarming mass of people rushing away from the courthouse. In these clips he felt certain, several times, that he’d spotted Clara, her slow but steady, almost dignified jog alongside a mad rush of people. It was her gait that he picked up on, even her running gait, which he’d never actually seen before. The way her shoulders and arms moved. For clothing, he called Bren over to verify what looked to be her gray pantsuit. But still, he couldn’t get a clear shot of her face. The shots were either too blurry or shaky for that. But at least he felt closer to an answer. Closer to Clara.

  He saw her. Probably. And at least, in that specific moment in time, she was alive and escaping.

  So where the hell did she end up?

  “Any luck with the hospitals?” Sam asked a momentarily phone-less Bren.

  “I only just started,” she said, putting the receiver back to her ear. “I’ve completely
given up on the friends and family.”

  “How are they doing?”

  “Her friends and family?”

  “They okay?”

  “Well, they feel better that we’re looking into it. But, yeah. They’re upset.”

  “How are you doing?”

  She shrugged, dialing another number from a phone book. “I’m upset.”

  Sam glanced over to Molly. She had fallen asleep. And good for her. The girl had been through enough, and cried enough to be utterly exhausted. Sam could see it even before she passed out, that dull, lost look on her face. It was as if someone had slipped her a sedative.

  Sam, on the other hand, was still riding a wave of adrenaline since the very beginning, since hearing about the news in the shower. How could things have gotten so fucked up so quickly? He’d gone from a having a nice, hot shower while thinking about Clara—and thinking about them together in the shower, to this.

  At least they had something to work from now. He had, or so he thought, identified Clara in the courtyard. Which meant that she had either fled unscathed, or collapsed and had been carted off by one of the ambulances out front. He might have even walked by her ambulance in the very beginning.

  He went back to his videos, the news broadcasts, speeding up the playback and scanning closely for any shots of ambulances loading. Across the room Bren was talking with someone at another hospital, asking about what kind of system had been set up for loved ones in case patients came in without ID. And then, in a suddenly agitated voice, asking why nothing had been set up yet. And then in a more apologetic tone, “Of course, I know, I know you’re busy. I know. It’s an emergency.”

  The biggest hurdle in finding Clara, if she had ended up unconscious at a hospital, was that she very likely had no ID on her. And assuming how rushed and flooded the hospitals were, even before this crisis, it could be a long wait until all of the unconscious and ID-less survivors were accounted for.

  There could be Jane Does, too. Bodies. Perhaps many of them. Clara couldn’t be a Jane Doe. Sam couldn’t let that happen.

  Right at the same time Bren hung up the phone with her usual, “Fuck,” Sam caught it. His heart leapt with the chance, the possibility . . .

  Yes! A quick flicker of Clara. Her face this time. He rewound and played the frames back slower this time, and he saw her.

  He definitely saw her!

  “Bren! We got it!”

  It was a quick shot of Clara being loaded into an ambulance. And Sam would have jumped for joy, as he was planning, until it was clear that she was in trouble. Clara was moving, her hands flapping about slowly. But her eyes were closed, her face sickly green. Though at least, for that time being, she was alive. He’d hold off the celebration until he saw her in person, and when he saw that she was okay.

  Bren had rushed to Sam’s side, hunching over his shoulder. “Oh, my God,” she said. “Oh, my God!”

  Sam read out loud the name on the side of the ambulance. “First Response Ambulance Services. And I got an ambulance number. FR423. We got it!”

  Bren was already backing away toward her phone. “You want me to call it in?”

  “The hospital? Which one?”

  “No,” she said, already flipping through the phone book. “First Response. I’ll call the company.”

  Sam looked over at Molly again, who, despite the noise and the half celebration, was still in deep sleep. Her movie played on softly in the background. Sam hoped that when she woke up, they could give her some good news.

  “Fuck,” Bren said. “They’re busy. I keep getting the signal.”

  “Their switchboard must be getting fried.”

  “Should I call the hospitals again? See if they have drop-off records with the ambulance number?”

  Sam reached for his phone. “I doubt they’ll have the number.” He pulled up Tansy’s name in his contacts and sent the call. “Don’t worry. I know someone who can figure this out.”

  13

  Clara

  She was in court, typing her own testimony. She was both a speaker and a recorder. Witness and stenographer. Alive and dead.

  The good news was that she had friends in the jury box, friends and family looking on with placid, if not bored expressions. They had come in like this every day for the last year, listening, noting, judging. There were also people in strange uniforms. She didn’t like them as much. They would walk into court with very serious, very fixed glares, brooding all the time with their instruments. They had all these instruments and tools, the metal glistening under the lights whenever they entered the court.

  Sometimes they would turn the lights out. And then it would be a funeral. A small wooden casket on the prosecution’s table surrounded by bouquets of white lilies.

  There was never anything to say or type at the funeral. She would try, and then the judge would appear, a light in the darkness. The judge was just a light. It grew brighter.

  “Clara . . .”

  It grew a little brighter.

  “Clara, come on . . .”

  It grew.

  “It’s me.”

  The light was the whole room. It was everything. She couldn’t see anything but the light.

  “Mommy? . . . Mommy, wake up.”

  She was in the room. Molly was in the room. Where was she?

  The room was dark again. Oh, God, so dark. Her family and friends were gone, the chairs in the court sitting alone and scattered, some pushed over to their side. What the hell had happened in here, and how had she missed it? Her family. She had to find them. Make sure they were safe.

  Clara tried to move, to take a step, just a single step. Nothing. She had to move. She had to get up from her desk and find her family. But God, it was dark, and she was all alone.

  Was it night? Was that it, was she dreaming? She had to open her eyes. Then the dark would go away.

  The effort seemed impossible, the goal insurmountable, but eventually she felt her eyelids flutter.

  “Clara? Clara, that’s it. Come back to me . . .”

  There was that voice again. She didn’t know who it belonged to, but it was warm. Safe. She saw a flash of a face. Dark hair, warm eyes. Someone was touching her, brushing fingers along her cheek.

  “Baby, can you hear me?”

  Exhausted, her eyes slid shut again. She was back in the darkness again, but this time she didn’t mind. The voice would protect her, keep her safe, until the light came back again. Then she’d be able to see again, and find her way out of here.

  14

  Clara

  Clara smiled again and it hurt her lips. They were dry and cracked. Pretty much every part of her body hurt, except her heart. That part was buzzing warmly with happiness. With love. No matter what else happened, her heart was content. She had her girl by her side, Molly’s smile beaming down on her. She hadn’t stopped smiling since Clara opened her eyes. And she had Sam, standing at the foot of her hospital bed, grinning and admiring from afar, a look of amusement on his face as he watched her and Molly. Somehow they had all wound up together, even Bren, the three of them being there just as Clara opened her eyes from the deepest and darkest sleep she’d ever had.

  But she still felt that sleep. Even now. It lingered on, worse than a sleeping pill hangover. Something still had hold of her, of the back of her brain. She could feel its tight grasp, its pressure. She could still feel the heavy fog. At times, she could even see it. It would come seeping into the room, sometimes getting thick and sleepy and she would doze off again. Then she would open her eyes and there would be a new set of faces looking down at her. Strangers. Nurses and doctors. They were nice and fine and all. And they likely saved her from whatever had happened back at the courthouse. But they weren’t her people.

  For now, Clara was fighting to stay awake. She wanted to stay with her people.

  “Do you think you need another nap?”

  Clara looked over to find Bren at her usual spot, in a chair next to the bed with a happy Molly on her l
ap.

  “You should probably sleep if you feel like it,” Bren said. “The doctor said it would help you recover.”

  Clara sat up a little, cleared her throat, and said “No.” Her voice felt and sounded a little strange. A little rough, foreign.

  Bren smiled. “No?”

  She cleared her throat again. “No, I can sleep when you guys leave.”

  “What if we don’t ever leave?” asked Molly. She was twirling her finger in her hair just like usual. Clara was glad to see how tough and unaffected she seemed through all of it.

  Clara smiled, her cracked lips feeling fine now. “If you don’t ever leave, then that means you’ll miss school.”

  “Aaaand?”

  “And if you miss school, you’ll be grounded.”

  “Awww . . .”

  “Don’t worry, Molly. We’ll take care of you,” Sam said. He walked around from the foot of the bed, joining Clara at the other side of the bed. “Don’t you want to go swimming?”

  Clara turned her head to see Molly nodding emphatically.

  “That’s right,” Bren said, turning to Clara and talking quieter. “I’ll find a store downtown and pick up a swimsuit. I don’t care how overpriced it is.” She laughed. “I’m not driving all the way home and all the way back.”

  “What pool?” Clara asked.

  “Mine,” Sam said. “Well, the hotel’s.”

  “We were there the whole day,” Bren said. “The Grand Marias. Molly got to abuse the movie rental channel while we tracked you down. And now that she’s feeling better, she wants to abuse the pool. Isn’t that right? She won’t stop talking about it.”

  Molly held her fists together in the air and cried, “Cannon Balllll!”

  They all laughed at the surprisingly good-spirited child It was amazing how quickly Molly had rebounded, now she was sure her mom would be okay. Clara felt more relieved than ever. Sure, there had probably been a few rough spots early on. Clara imagined there were quite a few of those . . . God bless her friends for taking care of things. Taking care of Molly. And now, her.