She didn’t smell anything rotting. Kalani followed him down into the cool darkness of the cellar. Still, she was glad he was ahead of her. She had met Laurel, Matthias’ girl, only once. She could see now why he was such a catch. He’d been so helpful to her the whole time in West Virginia. Fair at the SWAT camp, too.
“So far so good,” he said after clicking on the overhead light. He had pulled the chain and the bulb went swinging, sending the shadows warping around the small room. The walls were bare earth. As was the floor, a flat, dry dirt. Almost as hard as concrete. Up above, the floorboards were solid. Lea wouldn’t have heard anything. Nothing from Tucker if there had been a struggle and the cellar had been his ending. Nor would Lea hear anything if Matthias wanted to finally fess up about his suspicions about her. Kalani was tired of feeling the same way.
“So,” she said. “What are you thinking?”
“What do I think happened?” Matthias closed the lid of an old storage trunk, batting the dust away with one hand and covering his mouth and nose with the other.
“Sure,” Kalani said. “What do you think happened?”
He turned and looked at her for a minute, the light bulb light steadying on his face. “I haven’t the slightest clue. No one does, which is why we’re in here looking for a body.” Matthias turned back to a pile of old blankets. He picked at them carefully, holding them up only by his fingertips as he sorted through. That time he was more careful about not kicking up any dust or any of the resident critters. He finished without any gruesome discovery other than his hands getting dirty. He rubbed them clean on his pants.
“You wanted to talk alone because you don’t trust my sister?” Kalani said.
“No, I just wanted to talk alone.”
“About Lea?” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that something moved, some small dark shape running quickly along the floor. She was glad it was moving away, and even gladder not to see it again.
“Well, how do you feel about her?” He laughed. “I know that’s a stupid question. She’s your sister. But how has she handled the news?”
Part of her was relieved to be talking about it. She could feel her shoulders lowering slightly. It was right to talk about it, to vent, even if it was about her sister. She trusted these guys almost with the same conviction. “It’s weird,” she said. “I don’t know how else to describe it.”
“Weird because she’s acting suspicious?”
“I don’t know . . .”
Matthias coughed quietly. “I really hate to ask this, but . . . do you think there was anything going on with them you weren’t aware of? Tucker and Lea?”
“No,” she said, despite thinking immediately about the comments her sister had just made about him. Comments about what she might have been doing with him in the barn. It was supposed to be a joke. And Tucker was supposedly involved with someone else. Lea, however, being herself . . .
“You seemed to hesitate there,” Matthias said.
“No,” she said. “No, of course I don’t think there’s anything between them.”
Matthias shook his head. “Not like that. Tucker wouldn’t do that. I mean, could Tucker have told her where he was going? And now she’s concealing it for some reason?”
“But that wouldn’t explain why he hasn’t had any contact with you guys.” Kalani looked around the dim little space. Matthias had stopped his search. “Are we almost done here?”
“Almost.” He was standing still, hands in his pockets.
“Okay,” she said. “Why don’t you tell me your working hypothesis?”
More biting of his cheek. “We think your sister’s still in contact with personnel from Blackwoods Security.”
Her mind raced. “What do you mean?” Could Lea really still talking to the scumbags who had landed them in so much trouble? It was a clear delineation for Kalani. But for Lea, who had deeper ties to the dark side, who was in fact dating one of them—the break would have no doubt been much more difficult. “What kind of contact? I thought you guys were watching the phones.”
“We are. We’re watching a few things.”
“I didn’t know it was because you didn’t trust us.”
“It’s for your safety,” Matthias said. “Also, if I didn’t trust you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. And I sure as hell wouldn’t have you training with live rounds at the camp.” He looked away from her, to the ground, nudging something with his foot.
“Is training back on tomorrow?” Kalani asked. They had temporarily suspended the sessions while they figured out what happened to Tucker, and Kalani was surprised how badly she wanted to return to the range. She liked the routine. She liked getting out of the house for a while, and now it seemed like an especially good way to get her mind off things. Things like the past, random disappearances, and suspicious friends. She looked now at the latest suspicious friend, Matthias, still inspecting something on the ground. “Matthias? How about training?”
Matthias crouched to the ground and reached into the dirt, using his fingertips just as he had with the blankets, gently lifting up what appeared to be a dirt-covered tarp. It kept raising more and more of the dirt floor, lifting up to expose two straight lines moving away from the center point of the corner he’d gripped. He pulled more quickly, and more of the plywood began to show underneath, gleaming in the darkened cellar. He was muttering something as he pulled. Kalani leaned in to see better as he peeled it all the way back, finally exposing two boards of plywood lying flat next to each other. There was a crack down the middle. Space between, and a dark space under it. Matthias leaned his foot over the center and pressed down, tipping one of the plywood boards and tumbling it into the hole underneath. The secret compartment. The cellar under the cellar.
She couldn’t understand why, but Kalani felt an urge to step away from Matthias and his newfound discovery, to step away from the latest mystery. After Hawaii, she was tired of surprises and trap-door discoveries.
Matthias’ flashlight beam spilled into the newly opened compartment. He reached in and removed one of the boards, and then stood back to take in what he’d uncovered.
Kalani swallowed, her mouth suddenly as dry as the dust coating the room. “What is it?” He reached in again, pulling away the other board. “What is it?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “But it has something to do with . . .”
“With Tucker?” Kalani asked, stepping forward and peering into the secret compartment filled with strange-looking electronics equipment.
“Communications,” Matthias said, looking in close but still not touching anything.
“It’s not yours? It’s not from DARC Ops?”
Matthias shook his head. He finally reached in, to the side, pulling up on an electrical cord that lifted another line straight through the dirt. It had been covered just like the trap door, running along the wall to an outlet.
“Well, look at that,” Matthias said. “I thought it was weird they had a power outlet down here.”
“They?”
“I don’t know,” he said, crouching over the devices. “But it sure as hell isn’t us. And this sure as hell isn’t ours.”
She watched him inspect the devices, each having their own set of tiny blinking green and yellow lights. Each with their own short antenna. Each communicating God knows what to God knows whom.
“You can’t talk about this to anyone,” Matthias said.
“I wasn’t going to.” She stared at him, her eyes seeing the seriousness in his just before his flashlight clicked off.
“To anyone,” he said.
In the dark and in the silence, Kalani could hear the faint sound of footsteps up above as Lea walked across the kitchen.
8
Ethan
He was glad to be away from D.C. and the excruciating tug of war between Annica and their editor for whatever ounce of “loyalty” Ethan had left. Yes, he was loyal to Annica, who had given him his start. And he was grateful for the editor for his help
with that start—and his paycheck. The largest paycheck he’d ever seen . . . But his truest loyalty belonged to Kalani.
He had left without informing her, not having the time to arrange a coded message through the newspaper. Maybe he’d arrange for something on the road. The worst-case scenario would be having to continue connecting with her that way. To grasp at straws, to struggle for even the slightest and most abstract form of connectivity. The best scenario, and what he’d begun to expect would happen since being dispatched to West Virginia, would be to follow his increasingly sharpened investigative skills to find her. He’d been using those skills all morning, having followed a trail to his current rest stop just a few miles outside of Harrisonburg, Virginia. But he could admit that it was mostly luck that took him there. Along the interstate, the truck stop had its lot jammed with trailers from all different shipping companies. But it was the Khan brothers’ Pakistan Green livery and its crescent logo that had caught Ethan’s attention from the road. A lucky pick up, indeed. One of Kahn’s green shipping containers stacked on top of the truck’s flatbed trailer.
Jackson’s team, operating in D.C., had helped him generally locate the container. But it really was luck that he saw the green out of the corner of his eye from the highway. Luck, too, that no one seemed to be watching over it.
Ethan walked casually around the front of the truck, peering up to the windshield and squinting against the glare. The driver’s side offered a much easier view, a clear line of sight into the unoccupied cab. He lingered for a moment before spinning around to check back to the rest area, scanning for the return of the truck driver. A few were milling around the entrance. But milling only. No one seemed to be walking anywhere with purpose, and certainly not toward the truck with the Khan container.
He quickly made his way around the truck, to the back, where he was safely covered from view. There he walked up close to the tail end, feet away from the container itself: the potential source of so much trouble. The potential source of evidence that would blow the case wide open. He was shocked that he’d stumbled upon the moment so easily and quickly, and so early into his mission.
He leaned in to read the serial number on the plastic seal that wrapped around the shipping container’s door lock. If the numbers matched up to what Jackson had told him . . .
“Hey.”
Ethan froze. He didn’t want to turn around. Still frozen, he said, innocently, “Yeah?”
“The hell are you doing?” It was man’s voice. A gruff one. A voice sounding none too pleased about Ethan’s curiosity.
“I was just . . .” Ethan trailed off, having nothing to say. And then he tried: “Just making sure this door was properly—” The bullshit line halted as soon as Ethan had turned to view the man. To get a good look at him. At Sam, a DARC Ops team member.
A smiling one.
“You son of a bitch,” Ethan said, the lump having already disappeared from his throat. “You asshole!”
Sam laughed at him. “I just had to,” he said, taking on his own voice. He had a bad habit of perfecting various “voices,” the latest of which had just scared the hell out of Ethan. He apologized and said, “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Well, why am I even here, if you’re already—”
“Shh,” Sam said.
“What?”
“We’ll have to quiet down and hurry up.”
Ethan stepped away from the truck. “Yeah, sure.”
“Do you even know what we’re doing?” Sam asked.
“Yeah . . .”
Sam was staring at him with those maddeningly analytic eyes of his. Sam, the expert behavior analyst. The human lie detector.
Ethan finally said, “I have no idea, actually. I was sent out here by the paper for a drug story in small town in West Virginia. And Jackson wanted me to find and track this truck and follow it in. And why the hell are you here again?”
“We’re teaming up,” Sam said, taking a quick look to the rest station. And then back to Ethan.
“We are?”
“Teaming up. Jackson’s orders.”
“My orders were to . . .” Ethan couldn’t shake the image of Kalani’s sweet, sun-kissed face. “I was told to go to West Virginia.”
Sam smiled. “Yeah, you’re still going there.”
9
Kalani
“You don’t think it’s weird?” Lea said, asking the same question in its third variation. “Weird that he’s making us leave the house like this?”
“He’s not making us do anything.” Kalani kept her eyes on the road as she steered around a bend in the highway. She did likewise in the straights when it was unnecessary. For some reason it had become increasingly difficult to look at her sister’s face.
“It’s weird,” Lea said in a pathetic little voice. “I wanted to stay.”
“You don’t think it’s weird that Tucker’s still missing?”
“What’s that have to do with anything?”
“That’s why Matthias is here,” Kalani said. “That’s why he wants us to leave the house so he can . . . check on stuff.”
“Check on what?
Kalani wondered again about the electronics they’d found in the cellar, wondering who put it there and why. She didn’t even know what it was. She wondered how much her sister knew.
“Kalani, what is he checking on?”
She wasn’t even sure, herself. “Well, you know how when someone disappears, it’s like a crime scene?” Kalani paused for an answer but there was none. “So he’s investigating it like a crime scene.”
“The house?”
“I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”
Lea sighed. “What is he investigating?”
“The crime scene.”
“It’s not a crime scene,” Lea said, still pathetic-sounding.
“I don’t think you realize how serious this is, this whole Tucker thing.”
“I know it’s serious.”
Kalani laughed. “Do you?”
“I just don’t like that guy. That Matthias guy . . .”
“Yeah,” Kalani said, struggling with the urge to tune out her sister’s voice.
“And he’s some sort of investigator? He’s probably just going through our panty drawers.”
“Lea . . .”
“What?”
Kalani slowed the car to meet the lower speed limit at Claxtonburg’s town line. “You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”
“Well, it’s too late for that,” Lea said. “We took the deal.”
The deal had been laid out to them back in D.C. by some good and kindly federal agents, everyone positive and friendly and safe. The agents would smile at them despite the suspicions that Kalani knew lingered just beneath the surface. She and her sister were vital instruments to their plan, pieces to the puzzle. To the authorities, she and her sister represented the necessary leverage for putting the Blackwoods case over the edge. Their testimony would put an end for good to an illicit smuggling ring and a private security company that had grown to a paramilitary status. A mob status, even. A racket. A for-profit army willing to do any dirty deed, including harassment and death threats to several DARC Ops associates who had been the first to disturb the hornets’ nest.
Macy, who knew too much from her time working with one of them when he was a police chief back in St. Louis. And Annica, who knew too much after taking on their story as part of her journalistic mission. When DARC joined that mission, the hornets’ nest had officially been shaken, the whole thing coming to a head in Hawaii. Now everyone was in some degree of danger. Especially after taking the bargain to cooperate and testify, Kalani and her sister were possibly at the top of the list of enemies for the remaining and free and still deadly members of Blackwoods.
“We’re rats now,” Lea said, breaking the brief silence.
“You weren’t worried about that before,” Kalani said. “When they had us in that interrogation room. When our lawyers begged us to take the deal. An
d when you begged me to take it with you.”
“I begged you?”
“I could have gone my own way,” Kalani said. “They had nothing on me. Instead I get locked in with you with this testimony.”
“They had nothing on me,” Lea snapped back. “If it really went to trial. That’s what my lawyers said.”
“That was no lawyer,” Kalani said.
It was still a point of contention, whether or not Lea’s original attorney was a plant for Blackwoods. Jackson and his team had done more than hint at the horrible possibility. It was after their pleading with Kalani to convince Lea of it that they finally got rid of him. But like the ongoing disputes about dishes and domestic duties, and living as sisters once again after a decade, the topic was just another sore spot that would come up through the most importune nagging. Lately it had been coming up more and more, alongside with all the other suspicious events. Disappearance. Found devices. Kalani wondered about them, trying to bite her tongue as she drove, as she worried more about the timing of it all. As she wondered about who was getting to Lea . . .
“I feel the whole thing was a setup,” Lea said.
“Can I ask you something?”
“If I say no—”
Kalani interrupted. “Do you still talk to the captain?”
No reaction. “Well, I’m going to pretend you didn’t ask me that.”
“I didn’t want to ask you that,” Kalani said. “I hate that I have to ask you that, but it’s there.”
“What’s there?”
“The . . . idea of it. It’s not too far-fetched.”
“I’ve told you everything, Lani.” Lea’s voice had gone softer, using her childhood nickname. She pled once again with, “Come on.”
Dark Discovery (DARC Ops Book 8) Page 6