Where was Lea?
The two men had their backs turned to her, their hands out in front of them. In front of the suddenly opened door, one of them bent down to hold the dog around the neck. Someone was shouting something about the dog, calling someone else an idiot as Jimmy pinned the dog between his legs. Was that what the whole commotion was about? An escaping dog? It at least gave Kalani a chance to escape.
“What do you want?” The manager said to the shape in the open garage doorway. She couldn’t make out who it was, only the sun’s rays shining from behind. A golden silhouette that mumbled something in response. The manager pressed on: “What? We’re closed!”
It dawned on Kalani that some clueless after-hours customer may have had just saved her life. The three men were still discussing business hours at the door when Kalani decided to make a run for it, to the waiting room, to where she’d hoped she would see Lea. In the quiet calm, away from the dog and the cursing, she tried collecting her thoughts. The mechanic was just trying to show her something, and then a customer came knocking in the garage bay door.
Someone opened it and the dog tried to escape into the sunlight.
That’s all it was.
Kalani heard her name and turned to her sister. Lea closed the office door behind her. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“That guy really freaked me out,” Kalani said.
“Who? And get your hand off your gun.”
She had her hand at the holster the whole time, the gun popped loose and ready to draw and use on whomever asked for it first.
“Seriously, Kalani, you’re bugging out.”
She was. Yes. She was making a fool out of herself.
Lea said, “Is the car fixed?”
“No. I . . . I don’t think so.”
“Ma’am?” It was the manager now, coming into the room, red-faced. “You’re all set. You can go.”
“Excuse me?”
“No charge,” he said.
“For what?”
“For nothing,” he said. “Jimmy found the problem, the wiring.”
“Oh, wiring.”
“And he was trying to show you, but . . . well, you’re all set.”
Kalani didn’t feel all set. She felt like a trap had been only half sprung, halting at just the right moment right before clamping down on her tightly and mercilessly. Right before the hammer could drop.
Now it was all smiles and a fixed-up car.
He was laughing at her, calling her a “strange one.”
“What do I owe?” she asked.
“Nothing, he did nothing.”
“I did nothing, ma’am,” the mechanic hollered through the glass. He was walking the dog out of sight to the rear.
“What happened with the door?” Kalani asked.
He laughed again and turned to Lea. “Can you get her out of here?”
They had left the door open. Both of her car doors, too, open as if frozen in time. In that moment of the panicked escape. Lea could only shake her head when she got in. “So you’re the mental case,” she said. “I always sort of knew that. But now these two poor guys know it, too.”
Kalani forced a smile onto her face as she carefully backed her car out of garage stall, straight out into the midday heat. Already she was feeling better, looking back at the once grim, oil-stained killing floor. She felt better, even if it had been nothing at all.
“So that was it?” Lea said. “They just wanted you to freak out, and that was good enough to send you on your way free of charge?”
Kalani didn’t answer. She focused on leaving the Claxtonburg as quickly as possible, checking her mirrors constantly after seeing one of the cars in the lot pull out after hers.
“What are you looking for?” Lea asked her. “Someone coming after us now? God . . . When will it end with you? And where? A padded cell?”
“Who is that?” Kalani asked, her eyes still darting back and forth from road to rearview.
“The bad guys, Lani. They’re coming after us.” She was talking in a heavily accentuated spooky voice, like from a 1950s drive-in picture. “They’re coming to get you,” she quavered.
Kalani, in a normal tone of voice, said, “So who were you talking to in there?”
“The head bad guy.”
“The manager guy? Why?”
“Oh, nothing,” Lea said. “We were just trying to figure out the best way to silence you.”
“What did you come up with? Bashing my head in with a hammer?”
“You really thought he was trying that, huh?”
“No. What were you really talking to him about?”
“Just nothing,” Lea said. “Your car.”
“My car . . .”
“Yeah,” Lea said. “Where to put the bomb. I told them how you do most of the driving, so I think they’ll keep it under the driver’s side.”
The black sedan. It was still following her, gaining now as they left the town limits. She sped up quicker, and so did the black fucking sedan.
“That was what all the talk about the wires was,” Lea said. “You know, like in the movies. The red wire, the yellow wire.”
“Who the hell is that?” Kalani whispered. “Look, behind us. Is that their car?”
Lea couldn’t be bothered with looking. Or apparently with thinking or even considering the idea that they were in danger. She was more concerned with her comedy routine, which ran a little sour before it even began. “Shut up with the jokes and stuff,” Kalani told her. “I’m serious.”
“I know you are,” Lea said, her voice sad and flat.
“I’m pulling over.”
“Pull over, then.”
“I am,” Kalani said. “Right here,” as she steered the car onto the gravel lot of an abandoned gas station. She looked back to the mirror. The black sedan had pulled to a stop in the gravel two car lengths behind hers.
“I guess that’s kind of weird,” Lea said in a suddenly clear and sober voice. It had the lilting hint of a confession. “Did that car really come from their lot?”
“Yes.”
“Is it them?”
She was clearly all done with the jokes. When Kalani looked over to her, Lea’s hands were wringing up and down her jean thighs, a subconscious nervous tic. The suddenly nervous-looking Lea said, “So what do we do? Should we keep going? Maybe keep going and get out of here.”
A door swung open and she watched the shape emerge from the car. She squinted into the mirror and then turned her whole body around to see for herself, through the rear window, still straining and squinting for an answer.
“Who is that?”
Kalani said, “Shh,” and kept watching the figure detach from the car and straighten up into a walk. A familiar stroll. That simple short-stride walk. That face . . .
Parts of her brain remembered before its whole, parts of her already learning of the identity of her latest mystery man. Sparks of flashbacks ricocheted around her consciousness. Feelings, too. A tingle at her fingertips, as the puzzle slowly came together. The slowest microsecond she’d ever felt through. Throbbed through now, the information collecting and sizzling away at her brain. The recognition of a familiar face. A beautiful familiar face and the way it smiled at her, like that last time hundreds of miles away in D.C.
“Is that Ethan?” Lea cried.
He was halfway at her car by the time Kalani rushed out and ran into his arms, running hard and slamming into him even harder. They took a half dozen fumbling steps toward his car with her movement, and with the way she burrowed into his being. His chest. His arms, coming around and locking her in. All the hammers and dog barking and Lea’s whining meant nothing. They had all been silenced, along with the other more real fears of what brought the two sisters there in West Virginia. And what brought him there. As fast as she thought of the dangers of the outside world, as fast as they came to her, they all left again.
He squeezed her even harder.
She felt his voice through their emb
race, the vibration of her name. Her name, again. She felt his laugh. Theirs together. Their hearts. And then the heat of his mouth grazing across her skin. Her neck, to her ear, his urgent whisper: “Are you okay?”
She felt the first burning sting of tears at her eyes.
“Kalani,” he said, “are you okay?”
“I don’t know. What’s going on?”
“We should probably go,” he said.
“Where?”
“You tell me. Where’s the house?”
She would rather be with him at the relative safety of the house, and not standing roadside. But it was hard to break away from him. She’d been missing the feeling ever since D.C., and since it had come back so unexpectedly, and so fast . . .
She lingered in his embrace while he said, “We’ll follow you.”
“Were you at the car shop? What happened there?”
“I’ll explain. At home.”
It was still a good idea, but she still didn’t want to leave him. She gave him one last squeeze. “Can I come with you? In your car?” She followed him to his car, where another DARC agent sat, smiling from the driver’s seat. He lowered his sunglasses and Kalani was reminded of that video-call interview she’d once had back in Hawaii. It was when she first got started working for Jackson, her screening test with the human lie detector.
“So we meet again,” he said. “In real life.”
“It was real life before,” Kalani said. “You helped convince Jackson I wasn’t a lying scumbag.”
“That was my working hypothesis at the time.”
“So, what’s going on, guys? Another interrogation?”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “But not you.”
“My sister?”
He smiled and said, “No,” as Ethan left them, walking up the road toward her car. Kalani watched him round the passenger side and lean next to her window. She watched them chat awhile, wondering how Ethan would explain things, when Sam said, “Looks like we got you just in time.”
“The garage, right? Tell me I’m not crazy.”
“I don’t know about that,” Sam said. “But the whole thing definitely looked shady.”
“So then you knocked on the door?”
Ethan hollered from up front, “Come on, Sam, ride up here with Lea and we’ll follow.”
The rest of the story would have to wait. Maybe until she was alone with Ethan in the car. When they finally pulled onto the road, just the two of them, she reached across and wrapped her hand around his forearm. “I’m actually touching you,” she said.
He laughed. “Can you believe it?”
“I wish it was under better circumstances.”
“Maybe it will be.”
A lot of time had passed since they’d been together, since they’d been close. Since touching. Part of her worried about the change in him, if there would be a lingering awkwardness. If it would be hard to “get back into it.” So far, he’d assumed the role of D.C. Ethan, quietly accepting and perhaps relishing her touch. He took a deep breath and, with his eyes still on the road, said, “I missed you like crazy.”
“You didn’t miss the crazy though, huh?”
“It’s worth it.”
She laughed. “No, it’s not. It’s okay, you can be honest. I know Sam’s not around anymore, but you can try.”
“Okay,” he said. “For the sake of honesty . . .”
“Yes?”
“I’ve been worried sick about you.”
With the way he’d set it up, Kalani expected him to finish with some type of joke. Or at least a smile. She looked at him, his face tightened with the stress she’d been feeling all morning. Maybe it was contagious. Something anyone would pick up around Claxtonburg. Around that damn mechanic’s shop. “So are you ready to tell me what happened back there? And why the hell you’re here? And how?”
“That’s a lot to explain,” he said. “And I’ve got a cop following me.”
She turned back to see a highway patrol car following at about the same distance as she’d been followed by Ethan. Could she go anywhere without that creeping sensation of being followed? Could she ever just be alone? Or even better, alone with Ethan?
The officer in the patrol car made sure that it wouldn’t happen. He’d turned his lights on, the sirens wailing a few turns to signify his intentions. Now Kalani sat back, calmer than usual, waiting to see what Ethan’s intentions were. He’d already rescued her from what could have been a botched assassination. Or at least just some general awkwardness in a car shop. But now, on the open road, and with a cop behind him, he decided to play along and pull over.
“Let’s let those two get ahead,” Ethan said about Lea and Sam. “Better that he pulls us over than them.”
“I’m not sure about that,” Kalani said. “I’m the one attracting so much attention. No one seems to care about her.”
“I guess you’re right,” he said with a smile. “You definitely have my attention. The good kind of attention.”
“Is it?”
He nodded and Kalani asked, “Is that why you’re here?”
“Partially.”
For what felt like ten minutes, they sat off to the side of the road as they waited with evaporating patience for the officer to finally step out of the car.
She didn’t bother asking Ethan for his hypothesis, if he thought the stop had to do with their getaway from the car garage. She knew it did. Instead, she said, “So, what’s our story?”
“You don’t have one,” he said. “I’ll talk it out.”
“Who am I?”
“You’re my partner of ten years.”
“Partner? That’s too vague.”
He smiled. “My wife. We’re driving out to see my parents.”
“Too elaborate,” Kalani said. Though she liked the bit about her being his wife. Maybe they could still incorporate that in the story somehow. Or maybe after, if they were crazy enough. “Let’s be honest,” she said, “and say you’re rescuing me from getting bludgeoned in the head.”
Ethan looked at her, his eyes widening, and then his head snapped back to the mirror. “Alright, here he comes. I’ll take it from here.”
11
Ethan
It was easier with Kalani around, getting his game face on for whatever came his way. The urge to protect her was deeply rooted and strong, and it translated effortlessly into such simple actions as the unwavering smile that crossed his face for the officer. The way his body relaxed. His breathing, too. She had a way of settling his breathing, making him feel purposeful. Somehow, life was more understandable at her side, like he knew his role. His mission. It was there in West Virginia, to get the cop off their trail, as it was getting whoever it was at the car garage away long enough for Kalani’s escape. He could do that all day, all week, all year if he had to. But Ethan had a feeling it wouldn’t be necessary for much longer. He began his way to that by rolling down his window and then waiting for the footsteps to get closer. And then he waited for the officer’s friendly greeting, Ethan responding with his own, with his hands in clear sight for the officer.
“You got a tail light out. You know about that?”
“No, sir.”
The officer asked for and then received his license and registration. He heard the sound of sagging leather as the officer shifted his weight from one foot to the other, standing out there inspecting the documents. When Ethan glanced at his normally pretty passenger, she had a perplexed look on her face. He squinted at her as if to ask “What’s wrong?” She just shook her head.
The officer was still going on about the light. “Gonna get that fixed?”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“I saw it when you hit the brakes down the hill there, only one light coming on.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll address that right away.”
The officer handed back the documents and said, “You know, we got a shop just in town there, just down the road where you came. I’m not sure if they’re still open.”
>
“No, sir,” he said. “They’re not open.”
Ethan smiled at Kalani, but her face looked too nervous for it to remain.
She was eager to know the story. He couldn’t blame her. It had been a compelling mystery to him all along, too.
“How far is this place?” he said.
“Come on, just tell me.”
“Just tell you?”
“How you got here, how you found me at the garage.”
The only problem was how she might take the news. He would have loved to keep up the kidding, to tease her with it. But there were some elements of the story that he knew would wipe the smile from her face faster than seeing the lights of another highway patrol car. He knew now that they were after her.
“Jackson’s worried about you guys,” he finally said, without any hint of joking.
“Because of Tucker?”
“He’s worried about him, too. We’re starting our investigation, and part of that means we need more manpower over here in Virginia. There’s too much going on. We’ve got the legal proceedings back home, the training camp here, you and Lea. It’s a nightmare.”
“It is.”
“My paper, oddly enough, sent me on a story out here to West Virginia. It tied in with something Jackson wanted me to do, tracking a shipping container across the state line from Norfolk. I found it at a truck stop, and then Sam found me there. He was waiting for me, so I guess that’s the connection. It was just a way to get to me. Or I guess this whole thing with Tucker might have made it more urgent. Right now, it seems Jackson needs all the help he can get.”
“So can we.”
“That’s what I mean,” Ethan said. “So, Sam led me to Claxtonburg.”
“Why Claxtonburg?”
“That was where Tucker last used his cell phone. We don’t know what the call was about, or who it was to. But we’re working on that second part. All we know for sure was that it was from here, so that’s our first point of interest. We hung out for a while, and it was sheer luck we saw you in that parking lot.”
Dark Discovery (DARC Ops Book 8) Page 8