The girls were somewhere upstairs. He could hear them up above, their quiet footsteps. The odd creak of a floorboard. Ethan moved to the foot of the stairs, where he tried picking up some of the words. But he only got tones, the vague melodies of their voices muffled by a closed door. He waited there until it made him feel vaguely uncomfortable. He’d rather just walk straight up and knock on her door. Announce himself. See her. He would rather it be simple, like a vacation. A fun adventure in the countryside.
Kalani probably would prefer to have the whole thing over and done with. Or to have it never even start in the first place. But he couldn’t think too much about that. He focused instead on Lea, the real barrier. The real door that threatened to muffle everything. Had it not been for recent talk in the barn about her, Ethan would have probably been knocking already.
He stepped back around the foyer corner when the door opened. Someone’s footsteps spilled out. He listened to the strides, having no idea whose legs they belonged to.
The sound of another door at the end of the upstairs hallway, this one closing.
Who was the source of all this?
Matthias must have already done a full comprehensive sweep of the premises. He had to have searched every square foot of every room. They had to have been alone here with the sisters.
With the idea of random Blackwoods operatives having infiltrated the safe house and prowling around upstairs, Ethan began moving to the first step, and then scaling up even more quickly, his heart beating fast, mostly for Kalani. Mostly with excitement. Mostly.
At the top, he curled close against the wall, creeping around a corner slowly, making certain the hall was empty. At the end, a door. The bathroom, if he recalled correctly. Light glowed across the bottom. At the end of the hall in the other direction was another closed door. Perhaps bathroom and bedroom. Ethan found his way into the only other room—the only empty room—the guest bedroom where Tucker had been staying.
It was dark inside, but Ethan found the edge of the bed by the light of the hall. He sat there, listening to the sounds of the house around him: an unusual quiet except for the crickets and frog songs seeping through the open window.
The bed had been made, and made well. Military-tight and orderly, it must have been Tucker’s work. When his eyes grew accustomed to the light, Ethan saw a stack of bags leaning up against a table leg. The bags looked masculine and heavy duty, something a former soldier might lug around for a month in foreign territory. From D.C. to West Virginia, perhaps. Had Matthias searched them yet?
Ethan stood from the bed and crossed through the darkness over to the desk, sitting and rotating on the leather office chair with a quiet squeak as he leaned over to switch on the work lamp. Clean white light filled the room and flashed against several reflective badges stitched to the side of the bags. Before he could read them, he heard someone standing in the doorway. Someone sighing there. He pushed the chair backward and looked up to his visitor, expecting one of the girls, but prepared for anything.
Kalani smiled back at him. “You weren’t trying to listen in on us, were you?”
“What?” The question made no sense to him. He was more concerned with studying her beauty in the low light. Her tiny little frame barely filled the door frame. She leaned her hips back against it.
“Huh?” she said.
Ethan was lucky back in Hawaii, seeing a lot of skin. Her beautiful, tanned skin. West Virginia offered her very little reason for bikinis, and Ethan was a little resentful of that. But still, standing there fully clothed in the doorway, it was her figure that caught his attention. The soft round of hip pressing against the door frame . . . Maybe he’d spent too much time away.
“If she sees you here,” Kalani said, “she’s going to flip. Lea. She’s on the warpath.”
“Why?” He laughed and then tried stopping and quieting himself. “Why, what did I do?”
“She’s just sick of it all.” Kalani pushed off the wall, walked deeper into the room, the desk light glowing up more of her smile. Her smile widened as she approached. She sat on the bed, where he’d just come from. “She’s sick of you DARC guys, creeping around, investigating . . .”
“Well, technically, I’m not a DARC guy.”
“No?”
“Technically, no.”
“I don’t think she cares about technicalities.”
“Jackson does.”
“So, what were you doing? Just sitting here in the dark?”
“There’s a lamp on,” Ethan said.
“Sitting here with a lamp, then. Just sitting here?
He nodded. “Just sitting here. What are you doing?”
“I was about to take a shower.” She smiled, then looked away.
“That reminds me . . .”
“No,” she said, “you’ll have to wait your turn.”
“That’s not what I was getting at.”
“What does it remind you of, then?”
“Lani,” he said, feeling all the humor of the moment melting away to an almost desperate sincerity. “I missed the hell out of you.”
“Me too. The hell out of you.”
“Come here,” he said, stretching his arm across the gap. There were a few feet between the office chair and the bed, and he wanted it bridged. Quickly. “Come over here.” He watched her lift herself off the bed with a mischievous gleam in her eyes, the work light momentarily reflecting in them. She grabbed his hand, and then his arm, and then it was the warm weight of her body on his lap. Her softness, sitting on him. His arms wrapped. Their breathing, big and in and out and him squeezing her tighter, but still keeping his mouth away. He looked at the side of her neck, wanting it. But the sound of her giggle surprised him, and knocked a bit of the serious lusting out of him. She giggled and squirmed a little in his lap, and he forgot all about her neck. The weight of her felt so good.
“Shh,” Kalani said, standing and stepping back when the bathroom door opened. Then it was Lea’s turn to look into the room with a skeptical glare. “Hi, Lea,” Kalani said.
Lea, wrapped in a towel and with one curled over the top of her head, was still frowning.
Ethan said “Hi,” too, though he knew he probably shouldn’t have. But he just kept smiling after, everything fine and dandy in his world—especially after his brief snuggle with Kalani. In contrast, everything was stormy in Lea’s world. She smiled, but it was fake and filled with something Ethan could only identify as rage. “Good shower? How’s the pressure in this house?”
“Pressure?” she said, cocking her head to the side. “It’s getting a bit much.”
“I know.” He felt pressure, too. All kinds of pressure. Though he preferred the soft aching pressure of Kalani’s body against his crotch. He almost laughed when he thought of that, laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation. At Lea.
Kalani took several steps toward her sister, positioning herself between her and Ethan. He was a little thankful, watching how she handled her sister. Watching both of them disappearing back into the hall after one last devilish smile from Kalani.
He would have to continue that later, picking up from where they left off. On his lap.
Alone, Ethan ran his fingers through his hair, hand wiping down his face. He took a deep breath and tried to remind himself just where he was, and why he was. West Virginia. A supposed safe house.
He was also in the old room of a disappeared Tucker. A possible kidnapped and endangered Tucker. He looked around it again, scanning the bare walls and then circling back to the desk. And then down to the bags.
14
Kalani
The night had taken on a much more casual vibe, and she was much more okay with that. Like a group sleepover. Co-ed. It brought back memories of beachside campsites, teenage courting, and ghost stories. She supposed the tales that night could have been ghost stories. Real ones, the most real and depressing of which being Tucker’s mysterious departure. His vanishing. Though the campers had all seemed to keep spirits up enou
gh to just skirt past that one upsetting topic.
To make sure they’d keep things that way, an easy and fun proposition was made: movie night. They’d clustered around the old-fashioned tube TV for the first hour of an ’80s action flick, eager for the escape it provided. Eager to not have to keep looking at and talking with one another. Lea especially, who’d come in and out of the room at various points in the movie, visibly excited and restless. Anxious Lea, almost having burned through the rest of her pack of cigarettes outside.
Kalani had good reason to be only partially invested in the entertainment. She had her own to seek out and explore. She had Ethan, who made it conveniently obvious to everyone that he’d had some kind of work to do back in the barn. Something much more important than mere entertainment, at least until Kalani had gotten the hint. And at least until she finally worked up the courage to sneak away from the couches and blankets and popcorn bowls of Movie Night, almost tip-toeing down the back deck stairs despite everyone already knowing her destination and her intentions there. Kalani, at least, was certain of her intentions. Their intentions together. She wanted to see them realized and acted upon. She wanted that clearly and without mystery, especially having suffered through a summer of the mystery being drawn out through cryptic messages in a newspaper.
The teenage courting was over. They’d grown out of letter writing and fumbling long-distance with the puzzle pieces of what picture they’d wanted. What they’d wanted it to become. She was ready.
She was ready when she entered the warm glow of the barn. Ready for his intentions to seize upon her hard, or however he’d let them. However he needed it was unimportant. Just the fact that he needed it at all. And the fact that he’d get it.
But the look of surprise lingered on his face after she finally made enough noise for him to notice his audience. He’d been staring at her like she had interrupted something.
“Hey,” Ethan said.
“Hey,” Kalani replied, copying the tone he’d used for it. She’d already made a big enough move coming out here to begin with. She’d already stuck her neck out. What was he doing?
“I just came to look at something,” he said.
“Away from everyone else?”
“Yeah, just for a minute.” He turned back to the work table, his shoulder blocking Kalani’s view.
“Should I leave you to it?”
“Huh?” Head down and working.
“Should I not bother you right now?” But it was too late, the feeling having already soured in her. She didn’t mean for it to sour, but it did, and she hated that, too. It was his first night at the house, and she hated how everything hinged so tightly to the smallest little nuance.
She walked closer. Maybe if she could just see what he’d been working on, what had been so important . . .
A laptop.
Images flashed across the screen in quick succession. He kept tapping one of the keys as photographs whizzed by the screen, speeding through, searching for something. He paused once, for a fraction of a second, and Kalani could finally get her bearings. A photograph of the safe house, a view of the front lit up in full sun. And then the blur returned as Ethan continued scrolling through.
“Sorry,” he said.
“It’s okay.” She stood still behind him. She stayed quiet. There was a part of her that felt relieved. It did seem like important work.
“Sorry,” he said again.
Now it unnerved her, his concentration. The fact that someone had taken photographs of the house. She had no idea about any of it.
“Ethan,” she said, “what is it?” His shoulders rose and fell in a big breath. He finally turned away from his laptop screen, turning to her looking just as lost and worried as she felt.
“I think I found an SD card from Tucker’s camera.”
“Where?”
“From his . . . I think from his bag. Do you remember seeing those bags in his room?”
“Yeah.”
“They’re his?”
“I think so.”
“Have you looked in them?” Ethan said.
The idea had never occurred to her. At the start, when she first noticed them, the situation hadn’t developed into its current dire form. Back then, it would have been nosy of her. A violation of his privacy. While his story got more worrisome, she’d almost completely forgotten about them.
“Have you?” Ethan said, still staring at her hard.
“No, I haven’t.”
Ethan frowned. “What about Matthias? Has anyone looked at them? In them?”
“Not that I know of,” Kalani said. “I mean, he never said anything. And I just figured it was Tucker’s or DARC stuff, and, you know, just to let them deal with it.” He was still giving her that look. She squinted at him and said, “What?”
“Nothing, I’m just . . .” He turned back to face the monitor for a moment. And then back to her. “I don’t know. My thoughts are going in a hundred crazy directions.”
She selfishly wanted them all in her direction. But she saw how he’d been hunching over the laptop, how his fingers strained over the keys. There was a stillness in his eye that almost frightened her.
“Sorry,” he said, grabbing a chair and moving it next to his. “Let’s sit and talk awhile. Have you ever seen Tucker with a camera? Taking pictures?”
“No, never. He took pictures with his phone, for fun. But I’ve never seen him with an actual camera.”
“By the looks of it, he just had some little point-and-shoot. And he’s no photographer.”
“Well, what is it?” she said, hoping Ethan would continue through his slide show. “What’s he taking pictures of? And why?”
“Looks like the house, and its surroundings. A few other things.” Ethan cleared his throat. “I don’t know why. The only thing I can think of is it’s his way of communicating to us.”
“Communicating?” Kalani thought again of ghost stories. A voice from the grave. “What do you think he’s saying?”
“I’m not sure yet. But if these locations were important enough for him to shoot, well . . .”
“Then we should go see them,” Kalani said, catching Ethan nodding to the idea even before she finished saying it.
“Yes, we should, if we can identify where they are. That’s the hard part.”
“I saw the house,” Kalani said.
“Yeah, the house. That’s an easy one.” He reached for the keyboard and clicked through a few more photos. Green fields. Tall weeds, shrubs. A forest that looked like one surrounding the safe house. “It’s these ones here that are a little hard to place.”
“It’s around here.”
“It has to be,” Ethan said. “But where?” Then he sat back in his chair, shaking his head. He made a sound like a laugh, but his face was deadly serious.
“Tell me about the bag,” Kalani said.
“The what?” He blinked several times and then said, “Oh, yeah, his bag. So I just unzipped it and went through it. I’m still not a hundred percent it’s Tucker’s, but . . .”
“Did it have patches on it? Like the kind you get in the military, but reflective?”
Ethan nodded.
“I think I saw him with those. I never saw what he kept inside, but . . .”
“Clothes,” he said. “Clothes, mostly. But the odd thing was how they’re packed. From what I know about all the guys in DARC Ops, they’re meticulous about that sort of thing. Keeping their personal effects neat and tidy, like they were still in the service.”
“They sort of still are.”
“Not only were they not folded, or rolled up, but they were dirty. You have a laundry here, right?”
“We’ve got a washer and dryer.”
“And it works?”
Kalani rolled her eyes. “Don’t ask Lea, she wouldn’t know. But yeah, it works fine.”
“They were just all jammed in there dirty. And I found spurs attached to some of the pants.”
“Spurs?”
&nbs
p; Ethan gave her a blank stare.
“You mean burrs?”
“The kind that attach to your clothes.”
“When you walk in the woods? Yeah, burrs. Prickly things.”
“Yeah,” Ethan said, rubbing his fingers together. “I picked a bunch of them from his bag, some still attached to clothing.”
“So what do you think that means?”
“It just doesn’t sit right with me,” he said. “It’s almost like someone packed his clothes for him. I don’t like thinking that.”
“Where did you find the SD card?”
“In one of the pockets.”
“How about the camera?”
He shook his head. “No camera.”
She looked at him for awhile, at how his attention moved off her to focus back on his screen. He looked tired. Almost withered. “Are you tired?” He chuckled to himself and she said, “Can I get you anything from the house? A water or anything? Handful of popcorn?”
“Don’t,” he said.
“What?”
“Don’t leave.”
She was almost startled by how he’d blurted it out. By the immediacy of his words and what they’d done to his mouth. “I won’t leave,” she said.
“And let’s just keep this between you and me for now. Okay?”
“Okay.”
He patted her knee, his eyes back on her. Her feeling like they’d never leave. It was the same sensation she’d felt through his newspaper messages, though more filtered and abstract. But it was always there. There, too, back in Hawaii. That feeling had done a lot of traveling.
“Can I help you in here, then?” she said.
“You already are.”
“I am?”
He nodded.
“I feel like I could be doing a better job,” she said. “Sorry, I can’t add much to your camera discovery. There’s been a lot of things to pay attention to in the last few days, and Tucker taking photos around the house wasn’t really at the forefront, I guess.”
Dark Discovery (DARC Ops Book 8) Page 11