A Deeper Darkness

by J. T. Ellison

  Like they care, Sam. Really. You need to stop telling people about your troubles. She’d managed to go nearly two years without anyone commenting on her failings, and now half of D.C. was aware she’d become a hopeless mess. Maybe she did need protecting, after all.

  Xander met her eyes, frank and open. “I understand, actually. That’s why I’m up here. I get…upset, too.”

  “The war?”

  “Among other things. I don’t know how much you know about me, Dr. Owens.”

  “Your background. Your parents. That you were a very brave soldier.” She stopped for a moment, then started again, quietly. “I know Eddie Donovan thought the world of you. He trusted you implicitly. He talked about you a lot in his journals. He respected you, in addition to enjoying your company. That’s why I’m here. Eddie trusted you. And now it seems, so must I.”

  “Mommy?”

  A small, scared voice startled all three of them. Jennifer had climbed out of bed and come down the hall.

  “Did you have another nightmare, sweetie?” Maggie asked.

  “Yes. The bad one.” The little girl’s face was pink with the effort not to cry.

  “Oh, sweetie. Come here.” She gave Sam an apologetic look, and spoke sotto voce. “She’s been having bad dreams since we ran.” Then to her daughter, she said, “Tell me about it.”

  The little girl was trying hard to hold it together. “It was the house across the street. Back home. There was a man there. He had a wand. Like Voldemort. He waved at it you, Mommy, and sparks flew out, and you fell down.”

  She started to cry in earnest, and Maggie pulled her to her chest and held her, murmuring soothing words of nonsense to help calm her child. Sam fought the nausea that immediately blossomed when she saw the intimacy. She stood and went to the window, looked out in the dark night sky, saw the outline of the trees, their edges shimmering in moonlight.

  A repeating nightmare.

  The house across the street.

  A man with a wand.

  Perhaps a childlike interpretation of a gun?

  Sam rushed back to the table. “She saw the shooting.”

  Maggie and Xander both stared at her.

  “Ask her,” Sam said. “Ask her.”

  Maggie frowned, but sat Jen back on her lap. “Honey, the other night, your birthday night, you read that scary book and had a bad dream, then you called for me. What was it about?”

  “That wasn’t a bad dream, Mommy. Across the street, there was a shooting star in the window, and then someone left.”

  She stuck her thumb in her mouth and started humming “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

  Maggie pulled her thumb from her mouth gently. “Sweetie, the someone who left. Did you recognize him?”

  Jen shook her head. Maggie tried again.

  “Was it a him? Or a her? Could you tell?”

  Sam glanced over at Xander, whose face was intent with interest. He doesn’t know, she thought. He really doesn’t know who killed them.

  The realization that Xander had been telling the truth almost made her collapse in relief. For some reason, she so wanted to believe this man. She wanted to believe him in the very worst way.

  Was it Donovan? Did Xander remind her of him? Or was it the things Donovan had written in his journal that made her feel like she knew Xander? Parts of him, at least.

  Or was it the way his eyes probed into her like he was trying to share the universe’s thoughts with her?

  Flustered, she turned away, but heard Jen’s answer. “It was a him.”

  Maggie sighed, and Xander sucked his breath in through his teeth. “You’re sure?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Jen answered. “He had short hair and made a big shadow across the street. I thought he was coming to get me. Do you know the bad man?”

  Xander glanced at Maggie, then over to Sam.

  “Yes, sweetie. I think I do. And I promise, he won’t ever come near you again.”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Savage River Lodge

  Detective Darren Fletcher

  The sun was gone. Defeated, Fletcher had agreed to hunker down for the night. His sense of honor was in tatters. He was so worried for Sam he could barely breathe. As darkness had enveloped the search team, they decided a staging point would be necessary, and found the nearby Savage River Lodge, a beautiful stone-and-timber retreat that Fletcher had half a mind to check into and never come back out again.

  The forest service guys were stretched out over a table to his right, looking at a topographical map, estimating times and drawing circles with their protractors, then tapping things into their computers. They were attempting to figure out how far Sam could have gone on foot, working on the assumption, however faulty it may be, that she hadn’t been shoved in a car. Or put on a horse. Or dropped off a cliff.

  All he could do was wait. On the streets of D.C. he knew what his place was, what he could do. Out here, in the woods, he didn’t stand a chance. He’d never been much of a nature guy. Outside of the odd Boy Scout camping trip with Tad, trips that Felicia increasingly took in his stead as the boy grew up, he’d never spent any time in the woods. He wasn’t a hunter or a fisher. He was a cop. A jog down by the river was as exotically outdoors as he ever got.

  He’d been stupid to think he could control the situation. Alexander Whitfield was a seasoned soldier, capable of hiding in plain sight, and that knowledge made Fletcher even angrier. He’d been played. They’d all been played.

  But something in his gut told him Whitfield wasn’t his man. He was so far off the grid that calling attention to himself by murdering his old friends seemed out of character, at least the little bit he’d been able to profile from Whitfield’s record and Sam’s translations from Edward Donovan’s journal.

  Now, Margaret Lyons was another story. A woman scorned is a powerful thing. According to Taranto, Perry Fisher was the father of her kid. Maybe someone in her chain of command had figured that out and was using that knowledge to scuttle her career, and things got out of hand. Croswell could have found out and confronted her. She snapped, walked him across the street to the house she knew was empty, shot him and played dumb until morning, when Fletcher and Hart came knocking on her door.

  A plausible theory, sure. But where did Donovan fit into that? Lyons had been at work at her law firm when Donovan was shot. Three people had seen her and confirmed.

  Karen Fisher was still a good choice. Assuming she was playing the reporter for her own personal gain… She could have been using Taranto to ferret out the real story, and Donovan and Croswell were trying to keep it quiet.

  Shit, if he just knew who’d been the actual shooter in the friendly fire. That would help narrow it down.

  DOD wasn’t talking. Roosevelt had called three times, pushing hard. He was about to play his last card, which was going public with the information in an attempt to bluff them into telling the story. Fletcher wanted him to do it right now, but Roosevelt fancied a few more tries to see if he could work the back channels.

  Fletch even thought about calling Felicia, beg and plead for her to talk to Joelle again, but they were running out of time.

  That damn phone call. That’s what got the ball rolling. But there was nothing to indicate that the Raptor offices were Donovan’s end goal—he could have been meeting anyone anywhere. For all intents and purposes, it looked like a fluke that his direction took him toward the Raptor offices. Donovan’s boss, Deter, hadn’t called him in. The other guy, Culpepper, was in Iraq at the time. Fletcher had interviewed the personnel there three times, and didn’t have a single hit.

  So Donovan was headed somewhere else. But where?

  Fletcher paced around the room.

  He thought back to the conversation Sam had with Taranto.
He brought out his notebook and went through the code names again.

  King, that was Perry Fisher. Doc was Donovan. Shaky Guy was William Everett. Mutant was Whitfield, Jackal was Croswell.

  There was another name on that list. Taranto said when Karen Fisher heard that her husband might had been killed by one of his compatriots, by one of his friends, she went to another, Orange, to get the truth.

  So who the hell was Orange?

  Orange was his killer. He had to be. And something about Perry Fisher’s death exposed the man, or woman, who operated under that nickname, and as a result, they needed to minimize the damage as quickly and efficiently as possible.

  And the best way to make sure no one talks is to permanently shut them up.

  Had Susan Donovan figured out the truth? Fletcher resisted smacking himself on the head. Of course she had. She’d found the missing pages from the journal.

  Could she be responsible for her husband’s death?

  Shit. That couldn’t be. She was missing. But had she gone on the run? No. He was firmly convinced the killer was part of Donovan’s unit overseas.

  He called Roosevelt.

  “Where are we with the DOD?”

  “Third time’s a charm. I’ve been invited to the Pentagon. Fifteen minutes.”

  “That is fantastic news. I’ve got a couple things for you, too. Knock on my head must have sprung loose some nuts. You need to go find Karen Fisher. Taranto supposedly had her hidden away. She is involved, though how I don’t know. Check Taranto’s credit cards—he told Sam he was keeping Karen somewhere safe, so he probably got her a hotel room. And while you’re at the Pentagon, see if you can find out who was saddled with the moniker Orange while they were over there. Someone in Donovan’s unit was called Orange, and that’s who our killer is. I’m sure of it.”

  Roosevelt was quiet for a minute. “Seems I should let you get shot, lost and hit on the head more often. How would someone get saddled with the nickname Orange?”

  “Fuck if I know. Maybe he likes orange juice, or is from Florida or California. Remember that show, the O.C.? Orange County? Or has red hair. Doesn’t matter. We just need to find out who he or she is.”

  “Your wish is my command.”

  Fletcher laughed. “Call me back.” He closed his phone and went to the table of forest service guys.

  “You got anything?”

  The lead kid, and Jesus, he was a kid, nodded. “Four sites they could be, sir. Spread across the mountain. All very remote. Permanent camps on private property. It’s going to take a few hours to get to any of them.”

  “Show me.”

  The topographical map was just a bunch of lines and squiggles, circles and four small red Xs. All of them were in an area within the greatest concentration of lines, scattered across the map like miniature campfires.

  “What do those lines mean?” Fletcher asked.

  “Oh, you don’t know how to read a topo? That’s an elevation indicator. Pretend it’s in 3-D. If you can imagine the lines as rising into the air, as the concentric gets smaller, that’s the higher up the mountain it is.”

  “I failed Boy Scout 101. How far are these from us?”

  “Closest one will take two hours. Farthest is five, minimum.”

  “Do you know who lives at any of them?”

  “No. No, sir. Very remote. We don’t normally get up that way. We’re assigned to the park only. That’s private property.”

  “All right, then. There are four of you. Each of you will guide a team of my men. And we aren’t waiting for morning. We’re moving out right now.” He turned to the tactical team guys who were happily sprawled around the lodge’s great room, enjoying the fire and their full stomachs. The lodge owners had taken good care of them.

  Fletcher spun his finger in the air over his head.

  “Get off your asses. Lock and load. We’re rolling.”

  “But, sir…” The kid who’d explained the map looked panicked. “Really, it’s not safe.”

  Fletcher turned on him.

  “There’s a woman in danger at one of those camps. Do you want to be responsible if we get there too late because you were scared to go out on the mountain at night?”

  The kid puffed out his chest. “I’m not scared. I’m just not an idiot.”

  “Then prove it. And keep us safe while you’re doing it.”

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Savage River

  Maggie Lyons

  Maggie got Jen a glass of water and took her back to the bedroom to tuck her in. They were sharing a double bed—an inflatable air mattress. The boys were out cold on the floor in their sleeping bags. It always amazed her how hard they slept. Of course, they played hard, too, and, since they’d been up here with Xander, worked hard, as well.

  This room was Xander’s armory, and playroom. Weapons in various forms lined the walls, guns and bows and artillery, a variety wide enough the ATF would probably freak if they ever saw. He’d pushed a table out of the way that contained all of his fishing lures, tackle and numerous other things Maggie didn’t recognize.

  It was nice, having guy friends who could do some of the fathering Roy was incapable of providing. Noah and Bobby had both been up here before. To them, visiting Xander’s was like a really elaborate camping trip. She wondered if they’d remember the fun times they had up here when all was said and done.

  Now that she’d finally listened to Jen, who’d been trying to tell her about the scary man across the street for three days, now that they knew for sure who had killed Croswell and, of course, Donovan, Maggie had no illusions about what was going to happen.

  She and Xander were next. And once they were gone, the whole situation went far, far away.

  She didn’t want to die. She’d already been through hell, and come out the other side. Not unscathed, never unscathed, but whole enough to get her life back on track.

  She had made mistakes. Big mistakes. Getting involved with Perry Fisher—that had been a whopper. She’d always hated women who cheated, but once Roy started drinking more and more, treating her like she was a piece of dirt trapped under the sole of his shoe, after he punched her when she was home on leave and she had to return to her unit with a black eye and lie about how she got it, something in her changed. Her allegiance to Roy was shattered. She met Perry, and was lost. Perry was a gentleman, a soft-spoken soldier with intensely blue eyes that to Maggie seemed like staring into a perfect summer sky. He was married, as well, which made her feel doubly bad, but he’d filed for an official separation before they got involved, so she supposed it wasn’t as much of a sin as it would have been if he was just getting his rocks off.

  He loved her. And she loved him.

  When it became apparent to both of them that their feelings went deeper than just a simple physical affair, she’d gone online and found the makings necessary to file for divorce from Roy. Separation wasn’t even on the drawing board. Roy would have to be a clean split, or else he’d never let her go. Not all the way.

  But she had to tell him in person. She owed it to him. So they were waiting for her to get back to the States to file.

  She and Perry snatched time together whenever they could, which wasn’t a lot. War doesn’t leave a lot of downtime. But they’d managed to finagle leave together, back at Kandahar Airfield. Compared to being out on the roads, the Kaf was the Four Seasons.

  And that’s when it all went south.

  The fight they’d had after the “incident,” as she called it, was epic. She’d come out an emotional wreck. Perry died three days later, and nine days after that, while she was still in the grips of horror, she found out she was pregnant with Jen.

  She went straight to the doctor, determined to have an abortion, but couldn’t go through wit
h it. The doctors who treated her wrote her a medical discharge, and she was out of Dodge before you could shake a stick. She wasn’t even going to pretend she wanted to stay. She just wanted, no, needed, to lick her wounds at home, away from prying eyes.

  There was no way to play Roy, though. She was three months gone before the dust settled and she was back in Georgetown, applying to law schools. One look at him, drunk and weaving, the fire of anger boiling in his eyes, and she blurted out the truth, told him she wanted a divorce and threatened to kill him if he touched her again.

  She didn’t tell him the name of Jen’s father, though.

  She didn’t tell anyone.

  She kept her head down, worked hard, loved her kids, all three of them, and tried to forget. Until three days ago, when Hal Croswell was murdered across the street from her house, and all she knew to do was bug out. She ran straight for Xander and told him the whole story, start to finish. Not the party line. She’d told him what really happened. He’d gotten her set up with the boys and immediately headed south, to Billy, to bring him to the safety of Xander’s home. But he was too late. Billy had caved under the pressure.

  They were all dead. And the man who killed them was still out there. Haunting her. Hunting her. Trying to make sure the secrets never came out.

  She put her head in the pillow and let the tears come.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Savage River

  Dr. Samantha Owens

  Sam watched Maggie’s subtle retreat to the bedroom. Xander got up from the table and cleaned the kitchen in silence. He was a big man, naturally lean and muscled from outdoor work. He took up a lot of real estate in the small kitchen space.

  She considered him for a few moments. When nothing was forthcoming, she said, “Um, hey. Are you planning to share? Because I’d really like to know what’s going on. You know who killed them now?”

  “Yeah,” Xander said. She could practically hear the gears turning in his head, but he didn’t say anything more. She sighed and nudged him again.