Smokescreen

by Meredith Fletcher; Vicki Hinze Doranna Durgin

  “I’m sorry, Darcy.”

  “Me, too.” He had no idea just how sorry—no one did.

  “It’s their fault, not yours.” When she looked up at him, he added. “It’s written all over you that you feel guilty about this.”

  “I feel responsible—and guilty.”

  “You’re not. You didn’t start the fire.”

  “There’s more, Ben.”

  “What more?”

  “You know I spend a lot of time in isolation. I have to do it. Anyone with me would, too.” She rubbed his thumbs with hers. “I don’t think that’s fair to ask of anyone else—to ask of you. I shouldn’t do it.”

  He grunted and rolled his gaze heavenward. “Hell, Darcy, think. Where do I spend most of my time?” He ticked off his own response. “Los Casas. Here at home. At Mick’s, at church, rocking on the front porch—and once a year, at the festival. I like isolation.”

  “You do, don’t you?” Relieved and excited, Darcy smiled.

  “Yeah.” He pulled her to him. “Come here.”

  Darcy walked into his arms.

  Long hours later, Darcy’s cell phone rang.

  Ben rubbed her arm, wrist to elbow, unwrapped his leg from hers, letting it fall from the sofa to the floor. “It’s yours.”

  “Aw, I don’t want to move.” Snuggled back against his chest, his legs on either side of her hips, her arms folded over his at her waist, she felt totally relaxed and too comfortable to consider moving.

  He pressed a kiss to the side of her neck. “Don’t.”

  Boy, would she love that. “Have to, but hold my place for me.”

  “You got it, sweet stuff.”

  She rolled off the sofa, where they’d sprawled and dozed off, then grabbed the phone from her purse. “Hello.”

  “Darcy, it’s Colonel Drake. I’ve just upgraded your mission to a Code 2.”

  Darcy’s heart thudded. Code 2 missions signaled imminent threat. Wide-awake now, she asked, “Why?”

  “The photos you sent in—the two men with Santana—they reside at the Broken Branch Redemption compound. We think it’s a front for GRID.”

  “Santana owns TNT and runs Broken Branch. He cuts a deal with GRID and hides the explosives at Broken Branch, knowing we won’t go in due to the ‘freedom of religion’ complications. I’d say it’s highly likely, Colonel. Do we have any more details on these men? They could be GRID operatives as well.”

  “Maggie, Kate and Nathan, and Amanda and Max are on it.”

  Five Class-A operatives. Darcy thought a second, reviewing their collective expertise. “You might want to get Jackson Stone from Task Force 123 on it, too, Colonel. He’s got a mind like mine only his is a lot more full. He’s been this way since birth.” Darcy shoved her hair back from her face. “I’m guessing the supersleuths at Langley are still trying to break the code.”

  “Ever since you relayed it.” She sighed. “So far, no luck.”

  Perplexed, Darcy stared at the window. “So why are we upgrading to a Code 2?” Something had to spur the urgency.

  “The tracking device you put on Wexler’s truck is active. He left home about five minutes ago, heading back to the Oasis.”

  Darcy grabbed her shoes and started shoving them on her feet. “I’m on my way, Colonel.”

  “You are holding up—”

  “I’m fine.” She’d spoken sharply—far more so than was warranted. The question irritated the spit out of her. It shouldn’t, but it did. Her problem, not the commander’s. She sighed. “I’m sorry, Colonel Drake. I know you’re just concerned. Everything really is going fine.”

  “I’m glad, Darcy.”

  God, she felt like a heel. “Thank you for asking and for caring. I mean that.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I’ll keep you posted.” After ending the call, she grabbed her purse and told Ben, “Hustle. Wexler’s on the move.”

  It was three in the morning. Neither of them had to say what they feared he could be moving.

  Inside the Oasis, Mick sat behind the bar, his elbow bent, his chin propped on his hand, and eyes closed. The place was empty except for Wexler and a man who had his back to Darcy. They stood at the pool table and the man was taking a shot at the purple four ball. He looked out of place, wearing a suit. Wexler wasn’t in uniform. He had on faded jeans and a cotton shirt.

  Darcy sat down at a table near them, and half-turned away to better hear them. Ben went to the bar and snagged two sodas.

  “Ben!” Wexler snagged him. “Who’s that you’re with?” He cranked his neck to look her way. “Darcy?” His affable expression faded. “What are you doing here?”

  “Darcy’s renting my guesthouse,” Ben said. “Her car broke down, so I came to help her out. Since we were close, we figured we’d drop in for a drink.”

  The man sank the four ball.

  “At 3:30 in the morning?” Wexler frowned.

  Ben looked at Darcy. “Took me longer to get it running than we thought.”

  “Yes, it did.” Darcy nodded, then glanced at Wexler.

  Whether he was ticked that she was there with Ben or ticked that either of them were there, she had no idea. The man holding the cue stick turned around to look at her.

  Needle.

  She caught herself before reacting. Needle was a known GRID operative whose photo had been on Home Base’s wall for six months, two weeks and four days. Both Amanda and Kate had had run-ins with him on previous GRID missions. That he was here with Wexler, and that he was wearing a red shirt under his suit’s jacket, acted as heavy-duty verification of Intel’s suspicions about another attack and Ben’s assertion that Wexler was involved in it.

  “Who are they?” Needle asked Wexler.

  “They work for me at Los Casas.” He subtly signaled with a negative nod that Needle had nothing to worry about from Ben and Darcy.

  Ignoring them—which suited Darcy just fine—he turned back to his pool game, and took aim on the orange five.

  Ben returned to the table and sat down. They worked to appear lost in conversation, seemingly uninterested in Wexler and Needle, but Darcy hung on their every word. After they finished the game, they walked back to Wexler’s favorite booth in the far corner. He pulled out his brown book and passed it to Needle.

  Darcy’s skin crawled.

  Needle reviewed it for a short minute, and then passed back the book and began spewing numbers, which Wexler hurriedly wrote down.

  Darcy looked at Ben and saw his worry. She smiled to reassure him. “Drink your soda. This isn’t a challenge.”

  With a little grunt she nearly missed, he reached for her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. Grounding her, she realized. Just in case.

  Vintage Ben, she thought. He didn’t make a big deal out of anything. Just stepped up and did what he considered needed doing. She loved that about him.

  Actually, she loved many things about him.

  Needle’s litany lasted longer than Santana’s. At least twelve pages worth, Darcy estimated. Within minutes of finishing, Wexler closed the book, and Needle left the Oasis.

  Darcy considered following him but instead excused herself. In the restroom, she called Home Base for backup. The FBI could intercept Needle at Devil’s Pass as he went into town.

  When she returned to the table, Wexler was gone and Ben looked furious.

  “I retrieved the listening device.” He passed it to her.

  Almost afraid, she asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “The pompous ass just ordered me to back off from you. He’s got dibs.”

  And Ben didn’t like it any more than Darcy. “What did you tell him?”

  He slid out of the booth. “It’s not fit for a lady’s ears.” Circling her shoulder, he tucked her under his arm and led her to the door. Locking it, he closed the bar, leaving Mick sound asleep, sitting at the bar.

  “You take my Jeep,” Ben said. “I’ll drive yours.”

  “Why?” She walked over to his, swept it to make s
ure it was free of bugs or tracking equipment, and then let him seat her inside.

  “Wexler saw us holding hands earlier. He was pretty hostile about you and me being together, and his getting shut out.” Ben tapped the heel of his hand against the car door. “I half expect an ambush on the road to Devil’s Pass. He wants to get your attention.”

  “Then you should go first in my Jeep.”

  Ben nodded. “If he tries to force you off the road, just go around him. I’ll take care of him, and be right behind you.”

  Protective. She didn’t need it, but that he wanted to protect her was endearing. She liked that about him, too. Yet the last thing she needed was a war between him and Wexler. “I’ll see you at the house.”

  About halfway, her headlights shone on Wexler’s red Jeep, stopped on the road. If he tried anything, Ben would beat the man to a pulp and that could create serious mission challenges. Intercession required.

  She hooked the wheel, pulled right up beside Wexler, and stopped. Her headlights shining in onto his front seat, she stuck her head out her window. “Lucas, is everything okay?”

  He got out of his car. “What are you doing driving Ben’s Jeep?”

  “Mine was running hot. He’s driving it, and I’m sticking close in case it breaks down again. You having engine trouble?”

  “No.” He frowned down the road at Ben’s lights, going haywire from him bouncing through the potholes. “Just stopped to, um, have a smoke before going home. Elizabeth hates it,” he confided. “Everything is great. Just great.”

  He wasn’t smoking, but the excuse worked for her. “Okay, then. See you at work tomorrow afternoon.”

  “No!” he shouted.

  “No?” She slid him a puzzled look.

  “You’re off tomorrow.”

  “I am?” Damn it. She didn’t like the feel of this.

  “Yeah. Get settled and everything.”

  “Okay. Later, then.” He waved and she drove off, then watched in the rearview mirror. He stood at the edge of the dirt road and glared as Ben drove past.

  One war avoided.

  But instinct warned her there would be another. She retrieved her cell phone and called in Needle’s codes to Home Base. Kate took the call, and after the data had been recorded, she told Darcy, “Langley has made some progress on breaking the code, but they’re having a hell of a time with part of it.”

  “Maybe Needle’s latest will help them. So far, I’m coming up dry, but I haven’t really had time to give it full focus.”

  “We can but hope. Everyone around here is getting really edgy. We feel GRID closing in. You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Darcy?” Kate paused, her tone turned pensive. “I hate to ask but I need to know. Are you feeling okay?”

  “I’m fine, Kate.” Darcy resisted irritation. Her friend was worried. Her colleague was terrified. “Really. It’s weird, Kate,” she confided in her. “Being here and working with Ben. It’s like having a buffer between everything and me. I still take it all in, but it’s different.”

  “Different, how?”

  “I don’t know.” She really didn’t have a clue. “It’s all there. Every bit of it. But it doesn’t sink in as deep or something. I can’t explain it. But I really am okay.”

  “Stronger emotions filling the space?”

  What the hell. She knew it, and lying to Kate wouldn’t make it less true. “It could be. Ben’s pretty special. A lot like me.”

  “Okay, then.”

  Odd response. Shoot. “Is the colonel standing over your shoulder?”

  “That would be an affirmative, Darcy.”

  “I’m off then.”

  “Good. Get some rest. We’ve got backup standing by on Wexler.”

  “Who?”

  “Overt. As soon as our friends,” Kate said, speaking of the FBI, “heard GRID mentioned, they swarmed us with offers to assist. We accepted.”

  The FBI had lost several agents to GRID, too. “Awesome.”

  “The colonel says to get some sleep. We’ve got you covered.”

  “In that case, I’m on my way.”

  Chapter 6

  Darcy couldn’t sleep.

  Seeing Needle at the Oasis had rattled her, and while she wasn’t hyperstimulating to the point of an attack, she was alert. Far too alert to sleep.

  She made herself a cup of tea and sat down at the cottage’s distressed kitchen table with a pen and pad and wrote down a segment of Needle’s code. Why that specific segment stood out in her mind, she had no idea, but her instincts had been honed as an operative. She respected them. And so she’d follow them now. Assigning each numeral a letter, she went for the obvious vowels first.

  At 6:00 a.m., she showered, cleaned up in a fresh uniform, and drove over to Traveler’s Inn for breakfast and to check out, now that she had Ben’s guesthouse. Starved, she turned her nose up at her usual banana and bran muffin and gorged on bacon and eggs, toast with homemade strawberry jam, blueberries and nearly half a container of yogurt. While eating, she read two newspapers, less the sports sections, and drank three cups of coffee. In her mind, she continued to work on the segment of code.

  A rhythmic sequence hit her with a jolt. She played and replayed it, assigning the known and adding the possible, then she mentally switched to another page, one of Wexler’s first, and assigned it the same values.

  It fit.

  Excitement burned low in her belly. She returned to Needle’s segment, deciphering it, and an important piece of the GRID mission puzzle fell into place. A piece that explained Wexler’s sudden interest in working the night shift—and it had nothing to do with Elizabeth or the Independence Festival opera.

  She rushed to her Jeep and then phoned Home Base, keeping watch on the Inn’s dining room through the huge plate-glass window. As soon as Maggie answered, words spilled from Darcy’s mouth. “Quick. Get the colonel on the line.”

  “You got it, Darcy.”

  Seconds later, Colonel Drake said, “What’s up?”

  “I got part of the code.” She gave the colonel the rhythmic sequence, values assigned and data decoded. She’d pass it on to the S.A.S.S. operatives working it and to Langley. “Needle.” Darcy named the source. “Same means as last time. One of three shipments is coming in tonight.”

  “Where are the other two?”

  “I don’t know,” Darcy admitted. “They could already be here, or still be south of the border.”

  “Okay. Okay,” the colonel said. “We’ll chase that from here. Good work, Darcy.”

  “There’s plenty more to be decoded. Maybe it will help us find out what we need to know.”

  “I pray it will.” The colonel issued an order to Maggie to relay the information to Langley, and then again spoke to Darcy. “Monitor the shipment, but don’t interrupt it. After we determine the location of the other two, then we’ll have the FBI intercept and arrest all parties. Did you get the photos of the agents?”

  “Yes, I did. Maggie sent them last night.”

  They were following standard operating procedure. The S.A.S.S. unit didn’t exist, therefore it worked totally covert operations. Anything overt went to overt agencies at the time of the arrest and then they mopped up from there.

  “I realize it’s risky to let this play out so far, but Secretary Reynolds issued our orders,” Colonel Drake said. “He wants us to confiscate all the radioactive material designated for use in the attack and facilitate the arrests of all the terrorist thugs GRID designated to use it. Hopefully, this time we’ll get Thomas Kunz himself.”

  Darcy wouldn’t bank on it. “He’ll hide and let his minions take the risks. He always does.”

  “I know.” Colonel Drake grunted. “But a woman can dream.”

  Darcy returned to the dining room and waited. Finally, the two men from Broken Branch Redemption came out of the bank of elevators and walked toward the little restaurant.

  Darcy tucked her wallet back into her purse and asked
the waiter for a newspaper.

  A busload of teens streamed into the restaurant, laughing, squealing, talking across the tables. The Broken Branch men didn’t seem to mind the noise, and Darcy tried to ignore it, but she just couldn’t take it. Her chest went tight, her temples throbbed and the telltale warning spots formed before her eyes.

  Get out of here, Darcy. Now.

  She reached for her purse and looked up—just as her FBI counterparts walked into the restaurant. But it was the man walking two steps behind them who had her in a full-blown attack.

  Thomas Kunz.

  The head honcho of GRID looked like anything but the chief of a major terrorist network. He was around forty with short blond hair—and, she recalled from memory, blue eyes. Amanda and Kate had reported that he looked like a sunny kind of guy—confident, controlled, casual but elegant—and Darcy had to agree. Even knowing what she knew about him as fact, it was difficult to reconcile the ruthless killer he was with the man walking across the restaurant.

  He was familiar with the S.A.S.S. Would he recognize her?

  Go! Go! Go!

  She dropped a bill on the table, walked to the closest door and went outside. Twisting her purse clasp, she snagged her phone, palmed it and pulled it free. The spots in her eyes blinded her. Damn it, damn it. She dialed the phone by feel, and slid into her Jeep.

  Maggie answered, and Darcy gushed out the news. “He’s here—in the restaurant at Traveler’s Inn. Right now.”

  “Who, he, Darcy?” Maggie sounded worried. She’d definitely picked up on Darcy’s anxiety.

  This time, the worry and anxiety were more than justified. “Kunz.”

  Someone tapped on her window. Startled, Darcy’s muscles locked down. She couldn’t move.

  “Darcy?” A man moved around her, into her line of vision. A spot-speckled Mick. “Hey, what’s wrong?” He shifted a paper bag from his left arm to his right. “You look scared to death.”

  Her heart still banging against her ribs, she didn’t trust herself to speak and not spout gibberish, so she pulled her lips back from her teeth in what she hoped would pass as a smile, rolled down her window and gave him a negative nod.