Dark Control (DARC Ops Book 4)

by Jamie Garrett

At least her martini came on time, sliding and glistening before her. She held it. She tried to stop thinking. She brought the glass to her lips, but then felt an odd sensation on her shoulder. Someone’s fingers were tapping there. And when she turned, a familiar face was staring back at her.

  33

  Matthias

  The place had a voodoo theme, people walking around carrying drinks in glowing skull glasses, a far cry from his and Laurel’s spot in Atlanta.

  “Who the hell picked this place?” Matthias asked.

  “Why? What’s wrong with it?”

  He looked around one last time before pulling back his chair and taking a seat amongst his bikers at a corner table. “It’s like a tourist trap. I wanted a real bar.” He thought again back to his spot Atlanta, the place where he’d first met her. A place where the wood of the bar was old, not fake-old. A place where the price of drinks wasn’t inflated to cover the cost of the tacky souvenir it came in.

  “Lighten up,” Billy said. “We’re supposed to be celebrating.”

  Matthias gave his friend an odd look. He was the kind of guy who’d never had a mixed drink in his life. “Billy, I’m surprised at your selection.”

  “I had ’em pour beer in it.” He shrugged and then said, “We ordered wings. You hungry?”

  “No, just thirsty. And tired.”

  “Well, you’ve had a rough couple of days,” Billy said.

  “Yeah, it all started going wrong once I left you guys. I’m glad to be back.”

  A waitress came around and clunked a beer bottle onto the table in front of Matthias. He grabbed it. “We’re all together again now, so, let’s make the best of it.”

  There were a few rousing cheers and clinks of glasses that quickly faded to silence as they each took a drink. The silence continued until finally someone broke the ice with, “Where’s your girl?”

  “Doing what I should be doing,” Matthias said. “Catching up on some sleep.”

  “Sounds like Atlanta really put you through the wringer,” Billy said.

  “Yeah,” Matthias said quietly. “Some of us worse than others.”

  “We just heard about Ernesto. Really sorry about the news.” Some of the guys had also served with him.

  “Thanks,” Matthias said. “I didn’t want to bring it up. Lots of bodies back there from this damn thing.”

  “Good thing it’s over,” Billy said as his eyes glazed over at the sight of the oncoming basket of wings.

  “So when does your friend get here?”

  “Sam? He’s probably already here, watching us.” Matthias glanced around the bar. “That’s what he does best. Watching, observing, reading.”

  “So he’s like some kind of human lie detector?”

  Through the darkness of the bar, Matthias could see the approach of someone in a biker vest. Black leather. Patches. It made him think, and worry, about the whereabouts of those two missing bikers and Caitlyn.

  “Matt? What’s wrong?”

  No. Nothing at all was wrong. He was just being paranoid. He was over that. He just needed a drink. “Nah, I’m good,” he said, lifting the glass to his lips.

  But the dark figure kept coming, and Matthias kept worrying until it got close enough that he could see Sam’s face. The professor greeted the table with a smile, looking almost silly in the biker garb. Matthias was much more used to the professor’s stately argyle and elbow-patched jacket. In contrast, his leathers looked like parts of a Halloween costume.

  “I rode out here from Houston,” he said, grinning as he sat in the last unoccupied chair. “First time doing a long haul like that.”

  Matthias introduced him to his friends and then said, “I never knew you rode.”

  “There’s lots you don’t know about me.” Sam said it with a mock mysterious flutter of eyebrows.

  “Yeah,” Billy said, picking up a wing. “A real man of mystery.”

  “Not so much mystery,” Sam said. “I don’t allow for it.”

  “For mystery?” Billy asked as he sized up his wing.

  “My business is to eliminate mystery. Like you, for example, you were just talking about me, weren’t you?”

  The table went quiet until an almost nervous sounding laughter escaped from one of the riders.

  “I told the guys you were probably scoping us out,” Matthias said.

  “I was. And I could tell precisely when the topic turned to ‘where the hell is Sam?’”

  “So he’s a psychic, too?” Billy asked.

  “No.”

  “A mind reader?”

  “That’s closer.”

  Billy wore a smug grin and asked, “Can you read what I’m thinking?”

  “Yes, I believe I can. And I believe I can prove you wrong.”

  “About what?”

  “About thinking that I’m full of shit.”

  Billy laughed. “Oh, well, I didn’t think that. No way.”

  “You were also thinking about ordering another tray of wings.”

  This time, Billy went deathly silent.

  “Yeah, but he’s always thinking that,” said one of the riders. “Tell us something we don’t know.”

  “Okay,” Sam said, narrowing his gaze at him.

  The man under the microscope, Dan, a retired gulf war vet, was beginning to look a little uncomfortable. He smiled faintly.

  “For one,” Sam began, “That’s a fake smile.”

  The smile mutated into something tight and forced and almost sick-looking.

  “Real smiles make the skin around your eyes wrinkle up. Like crow’s feet. When you fake a smile, you can only control the bottom half of it. But you can’t lie with the eyes.”

  “This is making me a little uncomfortable,” Dan said to the laughing delight of the table.

  “Now you’re telling the truth,” Sam said, chuckling.

  “Alright, well do someone else,” Dan said. “Someone not sitting here.”

  “How about that couple at the bar?” Matthias asked with a subtle head nod. “Is she going home with him?”

  “They’ve already been home,” Sam said. “If you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t know,” Billy said. “Well I do know. But how?”

  Sam described the couple without having to turn his head away from the table. “See how their bodies turn in? With their thighs touching? See his hand on her knee?”

  “Yeah,” Dan said. “But that’s all pretty obvious.”

  Sam smiled. “See the wedding band on his finger?”

  Matthias couldn’t help but look over to the couple, joining the rest of the men in their subtle yet awkward half-looks to the bar. Indeed, the man was wearing a small band on his left hand’s ring finger.

  “Okay, well, so what?” said Billy.

  “Now look at her hand,” Sam said. “The left one, holding the drink.”

  Matthias squinted through the low light. Her hand was bare. Ringless.

  “It’s not their first date,” Sam said.

  When Matthias returned his gaze to Sam, the professor had moved on to a new subject. He was looking in the opposite direction, toward the back of the room. As hard as Matthias tried, he couldn’t pinpoint the new target for Sam’s discerning eyes. It made him nervous again.

  He’d been feeling particularly nervous since arriving in New Orleans, the bouts of it coming off and on at quicker intervals. And for the first time that he could remember, he felt his old problems creeping back in. The worries. The voice of his therapist. How odd it was to feel this way, him surrounded by his closest friends and allies. How odd . . . Everything . . .

  “Okay,” Matthias said. “Enough with the parlor tricks.” The sternness in his voice immediately snapped everyone’s attention back to the table. “You guys know who he is now,” Matthias said, looking at each of them squarely. But when he got to Dan, he saw that his expression was still a little too light and jocular.

  “So that’s why he’s here?” Dan asked with a dumb smile. “To entertai
n us?”

  “What is his reason for being here?” Billy asked.

  “I’m here because Matthias and Laurel’s situation is at a crucial and dangerous junction. The investigation is still very early and we don’t know who our friends are.”

  “We’re his friends,” Billy said, now wiping his hand with a napkin. “He’s safe with us.”

  “We’ll most likely have some people coming out of the woodwork, trying to access Matthias and Laurel. Some of those people will be helpful. As you know, we’ve got two other bike clubs coming in tonight for backup. There might also be some strangers, fellow whistleblowers, offering help. But there could always be that chance that it’s the opposite. So I’m here as a . . . a judge of character, if you will. And I also wanted to get the hell out of Texas for a weekend.”

  “Well, you picked a good week for it,” Billy said.

  “Bike Week, yes.” Sam was looking at Matthias now. “Which reminds me, you should come out front and see my hog.”

  Laughter rippled across the table. They must have thought it was a joke. Matthias, on the other hand, knew what the professor was trying to say. He stood up from the table and said, “Guys, hold down the fort.”

  A moment later, he and Sam were outside, walking the sidewalk away from the bar. Sam was talking quietly, but urgently. “They were watching you. Not looking. Watching.”

  “In the back corner?”

  “You see them?”

  “No,” Matthias said. “But I saw you.”

  “And they saw you.”

  Matthias had already reached for his phone, opening up a group text to the guys inside, typing a physical description of the suspicious party. Two white males in their forties, faded arm tattoos, long hair tied back. One of them wearing a New Orleans Saints football jersey.

  “The jersey was brand new,” Sam said as Matthias typed. “It still had the box creases. That guy was no football fan.”

  “I’m setting up a rendezvous. But we’ll keep Billy in there to monitor their movement.” Matthias finished with his phone and looked at the latest addition to his support cast. “You sure you got a bad feeling?”

  “We’re outside, aren’t we?”

  Matthias looked both ways down the sidewalk. And then across the street, scanning.

  “They were targeting you hard.”

  He might not have known what that meant exactly, but Matthias knew enough to trust Sam’s assertion—and to feel that shiver run down his spine. He was targeted. It wasn’t often that he let himself become the prey. At least not lately. He’d been doing so well lately. He’d been on the offense.

  “I had to pull you out right away.”

  And he’d been showing up at all the right times for Laurel.

  “Fuck,” Matthias muttered as he checked his phone again.

  “What?”

  “Laurel.”

  “She’s not alone, is she?”

  “No,” Matthias said. “I’ve got Tucker watching her.” He took a deep breath, trying not to think about her being alone.

  “How is she?”

  “Her mother is . . . very ill. She just found out.”

  “Oh.”

  “She’s got a lot on her plate right now.”

  “Life’s a bitch,” Sam said with an uncharacteristic vulgarity. “You put out one fire and then two more pop up.”

  “I feel so bad for her.”

  “Is she heading back to Atlanta?”

  “She wants to.” Matthias started them walking again, their slow pace along a row of parked motorcycles. “But I still think we need to wait this out at least a few days. But I understand the rush. There’s just that risk . . . There’s still Caitlyn. And whatever biker friends are involved.”

  “Caitlyn is still on the run. The Attorney General and two of his top aides are in custody as we speak. That sounds like they’re pretty damned neutralized.” Sam put a hand on his shoulder. “Look, Matt, I’m not saying those two gentlemen in there are from Atlanta. I don’t know who they are for sure. But, for whatever reason, they were watching you. Now do you really think her bikers would be following you here? And have you even proven they were involved with the Ernesto thing?”

  “I have,” Matthias said.

  “A blade of grass?”

  “And my gut instinct.”

  “Okay,” Sam said, nodding. “I know instinct. But does yours really tell you that instead of heading for the hills and going into hiding, Caitlyn and her crew are only concerned with chasing down you and Laurel?”

  Matthias thought about it. And as unlikely as it was, he knew better than to let his guard down for even the most unlikely, yet horrible of scenarios.

  “Just think about it from their standpoint.” Sam said. “From the criminal’s perspective.”

  Matthias stopped in his tracks, starring at a parked motorcycle.

  Sam walked back to join him at the classic Harley. “Nice bike, huh?”

  It was nice. Sure. But it was also very familiar to one he’d recently seen outside of a mobile home in Atlanta. Matthias walked up to it, closing in as the hairs began standing on his neck.

  “Matt?”

  He looked closer at the rear wheel well, and saw it.

  “What’s up?”

  He fucking saw it.

  “What is that?”

  He reached down and ripped a single blade of grass out from the rim. He held it up against a light breeze, inspecting it closely. Then he held it up to Sam and said, “A blade of grass.”

  “No way.”

  A fucking blade of grass. The blade of grass.

  “Is that the bike?” Sam asked, his voice climbing to a higher register.

  “Fuck.”

  “We need to start—”

  Matthias already had his phone out, but it rang before he could even do anything.

  Tucker.

  With his hands shaking as badly as they were, Matthias could barely aim his thumb on the answer icon. When he did, and when the phone was at the side of his face, and with his throat tightening close, he said, “Where is she?”

  “I’m . . . uh . . . “I’m . . .”

  “What?”

  “I’m still trying to find her.”

  “What!?”

  “She slipped out of her room. It’s empty.”

  He wasn’t sure that he heard it right. He wasn’t sure about anything but the rage boiling up inside. A hot, scalding rage that took away any space for thought or rational discussion with the man he’d entrusted to keep Laurel safe. The man that failed to do so. The rookie.

  A fucking rookie. What a completely asinine decision . . .

  “I’ll make it up to you,” Tucker said, his voice quavering. “I promise.”

  34

  Laurel

  It was the first time she’d felt it, the hard muzzle of a gun digging into her back as Laurel walked down the hall toward her room.

  “Nice and slow,” Caitlyn kept saying. “That’s it, nice and slow.” But there was hardly anything nice or slow about her voice. She’d taken on a tense, shrill staccato. Something Laurel had never heard from her back at the office. Everything about her, including the gun being shoved in her back, had been quite unlike the usually bright, cheery, non-psychopathic security analyst.

  “I’m reaching for my room card,” Laurel said.

  “Yeah, do it.”

  At first, Laurel’s shaky hand had trouble finding and diving into her pocket, her fingers feeling numb and bloodless. She could barely feel the thin piece of plastic that was her room key. She could barely move it out of her pocket and toward the door.

  “Come on, come on. Open it.”

  Something wasn’t working right with the lock. She swiped her card and waited for the anticipated a green light, but after three swipes they had all come up red.

  “Come on,” Caitlyn urged. “Do it!”

  So much for nice and slow. But at least now her words matched her frantic tone, her true identity revealing itself wit
h each despicable action—beginning from her setting up Laurel back at Sentry. And who knows how far back before that, what other deeds she’d been up to.

  Laurel held the card into the reader.

  “What are you doing? Don’t stop.”

  Laurel swallowed hard, and then said, “If you get that gun off my back, and if you turn around and just get the hell out of here, then you’ll still have time.”

  “Time for what?”

  “To get away.”

  Caitlin chortled at Laurel’s shoulder.

  “I’m serious. I won’t follow you. You can just go.”

  “Laurel, you should just open that door before I get upset with you. Okay, Hon?” She pushed the gun harder into her back and Laurel swayed into the door, the handle digging into her stomach. “Open that fucking door,” Caitlyn said.

  The card swipe worked this time, a blinking green light making Laurel instantly regret not trying to sabotage the attempt.

  Once the door opened, Laurel was shoved into the darkness, a stiff push that almost made her trip over a wastebasket, the plastic thing thudding and bouncing off her stumbling feet. The lights turned on, and Laurel got her balance enough to turn to face her coworker. Her kidnapper.

  “Yeah,” Caitlyn said. “That’s it.” It was like she could read her mind, the hateful, vengeful thoughts that had been building since the elevator ride, with each floor, each passing level adding a new layer of anger and fear, each electronic chime closer to her floor, signaling a situation growing more and more out of her control.

  “I can tell you hate me,” Caitlyn said, letting the door swing to a heavy close behind her. “I know. It’s understandable.”

  “Can you just tell me why?”

  “It’s a long story. And it really doesn’t have much to do with you.”

  “But why!?”

  “I already told you about it. About you being too nosy. That’s the problem. You think I want to do this? You forced me into it, the whole thing. You brought it upon yourself.”

  “What did I bring? You killing me?”

  “No,” Caitlyn said, walking into the room, gun still pointed. “Well, not me.”

  “Fuck you.”