The Darkling Hunters_Fox Company Alpha

by Rhiannon Ayers

  “Uh, I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” Sam said, holding up a quelling hand. “We…we only had partial success last night. We took out one of the darklings, but—”

  “Don’t be silly!” Good grief, the guy sounded like he’d swallowed a bottle of happy pills. “You two succeeded beyond our wildest expectations! So much so, in fact, that I would like for you to meet with me at the Helena field office tomorrow afternoon.”

  Sam felt the world tilt on its axis. No one got to meet Boss; hell, no one he’d had ever met from the Agency even knew the man’s name. Yet now, he was asking them to meet with him? In person? At a field office, no less?

  “Boss? What’s this about?” Sam asked, hoping he sounded intrigued rather than freaked out of his mind.

  “Why, you’re to be commended! The Agency is ecstatic over your recent success.”

  “What success?” Dex growled, expression livid. “We didn’t—”

  “Come, come, no need to be modest. We can discuss all the details when you arrive in Helena. Three-o-clock sharp, gentlemen. Don’t be late.”

  The phone went dead.

  “What…the fuck…was that about?” Dex said, eyeing it like it might grow teeth and bite him.

  Sam shook his head, still staring at the blank screen. “I didn’t even know we had a field office in Helena.”

  “DEA has offices in every state capitol, so that’s not surprising,” Dex said, “but since when does the leader of the whole freaking agency travel to a field office?”

  “Since when does he invite two relative unknowns to meet him in person?” Sam added doubtfully. He looked up at Dex with a frown. “Did any of that make sense to you?”

  Dex started to shake his head, but then he paused, a thoughtful look on his face. “He mentioned the fire. How the hell did he know about that?”

  Unfortunately, Sam knew the answer to that one. “Boss has had eyes on us since we got here.”

  “What? How the fuck do you know?”

  His lips flattened into a hard line. “Because last time I reported in, he asked me who we were working with. Then he asked for the name of the hooker.”

  “The hooker?” Dex scowled, uncomprehending, but then Sam saw the lightbulb go off. “Shit. He meant Sydney, didn’t he?”

  Sam nodded. “I told him she was just a local, someone we’d convinced to help us dig into the darkling’s crime ring. It was the only explanation I could think of at the time. He didn’t seem all that upset, come to think of it. He just told me to get on with it.”

  Dex sat down on the edge of the bed, his knee briefly brushing against Sam’s. “Maybe that’s why he’s so happy,” he said, voice grim. “The DEA usually ices its inside informants.”

  “Maybe,” Sam said noncommittally.

  Silence fell.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?” Dex asked at last.

  Sam heaved a sigh. “What, that it might be a trap? Yeah, the thought had occurred to me. But if it is Boss, and we ignore his summons, we’ll both be up shit creek.”

  “And if it isn’t Boss?”

  A derisive snort. “I guess we won’t need to look for a paddle.”

  Chapter 26

  Dex let out a long, low whistle. “Now that’s what I call a field office.”

  Sam could only nod, mouth slack, as he pulled into a free parking space and cut the Rav-4’s engine. “Remember that office in Arkansas? It was like a broom closet inside a hot dog stand inside a mini-mart. Either the DEA has appropriated a lot more funding over the last few years, or this place is a hell of a lot more than a simple field office.”

  They sat in silence for a time, contemplating the huge, three-story glass building that squatted in the center of a thirty-acre manicured lawn. Modern, sleek, and intimidating, it dwarfed all the other office complexes they’d passed while driving through downtown Helena. Though technically outside the city proper, all the roads in the area seemed to lead straight here. Almost as though it, not the Capitol building, ruled over the whole area.

  Talk about out of place.

  Sam drummed his fingertips on the dashboard, the only outward sign that his inner alarms were jangling his nerves. He’d made the thirty-five-minute drive from Boulder to Helena in less than twenty minutes thanks to his chronic case of lead-foot, so they had plenty of time to spare. He and Dex had talked about their upcoming meeting with Boss all night long, but the conversation yielded no new answers. All they knew for certain was that their once-faceless superior officer had asked them for a sit-down immediately after one of their most spectacular mission failures. No matter how the man tried to spin it, no matter the talk of commendations and rousing successes, that reality would underpin today’s unanticipated confrontation.

  Sam just wished he knew what this was really about.

  “One more thing to add to the list,” Dex muttered, half under his breath.

  Sam looked at him sideways. “What list?”

  Dex startled as if he hadn’t realized he’d spoken out loud, then gave Sam a tiny smile. “I was just thinking about all the things we’ve learned this past week. We met up with Syd, what, five, six days ago? In that time, we learned there’s more than one type of darkling, there’s a guy out there actually making those darklings, and that all this time, Sydney was trying to chase that fucker down so she could put him in his grave. We also learned that the legends about angels and demons came from a real-life race of immortal beings, that those beings have real-life magic, and, oh yeah, Sydney Carpenter was one of them.”

  He paused for a head-shake. “Now, we find out the DEA has a massive complex hidden away in the capital of Montana, and that our Boss is apparently waiting for us there. And, we’re supposed to go meet with him, in person, even though darkling hunters aren’t supposed to set foot on government property so that we can pretend we’re not Feds and blend in with the criminal underground. None of this shit makes any sense, Sam. Especially now that Sydney…” He trailed off with a hard gulp.

  Sam said nothing.

  After a long silence, Dex whispered, “All these secrets. All this bullshit. I thought I wanted a peek behind the curtain, but…now, I’m not sure it was worth it. Sydney told us she was immortal less than twenty-four hours before she…before she got killed. I’d call that ironic if it didn’t make me want to smash every window in that building up there. Fucking DEA.”

  Without looking, Sam reached over and wrapped his hand around the fist Dex had balled in his lap. He felt the tension thrumming through Dex’s body, felt the hesitation and insecurity—just before Dex reversed his grip and threaded their fingers together. But he only allowed a brief, reassuring squeeze before clearing his throat and throwing his door open.

  “Come on. Let’s get this over with.” He got out and slammed the door shut before Sam could say a word. Sam puffed his lips with a sharp sigh, then followed his partner out of the vehicle.

  The walk up to the enormous glass entry doors took place in eerie silence. Not because the two men remained quiet; because despite the nearly full parking lot, there were no signs of people anywhere. In Sam’s experience, a place like this should be bustling with comings and goings—people chatting or talking on their cell phones as they walked to and from their cars, lackeys carrying bags of food inside or talking about the food they were going to retrieve as they scurried toward their cars. But there wasn’t a single soul standing outside the building, and most of the vehicles looked as if they hadn’t been moved in a long time. Even the tall pine forest hugging the edges of the manicured lawn seemed unnaturally silent and devoid of life.

  Heebie-jeebies, anyone?

  Sam shook himself as they reached the huge entry doors. He pulled one open, gestured for Dex to precede him, then followed his partner into a large, open atrium dominated by a curved reception desk. A young woman, no more than late twenties, sat at the exact center of the arc. She didn’t bother looking up from her computer screen as Sam and Dex approached.

  “Uh,” Sam b
egan, “We’re here to see—”

  “Palm scanner,” the woman said in a flat, cold voice. She pointed to a small square of white glass inlayed in the countertop, then went back to typing. She never once looked at them.

  Sam exchanged looks with his partner as unease skittered down his back. Not knowing what else to do, he placed his palm on the glass and waited. A thin, piercingly bright line of green light passed beneath his hand, then winked out.

  “Next,” the woman said.

  Dex moved to take Sam’s place, and the green light repeated its function. Both men stood back, watching as the woman tippy-tapped on her keyboard. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she looked up with a cold, bored expression.

  “Sam Spencer and Dexter Peterson. Appointment confirmed. Take Elevator Two, down the hall to the left.” She pointed that way, as if they needed the hint. “You’ve been granted access to the main conference room on level two. Third door on the right.”

  No inflection in her tone or expression on her face. She looked back at her computer screen, dismissing them in an instant.

  And I thought the empty parking lot gave me the creeps…

  Dex moved to match strides with him as they headed toward the hallway the woman had indicated. Neither man said a word, but Sam knew they were both on high-alert. Cold, white marble floor tiles stretched out in front of them, broken only by the occasional fake potted plant off to the side. The left side of the hall consisted of plate-glass walls that overlooked the eerie parking lot, while the inner wall was made up of plain white marble slabs interspersed with wood-paneled support columns. No decorations. No signs. Not even the bland landscape paintings most office buildings used to break up plain white walls. Even a hospital morgue would have looked more inviting than this place.

  And the creep-factor just went up another notch.

  They traveled the length of the empty hallway and finally rounded the only corner. A single set of elevator doors waited in the center of a small, rounded bay, flanked on both sides by more plastic plants. Sam hit the button before shoving his hands into his jacket pockets, while Dex moved to stand on his left. The doors slid open without even a small ding to break the oppressive silence.

  As he stepped into the bland, white-walled elevator, every instinct in Sam’s body screamed trap.

  Tension practically vibrated the air between him and Dex as the doors slid shut. Sam hit the button for the second floor, noting that there were more buttons than were necessary for a three-floor building—nine, to be exact, though only the top three were lit up. The other six were unlabeled and seemed to be controlled by a small, circular keyhole that was similar to the kind used by fire departments to control municipal elevators in times of emergency.

  What the hell was this place, anyway? Certainly more than a DEA field office. Another secret lab, perhaps? He’d already known about the one in Fort Stockton, and there were rumors of another out in D.C. But in all his time working for the Agency, he’d never heard of a place like this one. Either this was the best-kept secret in the DEA, or he and Dex had been further out of the loop than they’d previously thought.

  Either way, he didn’t like it. Not one bit.

  The elevator doors hissed open, revealing another bland white hallway. Sam stepped out, Dex hot on his heels—

  And a piercing, three-toned whistle echoed off the marble walls, making both men jump. Sam spun to his left, incredulity making his face go slack as he recognized the two men striding toward them wearing delighted, welcoming grins.

  “Xander? Morgan?” Sam said in amazement, shaking both their hands in turn. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Xander, the taller of the two, had salt-and-pepper hair cropped into a military flat-top. Bright blue eyes twinkled with good humor in a face that was more rugged than handsome, and he gave Sam one of his signature crooked grins. “Was about to ask you the same thing, Sergeant Spencer. Didn’t expect to see you two here. Thought you hunter boys were forbidden on company grounds.”

  Dex exchanged back-slapping hugs with the second man, Morgan, who looked like a shorter, stockier version of Dex himself. His brown eyes were so dark they were almost black, complementing his deep-tan skin tone and brownish-black hair. Morgan grinned at Dex, then gave Sam an obvious once-over with an exaggerated up-and-down motion of his head. “Still too tall for comfort, Sarge. Gives a guy a crick in his neck every time he has to talk to you.”

  Sam snorted as he shook the man’s hand. “Whatever, runt. I’d tell you to go buy some platform shoes, but I don’t think they sell those in the toddlers’ section.”

  “Seriously,” Dex said, “what are you guys doing here? We didn’t call the cavalry on this op.”

  Xander raised a salt-and-pepper eyebrow. “No shit. Surprised the hell out of us when Boss called us up here himself, but he said you two were in deep and couldn’t risk your cover. Nice job on the warehouse, by the way. Glad to see you made it out all right. We were worried.”

  Sam froze. “Say again?”

  Morgan cocked his head. “That fire made national news. We figured you started it to make a clean getaway, but damn, talk about going overboard.”

  “How do you know we were at the warehouse?” Dex said, a sudden frown lining his forehead.

  “What do you mean, ‘how do we know’?” Xander’s other eyebrow went up as he eyed Dex. “Boss said you needed help with a snatch-and-grab. Who else would he call in to do the grabbing?”

  Sam just stared at him. Morgan Trace and Xander McFarland, both former members of Fox Company who’d served alongside Sam and Dex, were well-known for their skill in that arena. Whenever the Agency wanted a darkling detained, rather than killed, they called in these guys—and their success rate off the charts. In fact, they were so good at it, the Agency rarely if ever assigned them to regular darkling hunts. They were the elite Capture Unit, and they were only called in when the Agency found a darkling they thought would be more valuable alive than dead.

  Except…this mission hadn’t included any such directives. And Boss never mentioned that he was bringing Xander and Morgan onto their team.

  “Hey, we thought it was weird, too,” Morgan said, probably reading Sam’s facial expression and realizing they hadn’t known about his and Xander’s involvement. “Boss said it was a last-minute adjustment. Flew us up here from Florida. He told us to be at the warehouse and where to park the van. I about shit myself when those guys came busting out with that big bundle slung between them—didn’t realize we were going to get personal delivery service. They knew the passcode, though, and Boss told us it would be a quick in-and-out job, so we figured you’d set it up so we could get out fast.”

  “Hey, who was she, anyway?” Xander wanted to know.

  Ice skittered down his back. Sam turned to face the other man in slow-motion. “She?”

  “Gentlemen!”

  The jarring, too-loud voice made all four men startle. Sam whipped around to find a tall, balding, kindly-looking man in a white lab coat approaching from the right-hand side of the hallway. He wore thick coke-bottle glasses that had some sort of reddish-brown tint on them, and he carried a white cane similar to the kind used by blind people. He smiled in their general direction, his head moving in a way that suggested he couldn’t really see them despite the glasses.

  “Gentlemen, I’m so happy you got a chance to meet up with old friends, but I’m afraid I need to steal you away now. Come along, Mr. Spencer, Mr. Peterson. I’ve only so many hours in the day, and your appointment window is closing fast.”

  “Uh,” Sam said, glancing at Dex, “I suppose you’re—”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” the lab-coated man said dismissively, “I’m the one you all so affectionately call ‘Boss.’ Now, come along, please. Mr. Trace and Mr. McFarland have other assignments to get to.”

  “Hey, we’ll catch up later,” Xander said as he tapped the button for the elevator.

  “Definitely,” Morgan echoed his partner, giving Sam a po
inted look. Sam nodded, shook the man’s hand, then exchanged another look with Xander before both men boarded the elevator.

  Just before the doors closed, Sam said, “Hey, assholes!” And he let out a piercing whistle of his own, this one made up of four irregular tones that bounced off the marble-lined hallway. Xander and Morgan both laughed, and Zander flipped him off as the doors hissed shut. Sam closed his eyes and took a deep breath, praying the two men had gotten his message: go to ground, wait for my signal. Then, he turned to face Boss just as Dex came to stand at his side.

  “This way, please.” The man turned on his heels and walked back the way he’d come, moving with confidence despite his apparent blindness. Sam and Dex followed a few paces behind.

  The man led them to a pair of heavy wooden doors, pushed one open, and gestured for them to precede him. The room looked like a typical office boardroom, complete with conference table, multiple high-backed, black leather office chairs, and a huge flat-screen TV mounted against the wall. A giant map of the United States covered the whole of one wall from floor to ceiling, and it looked as if someone had put a bunch of colorful dots all over it.

  Sam wandered over to take a closer look. Clusters of pins in different colors, shapes, and sizes had been pushed into the map, mostly centered around cities, though a few seemed to be scattered around at random. There were also six large red pins placed on the map, and someone had used black-dyed twine to connect each red pin to the next one in line. It looked like a giant connect-the-dots game, except it didn’t form a picture. Instead, it seemed to be some sort of tracking system, starting in Arkansas, moving through Nevada, then Salt Lake City, then Chicago, then all the way down to Tulsa.

  The last red pin sat directly over Boulder, Montana.

  Every place we’ve met up with Sydney, Sam realized. His blood went so cold it felt like a glacier had taken up residence in his heart. They’ve been tracking our interactions with her ever since we met her in Arkansas. What…the…fuck…

  “Have a seat, gentlemen,” Boss said, putting action to his own words. He settled his cane against the table and gestured to a pair of chairs beside him. “We have much to discuss.”