Darkest Night

by Megan Erickson

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Piatkus

  ISBN: 978-0-3494-1960-2

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Megan Erickson

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Excerpt from Zero Hour copyright © 2018 by Megan Erickson

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Piatkus

  Little, Brown Book Group

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DZ

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  EPILOGUE

  An Excerpt from Zero Hour

  About the Author

  Praise for Megan Erickson and The Wired & Dangerous Series

  Also by Megan Erickson

  Acknowledgments

  “She’d never met a man this intense.”

  His words, when he finally did speak, dripped with determination and confidence. Something fluttered in her stomach, a feeling she hadn’t experienced in a long time. Sexual attraction. To a real human being sitting in front of her, not harmless porn on her phone in the dark.

  But attraction to Jock was stupid. He was a bodyguard to keep her safe. Don’t make it a thing, Fiona, she thought to herself.

  This was a job to him, another duty in a long line of them, she was sure. She was merely a body he meant to protect, and he wanted to take down the men who were criminals. Pure and simple. This wasn’t personal for him. Not like it was for her.

  She had to admit that not having to look over her shoulder all the time, to have him back there doing it for her, was a relief. But what would happen once he left?

  To being your own hero

  PROLOGUE

  As soon as Fiona reached into her small mailbox and closed her fingers around the mail, she knew. She knew by the crinkle of the bubble mailer, the feel of the smooth paper. She just knew.

  She walked to her apartment robotically, not paying attention to those she passed in the hallway—like little Yvonne in 5B who just had her birthday party and always had a smile or Terry in 8E who was finishing out his seventies but still had a wink for her every time she saw him.

  She ignored them all. Because she’d be moving soon. The bubble mailer proved that. She wasn’t sure why she moved anymore. They always found her, but maybe it gave her some satisfaction that they’d have to spend time finding her again, and for a few weeks, sometimes months, she had a brief, false sense of security.

  Her numb fingers had trouble holding her keys, but she managed to get into her apartment on the fifth try. She dumped all the junk mail on the floor, right inside her door. Then she ripped open the package.

  She looked every time. She wasn’t sure why, but she did. She kept everything they mailed to her in a shoebox and that shoebox went with her everywhere she moved. What woman traveled with her own skeletons? Oh right, she did.

  Three photos this time. The scared, strung-out Fiona Madden who stared back at her was a different woman. Maybe that was why she could now look at the photos with a certain sense of detachment. Because that woman was someone who had lived the nightmare. The Fiona Madden she was now was the woman who had survived it.

  She flipped through the photos. Two of her face. One of her being violated, the man in the image always blurred out. Didn’t matter. She remembered their faces.

  No threats this time, just the photos. To remind her that they could get to her at all times. It was a sick power game that she had never, ever consented to play.

  She ripped up the envelope, stuffed it in her trash, and went right to her closet. She pulled down the shoebox from the top shelf—an orange Nike sneaker box—and dropped the photos on top of the pile of notes, flash drives, and other photos. She wasn’t sure why she kept everything, but she did. Every. Single. Thing. They were hers now, and sometimes she took comfort in the fact that they were giving something back, even if they didn’t realize it. The proof of what had been done to her was sometimes the only way she stayed sane. It hadn’t been just a bad dream or a figment of her cracked mind. It’d happened, truly, and she was still standing.

  She put the lid back on the box, looked around her apartment, and sighed. Florida had been nice, and it’d been a mild winter. She’d miss it. With heavy footsteps, she retreated to her bedroom, pulled out her suitcase, and began to pack.

  They’d find her again. And again. But staying alive was her single greatest fuck you. So she intended to live as long as possible.

  CHAPTER ONE

  She’d nodded at him one time.

  He remembered it—the way her blue eyes slid up to his, narrowed a minute, assessing, before her chin had dipped quickly. Her running shorts had made a swish swish sound as her long legs ate up the length of the apartment hallway, and a bead of sweat dripped toward her belly button from her sports bra. As she’d passed him, she’d tucked a stray piece of blond hair behind her ear.

  It was a fuckup. She was never supposed to see him, but he’d had to run to his P.O. box to pick up some equipment. She’d changed her schedule that day. Thrown him off. Jamison “Jock” Bosh didn’t like to be thrown off. That had been a week ago, and he still couldn’t get that nod out of his mind.

  He rubbed the back of his neck, wincing at the cramp in his muscles as he squinted at the lines of code on the computer screen inches from his face. What time was it? He glanced at his watch. Six in the morning. He blinked at the digital letters and scratched the days-old stubble on his jaw. Another sleepless night, but at least it was also another night of Fiona Madden still breathing.

  That was why he was here, camped out in an apartment rented under one of his aliases, surrounded by empty takeout containers and the hum of PCs. There was a bed in the corner but he hadn’t slept much.

  He’d sleep when he was dead.

  A week of living in this Brooklyn apartment and he’d successfully tapped into just about every part of Fiona’s life and made it secure—anything he could do to make her existence invisible to those trying to find her.

  Two months ago he’d joined up with Roarke Brennan to avenge the murder of Roarke’s brother. While searching for the killers they’d uncovered an underground sex ring that had landed them on the radar of the most notorious, dangerous hacker there was—Maximus. Maximus’s connection to Fiona and the sex ring was murky, as were most things with the skilled hacker, but he’d made his threat to her clear. She was a loose end. Fiona had been victimize
d once, almost ten years ago in college, when she’d been drugged and abused. Like hell would it happen again.

  There’d been a lot of people Jock hadn’t been able to save, including the most important person in his life. So he’d forgo sleep and stare at this computer until he went nearly blind. Fiona would go on to live a happy life and would never know she was being threatened again, if he could help it.

  Her life seemed good. At least, good in a way that he could be happy. But also not good in a way that he knew wasn’t healthy for a thirty-year-old woman who looked like Fiona. She didn’t leave her apartment much—she was a freelance writer—and she never had friends visit. She also had a big mutt she called Sundance who barked at goddamn everyone. Sundance was a German shepherd mix—at least, that was what he looked like to Jock—who guarded Fiona like she was a queen. Jock considered him a silent partner.

  Most of Jock’s work was done. He’d placed Fiona’s apartment security on a separate server because that had been faster than making the entire building more secure. He’d stopped short of installing a camera in her apartment and worried every day that his discretion would turn out to be a mistake. Anyone else and he would have done it, but spying on her when she thought she was alone, after the way she’d been violated already…he couldn’t bring himself to do it. So he worked day and night making every other area of her life safe.

  The lack of rest was catching up to him. The rumpled sheets on his bed called to him. He couldn’t sleep yet, though. Fiona always woke up early and took Sundance out into the small apartment courtyard around seven. He could see her clearly from his window, and while he’d started watching for her safety he couldn’t deny that he looked forward to seeing her there every day. Some days, it was the only time she left her apartment. Everything she needed, she got delivered to her door. He knew because he ran background checks on the delivery employees of the few businesses she used. If a new driver was sent, he ran checks on them, too, and he would go as far as to hide out in her hallway if he wasn’t able to get a check finished on the delivery driver.

  A buzzing sound filled the small apartment, and his foggy brain took a minute to catch up that his cell phone was going off. After a quick glance at the caller ID, he picked up. “Yeah.”

  “Jock.” Roarke’s voice was low and calm in his ear. “How’s it going?”

  “Going,” he answered as he powered down his computer. He stood up, stretched, and took a sip of cold coffee.

  “Anything?”

  “No hits on her cell records, bank account, or apartment security.”

  Roarke’s voice was muffled as he repeated Jock’s words, probably to Wren, his girlfriend. Back in college Wren and Fiona had been friends, and both had been taken by the bastards. Wren had escaped quickly. Fiona didn’t get away until weeks later.

  Wren’s voice filtered through the phone, and then Roarke was back. “Wren, uh, wants to know Fiona’s mood or attitude. Is she happy?”

  Roarke sounded as uncomfortable asking the question as Jock felt answering it. “Fuck if I know.” He couldn’t read women that well, even if he’d known them for years. He’d only been observing Fiona for two weeks. Except sometimes he did notice the nervous habit she had of biting her nails, the way she kept her hand tucked into her purse when she did leave the house, and the brisk way she walked. “Always on alert,” he added.

  “How so?”

  “Takes stock of her surroundings, hates something at her six,” Jock answered. “Equipment in her apartment shows some history of self-defense classes. She works out, stays in shape. Runs on her treadmill.” He liked that about her. Tracking her while she ran outside sounded like a nightmare.

  “Okay, that’s good. Sorry, we can’t risk Wren calling her so…”

  “It’s fine.”

  “We can relieve you if you want. Marisol’s from the Bronx—”

  “Got it handled,” Jock said quickly. The thought of someone else—even a member of their crew—taking over this job didn’t sit well with him. He knew the lay of the land. He knew Fiona and her schedule. He’d lived a long time learning the person he could trust the most was himself.

  “Okay,” Roarke said slowly. “Any problems, hit us up. You’re doing us a favor.”

  Roarke didn’t realize how much this job wasn’t about the crew anymore. This wasn’t for Wren or Roarke or anything. This was a job that Jock had volunteered for and one he’d see through to the bitter end. He was committed now. “Alerts are all on, so gonna get some sleep.”

  “You do that. Later, Jock.”

  He hung up the phone and glanced at the time. Almost seven. She’d be out soon. He stood near his window, where his blinds were drawn but left open just enough for him to see outside.

  The sun wasn’t high in the sky yet, and the air had that hazy, humid look to it. It’d be hot today.

  The staircase door opened and Sundance exited first, nose down on the pavement. Fiona stepped out behind him and blinked up at the sun. She wore a pair of loose cotton shorts and a thin tank top. Thin enough that he could see the outline of her dark bra underneath. She wore her hair in a messy knot on top of her head, but strands escaped, falling in tendrils around her face.

  Objectively, she was a beautiful woman. Subjectively, he was attracted to her. And personally, he’d once allowed himself to wonder what it would be like to touch her. The time she’d nodded at him. Then he’d locked it all down, cut off the feeling, and focused on the job.

  As far as he could tell, she didn’t date. She had no dating profile on any dating sites. Her apartment was stocked for her and her alone. He’d searched it when he’d first arrived for any bugs, and found nothing. Although he had found a variety of vibrators in the drawer of her bedside table. He’d worked really hard to forget about that, but clearly he hadn’t. He was tasked to keep her safe, even if that meant from him, too.

  She let the leash go, and Sundance wandered around the small courtyard as he usually did, sniffing plants and small bushes, doing his business and marking everything he could.

  Fiona sat down on a small stone bench, pulled a paperback out of the back of her waistband, and began to read.

  Jock didn’t move, only watched her. The way she bit her lip and ran her fingers over the edge of the cover, the way her head turned as she read from page to page. She read romance and mystery novels. She alternated. The last couple of days she had been reading a romance novel, and she was almost finished with it.

  She read another twenty pages—he counted—and then she turned the last page. Her shoulders heaved with a sigh, and she closed the book, setting it gently in her lap. Her head came up, and her eyes looked wet. Unless he was imagining it, or it was allergies. She ran her hand under her nose and stared at the apartments around her. Her eyes passed over the window where he looked out, and for a moment he swore that she saw him, locking eyes, before her head turned.

  He sucked in a breath at the expression on her face. Wistful? See, now Wren had him worrying about emotions. He didn’t know what to name emotions. His spanned a whole spectrum of three—calm, annoyed, and angry.

  Then she whistled softly. Sundance picked up the end of his lead and trotted after her as she walked back into the building. When the door shut behind her, Jock closed his eyes. That was it. That was the last he’d see of her until the next day. He hated it a bit, that he couldn’t keep an eye on her all the time, but he was used to it now after two weeks.

  She’d taken Sundance to the dog park yesterday—the park being one of the rare places she went to when she left her apartment—and she only went three days a week, so he had some time to sleep now.

  After checking to make sure all his alarms were working to alert him to any breaches in his security, he stripped down to his boxers and slid into bed. He didn’t even remember his head hitting the pillow.

  * * *

  The humidity was so thick Fiona could barely breathe. Add to that the ever-present Brooklyn smell of the nearby restaurants’ meat and spices
, plus the exhaust from way too many vehicles, and she was about done.

  She hadn’t brought Sundance. As she ducked her head and speed-walked up the street to her Bushwick apartment, she felt naked without her constant canine companion. This had been stupid, but the grocery order she’d placed had come in and her usual delivery person hadn’t been available. She hadn’t wanted a stranger at the door so she’d gone to pick it up. Juggling groceries and her dog had seemed like a difficult task when she’d decided to go. Now she wished she’d brought him. At least she had her weapons in her purse.

  She thanked her workout routine for her arms, but even this short of a walk was taxing as she regripped her heavy bag, hitched her purse up higher on her shoulder, and continued on. Despite the neighborhood’s low crime rate—having decreased in the last decade despite Bushwick’s reputation—she didn’t feel safe. She hadn’t felt safe for over ten years. She’d probably never feel safe again.

  “Calm your shit, Fi,” she whispered to herself as she blinked sweat out of her eyes and squinted at the glare of the evening sun. She’d give just about anything to head to the park down the street and read her book there on a bench without a care in the world, but she didn’t remember what that was like. Maybe she’d try it with Sundance soon.

  She passed an alley and a chain link fence rattled. Her steps faltered and her stomach cramped with nerves. No, no, no. No way would she be caught out here like this, on a hot night with a clear sky, carrying produce. Had she really needed fresh vegetables that badly? She couldn’t have lived on the canned goods for a while?

  She picked up the pace, and by the time she turned the corner two blocks away she was winded and all her senses were on alert. The instinct she hadn’t had ten years ago, but the one she had now, was in full-alarm mode, blaring in her brain, coursing through her bloodstream like a shot of adrenaline.

  She tried to calm herself, thinking about the book she’d just read, but even an eighteenth-century widow finding love with an outlaw gunslinger wasn’t enough to take her mind off whatever the hell was moving in the corner of her vision.