Promises in the Dark

by Stephanie Tyler

  “I know just where he’ll stay.” Dahia’s faced flashed in front of her as Ama’s words echoed in her ears—When something is taken away, something is always given in its place. “I know someone who will love him. Keep him safe.”

  “That’s all anyone can ask for,” he said. He moved forward to cover Ida’s body with a sheet, gently. Respectfully. And then Olivia let him guide her out of the house, the baby in her arms.

  The doctor is still in-country. Our source panned out.”

  Elijah lay back on the bed in his house in Marrakech, listening to Ace report the news through the intercom as he pushed the woman who’d been between his legs away. She looked hurt and he had the urge to slap her, but instead, he pointed to the door, watched as she hurriedly gathered her clothing and left, pulling her dress over her head even as she went into the hallway.

  He’d never bothered to learn her name, but he remembered Olivia Strohm’s. It haunted him, as did her large, dark eyes that had stared at him with a mixture of contempt and pity.

  Now her eyes were haunted. The hair was longer and the body thinner, but it was most definitely Olivia on the screen of his BlackBerry, standing on the porch of a small house.

  His man, Kieran, had transmitted the pictures and the report and hadn’t been heard from again since nine P.M.

  Kieran, his twenty-three-year-old cousin who’d flown to Africa to work and train with Elijah. Kieran, who believed in DMH and looked up to Elijah.

  “What happened to him?” Elijah demanded.

  “Give me a minute—I think I know,” Ace said.

  Elijah put his feet on the floor and began to pace the bedroom. He’d thought Kieran was ready. Wanted him to be. But now the feeling of dread grew with every passing moment.

  As the head of DMH, he’d been making a major name for the group in recent years. DMH dealt in terror camps, drug trafficking, black market weapons, black market organs, skin trade, human trafficking … and the list went on.

  Elijah’s problem was getting Dr. Olivia Strohm back—and under control. He now had her entire file, things he hadn’t known about Olivia Strohm when he’d had her in his grasp.

  Until recently, he’d believed her dead, killed in the clinic bombing. Had believed the override destroying the building had been a mistake.

  He should have known better. Olivia was smart and strong. Perfect for him. And she knew far too much about the operation. Knew key names. Doctors from major U.S. hospitals who were involved in the black market organ operation. And because she knew, they were all compromised. It was threatening to grind the operation to a halt, because the doctors were afraid they would be exposed—or killed, as Olivia had pulled the switch to the bomb in the clinic in Morocco, killing most of the staff and exposing the illegal nature of the operation.

  So far, Elijah had managed to do enough damage control that the organ trafficking at the clinic seemed like an isolated incident. But if Olivia talked to the CIA, DMH would be in some serious trouble. It could devastate that branch and potentially cripple the rest of the organization for a time.

  He’d gotten far too invested in this woman for his own good, but would admit that only to himself.

  “This man is what happened to Kieran—picture number four,” Ace said tightly, a definite sense of blame in his tone as he pressed a button on his phone that transmitted an e-mail with pictures attached to the large screen of the computer in front of Elijah.

  Elijah flipped through the rest of the e-mailed pictures quickly until he got to the one that interested him—the man in the combat fatigues, turned to stare directly into the camera, Olivia standing behind him.

  “Find out who he is. Now,” Elijah barked to Ace. “I don’t care what it takes. Run his picture through the military databases—use our sources. Check the CIA and FBI as well.”

  But the man was military—Elijah could smell it. He had the cocky look of someone who was trained well and could handle anything.

  Almost anything. This man would regret getting involved in DMH’s business. Elijah would make sure of it.

  CHAPTER

  4

  Zane had won this battle, but only for the moment.

  He’d had the element of surprise on his side—it wasn’t necessary but always appreciated. He’d taken out two of the four men heavily armed with AKs—loud mean fucking guns perfect for ruthless country like this—before the second two could react.

  They’d taken more ammo to put down. The next four—well, that had nearly cleaned him out.

  Granted, now he was the proud owner of all their ammo and their guns. Spoils of the victor.

  “Zane—I want to wash my hands before we bring the baby in to Dahia,” Olivia whispered. She’d stopped at the water pump along the side of the house. “You need to hold him.”

  He freed his hands by placing the weapon and bags on the ground next to him and took the baby—impossibly small in his hands, and so damned helpless.

  And sleeping. Soundly.

  He looked away from the tiny face to watch Liv shove her hands under the pump to scrub the mess of childbirth from them. The baby’s blanket was dense but soft and she’d cleaned him off well; his skin shone with health.

  Again, total and complete chaos had followed Zane. He’d grown up in it, at least for the first eleven years of his life, and was surprised he was still drawn to it, moth to flame, Icarus burning his wings, in spite of the memories it dredged up.

  Memories that remained hazy, no matter how hard he tried to put a straight edge to them.

  He could’ve done more about the atrocities that happened to him and the other boys he’d known when he’d come of age. Gone back to the scene of the crime, searched people down. Demanded answers.

  Thing was, he was pretty damned happy with who he’d become.

  But the thought that there could’ve been grieving parents out there, still mourning for him … well, that knotted his gut almost as badly as knowing Olivia had still been out there.

  The infant stirred in his arms and Zane brought him closer against his chest so the baby could feel his heartbeat—Chris, his SEAL teammate and the team’s medic had taught him that. Zane had been on the receiving end of a few deliveries by Chris’s side. Granted, those always ended in a moment of joy between the baby and the parents.

  When he’d gone to see Olivia’s parents, he’d expected anger and grief, but not the raw pain that had given him a brutal slam to the chest. If he hadn’t already been committed to this journey, meeting them would’ve sealed the deal.

  “I’ll take him now, Zane,” Liv whispered, and he surrendered the bundle to her, snapping to and rubbing his face hard, to wake himself from the reverie. Now was not the time to take a walk into the past.

  And he refused to think of Olivia as the past. No, she was present and future and there was no way he would leave a woman to wander around in chaos.

  Within minutes, they were at the back door of a mostly hidden house. Zane remained outside, listened to the urgent, whispered Krio, the tears, the thank yous.

  When Liv came out she was smiling with tears in her eyes again.

  “Ready? We’ll have to go on foot.”

  “What about the car?”

  “They blew the tires. And the engine,” he said. “Probably figured it was yours.”

  “Damn.”

  “I’ll get us another as soon as I can. We’re probably safer not driving tonight anyway.”

  “My neighbor about a mile down the road has a truck—maybe we can borrow it?”

  “She’ll most likely never get it back,” he said.

  “I’ll make it up to her somehow. I’ll leave her money to buy a new one,” she urged.

  Grabbing her bags and the old rifle she’d been using, he led her along the back of the houses in the dark—swift and silent, prepared to carry her if she couldn’t make it.

  But she was all one foot in front of the other, no stopping. She moved like a machine, but not like she was heading to freedom. He had
a sinking feeling he was nowhere near done attempting to convince her that she needed to leave this place. Even as the nagging in his gut told him she was not safe—and never would be as long as DMH existed.

  Now he was in the thick of it.

  Identifying him would be easy if they had access to classified military files. And somehow, he knew they did.

  The woman wasn’t naked but she might as well have been, since the sports bra and tight workout shorts fit her like a second skin. And Caleb should probably feel like a dirty old man—more than he already did—but he justified the spying since he was sanctioned, and paid, to do it.

  He was hiding in the bushes outside the house in the dark, using binoculars to hone in on Vivienne Clare doing yoga, through the opened shades of her living room. Wondering if she’d strip down anytime soon to shower. Hoping anyway …

  “Are we enjoying the view?” Mace, his Delta teammate spoke into the mic in his ear with a drawl, something Cael had never understood, since Mace had spent his formative years in upstate New York, not North Carolina. His friend had been yanked from that state when he was ten and sent to live with his grandparents. That’s where he now owned the inherited bar and land, and where Cael spent much of his free time.

  Cael didn’t answer him directly, but didn’t stop looking at Vivienne either. “What are we supposed to do? Watch her for the next twenty-four hours in hopes someone from DMH stops by for coffee?”

  “Nope,” Gray piped in, Cael’s other teammate, who waited in the car down the street with Mace. “Just got word we’re supposed to bring her in. Kind of in the unofficially official capacity.”

  Mace started swearing and Cael just sighed. They’d do their jobs, of course, because they trusted their immediate superior, who’d issued the order, but the unofficial missions always held a good deal of risk.

  Cael had known this particular job would prove to be shitty, had felt it the instant Mace briefed him on it this morning. Before he’d had coffee. Or actual sleep.

  No, he’d spent the past days in a prison called SERE, where he survived, evaded, reconned and escaped with the best of them, and had a split lip, a severely bruised sternum and a qualification for continued service checked off in his file to show for it.

  He took immense satisfaction in that, because damn, training was fucking brutal. You were beaten and frozen and yelled at; every attempt to break you was made.

  Gray had taken the worst of it—he’d been sick the week before and it had gotten worse during SERE. IV antibiotics had taken care of it quickly and now he had only a hoarse voice—and multiple contusions.

  Before SERE, he and Mace and Gray and the rest of their Delta team had been chasing their tails for weeks, running from one location to another as Army Intelligence attempted to find the next U.S. location DMH—aka Dead Man’s Hand—planned to hit with one of their attacks. And just as Cael left SERE and headed to his evals and the doc, Mace called him with the breaking news, straight from Noah’s mouth.

  “We have reason to believe that DMH received a software program that was supposedly designed to protect nuclear facilities, but can be used to disable existing systems and render the facilities susceptible to sabotage.”

  Reason to believe meant chatter from Homeland Security. And things that sounded that big usually panned out.

  Mace continued to give him the information gleaned from the report. “Vivienne Clare—she goes by Vivi—hasn’t received any recent payment for the program that we’ve been able to track. It hasn’t been confirmed as to whether or not she knows the software was taken from her.”

  “Wait—she?”

  “Yes, she. Remember women, Cael?”

  Cael sighed, because he remembered. Mainly, they were trouble. Always wanted more than he could give. And really, there was only so much a man in his position was willing and able to give.

  Not just willing—a woman needed a major security clearance before he could even think about revealing his Delta status to her.

  Sex was easier. “So we don’t know if she’s in danger—or if she is danger.”

  “Right. It’s undetermined if she sold this program or if it was stolen. Gray said that if her computer was unprotected, someone could’ve gotten in and copied the program without her knowledge. Here’s the background—Homeland Security’s had an eye on her for a while because of her father. Lawrence Clare used to work for the government as a software developer. Apparently, one of his programs was hacked, causing a major problem with the electrical grid on the West Coast. He claimed that a co-worker sabotaged the system, but was never able to prove it. He was fired but, according to our sources, continued to create security programs for private companies. Vivienne was twelve at the time the hacking occurred—when her mother and Lawrence divorced, Vivienne stayed with her father. At the time of his death, he was working on a program for a private company that owns nuclear power plants. Never finished it, but somehow it’s been leaked.”

  “And we think Vivienne sold the program her father was working on to terrorists?”

  “She worked in private security software development with her father. In order to live up to the agreement on this contract with InLine Energy, she’d have to finish the program—at least that’s what she’s on record as telling InLine. She took over the responsibility of finishing the program since, apparently, her father had been paid over half the money on the contract. If she can’t finish the program, she’s supposed to return the money. Her house is in foreclosure, her bank accounts are desolate and it’s six months later.”

  “A desperate woman in desperate times,” Caleb said.

  “And get this—her most recent security system that she’s developing is targeted for use by the U.S. military.”

  Would she then have the balls to attempt to sell one system to the U.S. military and another to a terrorist organization?

  No one was that stupid—or that smart.

  Hell, he guessed they’d find out soon enough. And while he hated to scare a woman the way he was about to, he reminded himself that she was a possible traitor to her country.

  Years ago, that wouldn’t have seemed right at all, thinking this fresh-faced woman could be responsible for helping a terrorist organization, but times had changed.

  He tuned out Mace and Gray’s conversation with their other teammates, Reid and Kell, and focused on their soon-to-be non-virtual prisoner.

  Vivienne, their great white software hope, was five feet five inches tall. Curvy.

  She wasn’t classically pretty. Her face was a little too angular, almost asymmetrical, her hair was in a messy blond cut, heavy bangs, and the ends of her blond hair were dyed bright blue.

  He couldn’t see her eyes—the file said they were hazel—but from the picture he had, they were catlike.

  If Cael were sketching her, he knew it would take him a while to catch the nuances of her face. She hadn’t broken a smile yet, not even the hint of one. She seemed agitated, angry almost, and if he drew her, he wouldn’t get the animation correct without concentrating hard.

  And still, it wouldn’t do her justice.

  She was on the phone now, cradled between her shoulder and ear. She talked with her hands, didn’t even notice she did, probably, but tying her hands could effectively render her mute.

  “She doesn’t trust,” Noah had told him earlier, right before they’d left to find her. “Consulted attorneys about her options with InLine Energy and her possible contract with the military. Looks like she put her own program on hold to try to deal with her father’s.”

  She’d been smart to consult with attorneys. In today’s climate, separating yourself from the terrorists wasn’t always easy for those involved in the fight. Suspicion ran high—security was tight as hell and everybody could be the next traitor, especially when she was dealing with such sensitive, and potentially explosive, matters that InLine Energy handled.

  “So the program she’s been working on for the military hasn’t been leaked?” he asked.
>
  “As far as we know. Right now, the InLine software is of major concern because it has a much greater potential to harm than her own program does,” Noah answered. “In the right hands, it will provide intense security. Vivi’s father was some kind of genius. He was also a conspiracy theorist. She got his gift for numbers, but not the crazy theories,” Noah had continued. Basically, Vivienne was raised unconventionally, and what was happening to her was her father’s worst nightmare.

  But damn, she was young—looked like she belonged at a rock concert, not hacking computer systems.

  The house was run-down, but there were some flowers planted along the front porch. The windows were clean and the lawn was mowed.

  Someone was trying.

  He recalled the picture he’d seen of how the house had looked just a few years earlier, when Vivienne had gone off to college and her dad had been left all alone. It had been in a state of total disrepair and Lawrence had been issued multiple citations.

  Instinctively, as if she felt Cael’s eyes on her, she reached for the hoodie that was thrown across the back of the couch and pulled it on. Three laptops held court on the large coffee table. Several cell phones were strewn about as well, and Cael figured he’d have to take all of that when he took Vivienne … whether or not she wanted to go.

  No, this had long stopped being about choice.

  “Who’s going to break the bad news to her?” Gray asked.

  “I’ll do it,” Caleb heard himself say.

  Reid and Kell, who’d remained mostly silent in his ear until now each gave a quick, “Roger that.” Both men were the more taciturn ones of the group, loners, and somehow best friends who half the time could barely stand each other’s company, let alone any of the others’, who they deemed too damned talkative. They were listening though, Caleb had no doubt, both of them in the truck, Kell working on the crossword puzzle and Reid reading the Westerns he liked so much.

  They’d sweep her house efficiently while Caleb and the others escorted Vivi the few hours to post.