by Vicki Hinze
“With utmost respect for you, I’d say all things considered, it’d be crazy for you to even try.”
“Crazy it might be.” Colonel Drake left the doorway and walked across the room to them. “But, Darcy, not only will you try,” she said with steel in her voice, “you will succeed.”
Ben intervened. “Take a look at her, Colonel. There’s no way she can handle this mission.”
“She’d better find a way.” The commander cut loose a tone, revealing a temper as fiery as her short, spiked red hair. “We can’t use surveillance equipment. With the security improvements made since 9-11, any device we install will be detected. If Station Chief Wexler so much as sniffs a whiff we’re involved, then he’ll blow off GRID. They’ll just activate an alternate route—one we’re not privy to—and GRID will succeed because we’ll be back at square one. Maybe we prevent the attack on the spectators at the White House, maybe not. But GRID will blow up something, and somewhere in this country, people are going to get killed. And more people are going to get sick and die.” She held her gaze on Darcy. “We must track GRID from Los Casas to pinpoint the other targets. There’s no secondary path to them.” Swinging her gaze, she added, “And, Ben, remember this.... Without Darcy’s perfect memory, we’d be forced to rely on other means—any of which have high odds of being discovered. Remember, too, that discovery does not offer a positive outcome for your personal future.”
“I know.” He shoved his hands into his slacks pockets. “They’d kill me.”
“They would.” Darcy groaned. GRID never left loose ends or potential witnesses. Minimizing risks through attrition was a steadfast rule with them.
“Glad you two get the full picture.” Colonel Drake passed Darcy an envelope. “Your power of attorney—Maggie’s up next on the recipient’s list—and your last will and testament. Review them both, complete the POA and make sure any changes you want are incorporated in your will. Have them ready by the time your orders are cut.”
Typical pre-mission protocol, but one that had fear slicing through Darcy like a sharp knife. Swallowing hard, her hand unsteady, she reached for the envelope and lifted her gaze to Colonel Drake. “You realize I’m going to fail.”
“I realize no such thing,” she said, her expression and voice flat and unwavering. “You realize that if you fail, thousands of innocent people are going to die on July Fourth and many more, in the years to come, are going to suffer terminal medical crises and disease.” Her jaw ticked and she looked at Darcy as if looking over glasses propped on the tip of her nose. “You can’t just roll over and accept failure, Darcy. They deserve better. So do you.”
“I know they do, Colonel. They deserve someone who can—”
“You swore to serve and protect them. They have every right to expect you to do it. I have every right to expect you to do it. And you have every right to expect it of yourself, Darcy. So just do what you’re expected to do.”
“I know my job and my duty. This isn’t about that.”
“What is it about?”
“Not being able to do my job. I’m a realist, Colonel.”
Sally squared off on her. “You’re afraid, Captain.”
Anger sparked in Darcy’s stomach. Anger and five years’ worth of resentment erupted. “Of course, I’m afraid. I don’t want to kill anyone else, and I can’t do this.”
“You can and you will,” Colonel Drake shouted, then caught herself, and deliberately lowered her voice. She tugged at the hem of her blouse, pulled it down. “Dr. Vargus and I have spoken about your challenges at length. He believes—and I agree with him—that your best odds of reclaiming a normal life are to suck it up and force yourself into hyper-stimulated episodes until they become so common, they don’t affect you anymore.”
“That doesn’t work.” Darcy clenched her jaw. She’d tried it. She’d tried everything. True, they didn’t know it, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t tried every possible technique on her own. Didn’t they think she wanted a normal life again? That she missed her freedom and being able to do ordinary things without horrific responses?
“Suck it up, Darcy.” Colonel Drake moved back to the door, sliding Ben a cocked brow look that Darcy hated. “I’ve arranged for Fred Burns to be put out of commission. Maggie is taking care of inserting you as his replacement.” The colonel looked from Darcy to Ben. “Brief her on operations at Los Casas. I’ll be back with the orders as soon as we’re good to go.” She again walked out and closed the door.
Darcy felt her world spinning out of control, crashing down around her ears. “Suck it up.” She grunted, stood up and parked a hand on her hip. “Suck it up.”
Ben rolled his eyes back in his head. “Oh, great.”
She spun on him. “What?”
“I know that look,” he said with a grimace. “You’re going into beast-mode.” He let out a heartfelt sigh. “Can you wait until later? In the past two days, I’ve had about all the fun I can stand.”
“Not my problem.” She lifted a staying hand. “I’m too busy sucking it up over here.” She walked around the table and stopped near him. “Of course, that equates to severe suffering that incapacitates me to various degrees, which could get me or you or others killed, but having no choice, I’ll just suck it up and hope for the best.” She lifted her hands, palms upward. “Let me just tell you in advance. If I get you killed because I zone out…sorry.”
Ben stared up at her for a long second, torn in internal debate. Finally, he made his call, stood up and put his hands on her shoulders. “Darcy, do you think Colonel Drake would put you in the field on a mission of this magnitude if she wasn’t sure you could do your job?”
She stiffened, waiting for the bombardment from his touch.
It didn’t come. Before she could figure out why, he moved his hands and lowered them at his sides. “Well, do you?”
“Normally, no. But it’s not like she has a lot of options. I’m the only S.A.S.S. resident with total recall. She’s stuck.”
He searched her eyes. “You really believe that?”
“It’s the truth. Of course, I believe it.” His hands had felt warm on her shoulders. Warm and firm and far too pleasant. And he smelled good, too. She’d forgotten how good a man could smell when he’d been out in fresh air, earthy and tangy like summer. She’d avoided non-essential physical contact for five years. Clinical contact had been too big a challenge. And yet she didn’t seem to be overloading on input. How…odd. Why was he different?
“If you believe that then we’ve got a problem.”
“I know we have a problem,” she said sharply. “We’ve been talking about it for the last twelve minutes.”
“You don’t understand.” He shook his head, then turned even more serious. Serious and grim. “First of all, I don’t believe Colonel Drake would insert you unless she felt you had reasonable odds for success. You don’t believe it, and on this, we’ll have to agree to disagree. But beyond that, if you’ve already decided to fail, I’m not going to work with you, Darcy. You go in with an attitude like that… Well, you can kill yourself—I can’t stop you—but you’re not going to kill me.”
“I haven’t decided to fail,” she corrected him, prickly from all the upset. “I intend to use all necessary means available to me to succeed. But the odds aren’t stacked in my favor, and that’s just a fact, Ben.”
“You intend to succeed, meaning you are going ahead with this.”
“I have to go ahead with it.” Just saying the words chilled her to the bone. “I can’t sit here because I might have an attack and watch people die because I refused to do anything to save them.”
“Okay, then. That takes care of that.” He lifted a hand. “Isn’t going in with the intention of giving any mission our best—trying—all any of us can do?”
“Don’t oversimplify this, Ben.” She crossed her arms. “We don’t all suffer from hyper-stimulation attacks. I do.” He was ignoring the parts he didn’t want to hear. Typical reaction from those wh
o didn’t hyper-stimulate or see someone else go through an attack. “All scars are not on the outside.”
“I know.” He leaned back in his seat. “That’s true. We all have our demons, Darcy.” The look in his eye turned remote.
She waited, but he didn’t elaborate, leaving her to wonder what he’d meant. Iraq? PTSD? What demons did he fight? Regardless, his insight changed her attitude and she conceded the point. “Okay, so we both fight our demons and do our best to accomplish the mission.”
“That’s the best we can do.” He shrugged.
He had played her, but he hadn’t manipulated her without letting her know what he was doing. Actually, to be fair, she had to admit he hadn’t manipulated or played her, just offered her a shifted perspective. Whatever his demons were, he had put them on par with hers. That saddened her. “We can do a little better,” she said.
“I don’t see how.”
He had touched her shoulders and she hadn’t reacted. What would happen if she touched his? Highly inappropriate in a work environment, but she needed to know. She lifted her hands then hesitated, her hands mere inches from his shoulders. “Is it okay?”
While he might not know exactly what she was doing, he knew it was a test of some sort, and nodded.
She drew in a deep breath and then parked her hands on his shoulders. Braced, she waited for the telltale signs of overload, but again they didn’t come. Perplexed about that, she looked him in the eye. “We can pray that if anyone dies as a result of my involvement, it’s only me.”
“Sorry. You don’t get sole ownership of that prayer. I need it, too.”
“That’s fair. I’ll share it with you then.” She let her fear shine in her eyes, knowing he’d never miss it, and lowered her arms to her sides.
“Did you pass? Or I pass? Whatever that test was about?”
She nodded.
When he didn’t push her to explain, she smiled. “For the record, I like you, Ben Kelly. I really don’t want to kill you.”
He swallowed hard and his Adam’s apple rippled in his throat. “I don’t want to kill you, either.”
“Well, that’s one point of agreement.” She blew out a staggered sigh.
“Let’s find another,” Ben said, and backed away from her. “Let’s put your Intel skills to work and trace ownership of TNT Incendiary Devices, Inc.”
“Definitely. Where’s your thinking on it?” Darcy shoved her chair up under the table.
“When Paco Santana and Lucas Wexler cut the deal, Santana was wearing this red shirt with the TNT emblem above the pocket. Call me skeptical, but I want to verify whose payroll he’s on in addition to GRID’s.”
“That, I can handle. Come on.” Darcy jerked her head toward the door. “We’ll go to my office and take a look.”
“What about Colonel Drake? Won’t she look for us here?”
“She’ll find us.”
Darcy led Ben down the hallway. “You know whatever we find,” he said, “won’t be good news.”
“Ha. Again, we agree.” They were on a roll. She shoved through a set of double doors that warned people to stay out. “But maybe, if we’re lucky, what we find won’t be deadly.”
He grunted. “Care to bank on it?”
“With GRID mixed up in this?” She considered it a full second just for show. “Not a chance.”
Ben looked to the left and right, then at Darcy’s hub. “Unusual office.”
Seeing the twenty-by-forty warehouse of unused furniture stacked in rows, and the shelves housing files that ran the full length of the area, and the hub where she’d carved out her workstation through his eyes, she had to agree that it was unusual. Her computer desk was clear of clutter, her desktop littered with piles of Intel reports and files on just about anything of interest to the S.A.S.S. She’d appropriated a drafting table and light where she mapped out areas of interest. To its right, she had placed a section of portable wall she’d snitched from the Providence warehouse. It was split into sections, each signifying a different S.A.S.S. mission. Every section was crammed full of tacked-up photos, reports and scraps of paper that bore pertinent notes written in her own personal shorthand no one else could decipher. Together, all the sections formed a cozy cubicle about fifteen-by-fifteen, which suited Darcy fine but would strike anyone accustomed to a normal office as unusual. More likely, she admitted, it’d strike them as weird.
“Quite a setup, Darcy.” Ben strolled around the cubicle. “But definitely isolated.”
“Yes.” She shrugged. “On good days, I leave the double doors open to the outer offices.”
He stopped and looked back over his shoulder at her. “Do you have many good days?”
The urge to squirm hit her hard. He was asking because he didn’t trust her not to get him killed. She understood that, and yet a bitter part of her—the part that was still angry about the forced changes in her life—resented it. “Not many. An occasional hour here and there. Sometimes a little more.”
“Very challenging.” He didn’t sound uneasy, and she didn’t detect even a trace of pity in his voice, for which she was grateful.
She shrugged. “As you say, we all have bad days, don’t we?”
“Yes, we do.” Sadness etched his voice and shone in his eyes.
Was he thinking about his former wife? Regretting not taking the job with the S.A.S.S. that General Shaw had offered him, or something else? Darcy gave herself a mental shake. It was none of her business.
Okay, she gave in to that one. But the man was interesting. Handsome as sin and interesting, and he had ethics. She liked that a lot. Ethics were missing or something ignored by too many these days. A shame, because this man sure looked good wearing them. Others would, too.
“Do you need a break from me?” he asked.
“No.” That surprised her as much as him. “But thanks for asking.” She genuinely appreciated the thoughtfulness. “I’m okay.”
“No problem.”
Darcy walked over and sat down at the computer. “Let’s take a look and see who owns this TNT Incendiary Devices, Inc.” She motioned to Ben. “Pull up a chair.”
He sat on the stool at the drafting table instead. “There’s probably stuff I shouldn’t see here.”
Darcy smiled. “Don’t worry. General Shaw and Secretary Reynolds authorized your admittance to Home Base—that’s here. Their authorization included your being cleared for all we do. Otherwise, they’d have had Colonel Drake meet you elsewhere.”
“I see.” He dragged the stool across the concrete floor and sat beside her, careful not to crowd her. “I have to say, I was a little surprised to see a woman installed as the commander of the S.A.S.S. With the nature of the missions, back when I was active, the honchos would have gone with a big-gun guy. Progress is good.”
“It is. Sometimes still slow, but better.”
“Never understood why it mattered. We all have the same to lose.”
True enough. “Colonel Drake is an excellent commander. She has unique qualifications that make her perfect to command the S.A.S.S.,” Darcy said. Ben wasn’t being sexist, just speaking honestly. And he wasn’t questioning Colonel Drake’s abilities, only talking straight about how hard it was to change long-held traditions. “As it happens, she went toe-to-toe with a big-gun guy—Colonel Gray, the Providence Air Force Base Commander—and she won.”
“Impressive.”
“Yes. But also unfortunate,” Darcy said softly. She dropped her voice and leaned closer to Ben. “Gray was not a happy camper about losing. He wasn’t a good sport either. Since he’s the Providence base commander, he’s the S.A.S.S.’s host.”
Ben put all the pieces together. “Which means Gray decides what offices the S.A.S.S. gets, which explains why you’re stuck out in the middle of a dormant bombing range.”
“He thinks we work out of the banged-up trailer and shack above ground.” Darcy chuckled under her breath. “Tell him about the bunker and I’ll have to shoot you.”
Ben’
s eyes twinkled. “Your secret will go with me to the grave.”
A little dazed from the intimate moment, she smiled at him. “Your devotion leaves me breathless. Is it because you think Gray’s a pompous jerk for sticking us out here?”
“Of course not. I don’t even know him. It’s because you’re my partner,” Ben said, his amusement touching his eyes. “And because I like to see you smile.” He cocked his head. “Playful suits you, Darcy.”
It did. “I used to be playful a lot.”
“But that was before the fire?”
A shaft of sorrow arrowed through her, and she nodded. Avoiding it, she busied her fingers on the keyboard, flew through a few documents, quickly keystroked through a few more, following the paper trail on TNT.
Ben watched over her shoulder in silence. Minutes passed. Five then ten. “The owner didn’t want anyone locating him to be easy, now did he?”
“No, he didn’t. But persistence—” She keyed through documents on a fronting corporation and landed on a document that stole her breath. “Good God.”
“What?” Ben picked up on the anxious turn of her tone.
She swung her gaze to meet his. “Broken Branch Redemption owns TNT.”
“Is that bad?”
“It’s definitely not good,” she said. “Broken Branch is a universal religious organization.” She keyed in to get a list of its corporate officers.
“Who’s at the helm?” Ben asked.
“Checking that now.” She waited for the document to load. It finally appeared on the screen. “It’s your man, Ben.”
“My man? Who?” Ben craned his neck, but still didn’t have a clear line of sight to the screen. “Lucas Wexler?”
“No.” She looked at Ben. “Paco Santana.”
Ben frowned, dragged a frustrated hand through his hair. “Okay. The jerk’s working TNT on both sides of the border and working for GRID.” He blew out a spurted breath. “That’ll make the mission tougher.”
“More so than you think. Since the fiasco at Waco, the federal government has taken a hands-off approach on matters that could even remotely be considered an encroachment into the ‘freedom of religion’ domain.”