Dark Web (DARC Ops Book 2) (15 page)

“That’s a useful public perception. Outwardly, yes, we’re very much by the book. And we work with law enforcement quite often. But when it comes to the gray-hat stuff, well, we like to keep that under wraps.”

“Stuff like hiding out in the desert with a fugitive?”

“You’re a fugitive now?”

“Maybe.”

“Another reason why you’re lucky I found you, perhaps. Anyone else who didn’t know you would be more than happy to put you behind bars for aiding terrorists.”

“Excuse me? Terrorists?”

“Domestic terrorists.”

“That’s who hired me?”

“Who else would be so gung ho about compromising FBI cybersecurity?” He waited for her to speak, but she said nothing. “You can’t honestly tell me that you had no idea you were hacking into government servers.”

She brought her hand to her face, feeling her wounds again, taking a silent inventory of the damage. What kind of wounds did she have internally? Not just from tonight. Her brain, her heart?

“We’ve been monitoring their search for someone skilled enough to carry out their plans,” he said. “At the same time, I’ve been trying to get in touch with our old friends, see who was still doing what. You know, testing the waters. . . .” Tansy looked in the mirror, checking for any unwanted lights. Then he looked back at the woman he’d just rescued. In the moonlight, he could see hints of new blood forming at her nose. “You were last on my list. For a few reasons.”

She nodded.

“For one, I had assumed you never want to talk to me again.”

“That’s not true.”

“And second of all, which is kinda related to that, you’re retired. You’re, like you said, finished with all that crap.”

“It’s not crap.”

“Crap, yes.” said Tansy. “Me, your old life. You sort of treated it like it was.”

She was touching her eyelids, her hands shaking slightly as she tried moving them around. Was she still blinded?

“Which is fine. You never owed me anything.”

“Yes, I did,” she said. “Yes, I do.”

“We don’t even need to get into that right now. I’m sure you’re . . . exhausted, and maybe concussed.”

“I’m just . . . in shock, I guess. Getting . . . abducted like that. And then . . . you.”

He’d always wondered what it would be like to finally meet Cscape face to face. But this was definitely not it. Near the end of their friendship, he had been pricing out flights and hotel packages. He’d even practiced ways to bring it up naturally in conversation. Practiced in his head how to make it not sound like anything more than a friendly visit. It was a concept he first had to teach himself.

But then why had he wanted to meet her so badly?

He had gone to great lengths to find this or that hacking convention, this or that reason to finally be in the same physical space together. And when they would finally meet, maybe he would find a reason for what he was feeling. Maybe she would too. An immediate reaction that could push aside all the reasoning, all the logic. And he could stop forcing himself to believe their relationship was just friendly and platonic.

He was on the same slippery slope now.

Just how far was he willing to go to aid and abet someone the FBI was after? To harbor a fugitive that he himself had been assigned to track down?

He already knew the answer, even if he wouldn’t admit it.

“Okay,” he said. “I think it’s safe to head back.” He started the car, put it in gear, and then began the tedious process of turning the car around, rotating it slowly through several jerky back and forths.

“I’d get out and help you with any blind spots,” Carly said. “But . . . I’m a walking blind spot.”

“I bet you’ll clear up by tomorrow. Mine took twenty-four hours.” Tansy put the car in drive for the last time, ready to finally depart from their hiding spot, but the car wouldn’t move. He pressed on the gas harder, but the engine only roared louder, the car standing still.

“What’s going on?” asked Carly. “Are we stuck?”

“Not for long.” He tried to rock the car backward and forward. He had a pretty good track record for escaping sand traps. “Trust me, it’s not my first time stuck in the sand.”

“But were you doing it in a Honda Civic?”

She had a point. But Tansy had to block out that reality and continue his process, backing up and moving forward in small increments, hoping to gain some momentum.

But the car only got deeper.

“Fuck it.” He climbed out of the car and hunched down, inspecting the front tires with a flashlight. To his relief, it looked manageable. He returned to the car and grabbed as many floor mats as he could, stuffing them in front of each tire. He was repeating the process with the rear wheels, cupping sand away from their path with his hands, when he heard her call out to him.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m right here.” It had been damn unnerving when he’d lost his sight, however temporary it was. The sensation had made him uncertain about just about everything. Every step had become a risk, a scary mystery one moment to the next. He needed to do better, stay in audio contact with her the entire time, to always provide feedback about what was surrounding her. A guide, if you liked. A lifeline.

“Huh?” she replied. “I’m not worried.”

Okay. Maybe she didn’t need a lifeline.

Her voice was suddenly louder as she stepped out of the car. “I asked if you need any help.”

Tansy was surprised at her tone. Her split lips were pinched closed and she sounded almost annoyed.

He’d be annoyed, too, if he was suddenly powerless. That day when he was blind, he had his friends to rely on, people he trusted. Carly might not have even trusted that he was actually Tansy.

“Okay, yeah,” he said, getting up off his knees and brushing the sand off them. “You
can
help. Can you drive a stick?”

“Sure.”

There was always something extremely sexy about a woman who could handle a standard transmission. But coming from Carly, it was no surprise. She was already a standout in the male-dominated field of hacking. The techie equivalent of a tomboy. Except the way she looked in a dress. . . .

He slammed the door on that line of thought. “Do you want me to show you where everything is?”

“No, I got it,” despite her missing sight, she stood tall as she walked back around to the front of the car, her fingers tapping across the hood as a guide.

Tansy watched her again, consumed with his unfettered voyeurism. Although he’d seen photos of her, her in-person beauty was striking. Even with all the blood and bruises. Even through the darkness of the desert, her body gliding through the moonlight like a dream. He forced himself to look away, continuing to dig the sand away from his rear tires. He was just about to picture her in his mind again when he was suddenly preoccupied with another concern. Were any of his old friends from other deserts out here tonight? The snakes and scorpions that could end their little getaway with a single glancing blow?

From inside the car, Carly had called his name in a hushed cry. “
Tansy
,” she called again, this time louder. “Did you hear that?”

“No.” With his tinnitus, he was lucky to have heard Carly whisper his name, let alone whatever noise she was asking about.

“What’s that
sound
?”

He stopped scooping sand and raised his head, holding his better ear out in the air. “I can’t really—”

“Shh!”

He tried listening to whatever sound she was worried about. But all he could hear was his constant ring.

“It sounds like chirping,” said Carly. “Like . . . little babies.”

“What kind of babies? Birds?”

“No,” she said, the concern growing in her voice. “Cats. Big cats.”

“Like a mountain lion?”

“Cubs, maybe.”

“Okay,” he said, far calmer than he felt. “We better get the fuck out of here.”

Carly said nothing as the car sagged with her weight. Tansy quickly crawled out from under the wheel well and got behind the car. The car’s engine had already started by the time his hands were on the rear bumper. He heard her ask if he was ready, and then the car lurched forward, kicking up sand all through the car’s undercarriage. He got low with bent knees, like they taught football linemen, and pushed through as the car slowly rolled out of the deepest section of sand and back onto the stony trail bed.

“Alright,” called Tansy, walking up to the driver’s side window. “Nice job. Do you want to take it from here and drive us out?”

Her laughter was the best thing he’d heard all day.

N
o matter where she was
, physically, Carly felt trapped in a dark void. It followed her up the hill she slid down, to Tansy’s car, and now, speeding down the highway. The only good news was the person who was driving that car, steering Carly to safety. She had Tansy, just like back in the old days, to navigate her through the minefields. Just like in the Collective days, he’d saved her. He’d cleaned her wounds, and, with hardly any questions, ferried her off to safety before the cops arrived.

And like usual, she’d repay Tansy by putting him in danger, getting him caught up in her latest batch of trouble. It was a cycle she had tried breaking back then, even going to the extent of severing all ties with him. A desperate attempt. In time, she thought, he’d understand the move. He would get past the outward cruelty. They were, after all, the rogues of the internet, and as such, they occasionally fell off the radar, whether it was because of jail time, the threat of it, or a self-induced departure from the hacking world. At least two of those reasons were good enough for Carly to rethink her life and who she’d associate with in the future.

“Are you asleep?” Tansy asked through the darkness.

“No, why? My eyes are open, aren’t they?” She still couldn’t see anything beyond the red haze.

“Yeah, but you’re kinda staring off into nowhere.”

“What else is there to look at?”

There were, however,
some
things to look at. The approaching headlights of cars, for instance, shone bright enough to get through whatever visual blockage had handicapped her, each one a beacon of light before she would sit in the ensuing darkness, waiting for the next set of headlights to remind her of her loss.

“Want some music?” he asked, his voice upbeat but still sounding forced. He was trying to take her mind of everything, a thoughtful gesture. Then again, having gone through the same condition, Tansy might have known the importance of adding extra stimuli. Anything, even the shitty radio stations of Nevada, was a pleasant distraction from her blindness.

But the music that Carly heard made her wish for Nevada’s Top 40 country standards. Even blind silence would be preferable to Tansy’s electronic cacophony.

“What the hell is this?”

“Dubstep.”

Dubstep. . . . She wasn’t sure how the term correlated to the kind of pneumatic techno bullshit her ears were suffering through.

“What’s wrong?” asked Tansy. “You don’t like it?”

“I thought you were into real music. Oldies, classic rock. Something with real instruments.”

“It’s good driving music.”

“It sounds like two robots fucking.”

The music suddenly went away. The robots were gone. Her ears were safe.

“Sorry,” she said. “I only have my ears left, so, I guess I’m extra sensitive.”

“I thought your ears would be used to it. Conditioned from all the loud punk music they have to endure. Should I find some of that for you? I’ve got satellite radio.”

Next to dubstep, punk music was the second-to-last music she wanted to hear. “How about . . . classical?”

As Tansy presumably surfed satellite radio for a classical station, Carly began worrying about the girls. The last they’d heard from Carly was the phone call, a warning about a federal agent. They must think she’d gotten picked up. “Can we stop by the hotel?” she asked. “I need to grab my things before we go to your . . . compound.” The name sounded silly, like it was something straight from a twelve-year-old boy’s imagination. “Is that really what you call it? ‘The Compound’?”

“We actually call it ‘The Silo.’”

She couldn’t tell which was worse. “Why?”

“It’s an old nuclear missile silo. The top level is just a normal-looking house. But there’s a stairwell that goes about ten stories deep. That’s where we’ve been working. That’s who you almost blew up last night.”

The car was suddenly filled with the soothing melodies of a quiet string quartet. It sounded the aural equivalent of a Monet painting. Idyllic water scenes, floating lilies.

“Here’s your classical,” he said. “Vivaldi okay?”

She had no idea how he knew which composer it was, but she gave a big emphatic “yes” anyway.

“It’s a big change from punk,” Tansy said. “I think my ears got worse from your show. I’ve got tinnitus, so whenever—”

“You saw me?” Carly nervously interrupted. “I mean . . . you saw the show?” For some reason, it made her feel uncomfortable, almost violated, to be unknowingly watched by him. She was getting a little sick of the one-way street, him seeing her and not vice versa.

Unless Tansy was the guy who had sat right in front of the stage, who had stared at her mercilessly.

“I was there for half your show, yeah. You’re really good.”

“Were you that guy?”

“Was I
what
guy?”

“The guy who kept staring at me?”

“Oh . . . damn, I didn’t think I was being so obvious. I was trying to hide the fact that I was checking you out.”

She smiled, swallowing another laugh. He had to be kidding with her, trying to cheer her up. “Tansy, that was back when I could still see.”

“So who did you think I was? Or, am?”

Carly’s darkness was suddenly lit up with the bright lights of the Dolphin Club stage. Squinting beyond them, she could discern the bulky, muscular outline. Was that Tansy?

“Was he handsome?”

She saw his face, youthful and clean-shaven, but half covered in sunglasses and a ball cap.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“What was he wearing?”

Carly reached over the armrest, grasping through the darkness for any piece of Tansy. Her hand began at the thick mass of his shoulder and moved down his muscular arm. For some reason, she had been expecting him to move away from her touch. But he remained still, allowing for further exploration. She could feel his t-shirt, the sleeve tight around his bicep.

“A tight t-shirt,” she said, moving her hands back up to his shoulder, rounding it and creeping along his neck. Her fingertips glided up the stubble-like short hair at the back of his head, until they reached what felt like a ball cap.

“Ball cap,” she said.

“What else?”

She drew her hand away, folding it with the other in her lap.

“What’s wrong?”

Despite the shirt and the hat, and his info on Carly, it was still hard to believe it was actually him. But it would be an uncertainty that she’d probably have regardless, with or without the ability to see. She had absolutely nothing to go on. No shared photos. No video chats. Their relationship had been so heavily anchored in text. In emails. Messages.

“Do you remember your pet peeves with my grammar?” she asked.

“Why?”

“I’m just curious.”

“Are you still trying to make sure it’s me?”

“Yes.”

A long pause might have signified that Tansy had been pondering the question, thinking back to her syntactical errors, preparing him to say something about her confusing “their” and “they’re.” It might also have meant that he’d grown tired of the quiz show. Or worse, that he was an impostor whose background research ended before the specifics of Carly’s grammar problems.

And then she heard him swear, tersely, under his breath.

“Tansy?”

And then the car began to slow down.

“What’s wrong?”

“Police,” he said. “We’re being pulled over.”

She felt and heard the car slow even further, and then the hard vibration of rumble strips.

“I’ll take care of it,” he said as the car came to a stop. “Don’t say anything.”

“Okay.” Just forty-eight hours before, she’d given exactly the same advice. Hopefully Tansy would have better luck.

“Were you speeding or something?”

“A little bit. Maybe that’s all this is about. At least I hope so. But if this turns into a problem, let’s get our stories straight. Okay?”

“Okay. What the hell is our story?”

“We’re not friends.”

That sounded vaguely familiar.

“I saw you get kidnapped,” he continued. “So I followed you. And now we’re headed to the hospital.”

“What do I say?”

“Nothing. You’re concussed and confused. And you can’t talk.”

That sounded accurate enough. Maybe Tansy knew what he was doing after all. She heard him roll his window down and turn the engine off. The sound of him spitting his gum out the window. And then boots walking along concrete.

It began like a normal traffic stop. The officer asking for documents, asking how fast Tansy thought he was driving. Tansy acting surprised yet compliant. Carly not saying a word. The officer walking back to his car.

“So what’s your plan?” she asked.

“We’re gonna make a run for it.”

“That doesn’t sound like a plan.”

“Shh,” he said. “He’s coming back.”

It sounded like an excuse to drop the conversation. But she stopped talking anyway, listening for the painfully familiar sound of a highway patrolman’s boots clunking their way back to the car.

“Officer, I have to get this woman to a hospital. She—”

“Can you please step out of the car, sir?”

She heard Tansy unbuckle his seat belt without a word. His door opened and then swung shut a moment later. As he and the officer walked behind the car, Carly could hear the beginnings of Tansy’s story about finding a wounded woman, having to rush her to. . . .

Their conversation faded underneath the din of rushing traffic. Now she could only wait for one of them to come back, preferably Tansy, and preferably uncuffed.

If not, there would be a whole new reason to call her uncle. How would she phrase it? How would she explain her hacking past, and how it had suddenly caught up with her in Wells, Nevada? And how did Tansy fit into it all? He’d rescued her from certain death, only to get dragged back into Carly’s mess as a reward.

As she waited for any new aural hints that could explain what the hell was going on, Carly pulled her phone from her pocket and slid her finger across the screen. It was now cracked. She could feel all the tiny lines than ran jagged against her skin. Using the voice command function, she was able to send a text to Megan and Taylor. A quick explanation. Though it was harder than she thought to put the whole thing into words. Her voice sounded strange, breaking on the words “kidnapped,” “beaten,” and “rescued.” Still, a voice-commanded text message was no doubt an easier assignment than having to call and actually talk to them. Carly could barely explain it to herself, let alone someone who was actually sane and appropriately concerned.

“Ma’am?”

The voice came without warning. No footsteps. No jingling of keys.

“Are you hurt?” The officer, who sounded anything but sympathetic, was back at the driver’s side window.

“Yes. I’m hurt.”

“Do you need an ambulance?”

“No.”

“Are you able to step out of the vehicle?”

“No.”

The officer cleared his throat and asked, “Are you Carly Barlow?”

She thought for a second. And then said, “No.”

“Can you get out of the car?”

“No.”

“Step out of the car, please.”

“No.”

“Ma’am, I don’t care how hurt you are. If you don’t step out of this vehicle, then I’m—”

His voice was suddenly drowned out by the piercingly loud wail of a police siren. She heard the officer’s footsteps thudding away, and then the sound of voices, yelling angrily. A moment later, it was the sound of the driver’s side door opening, someone landing hard in the seat, the weight rocking the car, the engine turning on.

“Hang on.” It was Tansy.

Before she could understand what he meant, Carly’s head was forced back against the headrest and held there by the g-force of Tansy’s quick acceleration, a screeching burnout, and then a quick speeding through the gears.

“Is he following us?” she asked, straining her voice over the revving engine. He either didn’t hear or chose not to answer, which could only mean there was a police car hot on their tail. “Tansy!” she yelled, coughing from the effort. “It’s not worth it!”

“We’re good,” he said calmly.

“We’re good!?”

“Yeah. Can you hear his siren?”

“All I can hear is this fucking car.” That was a lie. She could also hear the pleasant melodies of a Debussy concerto accompanying the hundreds of horses which thundered and powered their getaway. “Tansy? As you might recall, I can’t see anything. So can you please tell me what the fuck is going on?”

“I hacked into his patrol car.”

What the fuck? What had she missed in ten years?

“How?” Asking a hacker for a secret was almost as bad as asking a magician. They were the same thing in the end, she supposed. “Were you even inside the car? I thought you needed to plant a dongle or something.”

“He did it for me. I’ve got secret software embedded into my driver’s license. And as soon as he swipes the card, I can start sending messages with my phone.”

She was impressed. But for how ingenious it was, the hack was probably only made possible through a significant budget and countless development hours. Cracking police security codes and faking a government-issued ID were no cheap and easy tasks.

“That’s the upside to developing cybersecurity for law enforcement,” said Tansy. “You get paid to fuck with everyone’s shit. For the cop back there, I started with his siren, drew him back to his car. And then I just made a run for it, like I said.”

“And you deactivated his car or something?”

“I messed with the starter. It’ll probably take a few days to get it running again.”

“So there’s one behind us?”

“No cops. No.”

“Okay. Do you have a hack for turning a Civic into a minivan?”

“We might be stuck with doing that the old fashioned way.”

“What’s the old fashioned way?”

“Carjacking.” He paused, maybe waiting for Carly to freak out, before adding, “Just kidding.”

“Okay, but what’s our
real
plan?”

“We’ll have to ditch the car at the compound,” he said as he swerved hard. “And then hunker down there for awhile so we can work on getting your story straight.”

“Which means what, exactly?”

“Well, you’re obviously in some trouble. Maybe we can bargain with the Feds.”