The Darkness Beyond (9 page)

“I take it this Big Ed has a problem with that.”

Cody nodded. “Yeah, he'd been giving her a hard time, but he eventually learned not to mess with Reggie.” The memory still made him smile. “He harassed her one time too many.”

D.J. clearly wasn't amused though. “What happened?”

“He said something under his breath and touched more than her shoulder, if you get my drift. Reggie rolled her chair over his foot and then elbowed him in his most prized possessions. Poor bastard was walking funny for hours.

“Not only that, but our boss saw the whole thing. He told Ed in front of everybody that he'd be looking for a new job if he tried anything like that again.”

“He should've been kicked to the curb right then,” D.J. snarled. His eyes were blazing when he asked, “Why don't you think he's the one behind this?”

“A couple of reasons. First of all, Ed's basically a coward. The man was humiliated in front of the office, but he backed down to our boss, who is half his size. More important, Reggie would never agree to meet the man outside work. She's smarter than that.”

“We'll still check him out,” D.J. said, nodding. “But who's the other guy you think might be involved?”

“Mr. DeLuca, our boss, gave Reggie a special project to work on a few days ago. She's supposed to be hunting down a hacker who's practically a legend. Reggie has been pretty secretive about the case, but I think she might have found him. She's sure been acting funny for the past few days.”

Cody paused as they drove into Reggie's parking lot. He'd been hoping that her apartment lights would be on and that this would all have been one big misunderstanding. No such luck. Feeling a bit sick, he finished his story.

“She was hunting the Knightwalker . . . and I think the bastard took her.”

Okay, it was hard not to laugh. The situation was so not funny, but the kid had lapsed into melodrama. At least D.J. could reassure Cody that Reggie wasn't in the clutches of the Knightwalker. He really wished she was.

He'd love to be the focus of all that intense energy she carried around with her, but now wasn't the time for that kind of thinking. He parked the truck and walked around to look Cody straight in the eye, hoping the kid would believe what he was about to tell him.

“It's good that you're thinking about possibilities, but I know for a fact that the Knightwalker doesn't have her.”

Cody gave him a skeptical look. “And how could you possibly know something like that? If she didn't tell me anything about what she's found, she sure wouldn't tell you.”

“I don't doubt that she trusts you more than she does me, but I have one thing going for me that you don't.”

He clapped his hand down on Cody's shoulder. “She's actually been chasing the Knightwalker for months, not just the past few days, and I'm guessing she was doing so just for the hell of it. You're a hacker yourself. You know how much we love a challenge.”

Cody nodded and frowned. “Yeah.”

“So since she first found the Knightwalker, she's been sending him cryptic little e-mails just to be a pain in the ass. And being the kind of guy not to take that lying down, he turned the tables and showed up at her door.”

“When? Why didn't she say something?”

D.J. offered Cody his best shark grin. “Because you were standing right there when he came knocking, or I should say, when
I
came knocking.”

It didn't take the kid long to do the math. He went from puzzled to full-out pissed off between one second and the next.

“You bastard! Where is she?” Cody shrugged off D.J.'s hand and then took a swing straight at the man's jaw.

Rather than duck, D.J. let the blow connect and his head snapped back hard. Damn, Cody packed quite a punch, but the kid needed to burn off some of his anger and worry about his friend before he could start thinking straight again.

D.J. rubbed his jaw. “Feel better?”

Cody looked at him as if he was crazy, but then nodded as he gingerly flexed his hand. D.J. wasn't the only one hurting from the punch. That seemed only fair.

“Let's get inside where we can talk without drawing any more attention to ourselves.”

Cody started across the parking lot, but then stopped. “We don't have a key.”

“Trust me. That'll slow us down, but it won't stop us.” D.J. patted the pack of tools he'd stuck in his shirt pocket.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Cool.”

Ten minutes later they were inside Reggie's apartment. This time D.J. wouldn't hesitate to search her bedroom. In fact, he'd turn the whole damn place inside out if that's what it took. As much as he'd prefer to protect the woman's delicate sensibilities, this wasn't the time. They couldn't afford to leave any possible clue undiscovered, not with her life at stake.

“You start in the kitchen. I'll start in back. Look for anything out of place, any sign that she didn't leave of her own accord.”

Cody stayed right where he was. D.J. figured he knew what was coming and waited for it.

“So, you're the Knightwalker.”

“Yep, I am. Your friend Reggie is the only one who's ever managed to track me down. Like I said before, she's been getting through all my defenses and leaving me messages for a couple of months. Her avatar has been able to track mine even when I changed it.”

He let his admiration for Reggie show. “I couldn't resist tracking her down. Hardest bit of hacking I've ever done. She's damn good.”

The kid started going through the kitchen drawers. “But if you're not responsible for Reggie disappearing, then we're back to Big Ed again.”

Here came the part where D.J. had to do some dancing around the truth. “Not exactly. I work for an organization that values its privacy. She managed to get into some secret files that might have set off an alarm. If so, they may have come after her.”

Cody pulled a stack of papers out of the kitchen drawer. “Could this have anything to do with it?”

Son of a bitch, he knew he should've taken the hard copy of Brenna's Paladin history. “Yeah, it could. I'll take those.”

D.J. held out his hand for the papers, waiting patiently to see if Cody gave in and surrendered them.

“What's in them?” he asked, but his eyes shifted down and to the left.

Damn it, had the kid read the papers, too? That would be another clusterfuck in the making.

“Something you don't want to know about. Not unless you want the same thing to happen to you. Are you hearing me?”

Cody nodded as he finally offered them up. “There's nothing else in the kitchen that's out of place.”

“Okay, you boot up her computer while I do a quick check of her bedroom and the bathroom. I'll be right back.”

He stopped long enough to run the papers through the shredder in the corner just in case the kid hadn't already read through the report. It used up some valuable time, but D.J. couldn't risk Cody letting his curiosity get the better of him.

The bathroom looked the same as it had the day before, and her bedroom was pretty much what he'd expected. If he'd had to choose two words to describe her most private lair, he would pick “colorful” and “comfortable.” The bed was made and all her clothes were either neatly put away or in the hamper.

The only bit of clutter was the haphazard stack of books on the bedside table. He paused long enough to check out her taste in reading material. Yep, just as he expected—she was a closet romantic. It went along with her wearing that scrap of black lace underneath her oversize T-shirts and jeans.

He studied the covers on the books. They all showed some heavily muscled guy carrying a sword or a gun. One model even had a double-bladed ax much like the one D.J. often fought with.

What did she think of the Paladins? He'd bet she found their history to be wildly exciting. Too bad the reality was anything but. It was hard to romanticize your own life, especially when it involved a heavy dose of killing on a regular basis.

Back to the problem at hand. There was nothing more to be learned from the apartment itself. He headed back to the living room to see if Cody had managed to get into Reggie's computer files.

“Any luck?”

The young hacker looked back over his shoulder with a frustrated frown. “Not so far. The passwords I wasn't supposed to know have all been changed.”

No surprise there. If she was like D.J., once he'd made direct contact, she would've gone through her entire system and changed all her settings.

“Let me try.”

Cody stayed right where he was. “She won't like you rooting around in her files. She'd be mad at me, but in your case, she'd go ballistic. You might want to remember what she did to Big Ed. The woman's got a temper when she's provoked. Besides, if our boss finds out, she and I will both be looking for work.”

“If your boss values the company's security more than he values his employees, he doesn't deserve either of you.”

Cody grimaced. “Easy for you to say. I've got tuition due in a couple of weeks. I'm finally closing in on my degree and can't afford to blow it now.”

D.J. understood exactly where the kid was coming from. He'd struggled to make it through college on his own, too. “Don't sweat it. I have contacts in the business. If this all goes to hell, I'll make sure you have any kind of job you want.”

He would, too. In fact, the Regents could always use another resident hacker on the payroll.

“Now get out of my way.”

Cody vacated the chair. “I'm going to watch over your shoulder.”

“I wouldn't have it any other way. First things first though. I'm going to see if I can track her through the GPS chip in her cell phone.”

No dice, but that didn't surprise him. If the bastards who'd taken her had a brain cell functioning, disabling her phone would've been one of the first things they'd done. Still, he'd continue to monitor the situation just in case.

Now on to her files.

After that, the only sound in the apartment was the pounding of computer keys and the ticking of the clock.

I
t took D.J. the better part of an hour to crack Reggie's firewalls. He leaned back in the chair and stared at the screen. Before going any further, he needed to think, which meant he needed to be up and moving. He instinctively grabbed one of Reggie's stress toys and started working it hard as he paced the floor.

Cody had given up staring over D.J.'s shoulder after the first half hour. Now he was sprawled on the sofa playing a computer game, losing himself in a cyberworld to avoid thinking about what might be happening to Reggie.

D.J. reached for his wallet and pulled out two twenties. “Cody, do me a favor. We're both running on empty here. Would you mind picking up something for us to eat?”

He dropped the money and his truck keys on the coffee table. “I'm not picky. Get whatever you like, but get double what you normally order.”

The kid eyed the money. “I can buy my own food.”

D.J. recognized pride when he saw it, so he lied. “Don't sweat it. It's a business expense for me.”

He wasn't sure if Cody believed him, but at least he pocketed the cash. Not the keys though. “There's a great deli on the next block over. I'll get sandwiches and a couple salads. Dessert, too, if you want.”

“Sounds good.”

As soon as Cody was out the door, D.J. returned to the computer to study the files he'd uncovered. Just as he'd feared, Reggie had triggered an alarm at the Regents' headquarters. But as far as he could tell, they'd mounted no defense against the incursion. There were definite protocols in place for dealing with this kind of situation, but none of them had been activated.

True, they might be trying to hide their actions, but he'd left a back door or two into their security programs when he and Cullen designed them. After coming at the problem from every possible direction, he couldn't find any sign that they were officially hunting Reggie.

That left an unofficial, off-the-books response, a much scarier proposition. If he'd had any doubts that that was what was happening, they'd been dashed when he finally got into Reggie's personal e-mail. Sure enough, someone had dangled a promise of information about the Paladins and Regents in front of her, and she'd obviously taken the bait.

Were they using local talent? Most of the Regents and their lackeys were stationed in the Midwest. Who would they have used out here? Definitely not someone from among the Paladins themselves.

Could this get any more screwed up? God knew who had her or what their plans were. He began a more thorough search through the Regents' files to determine the most likely culprit.

It didn't take long. There were only a handful of people who had that kind of talent. He saved his findings to a flash drive to pass along to Cullen. Maybe he'd have better luck.

Too restless to stare at the screen any longer, D.J. stepped out onto Reggie's small balcony for some fresh air. He took a deep breath and looked out at the parking lot, where he spotted Cody. D.J. went back inside to wait for him, figuring it wasn't smart to spend too much time outside where Reggie's neighbors might spot him. There was no way of knowing if they were the kind of folks who kept track of her business. Better to err on the side of caution.

Cody slipped back through the door. “Hope you like your sandwiches loaded, because that's what I got.”

“Perfect. After we eat, I'll show you what I've found.”

As D.J. spread out the food, Cody got out plates and silverware. Before he took a bite, he paused, his expression worried.

“Think Reggie's okay?”

“Yeah, for now.” D.J. concentrated on peeling back the wrapper from his sandwich, mainly to hide his own concern. “Don't worry, Cody. We'll find her.”

“And then kick their asses?”

“Oh, yeah, we'll definitely do that, too. Now eat. You need to keep up your strength.”

“Don't worry about me. I never get sick. I even have some kind of revved-up metabolism. I also heal faster than anyone I've ever met. It used to freak out my foster parents, I can tell you.” Then he dug into his sandwich.

D.J. studied his companion for several seconds, using his enhanced Paladin senses. Oh, yeah, he picked up on a familiar vibe. Almost immediately Cody frowned and looked around, obviously detecting something odd but unsure of what it could be. D.J. recognized it for what it was: like calling to like. How the heck had he missed picking up on it sooner? The organization would be recruiting Cody, all right, but not for his hacking skills. At least not the computer ones.

Devlin and the other Paladins would be pleased to meet the kid. Finding one of the lost was always something to celebrate. D.J. should know. He'd been out of step with the whole world until the day a Paladin recognized him for what he was and brought him into the fold.

The storeroom was only slightly more comfortable than the back of the truck. At least they'd cut Reggie's hands free before shoving her inside and locking the door. They probably figured she wouldn't be able to get into much trouble in the cramped, dusty, dirty room.

She cautiously peered out of the small window in the door. Unfortunately, the room was located off a narrow hallway, so the view was too limited to be of much use. She'd already surveyed the place and had come up with nothing that would enable her to stage a daring escape.

She upended a cracked plastic bucket and used it to sit on. Studying her surroundings, it was hard not to give in to utter despair. How could she fight back when she had no idea who the enemy was or what they wanted with her? She'd been an absolute fool for answering that damn e-mail. Despite her precautions, she'd badly underestimated the danger.

She wondered what Cody and D.J. were doing. Probably ransacking her apartment looking for clues. Any other time she would've resented the intrusion, but right now they were welcome to root through anything that might help them find her.

If only she'd been able to keep at least her cell phone hidden on her person. That was probably the first thing they'd taken from her. As long as they kept it turned off, there was no way for D.J. to track her through it.

Rather than spin in circles over what couldn't be changed, she concentrated on her captors. She was pretty sure there'd been three in the alley near the café: one to drive, two to make the grab. But on the way to the warehouse, there'd only been two in the truck with her. So what had happened to their cohort?

Then there were the two men who'd caught her trying to sneak out of the building. They were definitely an odd pair, that was certain. Their clothing was almost identical, perhaps a uniform of some kind although she'd never seen anything like it before. Their hair was an uncommon color as well, sort of iron gray and black mixed in equal amounts. She hadn't been with them all that long, but if she'd had to guess their ages, she would've put them in their late twenties, early thirties at the most.

Who were they? And why did they think she'd been brought there for them? She rubbed her arms to fight off the chill that swept through her. She'd only heard a small part of what they'd said to the pair who kidnapped her. Their accents were thick and unusual. Where were they from?

So many frustrating questions.

From what she could tell, they were all waiting for yet another man to arrive. Maybe he was the one with the answers, but at the moment she wasn't sure she really wanted to know them.

The sound of footsteps approached. She cocked her head to the side and closed her eyes to listen. Most likely just one set but definitely coming her way. She stood up, not wanting to greet her captor from a position of weakness.

The door opened, revealing the guy who'd grabbed her in the alley. He held out a cardboard tray with a soft drink and a bag from a fast-food chain.

“Here. Eat.”

She silently accepted the offering, only then realizing how hungry she was.

“Before I do, can I use the restroom? I'd like to wash my hands.”

He rolled his eyes, but nodded. “Don't try anything or I'll tie your hands again and let you go hungry.”

Then he stood back and let her pass. “It's over to the left.”

She'd secretly been hoping there'd be a window in the cramped bathroom that she could crawl out of, but no such luck. It was on an inside wall with no exit other than the door she'd entered through. Like everything else in the warehouse, it was also filthy. She took care of business and then washed her hands in the grungy sink. No paper towels either. She settled for wiping her hands on her pants.

On the way out, she deliberately tripped, falling against her escort. He cursed at her clumsiness, but grabbed her arm long enough to keep her from hitting the concrete floor. A few seconds later, he shoved her back into the storeroom and locked her in.

She all but collapsed in relief because he hadn't noticed that she'd swiped his cell phone. She didn't know D.J.'s number, so she prayed that he was with Cody by now. She dialed Cody's number and hoped he'd answer before her captor came looking for his phone.

Her friend answered on the second ring.

“Cody?”

His voice cracked when he spoke. “Reggie, where the heck are you? We've been so worried.”

One of them had to remain calm, and it looked as if it was going to have to be her. “Listen, Cody, is D.J. there with you? I only have a few seconds.”

She listened to the sound of the phone being handed off, relieved beyond belief that D.J. had come back. His voice was gruff with worry.

“Damn it, Reggie, I told you to leave well enough alone.”

“Yes, you did, but now's not the time to be saying you told me so. You can yell at me all you want once you break me out of this place. I have no idea where I am, so please tell me you can trace this call. After they grabbed me in an alley in Portland, they drugged me, so I don't know how far they drove before we stopped.”

“Whose phone are you using?”

“I lifted it from one of the bad guys. He might come looking for it any minute, so work your magic fast.”

“Will do. What else can you tell me?”

“They brought me here in a black panel truck. I didn't get the whole license number, but it has an Oregon plate. The three numbers were five-seven-zero. I know that's not much to go on.”

“It's a lot more than we had five minutes ago. Leave the phone on as long as you think it's safe. I should get a fix on you in just another couple of minutes. Then I'll be on my way, armed and loaded. Trust me, Reggie. I
will
find you.”

Oddly enough, she did trust him. “I know you will, D.J. Oh, and one more thing. There are two guys here with long black-and-silver hair dressed all in black. They look alike enough to be brothers, right down to their boots. I almost escaped but ran right into them. The older one said something about me being promised to them.”

D.J. immediately let loose with a furious stream of curse words. Under other circumstances she would've been impressed with his creativity, but right now all it did was scare her even more.

“D.J., stop it. That's not helping.”

“Sorry, Reggie. I've almost got you pinpointed. Another few seconds and I'll be on my way. Okay, that's it. Hang up and hide the phone if you can. Set it on vibrate, though, so they won't hear it ring if I call you back.”

“Okay. I'm okay, but they're obviously waiting for someone else to show up. I don't know what will happen when he gets here.”

“I'm coming, Reggie. No matter what, I'll find you. And no matter where.”

Before she could ask what he meant, the doorknob rattled. Damn. She stuffed the phone in a box in the corner and hoped for the best.

Cody planted himself right in front of the door. D.J. knew what he was going to say and couldn't blame the guy. Reggie was Cody's friend and that counted for a lot. However, the last thing D.J. needed right now was this kid demanding to play Robin to his Batman. He also knew a losing battle when he saw one.

The kid had been watching over D.J.'s shoulder while he ran the GPS location on Reggie. If he didn't let him ride along, Cody would find a way to follow. Far better to control the situation. Besides, if everything went to hell, he'd need someone who could call for backup.

“Do we need to stop by your place for anything?”

Not that he wanted to delay another second.

Cody shook his head and opened the door. “I've got my laptop with me, and I don't own any guns.”

D.J. grinned at him. The kid knew they were headed into trouble and was doing his best to act like he was down with that. Maybe he was.

“Don't worry, I've got plenty for both of us out in my truck. My only question is if you'd actually know what to do with a gun if I handed you one.”

Cody waited until they were outside to answer. “I've done some target shooting using an automatic with Reggie. I did all right, but it's not the same as actually pointing it at a person. Don't know how I'd do if it came to that.”

“No one does until the occasion actually arises, but I appreciate the honesty. It's better to err on the side of caution.”

He meant it, too, and let it show in his voice. Cocky recruits were always the ones who got killed first. Experience could be a bitch of a teacher, but at least Paladins usually survived the lesson.

Then the kid surprised him. “I'm a fair hand with blades though. I've been taking fencing and sword-fighting lessons at a local martial arts school. I like the discipline required, but it's not as if people actually fight with swords anymore.”

Okay, D.J. had to laugh despite the grim circumstances. “You might be surprised about that. I'm partial to blades myself. Here, you drive.”

He tossed the keys to Cody. “I'm going to need to make some calls.”

He waited until Cody pulled out into traffic and turned south on the interstate. According to the GPS reading they'd gotten, Reggie was being held prisoner in a town a couple of hours south of Portland. It was her description of the two men who'd caught her trying to run away that had him seriously worried.