A Perfect Darkness (9 page)

“Diamond…Yeah? All right, I'll be there in thirty minutes.”

Could she dare hope that he'd leave his laptop sitting there logged in? Not reasonably. She heard him snap his laptop closed, and a minute later he walked down the hallway and out the front door. She gave him plenty of time to leave before emerging. Feeling fully paranoid, she half expected Cyrus to be standing at the doorway.

He wasn't. She did note that he'd taken his laptop, and she knew he didn't keep anything work-related on his regular computer. She searched his desk and the file cabinets but found nothing about DARK MATTER, whatever that was, or any familiar names.

“Names.”

She picked up his telephone and scrolled down his speed dial entries, writing each one down. Bill Hammond, the Offspring she'd tried to talk to, was there. The phone rang, startling her into dropping it. It was, in fact, Bill's name on the caller ID screen. She was tempted to answer it, but knew that would be a bad idea. She wrote down the last entry and set the phone in the cradle, then waited until Cyrus's outgoing message finished and the machine beeped.

“Hey, it's Bill. I've been picking up some weird energy. And there's some guy hanging around who's definitely putting out a vibe. This all started after that weird chick came over talking about her dad. I've got a bad feeling about this. Call me.”

Weird chick. Didn't sound like he would be open to another visit. But what did he mean? Did he have a CIA spook watching him, too?”

“Damn, maybe because I went over there. Were they watching me that day?”

She shivered and quickly left.

 

Amy ditched the car near the City Docks in the historic section of Annapolis. The boats and salt air reminded her of her terrifying encounter the last time she went near the water, but she tried to pretend to enjoy the breezy day, like many of the others who were eating their lunches in the sunshine. The smell of food made her stomach rumble, though she didn't feel hungry.

She walked around the edge of the square brick area where people sat on benches. She'd been there only a couple of times in recent years. Too many people, too many glows. As she glanced around at the yachts tied along the seawall and the shops and restaurants, she scanned for anyone who looked suspicious.

She spotted Eric and Petra standing in the shadow of a tree on the opposite side, where the boardwalk edged the common area. It gave them an escape, she realized. It scared her that they had to think in those terms.

Petra looked like a fashion plate, as always, with slim black hip-huggers and a tight shirt with a butterfly painted on the front. Eric's now red hair looked even more like flames as it spiked up.

She meandered over to them. “I'm sorry, I only got three names.”

Eric shrugged. “Three's a start.”

She realized she should be pleased she got three names, under the circumstances, instead of apologizing. It was a bad habit, always feeling sorry. “Randall Brandenburg—”

“Rand,” Eric said to Petra. “He's the fifth kid in our group.”

“In the picture you saw,” Petra clarified.

“Who else?” Eric asked.

She glanced at the paper on which she'd written down the names and addresses. “Jerryl Evrard.”

“Never heard of him.” Eric leaned close to look at the paper. “Or Nicholas Braden.”

At the strange sound near her ear, she turned, furrowing her eyebrows. “Are you sniffing me?”

“You smell good.”

“I smell sweaty.”

“You smell like a woman.”

She stepped away from him. “So are you going to tell me how you knew Cyrus was online?”

“Nope,” he said without apology.

Amy let out a frustrated sigh. “Have I proven myself?”

“I suppose,” Eric said. “Be a hell of a lot easier, and smarter, if you just walk now and let us handle this.”

She met his gaze. “I know that.”

A breeze blew Petra's silky blond hair across her mouth. She pulled it back and wrapped her fingers around it like a ponytail. “He's ours. Our concern, not yours.”

He's mine,
Amy caught herself about to say.
Whoa.
Did she feel that way?

She didn't know for sure, but it was everything and more that she'd read in all those tragic romances—a
tidal wave lifting her skyward, ready to plunge her down to drown in the depths. She'd kept herself safe by not connecting emotionally. Now, she had to admit, she'd torn her cocoon as much as those three men had back at her apartment. She had fallen in love with a man who might die before she ever saw him again. That thought tore through her, leaving a gaping hole inside.

Eric interpreted the grief on her face as fear. “You have every reason to be afraid. Get the hell out of this while you can. Petra and I live off the grid now. No credit cards, no freedom—”

“Living in fear,” Petra added. “Never getting to just go out to the mall and shop.”

Eric said, “Walk away now, go back to your life, and forget all of us.”

The breeze blew her thick hair around, too, but it wasn't long enough to twist into a ponytail. “I thought you wanted to round up all the Offspring, band together. Why give me an out?”

“You're too emotionally involved. That's dangerous.”

She, Amy Shane, too emotional? She would have laughed if…if it wasn't true where Lucas was concerned.

He said, “So get the hell out of here and save yourself. It's okay to admit you're scared. Tell your uncle you've decided we're crazy, all of us.”

Or was she crazy to think he was trying to protect her as well as get rid of her? Maybe she looked scared. She felt scared, oh yes, she did. Just as much of finding out the truth about who she was, or of getting killed, as she was of losing Lucas. She could walk with her pride intact. But could she walk?

Amy Shane would run
whee-whee-whee,
all the way home. Something hit her: she wasn't that Amy anymore. She'd always considered herself a bit on the cowardly side, but look at what she'd done since Lucas broke into her apartment. She'd escaped spy guys, sneaked onto Cyrus's computer, and met with two people who, frankly, she didn't trust or like. She'd done things she'd never thought she could or would do. For love.

“I'm in.”

She was both terrified and excited to find out who this Amy was.

Neither Petra nor Eric looked especially happy.

Petra leaned against a large piling with her arms draped in front of her. “Why are you so passionate about finding Lucas? You don't even know him.”

“You saw the paintings. They weren't just any dreams.” Her cheeks reddened, and she saw Petra's do the same. “I can't explain what Lucas and I share, and I won't. But I'm here, so that should tell you what you need to know.” She met their gazes. “I want the same things you do. To rescue Lucas. To find out how my father was involved in all this…whatever ‘this' is. Why am I an Offspring? Who are these people watching me? I can't walk away from those questions…or from Lucas.”

Eric nodded, a grim expression on his face. “You realize that once the bad guys figure out that you're working with us, you're going to have to go into hiding. There's no turning back.”

Amy finally used her hand as a hair band. “That's why we've got to keep our alliance hidden for as long as we can.”

“Our alliance?” Eric said.

“We want the same thing. That makes us allies.”

He scrubbed his hand through his stiff hair. “Right now we have no idea where Lucas is. That's the first problem.”

Petra asked, “Can't you find out anything from him? During your dreams,” she added in a harder voice.

It hit Amy then that Petra was jealous of her connection with Lucas. Was she an overprotective stepsister or did she have other feelings for him? No matter, she knew she couldn't deal with that right now. “He won't tell me anything. He doesn't want me or you to rescue him.”

Eric shook his head. “Noble son of a bitch. Typical Lucas. Look, you're the only one who has a connection to him. You've got to find out something.” Frustration made his glow flare out from his body. “Can you connect to him?”

She shook her head. “I tried.”

“He told you they were injecting him with something.”

“Yes, but he doesn't know what it is.”

“They're keeping him alive,” he said, his mouth a grim line. “They could torture him to find out what we know, but Lucas would downplay that. Besides, they already know we're on to them.”

“How do they know?”

The two exchanged a look that clearly said:
should we tell her?

When the answer was their silence, Amy let out a huff of breath. A sea gull, squawking as it swooped by, mirrored her frustration. “Look, whether we like
it or not, we're involved in this together. I need to know everything.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. Made her wait a few seconds. “I'll tell you what you need to know,” he said at last, propping his arm on the same piling Petra was leaning against. “It started when I was arrested for suspicion of arson two months ago—bogus charges. The questioning just stopped all of a sudden, and this guy in plainclothes comes in, says he's Trevor Gladstone. He doesn't ask me more questions about the fire. He wants to recruit me for the Department of Tactics and Defense.

“I said ‘Hell no' and that was the end of it. Or so I thought. Except I keep seeing him around. I even followed him once, but he lost me. Then Lucas mentions someone's been breaking into the gallery, looking around but not taking anything. He installs a video security system and shows us the video of this guy creeping around his office. And holy shit, it's Gladstone.”

Petra said, “Then I wigged because he was a guy who'd been friendly to me at Hooters, where I worked.”

“So we realize this guy has been casing us. There's no such thing as the Department of Tactics and Defense, but he's probably government, has to be, with the clout to interrupt an interrogation.”

“That was the organization Cyrus was logged into,” Amy said.

“So we kidnapped him,” Eric said in the casual way he'd say they invited him to dinner. That was what unnerved her about him; one of many things. “He didn't give up much information, though. Lucas got
onto his computer, and with a little bit of cooperation we found what you saw at Cyrus's. We saw our profiles, Hammond's, and yours before his computer shut down.”

“That's how Lucas found you,” Petra said, not hiding her disdain at that. “Until then he only knew your first name.”

Eric pushed away from the piling. “We figured Gladstone gave us a code that alerted his people he was in trouble. We ditched the laptop in case it had GPS capability and left him there. Since they knew which profiles we'd looked at, we decided to wait to approach you and Hammond. Gladstone was monitoring us, trying to get to know us. Cyrus is probably your monitor, yours and Hammond's.”

Amy felt a jab in her heart. Cyrus had been reporting on her. Was that the only reason he'd been in her life? She pushed past her pain. “I saw two program names on the home page on Cyrus's computer: DARK MATTER and BLUE EYES.”

“What the hell is BLUE EYES?” Eric asked.

“That link was on Gladstone's computer, too,” Petra said.

“I didn't have time to check it out.” Amy flipped over the list. “I did, however, write down everyone in Cyrus's speed dial memory.” She got a pen from her backpack and marked lines through several names. “These probably aren't Offspring. I don't know who Zoe Stoker is. Oh, Bill Hammond left a message while I was there, saying he had a bad feeling about me coming over and that someone was watching him.”

Eric's expression grew grimmer as he looked at Amy. “Don't go to Hammond again. Right now you're
the wild card. They're not sure what you know or what you're up to. Let's keep it that way.”

Amy hooked her thumbs through the loops in her jeans. “Um, isn't that what I said?”

“Maybe we can get you onto Cyrus's computer again. Speaking of computers…” He looked at Petra and nodded toward Amy. “She retrieves data from damaged hard drives.”

Petra's face perked up. “Really?”

“I checked.” He lifted a cell phone that could obviously get onto the Internet. “She's got a reputation for her expertise, even got a small write-up in
Wired
magazine.”

Though Amy was proud of that, she was annoyed that he hadn't believed her. “And what is the relevance of your interest?”

His smile was smug. “We ditched Gladstone's laptop, but I took out the drive.”

All annoyance fled. Her fingers twitched. “Give it to me.”

“We'll do it together,” he said.

“Look—”

Petra shushed them and cocked her head. She kept a pleasant expression on her face, but her glow grew jagged as she shifted her gaze toward the parking lot. “Eric, see that cop car? He's calling into the station, citing your description. They're talking about the arson suspicion. Even though they didn't have enough to charge you, they were sure you were guilty. You need to get out of here.” Despite the words, she turned to Amy and said, “Laugh and pretend that Eric was trying to pick us up. We're so not interested.” She waved him off and grabbed Amy's arm as they walked away, laughing like teenagers.

“You're good at this stuff,” Amy said on a peal of laughter.

“I'm good at pretending to be something I'm not.” Her smile was hollow at that.

They glanced back and giggled again. Shaking his head at the silly girls, Eric casually strolled toward, ironically, the police substation, taking a walkway that went behind the small building.

“How could you hear the officer?” Amy asked as they got into a burgundy vintage Barracuda.

“I have really good hearing.” The engine roared to life, smooth as whiskey, and Petra pulled away. Worry permeated her features.