Unraveling Darkness Read online

  I frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “The girls are always adopted, and they’re never going to stop a child from going to a loving home if he or she had one. The sad fact of the matter is that a boy is half as likely to be adopted as a girl, and that chance gets even worse as the boy gets older.”

  My emotions were torn. Should I be feeling sorry for these kids, that they were taken away from the one chance of having a normal family, or should I be looking at these boys as the lucky ones? This might not be a traditional home, but I’d seen how the guys all looked out for one another. Sure, they fought and annoyed one another at times, just like any siblings, but they had each other’s backs. And not only that, they were given a profession. Wasn’t that better than them growing up in foster care homes and potentially ending up on the streets, with no future ahead of them?

  I looked back to the boys. They all appeared happy and healthy. If I asked them directly where they would rather be, would they say here? Or was that because they didn’t know any better? If they’d been left in the foster home for just that little longer, would the right family have come along?

  Chapter Fifteen

  We finished eating, and the boys walked around, picking up empty plates from the tables and stacking them to be washed. The scene reminded me of being back in the house, when we’d finished the curry, and Lorcan had collected the dishes. Had that been his job here, as well? I pictured a ten-year-old Lorcan, sullenly collecting dirty plates, his dark hair falling over his eyes.

  Someone walked into the room, commanding attention. Everyone looked, and I followed their gazes, as people tended to do when everyone was looking at one thing, to see Isaac standing in the doorway. He caught the eye of Alex, Clay, and Kingsley beside me, then jerked his chin to tell them they were wanted.

  The guys rose from the table, and I hesitated, unsure of what to do.

  “You, too, Darcy,” Isaac called over to me. “This concerns all of us.”

  My stomach churned, the cheesy pasta suddenly sickly and too filling. I wished I hadn’t eaten so much. This would be about our next move, and while I’d enjoyed this small moment of respite, getting to see where the guys had grown up, and learning a bit more about what had shaped them into the men they were, I knew we had a job to do. My fury and hatred at Hollan and what he’d done hadn’t abated in the slightest. I still wanted to see him dead, and I wanted him to look in my eyes and see it was the daughter of the man he’d murdered who caused his demise.

  My legs felt weak, but I pushed myself to standing, my palms flat on the table to steady myself. I followed Alex, Kingsley and Clay out of the room. The younger boys were watching the older men with fascination, as though seeing their futures walk by. I caught one of the boy’s gazes—a red-haired, eleven-year-old, with freckles across the bridge of his nose—and threw him a smile. The boy returned the smile, though a blush made his freckles stand out even more against his pale skin.

  Again, I couldn’t help thinking about the way these kids lived their lives. Were they allowed outside? Did they get to go to the nearest town and shop or go to the movies? I had so many questions I stored away to ask the guys about later.

  We waited at the elevator. The doors slid open again, and we stepped inside and rode the car up. My pulse thrummed, causing my heart to race, and my breath was shallow in my lungs. What would Devlin have to say about what we’d do next, and would I get any input in it?

  Devlin was waiting for us as the elevator opened again, depositing us at the upper floor. The men who’d been working on the computers earlier were no longer here, giving us privacy. The screens on the walls continued to show various images, though now the screen that showed where we’d entered only had a dirt ground, felled trees, and rusted equipment on it.

  Even though I had the others by my side, Devlin’s attention went straight to me, and he smiled, the lines beside his eyes crinkling. He made Isaac look small, and younger than he was. I didn’t think there were many people who could make Isaac appear inferior, but this guy managed it.

  “Hello, Darcy,” he said, flashing me a smile of straight, white teeth. “Thanks for joining us.”

  I glanced around at the others. Why did I suddenly feel as though this meeting was more about me than anything else? “That’s okay. I figured whatever was being said would include me as well.”

  He nodded. “Yes, you’re right. You’re very much involved in everything that has happened. Isaac told me you’ve given us the code to the memory stick, and you should know how grateful we are.”

  Flutters of unease danced through me. When I’d given Isaac the code, I’d believed I was giving it to the five of them. I hadn’t considered someone else being brought into the equation, and a deep sense of regret filled me. I’d told myself the code was my only bargaining tool this whole time, and yet I’d let it go. Had I given it up too soon?

  The smile he delivered didn’t meet his eyes, and I knew bad news was coming.

  “Isaac and I have discussed what’s going to happen next, and we’ve decided it will be safer if you and your aunt remain here, with us.”

  My jaw dropped, and I shook my head. “Not happening.”

  “Isaac warned me that you might not be happy about it.”

  My eyebrows lifted. “Not happy is an understatement. This is the exact reason I didn’t want to give over the code in the first place, because I knew I’d end up being sidelined. Just because I’m female doesn’t make me incompetent. My dad taught me how to handle a gun, and there are things I can do that you won’t have even considered.”

  I almost told them about my synesthesia, but kept my mouth shut for the moment. I didn’t know if I’d be able to use it to my advantage, but I wanted to make sure I played that card at the right time. I was already regretting giving too much too soon, and I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.

  “This isn’t a prison, Darcy.” Devlin took a couple of paces, his hands behind his back. “We can’t stop you from leaving, but just in the same way you want your aunt to stay safe, we want the same thing for you, too.”

  “That’s different. This involves me. My father gave me that code, not one of you, and Hollan is the one responsible for killing him.” My lips tightened. “I want in on this. I want to find out what’s on that memory stick, and I want to see Hollan pay for what he did.”

  Devlin’s jaw went rigid, the square jut suddenly becoming unattractive. “What’s on the memory stick has nothing to do with you.”

  I flashed him a look. “So, you know?”

  “Of course, I do. Do you think we’d go to this much effort if we didn’t?”

  I folded my arms across my chest. “Tell me. Then I might be a little more cooperative.”

  His cobalt blue eyes narrowed. “You mean you’d stay here, let us deal with things, without giving us any trouble?”

  I didn’t want to say yes or no. “I’ll think about it.”

  He came to a halt in front of me and folded his arms, mimicking my stance. The muscles of his biceps strained against his shirt. “Sorry, that’s not good enough.”

  I looked back, toward the others, trying to catch one of their eyes and have them plead my case. But none of them looked toward me, each of them finding something more interesting to do—Clay studying the nails of his right hand, Alex scuffing something on the floor with his foot, Kingsley looking behind him. Their lack of support caused pain to ball in my chest. Them not speaking up for me felt like a betrayal, and though I knew Devlin was their boss—and perhaps had been even more to them, a father figure of sorts—it hurt that they weren’t standing up to him on my behalf. Didn’t they want me around? Were they happy to leave me here and go off and do their own thing?

  My aunt’s words niggled at me. Had I been too quick to trust?

  Emotions threatened to cloud my thinking. They could force me to stay here, if they wanted. They’d done it before, so what was to stop them trying again? At least, while they were still willing to
talk, I could get some information from them. The idea of all the guys leaving to deal with Hollan, to put themselves in dangerous situations, while I remained useless here, threatened to fill my eyes with frustrated, angry tears, but I bit the inside of my lip to hold the tears back. This was a male environment, and crying wouldn’t help my cause. I wanted them to take me seriously, not pity me.

  I turned my attention on Isaac, tried to plead my case with my eyes alone, but he pressed his lips together and shook his head so slightly, I had to wonder if I’d imagined it. I knew what the look said—he wasn’t going to take my side either. They all wanted me to stay. I experienced a sudden pang of longing for Lorcan. Would he have taken my side? He was the least conforming of the group, though I doubted things would be different if he were here.

  If they didn’t want me, I wasn’t going to force myself on them.

  I swallowed down my anger and pride. “Okay. I’ll stay, if you tell me what’s on the memory stick my father died trying to protect.”

  Devlin raised his eyebrows at Isaac, and Isaac nodded his agreement. It occurred to me the men could easily feed me a lie, and I’d be none the wiser.

  “Locations,” Hollan said. “A series of coordinates, to be exact.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Coordinates for what?”

  “Places like this. Training centers. Bases. All across America. To keep them protected, we don’t even know where they are. We work as individual units against corruption.”

  “You’re spies,” I interrupted.

  He nodded slowly. “In a way, yes, but necessary spies.”

  “And you don’t know where other places like this are?”

  “No one does, and that’s how it should stay. It’s the only way to keep us safe. If one place is infiltrated or corrupted, then we know all the others will remain unharmed.”

  My brain whirred as I thought hard, trying to put all the pieces of information together and make sure I had it straight in my head. If I was giving up my chance to kill Hollan myself, I was sure as hell going to make sure the information I got in return was worth it. “But the details are on the memory stick?”

  “Yes, but they’re only supposed to be accessed in case of emergency. Your father understood how important it was not to have that information fall into the wrong hands, and so he took the memory stick from Hollan’s possession and put the code on it, the same one he gave you.”

  My shoulders lifted in a slight shrug. “If no one should know that information, why did you even need the code? Why not just find and destroy the memory stick?”

  “Because even though we don’t want it falling into the wrong hands, if something happened that affected us all, then we’d issue a code red and the locations would be revealed. Someone would need to coordinate our teams.”

  My eyebrows lifted. “That someone being you?”

  He nodded. “At this point in time, yes. That information has been missing for years now. For all we know, bases like this one might have already been inactivated, or infiltrated and destroyed. Before you gave the interview to that reporter, we believed the information was lost forever, and it didn’t matter that Hollan had the memory stick because he’d never be able to access what was on it, and if he even tried, he’d wipe out the contents. But now we know we can access it, and the time has come to make sure it’s back in the right hands.”

  My mind processed everything he’d said. “But surely you’d have someone who coordinated these various groups, so multiple teams don’t show up to deal with one situation?”

  His lips pressed together, his nostrils flaring. He dipped his head in a slow nod. “We did, before the memory stick was taken. The stick was only ever supposed to be backup, you see. But the man who coordinated us all was killed at the same time as it was stolen, so, other than the memory stick, that information died with him.”

  I could understand why Devlin and the others would want to know the locations of the other bases, but why would it interest Hollan? “And what does a man like Hollan want with that information?”

  Devlin rubbed his fingers across his lips. “Let’s just say that us watching over the shoulders of men in power isn’t what men in power want.”

  I frowned. “You’re saying they’d want to know the locations of these places to stop you?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “But how?”

  Isaac stepped forward, joining the conversation. I had noticed how quiet they’d all been while Devlin had been trying to explain. “You’ve already seen how Hollan works, Darcy. He killed your father. He sent a team of armed men into the house after us, shooting before asking questions.”

  The penny dropped. “You’re saying he’d find you all and kill you?”

  Isaac nodded. “Exactly.”

  My eyes widened. I imagined how it would be if armed men descended on this place. With it being buried in the ground, there were no secret ways out—at least not that I was aware of. People would fight back, or perhaps they’d run and hide, but this was their home, and they wouldn’t be expecting it. It would be nothing short of a massacre. “But ... but ...” I stumbled over my words, my brain trying to process the sheer horror of what might happen. “There are children here.”

  Kingsley’s hand touched my lower back, and I glanced up into his concerned face. “We know that, Darcy. Why do you think this is so important to us?”

  I glanced around at the faces of the others. Clay, Alex, and Isaac wore identical expressions to Kingsley, and it dawned on me just how important it was that Hollan never got access to the memory stick.

  “People in power don’t want us to exist, love,” Isaac said. “Before now, we weren’t much more than a rumor, a ghost story, something politicians could rib each other about, but with that stick, there is proof. They can track us down and put a stop to us.”

  “But surely there are people Hollan works with who would stop him from doing that? They can’t be all bad!” I thought of my father, and how he had died to prevent this exact thing from happening. He’d tried to get the memory stick out of Hollan’s hands, and he’d known how important it was for Devlin and Isaac to have the information, or otherwise he would have just destroyed it instead of placing the code on it.

  “We don’t even exist,” Kingsley said, “not really. The boys being trained have been taken out of the system. You think anyone is going to notice or raise a red flag because we go missing? No one is going to know.”

  I shook my head in horrified disbelief. “So Hollan would just come in and kill you all?”

  Isaac nodded. “Kill those who won’t be any use to them, take those who they think will have information.”

  “But the children ...” I thought of the shy boys at dinner, how they’d blushed at the sight of a woman and stared down at the table. I thought of how Clay, Kingsley, Alex, and the others would have been as boys, and the idea of men being sent in to have them killed filled me with fury. “This is obscene. Surely it wouldn’t happen. Someone would put a stop to it!”

  “Who would put a stop to it, Darcy?” Devlin asked, his voice gentler than it had been. “We’re the people who would normally put a stop to that kind of thing, but if we’re the ones being targeted, it would be a whole different thing. We’d be fighting for our lives.”

  The horror of it swept over me. Military men swarming places like the one we were in now, shooting children as they ran, putting an end to this small task force. What would the military be told? Not that the children were being raised to put an end to corruption, but quite the opposite. The men charged with the job to wipe them out would most likely be told they were dealing with terrorist units, though I couldn’t see how they would justify the killing of children. But wars were happening every day, and thousands of children were killed then. Nothing stopped the atrocities.

  I clamped my hand to my mouth. “Jesus Christ.”

  Hollan had to be stopped, and we had to get our hands on that stick. The magnitude of the issue suddenl
y expanded in my mind, and I understood the gravity of it. I didn’t know what I’d been expecting to be on the memory stick—maybe the names of some important people, or even the location of money, or weapons, but I hadn’t been expecting this.

  “I want to help.” I stared at Devlin earnestly. “I know I can. Put me to work, make use of me. Don’t leave me wandering around here with nothing to do.”

  His full lips twisted, and he shook his head. “No, sorry. I have my team, and they’ve worked together for most of their lives. You just ... complicate things.”

  “Lorcan is hurt,” I said, feeling guilty for using his injury, especially as it had been sustained because I’d been stupid enough to call Aunt Sarah from the house phone. I wouldn’t be dumb enough to make a mistake like that again. “I can take his spot.”

  Devlin turned to Alex. “How is he looking?”

  “Better already.” Alex shot me an apologetic half-smile. “The antibiotics are doing their job. I’m hoping he’s stronger by morning.”

  Devlin looked back to me, shaking his head. “Sorry.”

  I gestured into the air. “So, you’d rather let an injured man go than me? Why? Because I’m a woman?”

  Devlin’s expression grew darker. “No, because he’s had training.”

  That training didn’t stop him from getting shot, I almost said, but managed to clamp my lips shut. I knew I was speaking out of anger, and saying things without thinking them through wasn’t going to get me anywhere.

  “You think Lorcan will be well enough to leave tomorrow?” Kingsley directed his question toward Alex.

  Alex nodded. “He won’t be perfect, but he’ll be better.”

  “Great,” I muttered, scuffing my foot against the floor.

  “And do we have an idea where Hollan is?” Clay asked.

  Devlin nodded. “Yes. He must have gotten some info about you leaving the city from the west, so he’s been spotted in that direction. We have eyes on him. What we really need is one of these on him, however.” He turned to go to a desk with a computer on it and picked up a small box, which looked as though it would contain a ring or other piece of jewelry.