Dark Heart (DARC Ops Book 3) (24 page)

“Fuck you,” Jasper said, the words muffling back into his mouth and making him feel dizzy, like holding in a sneeze.

“We don’t want to hurt you,” said Vic. “You’re too important to us.”

Another futile
fuck you
. It went unheard, but Jasper was sure they knew what he’d meant, the sentiment conveyed through a growl. And through his eyes.

“You’ll stop screaming if we take off the tape?” asked Vic.

Jasper nodded until Vic reached over and ripped off, the pain of it making him fight the urge to yell again.

One of the men had carried over a large plastic jug, a bleach container, and parked it next to one of the open flaps in one of the pipes. He reached into the pipe and pulled out a dust-covered filter. But then Vic stated barking something at him. He suddenly stopped what he was doing looked at Jasper once, and then ran out of the room.

“Talk to me, Vic,” Jasper said. “What’s going on?”

He laughed. “What’s going on?”

“Yeah,” said Jasper, flexing his arms apart, twisting his wrists, doing everything he could to test the knot. But it was tight. Well constructed.

“I think you know what’s going on,” said Vic. “That’s the problem.”

“Right. You’re doing air-quality tests. Why don’t you tell me about your findings?”

Vic laughed.

“I’m a man of science, too, you know.”

“You want to hear my findings?” Vic asked, walking away to an opened laptop.

Jasper kept working the rope, stretching it against the metal. “Yes. Of course.” He felt the knot loosen slightly. “I’d love to hear your findings.”

“Well, the air, right now . . .” He was typing something. “Is good. Is safe.”

More pulling on the rope. He tried not to make so much noise, the belt buckle clanking against the pipe as he worked.

“But,” said Vic, “pretty soon it will be different. Not so safe for the prince.”

“Won’t that affect everyone? Not just the prince? Won’t you be harming thousands of innocent people?”

“Collateral damage,” he said with a shrug. “But most of them left already, so it won’t be so bad. You should have left, too.”

“I tried,” said Jasper.

“No, you were nosy.”

“Listen, uh, Vic . . .” More pulling, more loosening. “Was that you downstairs?”

Vic laughed as Jasper finally made enough room to slip a single hand out of the knot.

“Was that you, shooting at me like that?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It was a good shot. And I knew you thought so, too.” Jasper very slowly and silently slipped his hand free. But he was still careful to keep it by the other hand, as if it were still tied. “You were so surprised to see me alive, weren’t you?”

Vic shrugged while he walked over to Jasper.

“Why didn’t you finish the job up here?”

“Too many pipes,” said Vic as he reached for Jasper’s earbud and put it in his own ear. He listened for a moment, and then said, “They’re trying to refire the main generator.” Vic laughed uncontrollably before putting a hand to his mouth, blocking the sound.

“What’s so funny about that?”

“Your little nurse friend.”

“What about her?” Jasper’s mind began to panic. She’d left right, gone home? The last time he’d seen her she was safely—

“She might be a little uncomfortable, if your men turn the power back on.” Vic took out the earbud and threw it at him, the small device pinging off the floor. “Why don’t you do her a favor and tell them to stop?”

The prince, in surgery, needed the power for his life support while he was under. And so did any other patient who was still in the hospital and depended on electronic devices to survive. The generators couldn’t last forever. “Why would I tell them to stop?”

“You don’t have
to,” said Vic, returning to his computer. “You’ll have to make a choice.”

Jasper felt nauseous even considering it.

“So what’s in it for you?” asked Vic, still typing away. “Money? Are you getting paid for this?”

Jasper quickly brought his hand out from behind and reached it into his pocket. “I’m just doing my duty.”

“For Saudi Arabia.”

Jasper pulled out the syringe from the lab, still capped in his back pocket, and hid it behind his back.

“Why your two counties are so in love, I’ll never understand. Especially with how they fund terrorists and play your enemies against you. Let alone all the human-rights atrocities. If your country was smart, the people, they would ditch your globalist puppet leaders and finally join up with Russia. Defeat the real terrorism.”

“I think I’m looking at some real terrorism right now.”

“You think this is terrorism?” said Vic. “It’s just an assassination. Just business. The simple effect of the Oil War. It’s nothing personal.”

“Tell that to the innocent bystanders you’re about to kill off.” Jasper brought out the syringe and jammed it into the plastic bleach bottle. Using the fingers on his free hand, he pulled up on the plunger and extracted its brown contents. “What are you using, by the way? Is it chemical or biological?” With the syringe fully loaded, he aimed at the back of Vic’s leg.

“What do you care?”

“Because I want to know how fast you’ll die.”

The needle plunged deep into Vic’s calf muscle at the same time as Jasper’s thumb depressed the deadly contents into his body. It had an immediate effect, the puncture wound itself, the metal forcing Vic to yelp like a dog, jumping away from the needle and away from Jasper, falling to the ground with his hand clutching the back of his leg. He swore madly, kicking and screaming, his voice growing impossibly higher in pitch and intensity.

Jasper wasted no time, tugging and pulling at the rope still wrapped around his other wrist. Vic, meanwhile, had quieted down considerably. A look of deep sadness washed over his face, plus a green pallor—either from the substance, or from the shock of it all, the knowledge that something especially unpleasant was lying in store for him.

The rope began to loosen and then gave way with a satisfying sound as it rasped over the fabric of his shirt and fell to the floor. But the sounds that were now coming from Vic were anything but satisfying. Jasper had wanted to incapacitate him, to knock away his smugness. But what he was forced to listen to now was worse than what he’d expected. A grown man crying. And then hyperventilating, with bubbles and yellowish foam appearing from his mouth, his eyes opened impossibly wide. And then the shaking began, his body convulsing hard and slapping against the ground as Jasper freed his other hand from the rope.

S
he gave
up a long time ago. Kicking, screaming, trying to escape, everything seemed a wasted effort in her cold, dark coffin. All the struggling and crying, and all of its noise, had given her a splitting headache. The sound of every moment was amplified and echoed and redirected through her skull. Even her own beating heart, which had finally begun to slow down, echoed through her head like someone beating on a large tribal drum. Only she was trapped inside the drum, its booming concussive effect knocking into her at every turn.

There were no other sounds. No other explosions or gunshots or footsteps. Nothing from the outside world, just the sad, desperate soundtrack of her predicament. Not even the voice of her sister was there to console her anymore. Back in the autopsy room, she could have sworn she’d heard her voice, instructing her. But here there were no instructions.

Fiona called out, first to her sister, and then to God. And then to herself, whispering now. “You’re okay, you’re fine. You’re alive.” She repeated it until it almost made her feel better. Almost. She swapped to imagining her escape, someone coming along and opening the drawer, freeing her from the musty stench and the frightening blackness. How satisfying that first breath would be. That first glimmer of light after the door unlocked and before it swung open.

She tried not to imagine her drawer’s last tenant.

She did everything in her power to forget that she lay in the exact same spot as so many other unlucky individuals.

A shiver ran through her spine. A chill, like the icy touch of death, her insides feeling almost as cold as . . .

There was a sudden ticking noise from within the metal drawers, somewhere beneath her. Perhaps in the drawer below. Something crawling around.

Please, God. Don’t let it be a rat.

Trapped in a box with a rat was not how she’d like to spend her last hours alive.

“
W
hat the hell’s
going on down there?”

It was Jackson’s voice, an agitated buzzing that first came through Jasper’s earpiece.

“One of the threats has been neutralized,” he said, waiting impatiently in the service elevator as it lowered to the morgue level. “In A12.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“He’s dead. I was able to stop one of the operatives right before he released some kind of poison into the air supply. You need to immediately turn off power to all air-conditioning devices, to all vent rooms.”

Jasper also thought of Vic’s warning about Fiona. How, for some reason, it would be in her best interest if the power was still off. But he didn’t quite know how to explain that to Jackson.

“Jasper, we can’t do that. We need to keep the power on.”

“Everywhere?”

“Yes. I’m afraid it’s all or nothing right now. I’m getting reports from Eric that something with the power grid functions has been compromised. There’s no selectivity. And the prince is in surgery.”

“What the hell happened?”

“I don’t know. I thought you
would tell me.”

“I was just tied up with a fucking rope.”

“Are you free now?”

“Yes, I’m fucking free.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“So can you come help with the surgery? They’re extremely shorthanded.”

The elevator suddenly slowed, its little digital chime sending a rush of adrenaline through Jasper.

He still had one unscheduled stop. One he wasn’t going to let a madman with a gun distract him from again.

T
here was
a burning sensation across her body, especially the exposed portions. The metal that surrounded her, too, was painfully cold. How soon, she wondered, would she not be able to feel her bare skin? How soon would she be frozen against the metal slab?

Would she really freeze to death? It felt frighteningly possible.

The idea that she wasn’t in a refrigerator, but a freezer, made her feel even dizzier. And the dizzier she felt, the harder she tried to breathe slowly, and deeply, and usefully. But what little oxygen there was floated away. She was sinking under water, deeper and further away from oxygen and life. Drowning.

She was gasping now. Her little black coffin felt like it was moving, spinning around in an increasingly fast and tight circle. The movement was all inside her head—some part of her knew that, but that didn’t make it stop. The swaying began gently, like a sailboat rocking in morning waters. But now, twirling, it felt like the centrifugal force could obliterate her, collapsing her lungs and imploding her body like she was some leftover meal in vacuum-sealed plastic. A flattened sardine, lifeless and frozen.

She prepared her goodbyes, her last words to what remaining friends she could think of, to whomever would outlive her on the planet, running through the names and faces as fast as she could remember. And then the apologies, one last attempt while still alive to make amends for a lifetime of mistakes. Through her inner ramblings, her pleadings, her prayers, the pain of her lungs grew to an extent that made death preferable to even just another second of this frozen, suffocating torment. The pain grew so much that she preferred abandoning the apologies, and even her latest struggling breath.

She was okay with it now, with dying. She was prepared. Ready. Willing. Hoping for the salvation.

He’s coming . . .

It was hard to tell, in the delirium of her dying moments, whose voice it was. But there was an unmistakable hint, a familiar tone which brought back memories of childhood, of family, of her sister.

He’s coming!

What was that supposed to mean? Was her attacker coming back? And at this point, what difference would that make? She was tired and just wanted to go to sleep.

She tried going to sleep.

But there were several loud clanging sounds, metal, shaking. And then a sucking sound, a release, the breaking of a pressure seal that immediately made the air fuller, thicker. Breathable. Light began to seep into her coffin, slowly at first, a speck. A sliver. And then, like a supernova, the whole of her prison chamber searing with blinding light. And
air.
Fresh air! Life!

She could breathe again.

She could see.

The numbness, the suffocating cloud of death, the terror, all faded at the single sight of Jasper’s face.

Jasper!

Fiona struggled to sit up, lifting her back off the slab, barely, and leaning unsteadily on her elbows, squinting into the brightness of the room and of her savior’s face. Thank fucking God it was Jasper. He reached down to her, gripping her arms and pulling her up off the slab and onto him, over his shoulder like she’d been rescued by a firefighter. But she had no time to delve into what would normally be one of her sexual fantasies. Her priority was to simply breathe, to oxygenate herself out of the fog of death.

Her second priority was to warm herself, which Jasper made possible by wrapping his warm body around hers as they huddled together in the corner of the room. He was panting and sweating as if he’d just run somewhere, the heat he’d created to find her now a means to warm her half-frozen body. She sat in his lap, clinging to his chest like a child, burying her head into it, collapsing into his warmth as he rocked her slowly. Back and forth. She could hear his sweet voice, his words not yet making any sense, but calming her, warming her back to the living world.

* * *

S
he could finally stand
—without his help—and she could see without squinting. The feeling came back in her fingers and toes, and her nose, after it brushed against Jasper’s when their faces came together, when he kissed her after she smiled for the first time in what felt like an eternity. Their last kiss felt like an eternity ago, as did everything else that came before being locked away in the terrifying dark drawer.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered against her neck.

“Sorry?” It almost frightened her to imagine what he’d say next, what new bit of terrible news he’d relay. Aside from her rescue, the day was only getting worse and worse.

“I should have found you sooner,” Jasper said, shaking his head. “We knew someone was down here, because of the . . . the login fails. Was that you?”

She nodded.

“But I’d never imagined . . .”

Fiona shushed him. “Stop.”

His response was to break his thousand-yard stare, and instead focus a much softer, much more human gaze at Fiona. It was the most beautiful sight she’d seen in a long time. The most alive thing a morgue had ever contained. And it filled her with hope.

“Jasper,” she said, smiling, “you saved me. That’s all that matters.”

“I know, but there’s a few other things left to deal with. Including at least one more active terrorist. And then the prince . . .” He stared at the door. “We’ve gotta get moving.”

“Where?”

“I’m going to walk you out of here, to make sure you finally leave.”

“You know what the funny thing is?” she said as they walked out into the hallway. “I came back looking for you.”

Jasper held open the stairwell door. “What’s so funny about that?”

They climbed the steps together, Jasper in the lead, his gun held in front of him and pointing low, one hand reaching back to keep her close to him. It was so nice to be out of that fucking morgue. And it wasn’t so shabby being with Jasper either—even better, being behind him, climbing up the steps while staring into his tight ass. But he was more than just a nice view. She felt so much safer just being near him. Even in a hospital stairwell he seemed well in his element, his head constantly moving, checking back on Fiona, then forward to each door as they climbed higher and higher. Each of his looks back to her made her feel safer. She wasn’t alone. Even better, she was part of a team, part of the crew. With this in mind, she made sure to stay close to him—maybe too close. When he came to a sudden stop halfway up a flight of stairs, Fiona bumped into him, into that backside of his. It was like what her old driving instructor once told her. You go where you’re looking. And she certainly went, piling into him with an “
Oomf
.”

He grabbed hold of her, keeping her balanced on the step below.

“What is it?” Fiona asked quietly.

“Shh,” he said, looking up the stairs. “I thought I”—there was a distant popping sound—“ heard something.”

“Is that gunfire?”

He turned back to Fiona and told her, “Wait.” Only he’d said it coldly, like a soldier. And so she waited there while her brave Green Beret climbed up several steps, walked cautiously to the door, and then peered through the window. His body stiffened at the sound of more gunfire. It sounded closer this time.

“Stay there,” he said again, this time the words coming out hard and tense.

She stood on her step, gripping the rail and watching him as he brought his gun up to his chest and quietly pushed the bar lever, opening it, and stealthily slipping out.

Her instinct was to disobey Jasper’s orders, to race up to the top of the stairs and, like a curious child, peek through the door’s window. She wanted to see her man in action, but more importantly, to know that he was safe, and to possibly help.

How the fuck could she help?

But she still needed to know he was safe.

More gunfire rang out in the hall and, without thinking, she was already jogging up the steps. She looked through the vertical rectangle of glass, seeing an empty hallway. No, there was something, somebody, lying on the ground. Her heart sank as she realized that the person was dressed just like Jasper. Military boots, tactical pants, a weapon lying at his side. She heard more gunfire, but it didn’t faze her. She didn’t run from the door, or duck, or even flinch. Instead, her eyes were trained on that spot on the ground that may or may not contain Jasper—who was not moving at all.

Please, don’t let that be Jasper.

Despite the gunfire, she felt a growing urge to rush through the door, to enter the scene of the battle, blindly, frantically disobeying her orders. To run over to him, kneel by him, be near him. To know if it was him, and whether he was still alive.

A shape flashed into her field of view, a figure, a man. It wasn’t Jasper, but someone wearing a nurse’s scrubs. He ran across the hallway corner, speeding toward her. She didn’t recognize his face. But it was definitely an unfriendly one. She hadn’t seen him before, and she didn’t want to see him ever again. That snarled look of pure evil, those nostrils—like a bull’s—flared, face gnashed up in a homicidal rage.

He couldn’t have been a nurse.

But he most certainly could
have been the reason why someone who looked like Jasper was lying motionless on the ground.

Transfixed by the unfolding action scene, Fiona kept watching as the man suddenly stopped running, as he spun around and pointed his gun away from her, down the hall, and then fired, the rounds echoing tightly. He deked to the right and got up tight against the wall, revealing what he’d just been shooting at.

Jasper.

Not the person on the ground, but her military hero who was—at least for now—still upright and alive. And running toward her, and toward the evil nurse. Until another exchange of gunfire, after which he had, to Fiona’s relief, ducked into one of the rooms.

But now the nurse was heading back toward the stairwell, back toward Fiona. She froze behind the door, unable to process her options, unable to think. But she could still listen, hearing the approaching thudding horror of footsteps, and then something else. That voice that had been with her the whole afternoon, always there when she was at her lowest. Always guiding her, like now, instructing her very calmly to stay out of view through the window, and to huddle tightly against the wall.

Fiona listened, flattening herself against the wall, waiting, hoping the door wouldn’t open. But knowing what to do if it did.

And it did. She immediately went for the gun, slamming into him with all of her weight, lifting him off his feet and off the flat portion of the stairwell, the two of them tumbling down together in a chaotic, spinning, groaning mess of flailing limbs.

The thudding of their bodies sounded strange, but there were two distinct sounds that made everything worthwhile: the whimpering that came after his head crashed into the edge of a step, and the metal clattering sound of the gun as it was knocked from his hand. They might both be seriously injured, but at least not by a gun. But to her amazement, the serious injury never seemed to happen. She was already halfway down, and still no part of her was broken. No bad landings. Nothing headfirst. This good fortune, however, was made possible by her opponent’s bad fortune, his cushioning of each of her bounces, his body, like a pillow, seeming to always and inexplicably come between Fiona and the concrete steps whenever her body was about to land.

It still hurt, of course. It hurt terribly. But it was nothing she couldn’t manage. The man seemed to be managing less well. His whimpering had turned into a wail, a cry that rose and fell in volume with each thud. By the time they’d settled at the bottom of the steps, he’d gone absolutely quiet. He’d been that way for the last several bounces, his cries fading under the pure meaty thuds of his body taking all the impact. All the awful physics. It was a body that had surely been broken. It sounded broken. And now, with Fiona looking over at the mess, it looked broken. His arms and legs twisted in angles she’d never imagined possible. His head was split and bleeding, the trail of it beginning halfway down the stairs and growing larger with each step toward their ultimate jumbled mess on the floor.

Her chest heaved for breath as she pulled herself off the concrete, inching toward the wall and resting her back against it. The gun lay up on one of the bloody steps, resting there idly, safely, pointing away from her. She checked back to the broken figure of the man, checking for any signs of life. His chest was moving, albeit very slowly. The white of his bones broke through skin at several places. Ankles, wrist . . .

“Fiona!”

Jasper’s voice, and the sound of his frantic footsteps, grew louder as he hurried down the stairs toward her.

“Don’t move,” he said, the words barely understandable through the jolting of his steps.

But she moved. She casually pushed a leg off her waist and stood, unsteadily, but standing on her own power, the sight of which caused Jasper to slow his approach. His mouth hung open. His eyes, too. Wide. Disbelieving. Scared.

“I’m okay,” she said. The words came out flat, emotionless. She felt similarly cold. Detached somehow from the wreckage of their fall like her personality had been knocked loose. “I got the gun,” she said, staring at it.