Darkest Day (StrikeForce #3) (6 page)

“Jolene, try to get out of there,” Jenson said. “They’re in the back. Our exterior camera died when they showed up.”

“Which probably means Virus. If he fries your equipment, we won’t be able to monitor you,” Ryan added.

I didn’t answer. I turned and quietly stepped out of the bathroom, crept down the short, narrow hallway toward the living room. If any of them were out there, Virus, Daemon, whoever, I wanted at least a chance of grabbing one of them.

I heard a feminine voice, a soft laugh, and I stilled. They were at the back door. A moment later, a deeper voice.

“That’s not Daemon’s voice,” Ryan said in my earpiece.

I wondered for a moment if the woman was the author of all of the love letters. If so, it was possible we had the bait to make Daemon comply in hand. Even as clueless as I apparently am about the whole relationship thing, I could recognize the flirtatious note in her voice. If this was the object of Daemon’s affections, she maybe wasn’t as enamored and devoted as she’d seemed in her letters.

“The girl sounds familiar, though,” Ryan said over the earpiece, and I had to agree. I was trying to think of where, but I got distracted by the sound of the back door opening.

“Shit,” Ryan groaned. “Any point in reminding you that this is supposed to be a secret ops thing so we can hit them hard when they won’t expect it? If they know we’re there, they’ll start being more careful and then our job becomes harder.”

He was right. And whoever the guy was, he wasn’t Daemon, or Virus, for that matter. I crept back to the bedrooms, figuring I’d sneak out one of the windows. I did that, pulling it closed behind me, then I slunk back around outside the house. A lamp was on in the living room, and the two people were sitting on the couch. I crept closer to the window. Daemon had blinds, which made it easy for me to see into the bright living room. I wanted to make sure Jenson and David could get a screen capture so we could figure out who these people were who just made themselves at home at Daemon’s place. They had to be someone who mattered at least a little bit.

I got close to the window. “Got ‘em,” Ryan said.

It took a second before it registered why the woman sounded familiar. The guy, I didn’t recognize at all. I stepped away, glanced around. The neighborhood was mostly dark and silent around me at this late hour. Still, I wanted to be careful about being seen flying off into the night. Once I felt confident that no one was watching, I ran back to Daemon’s back yard and rose into the air, then headed back toward Command.

“The woman was the electro chick we let go after we took over from Alpha,” I said over my comm.

“Yeah,” Ryan said.

“Could you hear what they were saying?”

“They were talking about what to order in and what to watch. And I’m probably stupidly paranoid because I’m trying to figure out what all of it might have been code for.”

“Well, that makes two of us. We’ll be wearing matching tin foil hats in no time.”

He laughed. “You did good, Jolene. I know you were tempted to confront both of them and demand answers. Getting the drop on them, snooping around without them knowing we’re doing it, is going to make all of this a lot easier. We’ll hit them hard later.”

“I know. I just kept trying to remind myself of that.”

“There’s coffee waiting. We have a long night ahead of trying to sort through all the stuff you found.”

“Okay. Be there in a few minutes.” I flew over downtown. I could see Command shining in the distance, the river an expanse of darkness beyond. Cars snaked their way through the city below, and from up here, it was easier to see how downtown was laid out in a big circle, the streets almost looking like the spokes of a bicycle wheel. That ended once you got out of downtown, though. I guess the city had been planned, and the idea was to keep those spokes and that circular shape going forever, but at some point the concept of a grid of straight streets took over. I’m betting the original city planner, whoever he was, must have been pissed about that. Convenience ultimately rules, I guess. I’d found myself thinking more often lately about intentions and right versus wrong and shit like that. Things I never gave much thought to before, either because I didn’t care or because, once I started looking too closely, I might start to second-guess myself. But I was thinking about it now. Mama’s death had awoken not just a weird, simmering rage in me, but also questions I’d never bothered with before, such as who I was when it came down to it, and, maybe most of all, how I wanted to be remembered when I was gone. The one thing that kept coming back to me from Mama’s funeral was how so many people told me that she’d changed their lives, that she’d been there with an encouraging word, a shoulder to cry on, a hot meal, or advice just when they’d needed it most. And that was very much Mama. Even when we had nothing, she helped others.

I wasn’t her. I could never be her, and if I tried to be the way she was, it would mean spending my entire life acting. Playing a part. I couldn’t be remembered for being sweet because I wasn’t. But if, when all this is over, I can be remembered as someone who kicked ass and kept people safe when things got bad? That would be a decent way to be remembered. I wanted to be less of a fuck-up. I wanted StrikeForce to be less of a mess. And in truth, we needed to be better. No more mistakes. No more running around waiting for the next shoe to drop. And, when the time came to act, we had to be able to act without second-guessing or triple-guessing ourselves. That was why I met with Jenson and the others. We all knew that we would need to do things that we couldn’t wait to be decided on by some committee. Portia knew the same thing, which was why as far as we were concerned, unless we were specifically on patrol or on duty with StrikeForce, she turned a blind eye to us. Which was good. The less she knew, the better.

I gave downtown one final glance, then came in for a landing at the same exit bay I’d left from earlier, then headed down to my room, where Jenson and the rest of them were already going over the screen caps. Ryan was typing something out on another laptop while Jenson, Dani, and David gathered around a larger monitor, one of the love letters pulled up on the screen. I went to my bedroom and pulled off the new body armor and all of its tracking stuff, then headed out to the living room to join them.

“There’s coffee in there,” Ryan said, nodding toward the kitchen.

“You’re a lifesaver,” I murmured as I headed into my kitchen. I poured a cup and grabbed one of the muffins someone had brought up from the dining hall. I plopped down next to Ryan on the sofa and leaned in to see what he was looking at. It was one of the love letters from Daemon’s nightstand drawer. I read for a few seconds, then shook my head.

“I cannot imagine anyone fucking loving Daemon that much.”

Ryan laughed. “Well apparently the guy gets fucked, at the very least. Or really wants to,” he said, alluding to the stuff I’d had to sift through to find the letters.

“I am gonna have nightmares for years,” I muttered. “Any clues about who she is?” I asked, nodding toward the laptop and the image of the love letter on the screen. I took a sip of coffee and read a little more.

“Not much. She signs every letter ‘D.’ So not a whole lot to go on. But I think of everything you found, this is the thing that has the potential to be something.”

“That and the envelope I didn’t open,” I said, biting the inside of my lip. “I don’t know what the hell came over me. I just don’t want to get any kids involved. And I know they would have gone after a kid to get to me without a second thought, but—“

“Jolene.” Ryan set the laptop down on the coffee table and turned to face me. “One of the things we need to remember in this business is that we can’t let ourselves turn into the kind of people we’re trying to protect everyone else from. It’s too easy to become the monster when monsters are all that’s on your mind. When they’ve taken something from you that matters,” he added in a softer tone. “So you don’t want to involve a kid in this mess? That just tells me that you’re the kind of person I feel proud to fight beside.”

“Or I’m weak,” I said with a roll of my eyes.

“Nah. Never that,” he said quietly. I met his eyes for a second, then glanced away. “I know you wanted to go after them. Especially when we recognized the electro that you freed. But your initial plan was a good one. Learn their shit, then hit ‘em so hard they’ll wish they never stepped foot outside of their playpens.”

“And you’re here to remind me not to lose it,” I said, grinning. “Because I almost did.”

“I know. And I don’t blame you. You didn’t do it, though. You’re good at that sneaky shit,” he said.

“Who knew learning how to steal stuff would come in so handy?” I asked, and he laughed. We sat and read through a few more of the letters.

“If this is code for something, she’s really good,” I said after the third one. Ryan nodded. “I’m kind of thinking it’s not a code.”

“Yeah.”

“But, they’re old. The most recent one was like three years ago, at least that was the most recent I saw when I was flipping through them for the captures.”

“Yeah. Last letter was just over three years ago,” he said swiping through the files to find the last one I’d captured. Daemon had kept them in order, oldest letters on top, newest on the bottom. I wondered if he read them, because that was a weird way to store them. You’d think you’d just put the newest one on top of the stack. I leaned over and started reading.

“Oh,” I murmured.

“Shit,” Ryan agreed. “Well, that explains some things.”

The letter was about how it just wasn’t working out, that his activities had gotten too crazy, that the people he was associating with were too scary. About how she loved him more than she’d ever loved anyone, that she would have done anything for him, but that their child had to come first, and she didn’t believe their baby was safe around him.

“Baby’d be four or so by now, depending on how old it was when this was written,” Ryan murmured. Based on the very large, scrawly writing I’d seen on that envelope, I had a sneaking suspicion that the letter had been from Daemon’s kid.

“I’m maybe even dumber for not looking at it now,” I said. “Shit.”

“Nope,” Ryan said, bumping his knee against mine. “We can do this without resorting to crap that’ll just make you hate yourself.”

“I already—“ I broke off. He gave me a hard look and looked like he was going to say something, but I got up, muttering about needing another cup of coffee. Yeah. I already hated myself. I hated myself every time I pictured my mother dying, every time I thought through all the things I could have done differently.

But I hated Killjoy and his crew even more, and I was feeling increasingly raw and lost as we got closer to what would have been Mama’s fiftieth birthday. The next couple of days were going to be hell. I’d been trying not to think about it, but when I wasn’t working (which was almost never, thankfully) it was all I could think about.

When I went back into the living room, Ryan was thankfully focused on something else, and I went over to Jenson and the others to see what they’d dug up.

“So far, we’ve clearly established his name and date of birth. Jenson’s going to run some searches on that and see what it comes up with in terms of family and his financials. The letters you let us get screen caps of make it clear there’s someone out there he cared very much for at one time, and possibly still does. We’ll see about tracking her down,” David said, and I nodded.

“The electro that I let go showing up there is something we need to be looking at. How’s she involved with Killjoy’s people? Did she know Daemon before all of this or did she go to them because she was pissed at me? We need answers there. And maybe get some kind of tracking on her so we can see who she meets with.”

“I have a mini drone in the area now,” David said, nodding toward the other laptop on the table. It was a live feed of the outside of Daemon’s house, looking into the living room window, where the electro and whoever the guy was were watching TV and eating out of white styrofoam takeout containers.

“I had no idea you even had those,” I said.

He shrugged. “Jenson’s idea.”

“It’s a good one.”

We stayed up late, mostly waiting for the electro to go somewhere so the drone could follow her. I sat on the couch next to Ryan, who had already dozed off and was snoring quietly with his head resting back on the couch. Jenson sat on my other side with the laptop with the drone feed resting on her knees.

“You know, I set this to record,” David said finally. “We don’t have to stay up all night and watch it.”

“I’ve watched this long,” Jenson said with a shrug. “If you’re tired, you should turn in, though.”

I glanced up to see David watching Jenson with a blank look on his face.

“Unless you want to be too tired tomorrow,” she said in a quieter tone, keeping her eyes on the screen.

That seemed to get him moving. “Okay. Just leave that in my lab whenever you’re done with it. Night,” he said, then he smacked Ryan’s shoulder and Ryan jolted awake.

“They’re insisting on watching the drone,” David told Ryan.

Ryan stood up with a yawn, then glanced down at me. “So a late night for Jo means I’m in for a fun work shift tomorrow, then.”

“Are you suggesting that I get bitchy when I’m tired?” I asked.

“And I get to work with you first thing in the morning,” he said with a grin. “Try not to take my head off.”

I shook my head, and he called a “night” over his shoulder. Once my door closed behind Ryan and David, I turned to Jenson.

“So. What’s going on on tomorrow?”

Chapter Four