Shadows (Black Raven Book 1) (34 page)

“I’m not,” she shook her head. “I never once used the phone. It was only intended to receive that one message. My father handed it to me. There was no need for me to ever know the number.”

He drew a deep breath. “Ragno? Anything we can do with this to determine call origination?”

“Not a call,” Skye said, “it was a text.”

“Well, we can’t tell anything without either the phone or the phone number,” Ragno said. “Ask her nicely to tell us what the message was. Maybe I can back into it that way, but it’s doubtful. There’s too much data, too many messages, and whoever we’re dealing with no doubt is using encryption for their outgoing messages, just like we are.”

“Skye,” he said, “what exactly did his text say?”

She shook her head. “You’ll never back into finding whoever has him. There’s too many transmissions, and you know they’re rerouting all of their outgoing messages.”

He didn’t need two people telling him that he wouldn’t get the answer he needed. To Skye, he said, “Just answer the fuc-” he closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath to gain control of the moment. “Just answer the question. What exactly did the text say?”

“He used a code, which basically tells me to get to get to our lake house in Tennessee and to await the next signal from him, which was supposed to come in exactly 24 hours.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Give me the goddamn code.”

“131441413923117208152620.”
She whispered, as though she was worried someone would hear.

His head throbbed as he watched the ease with which she repeated the nonsensical numbers. “That’s how your father spoke to you. In meaningless numbers. Did he add xoxo at the end?”

“Yes, to the numbers. No, to the xoxo,” she said, her eyes pained. He remembered the numbers and letters throughout Spring’s tablet, and realized that both girls had been victims of Barrows-style psychiatric abuse. “But the numbers aren’t meaningless. Some parents teach kids foreign languages. My father did too. It’s just he created the languages, and they’re based upon numbers. They’re not meaningless.”

Jesus H. Christ
. Getting information from her was like having his teeth pulled without painkillers. “So what do the numbers mean?”

She drew a deep breath. “Cataclysm. Run. Now.”

His heart pounded, both out of frustration and because he felt he was hanging onto reality by the fingertips of one hand. If he kept looking at her, listening to her, he was going to lose his grasp. “And what the hell does that mean?”

“It means to get to the lake house in Tennessee and get in position for his next communication. That’s it. That’s all it means. That’s why I need to get there,” she said. “Now. I’m late. I was supposed to be there within twenty-four hours of the message, by 5:25 this morning, and I would have been there, but you showed up-”

“And saved your life-”

“And,” she paused, “yes. But if you hadn’t delayed me, you might not have needed to save my life.”

He chuckled, glad he could find humor in lala land. “Lady, you weren’t anywhere close to leaving when the kidnappers showed up.”

“Sebastian,” Ragno said, “don’t argue with her.”

“I need to get there,” Skye said. “Now. Please. Can we continue this conversation on the way?”

“I haven’t agreed to take you anywhere.”

She folded her arms, cocked her head to the side, narrowed her eyes in a way that told him she knew he was lying, and said, “Oh, really?”

Ragno said, “Sebastian? We need to investigate this. Don’t you understand how big this is?”

Of course he did. He just didn’t want to admit to Skye that she’d won.
Dammit
. If he was around her much longer, he was going to be crazier than Barrows.

“I’ll go and get Spring. She won’t be happy when she’s right in the middle of-”

“Spring stays here.”

“I won’t go without her.”

“She’s safe here, surrounded by tight security.” No way was he going to take Spring with them. Spring was his ace in the hole, and a way to keep Skye honest. Big sis wouldn’t bolt, if her baby sis was at Last Resort.

“Do you think I’d take her and try to make a run for it?”

“Hell, yes.” When she looked at him like he had three heads, he opened the door to the private quarters and gestured with his chin for her to proceed.

“Sebastian,” Ragno broke in, “she still hasn’t told you where the lake house is.”

“Where exactly is it?”

“I became turned around last night, but I estimate it’s approximately three and a half hours of driving from here. Maybe four.”

“The address, Skye. We’re not driving. I need to know the nearest airstrip.”

She shook her head. “Nashville International is the closest airport. There are some private airstrips, but even when we’ve flown privately we’ve used the international airport.”

“The address,” he said.

“No. I walk in when you walk in, and you won’t know the address until we’re almost there,” she folded her arms, eyes serious, and stood firm in the entryway, “and nothing you do or say will make me handle this any other way.”

“Is your claim that there’s backup just a ploy to get there, so you can check on whether he’s sent another message?”

“No,” she said, after only a second’s hesitation. Something in the way she shifted her eyes off of him, to the agents who were still watching, and refocused on him, was a warning signal. “There’s backup there. You’ll see.”

He nodded and opened the door for her. As she stepped in, he paused at the threshold of the living quarters and shook off the red-flag feeling. It didn’t matter. Even if she was only wanting to go there to see whether her father had sent her a signal, that was important enough, because this time, he’d get the device and track the origination. Backup for Shadows and LID Technologies, if it existed, would be an added bonus. “Ragno. Get Zeus on the line.”

Sebastian waited longer than he should have. Ragno’s silence told him she was filling in Zeus on details before connecting the call, and that she had muted her connection to Sebastian.
Great. Fucking great.
“Ragno, don’t talk behind my back.”

“Well, I hear Skye Barrows has given you one hell of a handful to contend with,” Zeus answered, his words light, but concern evident in his partner’s tone. “Are you all right, in spite of the fact that Ragno is telling me that something’s off with you?”

“Zeus,” Ragno said, “I was speaking in confidence.”

“I’m fine,” Sebastian said.

“How are your headaches?” Zeus asked, his tone serious.

“Fine. Look, can you please just focus on work?”

“Sure. Barrows’ backup?” Zeus said. “It’s a big fucking deal. Huge.”

“I’m aware,” Sebastian said, “but it might all be bullshit. We’ll need to run diagnostics immediately. Want to meet me in Tennessee?”

“I’m headed out to Raven Two now.”

“I’ll alert the pilots,” Ragno said. “She’ll be ready for departure when you get there.”

Traveling alone, Sebastian would have been in the chopper in two minutes, and at the nearest airport in twenty. But it took Skye a while to tell Spring she was leaving. Spring had layered smooth as paper icing on about three-dozen cupcakes in preparation for decorating them. She showed Skye fresh drawings of what she planned to put on the cupcakes. Skye did a fantastic job of appearing interested, as though what Spring was showing her was the most important thing in the world, before calmly mentioning that she and Sebastian had to leave for a few hours.

As though the dog knew Spring needed reassurance, she sat at Spring’s feet and leaned against her leg. The dog’s ears were erect, as they both listened intently to Skye’s softly spoken reassurances. Doctor Schilling also stood close by, and Skye continually drew Schilling into the conversation, as she assured Spring she’d be gone for only a few hours.

Hell.
It was even hard for him to say goodbye to Spring. Unlike Skye, he didn’t know whether he’d be headed back to Last Resort, when they were through in Tennessee. With Spring’s big blue eyes focused on him, he pretended he’d return.
Coward.
Before he was out the door, Spring said, “Wait.”

When he turned back to her, she handed him a plastic bag full of white jellybeans. He glanced at the bag and gave her a frown, as he slipped it into his jacket pocket. “Not even one red?”

She giggled. “Are you ever going to stop asking that?”

Without warning, she stepped closer, tiptoed up to his cheek, and gave him a sweet peck. “I’ll save some cupcakes for you,” she said. “Yours will be the best.”

As Skye reached out for one last hug with Spring, he was lost in the crashing currents of his complex feelings for Skye and his protective feelings for Spring. He didn’t know what he felt for Skye. Lust? Hell, yes. Curiosity? Absolutely. Frustration? More than a little. An insane desire to know her better? Yes, that too, even though he was now worried that she was nuts.

With Spring, his feelings were simpler. He wanted to ensure that for the rest of her life, she smiled that sweet smile and only had to worry about putting icing on cupcakes, or whatever other obsession had her attention for the moment. Innocence inspired his protective instincts like nothing else, and Spring’s blue-eyed brand of it made him feel like building a fucking fortress for her.

In his quick jaunt on the side of insanity, he had a fucked-up flash—the fortress he was going to erect for Spring would have to include living quarters for him and Skye. It was as simple as that, because the bond between the two of them never needed to be broken. The two of them, together. Skye and Spring. They needed to be protected from the ugliness of the world, and he was suddenly, irrationally pissed at Richard Barrows for not planning better for his daughters.

As he walked out of the house, the feeling that something was wrong came at him out of nowhere. He glanced to his side, at Skye. She wore a Black Raven issue leather jacket, which he’d pulled out of a closet and handed to her before climbing down the stairs. With her dark hair spilling over the black leather, and the snug pink sweater underneath, she looked positively vampish. Problem was, there was only one sister next to him and it felt wrong. He wanted them both with him, where he could cherish and protect them.

He drew a deep breath.

Last Resort versus travelling to some unknown destination in Tennessee?

No contest. Last Resort was safer. Too much could go wrong in a transport. Still, the sisters were meant to be together, and he was separating them. He had no option. Skye wouldn’t tell him where the lake house was unless he agreed to take her there, and he couldn’t torture the information out of her. Black Raven could handle the task of getting Skye there safely and returning her to Last Resort unharmed, but there was no need for Spring to go as well.

He shook off his discomfort as he helped Skye board the Bell 525 helicopter, one of several that Black Raven used for training, missions, and transporting personnel and clients between Last Resort and the airstrip that was located about an hour away by car, fifteen minutes by air. A four-man detail climbed into the chopper with them.

An hour after deciding to take Skye with him to the lake house in Tennessee, he was nodding goodbye to the Black Raven helicopter pilots, who’d transported them to the airstrip. The chopper landing pad was one hundred yards from where Raven One waited. Because of the regional airport’s proximity to Last Resort, Black Raven had a hangar there. The airstrip and the terminal was public, and the airport, though nowhere near as busy as Hartsfield-Jackson, Atlanta’s International Airport, had enough traffic that he was on high alert. Two private jets were landing. A fuel truck and a mechanic’s truck were heading to the helicopter that has just transported them. He paused, saw that the chopper pilots were watching the approaching trucks, and they didn’t seem surprised. He resumed walking.

The team of agents walked in circle formation around Skye and Sebastian, their eyes in all directions. The two pilots of Raven One were at the base of the boarding ladder. “Departure in ten minutes, sir.”

Raven One was supposed to be taking him to headquarters in Denver, where his partners who were stateside were congregating and the ones who were abroad would call in. Brandon, their corporate lawyer and his best friend, would be at the meeting for a legal assessment. Damage control was needed, because Senator McCollum, the head of the Bureau of Prisons outsourcing committee, was a major power broker in D.C. McCollum hired Black Raven for both his private oil interests and public sector contracts, which meant he was now one of their biggest clients. The senator was now majorly dissatisfied, and Sebastian had to apprise his partners of the potential for fall out. Yet instead of heading to Denver, he was sucked deeper into the world of Richard Barrows, on the search for backup that had better be where Skye said it was, looking for a message that he hoped like hell would be there. He’d participate by phone in the conference, as would Zeus.

The jet had two cabins. The forward cabin was larger, with seats set in configurations that facilitated working conferences while flying. The rear cabin was smaller, with two seats next to each other and a long couch that ran along the length of the plane. It was perfect for sleeping, or other things. He shook away the thought of those other things that he wouldn’t be doing on this flight, no matter how tempting that thought might be. A door separated the two cabins. He took off the leather jacket he wore and laid it on a chair. He reached into the pocket, took out the bag of jellybeans and then guided Skye into the smaller rear cabin.

Their accompanying agents had been in the office when he and Skye had argued and they’d been on the trail when Skye had slapped him. He thought about leaving the door open, but shut it behind them.

Fuck it. Let them compare notes and talk. I have bigger problems to worry about.

He gestured to the couch as he opened the bag and took out three jellybeans. “You should try to nap.”

He sat on one of the seats, stretched out his legs, and ate one coconut-flavored bean at a time. She peeled off the leather jacket, laid it on the couch, then sat next to him, her thigh sliding against his as she settled into the leather seat.
Fuck.
Of course she wasn’t going to listen to him and take the couch.

“Ragno,” he said, as he put the arm rest down between the two seats, “our flying time is 50 minutes. What’s Zeus’s ETA?”

“He’ll arrive there about a half hour before you. They’re ready to go in advance of your arrival.”

“Skye,” he said, fishing out three more jellybeans. “We need the address.”

“There isn’t a street address,” she said.

“Of course there isn’t,” he said, not trying to conceal his irritation. “I’ve stopped expecting easy with you or your father. Just give us the exact location.”

She shrugged. “I’ll tell you when we land.”

“If you wait until then, you’ll be wasting time, because no matter when you tell me, I’m sending a team there in advance of our arrival. We need to secure the area before you step foot there. So tell me now, or tell me later.” He shrugged. “Up to you.”

She stared at him for a second, before saying, “Firefly Island in Hickory Lake.”

He repeated what she said to Ragno. Over the sound of her fingers racing across her keyboard, she said, “I heard her.”

Skye glanced at Sebastian. “We need to call the caretaker first.”

“Why?”

“The island isn’t accessible by car. There isn’t a bridge. Our cabin and the caretaker’s cottage are the only houses on the island. Jack Graham and his wife, Posie, are the caretakers. The property’s in their name.”

In a matter of seconds, Ragno confirmed what Skye was saying.

“Jack always comes to get us in a boat.” She rattled off a phone number.

“Ragno, heard that?”

“Yes. Give me a second.”

“There’s no answer,” Sebastian informed Skye, after Ragno tried the number.

Her eyes widened. “That can’t be.”

He pressed his fingertips to his temple in an effort to ease the throbbing in his head, closed the jellybean bag, and shook his head. “Would I lie about this?”

“But Jack and Posie take care of us. It’s what they do. They were carefully vetted prior to hiring. They’ve lived on Firefly Island for ten years. They’re more than employees. He’s reliable, and so is she. They always answer.”

“Not today,” he said. “Could it be that he’s just not answering a number that he doesn’t recognize?”

“No. Jack answers our calls, regardless of whether he recognizes the numbers. We change phones like most people change clothes. Remember? I’m Richard Barrows’ daughter,” she said. Her tone was half-joking, half-desperate, and the sudden fear in her eyes made him want to hold her, to reassure her. “My father’s paranoia dictates what we do. Jack knows he won’t recognize the numbers that we’re using. But we always call that line. Or there are two more options. Jack has three potential numbers that we use-”

“Three?” Sebastian asked.

She nodded. “There are always three. Well, not always. Mostly always. My father’s compulsions, which he’s passed onto Spring, either by genetics or proximity, dictate that occurrences happen in threes.”

“Give me the numbers.”

She gave them to him. Ragno dialed them as he repeated them. No answer. He gave Skye a headshake as her eyes searched his.

“Especially now that news has broken regarding the prison break,” Skye said, “Jack would answer calls to these numbers.”

“Keep trying,” Sebastian said to Ragno, as the jet started taxiing. “Send Zeus in advance to reconnoiter. Secure a boat. Call on the satellite phone while we’re en route if there’s any news.”

“Will do.”

He took off the earpiece, slipped it into his pocket, and switched off the telecommunications portal on his watch. Only a few inches separated their seats. The armrest provided a laughable barrier, one that didn’t block the magnetic pull she had on him. “I was thinking that you’d try to rest on the couch.”

She shook her head. “I’m not tired. Besides, I can’t do anything now but worry about Jack and Posie.”

“Worry won’t be productive. We should know something shortly after we land,” he said. He couldn’t help but get personal when he saw the fear and exhaustion in her gray-green eyes. “You didn’t sleep at all last night.”

She gave him a slight smile, shrugging as the jet became airborne. “It wasn’t my first night without sleep,” she paused, “Thank you for believing me.”

“Don’t thank me. I’m trying desperately to find your father, and we have nothing else to go on. I believe that you’re telling the truth as you know it. To be honest, though, I’m not certain that what your father’s told you has any basis in reality. Shadows and LID Technology might have just been a figment of his imagination.”

“For now, you’ll just have to trust me. The technology exists. Even if you don’t believe me, once you have the backup, once your people assess it, you’ll know. It will be up to you to find out who wants it so badly, and up to me to follow my father’s instructions.”

“Those instructions,” he said. “All you know is you were supposed to get to Tennessee and await more instructions?” He had quizzed her endlessly on the way to the airport, but that was all she gave him.

“Yes. I’ll know more when I get to the lake house.” Her smile was slight, with just a turn-up to the left side of her mouth and a bit of light in her eyes. It was a sad, bittersweet smile that said, ‘
The world’s fucked up, but damn it, I’m going to be brave and find humor wherever I can.
’

Her smile was almost his undoing, because it made him hyper-focus on her, when he had told himself that all he was going to do was sit next to her and try like hell to ignore the magnetic pull she worked on him. With his eyes on that smile, studying the nuances of it, as he inhaled the fresh, vanilla-sweet scent of her natural perfume, she became impossible to resist.

Fuck me to hell.

As the jet leveled off, he shifted his legs, readjusted himself in the seat, and glanced at the bulge of his erection, visible through the Black Raven-issue khaki trousers. He glanced at her, saw that her eyes were on his hip area, and gave a hoarse laugh that was almost a groan. “Can’t help that, but don’t worry. After that apology I gave you, I’m certainly not going there again.”

“Would you, here?” She gestured with her chin to the door between the two cabins. “With your agents on the other side of the door?”

He chuckled. “Behind a closed door? If I wasn’t working, and with the right woman, the answer would be hell yes, and it wouldn’t matter who was on the other side of a closed door. I’ve never been very selective as to time and place. Would you?”

Some of the worry left her eyes as she laughed. “I’ve done it behind billowing drapes, in a crowded ballroom.”

Damn.

He’d known that she was his kind of woman, from the moment he’d looked at her bare-chested pose, as she readied herself for a dive. His kind of woman, he reminded himself, but not his woman. “On a full commercial plane?”

She shrugged. “That’s a rookie move.”

“The bathrooms are hell.”

She shook her head, with a smile. It would have been demure, but for the positively wicked gleam in her eyes. “We weren’t in a bathroom.”

“Holy hell.”

“The hardest thing about that,” she paused, “well, there were plenty of difficulties. But it is really hard to have an absolutely silent orgasm. Especially if it’s a good one.” He started chuckling and ended it with a deep, heartfelt laugh. “You know,” she continued, “I could probably win this game, because from my late teens, until about two years ago, when I chose to become celibate, I had one hell of a lot of fun in the sex department.”

“Monogamy’s hell,” he said, studying her eyes, her lips, the tilt of her head, “isn’t it?”

She nodded, her eyes serious, her expression blank, except for a slight smile that played at her lips. “Sure is. I’ve never been committed to it.”

“Your blank face tells me you’re lying.”

“No. Nothing but the honest truth.”

“Now I’m wondering at what point in this conversation did you start lying?”

“I haven’t at all,” she paused, with a gleam in her eyes that was virtually an admission she was fibbing and having fun doing it. “What about you? Monogamy. Has it ever worked for you?”

He cringed on the inside, knowing he shouldn’t have ventured down this path, yet he was intrigued by the irreverence with which she approached such a private subject. “Years ago I was in a couple of committed relationships-”

“At the same time?”

“No. Over a span of years. I actually liked it, until I figured out I’m just not the committing type.” He narrowed his eyes, studying her, enjoying talking to her about a subject that, like religion and politics, would be better kept private. “You’ve never been monogamous?”

She shook her head. “I’ve never been in a committed relationship, and that is the honest truth. There weren’t all that many men, but the men I did it with sure did it with a bang. You probably even know their names.” She gave him a slight frown, glancing again at his hips. She recaptured his eyes with a delicious, enticing smile. “You really don’t want to act on that, do you?”

He shook his head. Thank God the flight was short, and they were already a few minutes into it. “Regrettably, no.”

She drew a deep breath. “Wow.” Her expression turned serious. “Have I turned you off with my sexual honesty?”

“Actually, it’s become torture,” he said, “I’m using as much willpower as I’ve ever had, when what I really want to do is-” he drew a deep breath, and shut the hell up. If he described what he wanted to do to her, how hard she made him, how he wanted to rip those damn jeans off of her and slide in and out of her until she moaned like she had the night before, he was going to die.
Fuck it
. If he thought for one more second about it, he wouldn’t resist.

“That’s too bad.” Her voice was so low it was almost a hoarse whisper, her face just inches from his. “Because when I said best sex ever, I meant it. And I know what I’m talking about.”

“I can’t remember better,” he said, shifting in the seat, groaning as he did. “But you can change the subject. Or else I have to go hang out with my agents.”
After hanging out with myself in the bathroom
.

“You don’t kiss on the lips,” she said, her tone serious again. “When we were having sex, you avoided my kiss.” He drew a deep breath, as her eyes studied his, regretting that he had stayed seated and didn’t move into the front cabin. With just inches separating them, her eyelashes were thick and dark, even without mascara. A loose one had fallen on her cheek. He lifted his index finger, touched it, and flicked it off her cheek. “Why?”

Her question opened a door that he didn’t want to go through, but the light in her eyes was so captivating, he didn’t want to disappoint her desire for an answer. “How honest of an answer do you want?”

“On a scale of one to ten,” she said, “give me a ten. It’s the least you can do, after you’ve had your hackers break into notes from my therapy sessions.”

She had him with that truth, which he couldn’t refute. “Somewhere along the way, I got it in my head that kisses, full on the mouth, French kisses, the kind that go on…” he almost groaned, suddenly wanting to glide his tongue on hers, wanting to taste her, wanting to lock lips with her and pretend, for hours, that nothing but the two of them existed, “…and on, were promises. A promise of a future, even if that promise is just another phone call, another night together, another...” his voice trailed, “…another something. I stopped making those kinds of promises years ago. Sex is sex. That’s it. Women know before we have sex that there’s no future.”