The Darkness Gathers (38 page)

Craig’s job over the next few weeks would be to try to match questionable deposits with invoices. Any funds that couldn’t be attributed to clients would be removed from the firm’s account and used to establish a grant to aid young women in the escape from sexual slavery. All proceeds from the book she would write and entitle
Tatiana
would go to this fund, as well. It was Lydia’s hope that publicizing it would encourage women in trouble in the United States and around the world to seek assistance and would attract the attention of a national forum committed to helping the victims of sexual slavery and snuff films. Of course, she first had to get people to acknowledge that these things existed.

“Will you be able to forgive me someday, Lydia?” Jeffrey asked, so quietly that she almost didn’t hear him, she was so deep in thought.

They hadn’t spoken at all about the night in Van Cortlandt Park. It was as if she had blown glass around it and those final moments existed in a snow globe, nightmarish but silent. Dax had taken off like a panther through the trees after Jed, moving with impossible speed and agility for a man of his size. They heard three more shots and then in the distance the wail of sirens. A moment later, Dax had appeared through the trees.

“Don’t just stand there gape-jawed, you two. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

“Did you get him, Dax?” Lydia asked, her voice so small, she almost didn’t recognize it.

He looked at her with eyes full of apology. “He got away, Lydia. I’m sorry. I’ll get him, though. We’ll get him … me and Jeff. I promise you that.”

The Land Rover was parked on the other side of the narrow, rough path. They cut across the Parade Grounds with their lights off, and the heavy vehicle easily climbed the incline to the street. Dax made a left on Broadway and turned the headlights on. By the time squad cars began rushing past, they were just another vehicle on the road. Lydia sat in the backseat, having a hard time processing the things she knew, almost unable to believe that Jed McIntyre had appeared before her, was free, and that she could still draw air into her lungs. Surely when your worst nightmare enters your waking world, you burst into flames or die from sheer fright. But she was still alive and felt relatively normal, considering the circumstances.

The next day, they’d jumped to action, handling Jacob’s affairs for his wife and consulting with the NYPD on the manhunt for Jed McIntyre, playing stupid with the FBI about everything else—just the way the Bureau wanted them, it turned out, stupid and forgetful. They’d learned enough to know it had to be played that way if they wanted to fight the battle another day.

Lydia sat up and looked at Jeffrey now, frowning with concern. “Forgive you for what?”

“For giving up Tatiana to Nathan Quinn,” he said, looking as though it had been eating at him since that night and he couldn’t believe she didn’t know what he was talking about.

“For choosing my life and the life of our baby over a girl you barely know?” she said, putting her hand on his shoulder. “For choosing a life of peace over a life where we spend every day looking over our shoulders, worrying about each other, waiting for Jed McIntyre to appear out of the darkness with a hunting knife? Yes, Jeffrey, I forgive you for loving me and for loving our life. Don’t forget that I made the same choice. I didn’t shoot Nathan Quinn when I had the chance.”

He leaned in and kissed her on the mouth, his heart flooding with relief.

“I have an idea for the new firm,” said Jeffrey, referring to their plans for Lydia to come in as a partner. He took her hand in his.

“Yeah?”

“How about Mark, Mark and Striker?”

“No way. I’m keeping my own name. Anyway, it should be Strong, Mark and Striker. I have more name recognition,” she said with a smile.

“Was that a yes?”

“What was the question?” she replied, looking at him with mock innocence.

“Why don’t we go upstairs, and I’ll see if I can communicate it to you better.”

She pressed her body against his and put her mouth on his neck, smelling his cologne and feeling the stubble against her lips. He put his mouth on hers and she felt the familiar jolt of desire, the seductive wash of safety and comfort she knew only in his arms.

“Help me close up first,” she said, her smile wavering a bit.

“You bet,” he answered. “I think the book for the new security alarm is on the counter.”

As Lydia walked over to turn off the television, something on the screen caught her eye. “Look,” she said.

The camera had zoomed out a bit and the famous newscaster with salt-and-pepper hair and sparkling blue eyes had his hand folded in front of him as he delivered the rest of the news script. On his right hand, he wore the gold insignia ring Lydia and Jeffrey had come to know so well.

They exchanged a look and turned off the television. They hadn’t spent a whole lot of time discussing what they had learned about the way the world worked. And maybe that was because they recognized themselves to be powerless to change it. For the time being anyway. And they had a more present demon to battle than the shadowy, nebulous ones they knew maneuvered behind the scenes. If the Council members were the masterminds of world order, then Jed McIntyre was chaos. A chaos that needed to be chained.

Lydia truly hoped that with Nathan Quinn and Sasa Fitore burning in hell, where they belonged, she’d done significant-enough damage to their evil operation to have saved some of the women who might have met their fates at their hands. She knew they had only scratched the surface and there were many more battles left to fight.

While she went over to get the new manual, Jeffrey closed the security gates they’d had installed on the windows and in front of the elevator door, locking them each with a heavy clang. They walked together to the new touch pad installed that morning by the elevator. Jeffrey pressed the keys as the manual instructed, waiting for the confirming beeps that would assure him he’d set it right. If compromised, the system would sound an alarm and send a signal to the police, to a private security firm, and to Dax. It was only Jeffrey’s FBI contacts that allowed them access to the sophisticated system, normally reserved for government officials, diplomats, and heads of state.

Lydia looked at the gates with dismay before turning out the lights. They were harsh and ugly in contrast to the warm and beautiful living room with its carefully chosen colors, lighting, and soft, luxuriant materials.

“I feel like an inmate,” she said.

“We’ll paint them.”

“That won’t change what they are or why they’re there.”

“It’s not forever,” he said, walking over to her and touching her face. As he took her hand and led her upstairs, she pushed away the black fingers of despair that tugged at her inside, reaching for the hope that forever was a place they’d find together … all three of them.

Author’s Note

W
hile the circumstances, people, places, and events in this book are entirely a product of my imagination, they do have a basis in reality. My knowledge of Albania, its conflicts and challenges, has been quilted together from extensive research, including news broadcasts, newspaper archives, and several books.

In my research, I obtained a wealth of information from the following Internet resources: the
New York Times
archives (
www.nytimes.com
);
ABCNEWS.com
;
Albanian.com
; BBC News Online (
news.bbc.co.uk
); the Friends of Van Cortlandt Park Web site (
www.vancortlandt.org
); The World Sex Guide (
www.worldsexguide.org
 … for those of you who are interested); and numerous other sites.

Though
The Darkness Gathers
is, indeed, fictitious, Albania and the Balkans in general are clearly in crisis. The International Committee of the Red Cross (
www.helpicrc.org/help
) offers relief to this area and troubled areas around the world and is a good place to start if you are wondering how you might get involved. Furthermore, the trafficking of women and girls into sexual slavery is a very real situation and occurs daily around the globe. The Global Fund for Women (
www.globalfundforwomen.org
) or Amnesty International Women’s Pages (
www2.amnesty.se/wom.nsf
) are both good places to start if you are interested in becoming more involved or informed on women’s rights internationally.

It was not my intention to malign or degrade the Albanian population in this country or anywhere in the world in any respect. All the Albanian characters in this book, good and bad, are entirely fictitious and have absolutely no grounding in reality and were not inspired by any real person.

All mistakes are my own.

Thanks for reading.

Lisa Miscione             
www.lisamiscione.com

Acknowledgments

W
riters are solitary and work in isolation. But no book is completed or published without the support and encouragement of a vital network of people. And I am truly blessed in that regard. I am most profoundly grateful to:

My wonderful husband, Jeffrey Unger, for his tireless reading of drafts, his unflagging enthusiasm and encouragement, and his seemingly endless supply of patience. I am also thankful for his genius in designing and maintaining my Web site and taking my author photographs. And most of all, I am grateful for his love and support in all things. Without him, I would be only half the person that I am.

My literary agent, Elaine Markson, for her wisdom, optimism, patience, and encouragement. And her assistant, Gary Johnson, who offers all those things with his own brand of personality and humor.

Kelley Ragland, my talented and inspiring editor, for her extraordinary ability to see through the flaws of my manuscripts to something better and lead me there. And everyone at St. Martin’s Press, for turning the pages of manuscript into an actual book and getting it out there into the world! And especially the wonderful artists in the art department—their vision puts a face on the body.

My mother and father, Virginia and Joseph Miscione, cocaptains of Team Houston, for their shameless bragging and endless promotion.

My wonderful network of dear friends and family, especially my brother, Joey Miscione, my cousin Frankie Benvenuto, as well as Marion Chartoff, Heather Mikesell, Tara Popick, and Judy Wong, who each offer a crucial and thankfully endless supply of love and support, cheering me through the great days and pulling me through the tough ones.

My friends and neighbors Joan and Carroll Lovett, Marty Donovan, Kimberly Beamer, and JoAnna Siskin, whose day-to-day enthusiasm and support in a thousand different ways help to infuse me with excitement even in those moments when I’m stuck inside my own head.

Special thanks to Pembe Bekiri for her invaluable insight and advice on Albanian culture. She provided a much-appreciated insider’s perspective, offering details that turned out to be priceless.

About the Author

L
isa Unger, writing as Lisa Miscione, is an award-winning
New York Times
,
USA Today
, and international bestselling author. Her novels have been published in more than twenty-six countries around the world. She was born in New Haven, Connecticut (1970), but grew up in the Netherlands, England, and New Jersey. A graduate of the New School for Social Research, Lisa spent many years living and working in New York City. She then left a career in publicity to pursue her dream of becoming a full-time author. She now lives in Florida with her husband and daughter. She is at work on her next novel.

an excerpt from

twice

BY

LISA UNGER, WRITING AS LISA MISCIONE

COMING IN
FEBRUARY 2012

Prologue

I
t was night when he came back. His return was washed in bright moonlight, accompanied by the crackling whispers of branches bending in harsh cold wind. He stood for a while on the edge of the clearing, making himself one with the barren trees and dry leaves beneath his feet. Standing tall and rigid as the black, dead trunks around him, he watched. It stood like an old war criminal, a crumbling shadow of its past grandeur, the stain of its evil like an aura, the echo of its misdeeds like a heartbeat. It lived still. He couldn’t believe that after all this time, it lived. He pulled cold air into his lungs and felt the fear that was alive within him, too. Like the old house, his dread had aged and sagged but would not be defeated by time alone.

He made his way across the once elaborately landscaped and impeccably manicured lawn, now a battlefield of dead grass, weeds, hedges that had grown wild then died from neglect. The branches and thorns pulled at his pant legs like an omen. Everything about the house, even the grand old oak that stood like a sentry beside it, warned him away. But he was a part of that house and it was a part of him. He was all about collecting the lost parts of himself now. It was time.

Memories flickered before his eyes, 8mm film projected on a wall. He could see her dancing and see her smiling, see her running. Her chubby little girl legs, her tiny skirts and little shorts. He could see her blond pigtails, her round blue eyes. As she grew older, grew beautiful, her hair and eyes both darkened, her skin looked and felt like French vanilla ice cream. He could see her in those last moments before everything went bad. He heard her laughter and her screams and both were music to him. His love for her was a ghost pain. Since they had been wrested apart, he felt as though someone had donated his organs to science without waiting for him to die. He lived with a prosthetic heart.