The Darkness Beyond Read online

  It was now or never because they wouldn’t stay holed up in that office forever. Reggie didn’t hesitate, bolting through the narrow opening—and right into two long-haired men dressed in matching black costumes. There was no car in sight, so where had they come from? Not that it mattered. Ordinarily two such men wouldn’t be her first choice of rescuers, but right now she couldn’t afford to be picky.

  “Please, you’ve got to help me! I’ve been kidnapped!”

  The taller one looked at his companion with a freaky smile. “She must be the one they promised us.”

  She didn’t need to hear another word, and took off running. They caught up within only a few steps. The second man latched on to Reggie by the hair and dragged her back the way they’d come. As they pulled her inside the warehouse, she could hear the men from upstairs pounding down the stairs. Worse and worse.

  The two men in black waited for the others to join them. The taller one released her but stayed within grabbing distance. He studied her, his head cocked to one side.

  “She’s a bit on the small side, but I suppose we cannot complain. At least she’s feisty. I like that in my women.”

  When his companion laughed, Reggie’s last hope died.

  Cody prowled the parking lot outside his apartment building. The seconds were ticking down. If that rat bastard D.J. didn’t show up in the next five minutes, Cody was going to make good on his threat to call the police. He just wished he knew if that would further jeopardize Reggie’s chances of survival.

  What the fuck had she gotten herself into? D.J. better offer up some straight answers, and quickly. He stopped at the street corner and scanned in all four directions. No sign of that big mother truck yet. Where was he? If D.J. didn’t remember where Cody lived, all he had to do was call for directions. The man had his number.

  One more lap and that would be it. Cody started back around the lot, hoping against hope that this would be his last trip. He’d gone about halfway when his cell finally rang. When he saw the number, he cursed. It wasn’t D.J., but Mr. DeLuca. What did the boss want on a Sunday? Cody wasn’t scheduled to work until Tuesday afternoon.

  He cleared his throat and answered. “What’s up, boss?”

  “Sorry to bother you on your day off, Cody, but I was wondering if you’d heard from Reggie. I left her a message yesterday, and it’s not like her to not respond.”

  How worried was he? It was hard to judge. The temptation to confess all was almost overwhelming. Mr. DeLuca was a stand-up guy, and Cody had far more reasons to trust him than he did D.J. Before he could cave completely, though, he heard the rumble of a loud engine coming toward him. Seeing D.J. pulling into the parking lot bolstered Cody’s determination to follow Reggie’s instructions.

  “No, sir, I haven’t seen her since yesterday morning when the two of us went shopping together. Reggie didn’t mention any specific plans for today, but she had a friend from out of town show up unexpectedly. Maybe they took off for the weekend.”

  He wasn’t exactly lying, but he was sure skirting close to the far edge of the truth. At least Mr. DeLuca seemed to buy it. He definitely sounded relieved when he spoke again.

  “Okay, good. That probably explains it. I just wanted to make sure she hadn’t run into problems with the case she’s been working on. Enjoy what’s left of your weekend, Cody.”

  “I will, sir. You do the same.”

  He hung up, headed straight for D.J.’s truck, and climbed in. The man gave the cell phone a pointed look.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any chance that was Reggie calling.”

  Cody shook his head as he fastened his seat belt. “I wish. It was our boss asking if I’d heard from her. Evidently he left her a message yesterday, but she didn’t call him back.”

  D.J. was already pulling back out onto the street. “What did you tell him?”

  God, Cody hoped he’d done the right thing. “I said she had a friend from out of town show up with no warning.”

  “Quick thinking. Sticking close to the truth is always best. We can’t keep her disappearance quiet indefinitely, but you bought us some time.”

  As if sensing Cody’s doubt, D.J. shot him a quick look when he pulled up to the stop sign down the block. “I know this is hard for you, Cody, and I promise to tell you everything I can. But if my suspicions are correct, believe me when I say that the regular authorities aren’t equipped to do anything to help Reggie.”

  Okay, that sounded bad. “Are you thinking terrorists? Why would they go after someone like Reggie?”

  D.J. didn’t answer right away. When he did, he was obviously hedging his bets. “Not terrorists, at least not any you would’ve heard of. I’m thinking Reggie managed to stir up a hornets’ nest when she poked that cute little nose of hers where it didn’t belong. I tried to warn her, but I suspect she wrote the book on stubborn.”

  Cody had been slouched in the corner, but he jerked upright and slapped his forehead. “Why didn’t I think of that? I know who this must be. That bastard. And here I was ready to blame Big Ed.”

  D.J. shot him a puzzled look. “What bastard? And who the hell is Big Ed?”

  “Big Ed works with the two of us.” Cody frowned. “Do you even know what Reggie does for a living?”

  The jerk actually grinned. “Yeah, I know. She hunts down hackers. I assume you do, too.”

  “Yeah, well, Big Ed used to be the baddest of the bad when it came to hunting down the hackers our clients were having problems with. Reggie took over as top gun the minute she joined the company. There’s only been one month since when she didn’t top the list.”

  “I take it this Big Ed has a problem with that.”

  Cody nodded. “Yeah, he’d been giving her a hard time, but he eventually learned not to mess with Reggie.” The memory still made him smile. “He harassed her one time too many.”

  D.J. clearly wasn’t amused though. “What happened?”

  “He said something under his breath and touched more than her shoulder, if you get my drift. Reggie rolled her chair over his foot and then elbowed him in his most prized possessions. Poor bastard was walking funny for hours.

  “Not only that, but our boss saw the whole thing. He told Ed in front of everybody that he’d be looking for a new job if he tried anything like that again.”

  “He should’ve been kicked to the curb right then,” D.J. snarled. His eyes were blazing when he asked, “Why don’t you think he’s the one behind this?”

  “A couple of reasons. First of all, Ed’s basically a coward. The man was humiliated in front of the office, but he backed down to our boss, who is half his size. More important, Reggie would never agree to meet the man outside work. She’s smarter than that.”

  “We’ll still check him out,” D.J. said, nodding. “But who’s the other guy you think might be involved?”

  “Mr. DeLuca, our boss, gave Reggie a special project to work on a few days ago. She’s supposed to be hunting down a hacker who’s practically a legend. Reggie has been pretty secretive about the case, but I think she might have found him. She’s sure been acting funny for the past few days.”

  Cody paused as they drove into Reggie’s parking lot. He’d been hoping that her apartment lights would be on and that this would all have been one big misunderstanding. No such luck. Feeling a bit sick, he finished his story.

  “She was hunting the Knightwalker . . . and I think the bastard took her.”

  Okay, it was hard not to laugh. The situation was so not funny, but the kid had lapsed into melodrama. At least D.J. could reassure Cody that Reggie wasn’t in the clutches of the Knightwalker. He really wished she was.

  He’d love to be the focus of all that intense energy she carried around with her, but now wasn’t the time for that kind of thinking. He parked the truck and walked around to look Cody straight in the eye, hoping the kid would believe what he was about to tell him.

  “It’s good that you’re thinking about possibilities, but I know for a fact tha
t the Knightwalker doesn’t have her.”

  Cody gave him a skeptical look. “And how could you possibly know something like that? If she didn’t tell me anything about what she’s found, she sure wouldn’t tell you.”

  “I don’t doubt that she trusts you more than she does me, but I have one thing going for me that you don’t.”

  He clapped his hand down on Cody’s shoulder. “She’s actually been chasing the Knightwalker for months, not just the past few days, and I’m guessing she was doing so just for the hell of it. You’re a hacker yourself. You know how much we love a challenge.”

  Cody nodded and frowned. “Yeah.”

  “So since she first found the Knightwalker, she’s been sending him cryptic little e-mails just to be a pain in the ass. And being the kind of guy not to take that lying down, he turned the tables and showed up at her door.”

  “When? Why didn’t she say something?”

  D.J. offered Cody his best shark grin. “Because you were standing right there when he came knocking, or I should say, when I came knocking.”

  It didn’t take the kid long to do the math. He went from puzzled to full-out pissed off between one second and the next.

  “You bastard! Where is she?” Cody shrugged off D.J.’s hand and then took a swing straight at the man’s jaw.

  Rather than duck, D.J. let the blow connect and his head snapped back hard. Damn, Cody packed quite a punch, but the kid needed to burn off some of his anger and worry about his friend before he could start thinking straight again.

  D.J. rubbed his jaw. “Feel better?”

  Cody looked at him as if he was crazy, but then nodded as he gingerly flexed his hand. D.J. wasn’t the only one hurting from the punch. That seemed only fair.

  “Let’s get inside where we can talk without drawing any more attention to ourselves.”

  Cody started across the parking lot, but then stopped. “We don’t have a key.”

  “Trust me. That’ll slow us down, but it won’t stop us.” D.J. patted the pack of tools he’d stuck in his shirt pocket.

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Cool.”

  Ten minutes later they were inside Reggie’s apartment. This time D.J. wouldn’t hesitate to search her bedroom. In fact, he’d turn the whole damn place inside out if that’s what it took. As much as he’d prefer to protect the woman’s delicate sensibilities, this wasn’t the time. They couldn’t afford to leave any possible clue undiscovered, not with her life at stake.

  “You start in the kitchen. I’ll start in back. Look for anything out of place, any sign that she didn’t leave of her own accord.”

  Cody stayed right where he was. D.J. figured he knew what was coming and waited for it.

  “So, you’re the Knightwalker.”

  “Yep, I am. Your friend Reggie is the only one who’s ever managed to track me down. Like I said before, she’s been getting through all my defenses and leaving me messages for a couple of months. Her avatar has been able to track mine even when I changed it.”

  He let his admiration for Reggie show. “I couldn’t resist tracking her down. Hardest bit of hacking I’ve ever done. She’s damn good.”

  The kid started going through the kitchen drawers. “But if you’re not responsible for Reggie disappearing, then we’re back to Big Ed again.”

  Here came the part where D.J. had to do some dancing around the truth. “Not exactly. I work for an organization that values its privacy. She managed to get into some secret files that might have set off an alarm. If so, they may have come after her.”

  Cody pulled a stack of papers out of the kitchen drawer. “Could this have anything to do with it?”

  Son of a bitch, he knew he should’ve taken the hard copy of Brenna’s Paladin history. “Yeah, it could. I’ll take those.”

  D.J. held out his hand for the papers, waiting patiently to see if Cody gave in and surrendered them.

  “What’s in them?” he asked, but his eyes shifted down and to the left.

  Damn it, had the kid read the papers, too? That would be another clusterfuck in the making.

  “Something you don’t want to know about. Not unless you want the same thing to happen to you. Are you hearing me?”

  Cody nodded as he finally offered them up. “There’s nothing else in the kitchen that’s out of place.”

  “Okay, you boot up her computer while I do a quick check of her bedroom and the bathroom. I’ll be right back.”

  He stopped long enough to run the papers through the shredder in the corner just in case the kid hadn’t already read through the report. It used up some valuable time, but D.J. couldn’t risk Cody letting his curiosity get the better of him.

  The bathroom looked the same as it had the day before, and her bedroom was pretty much what he’d expected. If he’d had to choose two words to describe her most private lair, he would pick “colorful” and “comfortable.” The bed was made and all her clothes were either neatly put away or in the hamper.

  The only bit of clutter was the haphazard stack of books on the bedside table. He paused long enough to check out her taste in reading material. Yep, just as he expected—she was a closet romantic. It went along with her wearing that scrap of black lace underneath her oversize T-shirts and jeans.

  He studied the covers on the books. They all showed some heavily muscled guy carrying a sword or a gun. One model even had a double-bladed ax much like the one D.J. often fought with.

  What did she think of the Paladins? He’d bet she found their history to be wildly exciting. Too bad the reality was anything but. It was hard to romanticize your own life, especially when it involved a heavy dose of killing on a regular basis.

  Back to the problem at hand. There was nothing more to be learned from the apartment itself. He headed back to the living room to see if Cody had managed to get into Reggie’s computer files.

  “Any luck?”

  The young hacker looked back over his shoulder with a frustrated frown. “Not so far. The passwords I wasn’t supposed to know have all been changed.”

  No surprise there. If she was like D.J., once he’d made direct contact, she would’ve gone through her entire system and changed all her settings.

  “Let me try.”

  Cody stayed right where he was. “She won’t like you rooting around in her files. She’d be mad at me, but in your case, she’d go ballistic. You might want to remember what she did to Big Ed. The woman’s got a temper when she’s provoked. Besides, if our boss finds out, she and I will both be looking for work.”

  “If your boss values the company’s security more than he values his employees, he doesn’t deserve either of you.”

  Cody grimaced. “Easy for you to say. I’ve got tuition due in a couple of weeks. I’m finally closing in on my degree and can’t afford to blow it now.”

  D.J. understood exactly where the kid was coming from. He’d struggled to make it through college on his own, too. “Don’t sweat it. I have contacts in the business. If this all goes to hell, I’ll make sure you have any kind of job you want.”

  He would, too. In fact, the Regents could always use another resident hacker on the payroll.

  “Now get out of my way.”

  Cody vacated the chair. “I’m going to watch over your shoulder.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way. First things first though. I’m going to see if I can track her through the GPS chip in her cell phone.”

  No dice, but that didn’t surprise him. If the bastards who’d taken her had a brain cell functioning, disabling her phone would’ve been one of the first things they’d done. Still, he’d continue to monitor the situation just in case.

  Now on to her files.

  After that, the only sound in the apartment was the pounding of computer keys and the ticking of the clock.

  Chapter 8

  It took D.J. the better part of an hour to crack Reggie’s firewalls. He leaned back in the chair and stared at the screen. B
efore going any further, he needed to think, which meant he needed to be up and moving. He instinctively grabbed one of Reggie’s stress toys and started working it hard as he paced the floor.

  Cody had given up staring over D.J.’s shoulder after the first half hour. Now he was sprawled on the sofa playing a computer game, losing himself in a cyberworld to avoid thinking about what might be happening to Reggie.

  D.J. reached for his wallet and pulled out two twenties. “Cody, do me a favor. We’re both running on empty here. Would you mind picking up something for us to eat?”

  He dropped the money and his truck keys on the coffee table. “I’m not picky. Get whatever you like, but get double what you normally order.”

  The kid eyed the money. “I can buy my own food.”

  D.J. recognized pride when he saw it, so he lied. “Don’t sweat it. It’s a business expense for me.”

  He wasn’t sure if Cody believed him, but at least he pocketed the cash. Not the keys though. “There’s a great deli on the next block over. I’ll get sandwiches and a couple salads. Dessert, too, if you want.”

  “Sounds good.”

  As soon as Cody was out the door, D.J. returned to the computer to study the files he’d uncovered. Just as he’d feared, Reggie had triggered an alarm at the Regents’ headquarters. But as far as he could tell, they’d mounted no defense against the incursion. There were definite protocols in place for dealing with this kind of situation, but none of them had been activated.

  True, they might be trying to hide their actions, but he’d left a back door or two into their security programs when he and Cullen designed them. After coming at the problem from every possible direction, he couldn’t find any sign that they were officially hunting Reggie.

  That left an unofficial, off-the-books response, a much scarier proposition. If he’d had any doubts that that was what was happening, they’d been dashed when he finally got into Reggie’s personal e-mail. Sure enough, someone had dangled a promise of information about the Paladins and Regents in front of her, and she’d obviously taken the bait.