Depart the Darkness Read online

  Elliott stood and clapped him hard on the shoulder.

  “See you around, Dillon,” he said, and he walked away.

  I quickly skimmed over the news of Elliott’s death. I did catch that it happened that night, and that Dillon was scared. I didn’t have a lot of time left though, so I was going for the Cliff Notes version of events.

  Dillon sat at the bar, his eyes bleary and his face haggard. His hands shook as he lifted the glass, but his condition was the result of guilt and fear, not alcohol.

  Other Intersect employees talked solemnly at the nearby tables, too overcome by their friend’s death to banter cheerfully as they ordinarily would.

  Jeff, the guy we met at the wedding fair, was there. He and the others cast glances in Dillon’s direction now and then. Some were more curious than sympathetic, but all were surprised by the depth of emotion he displayed. Emotion, the source of which, they couldn’t possibly fathom.

  Dillon gave up on finding solace, and sought solitude instead. He left the bar, shoulders hunched against the cold, and walked back to his car.

  I moved forward, searching for something more promising.

  Dillon’s heart pounded. His eyes flew open, struggling to see in the darkness. His hands gripped the bed covers, and the rest of him froze at the sound of the familiar ring.

  He was wide awake now.

  Dillon struggled with the lamp and light shone forth, chasing the darkness into the corners of the room and holding it at bay. He looked around frantically, listening.

  At the sound of the ring, he jumped up and put several steps between himself and the bed. Then he knelt and cautiously peered underneath.

  The light of the phone lit the space with each ring.

  Dillon crawled forward. His hand shook as he reached under the bed and picked it up.

  The phone looked cheap. And new. Like all the others. He pressed the answer button.

  “Mr. Graves,” said the voice that was now familiar after many such calls.

  Dillon’s heart pounded, interfering with his hearing and nearly choking him.

  “Did you kill Elliott?” he blurted out.

  “No, Mr. Graves. You did,” was the response.

  “No!” Dillon shouted, panic ridding him of the deference and respect he usually paid to this voice. “I had nothing to do with it!”

  “You killed your friend, Mr. Graves, when you involved him in this.”

  “Involved him?” Dillon exclaimed. “I didn’t! I never said a word about it to him, or anyone else!”

  “You involved him, Mr. Graves, just as you did Mr. Fellows.”

  Dillon pressed his hand to his forehead, and tried to speak calmly.

  “I don’t have the necessary permissions to access the program files you want. Aaron and Elliott did. Aaron doesn’t know anything about this, and I have no idea how Elliott found out. I sure didn’t tell him who you are, I don’t even know. I had no idea he knew anything, until the day he died.”

  “All you need to know, Mr. Graves, is that you will join him if you fail to deliver. Do not mistake your lender’s generosity with the forgiveness of your debt.”

  Dillon hurled a pillow across the room.

  “If I fail to deliver, it’s because you killed Elliott!” he snarled. “I accessed the program files through his account! I can’t very well do that anymore with him dead, can I!”

  “You would do well to control your temper, Mr. Graves,” the man said evenly. “You would do well to locate the means to live up to your end of our agreement. You would do well not to disappoint your lender or to cause him any further annoyance. Otherwise, your position will be filled by someone more deserving, and you will join your friend Elliott.”

  “I’ve already got a guy lined up,” Dillon snapped. “But if you make a habit of murdering my point of access, don’t blame me if your information doesn’t get delivered!”

  “Mr. Graves,” the man said, and laughed softly. “The one thing you can be certain of in life is that if you do not deliver for any reason, you will indeed be the sole recipient of the blame.”

  “Look, if anything happens to this new guy, I’ll have nothing to fall back on until he’s replaced!” Dillon insisted doggedly. “Everyone else has been there too long. If I try using one of their accounts, they’ll catch on! Eventually security’s going to take repeat accusations seriously, and start looking at me. So much for future deliveries, if that happens.”

  “Then I suggest you take better care of this new guy than you did the last two, Mr. Graves,” the man said coldly. “You cannot afford to inconvenience your lender by losing another.”

  “I didn’t lose either of them,” Dillon said in irritation. “One lost his job, and you killed the other! If you weren’t in such a hurry, I could’ve talked to him! I could’ve fixed it!”

  “For your own wellbeing, see to it that there are no further job losses, attempts to blackmail, or problems in need of fixing.”

  “No job losses? I don’t have any control over that,” Dillon said firmly. “It’s not up to me whether or not this guy gets fired for incompetence, or decides to leave and go somewhere else.”

  “Your life depends on the availability of your access point. Take care that you do not lose this one, or you will be replaced. See to it that your access point does not attempt to blackmail your lender, like your unfortunate friend did. Rest assured, in the face of that regrettable event, you and this new guy will both be permanently relieved of duty.”

  “I had nothing to do with that!” Dillon interjected. “And I can’t force this guy to keep working here, if he doesn’t want to! You can’t hold me accountable for what’s beyond my control, and for stuff I don’t know anything about!”

  “Rest assured, that argument will buy you nothing. See that you properly manage your access point and deliver when instructed to do so. You will be compensated generously, in the usual way. Tomorrow at one-thirty in the afternoon, see that the files are available.”

  The conversation ended on that abrupt note, and I was out of time. I prayed for release as I looked at my rings, or where I knew they were anyway, and with a blinding flash of light, the darkness was gone.

  I did like that part. A lot.

  Now that I was used to it, and knew what to expect.

  For Miles, almost no time passed, so he was still kissing me. I didn’t mind that, at all! I was inclined to keep it to myself that I’d been there and was back already.

  “How do you feel?” he asked, brushing aside my bangs so he could look into my eyes.

  “Great,” I said, and pulled him closer again.

  He began to laugh, and ruined my attempt to get back to kissing him. He thought something was awfully funny, because he was still laughing.

  “The mood is dying with laughter,” I pointed out. I was about to laugh too though, because for some reason, the right kind of laughter always draws more to it. And Miles has the right kind.

  “Sorry,” he smiled. “What I meant is, how was your truth gathering? But I’m glad to see it didn’t take anything out of you this time. Now I’m wondering why. What kind of truth were you gathering?”

  I laughed at his teasing, and slapped his shoulder lightly.

  “It didn’t drain me because there was no darkness, for your information. Not the kind I see, anyway.”

  “Good. I’m glad. The thought of what several days of it would do to you, even broken into increments, had me concerned.”

  “You needn’t be. The worst I’ll be is bored. I couldn’t go through everything obviously, not in four hours. But I did glimpse all of the truths I gained during the interview. Enough to know there’s no darkness.”

  “Did you find anything that we can use to gain proof of his guilt?”

  “No,” I said, disappointment filling me. “I learned things we didn’t know before, but nothing like that.”

  Miles looked disappointed too, and sympathetic.

  “Even if there’s nothing… we’ll figure some
thing out.”

  “I know,” I said glumly. “And maybe I will find something. There’s a lot to go over with a fine tooth comb.”

  “Your specialty is truth. If the truth isn’t there, then…” Miles ran his hand through his hair and his forehead creased faintly.

  I knew what he was thinking.

  Dillon said there was no proof.

  He was telling the truth.

  There is no proof.

  Miles knew I was thinking the same thing.

  “Just because there is no proof now, doesn’t mean there won’t be,” he encouraged me. “That’s what you’re looking for. Remember that, and don’t let discouragement burden you. Maybe there’s someone, somewhere, who knows something. You can get the truth from them, and…”

  There is no proof.

  Miles came to the same conclusion, I saw it in his hazel eyes.

  “It’ll be alright,” he reassured me. “We’ll figure it out. We always do, and it always is.”

  I couldn’t help sighing.

  “For two people who are so powerful in one way or another, I feel so powerless.”

  “It’s not that we’re powerful,” Miles reminded me. “But we were granted these abilities, and there’s purpose behind that. So let’s trust that we’ll also be granted the opportunity to use our abilities to exonerate Phillip and Aaron.”

  I didn’t realize I was tense, until his words melted it away.

  “Listening to you always makes me feel better,” I informed him.

  “Good,” he smiled. “Now do you want to talk about what you learned, while you were away?”

  “Not particularly,” I replied, wrapping my arm around his neck as he pulled me closer. “Do you want to hear about it?”

  “Yes,” he said. I raised an eyebrow, and he smiled. “Tomorrow.”

  The look in his eyes easily vanquished my feeble attempt at laughter. I put that off for later, along with the truth that held no proof, and melted instead.

  Chapter 21

  Considering the nature of our conversation and the new waiter in training at Elizabeth’s the next morning, our friends held in their questions for later.

  Later, meaning exactly the amount of time it took to get from our private dining room to our suite, without knocking over a guest.

  Xander argued briefly that the stairs would be faster than the elevator. John pointed out that if I went at Xander’s pace, I’d be out of breath for the rest of the morning and he’d have to wait even longer. I said, hey! I’m in better shape than that! Miles asked, do you want to take the stairs? Consider which side you want to argue.

  I chose weak and out of shape.

  Jenny suggested Xander take the stairs and work off some of his enthusiasm, and we all laughed. He said, as if that’d make any difference.

  Then the elevator came. Soon, if not soon enough, we were in the sitting room, door bolted, and the wait was over.

  “Dillon lost a gamble and owed someone a lot of money,” I told them. “Rather than collect from him, that debt was bought by whoever it is that wants the classified data from the medical research project at Intersect.”

  “And who is that?” John asked.

  “Dillon doesn’t know, so neither do I. So his debt got bought off, not forgiven. A few days later, he gets a call on a phone left in his car. It was new, inexpensive, pay as you go, and meant to be disposable. A new phone was used each time they communicated, and communication ran one way.”

  “So he found a new phone in his car whenever this guy wanted something?” Xander asked.

  “Inside his car, underneath his bed, on top of the refrigerator, somehow one ended up in his grocery cart once. He didn’t see who put it there though, so neither did I.”

  “Do you remember who was around him?” Annette asked.

  “Yes. I can go back and see the truth play out again and memorize every face he saw. But, that’s a lot of faces. The store was crowded.”

  “That wouldn’t give you any names, either,” Miles finished for me. “So go ahead, each time this person wanted information, he left Dillon a new phone.”

  “Yes. At first Dillon said he couldn’t access the information wanted by this guy, because he isn’t part of that project. He was told to find a way, or pay his debt with his life.”

  “Are you serious?” Annette exclaimed, and the rest of our friends turned varying shades of stunned and alarmed.

  “Yeah, I’m serious. That’s what the guy said. So, Dillon used Aaron to do it.”

  “Why not go to security?” John asked. “That’s what he was supposed to do, and he knew that.”

  “You’re telling the truth, but how do you know?” I wondered.

  “Because Dillon has top secret clearance,” John said. “His father is the director of the defense contracting firm he works for. He knew.”

  “All he had as evidence was a cheap phone,” Miles pointed out. “He didn’t know who it was that paid off his debt to the loan shark. He couldn’t prove they threatened to kill him if he didn’t provide classified materials.”

  “Security would be more concerned with protecting the program files, than they would him,” John acknowledged.

  “It’d be too late by the time they were sure he needed protecting,” Xander agreed.

  “The witness protection program isn’t designed for this sort of thing,” Annette said.

  “His concern was all about saving his own neck,” I added. “Not about what was right. He had until the next day at two o’ clock, to decide what to do. He decided to use Aaron to expose the files. He thought if he could get Aaron to actually commit a serious infraction, he’d be less likely to go to security if he found out about the audit logs.”

  “Dillon changed the audit logs?” John asked in surprise.

  “Yes,” I confirmed. “I know, I know. It’s extremely unlikely. But, it’s also the truth.”

  John leaned back in his seat, now lost in thought. He needed to process that. The rest of us didn’t know enough to find it hard to accept, so we kept going.

  “Anyway, so Aaron was inadvertently guilty of one thing, and framed for a lot of others. He went to security, and you know what happened after that.”

  “Alright, so moving on to Elliott,” Xander said, his eyes intensely focused now.

  “Not quite yet,” I replied. “I haven’t unlocked the actual event, but at some point, Dillon started receiving compensation for his compliance, in the form of insider trading tips.”

  “But yet there’s nothing there to prove he’s guilty of a crime,” Miles stated, his eyebrows knitting as he wondered why.

  “He was given tips that benefited him, but also tips that would cause loss, just enough to throw anyone off. He wasn’t given money, either. It was his own money he used to invest. When Jackson gets back to us with his exhaustive search of Dillon’s financial status, there aren’t likely to be any red flags. Dillon looks like a day trader with good instincts, or good luck. And the tips are for a variety of companies, and not under the umbrella of just one. So there’s nothing suspicious there. But somehow Elliott figured it out. He also figured out who was behind this. Whoever it is, he’s got a lot of money and is obviously powerful. Elliott tried to blackmail the guy. He wanted more than insider trading tips, especially since he was set up to take the fall if security ever found out.”

  “This whole thing is awful,” Jenny said, covering her eyes.

  “Yeah, it is,” I agreed.

  “Elliott figured out who the mastermind is,” Miles pointed out. “Any idea how he did that?”

  “None,” I was sad to report. “Elliott told Dillon what he discovered and that he was meeting the guy after work. He offered to let Dillon in on it, and Dillon refused. Elliott didn’t give details, and he died that night.”

  “That’s why Dillon was so shook up about it,” Annette said.

  “It was proof of just how dangerous this guy is,” I agreed.

  “Dillon told Phillip this guy would go af
ter his family if he went to security,” Miles said, prompting me to elaborate on that.

  “Yes, but unless I haven’t unlocked it yet, Dillon was never told that. What he was told, is that he better not lose another access point. If Phillip left Intersect or tried to blackmail the guy, Dillon would be held responsible. He would die like Elliott. Harm was never threatened against Dillon’s parents, or Phillip and his family. Unless Phillip tried blackmailing the guy like Elliott. If he did that, then he would come to the same end.”

  “What about abductions?” Miles asked.

  “I haven’t found any truth to support that,” I replied.

  “Dillon probably made it up,” Annette surmised.

  “What better way to scare him into compliance,” Jenny said, shaking her head in disgust at the whole situation.

  “Uh, you know, Phillip quit Intersect,” Xander pointed out. “Last Friday was his last day.”

  We sat mulling that over.

  “I call Prime Directive,” Xander said, and we all looked at him. He looked back. “You know, non-interference. Let events take their course.”

  Jenny gave him a shocked look.

  John and Annette considered that.

  Miles rubbed his forehead, a sure sign he was either trying not to laugh at something I said, or he was stressed. I didn’t say anything funny, so I tucked my knees under me to make myself taller, and massaged his shoulders.

  We all waited.

  “We… don’t harbor criminals,” Miles said at last. “We provide a safe haven to those who are innocent.”

  “Taking him on, would be like letting someone into heaven that belongs in—Ow!” Xander said, as Jenny pinched him. “I was going to say that other place!”

  “Phoenix,” I said.

  “That!” he declared. “Yeesh, woman, leave me black and blue over it…”

  Jenny rolled her eyes and rubbed his arm, which was hardly black and blue. He worked out as much as Miles did. Pinching him was probably like trying to pinch a rock. She’d be lucky if she didn’t get a broken nail for her troubles.

  “I think I broke a nail,” she muttered, and I almost laughed. But this was a serious matter, so I held it in.