Keith Hertzinger was, indeed, a CIA operative. It was he who had shot down Cal’s plane on Whitman’s orders. Whitman claimed not to know whether he was alive or dead, but Cal was as certain as it was possible to be that Hertzinger was dead. Along with Gina, Hertzinger would have been one of the two survivors of the horror that had befallen the research party on Attu, and as such he would have been subjected to some pretty severe questioning as soon as the authorities had shown up to investigate. Whitman couldn’t have risked that, because Hertzinger knew too much about Whitman’s involvement in what had gone down. The simple solution: kill Hertzinger. Which, if Hertzinger was still alive at the time of Cal and Gina’s escape, Cal was certain Whitman had done before leaving Attu.
Ezra had been induced to fall in with Whitman’s plan when Whitman had convinced him that the US government had made a deal to sell Rudy and his knowledge to a valued ally. Whitman had told Ezra that Cal wasn’t in the loop on the new deal because he supposedly had some issues with that ally, a Middle Eastern government that Ezra knew Cal did, indeed, mistrust, and that, therefore, Cal couldn’t be counted on to cooperate.
“We done here?” Cal asked Agents Brady and Rincon, who’d taken the lead on the interrogation, when Whitman quit talking at last.
Brady nodded. “Yeah, we’re done.”
Rincon and another agent were already pulling Whitman to his feet, getting ready to handcuff him and cart him off to wherever it was they kept traitors until he could be picked up by higher authorities and taken away.
Cal stepped up to Whitman, looked him in the eye, and slammed his fist into Whitman’s face. He felt the crunch of bone with a rush of savage satisfaction. Blood spurted from Whitman’s nose. Reeling back with a cry, Whitman fell to the ground.
“That was for Ezra,” Cal told him, then shook off the agents who’d leaped to grab him and walked away.
Word came down from D632 early the next morning: the hole in the software that allowed the outside takeover of Flight 155 and other commercial airliners had been plugged. It was a simple fix, and the best part was, the patch included a worm that, if anyone tried to do such a thing again, would allow investigators to trace the attempt back to its source.
The perpetrators would be identified, and neutralized.
And so the day was saved.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
A little more than two weeks later, Gina’s doorbell rang.
She was in her condo in sunny California, it was seven o’clock on a Saturday night, and she had a date.
With Cal.
It was their first. Kind of.
The chic little black dress she wore with diamond studs and killer heels was slim-fitting, short, and extremely becoming. It had been chosen expressly to wow the man on the other side of the door.
Whom she hadn’t seen since she’d left Alaska, when he’d put her on a commercial flight to California. He’d then flown off to DC, where he’d been “requested” to appear by the CIA to give his account of Whitman’s perfidy.
In the meantime, they’d talked on the phone. A lot. He’d flown in this afternoon, and tonight he was taking her to dinner.
Her pulse fluttered as she pulled open the door.
He stood there in her hallway, smiling at her. Tall, dark, and dangerous.
He was all of those, and also so handsome that her heart beat faster just from looking at him.
He wore an expensive-looking dark gray suit and was holding a big bunch of red roses.
“Hi,” he said, and stepped into her apartment as he handed them over.
She smiled at him as she took them and closed the door. “Thank you.”
“Hey, I promised you flowers and dinner. I always keep my promises.”
“Just like you always pay your debts?”
He grinned at her, clearly remembering, as she was, exactly how he’d “paid his debt” to her. “Just like that, yeah.”
Then he bent his head and kissed her.
And the heat of it, the instant sizzle, the I’m-melting-into-a-little-puddle-on-my-floor-and-I-wouldn’t-have-it-any-other-way impact of it, totally blew her away.
As she went up on tiptoe and twined one arm around his neck—the other was curved around his roses—she felt as if a whole garden of flowers were springing to life in her heart.
She was happy.
She kissed him back like he was the best thing that had ever happened to her, like he was exactly what she had always wanted.
This, she thought, dizzy with the promise of it, is me with you.
Acknowledgments
To make a book requires more than just a writer: it requires a team. I want to thank Lauren McKenna, editor extraordinaire; Elana Cohen, her fearless assistant; Louise Burke, our leader; and the whole incredible group at Gallery Books.
Karen Robards is the author of more than forty books, including the romantic thrillers Justice, Sleepwalker, Shiver, and Hunted, and many historical romances. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with her family.
FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR: authors.simonandschuster.com/Karen-Robards
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THE BANNING SISTERS TRILOGY
Shameless
Irresistible
Scandalous
OTHER TITLES BY KAREN ROBARDS
Hush
The Last Time I Saw Her
Hunted
Her Last Whisper
Shiver
The Last Kiss Goodbye
Sleepwalker
The Last Victim
Justice
Shattered
Pursuit
Obsession
Vanished
Superstition
Bait
Beachcomber
Whispers at Midnight
To Trust a Stranger
Paradise County
Ghost Moon
The Midnight Hour
The Senator’s Wife
Heartbreaker
Hunter’s Moon
Walking After Midnight
Maggy’s Child
One Summer
Nobody’s Angel
This Side of Heaven
Dark of the Moon
We hope you enjoyed reading this Gallery Books eBook.
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Gallery Books
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Karen Robards
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Gallery Books hardcover edition March 2016
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Interior design by Jaime Putorti
Jacket design by Lisa Litwack
Jacket image © Coffee and Milk/Getty Images
Author photograph by Brian Velenchenko
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Robards, Karen, author.
Title: Darkness / Karen Robards.
Description: First Gallery Books hardcover edition. | New York : Gallery Books, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016000318 (print) | LCCN 2016004507 (ebook) | ISBN 9781476766591 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781476766638 (ebook)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Romance / Suspense. | FICTION / Romance / Contemporary. | FICTION / Romance / General. | GSAFD: Romantic suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3568.O196 D43 2016 (print) | LCC PS3568.O196 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016000318
ISBN 978-1-4767-6659-1
ISBN 978-1-4767-6663-8 (ebook)