CHAPTER FIVE
Deacon ran the three miles through the tunnel, ignoring how the walls closed in on him. How his lungs tightened and fear crept in like a shroud of blackness, making him light-headed. He focused on his breathing—in and out—in and out—and not on how his legs felt like jelly or how his heart pounded painfully in his chest.
He tortured himself the same way every day. Three miles underground until he reached the end and used the ladder to climb out, and then lie flat on his back as he gulped in breaths of fresh air. The cool mud seeped into his clothes and the rain chilled his overheated flesh. His eyes were sensitive to the daylight, so he kept his eyes closed.
They owned the abandoned lake property, and there was no danger of others seeing him there. So he lay there and let the seconds tick down in his head while his heartbeat slowed and the blackness ebbed away.
He allowed himself exactly four minutes to lie there before dropping back into the tunnel and starting the three-mile trek back to the house. Maybe someday he’d be able to make it in each direction without having to stop and remind himself he wasn’t dying. He’d made a lot of progress in two years. But there were some things—some horrors—that stuck with a man forever. And the day he died and rose again was his perpetual nightmare.
The last mile was always the hardest, when he was so close to the end but the urge to quit rose up inside of him. By the time he reached the door and coded himself back into the carriage house, he’d broken out in a cold sweat and his hands were shaking. But they weren’t shaking as bad as they had been the day before. Or the day before that.
A cold blast of air hit him when he entered the kitchen and Axel was sitting at the table, his iPad in his hands and a cup of coffee within arm’s reach. He quickly blanked the screen when he saw Deacon, but Deacon pretended like he didn’t see it and went to the fridge for a bottle of water, guzzling it down in one long gulp.
The kitchen was large and built family-style, though it was rare for all of them to be in it at the same time. They were all solitary by nature, and had their own habits and ways of doing things. But he’d lived in worse places, and no one could say that Eve Winter didn’t provide for the men who owed her servitude.
The kitchen was bright and airy and extremely modern, which Deacon didn’t particularly care for, but it was more than functional. The floor was big slabs of stained concrete and the walls were a horizontal wood paneling. The appliances were stainless steel and oversized, and every dish in the cabinet was white. Once a week several boxes were delivered that contained groceries for the week. They all foraged for themselves since no one was much good in the kitchen, and Tess was even worse, so there was no use trying to bum a meal off her.
The kitchen was in the back corner of the house and looked out onto a courtyard garden protected by an eight-foot stone privacy fence. There was a fountain and a couple of benches hidden between shrubs and flowering bushes, and more often than not it was the most likely place to find Axel at the end of the day, just as the sun was going down.
Of all his brothers, Axel was the one he was closest to. But he didn’t know how his friend did it. How he managed to wake up every morning and get out of bed—put one foot in front of the other—knowing his wife was a thousand miles away, going on with her life under the assumption that her husband was dead. Axel had watched her grieve. He still watched her grieve. And there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. He was hanging on by a thread, and one day it would snap.
The stakes were too high for Gravediggers. They were dead men. Their lives belonged to Neptune and the talking heads who were playing a game of chess with real lives—at least they belonged to them for the ten years they’d signed on for servitude. Or until they died for real. But you didn’t sign your name to that contract without understanding the ramifications of what happened if it was discovered that you weren’t as dead as the rest of the world seemed to think you were. That was why it was so important to stay away from anyone in their former lives. The second their true identity became known, not only their lives became forfeit, but the lives of their family as well.
So Axel watched the woman he loved from a distance, using satellite imagery and the surveillance cameras that he’d had installed. He’d watched her grieve with such intensity that the child she’d carried hadn’t been able to withstand the stress on her body. And he watched her still, as she tried to put the broken pieces of her life back together. Axel wasn’t a man of many words. He did the job, and did it well. But there was a loathing rage inside him that bubbled just beneath the calm surface. And Deacon couldn’t blame him one bit if he decided to erupt one day.
“How’s the new guy?” Deacon asked.
“About how you’d imagine. It never gets easier. Bringing them in and watching them, knowing what they’re going through.”
“On a scale of one to ten, how pissed is he?”
“About a fifteen, but he’s hiding it well. He’s a dangerous son of a bitch. You read his file?”
“Yeah, I read it. And he’ll be a hell of an asset. If he doesn’t try to kill me. Eve’s not very good about the transition once she has their signature on the contract. All of a sudden you’re surrounded by men who hold you down and inject you with whatever the hell that stuff is.”
“Hurts like a bitch,” Axel said. “Like molten lead going through your veins. You can actually feel yourself dying. Feel your heart slowing, even though your brain is working just fine.”
“Yeah, she doesn’t explain that part to you,” Deacon agreed. “Now I have to go convince this guy we’re not actually here to harm him, and hope like hell I don’t have to fight him. I’m getting too old for this shit.”
“And you might lose, mate,” Axel said, grinning. “He’s fucking Kidon Mossad.”
“Thank you,” Deacon said dryly. “That’s very helpful.”
“Hey, mate, that’s why you’re the team leader,” Axel said, saluting him with two fingers.
“I’ll give him another thirty to cool off while I take a shower.”
“Good luck.”
Deacon tossed his water in the trash, took the stairs to the second floor, and walked to his suite of rooms. Once the new guy was acclimated, he’d take the rooms across the hall from him. Axel and Colin lived up on the third floor. All four suites were identical to each other, but Deacon’s was larger since he’d been the first.
His heart rate had finally slowed and the paralyzing fear had ebbed. He hated the weakness—a weakness brought on by what Eve had put him through when he’d been reborn as a Gravedigger. The serum had still been in development when it had been tested on him, and he hadn’t had the luxury of coming back to life in a room aboveground where oxygen had been readily available. He’d woken up trapped in a seven- by two-foot box, buried six feet underground.
He’d have preferred a real death.
When they finally dug him out of the ground, he’d been more animal than man. Fear like nothing he’d ever experienced before had seized him as he’d clawed and pushed at the sides of his cage, his every breath growing more shallow.
He shook himself from the memory and stripped out of his clothes, and then turned on the shower. While it heated, he took a moment to shave. He’d barely nuzzled Tess’s neck that morning, but when he’d stepped back he could see the marks from his beard. And he couldn’t say it displeased him to see them there, especially with the sheriff knocking at the door.
Cal Dougherty would’ve had to be an idiot not to notice, and Dougherty wasn’t an idiot. Deacon had run a thorough check on the sheriff when they’d first set up headquarters, and Cal was so overqualified for his job it was laughable. But the sheriff had secrets he wanted to keep, and Deacon was more than happy to let him keep them. Until it was no longer convenient.
What Deacon didn’t appreciate was Cal’s interest in Tess. He’d sniffed around for the last couple of years, but fortunately Tess was pretty oblivious when it came to men noticing her. That was one of the things he liked about her. She had no idea of her appeal to the opposite sex, and she seemed to cloak herself with an invisible sign that read “Keep Away.”
That fiancé of hers had done her a favor by calling off the wedding, and Tess hadn’t seemed to notice men even existed since then. Until that day he’d almost kissed her in the kitchen. She’d most definitely noticed him then, and he’d almost laughed at the surprise that had come into her eyes at the realization that he was very male and very interested. Fortunately for both of them, they’d been interrupted before things could go any further.
He’d wanted her to wake up. To see him as a man. But he hadn’t thought things through on what he’d do when she finally did. They had rules as Gravediggers, and it wasn’t a job conducive to relationships. Sex, yes. But relationships, no. For all intents and purposes, they “worked” together. She was their cover, and seducing her for the sake of a few moments of pleasure that could never lead to anything else wasn’t fair to her.
Now, if only he could get his body to listen to his mind. The second he’d started thinking about that kiss he’d gone hard as a rock, and he shook his head as he looked down at his undisciplined body. He stepped into the hot spray and let out a sigh as the heat pounded against his muscles.
It would’ve been easy to bring back the taste of her—the way her breath caught when their lips met. It had taken every ounce of control he had not to put his hands on her. And when she’d touched him . . .
He groaned and turned off the hot water so only the cold blasted across his heated skin. It wouldn’t have taken much more than a touch for him to relieve the god-awful need that had been building inside him since he’d kissed her. But if he couldn’t control those basic needs, he couldn’t control anything.
He showered quickly and dried off, cursing the erection that had a mind of its own. He pulled his hair back into a stubby tail while still wet, dressed in khaki BDUs and a black T-shirt, and laced up his boots. When he looked at his watch, he was satisfied to see that he still had two minutes left of the thirty-minute reprieve he’d given the newest recruit.
The two minutes was up by the time he made it back to the kitchen and the locked door that led into their headquarters. Tess had been right when when she’d spoken of the hidden passageway inside the casket warehouse. There was also a passageway from the kitchen inside the carriage house to the underground bunker that housed the kind of equipment and resources that would blow most people’s minds.
He typed in the code and pressed his index finger to the fingerprint scanner, and he heard the quiet snick of the lock open. He turned the handle, walked down the darkened stairwell to the next locked door, and typed in a different code. When the door opened, his options were to go left or right. The left would take him to the secret escape tunnel that had become his personal hell every morning. The right took him to another locked door, embossed with a gold trident in the center.
A cool blast of air hit him as he entered the inner sanctum of Gravediggers HQ. There was no one in sight. Considering the night they’d had, it was more than likely the others were catching a couple of hours of sleep.
He left the control room and headed toward the isolation rooms. It was necessary for new Gravediggers to be contained until their bodies had completely detoxed from the serum and any ill effects it might have. Once they passed the psychological and medical evaluation, they could be briefed and slowly implemented onto the team.
He stared at Levi Wolffe through the window in the isolation room. Levi never looked up. He sat on the edge of the bed, his head resting on his hands. Deacon knew he had a hell of a headache, along with a powerful thirst. Dying wasn’t easy.
As if he’d heard the thought, Levi lifted his head and stared at him out of cold, black eyes. Deacon was familiar with the look of a man who could and had killed. They’d been monitoring him from the surveillance system inside the house, and when the stages of paralysis looked like they were starting to pass, they’d gone in to retrieve him, he and Axel supporting the other man between them as they guided him to the isolation room. It was easier to move a man the size of Levi if he was able to stand on his own two feet and help a little.
Levi was just over six feet, and his Israeli heritage was strong—his skin swarthy and his dark hair cut close to the scalp. He had several days’ worth of beard on his face that he’d get the opportunity to shave off once they let him have a shower and knew he wouldn’t try to slice his own wrists with the blade. He still wore the flight suit he’d been buried in, and there were two empty bottles of water at his feet.
Deacon went to the mini fridge outside the room and grabbed a couple more bottles, and then he unlocked the storage cabinet bolted to the wall and took out a painkiller that would take care of the sledgehammers in Levi’s head. Once he had the supplies, he punched in the code on the keypad and let himself into the lion’s den.
“I know you’re thirsty,” Deacon said, coming boldly into the room.
He didn’t fear for his life; he’d never feared another man. They were both trained to fight—trained to kill—and there could be no fear when you always expected each fight might be your last. He also knew Axel was watching on the camera feed.
“And you’ll probably want this,” he said, holding out his hand with the small white pill. “I imagine your head is about ready to explode at this point. It’s always bad right after you come back.”
Levi just stared at him, but he eventually took the water and gulped it down. He didn’t touch the pill.
“It’s a standard prescription painkiller,” Deacon said. “Nothing more. But I don’t blame you for not trusting it. None of the others did either, and I was so fucked up coming out of the ground I don’t think they even offered one to me. I’ll leave it on the nightstand in case you change your mind. The headache usually lasts six to eight hours without the drugs.”
The isolation rooms weren’t prison, but they were built with the idea in mind that whoever was occupying the room might not care about his personal safety. They were kind of like hotel rooms, only there was a lock on the outside of the door instead of inside. There was a queen-size bed, a small table and two chairs, and a toilet. There was no shower or kitchenette. The isolation room across the hall was equipped with more amenities, and once Levi passed all the evaluations he’d be moved over there.
Deacon grabbed one of the straight-backed wooden chairs and straddled it so he faced Levi.
“She didn’t explain what would happen to you, did she?” Deacon asked.
Levi continued his silence, but Deacon wasn’t deterred. He’d done this with each of his brothers. They were all different, but in many ways they were all the same.
“It’s a shock, isn’t it?” he continued on. “All of a sudden this woman shows up out of nowhere, usually when things are about to go straight to shit and you’re wondering not if you’re going to be taken out of the game, but when you’re going to be taken out. Then Eve Winter shows up like the Angel of Death and tells you since you’re already marked for death you might as well come to work for the devil and live a little longer. We’re all going to die eventually, right?”
“I believe the life we live on this earth prepares us for the life that comes after. I’m grounded in my faith, and I did not sell my soul to the devil. I’ve seen the devil and her name is not Eve Winter.”
“But she got you to join us?” Deacon asked, surprised at Levi’s first words.
Levi picked up the other bottle of water and drank it slower this time, contemplating his answer.
“I agreed to fulfill the contract in hopes of continuing my quest for justice. There is still work to be done on this earth, and my destiny hasn’t been fulfilled.”
“You seek vengeance?” Deacon asked, unsurprised.
“Don’t we all?”
“To a point. There’s a lot of good in humanity, but in our line of work we rarely see it. We’re protectors.”
“That we can agree on, though I’m wondering now who exactly I’ve agreed to protect.”
Deacon knew the feeling. When Eve Winter showed up and told him the only options he had were death or a new life created by her, his first response had been to tell her he would gladly choose death. But Eve knew things. Things that no one else could know. And she knew exactly the buttons to push to make a man agree to her proposition instead of choosing death. He didn’t know what had made Levi Wolffe make the decision, but he did know it was deeply personal. It was deeply personal for all of them.
“You’re working for the good guys, but it’s no different than any other covert ops mission. Sometimes you wonder. And sometimes you don’t know which devil you’re working for.”
“She told me I had to die and be reborn. That my family and friends could never know my fate or they would suffer and meet me in death. Most of my family was killed during a Palestinian rocket attack. They were at the market and there was no warning. Only mayhem and death. My younger sister was the only one to survive, though her injuries were grave. I was willing to leave that life behind. But that doesn’t mean that life won’t revisit me. We can never truly separate ourselves from our pasts.”
“I know. But we can live now and ask for forgiveness later.”
A hint of a smile quirked Levi’s lips, but it was gone almost before it began. A shudder wracked his body and his hand went back to his head. Then he very deliberately looked at Deacon and then over at the white pill sitting on the nightstand.
“It’s a bitch of a headache,” Deacon said.
“Yeah,” Levi answered. He reached over and grabbed the pill and popped it in his mouth, swallowing it down with a gulp of water. “I don’t know what happened to me, but I figure you’ve had plenty of time to kill me if that’s what you wanted to do.”
Deacon smiled, but there was no happiness in it. Only bitter memories of his own transition from life to death to life.
“Once you sign that contract, there’s no going back. There are no other meetings or negotiations. All you know is they’ll do all the work and bring you over. They don’t tell you they’ll ambush you when you least expect it, to the point you think whatever is happening is real. They don’t tell you about the serum they shoot through your body, or that you can feel yourself dying. That your fully functional brain panics as you lose control and begin to feel your heartbeat slow. That you’ll be paralyzed just before you slip into unconsciousness.”
Deacon watched as Levi’s knuckles turned white, but he didn’t stop there. “You were lucky. I was the first. And all I can remember is my eyes opening to complete darkness, and trying to suck air into lungs that couldn’t remember how to breathe. I remember not being able to move my legs, because it takes a while for the paralysis to completely disappear, but I could move my arms. I didn’t know I’d been buried underground. I only knew I was trapped in some kind of box. I clawed and pushed at the sides and top until my fingers bled, and every minute that passed it was harder to breathe.
“Then there comes a point when you’re hovering just on the brink of death, where pain and fear disappear and it’s nothing more than waiting to take the last breath. All the prayers you know have been said at this point, and there’s peace.”
“Yes,” Levi said, in complete understanding.
“It was then I heard the thump of something hitting the top of my cage, and I was jostled around as they pulled me from the ground. They were as surprised as I was when they opened the casket and I crawled out into the fresh dirt.”
Levi raised his brows and said, “I bet so. You’re lucky some trigger-happy cowboy didn’t fill you with lead because he thought you were a zombie.”
Deacon did smile at this. “That’s the thing about this organization. There aren’t any cowboys. It’s a fluid unit, from the most insignificant job to the most important. And everyone is the best at what they do. Eve Winter sought you out for that reason and brought you here.”
“And yet, I still don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
“How’s your headache?”
“Gone,” Levi answered. “Thank you.”
“We’ve got your background and service file. You were Kidon Mossad. Everyone here comes from similar agencies.”
“Mossad has no equals.”
Deacon smiled. “We can put it to the test once you’re back to full strength. We train together and spar together, sometimes just for the hell of it. You’ll get your chance to show us what you’re made of.”
“Where do you come from?”
“Originally? From a little town in Louisiana. But I was recruited by the CIA about a dozen years ago. I worked covert ops eight years of that. My last four I was taken off the books completely and spent so much time in deep cover I forgot my real name. I took over the identity of Syan Ackbar and infiltrated his ISIS terrorist cell. I spent four years there, slowly cutting the heads off the snakes until the cell had been completely destroyed.”
“We have agents as well who have infiltrated these cells,” Levi said, nodding. “It is a dangerous game we play with each other. Many lives are lost. But more are saved.”
“That’s why we do it,” Deacon agreed. “You’ll meet the others over the next few days. All are allies to your country and to you. Dante is former MI-6, Elias was a Navy SEAL, Colin is French Intelligence, and Axel is Australian Intelligence. We no longer fight for our individual countries, but for one world. That allegiance to each other is important.
“You’ve got to go through psychological and physical testing over the next couple of weeks. You’re feeling a little better now after the pain pill, but when it wears off that headache will come back with a vengeance. You might also have some hallucinations and some out-of-character behavior—meaning you’re going to get mad as hell and want to pound on whatever’s closest to you. You’ll also have some nightmares. It’s all part of the process.
“Once those symptoms pass, we’ll move you to the room across the hall. It’s bigger and you can rehabilitate in more comfort. There you’ll start the debriefing process and learn about the organization, as well as be updated on current mission status. You should only be there a couple of days. Then you’ll move up to your permanent quarters on the second floor. Unless you want to find a place of your own. Dante and Elias both live off-site.”
“Ten years seems like a long time,” Levi said.
“It’s the blink of an eye when it seems like the world might not last that long.”
“How do you stand it?”
Deacon shrugged. “We’re not prisoners. We train, we fight, we work hard. But we’re free to come and go as we please. Elias likes to go to his cabin in Colorado. Dante will disappear for a few days at a time when things are slow, and no one knows where the hell he goes. It’s up to you. Ten years isn’t forever. It’s important to remember that.”
Deacon decided not to tell him there were times being a Gravedigger felt as if it’d last an eternity. And who knew what was in store for any of them? It was something that occupied his mind from time to time. When the ten years were up, would Eve really let them leave?