Dark Secrets Read online

She did a lot of good.

  But it was a hollow kind of victory.

  It simply never really occurred to her to mourn that.

  The fact that she felt like doing so right there in the shitty diner right next door to her work because she was confronted with the fact that the guy she was involved with was just another dirtbag, well, it made no sense.

  Unless K was right. Unless he was in.

  In which case, that sucked.

  Because it was going to hurt like a bitch when she ripped him out.

  "You got us," Xander amended, obviously having planned to go full-on cheeseball on her before. "Remember that, okay?"

  "Yeah," she said, swallowing hard, her own saliva burning like acid down her throat as she slid out of the booth and walked out the door.

  Outside, she took a couple long, deep breaths, letting the air sting her lungs, looking for the anger, knowing it was the only thing that could soften the sharp pain of disappointment, of betrayal, in her chest.

  They were right; she had them.

  And, what's more, she had herself.

  Those things had always been enough before.

  They would just have to be enough again.

  She straightened, lifted her chin, and yanked open the door to Lam.

  TWELVE

  Danny

  Shit was not good.

  Really, that was the only thing he knew when he saw Faith walk back into Lam.

  He had obviously misread her leaving with them. He figured they were just going to go have a cup of coffee or some dinner and talk. Maybe they'd ask her about her hands. Maybe they'd give her a similar lecture like the one he had given her- about how accepting help didn't mean she was weak. They were good men. They cared about her. And no matter how capable she was, they had to worry about her sometimes.

  But apparently whatever they had to talk about had pissed her off.

  It was clear in everything about her- the set to her shoulders, her tight jaw, her lifted chin, her purposeful steps.

  He was prepared for her to come behind the bar and slam around, maybe obsessively clean shit until they closed up.

  He hadn't been prepared for the reality of what actually happened.

  She moved behind the bar, walked right up to him, and said in a quiet but forceful tone near his ear, "You're fucking fired."

  With that, she stormed to the other side of the bar and refilled a guy's gin and tonic while he stood there for a long second, sure he misheard her.

  But when she walked behind him to go grab a lime, she hissed under her breath, "What the hell are you still doing here?"

  "Faith," he said, his guts twisting painfully, something very akin to dread. And he was about ninety-percent certain the dread had nothing to do with failing another job and everything to do with, by failing that job, fucking over a woman he was almost unreasonably interested in.

  "No."

  "Faith," he tried again, voice softer, reaching out for her elbow.

  He should have known better, he really should have.

  Faith wasn't the type of woman you touched when she was pissed.

  But he was too busy worrying about what the fuck he could have done to piss her off enough to fire him.

  So when she twisted, grabbed his arm by the wrist, yanked it backward and up between his shoulder blades hard and high enough for him to curse at the shooting pain in his shoulder then slammed him against the bar, yeah, he hadn't been paying close enough attention to react until it was too late. Until the right side of his face cracked against the solid wood of the bar, a spill of alcohol stinging his eye.

  Then her body curled over his and despite the burning of his eye and the pain in his shoulder and the bruise that was surely forming on his cheek, he felt a rush of desire at feeling her hips press into his ass, her breasts press into his back.

  But then he felt her warm breath on his ear where she hit him with the gut punch, "I know."

  His stomach pitched to his feet at that.

  She knew.

  She fucking knew.

  That was why Xander and K were there.

  He wasn't stupid. He hadn't gone into this operation blind. As soon as he knew Faith had a connection to Xander, K, Gabe, and Corey, he had their files pulled up. Xander investigated and he was expanding. K helped out when he wasn't busy saving women from bad situations, training them, then getting them new lives.

  But them handing his true identity over to her could only mean one thing- she asked them to run him. She never had trusted him. He had no right to be offended by that. None at all. He had been hiding a lot from her. He had given her more than he usually gave women though. More than was probably smart. But she still knew something was up.

  "Faith, dear," Vin's voice said from the front of the bar, standing over him slightly. His voice was casual, unconcerned, like this was nothing unusual. Knowing Faith, it probably wasn't. "What did we say about martial arts at the bar?"

  "He's done," she told him, pushing off of him and stepping back as he straightened again.

  He swiped the booze off his face and looked at Vin who was looking between the two of them with what could only be described as a 'knowing' look in his eye. Like he knew they were fucking. Like he thought they were in a snit. "Faith, you've got to give these guys a chance."

  "Vin, you said the hiring and firing is on me," she said pretty loudly and clearly considering her teeth were so clenched it had to be painful. "And he's done here."

  "Faith..." Vin tried to reason.

  "No," Daniel said, looking at Faith, seeing past the anger that she was wearing like a mask, seeing the hurt beneath it, the betrayal. He put that look there. He gave her another reason to be cold, to be detached, to never want to trust a guy again. And seeing that, yeah, all the fight went out of him. Because he realized there were worse things in life than yet another botched job. Like hurting a strong woman. That shit sucked. "No, it's alright," he said, looking at Faith, hoping his eyes could in some small way show her how sorry he was. But even if he accomplished the task, she wasn't paying attention, too lost in her own head. "I'll go," he said with a nod, taking the key he had to the building and putting it down on the counter.

  As he walked out, there was no denying how wrong it felt. Not leaving Lam, not leaving the job he had fought for.

  But leaving her.

  Leaving her felt more wrong than all the other twisted and shitty things he had ever had to do before. And there was a lot to compare it to.

  He turned the opposite way outside of Lam, not going to his own apartment, going instead to a fourth floor walk-up in a slightly crummier neighborhood and slamming on the door until the voice inside growled, "Al-the-fuck-right, keep your fucking panties on."

  The locks slid and the door pulled open and there was Max in a gray tee and matching thick sweatpants, eyes a bit blurry like he had woken him up.

  "Aren't you supposed to be at work?"

  "She knows. The job is done," he said and, with that, turned to walk away.

  "Whoa whoa whoa, the fuck?" Max exploded. He wasn't one to get angry often, but when he did, he did it big. Daniel didn't even get three feet before Max was somehow in front of him, arm out, finger pointing back to his apartment. "You don't drop a bomb like that and saunter the fuck off. Get in my apartment so we can talk about this. Now," he added when Daniel couldn't force his feet to obey.

  Max's apartment was nothing like Daniel's.

  It didn't matter that Max had to uproot just about as often as Daniel did. When he got a place, he settled in.

  His place was a small one-bedroom, nothing special, no distinct architectural accents. But Max had painted the walls a burnt orange color and he bothered to move in a big, clunky, impossible-to-carry-up-four-flights (which he knew because he had been the one to help Max move in) black leather couch and a recliner to match. There was a coffee table that he had magazines and books scattered on- pointing to his various interests from sports to fishing and even a manual on Spanish which he
was always pissed his parents never taught him and he seemed to have no real skill for, even after years of study. The kitchen cabinets were painted a fresh white and Max knew that they had multiple cups, plates, bowls, and various food items. There was even a picture of his mother and sister in a nice frame on an angle beside the sink.

  "Drink?" Max asked as he walked over toward the kitchen and grabbed beers out of the fridge.

  "Or twenty," Daniel said, taking the recliner and resting his forearms on his legs.

  "Alright," Max said, handing him his beer and sitting down on the couch, knocking off the top on the edge of the coffee table. "What the fuck do you mean she knows and the job is over?"

  "Rhodes and K came into the bar tonight. They took Faith to the diner. When she came back, she was pissed and she fired me. When I tried to object, she told me she knew."

  "That's it?" Max asked, snorting. "Maybe she means she knows that you snore or that you like watching the fucking cooking network on TV."

  Daniel snorted, shaking his head. "No, man. She knows. You didn't see her."

  "And what was I missing by not seeing her?"

  "Hurt," he said, the word a bitter taste on his tongue. "Betrayal. Anger."

  "Ahh," he said, sitting back on the couch, looking at the wall for a minute. "Yeah, that's not good. You were with her last night, right?" he asked. "I called three times."

  "Yeah, I was at her place."

  "So that's why you looked like you took a shot to the nuts," Max said, smirking.

  "It's not like that. I'm not pissed because there's a lid on the fucking cookie jar, Max."

  "So you're saying, what? That you have feelings for her?"

  Daniel sighed, fighting back the urge to hide the truth to save face. "Something like that," he agreed. "I know it's fucking whack. Especially this soon. But she's something special, man. Never met a woman like her before. She's a fucking battle axe wrapped in velvet."

  "Wow, man. That was... poetic," Max teased, lips twitching. "But I get it. Sometimes it happens that way with a woman. And there ain't shit you can do about it. Swear to fuck, God throws a couple of those unforgettable women in our paths at the wrong fucking time just to screw with us."

  Daniel sighed, popping off his beer top and taking half the liquid down in a long swig. He had to agree- it was the wrong place. It was the wrong time. It was the wrong situation. It was just so wholly fucking wrong.

  But that didn't shake the small, niggling little voice that whispered maybe, maybe that in spite of all that, it was still incredibly right.

  Except now she knew he was a liar and a fed and probably thought he was fucking her to try to get information.

  He had gained information on her. He had Max run a whole file. But as soon as things hit the sheets with them, he decided he was done snooping around her life looking for dirt. So when she left in a rush to go to her class, he took his time getting dressed, but he didn't snoop. He didn't even look in her goddamn medicine cabinet. Nothing. He just went home.

  Not that it made him some sort of saint to not be a creep, but the fact of the matter was, this was his job he was talking about. He wasn't like normal people. He didn't have a rich family life and lots of close friends and an apartment with plants and pets and a social life to fill out his life. His entire life was the job. He knew nothing else. It wasn't just his bread and butter, it was his fucking everything.

  So possibly hindering a job he had worked hard for because he didn't want to dig through her things, yeah, that meant something for a man like him.

  And he wasn't lying about her being special. She was like something he had never seen before and he had seen a lot. He had met fellow agents who did dangerous, dirty God-awful undercover gigs. He had met women who specialized in bomb-making and women who ran lawless militaries. He knew special women.

  But Faith, for him, was above and beyond. She had obviously grown up somewhat sheltered despite having a criminal dad. So the way she dusted herself off just hours after watching her father and mother being tortured and being badly beaten herself was even more impressive. Then she had, somehow, the part that followed was unclear, but she somehow took care of herself and trained and got tough. And she didn't just use that to take care of herself, to guard herself; she used it to better the lives of other women in her situation or worse.

  You would think it would make her cold all the way through. And, on first impression, she did seem that way. She was prickly and abrasive and cool. But if you spent the time with her, you got to see that she used those masks to hide what was underneath. Hell, you just had to look around her ultra-girly apartment to know there was softness there.

  He barely got a glimpse under the surface, but he wanted more. He wanted it all.

  But now he fucked it all up and he would never get any more.

  "Yo," Max broke into the endless swirling of his thoughts.

  "What?" he asked, getting off the chair and going back to the fridge to get them another round, putting his empty next to the sink because Max, among other things, was a pretty fucking strict recycler. And he needed to rinse the bottles and shit before he chucked them in the bin.

  "Seen you after every one of your jobs blew up before, jobs you worked on for years, sacrificed pieces of your goddamn soul for, and you were hardly shook. Not like you're shook now. You just started this job. You didn't have to do a damn thing dirty."

  "Max, enough."

  "Nah," he said, shaking his head a little tightly. "I wasn't done. You're shook. So I can only conclude that it's because you were in deeper with Faith than you even want to admit to yourself."

  "Either way, man, it's done. It's all fucking done."

  Max sighed, knowing it was true. While undercover, their lives were pretty much theirs to govern, giving that the government knew that they had to involve themselves with illegal situations, had to do things they couldn't stop, so while they kept in contact with handlers, they did their own things. But when a job tanked- they were given two options right away. One, they opted into getting shipped somewhere else, getting trained on something else, going undercover yet again. Two, they finally stopped uprooting their lives and pretending to be people they weren't. They chose to be stationed somewhere. Maybe, if they had a good career, they could get accepted at a field office in one of the big deal places- California, New York, Florida. Places where the crime was big crime and you wouldn't die of fucking boredom in a week.

  Daniel had never even needed to think about it.

  In his mind, there had never really been a choice.

  He had dedicated his life to finding the scum of the Earth, gaining their trust, and getting them the fuck off the streets. That was what he did. He had a soul etched with black marks because of it. But it was all for the greater good. He saved people from abusive pimps, notoriously violent drug cartels, vicious human traffickers, and domestic terror cells.

  It never even occurred to him to stop. He thrived on it. Some people were born knowing they were meant to do something- be a poet, sing death metal, teach children. Daniel, never having had any of those drives, did what his father raised him to do- protect the country he loved. And while he himself had little interest in combat, in being shipped into literal war zones, he managed in his own way.

  But suddenly, he was tired.

  He couldn't say for sure he ever felt that way before- done, beat-down, over it. That was how he felt though.

  He wanted out.

  "What's that look?" Max asked suddenly and Daniel knew his decision was clear on his face.

  "That's the look of defeat, man. I'm done."

  "There's always..."

  "No, man. I'm done with this. I'm done being undercover. I'm done spending my entire goddamn life lying. I swear to fuck, sometimes I lie so much I start to believe the lie myself."

  Like at Lam.

  Sure, all the training he had done to be what he needed to be to work there was just that- training. It was something he was aware he did to meet and end.


  But working there- serving the drinks, talking to the people, doing the mindless cleaning, yeah, it was easy to believe most nights that that was what he was- Danny the friendly neighborhood bartender.

  "You're saying you want out?" Max asked, voice a strange mix of feelings Daniel couldn't quite decipher.

  "That's what I'm saying."

  "You understand the whole of what that means, right?"

  Daniel shrugged, finishing off his second beer. "It means I can figure out who the fuck I am and what the fuck I want out of my life. I've given everything to this job. You, man, you have your family. They might not get to see you much, but they love you. You always have them to fall back on. I have shit. I have less than shit. My entire goddamn life fits into a duffle bag, ready to skip town at any given notice. This is no way to fucking live. Not anymore."

  With that, he put his empty beer on the table and walked to the door, closed it without saying anything else. What more was there to be said?

  He made his way back to his apartment, noticing with a feeling of distaste how hollow it was before going into his spare room, grabbing his separate cell, and calling in the news to his superiors. Not just about his cover being blown, but about quitting.

  They completely ignored the latter, maybe picking up on a slowness in his speech, figuring he wasn't in his right mind, and drilled him on the former. They wanted to know how she knew, why she knew, what made her snoop in the first place.

  And then they wanted to know something he never thought of until that moment: was Max's cover blown as well?

  He didn't have an answer for them on that.

  He didn't fucking know.

  But Vin being the high-profile target the Bureau wanted so they could hang his head on their wall like a goddamn hunting trophy, they weren't convinced the risk was high enough to pull Max too.

  So that Sunday, he was going back in.

  Daniel hung up disgusted, voiced raised to people he used to trust with his life, with his secrets. Because they were taking unnecessary risks. And he knew Max; he would go in. He would finish the job. Or die trying.