Wicked Lies: A Dark Mission Novella Read Free

to see in the gradient blue light. Just a gray floor, gray walls, and a gray door with a slot built into the solid panel.
    And a tiny black dot on the floor in front of it.
    He squinted. It didn’t move. It didn’t even skitter, the way he expected a spider would. Or a fly. Or something that was anything but an innocuous black dot inside his prison cell.
    His mouth quirked. The motion tore a ragged edge through his upper lip, but he didn’t care.
    There was no such thing as innocuous anything when his grandmother was involved. And he’d known the fiercely protective woman would find him. Whether or not she should.
    They all knew the risks. Fighting for her, with her, came with a single guarantee: trouble. He’d known it all his life. Accepted it.
    But he’d be lying if he didn’t admit to stark-raving relief now.
    Not all the objectors the Church captured warranted the risk to free them. A strict policy of disavowal is what helped keep the cells alive, even after the Mission did everything in its power to run them to ground. Danny had never known if he’d be one of the lucky ones, or if they’d leave him to rot to keep the rest safe.
    Part of him hoped to be rescued. The rest of him knew that dead men revealed no secrets.
    But that wasn’t true, either. He didn’t know if he’d last another round.
    Crawling across the floor, he hissed out words that would have had his feisty grandmother reaching for the back of his head. It took more effort than he wanted, more energy than he’d have strictly liked, but he did it. And the metal bit he found as his fingers closed around that swaying black dot had his heart singing hosannas. Within seconds, he’d managed to fit the small comm into his bruised, tender ear. “Hello?” It came out a guttural rasp.
    “You found it, great job.” The voice that filled his straining ear sheared through . . . damn, everything. Pain and fear and impatience turned to a focus so sharp, so intense, that for a single moment, the gray cell faded to nothing. “My name is Jonas.” Masculine, warm without edging into inappropriately cheerful, Danny listened to the finest tenor he’d ever heard and fell back with a raw, visceral shudder. His shoulder collided with the far wall. He didn’t care.
    There was someone out there. Someone real. He wasn’t alone.
    “Danny? Danny, are you all right?”
    Trembling, he cupped one hand over his ear and rasped, “Nice to meet you, Jonas.”
    “We’ll meet face to face soon enough,” said that finely tuned voice. “Stay with me, kid. I’m going to get you through this.”
    He closed his eyes. “I think I love you,” he managed through the shudders gripping him, rocking through his hard-won sense of calm. He wasn’t alone.
    There was a brief moment of silence, and then a touch of amusement murmured through the link. “I bet you say that to all your rescuers.” His mysterious benefactor didn’t wait for a response. “Hang tight, man. We’re going to have to wait for the right moment, but I’ll be with you every step of the way. Can you walk?”
    Danny’s eyes squeezed tighter. Even through the red and white fireworks detonating behind his eyelids, he knew what he’d say. “You bet.” Now, he just had to make sure he meant it. “Can . . .” His voice cracked, embarrassingly loud in the still silence of the cell. He braced an elbow against the wall behind him, wincing through the pull of abused muscles. “Can you see me, Jonas?”
    “No,” he immediately replied. “So I’m going to have to rely on your eyes.”
    “Eye.”
    “What?”
    Danny’s mouth quirked again. Another flick of wry humor. Another twinge of torn scabs. “One’s swollen shut.”
    The man said a word that turned the comm link electric.
    It took effort not to laugh. “It’s a good eye,” he assured the mystery man. Jonas. He didn’t recognize the name, but he didn’t know all of his grandmother’s people. She liked it better that way. Hell, he was