Free Dark Secret (DARC Ops Book 1) by Jamie Garrett Page B

wasn’t so much her tone regressing as it was the frequency of her noticing.
    She heard him sigh, and then say quietly, “Sorry I haven't called sooner.”
    “Dad, stop.”
    “You sure everything's good back there?”
    Whenever her father was away on business, especially in the seven years since her mom’s passing, Mira had become accustomed to glossing over the troubles of her life lest Dad catch the next red-eye. But today she was tempted to buck the trend.
    “Yeah...” And then she followed a lie with a truth. “I'm excited to see you.”
    “Me too. But how about work? Work's going okay?”
    Mira thought for a moment of retreating into her inner six-year-old, her inner Daddy's-little-gremlin throwing a wild tantrum about how unfair it all was. The stupid job and the stupid computers and stupid, stupid, poopy-head Langhorne. She'd cry hysterically until a lack of oxygen, and then wake up feeling refreshed and ready for more ice-cream.
    “It’s fine.”
    “Well, alright,” he said. “But don't you hesitate to call your Dad anytime you need to. Got it? We should probably talk about things when you're not at work anyway.”
    Mira laughed innocently. “Yeah, probably.” When she swiveled her chair, she noticed someone standing at her cubicle entrance. “Alright, well sounds good,” she said, watching Abram make the international hand signal for hang up, you fucking idiot .
    “Yep, sounds good,” said Dad.
    “They're coming back,” Abram whisper-shouted.
    But Mira's father kept talking. “You be good out there. Stay out of trouble.”
    Mira promised him, said goodbye and ended the call.
    “Sorry,” said Abram. “Didn’t want Langhorne to see you on your phone like that. He should be here a few minutes.”
    “Thanks, but it's okay,” she said with a polite smile.
    “Huh? Excuse me?”
    “I'm not on the clock. Just here to grab some things.”
    He looked almost disappointed.
    A second after Abram walked off, Mira logged on to her boss's account and began the scavenger hunt, searching through directories like she'd just been looking for some misplaced translation work. That's all she was doing, looking for work. She didn’t feel nervous, not even while inserting the USB stick. Just looking for some work to bring to her apartment. She was on sick leave. Didn’t you know that?
    His folders were as messy as his desktop, but she was able to weed most of it out by searching for a few decrypted key-terms. What interested her most was a file titled “mos_dan_gam,” where she found several documents that seemed to contain the infamous encryption.
    She was surprisingly calm and methodical with her search, as if she'd actually been looking for this or that nondescript work-file. And she almost began to believe the lie, until a certain booming voice reminded her otherwise.
    It finally caught up with her, the pounding heart, the profusely sweating armpits, fingers that could barely stay on a track-pad, and a dissociative out-of-body feeling that became vaguely terrifying.
    Having neither the time or mental capacity to actually read anything, she hastily dragged and dropped the entire folder into her USB.
    And then footsteps...
    And breathing.
    And Mira logging the fuck out.
    “A bomb threat. A friggin bomb threat. Can you believe it?”
    Mira spun around to see Chuck walking towards her with another man. He was black and middle-aged and in traditional East African garb – a long white shirt with gold and red embroidery atop baggy white pants. He was bald, but had curly tufts of white hair along his chin.
    “They canceled the whole thing,” said Chuck as he approached her cubicle. “Drove three blocks and they turned us around. This guy was stranded.” He was pointing to the African.
    “How do you do,” the African said to Mira, whose heart was still racing.
    “This is Hanisi,” said Chuck. “He's an aide to the Tanzanian Embassy. Hanisi, Mira.”
    Mira nodded politely, still not sure if she'd been