Unhidden (The Gatekeeper Chronicles Book 1) (4 page)

Darko sucked in a breath and looked down at me with a shit-eating grin on his face. He had opened his mouth to say something when his expression quickly transformed into shock then anger. He turned away from me to face the cave entrance. That was when I noticed three precisely placed holes in his back that looked curiously like they had come from a long-range assault rifle. I had no idea how he was still standing, let alone fiercely screaming to his guards.

“They have come for her. Kill them!”

All the guards ran into the surrounding jungle, searching for the attackers. When I heard the sounds of rapid gunfire, I took that as my signal to act.

While Darko’s back was turned, I reached up with my free hand and grabbed the Bruja by the neck of her robe, slamming my forehead into her much more sensitive nose. As she staggered backward, stunned and bleeding, I grabbed the knife that was lying at my shoulder and quickly sliced through the rope binding my other wrist.

Darko came at me as I fully sat up, and I took the opportunity to jab my free elbow into his jaw. However, he barely seemed to take notice of the blow, shaking it off. As his eyes landed on mine, I wielded the knife menacingly at him. The gunfire sounded closer, and Darko glanced quickly toward the cave entrance, considering his next move. I could almost see his train of thought. He could stay in the cave and spend precious minutes trying to subdue me while my team got closer to our location, but there was a good chance they would come crashing through the entrance with semi-automatic weapons at any moment.

Although it appeared a few bullets shot at a distance caused him no harm—for some incomprehensible reason that I put off trying to assimilate until another time—I was willing to bet a full magazine shot at point blank range wouldn’t be nearly so easy to walk away from.

I desperately tried to hide the fairly obvious fact that I was bleeding out and struggling to stay conscious. I held my wounded wrist behind me, trying to block his view to the amount of blood I had lost already. Showing weakness to a predator was a sure way to get killed, and Darko was king of the jungle right now. It was taking all my strength to keep my eyes open and my mind focused, but I couldn’t hide the rapidly draining color from my skin. Darko was no dummy; he noticed it too. He must be a gambling man because he knew when to hold them and when to fold them, and he decided on the latter.

With a sudden smile, he said pleasantly, “Miss Hayes, until next time, it has been a true honor and pleasure.” He gave me a small bow, turned, and vanished from the cave. No, I didn’t mean he walked out; I meant he literally vanished. Poof, one second there, the next second gone.

I was too tired to even blink in disbelief; as a result, I merely slumped back on the table, unable to hold myself upright anymore. The knife slipped from my hand and clattered to the floor.

My mistake was in forgetting that a threat still existed in the room. The Bruja had evidently recovered from my head butt, and quiet as a whisper, she crawled around the base of the stone table until she reached the knife I had dropped. She rose up over me, clutching the blade in two hands, ready to put all of her strength into plunging it through my rib cage and into my heart. A look of pure pleasure crept across her hideous features, the smile making her look even uglier.

I didn’t have the strength left to even attempt to defend myself. My injuries had turned into an incessantly painful throb, pulling me steadily into unconsciousness.

Before she could take her vengeance on me, I heard a single shot, and the Bruja fell across my chest. For such a frail looking woman, she had some serious weight to her, like her paper-thin skin was hiding thick muscle.

With one last monumental effort, I ran my hands over the old woman’s neck until I found the chain. My fingers landed on the mysterious amulet. I don’t know why, but I had an overwhelming urge to claim it. It had my blood; it was mine. I didn’t have the strength to pull it off her; instead, I just clutched it tightly, unwilling to let it go.

I turned my head to the cave entrance and saw Jason’s beautiful figure standing there with that familiar cocky grin on his face and a rifle casually slung over one shoulder. I was safe now that Jason and Daniel had found me, so with a contented sigh, I gave myself permission to slip into a dreamless abyss.

M
y eyes opened to the dim grayness of morning in the minutes before sunrise. The diffused light barely illuminated the forms of an unfamiliar dark cherry wardrobe, an overstuffed armchair, and an unfamiliar man lying naked in bed next to me.

For the past seven nights since the crazy events in Mexico, I had been drinking myself into a stupor and looking for temporary comfort in the beds of strangers. It was my way of trying to avoid thinking about what had happened and what I had seen, though pushing those images from my mind was easier said than done.

I couldn’t remember where I was or whom I was with. I thought his name was Tom … or Tim … no, Tony. I had picked him up last night at one of my favorite local watering holes. He had been there with colleagues, celebrating the landing of a big new client. I had struck up a conversation then pretty much ignored everything he had said to me in return. I hadn’t been interested in talking.

I rolled out of bed, trying not to bounce the mattress or disturb the blankets, and hunted for my clothes in the pre-dawn light.

“Hey, babe. What are you doing?” a husky voice sounded from the heap on the bed.

“Oh, hey. Good morning,” I said softly, startled by his awakening. “You know, it’s still really early. You should go back to sleep.”

“Are you bailing on me?” he asked, sitting up and taking notice of me as I slid on my underwear.

“I … um … no.”

“You won’t even ask for my phone number so you can lie and promise to call me?” he asked, trying to sound like he was joking, but I could hear the slight edge in his tone.

“No. I was just … I just have to go … to work.”

“It’s Saturday morning. Where do you work?”

“I’m, uh … a consultant … for a movie studio. They’re based in California, so the work schedule is off because of the time difference.”

“California is three hours behind us, not ahead. It’s only two-thirty a.m. there.” He was a persistent bugger.

“Fuck it. Look, Ted—”

“Todd.”

“Todd, sorry. I had fun last night, but—”

“Hey, we can grab some breakfast and talk,” he quickly interrupted. “You know, get to know each other better?”

“That’s sweet, but really not necessary.” I finished dressing and found my purse slumped in a corner of the room.

Making my way to the bedroom door, I was stopped as Todd reached out and took hold of my arm.

“Holy shit!” he yelled as I reflexively twisted his arm behind his back and applied pressure.

“Oh, God! I’m so sorry,” I said, releasing him like he was on fire. “It’s just habit. I, uh … take self-defense classes. You know, a woman alone in the big city …” I trailed off sheepishly. “I’m just going to go now.”

There were days when I really wished I was more eloquent and could come up with exactly the right thing to say to get out of those kinds of awkward situations more easily. Nevertheless, I wasn’t really one for conversation. When you didn’t have many friends to talk to, your conversation muscle grew pretty weak.

It was a cool spring morning, yet the air held humidity and the promise of a warm day to come. I walked slowly through the streets of New York City, enjoying one of those rare moments when the sidewalks weren’t crowded with people. In the early hours of a Saturday morning, with the sun just starting to rise above the myriad apartment buildings and skyscrapers, it almost felt as if I were the only person left in this giant metropolis. I smiled at the peace and aloneness, though only for a moment. Aloneness quickly turned to loneliness.

I always got a little despondent after one of my trysts. I missed the warmth of a human body against mine, that fleeting feeling of connection, but I wasn’t built for emotional entanglements, so I pushed the longing aside. Then I craved Manhattan’s mass of bodies that would crash around me like a tidal wave. Even if I was unable to connect with people, at least I would always feel like I belonged in some way among the anonymous millions.

Walking, I shook out my stiff legs, stretched my arms over my head, and rolled my shoulders. I still had some soreness from Mexico, but I was healing rapidly. The bruises on my face were now barely visible, and I no longer needed bandages or a sling for my dislocated shoulder. I certainly wasn’t one hundred percent, but one week after Jason and Daniel had rescued me from that cave, I was feeling much more like myself.

Thankfully, the boys had the forethought to radio in a chopper before attacking the cave, just in case we needed a speedy exit. It had come in handy for getting me to a hospital in Mexico City before I bled out. After I was stabilized, they had flown me back to New York to recuperate at home.

During my year in Manhattan, I lived in some filthy hovels in questionable neighborhoods that were the size of a small closet. A military pension didn’t go very far in NYC, but as my freelance business had taken off—mercenary has such a negative connotation—and my income increased exponentially, I had finally saved enough money to buy the apartment of my dreams. I lived in a dramatic duplex on East 11th Street and Broadway in Greenwich Village, only a few blocks from Union Square Park to the north and Washington Square Park to the south.

“Morning, John,” I said to my doorman.

Even though John had seen me do the walk of shame on many mornings, I still blushed when I greeted him. He was never judgmental though. As always, he gave me a pleasant “Good morning, Miss Hayes” and a tip of his cap.

I made my way up the stairs to the fifth floor penthouse. The building had an elevator, but I could use the exercise since my injuries had put me off my workout schedule that week.

A small smile touched my lips as I opened the door to my apartment. God, it felt good to be home. Opening the front door, I looked straight through my apartment to a wall of sixteen-foot high floor-to-ceiling windows that flooded the airy, open space with sunlight. The apartment was a perfect rectangle, long and narrow, only fourteen feet wide, but forty feet long from front to back. The main level was a single great room with a modern open kitchen on the right and a living room/dining room combination straight ahead. The only bathroom was just to the right of the front door, with an enormous travertine-tiled walk-in shower. My bedroom was up an open staircase off the living room in a loft area. The bedroom also had that rarest of NYC amenities—a walk-in closet.

My favorite feature, however, was the exposed brick wall on one side of the apartment. It was the perfect backdrop to display my framed movie poster collection from some of my all-time favorites:
Star Wars: A New Hope
,
Indiana Jones and The Raiders of the Lost Ark
,
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
,
The Matrix
. The brick wall was the only remnant of the building’s old bones when it had been a boarding house in the 1800s, giving it character and history.

Being in the penthouse, I also had access to a rooftop deck, but since the building was only five stories, the roof didn’t afford dramatic views of the city. During certain times of the day, it got enough sun for a few hours of sunbathing before shadows from the surrounding buildings spilled over it.

I kicked off my red heels, followed by the rest of my clothing, and padded naked across the hardwood floors and up the stairs to my bedroom loft. Gathering a clean change of clothes, I made my way back down to the shower. I rarely closed the curtains on my windows. There wasn’t much need since the building across the street was a warehouse that stored carpets for the rug store downstairs. Maybe the occasional warehouse worker managed to sneak a peek at me and got a good show, but I had never noticed anyone moving around behind those windows; therefore, I didn’t worry much about it.

As I passed the kitchen after my shower, I noted that the digital clock on my stainless steel oven read seven fourteen a.m. When I had been in the military, I was forced to become a morning person, regularly woken up at four a.m. for a ten-mile run. Since being discharged, my body clock had been significantly reset. Almost all of my jobs took place under the cover of darkness, usually followed by a night of hard partying to celebrate the victory. I had become a very late riser, often not falling out of bed until late afternoon … when I was in my own bed.