by CK Dawn
Caitlin was staring off into space as the elevator slowly made its way down to the lobby, her eyes unfocused as though she were lost in thought.
They were dark green, and slightly larger than what he would expect. Or maybe it was just her iris that was larger. It gave her a wide-eyed, almost innocent look.
The elevator doors clicked open and pulled him inside, jamming the top floor button with one finger.
“Penthouse, huh?” he said.
“Another of the perks of my job,” she said, sliding her door-key against the panel as the elevator prompted her for authorization.
“Ah.” He raised an eyebrow at her.
“You’re probably not going to tell me what your job is.”
She smiled.
“Not yet.”
He looked down at her as they rode in silence. She seemed lost in thought again, and so motionless that she almost looked like a statue, cast in bronze. A Greek statue.
All at once, an uncomfortable feeling rose in his chest. What was he doing here? What was she doing here with him?
“You know,” he said, breaking the silence. “I know you have to deal with the press and everything, but I’m kind of taking over your life right now. I’m completely okay just riding back down. No one will even notice me leaving.”
She looked up at him, the overhead lights shining in her green eyes.
“Are you saying you don’t want to have dinner with me?”
“Uh, no… that’s not it, I just—” If there was ever a moment he wished he was one of those smooth people with all the right words, this was the one.
“I’d love to have dinner with you. I just don’t want you to feel like you have to.”
Her arm tightened around his. “I’m not sure who you’re used to dealing with, Wash, but I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t mean it.”
“You’d have just dumped me there on the beach?” he asked.
“There were ambulances on the way. You probably would have been fine if I left you with one of them.”
He paused. “So… why didn’t you?”
Her eyes seemed to widen a fraction, and she looked away, though her tone was airy when she replied, “Like I said, I would have worried about you. I pulled you out of the water, it’s the least I can do to make sure you don’t drop dead from a head injury later.”
That actually hadn’t occurred to Wash. He raised a hand to the bump on his head involuntarily.
The elevator dinged their arrival. The doors slid open slowly revealing a softly lit and elegantly decorated hallway.
Across from them, the other bank of elevators was open. Three men stood inside, along with a little blonde woman.
The woman’s eyes widened as she caught sight of them, and she screamed.
“Daphne?”
Caitlin shifted her weight forward, and Wash knew she was about to dart out of the elevator, not realizing that one of the men had a silenced pistol pointed at her.
Everything froze. Wash could almost feel the man’s figure tightening around the trigger.
He grabbed Caitlin and spun, just in time to hear the gun bark twice. Wash cried out in sudden pain and fell forward into Caitlin, pushing them into the back of the elevator. He tried to stand, but his legs wouldn’t hold him.
“Wash?”
Caitlin grunted under the sudden weight of the man collapsed against her.
“Wash!”
He was dead. That was the only way this ended, but she didn’t have time to freak out. Of all the stupid things to have happen! Where was the hotel guard? Her first instinct was to be furious at her sister—did she invite those men up for drinks the way she had those drug runners the summer before?
There was no time for the blame game, she needed to get her sister back, and fast. At least Daphne probably wouldn’t be in any physical danger. They had to know who she was, right? Daphne was never shy about throwing that information around.
Caitlin pushed Wash off her, he groaned as he fell to the side, and she let out a sigh of relief. At least he was alive for the moment.
“Hang on, Wash. I’ll have medical help here in a minute.”
He was breathing and that was enough for now. She stepped out into the hall. The other lift was already halfway down the building. Even if she were to take the lift straight down, she would be too late.
Unless…
Each room had an open air balcony. There was always plenty of wind in San Juan, especially twenty floors up. It would be tricky, but it might work.
She sprinted down the hallway. The door to the penthouse was shattered, wood splinters strewn all over the place.
Her security guard was sprawled on the floor inside, but she had no time to stop and see if he was alive. She flung open the balcony doors.
“Come to me, spirits of the wind!” she called, one hand on her astéri. “I need your aid.”
A gale formed below her, blowing curtains and swirling debris in a circle around her balcony.
We come to serve.
Wind spirits were always easier to command than earth. They were born to howl and run, to move and change constantly. Getting them to obey was easy, but relying on them was a little trickier.
In her mind, she imagined what she needed. As she did, a funnel of wind roared up from below. Taking a deep breath, Caitlin stepped up on to the balcony railing.
“Caitlin, wait!” called Wash.
She turned, surprised, and expecting to see him on the floor, crawling along with a trail of blood behind him. Instead, he was standing in the doorway of the balcony.
“I have to go after my sister,” Caitlin told him.
And then she leaped out into open air. It wasn’t quite flying, but it would do. The wind buffeted her from every direction, keeping her in place.
Turning, she realized that he meant to follow her.
“Wash!” She lunged for his hand just as he stepped off the balcony.
A snap of electricity passed between them as their hands touched, and the familiar roaring buzz filled her mind. Her bones shuddered, teeth rattling as though they were vibrating out of her skull.
The wind spirits broke and dispersed, without her concentration to keep them together, and they were falling.
Air howled past them as they plunged downward. Wash pulled her close, twisting around to place himself beneath her, as though he could shield her from the swiftly rising ground.
Caitlin shoved him away as hard as she could. The moment their physical connection broke, power rushed back into the space around her, and the wind spirits roared up in a circle beneath them, a cushion of air slowing their descent.
The collision still felt brutal as she crashed into Wash’s body, and they both hit the concrete.
Silence followed for a few seconds before the people around the pool cheered.
With a groan, she struggled to her knees, hands still on his chest. There was no overwhelming buzz. She moved her hands from his chest to his arm, thinking perhaps it required bare skin.
Nothing.
Whatever had disrupted her control, there was no sign of it now.
“Wash?”
“Yeah, just a few more minutes,” he mumbled.
“We have to stop those men. If I can just see them for long enough to cast, I can end this.” She grabbed his hand and helped him up.
As they raced out of the hotel and around the back, Caitlin tried to figure out where Daphne must be. She knew it took lifts thirty seconds to reach the bottom floor. Another twenty to hustle to the garage, and maybe ten more to leave.
She had a vague hope that Sanchez and Rodrigo would stop them, but if they were clever enough to push her sister across the lobby unseen, they might be able to bypass her other two security men.
There were two exits to the underground garage, and if she had to guess, they would be going out the south exit, facing away from the shore. Fewer people and it was more like an alley.
Caitlin focused on her breathing as she sprinted. If
anything happened to her sister…
Her parents would never speak to her again, and never was a long time for her. She might even be banished. How the hell could this have happened?
That last sentence played over and over in her head as she ran, first in her own voice, then in Daphne’s, then in her mother’s.
Caitlin skidded to a halt as she came around the corner to the back alley. She almost fell sideways, only staying upright by holding onto Wash.
A white van, one of a thousand seen every day in the streets, tore out of the garage in the opposite direction, bucking as the front tires found air before biting into the pavement.
“Damn it!” Caitlin shouted.
The van was heading west, and already a hundred meters away. She looked to the sky. A bolt of lightning would be handy right now, but the sky was bright and sunny, devoid of clouds. It would take time to—
Wash tore his hand from her grasp and shot off like a rocket, bare feet slapping the pavement.
“Wash—there’s no way—”
He couldn’t possibly catch up to the van on foot, but he didn’t seem to hear her.
To his credit, he was fast. He was right behind the van as it disappeared into the mouth of the alleyway, and she lost sight of both.
Caitlin swore and then took off in the opposite direction. Maybe she could cut through the market and intercept them. She leaped over a hedge at the end of the alley, tearing through someone’s garden.
Placing one hand on her astéri she searched for any nearby spirits.
Trapped water below the street called out to her as she dashed through the gate, and found herself on the street parallel to the ones the kidnappers had turned on to.
The cobblestone and pavement were annoyingly silent. Dammit, if she could just get a good look at the van… she was at the end of another block and her legs wobbled, lungs burning from the exertion. She was pretty decent on a treadmill, but a flat sprint for half a mile was a little much.
She stumbled to the last corner, and caught a glimpse of a white van, missing its driver-side door, just before it disappeared behind a building.
The van roared down the alley, its tires screeching as they tried to keep a grip on the old stone. If Wash could just reach it, maybe he could pull her out.
The thought had barely formed in his mind when he found himself hurtling after the van.
“Wash—there’s no—” he heard Caitlin call.
The van slid around the corner, its back end breaking loose. The driver rode the slide until the van righted itself, slowing it just enough…
Wash leaped the last few feet, grabbing the handle and bracing his foot against the side. The driver floored it, trying to shake Wash off. He hooked his hand on the hood between the windshield and the engine compartment.
He caught a glimpse of the inside of the van. Four men, all wearing ski masks, and nondescript clothing. Nothing distinctive. Caitlin’s sister was stuffed between two of them in the back.
The driver was too focused on the road to spare Wash anything more than a glance as he tried desperately to open the door. Wash jiggled the handle but the door was locked.
The man in the passenger seat pulled out a wicked-looking revolver and pointed it at him. He froze for a heartbeat when Wash met his eyes.
Wash yanked the door, metal creaked and the door burst open with a ping of breaking springs.
“What the hell?”
The man riding shotgun punctuated his surprise with a round from his pistol. Glass shattered, and Wash let go of the hood. The tortured door already stressed, ripped off.
Wash hit the pavement hard, rolling several times before coming to rest against the side walk.
Everything hurt, again, as he climbed to his feet, leaning heavily on a parked car. The van disappeared around a corner. He cursed as he slapped the trunk of the car.
What was he thinking? Sheer luck was the only reason he wasn’t dead—that and a van with some crap repair job. The mechanism had obviously broken, although it must have looked like he tore it off to the guys inside.
At least he could tell Caitlin her sister was okay. She had seemed very determined, but not as afraid as he imagined the sister of a kidnapped woman to be. An elf thing, maybe.
His knee was killing him, and he ended up limping to the end of the block.
Once he arrived, nothing looked familiar. The buildings around him were too tall, he couldn’t see the Marriott.
A black-haired figure slammed into him at full speed, almost knocking him to the ground.
“Wash!”
Caitlin threw her arms around him in a surprisingly firm hug. “Poseidon, Wash. I thought you were dead. How did you catch the van? Did you rip that door off—?”
“I didn’t—”
“And why on earth did you disrupt my spell?”
She punched him in the shoulder in a way that might have been playful if it didn’t hurt so much.
“You could have killed us both!”
“Can we go back to the hugging? I liked that a lot more.”
She just stared at him for a moment, and then laughed, squeezing him. Then, inexplicably, she punched his shoulder again—though more softly this time.
“Let’s get back to the hotel. I have a lot to figure out.”
Three
“Señorita Vnois?” Alfredo approached them with wide eyes as they crossed the lobby toward the lift. “We sent someone up—your room—”
“I know, Alfredo. I need a new room, por favor—and the food I ordered if it’s still warm.”
“Of course, but what happened? The door, your man—”
“One of my fans may have gotten a little out of control. It’s nothing I can’t handle. Please have Rodrigo and Sanchez check on Manuel, he may have been hurt in the struggle.”
Alfredo’s eyes went wide with alarm. “I’ll contact the police immediately.”
The last thing she needed was the police involved. She’d been down this road before. They would contact her parents, and it would be the same nightmare all over again.
No, she could handle this. Besides, she had Wash, and this was the perfect time to figure out what the hell was going on with him.
“No police, Alfredo—”
“Señorita —”
She took his hand. “Alfredo, please trust me. Just make sure Manuel is okay.”
He hesitated for a moment before nodding.
“As you wish.” He bowed and left in a hurry.
She hated to stress him like this. He was a dear, sweet man, but this involved family.
Sometimes Caitlin hated that word.
Because of their family, both she and Daphne got their fair share of kidnapping threats. Most of them were just threats and were dealt with quietly. The last time, it was one of Daphne’s friends—her sister had a knack for attracting the basest elements of any social situation—who had taken Daphne away for a long weekend, and then used the absence to fake a kidnapping and extort money from their parents.
It had probably been one of the most stressful weekends of Caitlin’s life, even though she was on another continent at the time. Daphne had just laughed it off.
This was different, though. The men who took her were professional enough to get into and out of the hotel unimpeded by either Caitlin’s security, or the hotel’s. That meant they did this for a living… and they couldn’t be ignorant of who Daphne was.
That was the only silver lining, here. Daphne was far too valuable for them to actually harm, and that gave Caitlin some time to sort the situation out.
She and Wash—who, weirdly, didn’t seem the slightest bit perturbed by any of this—waited silently for the lift. They were halfway to her floor when her sheer exhaustion started to catch up with her. She leaned more into him, letting her eyes droop for just a moment.
When the doors opened with a ding she jerked straight.
He’d been shot.
“Wash, turn around please.”
“Hmm?” H
e looked as tired as she felt, but he obediently turned. Sure enough, there were two bloodstained bullet holes in her favorite hoodie.
“What?” he asked.
She placed her hand on his back, running her fingers through the holes to the unblemished flesh beneath. Her hands paused for a second over where the wounds should be.
“Caitlin?”
“It’s nothing,” she lied. “I thought you were hurt, but you’re fine.”
He didn’t seem to remember what had happened, and she didn’t want to freak him out.
“I don’t know if ‘fine’ is the right word,” he said with a quiet groan. “I’m going to be so sore tomorrow.”
She took his hand again, wondering what conclusions he’d drawn from all the hand-holding and leaning-against she’d been doing. Probably the wrong conclusions, but she’d deal with that later.
What she really wanted was to catch some sign of that weird buzz she’d felt on the beach, and then again when they were falling.
When they reached the top floor, there were already a half dozen hotel employees cleaning up the mess and moving her things into the adjacent room.
Manuel sat next to the door, holding an icepack to his head under the firm supervision of one of the maids. She had to be new; Caitlin couldn’t recall her name. Standing nearby and directing the traffic was the hotel’s deputy manager.
“Tio Chico!” She let go of Wash’s hand to hug the statesman-like older man. He smiled big and accepted her warm hug with one of his own.
“Señorita Vnois, always a pleasure. And who is this young man?”
She caught the edge in his voice and patted his arm. “Thomas Washington, Tio Chico.”
Wash held out his hand. “A pleasure to meet you, sir.”
Chico raised an eyebrow as he shook Wash’s hand. “It’s an honor, senor.” He turned to Caitlin with a smile. “So polite. I like this one. Keep him around a while.”
“I’m only here because she saved my life, sir,” Wash said to the man. “I’m just trying to return the favor.”