The Fey (29 page)

“
Please don’t go. Please
Jesse. Please…” Alex sobbed.

Jesse reached for her hands. Holding her
hands, he looked into her eyes.

“
Tell Maria that I love
her,” he whispered.

He drew in a ragged breath. With his exhale,
he said, “We’ll be friends forever.”

“
No, Jesse.
No!”

Alex screamed and shook his body trying to
make him take another breath. Overcome with grief, she rocked him
in her lap.

She began to fade. With each beat of her
heart, her life spilled into the pool of blood on the limestone
floor. Closing her eyes, she let go, then jerked alert. Someone ran
down the wooden stairs.

Looking around, she noticed the team
journal. She propped the journal against the door when she tried to
stop Jesse’s bleeding. When she fell over sideways to grab the
journal, Jessie’s head pressed deep into her wounds.

She screamed in pain.

With all the strength left in her body, she
lifted the nearest crate a tiny crack and stuffed the journal
underneath. Righting herself, she kissed Jesse’s forehead and
surrendered to the dark.

The next thing she remembered was being
carried by Raz through a room of people. She heard her voice
begging Raz not to leave her but she wasn’t sure she said a
word.

FF

Alex blinked until the memory receded.

She was standing in the team’s storage
vault. Glancing around the room, she saw the stack of body armor,
weapons and various supplies the team used.

Closing and opening her eyes, she tried to
clear her vertigo.

The journal compartment was empty. Someone
had taken her mission journals. Dropping to her knees, she reached
under the crate next to the door. Her fingers felt the binding of a
journal.

Hearing movement in the hall, she rolled
over and pulled her weapon.

“
Alex,” Ben appeared in
the doorway. He was sweating and breathing hard. Noticing her
handgun, he held his hands up. “Alex, what the fuck?”

Alex shook her head and blinked. Was this
really Ben? He made an impatient sound. This was Ben.

Holstering her gun, she stood.

“
What do you
know?”

“
I received a telephone
call about a hit scheduled on… on my daughter and her team at
twelve-thirty. It was a courtesy call, you know, designed to warn
me but not give me enough time to change the outcome of the
hit.”

“
Who called
you?”

“
Someone who is no longer
living.”

Alex jerked her head in a nod. Her eyes
flitted from one spot to the next both taking in and avoiding the
horror at the same time.

“
We looked for you
everywhere, everywhere. I couldn’t find you. No one had seen you in
hours. Zack was on his way to Afghanistan. You checked out of base
at eleven. I called your cell phone but you were down here. Out of
range.”

“
Where were
you?”

Alex’s eyes detected something shiny on the
floor. Using a fingernail, she pried Jesse’s St. Christopher
medallion from the blood encrusted floor.

“
London. Claire called to
remind me that it was Helene’s sixteenth birthday. She mentioned
that you had stopped by around noon. She said you were going for
absinthe then would meet them for a birthday dinner.”

“
I wanted to be here for
her big birthday,” Alex said. Pieces of the memory began to click
into place. She wiped Jesse’s medallion on her jeans in an effort
to clean off the dried blood. “I remember that. How did you find
me?”

“
I have no idea. Angels?
God? I don’t know.” Ben looked around the room. “I could see you
from the landing, sitting here, in the doorway, with Jesse’s head
in your lap. I checked your pulse but I was so freaked out that I
must have missed your low pulse. We assumed you were dead. I was in
the room… Everyone was… cut in two by machine gun fire… dead. Raz
realized you were alive. I guess Jesse’s head stemmed your
bleeding. Raz picked you up and ran out of here.”

“
I killed the shooter,”
Alex said. She slipping Jesse’s St. Christopher into her
pocket.

“
Yes, his body was right
here,” Ben said. He moved to the space where the shooter’s body had
been. “When we got here his head was wrapped in
T-shirts.”

“
You interrupted
someone.”

“
Probably. By the time the
Army arrived, the shooter’s body was gone. What did you keep
here?”

“
We kept everything we
needed here–cash, random tools, clothing, weapons or whatever. We
kept my journals, the big ones that held our plans, schedules,
ideas and notes, in that vault. We kept our Christmas presents and
stuff like that here too.”

“
And the small journals?
The ones you carried in your pocket?” Ben asked.

“
Here,” Alex said. She
walked to another portion of the limestone walls and pressed on the
wall. With a loud click, the wall opened showing a line of
pocketsized notebooks. Looking around the room, she grabbed a large
empty duffle bag and began dropping the journals into the
bag.

“
Who knew about this
place?” Ben asked.

“
No one knew it was ours.
The shop upstairs rented the space and Charlie paid for ten years
in advance. Cash.”

“
Just the team. Does Max
know about this?”

“
No,” Alex said. “Max knew
that I was in Paris for work a lot, but not why or what I was
doing. You know Max. He couldn’t care less about that kind of
thing.”

“
Did the Boy Scout know
about the vault?” Ben said.

“
I don’t think so,” Alex
said. “We never trusted him. We were going to meet him in
Afghanistan after a night in Paris. Isn’t that where he was?
Afghanistan?”

Ben shook his head.

“
No one is quite sure
where he was that day. He was on leave. The Army wasn’t tracking
him. I’ve heard that he was in Paris.”

Alex walked toward the door.

“
Why the cover up? Why say
we were killed in Afghanistan?”

“
No one knew what you were
doing here. It breaks about a dozen treaties to have an
unauthorized Special Forces mission in Europe.”

“
We were here all the
time.”

“
Europe wasn’t your
assigned area. Was it?”

“
We rescued hostages in
every country.”

“
There were no known
hostages in Europe at that time.”

“
No known… Huh,” Alex
shrugged. “Can you lift this crate?”

Ben lifted the crate and Alex pulled the
journal from under the crate. Although the journal was marked with
bloody handprints, the crate had channeled the blood away from the
journal. She flipped through the dry pages.

“
I heard footsteps,” she
said. “I protected this journal for some reason.”

“
Alex, we have to get out
of here,” Ben said. “There’s no way to know what events were set
off by your presence in this vault.”

Alex startled then moved into action. She
stuck the journal into the duffle bag.

“
I need a couple things,”
Alex said. She walked around the storage unit. “The cash is gone,
but that’s not too surprising. We were on our way to Afghanistan.
We never needed cash there.”

Smiling, she pulled a ten-inch square
jewelry box from the floor. The outside of the box stuck to the
floor, but the box held its shape. She tucked it into the duffle
bag. She went to the wall and pushed open another cabinet that held
a small box. She put it in the bag.

“
We need to go,” Ben said.
Holding a handgun, he looked down the hall.

“
Here,” Alex said. She
tossed Ben a body armor vest and pulled on another vest. “Army
issue.”

“
Thanks,” he said. “What
about the property?”

Alex looked around the room.

“
Nothing stands out. Who
knows?”

She slipped her arms through the duffle bag
handles. The bag rested on her back. She pushed the door to midway
open causing the door to swing shut. The gears of the lock
engaged.

She ran after Ben. Reaching the landing of
the stairs, they heard the door open above them. Two people pounded
down the wooden stairs toward them.

Following Ben, Alex flew down the stairs
into the tunnels below.

F

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“
Count,” Jesse
said.

Alex counted the steps out loud, “One, two,
three, four, five”, turn, “one, two, three four, five.” They
stopped on a landing where a long set of stairs continued straight
forward into the darkness.

“
No. Keep your count,”
Jesse said.

On her left, Alex noticed a set of stairs
which continued the five stair count.

“
This way,” Alex said. She
pushed by Ben. Turning left, she continued down the short flights
of stairs, “one, two, three, four, five”, turn, “one, two, three,
four, five.”

“
Jump,” Jesse
said.

Alex hurled herself forward over a five feet
wide broken landing to a step below.

“
Jump Ben,” Alex
said.

“
I heard him,” Ben
said.

He leapt forward toward the step. Alex
grabbed his waist as his feet slipped on the edge of a step. They
stood for a moment, breathing hard, holding each other, then Alex
turned and continued down the stairs.

“
One, two, three, four,
five”, turn right, “one, two, three, four, five,” turn
left.

“
Did they make it?” Alex
asked Jesse.

“
You lost one,” Jesse
said.

“
That’s Jesse Abreu.” Ben
said.

“
What is?”

Jesse stood to the side of the next landing.
Alex grabbed Ben’s hand and yanked him into a limestone tunnel. As
they raced through the dark, their surroundings began to change.
The tunnel transitioned into well lit, clean storage areas. Passing
wine racks, storage boxes, bikes and household items, they could
hear someone chasing them.

Jesse stood at the corner of a cross
tunnel.

“
Behind you,” he
said.

Using her shoulder, Alex knocked Ben around
the corner. Turning, she raised her handgun.

“
Show yourself,” Alex
demanded.

The figure responded by firing a weapon.

“
Smith and Wesson, 38
Special,” Jesse said.

Two bullets smashed into Alex’s body armor
near her heart. The force of the bullets sent her a couple steps
back. She took off running away from the shooter. Pushing Ben
further down the corridor, she turned sideways and fired her
handgun. The figure fell backward, shot through the forehead.

“
Go,” Jesse
said.

They ran down the semi-lit corridor. At
another juncture of tunnels, Alex stopped to get a reading from the
compass on her watch.

“
Get going, lazy bones.”
Jesse yelled over the sound of two pairs of feet running down a set
of wooden stairs along the edge of the tunnel.

Alex turned to fight.

“
No here,” Jesse said.
“Get going.”

Ben grabbed her hand and pulled her down the
passageway. Pursued by the two men, they ran down the tunnel.

“
This way,” Jesse
said.

They turned down a poorly lit passage where
naked light bulbs, hanging from the limestone ceiling by electric
wire, created bright circles of light surrounded by deep
shadow.

“
Now,” Jesse
said.

Alex slammed Ben against the wall next to a
stack of wine casks. Turning back, she dropped the duffle from her
back. Two men were standing under a circle of bright light. They
peered into the dark tunnel with their handguns raised.

Alex ran toward the men.

Jumping in the air, she rotated. With a
powerful flying back kick, she caught a man in the upper chest. He
fell backward into the hallway. Before the second man could react,
Alex landed. She kicked him with a high reverse roundhouse kick
catching him in the face with the ball of her foot. He dropped to
the ground.

The first man grabbed her by the shoulders
and threw her into a rack of boxes. Pressing off the boxes, Alex
raised her leg in a front kick catching the man’s solar plexus. He
dropped to the ground. Breathing hard, she stood over him expecting
him to get up from the ground. The man moaned, shaking his head,
and Alex punched him unconscious.

Setting their weapons beside their feet, she
motioned for Ben to come forward. With quick professional motions,
they removed the men’s identification and stuffed them into their
pockets.

Hearing movement in the tunnel, Alex jumped
up to assess the danger.

“
This way,” Jesse
said.

He pointed to a tunnel, less than three feet
wide, cut into the limestone. Alex moved a large box out of the way
and pulled Ben into the tunnel. Once he was in the tunnel, she
covered the tunnel entrance with the large box.

Holding the duffle in one hand, she mimicked
Ben’s sideways motion through the tight passageway. Within forty
feet, they reached a four foot wall of human femurs. Ben stepped
over the wall. Alex passed him the duffle bag then stepped over the
wall. They stood in an open passageway surrounded by the bones of
fourteenth century plague victims. Alex threw the duffle bag on her
shoulders and they took off running. They past human femurs stacked
in a perfect five foot wall adorned with a cross made of human
skulls. Continuing straight forward, they threaded their way
through rooms filled to the ceiling with human bones.