by Alex Archer
She stood in the center of the road, gun aimed for the tires of the oncoming vehicle. The first shot missed. The second hit the rusted chrome bumper. The car didn’t slow as it ate up the distance between them.
Drawing in a breath, Annja straightened her stance. She wasn’t about to lose this game of chicken.
Firing again, she saw the windshield shatter. Springing up, her foot touched the hood of the moving vehicle and she pushed up and levered herself skyward. In midair, she somersaulted high above the same spot from which she had jumped, momentarily feeling the air hold her there as if flying. Then she landed on the ground in the car’s wake, wobbling into a crouch.
Drawing her sword from the otherwhere, she swung upright and turned to stalk toward the vehicle, which had ground to a stop in a plume of hazy dirt and throat-clogging dust fifty yards beyond where her rental had come to a stop.
Santos curled around and hopped out from the passenger’s side, sword thrust before him. He wore a scarf tied around his head, and it fluttered in the breeze behind him. Determination tightened his jaw and his dark eyes focused on her.
Annja dipped low, sweeping her sword arm across her body, and when she stood upright, she cut the blade across Santos’s weapon. As her body spun through the delivery, she punched Santos in the kidney with a hard left hook. The surprise jab knocked him off balance. He stumbled, grunting out an oath, his sword arm wavering.
Recovering from the momentum of that swing, Annja twisted at the waist and elbowed Santos’s jaw as she swung back around to face him. He managed to swipe the blade before her, low, aiming for her shins. Annja leaped high, pistoning her knees to her chest. The blade cut the air where she had once stood.
She landed on one knee, her left hand touching the gravel for balance. Rising in the next breath, she lunged, shoulder first, and plunged into the man’s chest. Her body twisted against Santos’s. Grabbing his shirt, she lifted him and shoved him away to clear her personal space and prepare for another strike.
“Are you seriously going to do this?” she snarled angrily.
“I said I’d give you an hour,” he said, spitting out dust. “Time’s up, bone hunter.”
He dashed forward, but she met his charge with a defensive thrust of her sword. Blades clashed in a clatter of steel. They fought for purchase on the dug-in tire ruts that wedged the loose gravel into mounds. Yet Annja had never felt stronger. She stood with Joan’s sword gleaming in the sun.
This was the reason the sword had chosen her.
She’d come to Chrastava for a simple archaeological mission and a salacious legend. What she’d uncovered sickened her, and she would get her answers and take them to the authorities.
“You work for Bracks, don’t you?”
Santos dodged her feint, and returned a thrust that she easily avoided with her quick footwork. His height, about six inches taller than her, put his swings level with her throat, so she was keen to move quickly and keep an eye on the twitch in his elbow that signaled his thrusts.
“I’ve done work for him off and on over the years,” he said on gasping breaths.
“A freelancer, eh?”
“You’ve made it difficult to enact what should have been a simple task. I notified Canov the moment I heard about the skull. Thought he’d be interested. And he turned me on to Bracks.”
Canov. She’d heard that name before...from Garin. “Bracks uses innocent people’s fear and superstition to cover his dirty work?”
“Yes, but we didn’t need someone like you to preach to the Roma how foolish their beliefs were. To make them doubt.”
“I don’t see that I accomplished anything close to that. They’re burying a child today and all the Roma believe Tomas will come back from the dead to avenge himself.”
“Leave them alone. Let them have their beliefs.”
“Wait! Are you afraid of the child’s revenge, Santos?”
He slashed at her, losing all skill in that moment of anger. She’d struck a chord. He did fear revenge for his crimes. Otherwise, why pursue her so relentlessly?
“Is Bracks the one who ordered you to sic your wolf after us?”
The man shoved the scarf off his head, wiping away the sweat in one rough sweep, and tucked it in a pants pocket. He stepped to the side, double-stepping to not lose balance. Annja sensed he was tiring under the hot sun. “You killed my wolf,” he muttered.
“What is Bracks’s game?” she pressed. “Does he take the children, then sell their blood? Their organs? And why a child? If the man is dealing in human flesh and blood why not an adult?”
Though a child would prove easier to abduct and subdue.
“I have no idea—I only find the kids for him.”
“You’re lying.” Annja’s steel cut Santos’s arm and he winced, yet maintained his defense.
“I don’t know what he does with them!”
“You saw the boy who returned with a wound that had been stitched up. They take more than blood,” she surmised. “They’re harvesting organs.” Had to be. “It’s a sick crime, Santos. How can you allow it to happen to your own people?”
“You’ve become a nuisance, Annja Creed. Besides that, you’re deadly. I think my driver took a bullet. He could be dead!”
“You’re next.” Annja thrust low, driving the edge of her blade along the inside of Santos’s leg, cutting the jean material and opening what she hoped was the femoral artery. She wasn’t going to hold good on that threat; it would be wiser to keep him alive so the authorities could question him. “I need some real answers, or I’ll leave you here to bleed out.”
The blood spurting from his leg, Santos fell to his knees, his sword arm falling slack. Slowly, he collapsed onto his side, gripping his thigh and cursing her. He wasn’t going to give her any more information. Good thing she didn’t subscribe to the power of a Gypsy curse, either.
Releasing the sword back to the otherwhere, she could still feel the lingering warmth of the hilt.
Santos was quickly growing weaker. If the man lived, he could talk to the police.
She raced to the Jeep where Doug, still in the backseat and strangely shirtless, leaned over the front seat tending Luke. Frantic, he looked to her, then to Luke, and shook his head.
“What is it? Is he hurt?” she asked as she arrived at the driver’s side. Blood covered Doug’s hands, and he fumbled with the T-shirt he’d removed to press against the side of Luke’s neck.
“He took a bullet to the neck right before we swerved to a stop. He’s bleeding a lot. I don’t think he’s dead. Hell, Annja, this is not happening!”
“He’s not going to die.”
She didn’t know that. She had no idea how bad the wound was. If it had skimmed the carotid, or merely opened flesh and abraded the skin like Doug’s wolf bite.
“Help me get him onto the passenger seat. I remember seeing a hospital in Liberec not far from the train station. I’m going to get Luke some medical care, then see you off to the States.”
“Is that guy back on the road dead?”
Annja climbed behind the wheel and shifted into gear. “Not yet.”
* * *
THE HOT AFTERNOON sun boiled in the bubbling wound on Santos’s leg. He was growing dizzy and his mouth was dry, yet sticky. He knew he had to get to a hospital, and fast. The sword cut was deep and the blood flow had slowed. Or maybe it hadn’t.
He blinked. The bright sun flashed in his eyes and made it difficult to see anything.
The driver, a friend for over a decade, must be dead. He hadn’t moved or come to help Santos.
Annja Creed was some kind of crazy. The operation should have gone smoothly, the Gypsies in his encampment seeing the American woman had lifted a horrible curse from the ground, and causing them to believe it had come to fruition when their children started t
o disappear.
They did believe that.
Mamma didn’t, though. She’d spoken to Annja Creed and it was as though the two had known, had seen beyond the lies to the truth. Mamma had cursed at him for whatever he was involved in and told him he had to make amends to the families for their missing children. She hadn’t known he was behind Tomas’s disappearance, but she felt he’d been a part of it somehow.
But shame no longer affected Santos. The only emotion he still felt was anger. After losing Mica two years ago, he had nothing left to care about. His child hadn’t been stolen by a fictional creature or an evil man. Mica had died two days after Santos’s wife had given birth to him. Laura had died the moment Mica had taken his first breath.
Santos had lost so much. There was nothing left to give.
Somewhere close a tinny buzz vibrated against his hip. Santos spat blood and moaned. He had his phone! He could call for help. And luck upon luck, someone was making it easier by calling him.
He flipped open the phone and, gasping for breath, muttered, “Help me.”
“Santos? What is your status?”
“Dying,” he said, realizing the voice on the other end belonged to his boss. And that meant he’d get no mercy and no help from him.
“Hell,” Bracks said. “What went wrong?”
“The woman...she is smart.”
“Annja Creed? The same woman who challenged me in the hotel room, and who then followed my men to the cottage out of Liberec? You said she was an archaeologist.”
“She fights like a man and carries a big sword.”
“Is that so? Interesting.”
“And she knows things. Has it figured out...”
Though Santos himself wasn’t clear on the real reasons behind Bracks wanting the children. That Tomas had returned home with stitches had shocked him. He’d thought the kid would never be seen again.
He gasped and choked on the blood that fountained up his throat. If his driver were only still alive, he could get to a hospital.
“I’m ten miles out of...Chrastava...south...”
The phone clicked off, and Santos tasted metal on his tongue. The wicked sun blurred bright orange spots in his vision. Sweat dripped into his ears and down his neck.
He laid his head on the rough gravel and reached for the sword his father had given him. His father had stolen it from a man who had once threatened to kill him with it. One should never threaten a Gypsy without following through because that threat will come back to haunt you. They protected their own.
Santos had not protected his own. Didn’t matter. Mica was all that had mattered to him.
Whether or not death took him today, he would return to haunt the American woman.
Dragging himself across the gravel, he cried out at the pain in his leg. In the distance, he heard a man’s shout.
* * *
“CLOSE UP THE operation in the Czech Republic. Damn it!” Bracks stubbed out his cigar and waited for his assistant to leave the room. Wayne Pearce was on the phone, currently driving through France. The man was sightseeing when he should be back in London. “And send someone out to clean up the debris. What a wasted effort that was.”
He settled into the easy chair behind a massive mahogany desk and put up his feet on the open drawer. He’d jumped at the opportunity to use the discovery of the skull as cover for his operations.
In Egypt he’d used a mummy’s curse to obtain gold relics and scarab jewelry from a relatively insignificant tomb. He still carried one of the gold beetles with him because the weight of it in his pocket reminded him of his clever foray.
In Italy he’d manipulated the rumor of a serial killer, and had gotten out with half a dozen children without raising suspicion.
Only three children from Chrastava.
Yet the demand didn’t cease. It was a profitable venture but the supply could never meet the demand, and coming up with covers was making it not worth the effort. Almost. He wasn’t one to abandon business ventures until they’d been proven profitless. Up to fifty thousand per child, sometimes more, was nothing to sneeze at.
But he had a problem. Annja Creed.
Who the hell was she? That he had connected her to Garin Braden added a new and interesting twist to the game. He did love to toy with Braden. The diamond caper a few years ago in Abu Dhabi had been a marvelous snatch. And Braden had followed up with an elegant yet subtle twist of the blade into Bracks’s Japanese uranium securities.
Garin Braden was a fine opponent, a match to Bracks’s ingenuity and criminal daring. And the man was strong, another thing Bracks appreciated. He kept fit by boxing and practicing mixed martial arts every other day. Proper nutrition and meditation kept his mind and body at peak performance. The only one he’d found with the mettle to stand against him was Garin Braden.
Was the female archaeologist involved with Braden? He’d already stolen a girl from Garin once.
Annja Creed was a looker. And if she had taken out Santos, then he wanted to meet her, alone, and get to know what made her tick. Garin wouldn’t appreciate it if Bracks tortured that knowledge out of her.
He smirked.
He did admire bruises on female flesh.
Chapter 16
The small clinic in Liberec was open when Annja drove up. Together, she and Doug helped Luke inside. He drowsily muttered, “You’re so beautiful,” as she helped him from the car and had given her a smile.
Leaving him in the exam room with a nervous nurse and an elderly doctor who yawned after every sentence, Annja paced in the waiting room painted a sterile 1970s shade of lime green while Doug ransacked a vending machine across the street in front of a combination pool hall/Laundromat/massage parlor.
She checked with the receptionist. “Do you have the number for the police?” she asked, and when given it, she punched it into her cell phone. “Thanks.”
Stepping outside the front doors of the hospital, she dialed the Chrastava police and left an anonymous tip that two children had gone missing from the Roma camp outside the city and that an adult male was bleeding out from a gunshot wound on the other side of the forest from the camp.
She could hear the dispatcher placing a call for an ambulance and a police escort for the wounded, then asked her name, which Annja skirted by going into a description of the man.
“The Romani are frightened,” she said. “They need help.”
“Our officers will speak with them, Miss...?”
Annja hung up. She’d have to get rid of this mobile phone. But first...
Garin Braden answered after five rings. “What do you want, Annja?”
“Now you’re answering my calls?”
“I’m in no mood.”
“Again with the mood. Fine. There’s only one thing that could possibly give me reason to call you. What did you learn tracking the cooler? Anything?”
“Nothing.”
“Is that an ‘I’m still tracking Bracks and haven’t been able to get close to him’ nothing, or a ‘she doesn’t need to know all of my business’ nothing?”
“Figure it out for yourself.”
She stared at the cell phone for a moment. He was particularly abrasive and she suspected the man had done a one-eighty regarding helping her. On the other hand, she didn’t recall him ever agreeing to help her.
Garin Braden never did stand on the side of anyone but himself. She knew that, and expected as much. But the few times they had worked together he had genuinely helped her and she had accidentally expected as much this time.
“What was in the cooler?” she asked.
“What makes you think I looked?”
“Was it blood or a body part?”
“Annja.”
“You’re involved in this,” she stated, angry that he
was keeping a tight lid on this when anything they learned could help innocent children. “That’s why you don’t want me breathing over your shoulder. And when I learn the connection between you and Bracks, I’m bringing you down, too.”
“When making a threat, Annja, I suggest you’ve the moxie to back it up.”
“You know I do.”
“Not today you don’t.” The phone clicked off.
With a curse, Annja shoved the phone in a pocket on the thigh of her cargo pants. Garin and Bracks? She didn’t even want to start doing that math.
She stormed back inside the hospital to continue pacing.
As soon as Luke was finished here, she should head back to the States and leave whatever it was going on with the Romani children to the police. She would put Doug on a train. Luke could finish up at the dig site. And the Roma could handle their own troubles, superstitions be damned.
Only, it didn’t work that way in Annja Creed’s world. She’d been embroiled in this situation for a reason. The sword always led her to trouble, and she always followed it.
Children had gone missing. No one was protecting them. And her heart squeezed inside her chest for what they were going through. She knew she could make it all stop if she found Garin Braden. Because wherever he was, she felt sure Bracks would be close.
Doug entered the waiting room with a handful of potato chip bags and chocolate bars. He tossed her a protein bar.
“Figured you’d like that one.”
“Thanks, Doug.” She dropped onto the hard plastic waiting room chair that wobbled thanks to two missing rubber pads that should have tipped the steel legs. “You get a train out?”
“Tomorrow morning,” he said, crunching loudly on the chips. “You sure you’re going to be safe here? Alone?”
“I’ve got Luke.”
“Dude’s getting a bullet wound patched up, Annja.”
“And still standing, so that puts him in the capable category. Don’t worry, Doug. I never unnecessarily put myself in harm’s way.”
Her producer paused midbite, eyebrows lifted.
