Fragile Bonds

by Adelaide Walsh

  Adelaide Walsh

  Fragile Bonds

  Adriana Rojas series

  Book 1

  Copyright 2019 by Adelaide Walsh - All rights reserved.

  Cover design by R. Bosevski of Story Styling Cover Design.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Books by Adelaide Walsh

  The Coven Unleashed series:

  The Ritual

  The Bloodless Case (exclusive to Mrs Dracula anthology)

  Feel the Pride (subscriber-exclusive short story)

  The Great Keeper series:

  Shake

  Drown

  Christmas Eve Frenzy (subscriber-exclusive short story)

  Freeze

  Table of Contents

  Books by Adelaide Walsh

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  From the author

  Want to know more about my world?

  Dive into Faded Lines

  Chapter 1

  Thirteen faces stared up from the photos splayed across the little glass-topped table in front of me. No matter how long I stared at them, they stubbornly refused to tell me anything useful.

  “This just isn’t working,” I grumbled as I rubbed my temples in slow circles. “What am I missing?”

  “Still no progress?” Isla, my rock, my best-friend-slash-soul-mate since before we could walk, slid into the seat across from me, tipping two full cups of coffee on to the table, carefully avoiding the laminated photos I’d been pouring over for the last several hours. Whenever a story simply wouldn’t come together, Isla’s bright little bakery on the east side of the city always seemed to help me get my head straight. Its dainty tables with bases of curling wrought iron nestled in between large porcelain planters overflowing with a riot of colorful flowers and the blue and white striped awning over the front door always reminded me of the modest cafés that lined the streets of Paris.

  “None,” I said with a frustrated sigh. “No witnesses I can talk to, no security cameras, nothing left at the scene of any of the abductions.”

  “Well,” she nudged the coffee cup toward me, “was Justice able to pull any prints from the scene? Any forensic data?” I shot my friend a questioning look from under a raised eyebrow. She giggled and shrugged. “Maybe I’ve been watching a few too many cop dramas.”

  The corners of my mouth tipped up at my friend’s honest admission. But her question remained valid. And the answer to that question had me scrubbing my hands over my face, the frustrating truth here making me want to scream.

  “Justice is absolutely no help. They’re never exactly willing to give up case details to a journalist, but this time it’s like they’re refusing to even investigate. I’ve been nagging them for updates on the investigation for months, I even did a little snooping in their system the other day. Nothing. No case notes. No conclusions. Nothing. Even the officer assigned to the case is completely stone-walling me. Won’t even answer my calls.”

  “Adriana!” Isla gasped, “You can’t do that!”

  “Do what?” I asked and took a well-timed sip of my coffee. My best friend was a maestro in the kitchen when it came to pastries, but she also made the world’s best cup of coffee.

  She lowered her voice to a whisper and her eyes searched the café as if one of the three other customers here actually gave a shit about our conversation. “You can’t hack Justice! That’s illegal!”

  I waved off her concerns, not worried in the slightest. This was Justice we were talking about. Colombia’s law enforcement department was so outdated, a ten-year-old with a cell phone could hack their databases.

  “It’s fine. I do it all the time.” I continued talking, glossing right over her horrified expression. “Besides, there wasn’t anything to find. They aren’t working the case. They aren’t even looking for these people, and I’m willing to bet it’s because they’ve been well-bribed to sweep it all under the rug.”

  My best friend shivered and wrapped her hands around her mug as if she needed its warmth, despite the intense Colombian heat currently creeping into the little bakery through the open front-door. A misty rain was falling outside and the haze from it pooled around the doorway in swirling tendrils that reached into the room like ghostly fingers.

  “That’s scary, Adriana.”

  “Damn right it’s scary.” I slapped the table to emphasize my point, making the little white saucers and silver sugar pot rattle. No one even glanced our way. The couple on the other side of the room was too lost in each other to notice my outburst and the twenty-something a few tables away was shielded from the outside world by a pair of headphones and whatever she was watching on her phone. “And what’s even scarier is that our cretin of a president is letting it happen. I’m certain that the man knows exactly who is behind these disappearances, too. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that all thirteen of them have been open about their displeasure with his lazes fair foreign policies.”

  Isla was my confidant, and if I knew one thing, it was that she’d have my back no matter what happened. If anyone came asking after me she’d flash that innocent smile, flip her pretty blonde hair, and take my secrets to the grave. But I still censored myself, and kept the discussion of my theories deliberately vague. I couldn’t tell her the details of evidence I had found, about why I was so sure that our government was hiding knowledge that would help give the family members of the missing people answers. Isla didn’t pry. I’d been a journalist and her friend for long enough that she knew I’d tell her what I could, and the rest had to stay quiet until it was published. I had no problem putting my own life on the line to get to the bottom of a story, but I wouldn’t put my friends and family in danger by proxy. Too much information was dangerous. She got that.

  “So you’re really the only one looking for these missing people?” She asked after a long pause; a vulnerable kind of skepticism in her voice.

  I nodded. “I’m really the only one.”

  She let out a long breath. “If anyone can find these people, it’s you. You care so much, Adriana. I know you’ll find them.”

  My phone rang, interrupting our discussion, and when I saw the name that flashed on the display I held up the phone for Isla to see. She grinned and blew a kiss as I answered it.

  “Hola, Mamá. Isla is sending her love.”

  “Hola, mi cielito. How are mis bebès?”

  I smiled as she showered us both in greetings full of love and demanded I put her on speaker phone so that she could talk to us both. She might have been my biological mom, but she loved Isla like a second daughter. My momma had a huge heart, and the woman was so full of love it seemed endless.

  “You girls saw on the TV about the President’s address tonight? Sí?”

  “Yes, Mamá.” Isla and I answered in chorus.

  And we had. Everyone had. Every news station and radio program and political blog in the country had been electrified with the announcement all morning. Our country was in flux, and each citize
n in our rainforest haven was waiting for our president to put our fears at ease and tell us that we were all safe. Our leaders were going to tell us that we were protected. That things were going to be okay. They had to. That was their job. To make things okay.

  “We should be together for this.” A pregnant pause. “We live in scary times and my girls should be here for this. Family is what’s important right now, mis bebés. The earth might crumble under our feet, but it's family that will get us through.”

  Isla looked at me with worry in her eyes. “We’ll be there, Mamá,” she called, and sunk her teeth into her bottom lip.

  I suddenly felt a pang of guilt for telling her so much about the horror that was the thirteen missing people I’d been investigating. Isla was a gentle soul. She was scared, and me commenting about our corrupt leadership had only exacerbated that. I felt like a jerk. It was easy to forget that most people weren’t quite as jaded as I was.

  “Yeah, Mamá,” I said into the phone I’d laid on the table. “We’ll be there.”

  After I hung up I reached across the table to Isla and gave her hand a squeeze. I wanted to say something encouraging, to tell her not to worry, but I just couldn’t find the right words.

  “I need to go check on my cakes,” she pulled her hand away from me and got up, taking her coffee cup with her as she walked toward the kitchen.

  I flipped through the photos and my notes again, trying desperately to see something I’d missed before. I had a lot of information, but nothing obtained legally, and nothing that would hold up in court. The truth was, I knew who was responsible, I just didn’t have enough proof for that knowledge to matter.

  I sat there in the bakery, tapping away at my laptop and uselessly flipping through the photos of these people for another hour before Isla enlisted me to help her close up. By four o’clock we were making the short drive across a Bogotá bustling with the life and vibrancy that was so much a part of our people, to the tiny two-bedroom house I grew up in.

  Chapter 2

  “Oh, mi cielito, what will we do?” My mother clutched her hand against her heart as she watched the newscaster on TV break from her stunned silence to reiterate what President of the Republic of Colombia, Carlos Orcanas, had just told his people. “This will bring nothing good, mija.”

  The President looked out at us from the television screen, with a man I’d only seen in covertly-captured photos standing at his back, and announced that the democracy had fallen, that Dariel Abreo—the leader of what we’d all thought was just a rebellion, just a minor aggravation our leaders would handle—would be the man to “free us from the corruption of a weak and fractured government.” My country had just been handed over to a radical tyrant, and the relative peace we’d lived with yesterday, had expected to live with for years and years to come, shattered. The Colombia I had been born to, the Colombia that I have loved and fought to protect for the last twenty-nine years, that Colombia no longer existed.

  I curled into myself, clutching a decorative couch pillow to my chest, and attempted to process the sheer horror of what I was watching. The news stations all over Colombia had spent the day hyping an impromptu presidential address suddenly scheduled for this evening. There had been speculation in the papers and by the anchors on every network that our president would be announcing to us all that our country was at war. As terrifying as that thought had been, the truth turned out to be so much worse.

  My stomach twisted as I listened to our president condemn my beautiful country to an era of oppression. My Colombia had never been perfect, our people too filled with fire to be easily governed, but no matter what that traitor of a politician said, my country had never been weak. I searched for words, for a reaction of any kind, as I watched the newswoman solemnly repeat the president’s...former president’s message: Colombia was now under martial rule as instated by Dariel Abreo, the alpha of the Snakes.

  “How could this have happened?” Isla covered eyes swimming in tears with her hand. “How can this be, Adriana? You’re out there. You see what’s happening, you’re involved in this stuff. How could this have happened?” she demanded.

  I wrapped my arms around my friend, unsure of what comfort I could give her. My mom just looked at me over Isla’s hunched form as we gathered in my mother’s living room to watch our country fragment. I wanted to tell them it was all going to be okay. I wanted to say something that would take that abandoned look off my mother’s face. But the truth was, I didn’t think it would be okay. I knew things. I’d always had these ‘feelings’. My mom had told me since I was a child that it was a gift passed down from some distant ancestor, some powerful witch in our lineage long, long ago. And right now, I had a very bad feeling.

  “Dariel has been building his power base for years now.” I tried to be rational. “We knew he was in Colombia. People have been going missing for months. People with political voices. It was obvious our Colombia was next in line to deal with him...but this?” I shook my head and squeezed Isla a little bit tighter. “I thought...I don’t know what I thought. Not this. Never this.”

  Mamá reached out a trembling hand and curled her fingers around my own. This was a dark day for my country. For all of us.

  Three days ago, Dariel’s army invaded Bogotá, infiltrated our capital, succeeded in capturing the president and filling our cemeteries with bodies. But it wasn’t an invasion like you think of when you read a history book, safely protected by the wave of soldiers walking the streets. There were no tanks. No bombs. In fact, for most of the people who lived in the capital, it was a day just like any other. Dariel and his army of Snake changelings were highly trained, entirely lethal assassins who’d come from the heart of the Amazon. They slunk into our city without disturbing our leaders, without disrupting the simple routines of the people in the office buildings, the people stuck in traffic, the kids in their schools. Nobody except their targets even knew they were a threat. They’d disposed of the loudest voices of dissent, one by one, over the last four months. And three days ago, they’d targeted the most powerful people in my country’s capital all at the same time. A series of vicious, precision strikes.

  When the attacks happened, I’d been covering a press conference at the convention center in central Bogotá. I shivered as I thought back to the slaughter that occurred in my city.

  Colombia is comprised of seventy-five percent rainforest, which meant that a huge amount of political maneuvering was done around the forest and the protections that prevented it's abundance from being misused. The press conference that day was just one of many. Nothing special. I’d covered these things a hundred times for the newsgroup I worked for. I stood at the back of the room in the press pit, my journalist’s badge stuffed into my back pocket, camera held up high in hopes of getting a shot above the heads of the crowd when it all went to shit.

  The windows of the convention center exploded in a hail of gunfire and lethal glass daggers. When a plate glass window breaks, it doesn’t crumble into harmless little cubes. It’s only tempered glass that does that. Plate glass fractures into vicious, knife-sharp shards. My ears were ringing as I flung my body to the carpeted floor, scraping the skin off my forearms in the process. The large room, chosen for its abundance of natural light, was obscured with smoke and dust and spatters of darker, wetter things. The sweeping space splintered with screams, rapid-fire Spanish, the sound of bullets meeting the concrete walls. The second the windows were no longer a barrier, the humidity from outside poured in, making the dust from the disaster stick to my skin, coat my lungs. But I didn’t stop to take in the incredible amount of damage that had been done in just a few seconds.

  There was a man on the floor in front of me. He wasn’t moving, but I knew he couldn’t have been hurt too badly. We’d been at the back of the room with the rest of the reporters, our position shielded from the assault on the windows by the angle of the building which flared out to one side.

  Thank God for modern architecture.

  It wa
s probably shock that had the guy lying there in such stillness. That’s what gets people killed in these kinds of situations. They freeze, don’t get out of the way while they have the chance. But I wasn’t about to lay here and wait for the guys with guns to realize they’d missed a spot.

  I dug my fingers into the fabric of the man’s tailored jacket and rolled, kicking one of the heavy double-doors open at the same time. The hallway seemed oddly sedate in contrast with the chaos of the big conference room. I crawled on my belly along the wall, away from the doorway, dragging his body with me. He’d started to panic and wasn’t just dead weight anymore. I could feel him scrambling to sit up, but damned if I was going to let go. I could save him. I could save at least one person in this mess. If he was with me, he’d be safe, or at least he’d have a better chance than in that room. When I was far enough away from the door that we’d be out of immediate danger from a stray bullet, I propped him up against the wall. He was breathing hard. Too hard.

  “You’ll hyperventilate if you do that.” His eyes were wide, grey-brown orbs clouded with fear and confusion. “Are you hurt?” I asked, trying to stave off a tremor in my own voice that threatened to crack the clear focus of my survivor’s brain.

  He shook his head for a long moment before answering me. “No.” He patted at his chest. “No, I’m ok. I’m ok.” He repeated it like a mantra.

  “Good.” I shoved up to my feet and looked around. “What’s your name?” I asked.

  He hesitated for a second like he needed to search his mind for the answer. “Elias,” he chirped. It sounded more like a question.

  “Hola, Elias,” I said with disinterested formality, my mind devoted mostly to coming up with a plan to keep on living. “I’m Adriana.”

  The convention center was made up of four floors. The ground floor—where the press conference was being held—was formed in the shape of a massive triangle; the three main rooms on this level positioned at its points. The whole building was set back from the street by about half a kilometer on a grassy, sloping campus. What happened in there...that was no drive-by shooting. Whoever had attacked the press conference was close and they were, more than likely, coming inside. That meant that I needed to get out of that hallway. I decided that taking the stairs to the upper levels and looking for a place to hide would be my best bet. These people were targeting the press conference. They had to be after the politicians here: The Minister of Foreign Affairs, The Minister of Culture, directors from the environmental departments, members of every non-profit in the country that had a hand in protecting our beautiful rainforest, they were all in this room. There was no reason for the assailants to start clearing the other levels.