The Keepers (The Alchemy Series) (24 page)

He didn’t move an inch. “Sooner or later, you are going to have to work on this intimacy problem you have.
You wonder why I’m interested in Lacey, why I didn’t touch you on the rooftop? Because of this.”

I looked into his eyes. “Don’t you get it? I’m broken, and not the kind that can be fixed. This is who I
am and who I’m always going to be. And I’m sick of hearing you tell me what’s wrong, so either deal with it or I’m leaving.” His eyes were so intense on me it chilled my skin and I forgot any pain my nose had caused. Unsettled, I folded and moved first, leaving him standing alone in the bathroom as I walked out the door.

“So does that mean you are admitting there is a problem?” I heard him yell as I walked to the other room.

“Maybe we should hold hands like we did with the radiation problem?” I asked as I banged the back of my head against the hard wall that was acting as my seat back.

“No, this part doesn’t work like that,” Dodd explained.

“Maybe I should jump in it before it slams shut?” I offered.

“Not a chance. It could crush you,” said Cormac.

It was almost two in the morning and they still couldn’t get the portal up and running for longer than a minute. The two people who were traveling back had been waiting in the other room for four hours now.

“Boss?”

“What’s up, Buzz?”

“They’re
getting pretty impatient over there and Tracker just showed. He wants to know why his people haven’t crossed, yet.”

“Tell them it’s off for tonight. I’ll come over and talk to Tracker in a couple of minutes.”

I leaned my head back against the wall and closed my eyes. This had just gone from bad to disastrous. I heard the click of the door shutting and opened my eyes just in time to see Dodd’s hand slam against the table. Cormac stood deathly still, just staring at where the portal should have hovered open, displaying a beautiful lavender sky.

I stood and stamped the pins and needles out of my foot. “There has to be someone wi
th answers. I can’t believe you guys don’t have an owner’s manual or something.”

“I wish,” Cormac replied.

“Well, who trained you? You must have had some sort of mentor?”

“That would be Hammond. The guy I can’t find. Let me go get this over with.” I watched Cormac’s heavy steps as he left the room.

“What’s he going to say?” I asked Dodd.

“I don’t know, but he’ll buy us some time. I’ll be right back. I’m going to see if I can help things along a little.”

“Yeah, go. I’ll be here doing nothing.”

Alone in the room, I ran my hand down one of the ebony monoliths, wishing I could unlock a problem that people so much more knowledgeable than me were stymied by, and I was frustrated. Knowing the room was soundproofed, I let out a scream that contained all my pent up anger at the situation, my repressed anger at always being the underdog, and most of all, I released
my disgust of myself at being helpless.

The lights in the room flickered off, and were quickly replaced by the portal bursting open. I’d never seen it so large in any of the times I’d been there. It shot toward the ceiling and pressed from wall to wall, leaving dents where the walls strained to contain it.

On the other side, I saw two men, one I didn’t recognize, but the other was the guy in the suit who had gone into the doctor’s office with Tracker. Both of their faces gaped open in shock.

“Who are you?” the man in the suit hollered down the length of the portal.

“Who are you?” I hollered back. Who’d this guy think he was?

He stepped into the portal and started making his way to me.

I didn’t want to panic, but I had a real bad feeling about this guy. I considered making a break for the door, but I didn’t want to run. Something about the idea of running from this guy made me mad, so I stood my ground.

As long as he wasn’t immune to my skills, I could take him. He was about five feet ten inches and of average build. His appearance gave me the impression that he wasn’t the type to get physical, or at least
, he didn’t look like he was used to getting dirty, might be a more accurate way to describe him.

His shoes hitting the interior floor announced his official exit from the portal.

“Who are you?”

His voice was deep, even now that he wasn’t yelling. I saw the silver at his temples and slight wrinkling at the corner of his eyes. Even without this display of age, I could sense his experience
by his carriage and the confidence he held within himself.

“Not going to answer?” he asked.

“I’m not sure why you think I owe you any answers?”

“It doesn’t matter. I might not know what hole you dragged yourself o
ut of, but I know who you are, regardless.”

“Excuse me? Would you care to elaborate?”

“You stand there like your tough and confident, but I know the truth that lies beneath the act. Now, it’s time you crawl back to the gutter and get out of my business.”

“Y
ou’re right, I do come from the gutter, and guess what? That’s how I fight too.” Before I gave him even a second to react, I kicked him in the stomach. I threw everything I had into it and he fell backward into the portal. The rage over his words, and my fear that he was correct, fueled my energy as it shot out of me. He’d been so confident in his physical superiority his relaxed posture had made him an easy mark and he flew back a couple feet into the portal.

A second after he hit the portal, I heard the door swing open. As I turned to see Cormac and Dodd walking in, I felt a swoosh of air as the portal instantly collapsed with a force so strong it created an aftershock that shook the very walls.

“Oh, god!” I said frantically, looking from Dodd to Cormac. “I gotta get this thing back open!”

“What the…”

“Cormac, I just shoved a man in there before it collapsed!”

“What the hell happened in here?” Dodd finally articulated. The two of them circled the room, the smell of dust in the air.

“Whatever you did dented the walls.”

I turned to where Cormac stood, and I saw the cracks that wer
e running floor to ceiling. It looked like an explosion had happened.

My hands started to shake violently and I started gasping for air. It felt like I couldn’t catch my breath no matter how hard I tried.

“It’s okay. Just relax,” Cormac said, his arm around me.

“I killed him.” I’d done horrible things, but this was a f
irst. I’d hurt people, but I had never, ever, killed a single soul.

“Who?” His hand was rubbing my back, and as much as I wanted to fall into the curve of his arm, I thought of the man’s words before he died
.

“The guy I saw with Tracker. I killed him. I pushed him into the portal and then it collapsed.”

“What did he look like?”

With shaky hands, I reached in and pulled out my phone, flipping through the pictures.

“This is him.” I handed my phone to Cormac, Dodd looking over his shoulder.

“I can’t make out anything. It’s a complete blur.”

“It’s not like I could ask him to stand still and pose.”

“Can you make anything of this?” Cormac held the phone closer to Dodd.

“Nothing.”

“You’re sure it was the same guy you saw with Tracker? One hundred percent sure?”

“Yes.”

“If she’s right, then it is Tracker behind all of this. How’s he been pulling it off? We’ve been trailing him for months,” Dodd said.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were watching him when I told you my suspicions?”

“I thought I had ruled him out. When he had us take his little brother through, I really thought he was innocent.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“He didn’t leave long ago. Call the guys upstairs and put a tail on him.
I want every piece of property he has watched. I want anyone he’s ever spoken to in the last year watched. I want to know a complete list of the Keepers who are cooperating with him, every single last one who is involved.”

Dodd pulled out his cell phone, and walked off to make the calls. I turned and watched as Cormac ran his hand along the dent on the floor, then he turned and looked to me.

“What the hell did you do? It looks like a bomb went off in here. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

I just shrugged my shoulders. I had no clue.

It had taken a week for the Keeper construction crew and engineers to fix the portal room, which also served as a great excuse to shut it down. Unfortunately, Tracker had fallen off the ends of the earth in that week. After he left the casino that day, he’d vanished. He wasn’t answering any of Cormac’s calls and there was a feeling of impending doom that hovered in the air around the penthouse. The general consensus was that he knew the curtain had been pulled back and his time was limited. Tracker’s only option now was to pull out the big guns. Our problem was; we didn’t know how big those guns were.

As I waited in line to order my latte that day, the very last
person I expected to see was Tracker passing by the window, right on the strip, in plain sight of the casino.

“Excuse me,” I said, to a woman
I almost knocked over as I rushed from the coffee shop. My hand fumbled into my pocket for my phone to call Cormac while I pushed out the door to follow Tracker down the strip.

“Hello?”

“Cormac, I’ve got Tracker in my sights. I’m following him down the Strip.”

“No. Just give me your location and wait there.”

“If I do that, I’ll lose him.”

“I don’t care.”

“I’m heading east down the Strip.”

“Are you deaf? I said d
on’t follow him.”

“I’ll call you when I get a location,” I said and hung up the phone to the sound of him cursing. The ringer started chiming less than ten seconds later and I turned it off.

Why was Tracker walking? He had to be going somewhere close by, and then as if I jinxed myself, he got in a cab. I frantically waved down the next one I saw.

“Here, follow that cab, but don’t let him know.” I shoved two
one-hundred dollar bills at him. Cormac liked all his employees to have a minimum of a thousand petty cash on them. I told him I wasn’t his employee. We had compromised with the term independent contractor. He then insisted that all of his independent contractors needed to have a thousand in cash on hand at all times. I didn’t feel like arguing anymore and just took the cash. Not that it wasn’t nice, I just resented his controlling nature at the time. Now I was glad. As it turned out, it wasn’t such a bad policy.

“You’re getting too close.”

“Relax, lady, this ain’t my first rodeo,” the grizzled cabbie replied.

“
You do this a lot?”

“Y
ou’d be amazed at the things I’ve done in the course of this job.”

Several blocks off
the strip, we slowed down around the corner from where Tracker’s cab pulled up in front of a mechanic’s garage.

“What are you planning
to do?” the cabbie asked.

“I’m not sure. You’
re the one with all the experience, what would you suggest?”

He turned and looked back at me with a skeptical eye. “I’m not sure you should be going in alone. You don’t look too tough.”

“I’m tougher than I appear.”

“If it
was me, I’d get out here and circle around back.”

“That’s what I was thinking
, too. Thanks, it was a pleasure.”

“Good luck.”

As I stepped out of the cab, I text messaged Cormac the location, then shut it off again. The last thing I needed was my phone giving me up. The houses were empty at this time of day, and the alleyway between them was a straight shot from here to the back entrance. A dog in the distance yelped once or twice, but quickly quieted down as I continued on my path.

I crouched down about twenty feet away, and I
spotted a door and several windows all coated in dust and grime, which would work to my benefit. Creeping up to the window closest to me, I started to peek over the edge, hoping my blond hair wouldn’t be spotted.

“Right on time.” Tracker’s voice was right behind me. “I smelled your scent all the way back on the Strip. It probably didn’t hurt that I was expecting you.”

I wanted to bang my head against the wall. How could I have been so stupid? He didn’t just walk right in front of the Lacard. He knew Cormac had men searching every corner for him. It had been a set up, and I’d fallen right into it. All wasn’t lost, I knew from past experience I could take him.

“What do you want?” I asked as I turned. That’s when I saw two more men hanging back.

“I’m perfectly aware of your little tricks, Josephine. First, we are going for a ride. This dump was nothing but a decoy. Follow me.”