*Posting while pointedly not looking to see how long it's been since the last chapter went up* Hey guys! I know, right- got this chapter up pretty quick!
Sorry guys- I know it's been a while, and I feel like this isn't my best. Life has not been the best at being inspirational to writing recently, but I felt like i just needed to get this out to kind of get back in the groove. Hopefully I'll do better at getting stuff out sooner, and better quality, here in the next little bit. Thanks to everyone who is still hanging in there with me! And a special thanks to Timid Antelope- thanks for your support on this! ;-)
Cassie's palms scraped on rough stone as she swung her legs over the top of the wall surrounding the Escarra's courtyard and dropped onto the other side. Grimy water stained her velvet shoes as she splashed down into a puddle, landing in a crouch before standing up in the alley running along the side of the estate. In the moment of relative calm after their battle with Tristan's men, several nagging questions about the events of the evening rushed to the forefront of Cassie's mind, and as two out of her three comrades dropped to the street beside her the most urgent of these questions came tumbling out of her lips. "Where's Solange?"
Half-obscured in the gathering shadows of the night, Ian turned to her with a grim expression. "Haven't seen her since the Ocelotl arrived."
A heavy silence stretched between the three treasure hunters. Cutter looked both ways down the alley, then said, "Oi- with any luck, she made it back to the hotel with the coin already. Speaking of," he added as the wail of a siren carried through the night, "the hotel would be a bloody beautiful place to be right about now."
Cassie looked to her left and saw the blue glow of police lights pooling on the pavement at the end of the alley, and a quick look the other direction showed the same there. "C'mon!" Ian said, waving for her and Cutter to follow as he jogged to a fire escape on the side of the next building. "Let's take the rooftops!"
The clanging of steel under their feet rung through the alley as they dashed up the stairs, while below the sirens' drone was becoming a scream. Radios squawked, and suddenly voices were shouting in Spanish and ordering them to stop. "Shit!" Cassie cursed as she leaped over the parapet wall onto the roof. "They saw us! How come every time I'm around you we end up with the police on our tail?" she hissed at Cutter.
"Oh, come on now, that's hardly fair luv!" he protested.
"What's not fair about that?" Cassie asked in exasperation.
"Because," Cutter huffed as he ran. "Spending time around any of your friends and family will get the cops on your tail!"
They sprinted across the roof and leaped to the next. The police, swarming up the fire escape behind them, stopped at the edge and barked into their radios, while warily eyeing the gap that stretched between the two buildings. Looking over his shoulder with a smirk, Ian said smugly, "That was too easy!"
Suddenly a spotlight blazed on some distance away, and moved quickly across the tops of the buildings until it locked on to the three treasure hunters. The whoosh of helicopter blades churned the air, becoming deafening as the aircraft swooped nearer, and Cassie, Ian, and Cutter all stopped and shielded their eyes from the light as a voice called to them over a loudspeaker. "Stay where you are and put your hands up! Repeat, stay where you are and put your hands up!"
Thinking quickly, Cutter called out, "Split up! It'll be harder for them to follow three of us at once!"
Cassie gulped and glanced over at Ian, who met her gaze. "See you at the hotel?" She said uncertainly.
Ian flashed a quick, confident smile. "Count on it."
A quick series of thuds on the roof made the three of them turn, and they saw that the police who had been chasing them on foot had just braved the jump across the alley to them. "It's now or never, mates!" Cutter yelled.
The three of them broke up, each running a different direction across the rooftop as the policemen drew guns and the helicopter swung its searchlight indecisively between them. "¡Alto!" one of the officers yelled as Cassie reached the edge of the roof and leaped up onto the parapet. She paused for a moment to throw a last glance back at Ian as he ran the other way, then bent her knees and jumped.
In the dark, Cassie misjudged the distance of her jump and landed heavily, her knees coming hard up into her chest and knocking the wind out of her as she made a clumsy attempt at rolling into her landing. With a groan, Cassie got to her feet and stumbled forward, clapping a hand to the back of her head where it had hit the roof. "Ugh. That hurt," she muttered as she began to run. A gun fired and Cassie yelped, ducking as the bullet clipped the edge of the building and sent a chunk of broken brick whizzing past her ear. "Shit!" she yelled, breaking into an all-out sprint. More bullets sailed by on either side, and as she jumped another roof gap Cassie called out, "You're shooting at the wrong people, guys!"
Cassie reached the edge and placed her hands down on the parapet as she leaned out over the street. "Oh, shit!" she breathed, her eyes traveling over the yawning twenty-foot span to the next building. "I can't jump that!" She looked over her shoulder and saw that the officers had stopped on the last building back with guns drawn and trained on her. They shouted something that Cassie couldn't quite make out, and then suddenly she was blinded by the helicopter's searchlight as it locked on to her. Squinting and shielding her eyes as the prop wash from the low-hanging chopper kicked up a storm of grit from the roof, Cassie reached down with her other hand to grab the hem of her dress as the wind tore at it. Taking a step back, Cassie nearly tripped over the parapet. "Seriously?" she hissed as the officers closed in. "There's three of us, and the helicopter choseme of all people to follow?"
From above, the chopper's loudspeaker boomed down at her, "Stay where you are and put your hands behind your head!"
Giving a desperate and frustrated look around her, Cassie's eyes landed on some power lines trailing off the corner of the roof, down across the street, and to the building across the square. As she quickly ran through her options, her eyes landed on her feet and inspiration struck. In a flash, she removed one of the delicate velvet shoes Cutter had so generously bought for her, laid it across the top of the wire, and hooked her fingers inside. As the police closed in on her, she took a final, reluctant glance at the footwear and muttered, "This is why I have no nice clothes."
"Freeze!" an officer yelled from close behind. Cassie shot a determined glance over her shoulder and then threw herself from the edge, her heart in her stomach as she flew out over the streets of Madrid with nothing but a piece of velvet and rubber keeping her from falling to her death. Using her shoe to zipline down the power cables, she followed the swoop of the wires down and across the street, letting go just before she smashed into the building on the other side. "Oh shit!" she yelped as she plummeted to the ground, her fall broken only by a fabric awning that she crashed through before hitting the hard pavement below. The world swirled around her as Cassie lay on her back and did her best to ignore the dozens of sore and bruised areas of herself, then slowly pushed her aching body to its feet. "Well," she mumbled, "It coulda been worse."
A burst of gunfire ripped into the stone wall beside her, and Cassie gave a cry of surprise as she lurched into the shelter of an alley. "It got worse!" She grimaced as her one bare foot splashed through a slimy puddle, and she looked at the shoe she held in her hand. Both the sole and the top were warped from friction, distorted by heat to the point of being unwearable. Cassie scoffed and pulled her remaining shoe off, then threw both aside as she sprinted down the alley. "Sorry Charlie," she sighed as she ran barefoot into the night.
Following a twisting path, Cassie made sure to take as many turns as possible until she was certain she had lost the police officers that were chasing her. Arriving breathless at the edge of a square after snaking her way through the city, she slowed and lightly touched the wall to steady herself as she warily stepped out from the shadows. It was at that moment the helicopter suddenly soared overhead, the thrum of its rotors rudely shattering the stillness of night as its searchlight combed the area for her and her fellow fugitives. Sucking in a sharp breath of air, Cassie withdrew back to the alley and flattened herself against the wall as the light swept past, staying there until she heard the noise of the chopper fading into the night. Relieved, she exhaled through pursed lips and stepped back out into the open, looking up to the skyline of Madrid that stood silhouetted against a deep, deep indigo night. "There," she breathed once she spotted their hotel- pretentious and towering, the building was dotted with an array of lights to accent the opulent exterior architecture. "Not far to go now- just a few blocks!"
Cassie started running, but stopped when she heard voices echoing down the street. Two officers brandishing flashlights rounded the corner ahead and turned her direction, and she dove for cover. "Crap!" she muttered as she crouched behind a low wall at the edge of the square. "Can't I ever get a break?" She heard the rumbling of an engine coming from behind her and turned to see a delivery truck rattling slowly her way. Cassie frowned and drew back into the shadows as an idea popped into her head. Waiting out of sight until the truck was passing by, she stood up and jumped, grabbing the handle on the back of the truck's box and swinging onto the tailgate. The truck jolted as it hit a pothole; Cassie held tight to the handle, pressed her back flat against the cargo door, and hoped for the best.
Puttering at a leisurely pace toward the policemen, the truck swayed and dipped as it rolled over the cobblestones of the square, the driver unaware of his additional passenger hiding on the back. It slowed as it reached the edge of the square, and Cassie's heart sank as she realized that the policemen might stop it to search the vehicle. Then the engine revved again, carrying on into the streets with Cassie still plastered to the back cargo door, chuckling as she slipped by the officers completely unnoticed.
"Heh," Cassie murmured to herself when she was far enough away to feel safe. "Right under their noses!" The truck slowed to go around a tight bend in the road, and she took the opportunity to leap off toward the sidewalk. She tried to roll as she landed, but one bare foot landed painfully on a rock, and she ended up sprawling across the pavement and into a couple of garbage cans, loudly knocking them over. As Cassie lay on the ground nursing the latest injuries to her ever-growing list, the lid from one of the overturned cans rolled into the side of her head and flopped lazily over, adding one last slow, reverberating crash as it came to rest. Cassie winced, knowing that the sound would have been easily heard for blocks, and suddenly she heard voices shouting in Spanish nearby. "Ah, not again!" she hissed as she looked up to see the beams of two flashlights bobbing as a couple police officers ran her way. Sucking in a sharp breath, she kipped to her feet and scurried into the nearest alley. Ducking into the shadow of a doorway, Cassie listened with bated breath as the police officers came closer.
"¿Qué fue eso?" she heard one of them ask.
"¿Quién está ahí?" the other barked out.
She frowned and peeked out around the door frame as sounds of the officers searching the area drifted her way. Leaning forward, she craned her neck and peered upward, grinning as she quickly plotted a route up the side of the building. "Piece of cake," she muttered to herself, then grabbed the trim of the door and began climbing.
A few moments later she was clutching the sill of a window, hanging just below an intricately carved cornice about halfway up the wall. Her fingers reached upwards and curled around the granite edge while her feet scrabbled against the stucco, and with a muted grunt, Cassie pulled herself up to stand on the precariously narrow ledge. Pressing herself flat to the building behind her, she paused and drew a sharp breath, her eyes narrowing as she set herself to shimmy along a cornice that was barely ten inches wide and twenty feet in the air, all while barefoot and in a dress. "The things I do for history," she scoffed, then blew a loose strand of hair from in front of her eyes.
She was almost to the corner when a sound came from the alley below. Pausing mid-step, Cassie looked down, her eyes widening when she saw the two police officers stride into the alley below with guns drawn. They moved carefully but deliberately, stalking down the dank side-street with their flashlights sweeping continuously ahead of them, combing the alley for her or her friends. Cassie froze, not daring to move until the officers had reached the opposite end. With their backs to her and a dozen or more yards between, she finally slithered around the corner of the building and headed for the balconies on the front side.
It was as she placed her hands on the cold iron railing of a balcony and was about to climb over, that a chunk of the cornice crumbled under her left foot. The pieces of granite tumbled down, cracking and bouncing off the side of the building as they plummeted noisily to the street below. "Shit!" Cassie hissed under her breath as she used the railing to catch herself from falling. Spanish voices called out, and she looked up to see several more policemen running toward the sound to investigate. Her eyes flicked over to a rack of laundry that had been left on the balcony to dry, full of crisp, light-colored linens fluttering gently in the breeze. Quickly, she dove over the railing and scurried behind the rack as the officers reached the foot of the building. Huddled in the corner behind a flowy, white and blue dress, Cassie sat with her heart pounding as she listened to the vague snippets of conversation that drifted up to her. She caught glimpses of the officer's flashlight beams as they played them over the quiet street, then suddenly the light was shining directly on the rack of laundry hiding her, the brightness making the dress's fabric glow like a halo around her. Cassie sucked a breath through gritted teeth and waited to be discovered- and then the light moved on and the voices soon faded into the stillness of the night. Letting out a sigh of relief, Cassie even dared to laugh a little as she pulled herself to her feet and climbed the rest of the way to the roof of the building, where she continued her way across the tops of the city to their hotel.
Cassie landed heavily, stood, and opened the door that went from the balcony to her hotel room. Closing and locking the door behind her, she pitched her purse onto the bed and scrubbed her hands over her face.
"What a night," she huffed. She looked around the empty and dark hotel room, then strode toward the kitchenette. "Solange?" she called into the silence.
No one answered.
With a shrug, Cassie returned to the bedroom and picked up a half-full glass of water from the nightstand, chugged it, then turned toward the bathroom, stopping when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. The lovely little red-and-blue tango dress Charlie had bought for her was now thoroughly ruined- soaked in alcohol and ripped in a few places from her scuffle at the estate. She sighed again, and looked down at herself. "This is why shopping for expensive clothing is never a worthwhile investment for me…" she muttered darkly, turning back toward the dresser.
As she grabbed the hem of the garment and started to pull it up over her head, her eyes caught something on the nightstand and she stopped, peering quizzically at it for a moment. Letting the dress fall back down, she quickly crossed the room and stooped over the nightstand by her roommate's bed. "It's Solange's phone," she breathed, carefully picking up the item. "She must have forgotten it when we went to the party…"
Cassie stared at the screen, remembering that a couple days ago she had walked behind Solange as the girl was unlocking her phone, and was pretty sure she had seen what her code was. She frowned as all the little anomalies and inconsistencies, both from that night and from the whole time she had known Solange, flooded back to her mind, and somewhere inside of her, the journalist side that Cassie had inherited from her mother was telling her that this phone might just hold some answers. With a quick, nervous glance around the room to make sure no one was watching, Cassie let curiosity get the better of her as she punched in a few numbers, getting the code wrong the first and second times before finally unlocking it the third. With a growing and almost inexplicable sense of unease, Cassie went straight to the text messages, and immediately locked onto a conversation marked simply "T.V.". The first message she saw when she opened the conversation read simply, but ominously: "We have the girl, come meet my men outside and we'll talk business."
"What the…" Cassie's eyes widened as she checked the date and quickly ran it through her mental calendar. "That was the night we were at that bar in Jamaica!" she breathed, her blood running cold. Her heart beginning to pound, Cassie continued to stare dumbfounded at the screen until a new message appeared with a chirp, sent from "T.V." and saying simply: "Well played tonight. You have your precious coins now- but you know that's never what we were looking for anyway. We'll get your map soon enough"
"What the hell?" Cassie muttered, a mixture of fury and panic rising up in her. The words of the messages reverberated hauntingly over and over in Cassie's brain.
"We'll talk business..."
"Well played tonight…"
"Well played…"
"Oh my god," she whispered to herself. "We've been played!"
Behind her, the doorknob rattled as someone entered the room. Paranoia-induced adrenaline coursing through her veins, Cassie immediately ripped open the nightstand drawer and pulled out the handgun inside, whirling around to point it at the intruder with a deathly glare etched on her face.
"Whoah! What the-" Ian stepped backward defensively, raising his hands. "It's just me, Cass. It's all right."
Cassie exhaled deeply and closed her eyes, her shoulders sagging as she lowered the gun and wiped a cold sweat from her brow. "Is it?" she asked ironically. "You might want to take a look at this, then." She tossed the phone to Ian, who caught it and scanned over the messages. "It's Solange's phone. She left it behind tonight. Recognize the date on that first text?"
Ian read and re-read the words, shaking his head in disbelief. "I sure do," he said in a low voice. "Jamaica- The Nautilus bar." Meeting eyes with Cassie, he furrowed his brows and added, "So this means that-"
"Solange's been playing us," Cassie interjected, her jaw set hard. "She knows something that she's not telling, and who knows what her plans actually are." She stared out the darkened doors to the balcony, her blood boiling as she mulled over the possibilities. "What bugs me is that 'T.V.', who I'm guessing is Tristan, said that they were never after the coins. If that's true, then why wouldn't he want the map to the Smoking Mirror, and why does Rodriguez want it?"
"Because," a familiar female voice spoke from behind them, catching both Ian and Cassie off guard. The two young treasure hunters turned to see Solange standing in the open doorway, her mouth in a tight line. "That's not the map to the Smoking Mirror-" she said, "-and my name's not Rodriguez."
A/N: As Usual, the translations were done with google translate, so sorry if they're not correct!