Page 18 of Gabriel (Legacy of Heathens #4)

Amara

T his city felt like it was rotting from the inside out.

I walked the cracked sidewalk near La Bodeguita Dock, the wind whipping in off the ocean sharp enough to slice through the fabric of my shirt. It was a welcome reprieve in this humid heat.

A cargo ship groaned in the distance, cranes silhouetted against a smoke-choked sky, the whole area pulsing with the low, mechanical throb of machines that never slept.

Somewhere, bobbing in the inky-black sea, Elira was waiting for me.

The thought gave me the confidence boost I needed to complete my mission.

In a way, it reminded me of the property in Venezuela where I’d spent the first five years of my life. I vaguely remembered it, but it was the kind of remote place people vanished in.

I had a horrible feeling that whatever Jet—with or without Santos—was up to, it would end badly for all of us.

When my brother made up his mind about something, he rarely held back.

Like the time he put the first boy I ever slept with in the hospital for making a joke about my virginity.

Jet broke every one of his fingers, then shattered both his legs, just to make a point to never make fun of any girl again.

My phone rang and Elira’s name flashed.

“Hey,” I answered.

“You were supposed to call me,” she reprimanded. “I was worried sick.”

“Why?”

“Well, for starters, we are on someone else’s territory, and you’re my sister. Of course I worry, dammit.”

I smiled. “As we expected, I ran into Santos.”

“Shit,” she muttered. “Although not exactly surprising. We kind of anticipated it.”

“Yeah, we did.”

A heartbeat of silence. “Any signs of Jet??”

“I found his phone.”

My fingers curled around the phone in my pocket.

“And?”

I’d found it in the bag he dumped outside that camp and picked it up knowing it might lead me somewhere. It wasn’t the phone he’d had with him the evening we’d been separated. This one was matte black, unbranded, and heavily encrypted.

“I can’t unlock it.”

“Lucky for us, there’s a good hacker here,” Elira pointed out. It wasn’t unusual that we thought along the same lines. After all, both of us were trained by the same people. “Will you go to him?”

“I don’t have much choice,” I muttered. “Not if we want to unlock it.” I couldn’t decide whether coming to Esteban’s was smart or plain stupid. “Anyhow, I’m here now. I’ll update you on everything when I leave.”

“Sounds good. Good luck.”

Click. The line went dead while I stared ahead. I couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was amiss and that everything wasn’t as it seemed. Maybe I should just get back to the yacht.

“I’m already here,” I muttered under my breath, eyes darting around the structures looming over me. “I might as well get the information and then I’ll go from there.”

I slipped through the warped side door of the ten-story building, a vertical stack of crumbling apartments, most of them reeking of mildew and despair. Mold climbed the walls like ivy. The stairwell stank of piss, rotting wood, and spilled beer. Every step I took groaned underfoot like a warning.

What the hell was Jet up to? Why couldn’t I shake off the feeling that I was making a mistake? Yet, I kept ignoring the warning churning in my gut.

By the time I hit the third floor, I was high on adrenaline and self-doubt that I blamed on a level of fatigue not even espresso could fix.

I raised my fist to pound on Esteban’s door, then hesitated. If I spooked him, he’d bolt. If I gave him time, he’d start lying. He always did.

So I knocked firmly, only once.

A long pause followed before the door creaked open an inch and a pale face peeked out. His eyes widened, the blue glow of his monitors illuminating the space behind him.

“Amara?” Esteban breathed.

“One and only.” My eyes bounced from him to my right, feeling invisible eyes everywhere. We met at D’Arc. In our world, hacker skills were important, and once I learned of Esteban’s skillset, Jet, Elira, and I occasionally shared his expertise.

“What a surprise. Good one, of course.”

I rolled my eyes. “Inside.”

He stepped aside fast, the deadbolt clattering uselessly against the frame as I walked in.

The place was hot and filled with stale air.

Half-eaten food containers and empty cans were strewn across a floor that hadn’t seen a broom in maybe ever.

The air conditioner in the window wheezed like it was dying.

Three monitors threw light across a desk cluttered with wires, flash drives, and a tangled mess of mismatched tech.

“You look like hell,” I muttered. “Much like this place.”

He scratched the back of his neck. “It’s a side effect of people wanting you dead.”

Esteban had always been a little paranoid. I assumed it was related to secrets he’d dug up over the years, although I’d never cared enough to find out the details. My sources told me he’d been here for four months, which I knew to be an eternity for a hacker at his level.

“Then solve my problem before someone from your long list of enemies gets lucky.”

He gave a nervous laugh as I pulled the black phone from my jacket and dropped it on the desk.

His brow furrowed. “That’s a military-grade satphone. Where’d you get this?”

“Jungle.”

“Who does it belong to?”

“My sibling.”

His face paled. “Which one…?”

“Not your business.” I stared him down. “You’re going to crack it. And stop asking questions.”

He chewed the inside of his cheek, hesitating. He picked it up and turned it around, typing the barcode into his monitor and plugging it into a portable grid. Finally, he set it down and met my gaze. “Look, this kind of thing takes time. And depending on the layers?—”

“You’re already wasting my time,” I said, stepping close enough to make him flinch. He had a foot on me, easily, but I was the more lethal one and we both knew it. “Just do it.”

Esteban put his hands up in surrender and sat at his desk. “Alright. Alright. Let’s see what secrets it holds.”

I watched him work, fingers flying across his keyboard as he connected the phone to a different set of cables and adapters. Lines of white on black code began scrolling down the monitor faster and faster.

The room buzzed with the low hum of decryption. He muttered under his breath in a twitchy mix of Spanish and code. Minutes passed. Then something shifted.

Esteban leaned forward.

“I’m in. He buried the data under a dummy operating system that looks like a media player on the outside, but inside…”

He trailed off as files began to unfold across the screen.

“Encrypted folders,” he murmured. “GPS log. Here’s one drafted message. Unsent.”

I reached forward and grabbed it, yanking wires off of it, and opened the draft. The message was scrambled, parts of it lost or corrupted, but what remained turned my stomach cold.

To: A. If you get this, follow the coordinates. Snatch Santos. Jet.

My brows knit together. There were no coordinates in the message. No attachment. Just empty air where something important might’ve once been.

Then it clicked.

The server .

Back when we were kids, Jet, Elira, and I had built a Dropbox on the net. It started as a joke of a place to stash dumb messages, fake spy games, and test answers as we got older. It reflected the kind of paranoia kids thought made them clever.

But then we continued using it as we spent extended periods of time apart as a way to stay up to date on each other’s lives.

I pulled out my phone and my fingers moved on instinct, punching in the right codes, clearing the layers of encryption like brushing dirt off a buried weapon.

Three minutes later, the screen blinked once with a single file, uploaded by Jet forty-eight hours ago. They were coordinates.

“What does it say?” Esteban asked, voice low, glancing at me.

I stared at the phone screen.

Why would Jet want me to snatch Santos and deliver him to those coordinates? Why wouldn’t he have just taken Santos himself since he was clearly in the jungle and on Santos’s territory?

I turned and headed for the door, sliding both phones into my coat.

“Wait—hold on, I can back that up. Just give me?—”

I stopped at the threshold and looked back over my shoulder.

“If you tell anyone I was here, I swear to God…”

He swallowed. “I won’t.”

I opened the door.

“If you lie to me,” I added without turning around, “say your prayers. You’re already a dead man.”

A heartbeat passed before he replied, “Okay.”

I disappeared into the hallway, already pulling out my burner phone and telling Elira I was on my way back. We needed to know where this clue led.

Then we’d grab Santos. The one man I’d rather keep at a safe distance.

But hey, you know what they say: keep your friends close and your enemies closer.