Incarnate: Mars Origin "I" Series Book III (20 page)

Simon was in an
army-style jeep. No top. Cage bars across the top. Sitting there with a look of
satisfaction on his face.

“Get in,” he
said. “You’re safer with me, Justin.”

“Safer than
what?” I still didn’t know why Simon was sitting there. Where he’d come from?
But more than that, I didn’t know how much he had to do with me being shot at
in Jerusalem or spears being thrown at me in the Andaman Islands. I didn’t
trust him. “Did you shoot Jairo?” I said.

He picked up
something off of his lap. It was a gun. I grabbed Logan close to me.

“Oh, my God,
Mommy who is that?”

“I’m your
benefactor, Logan. And your only means of escape. Don’t worry, the gun is to
protect us from them. I didn’t shoot anyone.” He laid it back down in his lap.
“I’m not the bad guy here. Get in if you want to make it out of here safely.”

I looked at
Logan, we both were trembling. I spotted Logan’s jeep. There was a dark blue
sedan parked next to it. “We can take ourselves out of here,” I said. I pointed
to the jeep and nudged Logan toward it.

“Go ahead then.”
he said.

I automatically
patted my pockets. Nothing in it but my cell phone.
Jairo
, I thought. He
had the keys when he left to go out to the car.

“I have to get
the keys.” I didn’t know why I was explain myself to him. “C’mon, Logan.” I
grabbed her hand and turned to reenter the cave that led to the tunnel.

“You won’t make
it if you go back in that tunnel. They’re in there. It’s you two they want.”

“Who?” I closed
my eyes to try and calm myself and get a grasp on what was going on. “Who wants
us? Why would anyone want us?”

“Aaron Coulter.
And his henchman. I’ll tell you all about it on the way. C’mon get in.” He
patted the passenger seat.

Logan looking
over her shoulder toward the cave, looked back at me. “Mommy, maybe we should
leave with him.”

I hesitated. We
really didn’t have a choice. We couldn’t go back in and get the keys from
Jairo’s body. I looked out toward the thicket of the jungle. On the other side
was the Panama Canal. We wouldn’t be able to make it on foot if people were
coming out of the cave after us. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll let you take us back to
the hotel.” I looked at Logan. “We can call the police from there.”

We piled into
the jeep, Logan in back, and Simon took off across the jungle floor, juggling
us around our seats. Holding on to the roll bar I said, “Do you know where
you’re going?”

“Out of here.
Isn’t that where you want to go?”

“You said Aaron
Coulter before. Are you talking about the archeologist?”

“One in the
same.”

“Why would he
be here to for me? Why would he want to kill me? And how are you Logan’s
benefactor?”

He glanced over
at me. “Long story,” he said and grinned. “And Aaron is here because I told him
about you.”

“You sent them
after us?”

“I didn’t know
they were going to shoot anyone. I take it Jairo’s dead?” I nodded. “Yeah. I
just wanted them to take over the dig.”

“What about
Logan?”

He glanced back
at her. “I just needed her to draw you out. I wanted to get you down here.” He
eyed me. “Revenge and all.” He grinned.

“Revenge?” I
scrunched up may face. “I’ve never done anything to you.” We were bumping along
the makeshift road and my voice was coming out uneven. “So Aaron Coulter is
shooting at us because he wants to take over a dig? What happened to just going
to get a permit? I thought he had made a big name for himself.”

Simon laughed.
“Sort of like me, I guess. Prodigy boy gone bad. He was having a hard time with
something he started over in Egypt. Looking for tunnels under the Sphinx.
Thought there would be a library under there.”

“A library?
Under the Sphinx.” I thought about that for a minute. “You mean like Edgar
Cayce’s Hall of Records?”

He chuckled.
“Yep. That’s what he thought.”

Well he thought
wrong. I glanced back at Logan. Looked like she’s the one that found a long
lost library. Even Jairo, God rest his soul, had said our find was the Hall of
records.”

“I was trying
to help him out. Kill two birds with one stone. So to speak.”

“So you did all
of this?”

“Yes. In a
roundabout way. I guess I did. But then I saved you.” He reached over and
patted my knee. I knocked his hand off.  “I gave them Jairo’s location
instead of Logan’s. And then I followed them out here. I waited for you to
emerge from the cave. At least I hoped you’d make it out. Lucky you, huh?”

“How could you
have known our location?”

“GPS. Logan’s
phone.”

I turned to
Logan. “Give me that satellite phone.”

“What?”

I yelled at
her. “Give. Me. Your. Satellite phone.” She handed it to me and I chucked it
out of the window.

“Ma!”

“Take me and my
daughter to my hotel. It’s in Downtown Panama City.”

“Yeah. I don’t
think so.” He glanced at me. “I’ve got something else in mind for you.”

“Micah.”

He turned to
see who called his name.

“Nikhil? What
are you doing in Panama City?”

Micah had just
finished checking into the hotel and was going to find the elevator.

“I came to find
your mother. I called your father he told me she was here. And that you’d come
to get her.”

Micah looked
down at the phone he was holding in his hand. “I just talked to my dad . . .”

“Earlier. I
talked to him earlier.” Micah looked at him questioningly. “I know a guy with a
plane. Where is your mother?”

“She’s not
here. She and Logan are out somewhere.”

“Did you try to
call them?”

“Yeah. I did.
No answer. Me and my dad put a GPS tracker on my mom’s cell phone. I can see
the last place she went, but there’s no signal. It’s like she’s out of range or
something. I’m just going to wait until they come back.”

“Let me see the
tracker.”

Micah pulled
out his phone and pulled up the tracker to his mother’s phone and handed it
Nikhil.

“How did you
manage to get this? You can use GPS on cell phones? Track anybody?”

“Family plan.
It’s really a phone locator.”

Nikhil nodded.
“I’m going here.” He pointed to a place on the screen. “Where it stopped.”

“Why?”

“I need this
phone.”

“You need my
phone? Wait. I’ll go with you. Just let me store my bag.”

“I’m leaving
now.” Nikhil started walking toward the door.

“Oh. Okay. I
can just take it with me . . .”

Nikhil stopped.
Stared down at the phone. And then started walking again. “C’mon, Micah. The
dot is moving. We’ve got to go to her.”

ϫ ϫ
ϫ ϫ ϫ ϫ ϫ ϫ ϫ ϫ

“We’ll never be
able to find them in here. Let’s back track,” Aaron said to Castor. He looked
at Laura. “You okay?” She was bent over, resting her palms on her knees. Out of
breath and sweating from running through the cave.

“We’ll get them
outside of here. See what they’ve got.”

“Do you think
we could use an approach other than shooting?” Laura said, tried to catch her
breath. “Maybe just talk to them.”

Aaron laughed.
“What about threats? You think they’d be open to threats?”

“You just can’t
come down here and take over things,” Castor said. “It’s not right.”

“You know
you’re the most diplomatic assassin I’ve ever met.”

“How many do
you know?” Laura asked. She raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

“I’m not an
assassin. Per say,” Castor said. “I don’t kill real important people. I’m more
what you call a persuader.”

“Oh, so now you
can persuade dead people to do things?” Laura started walking back in the
direction they had come. “Fun fact to know.”

 “I’m just
saying. This isn’t medieval times,” Castor spoke to Aaron. “You just can’t go
into a government sanctioned research site, uninvited, and bulldoze down
everyone and take what they have. You don’t even know what they have.”

“I was invited by
Simon.”

“Simon is in
charge of a site in Belize. At least that’s what he said. This is Panama.”

“Yeah, I know
the difference.”

They walked in
silence the rest of the way out.

“Their car’s
still here,” Laura nodded toward it.

“You want to
wait here until they come out?” Castor asked.

“No. I want to
find that piece of shit, Simon.” He looked at Laura then back at Castor. “Maybe
we can
talk
this out. Find a better way to go about this. Because I
really need this. I need this dig.”

Laura smiled at
him. “That’s my guy. Talking is good.” She walked over to him and kissed his
cheek.

“Then, Castor,
after I talk to him, I want you to shoot him.”

It
was muggy and the grime on my face was slipping its way down my neck. I took
the inside of my collar and wiped my face. The branches of shrubs and trees
were smacking me in my face as Simon drove through the bush. He only drove for
a few minutes before he stopped. The word “revenge” was in the forefront of my
mind. I didn’t know what he was thinking. Or what he was doing.

I did know I didn’t want to die out here in the jungle.

He
turned off the ignition and hopped out of the vehicle. He stuck the gun down
his waistband and put the keys in his pocket and patted it. “Don’t go
anywhere.” He grinned. “I’ll be right back.”

“What
is he doing, Ma?”

“I
don’t know.” She still appeared frightened. I could relate. Simon was
definitely someone to be frightened of.

“How
does he know you?”

“I
used to work with him.” I hesitated and glanced back at her. “We used to be
friends. You met him before. When you were little.”

“I
knew it. I knew whoever put me in charge of this had something to do with you.”

“I
wish it hadn’t.” I could see the disappointment in her face poking through the
fear I knew she was feeling. “But this is your find. Panama. It had nothing to
do with me or with him.” I nodded toward the direction that Simon had
disappeared. “You did good.”

She
leaned forward and whispered. “What are we going to do?”

I
saw Simon approaching so I just hunched my shoulders.

“You
ladies miss me?”

“Simon,”
I said. “No one is going to play your game. Whatever it is. Just get on with
it.”

He
laughed, and threw a black duffle bag in the backseat next to Logan.

“Equipment,”
he said. As if someone had asked. “Thought I might have needed it to find out
what the three of you were up to in that cave. First time you stayed in the
same place that long. And then with the things you brought out . . .”

“You’ve
been following us?”

“What
kind of benefactor would I be if I hadn’t?”

He
took off through the forest, hitting shrubs and rock, slowly taking us to a
place where he could do whatever it was he had planned.

Simon had
finally pulled onto a paved road and seemed to be heading toward Panama City.
But I couldn’t really tell. He had stopped talking and I sure didn’t try to
start a conversation with him. Logan seemed less nervous.

“Oh shit!”

The first words
to come out of his mouth in a while. He was looking in his rearview mirror.

“What?” I said.

“Looks like
Aaron doesn’t want to give up on you.”

“What?” I
turned around and looked behind us. The blue car two cars behind us sure did
look familiar.

“Is that him?”
I asked Simon.

“I think so.”
He chewed on his bottom lip.

“Maybe he’s not
after me,” I said. “Maybe he’s figured out that you gave him the wrong GPS.”

Simon sneered
at me and glanced up in his rearview mirror again. He veered suddenly off the
road and quickly corrected the vehicle sending us flying to one side it.

“Better watch
where you’re going.” I heckled him. The mention of Aaron seemed to upset him.
“Run us into a ditch and we’ll be sitting ducks for Aaron’s wrath.”

“Shut up,
Justin.”

“I think
they’ve spotted us,” Logan said. We all craned our necks to look back.

Simon gunned
the jeep, knowing that he couldn’t outrun the sedan, he started driving
erratically. He made a sharp turn and me and Logan’s arms went up,
instinctively, to grab ahold of the roll bar.

“How do you
think you’re going to outrun them?” I asked. A smirk on my face. I didn’t want
to die with Simon. And I figured if I gave Aaron what he wanted, he’d spare me
and Logan. I wasn’t the one who had double-crossed him.

Simon took
several more turns, yanking the steering wheel each time, then swerving trying
to correct for his reckless handling. I’m surprised he didn’t tip us over. But
it looked as if it worked. I looked behind us, and Logan did the same when she
saw me. She turned back and found my eyes with hers. I hunched my shoulders. I
didn’t see the other car. I didn’t know where they could have gone. Simon
pushed his foot down on the gas pedal and followed down a road until we landed
on a suspended tied arch bridge – Bridge of the Americas the sign read. I
looked over the side of the jeep and saw the waterway below. It was the Panama
Canal.

Simon took a
sharp right turn off the bridge and landed us on the dock of the canal. When he
turned off the bridge, I saw the blue car catching up with us.

There they
are
. Simon would get his.

We drove down
the docks practically on the tracks for the mules that followed the boats
through the locks. The noises of the area – blaring boat horns, rush of water –
all mixed in with people yelling at us to get off the road. Simon blasted the
jeep’s horn and held it down, more noise just to add to the confusion it
seemed. The blue car, not too far behind us, was taking advantage of the
cleared road made in Simon’s wake. I saw up ahead of us a yard filled with
warehouses.
Oh no
, I thought. An easy place to hide. Simon could get
lost there. I turned to look back.

C’mon,
Aaron. C’mon.

I looked out
the side of my eye at Simon.

How crazy
,
I thought.
I’m rooting for Aaron to catch us.

Simon weaved
around the warehouses. Out of sight of the blue car. After a few turns, he
slowed down but didn’t stop. He wove his way deeper into the warehouse lot and
pulled behind a huge dumpster before cutting the engine.

He drew the gun
out from his waistband, laid it across his lap and looked at me. “You better
hope they don’t find us.”

“I’m not afraid
of you, Simon.”

“You should
be,” he said.