Page 47 of The Lost Guardian

They burst into the intersection. For a moment, cars came at them from all sides, and bile burned in Santiago’s throat. The world was lopsided, their turn so sharp that he was sure the motorcycle couldn’t be straightened out again.

Santiago pictured their bodies skidding across the pavement, grated like cheese. They would slide through the street and straight under the tires of an oncoming truck.

But then, the world was right side up once more, and a hysterical laugh escaped his throat. The relief was not long-lived. He saw both pursuers closing in on them through the side mirrors, their forms like dual shadows of the end times.

“There!” Ali said, her voice strained. Santiago didn’t have time to ask or wonder where before she turned them onto a pedestrian sidewalk. People screamed and jumped out of the way as she barreled through them. She maneuvered them sharply into a construction site.

Santiago heard the huaqueros gaining on them, so close he swore he felt their breath against the back of his neck. As they bobbed between discarded equipment and weaved around bulldozers and cranes, Santiago noticed that the majority of the site was surrounded by a chain-link fence. He couldn’t see any way out except doubling back, which would put them right in the path of their enemies.

Fear had already made itself at home in his body, adrenaline creeping into every crack and crevice, saturating his blood and bones from the root of his hair to the tips of his toes. He didn’t think he had room for anything else inside, but he was wrong.

Something new invaded him now, igniting that fear like gasoline. An inferno of hysteria engulfed him. He felt his grip on Ali relax, his body no longer controlled by his conscious mind.

“Stay with me, Rios!” Ali cried out, risking removing one hand from the handlebars to pull his arms tighter around her. “Trust me!” She pointed them toward an enormous pile of dirt and rubble.

He had never trusted anyone less in his life.

This time, Santiago’s eyes shut for him. He didn’t see them go airborne, but he felt it. The world dropped away beneath them, his stomach plummeting, the surreal sensation of utter weightlessness overtaking him.

And then they were hurtling toward the ground. The landing jolted them hard enough to force Santiago’s ghost back into his body. He wheezed as the wind was knocked out of his lungs. Then he risked a glance behind him, watching as one of the motorcycles barely cleared the fence, still in pursuit.

The other rider was defeated by the mound of now-loosened dirt, the roar of an engine screaming through a shower of dust kicked up by rotating tires. He watched the bike skid down the side of the pile and sputter out.

“One down!” Ali whooped as they tore along a narrow alleyway. Was she getting some kind of sick joy out of this?

The remaining rider was still in hot pursuit. They flew out onto a busy highway, traffic flowing even faster than the road they’d started on. Ali sent them left, then right, then left and right again before exiting quickly onto a busy street lined with houses.

To their right, the electric gate of an apartment garage was descending behind a resident’s car, and Santiago knew what Ali would do a fraction of a second before she did it.

She didn’t hesitate. Ali swerved toward the gate, both she and Santiago ducking small to make it under before it slammed shut behind them. She swerved around the car, tires screeching as she jerked them into a full hockey stop. She cut the engine, and a heartbeat later they watched through the grate as a motorcycle zoomed past the building, searching for them.

They panted, frozen in place. As the seconds ticked on and his heartbeat slowly softened, Santiago accepted that they had escaped. Ali pried her fingers from the handlebars, and he felt her muscles relax.

“Uh, Rios?” she said, tapping at his hands pointedly. It was only then that Santiago realized his grip had shifted at some point in their pursuit. His left arm was wrapped snugly around Ali’s waist, but his right forearm was plastered against her chest, his hand nearly clasping her breast.

He released her with a gasp, sliding off the bike into a Santi-shaped puddle on the ground. All of his limbs trembled with fatigue. He was surprised to find he didn’t vomit.

“I apologize,” he managed to say, his voice faint. He pulled off the helmet, tossing it on the floor beside him. “I promise it wasn’t inten—” But Ali waved him away before he could finish. She hopped off the bike, looking far steadier than he felt, and wheeled it toward an empty parking spot.

“Come on, we need to find another ride,” she said, already scanning the cars in the garage.

“You want us to steal a car?” Santiago asked.

“Do you have a better idea?” she asked, peering through the windshields of several vehicles, then moving on. Santiago scrambled to follow her, legs wobbly. He thought that, in the face of dangerous men trying to kill them, grand theft auto could be justified. He still felt guilty, though. Talk about ruining someone’s day.

Santiago raked shaking hands through his hair. “Maybe we can look up José or call the university and have them patch us through,” he said, reaching for his phone before remembering he didn’t even have one.

Ali rounded on him. “We don’t have time,” she said. “By now, Torres’s men will have realized that we left behind the map. Which is a good thing, since they won’t need to hunt us down for it. But it also means we need to get to Cajamarca and figure out the next part of the clue before they can.”

Santiago sighed. She was right. And José had said he would meet them there. He had to trust he’d make it. “Okay, yeah, you’re right. We should get to Cajamarca.”

Ali crossed her arms in front of her chest with an impatient huff. “Which is easier said than done, since we have no map and you two never finished deciphering where in Cajamarca we are supposed to go.”

“Don’t worry,” Santiago said, pleased to finally have something to contribute. He felt a little smug about it, too. “I figured it out already.”

The look on Ali’s face was so incredulous that Santiago didn’t know whether to be amused or offended.

“You know where to go?” she asked.