AWAKENING (25 page)

Yei
found a cab
recite
d
an
address in Miami and the driver had to check with his dispatcher to get approval.
Yei
, tossed a thousand dollars on the front seat and the driver started moving. She
leaned against the cracked pleather seat and shut her eyes. The face of her target appeared
. She had the
ability to retain and recall information longer than most
which
came mainly from practice.
As a girl to fill the lonely hours as her mother toiled in the hot factories sewing and ironing garments to be sold all over the world for
expensive prices. In America they were called sweat shops, yet did anyone care
about
these women
who
worked sixteen hour
day
s
and received less than what it cost to make one of those designer shirts or pants they wore? Of course not,
because
if they did
,
they would n
ot continue to
strut about proudly with designer handbags with fancy stitching.

Yei’s
lip curled in disgust.
People were such idiots. Their self-worth was tied to perishable goods and expensive items. She shunned their frivolities, opting to purchase wearable items from local merchants, farmers and struggling mom and pop shops. They could be found everywhere she traveled, except many people did not look. They settled for convenience and entered the shiny fake world of malls and mega-marts.

Sometime, during the rambling conversations with herself, she fell asleep. Many long hours later the
taxi stopped and her eyes opened. The unimpressive hotel was lit, a scattering of cars sat in the parking lot
and at this late hour there was very little activity. She quickly exited gripping her backpack.

Yei
resembled a college student in her frumpy jeans, sneakers and Ivy
League
baseball cap. She hurried inside the lobby to the lone attendant and requested on a lower floor for th
e night
and waited patiently as the
bug-eyed man checked the computer. “I got a single, seventy-five a night. Want it, it’s all we got?”

“Okay.”

“Name?”

“Joy Ling.”

“I need identification, please.”

She rummaged through her wallet, handed him a California driver’s license belonging to a young woman she’d never met but whose ethnicity, height and general features were similar. The underpaid clerk did not bother to
scrutinize the identification, because to the unsophisticated eye most Asians look similar.
Ignorance.

“We take
Mastercard
and Visa.”

“I have cash.”

“
Sorry, w
e only
accept
credit cards.”

The credit card was a way of tracking, although for hotel purposes it was charged in the event a guest damaged property or rang up a large bill for the phone or whatever the hell guests do nowadays.

Her eyes watered.
The pitiful
helpless young traveler, damsel in distress routine.
“Please is there any way you can make an exception? I flew here from California to stay with my boyfriend thinking he loved me, but I see I was stupid. He has many
girlfriends,
one was there when I arrived. We got into an argument and….and….” she sniffled watching the man’s demeanor change.

“Okay…tell you what. I’ll give you the room.
Gimme
two hundred dollars but you
gotta
’
be out before eight or we’re both in big trouble.”

She nodded, reached in her wallet and gave him the money. He shoved it in his pocket. “I can’t give you a key. Come on, I’ll unlock it for you.”

She silently followed.

They took the stairs to the second floor and he pushed open the door leading to the hallway. Looked around then walked briskly to a door, swiped
a card then turned waved her in. “Don’t forget, out before eight.”

She nodded. She’d remember.

                                         *
***

It was three in the morning. The hotel staff
chatted
in the lobby.
Yei
hear
d
their laughter from the stairwell. She
’d
changed out of her clothes into a maid’s uniform she swiped earlier from the employee locker room in the basement. There were two maids on duty for the sm
all hotel, one went home sick an hour ago and the other was downstairs. One of the voices
downstairs
, talk
ed
about the
ill
woman to the clerk. They were laughing and
Yei
found nothing funny in their malice. Thankfully, they were too engaged in gossip to pass the time instead of working or else she would not have the opportunity to earn her money.
All
,
five million of it
.

The contract gave a window of forty-eight hours. She already used thirty-six of them. Usually, she gave herself a week or more between contracts, high-tailed it out of town or la
id
low until she could. This
one,
gave an incentive to disregard the practice. A one million dollar bonus
if it got completed on schedule. Two million for the Senator, five for this Gregorio and one as a bonus came to a grand total of eight million dollars, for two days work.

She climbed the stairs, clutching the dust rag, wiping the railing as she ascended and reached the third floor landing. Before she touched the handle, the hallway door opened and a man stood there. He wore an inexpensive suit, the kind you buy in large department stores for
less than
one hundred dollars. It cost one-tenth of that to make in Taiwan.

“Ma’am this floors off limits, didn’t the manager explain that to you?”

Yei
feigned ignorance
, s
witching from perfect English to
a heavily accented choppy speech. “He say ask guests needing nothing.”

The man frowned, “We’re good, thank you.”

“I sorry, no trouble.
No tell I fired.”

The suited man was in the doorway, holding it ajar with his body. “It’s fine. You won’t lose your job.”

Yei
nodded, “Thank you, thank you…you nice man.” She smiled then turned. She did so slowly and peripherally
observe he did the same.
He hadn’t released the door yet.
Yei
spun around;
the long blade concealed in
her
cloth was pushed
smoothly
through the rear of the man’s neck. He made no sound, as she gripped his collar and tugged him backward to change the direction of his fall. He crashed against her and she stumbled, then unable to right herself due to his weight, landed on her ass atop a stair going up with his head in her lap. She quickly rolled him aside
then scrambled to her
feet
, before he began to bleed on her uniform
.

Time began to speed in pace with her feet. She was in the hall, the other agent spotted her coming up from his seat, reach
ed
for his weapon but he never drew it.
Yei’s
knife throw caught him in the forehead and he crumpled. She bent down and searched his pockets for the key, found it and unlocked the door from her crouched position.

The door swung open and nothing.

No gunfire.

No Gregorio pleading for his life.

A room with an unoccupied bed.

She stood, forehead crinkled in confusion. Had they moved Gregorio?
There weren’t
shadows against the wall or movement
, not even the quiet breaths of someone in hiding. She stepped inside and once she did, a warning told her to retreat but it was too late.

The blows came with such
force;
the air blew out of her instantly. The blade in her hand clattered to the floor. In the darkened room her attacker poised for a death blow
. Her bruised body found strength and she fought back, ducking low then thrusting strategically with the points of her fingers to where the
attacker’s
testicles should be. She made contact, slid around him and elbowed the center of his spine. This caused a short grunt and the shadow responded with a roundhouse kick flattening her to the floor then grabbed
a handful of her clothes and s
he was hoist
in the air like paper
. He
was bringing her down to snap her spine. Her head turned toward the line of light entering from the hall and he froze solid.

She could not see his face clearly but
Nico recognized her, “
Yei
?”

He set her upright
.
The man standing in front of her was a ghost from the past.
“Nico?”

“Dammit
Yei
, what the fuck are you doing here?”

“The same as you!”

Nico shook his
head,
there wasn’t time for small talk. “Did you leave a mess?”

“Death can
get
messy.”

He growled. Peeked in the hall, saw the body there and dragged it in the room. “There were two
men
out there, where’s the other
guy
?”

“The stairwell.”

“Fuck, stay here,” he said then disappeared down the corridor and returned with the second agent’s body and dropped it on the bed.

She inquired about Gregorio and Nico pointed to the closet, “He hung himself.”

“And the other agent?”

“Experienced a heart attack
sitting on the john.”
He
removed the knife from the body, quickly wrapped it in a bedspread and shoved it under the bed.
He did the same with the second agent as he
tr
ied
to buy time
before anyone discovered the bodies.

Yei
watched him
meticulously wo
rk
and
stay
ed
out of his way
.
She stood motionless. Now, that
the threat was over, her
adrenalin slowed
and the aches radiated throughout her torso.
Nico’s blows caused damage. Of course, they
were meant to.
Each attack occurred at a strategic spot
. If Nico had not recognized her, he would have snapped her in half and she wouldn’t have had the strength to stop it. Nico was the ulti
mate enforcer and to engage in close combat
with someone of his caliber was
an extremely risky undertaking. Survival prompted the response, yet in her moment of reassessment, she
questioned
her action, especially when she noticed the dagger attached to his belt. She hadn’t noticed it
before because
if she
had, their fight would’ve ended with his blood.

Nico
picked up
a
shoulder bag
and slung the strap over his head.
He
glanced
toward the open bathroom door.
T
he man sitting there seemed to have fallen asleep taking a dump. The sight was priceless.
Franky hadn’t known what hit him.
When Franky saw him, he tried to scramble up from the toilet but Nico fist struck hard and fast. Franky didn’t have a chance
. The powerful hit to the heart sent the man back down to die atop his
filth
in cardiac arrest
.
It was a
n appropriate ending for the crap he did.

“Let’s go.”
He ordered as he started for the open window.

Yei
inhaled
then
took
one painful
step.
A sharp ache
radiated to
every
limb.
She
stopped.
The soreness made walking difficult.

Nico rolled his eyes. Fucking amateur!

He picked her up
,
twist her around his back
and warned
, “Hold on. You let go
and
I’
ll l
eav
e
your ass.”