Lover Uncloaked (Stealth Guardians #1) - By Unknown Page 0,60
he judged his friend too quickly? Could there really be a legitimate reason why he had disappeared and not backed him up on his last assignment?
Next to him, Leila fidgeted. “Why the dogs? Are they attack dogs?”
He took her hand and squeezed it. “No. Whoever is coming knows I can make you invisible, but the dogs will still be able to trace you, because they can smell you.”
“Oh, no!”
Her panicked expression made the decision for him. They had to escape right now. Once they were out of this mess, he could deal with Hamish. And he hoped for all their sakes that his old friend had an explanation he could believe. Because he wasn’t ready to lose him. They’d been through too much together.
“Where to?”
Hamish nodded. “Follow me.”
Leila freed herself from his grip and rushed to the bed where she snatched her handbag and slung it diagonally across her torso. As he took her hand in his again, she nodded at him, indicating she was ready.
Aiden used his powers to assure that he and Leila were invisible to all but Hamish as they followed him out the door and into the hallway. He gave her a sign to be silent by putting a finger across his lips.
The corridor was a chaos. Half-clad masseuses and their clients scrambled toward the emergency exits. Pulling Leila with him, he ran after Hamish, every so often evading people barreling toward them, not realizing that they would run into an obstacle. It was one disadvantage of being invisible, one he dealt with gladly if it would get them out in one piece.
Looking down one corridor as he passed it, he saw men in riot gear charge through the hallways, pushing door after door open, their dogs on leashes, sniffing out every room before they moved on.
Excited barking sounded all of a sudden. How the dogs could catch Leila’s scent was beyond him, unless whoever these people were, they had managed to salvage something with her smell on it from her burnt apartment or maybe her office.
He couldn’t worry about it right now as he tried to keep up with Hamish, who ran through the maze of corridors and stairs as if he knew exactly where he was going.
As they moved up another flight of stairs, Aiden grabbed Hamish’s shoulder and stopped him. “There’s no way out from up there,” he said in a low voice.
Hamish looked over his shoulder and gave him a serious look. “You’re gonna have to trust me. I’ll get us out.”
Aiden wished he had the same confidence in his former second that he’d once had, the knowledge that he could trust him with his life. Unfortunately, his doubts about Hamish’s motives hadn’t dissipated. “I wish I had more than your word on that.”
“My word is still as good as ever.”
Leila fidgeted next to him. “Better him than those men and their dogs,” she whispered.
It had gotten quieter up on the top floor with all the staff and their clients having scrambled for the fire exits. Eventually the intruders would reach them and the dogs would close in on the three of them, whether they were cloaked or not.
Aiden nodded his agreement to Hamish who turned and headed for a narrow flight of stairs. Roof Access, a sign on the wall said.
As Hamish reached for the door handle, Aiden put his hand over his and stopped him.
“What guarantee do I have that there are no demons waiting for us on the roof?”
His fellow Stealth Guardian tilted his head toward the green neon sign over the door that said ‘Exit’. It burned steadily.
Aiden breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. Let’s go.”
He turned to face her. “The aura of the demons reacts with two gases: neon and mercury, which are inside of fluorescent and neon light tubes. If they come too close, the light starts to flicker first, then it burns out.”
That fact had often alerted them to the presence of demons and given them a few seconds of advance warning in times of need. Just as that same fact confirmed now that no demons were waiting for them beyond that door. And it also made another thing absolutely certain: whoever the intruders were, they weren’t demons, otherwise the many neon signs in the Thai massage parlor would have flickered and burned out instantly.
But in order to be sure that the coast was truly clear, he stepped past Hamish.