AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Ed cursed and fired several shots into the alley. The sirens were on top of them now. Flashing coloured lights penetrated the thick haze.
“You heard the man.” Ed grabbed her arm and spun her away from the edge of the roof. “We need to get out of here.”
“No!” Julia struggled against him. They couldn’t leave Joe. No. No. It wasn’t happening. “No!”
“Julia, we need to leave.” Her grandmother grasped her hand. “Joe wants us out of here. We need to do what he wants.” Her tone was sympathetic but firm.
Between Ed and Patricia, Julia was dragged across the roof—struggling all the way.
“We can’t leave him!” The sounds of fighting, cries of pain and intermittent gunfire were deafening.
There was a war going on down in that alley. And Joe was in the middle of it.
“We can’t leave him.” Julia fought to get back to the ladder.
“No!” Ed snatched her around the waist and lifted her, striding forward with Julia’s feet dangling above the ground. “You can’t do anything to help. You’d make things worse. Joe is doing this to protect you. Don’t let him down.”
Patricia jerked a door open. It led to a stairway. Julia barely registered it. Her eyes were still in the edge of the roof leading down to the alley.
Sirens. Whistles. Feet pounding the ground. Gunshots. Wails of pain. Shouting. The sounds swirled around Julia until they formed one overwhelming cacophony of violence.
Ed carried her into the stairwell, holding her tight as he ran down the stairs.
“Joe!” Julia shouted.
All she heard was her own call echoing back to her.
Chapter 12
There were twenty-seven power sockets in their suite. Thirty-two light switches. Seven lamps…
“Julia,” Patricia snapped. “Stop pacing.”
Julia dragged her eyes away from the lamp. Seven. There were seven. She’d stopped beside the desk. The notepad
didn’t line up with the corner. The pen wasn’t parallel to the pad. Julia fixed it. Still wrong. It was still wrong. No balance. That was it. She pulled open the drawer, took out a second pad and pen and placed them in the opposite corner to the ones that were already there. Better. She turned the pens so that the hotel logo faced upwards. Her fingers twitched to switch the lamp off and on. Three times. It needed to happen three times. She spun and paced to the window while she could still resist the urge.
She placed her palms flat on the glass and rested her forehead between them. Cool. Hard. Somehow soothing. With eyes closed, she rolled her forehead, feeling the pressure against the bone. It helped.
A hand rested on her back. Julia jerked out from under it and gave her gran a strained smile.
“I’m trying,” she said.
“I know.”
Patricia folded her arms, aware that Julia couldn’t bear touch. Not right then. She felt like her skin had been sensitised. The air in the room acted like tiny knives against it. Even her hair rasped against her skin. Julia dug around in her bag, which was still across her body, and pulled out a hair tie. She tied her hair up in a messy bun at the back of her neck.
Her eyes drifted to the window. The canyon bowl La Paz sat in was lit up in the darkness. All around them were walls of blinking lights, stretching up into the night sky. Joe was out there. Somewhere. Pain speared through her stomach at the thought. They should never have left him. Never.
It was wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong…
“Julia.” Her grandmother’s voice was firm, pushing through the tight band of panic squeezing Julia’s chest. “I have medicine for the altitude sickness.” She held up a pill and a glass of water.
Julia didn’t know where the water had come from. She wanted to tell her gran, remind her that she needed the water in a bottle. A sealed bottle. Joe would have remembered. Her eyes drifted towards the lights again. Where was he? Was he still alive?
No. No. She couldn’t think like that. No.
“Pill, Julia. You can’t afford to get sick again.”
