Chapter 2 Isla

Isla

The first bullet broke our back window, and I screamed.

Glass shattered inward, spattering across the back seat in a glittering rain of death. My hands shot up to shield my face, my heart pounding so hard against my ribs I feared it might escape from it.

"Get down!" Enrico's voice sliced through my fear like a knife. His hand pushed my head down, forcing me beneath the dashboard. "Stay down!"

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. The world had shrunk to the pounding of my heartbeat and the shriek of tires and the quick crack-crack-crack of gunfire that seemed to erupt from every direction.

Enrico yanked the wheel hard to the right, and the SUV lurched around a corner. My shoulder hit  the door. A bullet shattered the rear window, and I felt the displacement of air as it whizzed by where my head had been moments before.

Oh God. Oh God oh God oh God.

"How many?" Enrico's voice was icy, calm, as if he were inquiring about the forecast rather than the men attempting to kill us.

I couldn't respond. My throat was closed, my bladder was full to the point of danger, and in the back of my mind, I was aware of the mortifying fact that I might very well wet myself. I had never been consumed by so much fear.

The SUV swerved again, and I was thrown against the seatbelt. Enrico was driving with one hand now, the other reaching for the gun in the glove compartment. He grabbed it without looking, checked something with a practiced flick of his thumb.

"Enrico—" His name was spoken as a whimper.

“Stay down, Isla. Don’t move.” He said it like a promise, like he could save me through sheer force of command.

Another bullet hit the windshield. I gritted my teeth to keep myself from screaming again, tasting blood as my teeth came in contact with my tongue . I was shaking so hard that I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to.

Please God please God please don't let me die like this please.

The prayer echoed through my mind, a desperate chant as Enrico jerked the wheel hard to the left. We bounced over the curb, and my head smacked into the door frame hard enough that I saw stars. The SUV moved, tires screeching, and then we were back on pavement, driving down what I hoped was Fifth Street.

I dared a look up and promptly regretted it. There were three black cars behind us, close enough that I could see the muzzle flash from their windows. Close enough that I could see the driver of the car nearest us, a man with dead eyes and a gun pressed against his door.

"Eyes down!" Enrico barked

I fell, pressing my face into my knees, trying to make myself as small as possible. My breathing came in sharp, agonising gasps. Was this how Marco had felt? This deep, abiding fear, this knowledge that the next moment would be the last?

Enrico rolled down his window, and the sound of the wind rushing in made everything louder, more chaotic. Then he was leaning out, actually leaning out while driving seventy miles an hour through city streets, and firing.

The sound of the gunshot was deafening. Once. Twice. Three times.

I heard the crunch of metal, the screech of brakes. One of the cars behind us swerved erratically, hit a parked car, and spun out. But the other two just kept coming.

“Come on, you bastards,” Enrico muttered. His accent thickened when he was concentrating, his vowels rounding, his consonants hardening. He fired again, and I winced with each shot, expecting any moment a bullet to hit him, to blast through his head and spatter me with—

No. No, I couldn't think about that.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee..

The prayer was just muscle memory from when I was a kid, from when Mom used to make me repeat it every night before I went to bed. I'd thought I'd forgotten it. Apparently, terror had a way of remembering things for me.

Enrico jerked the wheel hard to the right, and we sped down an alley so tight I could hear metal scraping brick on either side. The mirrors shattered with sharp breaks. Back there, one of the cars chasing us attempted to follow and became wedged between the buildings.

One left.

We burst out of the alley and onto a main road, and Enrico hit the gas. Eighty. Ninety. The engine was screaming. My stomach was turning as we blew through an intersection, horns blaring all around us.

The final car was still on the scene, still firing. A bullet knocked out our side mirror. Another hit the door just behind Enrico's seat, so close I could feel the warmth.

I was going to die. I was twenty-two years old, a junior in college with a paper due on Monday and a roommate who borrowed my clothes without permission, and I was going to die in a hail of bullets before I'd even really lived.

Enrico let out a sound from deep in his throat, a laugh and a snarl combined. Then he slammed on the brakes.

The chasing car wasn't ready for that. I watched in the rearview mirror as it attempted to slow down, to swerve, but its momentum was a harsh mistress. It sped past us, and Enrico hit the gas once more, crashing into the back quarter panel of the chasing car.

The physics were beautiful and terrible. The car spun, made contact with the guardrail, flipped once, twice, and landed upside down in a shower of sparks and broken glass.

Then silence.

Just the hum of our engine and my ragged breathing and the hammer of my heart.

"Isla." Enrico's hand brushed my shoulder, gentle despite everything. "It's over. You can sit up now."

I couldn’t move. My muscles were locked, my body thinking that if I stayed small, I would stay alive.

"Isla." Stronger now. "Look at me."

I pulled myself up slowly, my neck protesting. Enrico's eyes met mine, dark and steady, and something in his gaze, perhaps concern or understanding, made my chest feel tight.

"You're okay," he said. Not a question. A fact he was willing into existence.

I nodded, even though I wasn't sure that I would ever be okay again.

He drove us through back streets and side roads, checking his mirrors that no longer existed. My hands were shaking uncontrollably. Every car that went by startled me, every shadow was a potential threat.

As we finally pulled up outside my dorm, I gazed at it as if I'd never laid eyes on it before. The brick exterior. The fluorescent lights in the lobby. The stupid banner some freshman had strung up proclaiming "Hell Week" for midterms.

It all seemed impossible. Like a memory from someone else's life.

"You have five minutes," Enrico said, already out of the car, scanning the street with the eyes of a predator. "Pack anything that's useful. Anything that can be used to track you, phone, laptop, IDs, anything that has your name or face on it. Leave the rest."

"I..." My voice caught. "I don't understand. I can't just..."

"Five minutes, Isla." He opened my door, and his hand was there to steady me when I almost fell getting out. "Then we disappear."

The hall was empty at four in the morning. Our footsteps echoed in the stairwell. third floor, end of the hall, room 314. I fumbled with my key, dropped it, picked it up with hands that wouldn't cooperate.

My roommate Sarah was asleep, one arm thrown over her face, her phone still playing Netflix on her chest. She looked so peaceful. So normal.

I glided through the room like a ghost, reaching into the closet to pull out my backpack with numb fingers. What did you take with you when your life was ending? When everything you knew was being torn away?

Laptop. Power cord. My external hard drive with all my pictures. I reached for my wallet, began packing it, then remembered what Enrico said and took out my credit cards, leaving them on my desk. They could trace those.

My hands found my mother's necklace on the nightstand, a small silver cross that she had given me before she passed away. I put it around my neck, and that's when the tears started.

Silent, hot, streaming down my face as I stuffed clothes into the bag without looking at them. Sports bra, underwear, jeans, the hoodie Marco had bought me for Christmas. My hands were clumsy, my vision blurred, my chest so tight I could barely breathe.

This was real. This was actually happening.

I was crying so hard that I didn't hear Sarah get up.

“Isla?” Her voice was thick with sleep. “What are you…”

I turned, and her eyes went wide. I must have looked like hell, tear-streaked, terrified, covered in glass dust from the shattered window.

"I have to go," I managed. "I'm sorry, I…”

The door swung open.

But it wasn't Enrico standing in the doorway.

It was a man I had never seen before, and he was pointing a gun right at my chest.