THE BREEZE HAD PICKED UP. Clouds darkened the sky, and I smelled moisture in the air.
Even though most of the buildings in this neighborhood were attached to one another, few were the same height. The building on one side of the three-story hostel, which was on the corner, was one story higher, and the building on the other side—the one that housed the motorcycle repair shop—was one story shorter, as were the two rooftops beyond it. We’d surveyed the area earlier in the day, and Deondre had scouted an escape route that led to an apartment building three rooftops over, where the rooftop access door led to an interior stairway straight down to the lobby. That’s where we were headed.
But first we had to make the ten-foot drop to the motorcycle shop’s rooftop. Easy for Deondre and the others, who were a lot taller. Not so easy for me.
“Just let go,” Deondre whispered urgently. “I’ll catch you.”
He and the others had already lowered themselves down, but I got only as far as hanging over the lip with my legs dangling. When I looked down, the rooftop below seemed like a long way down and my fingers didn’t want to let go.
“You can do it, Alex,” Strawberry said.
“Dude,” Simon said in a hushed voice. “You have to do it!”
My brain was telling me I would get hurt.
“We’re running out of time,” Deondre said. “You’ve got to—”
A ringtone sounded above me.
“Si!” the woman’s voice said, answering the call. Her voice was faint. “Me estás tomando el pelo. ¿El niño pequeño?”
She was speaking about me! There was a brief silence, and then she shouted in English, “We know who you are, Alex. We’re coming for you!”
I closed my eyes and let go. Deondre caught me in a fierce hug that dug the contents of my pack into my spine and stole my breath away.
“I told you I’d catch you,” he whispered. “Now move it!”
He grabbed my hand as we sprinted toward the next roof, my backpack bouncing with each stride. The mini inside and the energy it emitted fueled my courage, but it didn’t make me less afraid. She knows my name. I dodged a short chimney as I skipped over a loose brick that had toppled to the deck. The jump to the next roof was easy. We were halfway across it when the target rooftop-access door on the next building slammed open, and Sergeant Sánchez and another man stepped out. Sanchez spotted us immediately.
“Got you,” he spat.
“Back!” Simon squealed. We spun around and leaped back onto the roof of the motorcycle shop.
“Down there!” a man shouted in front of us from the hostel rooftop. Another guard hurried next to him, and they both raised their pistols.
“Don’t shoot, you fools.” The woman appeared next to them. “I want them alive.”
We were trapped. Sánchez and his guard were moving toward us, and any second now the men above us would lower themselves down. There was no stairwell door leading down into the motorcycle shop, and since the building was only two stories tall, there was no fire escape ladder. An air conditioner unit was up there, though, so there had to be a way for a serviceman—
“This way,” Deondre shouted. He picked up the fallen brick as he dashed past the chimney toward a skylight at the back end of the roof. He peered through it, nodded, and hammered the brick into the pane. The glass shattered. “Hurry,” he said. He vanished down the interior rooftop-access ladder.
Simon ushered Jazz down next. Her eyes were wild with fear, but she moved faster than a cat with its tail on fire.
“¡Oye!” a gruff voice shouted from inside the building.
“After them!” The woman shouted in Spanish from above us. As I scrambled down the ladder, I heard the impact of men jumping from the hostel onto our roof deck. Simon was directly above me, and his feet grazed my hands with each rung I released. A part of me wondered why he’d gone before Strawberry, but the answer came soon enough.
“Eat this!” she shouted. I glanced up to see her toss one of her two remaining firebombs toward the hostel. There was an explosion, and from the way her face was bathed in firelight, I could tell she’d smashed the bulb not far from where she stood.
A man shrieked in pain.
As my shoes crunched on the chunks of glass on the floor, I looked up again to see Strawberry light the last bomb and smash it in the opposite direction toward Sánchez and the other guard. There were shouts as she half-scrambled, half-slid down the ladder. Simon pushed me aside and arrested her fall. Her eyebrows were singed, and her maniacal expression reminded me of the Joker from one of the Batman movies.
“The flames will hold them back,” she said breathlessly. “But not for long. I felt raindrops.”
“¡Sal de mi casa!” a gruff voice said behind us. We turned to see a hefty old man with his arms locked behind him under Deondre’s grip. The old man twisted and kicked to get free. I recognized him as the shop owner we’d seen when we first arrived.
“Please don’t hurt him,” Jazz said.
“Him?” Deondre grunted, peeking his head around the guy to reveal a swollen and bloody lip. The old man had obviously come out swinging.
“We don’t have time for this,” Simon said.
Jazz stepped up to the old man and spoke urgently in Spanish, her hands waving. The old man’s expression tightened, and I reached out to calm him with my mind. He stopped struggling and glanced at me curiously. When he looked back at Jazz, the anger inside him was no longer directed at us.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You can let him go.”
Jazz nodded. “Yes. Please.”
“You sure?” Deondre asked.
“Trust they are right,” the old man said. His accent was thick but his English was good. “I will help.” Deondre released him and the man raced down the steps to the ground floor. We followed, and over the echoes of our footsteps, I heard the first rumble of thunder.
Moments later I’d rotated my backpack around to my chest and was scrambling onto the front edge of the seat of an old Vespa motor scooter. Deondre was in the driver position. Strawberry jumped up behind him and wrapped her hands around his waist.
“Ready?” the old man asked. He stood at the rear roll-up door of the shop, his chest heaving. There was fear on his face, and his gaze kept darting toward the staircase.
“Yep,” Deondre said, steadying the bike with his legs. His hands gripped the handles, and his right thumb hovered over the starter switch.
“Listo,” Jazz said with fire in her eyes. She was beside us, straddling a sleek off-road motorcycle with a beefy-looking engine. Simon sat behind her, his face white.
A flash of lightning shone through the row of windows at the top of the roll-up door, followed immediately by another clap of thunder. A second later there was a loud thump on the floor above us, and the old man’s eyes widened. “Now!” He mashed his palm against the red wall switch and the door rolled upward.
It was a slow mechanism. Too slow.
Deondre and Jazz revved their motors impatiently.
Footsteps pounded on the staircase, and my heart raced as I realized the bottom of the door wouldn’t be high enough for us to clear it before Sánchez and the others were on us. The old man must have known it, too. He raced into the room and bowled into the first man to appear around the corner. They went down in a tangle. A gun went flying, and the following footsteps slowed.
Deondre ducked low and scooted the bike under the lip of the rising door into a wall of rain. As soon as we were clear, he gunned the engine, popped the clutch, and we jerked forward. The old man had bought us the time we needed, and when I heard a gunshot, I suspected he’d paid the ultimate price.
The rear of the bike skidded as we picked up speed, and I freaked when I nearly lost my grip on the center of the handlebar. But when I saw that Jazz and Simon were right beside us, I allowed myself to breathe. The dual motors echoed between the buildings on both sides of the narrow alley. I squinted at the approaching intersection.
The woman stepped around the corner.
“It’s her!” I shouted. The woman reached into her bag, leering at me.
There were gunmen behind us so we couldn’t turn back. Deondre opened the throttle all the way, but the Vespa wasn’t built for speed and we wouldn’t be on her for at least three seconds.
A lifetime.
My vision narrowed into slow-motion detail: The woman’s hand climbing out of the bag, the glint of a pistol, an engine rev beside us, Jazz’s dirt bike leaping past us as if we’d been standing still, her white dress flapping, her face twisted in anger, mouth in a sustained scream, the woman’s eyes going wide, Jazz cocking her right leg, the woman turning to dodge, Jazz’s foot kicking into the small of the woman’s back, the woman thrown forward onto the pavement, Jazz’s motorcycle skidding into a turn in the intersection as Simon hung on for dear life, the bike righting itself at the last possible moment, and speeding up the avenue.
“Bitch!” Deondre spat as we sped past the unmoving woman and followed Jazz and Simon.
I twisted back and saw Sánchez helping the woman to her feet, but by then we were zigging onto another side street.
Now all we had to do was search through a city of seven million people to find Ellie.
And Dad.