Page 82 of The Hitman's Secret Baby
Then my foot catches on a loose flag—one of those fraying red and white stripes that mark the corners of vendor plots—and I go down.
The stone bites through the thin fabric of my dress, skin splitting just above my knee.
My hands scrape against the ground, and the pain comes fast, sharp, merciless.
But worse than the fall is the emptiness in my grip.
Gabriel's hand is no longer in mine.
I look up, wild, searching for him through a blur of motion and noise.
Children run past, a vendor drops a bowl of olives that scatter like black marbles underfoot.
People yell in a dialect I can barely register.
Somewhere nearby, a dog barks.
I spin on my knees, crying his name, my voice cracking with a rawness I do not recognize.
"Gabriel!"
I scream again, louder this time, panic crawling up my throat like a rising tide.
My legs refuse to work for a moment, frozen in place as the horror roots me to the spot.
Then I see him.
He is crouched behind a low stone wall near the back of a spice vendor's stall, his body small and hunched, his eyes wide and watching me with the frozen clarity of a child who knows that something terrible is happening and does not yet know how to help.
I scramble to him, ignoring the sting in my knees and the wet warmth soaking into the fabric where my blood has bloomed.
I reach him, crush him to my chest, my arms locked around his narrow frame as if I could will the fear out of both of us.
He is crying now, not loudly, but those silent tears that wet your collarbone and steal your strength in ways you do not expect.
"I'm sorry," I whisper into his hair. "I'm so sorry."
But we cannot stop here.
I rise, carrying him against my side until his legs hook around my hips, and then I move.
We take the narrowest alleys I know, the ones no tourist would bother with, the ones that wind behind forgotten doors and aging staircases.
I keep one hand braced against his back and the other outstretched to push aside anything in our way.
My mind tracks our progress block by block, recalling the route like a soldier remembering a map under fire.
The home we keep is not much, just a flat with peeling shutters tucked behind a stone terrace smothered in bougainvillea.
We round the last corner, and I feel my legs begin to shake, the adrenaline thinning into something weaker, the fear still rooted deep.
When I reach the gate, I fumble with the key.
My hands will not obey me.
The key slips once, then again, before I finally manage to fit it into the rusted lock and twist hard enough for the gate to groan open.
Inside, I collapse to my knees just past the threshold, Gabriel still clutched to my chest.
