I’d used every bit of strength I had to move a pallet full of… something in front of the door, then cowered in a back corner, praying the cinderblock could stop a bullet.
I wasn’t sure if I was hoping for Venezio to find me or that he was getting to safety himself.
But I did know that when I heard his voice, it immediately chased away the flow of tears as I desperately tried to move the barricade and get to him.
In between those bullets, the man had been ranting and raving. About his cousin. About vengeance. About what he was going to do to me while he made Venezio watch.
Those were the rantings of a desperate man.
But the one chasing us, he was even more unhinged.
Instead of saving his breath like we were desperately trying to do, he was talking to himself, shouting at us.
I hoped he would run out of steam.
Because I was starting to.
Especially as the damn sky opened up once again, pelting us with freezing rain, making the ground slippery. I was struggling enough to keep going. Sliding feet only made the pain intensify.
I turned my head away from Venezio, making it look like I was scanning for some way out of this situation. In reality, I was trying to keep him from seeing the pitiful tears that slid down my cheeks again.
The streets had been pretty empty before, but now that the weather had taken a turn for the worse, things were downright desolate.
It added to the sensation of hopelessness.
It made the city fold in around me, made my lungs seem to do the same.
“There,” Venezio, suddenly short of breath too, said, waving toward the Manhattan Bridge. “Go. Run.”
“What? No. I can’t—“
“I’m ending this. Go. When you get across, I need you to find my boss.” He rattled off an address as we got closer and closer to the bridge. “Go!”
With that, he ran past the bridge, heading for the bank beside it.
On a cry, I did what I was told, rushing toward the bridge, figuring that if I was quick enough, I might be able to get him help.
This, of course, coming from someone who had no damn idea how long it might take to run over the Manhattan Bridge. Or how hazardous it felt with the ground growing more slippery by the moment.
I’d just barely gotten on it, though, before I stopped and turned.
I couldn’t leave him.
Not with that psychopath.
He would never leave me.
I knew that down to my bones.
On a whimper, I made my way back off the footpath.
I wasn’t even really aware of stooping to grab an empty bottle of booze lying on the ground. I was just aware of its reassuring weight as I moved through the fence and made my way past the rocky embankment before the sand of the shore.
It was then that I heard sounds.
Grunting, cursing, the sound of fists hitting skin and bone.
My heart lodged itself up in my throat as I moved toward the bodies rolling around in the sand near the edge of the shoreline.
