Huck rattled the elevator handle until it opened to reveal a wide-eyed lift operator behind a scissor gate. No time for niceties. I pulled open the gate myself, and we stumbled onto the lift—an old, rickety box barely big enough for the three of us. While Huck closed the scissor gate, I shouted, “Lobby!” at the operator, a pasty-faced boy no older than me. Thankfully, he reacted quickly and threw the crank into the down position. The elevator groaned in protest. Then it began descending.
I fell against the elevator’s wall, head sagging in relief.
“Is everything okay?” the elevator attendant asked in halting English.
“No,” Huck said. “Bad men are chasing us. Can you let us out at the lobby and go find help?”
He agreed, though I wasn’t sure he completely understood. And either he was new at the job or as nervous as we were, because when he pulled the lever to stop the lift, he missed lining up the elevator with the lobby floor by several inches. Huck didn’t care. He yanked the scissor gate open and half shoved, half lifted me over the mismatched floors, then scrambled behind me into the lobby.
I frantically glanced around the large, domed space. Where was everybody? Our helpful friend Andrei was gone for the night, and in his stead was a boy I didn’t know, bent over the registration desk with his head on an arm. The guard sitting on a stool by the hotel entrance was asleep too. The elevator attendant shouted at the boy behind the registration desk. He didn’t move. For the love of Pete, was he drunk?
Or drugged.
My blood ran cold.
I didn’tthinkthe employees were dead.
But I wasn’t sticking around to investigate.
“Hide!” Huck warned the elevator operator as he grabbed my hand. Then we both sprinted across the lobby together.
At first we headed for the entrance. But the idea of racing down the well-lit boulevard—where we could easily be spotted by the men chasing us—made me nervous. “This way!” I told Huck, and we turned into the nearby corridor that housed the hotel’s amenities.
We jogged past a pair of late-night lovers locked in an embrace and a restaurant that was turning up chairs onto tables for the night. The only establishment that was still open was a brewhouse, and the sharp scent of beer and cigarette smoke wafted as a man stumbled out of its door. Men in tuxedoes were drinking and laughing at the bar, and someone was singing a folk song at the top of their lungs.
Behind us, a stampede of footfalls raced through the lobby. The robed men were catching up.
We picked up speed and raced past a gated cinema lobby with a single ticket window, a self-serve popcorn vending machine, and double doors leading into the theater—locked for the night. The only person here was a befuddled old man, sweeping up.
Huck tugged me forward, toward a door on the other side of the cinema. The knob turned, and he swung the door open.
For one terrible second I thought it was a broom closet. But no, it was a dim stairwell. The service stairwell—the one that was locked on our floor. We quickly ducked inside and found two choices before us: the first was a windowed door to our right that led down a dark corridor, perhaps to the hotel kitchen or laundry, but we’d never know, because it was locked.
That left the second choice: the stairwell.
“Up!” Huck said, and we took the dimly lit stairs two at a time, jogging around the landing. The floor numbers were crudely marked in paint on the concrete walls—2, 3, 4... My calves burned, and I couldn’t get enough breath into my lungs. I mentally cursed both gravity and my own lack of athleticism as I stumbled up flight after flight of stairs, too afraid to look back when I heard a door slam somewhere below us.
Huck raced up the final flight of stairs to the door at the top. He pushed it open, and we rushed out onto—
The hotel’s roof.
Fresh air! Night air.Coldair. It needled my struggling lungs as I inhaled the chemical scent of pitch and smoke rising from chimneys.
We were six stories above midnight streets, and the rooftops of Bucharest stretched as far as I could see in the darkness. Cars streamed down the boulevard, and an ambulance’s siren wailed in the distance. For the briefest of moments it all felt like freedom.
Until I realized there was no place left to run.
“Shut it!” Huck said. “Shut the rooftop door.”
Next to my feet, a large cement block looked as if it was there to serve as a doorstop. “What if it locks?” I asked, frantic.
“I hope it damn well does!” He shouldered past me and slammed the metal door until it clicked into place, testing it for good measure.
Locked out. Them. And us.
Do not panic. Steel spine, chin high. You are not a coward.
I surveyed the roof. Cigarette butts, glass soda bottles, and a dead pigeon littered the area near the roof-access door. At the other end of the building sat the hotel’s glass dome, shining light over the roof, but there was no viable path to get to it. The building was shaped like an L that cradled a courtyard in the back, and the only thing to do was to head there, so we stepped over broken tile and telephone wires, threading our way across the rooftop.
