Hunting Lila

by Sarah Alderson

  He opened the passenger door for me and I got in. The white leather seats stuck to the back of my bare legs and the inside smelt of stale beer with overtones of upholstery cleaner.

  ‘Nice choice,’ I said, when Alex got in his side.

  He looked over at me briefly and I thought I detected the start of a smile at the corner of his mouth. My stomach muscles contracted with it. It was the first sign of warmth he’d shown me. The arm around me didn’t count, that had been acting. I let my eyes travel all over his face. He was busy reversing out of the space, looking over his shoulder. Maybe it was because it was daylight and the shadows were gone but the anger from last night seemed to have dissipated. He was still tense, I could tell from the furrows in his brow and the way his mouth was set in a line, but he didn’t seem angry anymore, just very focused.

  ‘Why did you sell Jack’s car?’

  ‘We’re going to need the money. Plus they’ll have an APB out on us. Every cop in the country’s going to be on the lookout for us. The Audi’s fairly conspicuous.’

  We drove a few miles out of the town. Alex was quiet the whole way and the air was saturated with unspoken questions. I had so many to ask I didn’t know where to begin but I knew that he most certainly had questions for me too. I wondered when he would start the inquisition.

  Just as I was about to test the water by asking again where we were going, Alex swung into the car park of a giant mall. He pulled into a space away from the entrance, between two big SUVs. Before I could ask what we were doing there, Alex started unbuttoning his shirt. My jaw went slack as I watched. When he was done with the buttons he pulled it off. He was wearing a white vest underneath and I couldn’t help but stare at his bare arms and shoulders, wondering what on earth he was doing.

  ‘Here, put this on.’ He chucked the shirt at me.

  I looked at him with a question in my eyes.

  ‘You can’t walk into a mall like that,’ he said indicating my ripped dress.

  He had a point. I didn’t reply, just put the shirt on over my dress, my fingers mangling the buttons they were shaking so much.

  I peeked up at him when I was done. The sleeves were much too long, hanging over my hands. Alex took my arm and started rolling one sleeve up.

  His eyes, I noticed, were back to their normal cool blue but they were shuttered and I couldn’t read his mood. When he was done he got out of the car and I took a second to look at myself in the little mirror on the inside of the visor. Eyes like a raccoon, hair like it had been dreaded. There was little I could do besides wipe some of the black soot from under my eyes. I got out of the car.

  ‘Can you make it in bare feet?’ He was nodding towards the entrance.

  I nodded back. We crossed quickly to the front of the mall and walked into the air-conditioned cool. Alex didn’t put his arm around me this time, though he stayed close. I was super-conscious of how we looked, the shirt not being much of an improvement. I’d gone from looking like a dirty stop-out to looking like a dirty stop-out wearing the shirt of the man I’d stopped out with. Still, I wasn’t going to take it off. Actually, the Vegas line had been kind of genius. That was exactly what we looked like. Two hungover, partied out people on their way to or from Vegas.

  We went into the first store we came to, a Gap. Alex strode through it, clearly in a hurry, and I jogged after him. He was in the women’s section picking out T-shirts. He crossed to the jeans and held up a pair, threw them down and picked up another pair, examined them for a second then threw them over his arm. He seemed to remember I was there and looked around.

  ‘Shoes,’ he said, as though he thought I’d have already figured out that’s what I should have been looking for.

  I turned around and saw a rack of flip-flops by the till. I grabbed the first pair in my size and turned back to him. He was standing by the underwear section now.

  I hurried over, feeling my cheeks burn. I hoped to God he wasn’t going to estimate my size in this department too, but when I came up to his side he said, ‘You’d better get some things. I’ll be just over there.’

  He walked off to the men’s section. I panicked at the few feet he was putting between us and reached out and snatched hold of the first things I could see then scurried over to where he was.

  ‘Did you get a sweater? You’re going to need something warm.’

  Where were we going? Alaska? I turned around again and ran over to the table with the sweaters on. It was the desert, they didn’t sell many sweaters in this store, at least not ones that would keep me warm if I was Arctic-bound. I pulled one from the pile and rushed back to Alex. The woman behind the counter handed Alex some scissors so he could snip the tag attaching my flip-flops. She looked like she would have liked to hand him a whole lot more, like her naked body across the counter. I slipped the shoes on while glaring at her.

  Alex took me by the arm and marched me out the store. ‘You hungry?’

  It wasn’t so much a question. We were already walking towards a fast food restaurant. I hadn’t thought about it until that point. My stomach had been in so many knots but now he’d said the word it growled like a wolf to the moon. I clutched it and looked up at Alex nodding.

  We ordered enough to feed about ten men and a large, black coffee, which Alex piled sugar into. I felt bad at how little sleep he’d had. And on his birthday, which I realised I had totally ruined.

  We sat at a table out of the way, near to the fire exit. Alex kept his back to the wall, eating like he didn’t know what he was putting in his mouth, not looking at it once, his eyes too busy moving over the restaurant. I ate until I was full and then leant back in the chair, suddenly feeling the smack of exhaustion hit me full on. I could have put my head on the table right there and fallen into a coma without caring an ounce whether Demos found me. Or the Unit for that matter.

  I rested my chin on my hand and watched Alex scanning the room. Circles were starting to shadow his eyes.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’ Alex moved his eyes back to me. The frown line, the same one I usually caused, was back.

  ‘I still don’t understand why you’re helping me.’

  He looked away again, over to the entrance, at a couple of noisy teenagers who had just come in. ‘I told you, I didn’t have a choice.’ His voice was neutral, no anger in it, just stating a simple fact.

  I carried on. ‘But I know what you think about people like me.’

  He shook his head and a half-smile, slightly sad, pulled at the side of his mouth. ‘You don’t know what I’m thinking.’

  That was true, but last night I hadn’t needed to be telepathic to know how much he despised me. ‘You hate me.’

  I waited to see what he would say. He was looking over at the entrance again, as though fully expecting to see Demos breeze through at any moment. After a couple of seconds he turned his head slowly to look at me again. ‘Lila, I don’t hate you.’

  I picked up on the slight emphasis he put on the word ‘hate’ as though he was denying the one word while replacing it with another in his mind, like ‘loathe’ or ‘despise’. It was just semantics, though.

  I looked at the table and picked up a napkin, twisting it into a rope. ‘Why did you lie?’

  He frowned at me. ‘Lie? About what?’

  ‘About Demos. I know he killed my mother. I know that he’s the one after me. But you told me it wasn’t the same people. That I didn’t need to worry. And you said that Suki had no connection to the people who did it and I know she does.’ An associate sure as hell was a connection.

  For a moment, Alex’s brows drew together and he narrowed his eyes at me. I felt myself flushing under his examination. His expression calmed after a moment, his forehead uncreased. ‘I’m guessing you know all this through Key?’

  ‘Something like that.’ Best leave out the hacking.

  He nodded. ‘I’m sorry I lied to you.’

  I was thrown a bit by his apology, it was so unexpected. I shook
my head as though it didn’t matter. An apology was nice but I wanted to know why he had done it.

  He looked at the table for an instant, then back towards the door, then finally back at me.

  ‘Would you believe me if I told you that I was doing it to keep you safe?’

  I raised my eyebrows to indicate no, I wouldn’t believe him.

  He sighed. ‘I thought that if you knew the same people who killed your mum were after you, you might try to do something stupid. Like act as bait. Or that you’d run away, thinking we couldn’t protect you. You looked so scared.’

  ‘You thought I’d run away?’ Before last night, I’d never have run away from Alex. I’d run to him all the way from London in the first place.

  ‘It has been known, Lila, it’s not that absurd a conclusion to draw.’ He took a sip of coffee.

  He had a point, so I pressed my lips together and let him carry on.

  ‘I thought you deserved to know about Jack and your father – the reason Jack was appearing so unreasonable.’ He placed his hands on the table. ‘But I didn’t think you deserved to know that the same people were after you as killed your mother. Why would you deserve the fear that would cause? When the threat wasn’t even established—’ He ran a hand through his cropped hair then put it back on the table, around his coffee. He looked up at me through his dark gold lashes and he was suddenly my Alex again. The boy who was holding my hand at the funeral, keeping strangers at bay. ‘Lila, I hate seeing you scared or hurt and I wanted to protect you. It’s as simple as that.’

  I nodded. He hadn’t used the past tense. He had said I hate seeing you scared. It was enough to spark a flame of hope that he didn’t despise me after all.

  ‘Why did you leave the bar and run off like that?’

  ‘Key was there. He told me – he told me what you and Jack do for a living.’

  I didn’t need to tell him that the deciding factor was not that but seeing him with Rachel.

  Alex was glaring at me. ‘What did Key tell you?’

  I started tearing the napkin into little pieces and scattering them over the table. ‘That the Unit’s mission was to hunt down people like me and that they – that they disappeared and didn’t come back once you caught them.’

  ‘How does he know that?’ Alex said under his breath.

  I shot back in my seat. If I’d wanted a confirmation about what the Unit was doing, here it was.

  When we got outside, Alex became quiet. He scanned the car park several times before stepping out of the shadows by the entrance. He took my hand this time, pulling me along behind him. I was holding the shopping and he had his other hand resting behind his back on his gun. My heart was racing; coming outside again felt like being a rabbit out of a hole.

  We got back to the Toyota and I waited for him to unlock the door, bouncing on the balls of my feet. But Alex didn’t unlock the doors, he just opened the trunk, took the holdall out, then shut it again.

  ‘Come on,’ he said.

  We walked several rows down and stopped by a brand new black Lexus. I hoped that we were just admiring it but I had a sinking feeling I knew what he was about to do. He slipped down the side of the car, pushing me ahead of him. My eyes darted around the car park to see if anyone was coming, adrenaline starting to pump. Alex stayed as cool as ice. In one fluid movement he pulled something out of the holdall and held it against the key lock. The thing in his hand beeped and the electric locks on the car flipped up.

  He looked at me and tilted his head. ‘Coming?’

  I swallowed, looked around me again and jumped into the passenger seat which he was holding open. He walked quickly around to the other side, threw the bags into the back and got in. The same machine, held by the ignition, switched the engine on. I stared at him in disbelief as we swung out of the car park, and slid down in my seat as far as I could go. It wasn’t enough that we had Demos and the Unit after us, Alex had to bring the police into the equation too?

  19

  From the signs on the interstate, we were headed north towards Palm Springs. Alex had, at some point in the night, doubled back and headed north-east.

  ‘What are we doing?’ I asked. ‘What’s the plan?’ I hoped that he had one, and that it was a good one – and that it involved him coming with me all the way, not just to drop me off at an airport. Then I remembered that I didn’t have a passport. Alex might have a whole bag stuffed full of useful toys, gadgets and fake IDs but he didn’t have a passport for me. So I wouldn’t be going anywhere.

  ‘We’re going to find a motel and get some sleep.’

  Apart from a motel. ‘OK . . . and after?’ I asked.

  ‘One thing at a time.’ He glanced at me and I felt my heart skip a beat. I wished he’d tell me what was going on and what he was thinking.

  He kept his speed down in this car, brushing the limit. An hour later, on the road into Palm Springs, he pulled up at a motel, one of several lining the road. It had palm trees out the front and a square pool with railings around it. The rooms were laid out in an L shape over two floors. He drove in and pulled up next to a car with a trailer, well hidden from the road.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said, turning off the engine.

  He paid for a twin room on the ground floor. Alex unlocked the door, letting me in first. I hovered in the middle of the room, unsure what to do next. He came and piled the bags onto the chair by the door.

  ‘Why don’t you take a shower? Here.’ Alex handed me the bags with my clothes in.

  I took them and closed the bathroom door behind me. The mirror was not kind. I looked awful. I eased off Alex’s shirt and my dress, catching sight of the fading, green-tinted bruise on my thigh. For a few seconds I stood there experiencing déjà vu, reliving the exact moment that had set in motion this whole chain of events. I’d been standing in a bathroom then too, in a pretty similar state. Though in retrospect that situation was a kids’ ride compared to the roller coaster I was now on.

  It was a quick shower – I felt too scared to stay in it long, conscious that if Demos chose to find me now, I didn’t want to have to put up a fight while naked.

  When I was done, I towelled off quickly and threw on a vest and the jeans that Alex had picked out. They fitted perfectly. He had chosen my exact size.

  Alex was standing by the window looking out through a crack in the curtain when I came out. He looked round at me and said, ‘Come here.’

  I came towards him slowly. His face was hard again and I was scared suddenly. He looked like he was going to interrogate me.

  When I was standing in front of him he reached behind and my stomach dropped – he was going for his gun. He didn’t need a gun, I would tell him whatever he wanted to know. He took it out, keeping the barrel pointed down.

  And then he handed it to me. ‘Do you know how to use this?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Here.’ He pressed my hands around the grip. The gun was heavier than I expected and warmer, from where it had been pressed against his back. ‘This is the safety catch. It’s on now, click it down to release it.’ He pushed the catch with his thumb over mine and, standing behind me with his arm over my shoulder, he pulled the gun up so it was pointing at a painting on the opposite wall. ‘Point and fire.’

  He clicked the safety back on and took his hand off mine. The weight of the gun dropped my hand a few inches; he lifted it back up to chest height. ‘Aim high, but for the chest. I guess you don’t need much help in the way of weapons, but just in case.’

  I felt my cheeks start to burn but chose to ignore the comment. ‘Just in case what?’

  ‘I’d just feel better knowing you know how to shoot. Just don’t shoot me while I’m in the shower.’ I didn’t know how he could joke. Or was he joking? Did he think I would do that? If he did he wouldn’t give me his gun, surely?

  Alex walked into the bathroom but kept the door cracked open. I stood by the window, looking out, the gun hanging in my hand, pointing at the floor. I wanted to put it
down but I also felt oddly comforted holding it.

  The shower started to run. I turned from the window just as Alex walked back into the room. He was wearing a towel around his waist and had his clothes in his hands. He dropped them onto the bed and took a few new clothes out of one of the bags. Then he walked back into the bathroom without a second glance at me. I commanded myself to breathe.

  I heard Alex get into the shower and I walked over to the window, looking out across the parking lot to the empty, leaf-strewn pool. There was no sign of the police, no sirens, no black SUVs screeching up the road. I rested my head against the glass. When would this chase ever stop? And who was going to win?

  A hand closed over mine and I almost jumped out of my skin. I hadn’t heard him even come out of the bathroom.

  Alex prised the gun out of my hand. ‘Lila, I give you a gun and you don’t even hear me coming.’

  ‘I haven’t done three years of Marine training, I don’t have special . . .’ I trailed off. I had been going to say ‘skills’. Alex was cocking an eyebrow at me.

  I sank down onto the bed. He stayed standing, watching me carefully. He looked like he was about to ask me something and I readied myself for the question about to come.

  ‘You should sleep. I’ll keep watch.’

  I looked up at him confused. ‘No, you need to sleep. You’re exhausted.’ He looked so tired, the circles under his eyes darkening, a day’s worth of stubble giving his face a golden glow.

  ‘It’s OK. You go first. I’ll wake you in a few hours,’ he said, already turning away.

  I lay down on the bed – I didn’t have the energy to argue. Alex shifted the chair nearer the window and sat down in it, the gun in his hand pointed at the door. I rolled over so my back was turned and stared at the other wall, trying not to think about anything, trying to breathe through my fear. I had given up trying to figure out what Alex was thinking or feeling.

  This time, the men in my nightmare had faces.

  As I followed the path of blood I noticed the smashed vase on the floor by the front door and the table overturned in the living room. My mum lay on the stairs like a broken doll, blood pumping from her chest, and I dropped to my knees, my hands turning red as I tried to scoop her life-blood up and push it back.