Hunting Lila

by Sarah Alderson

  About five minutes later he came out. He avoided making eye contact and glanced at his watch. ‘We may as well get going while it’s still dark.’ He moved to the chair in the corner and started rummaging around in the bag.

  I stared at him, my mouth half open. That was it? That was all he had to say? I looked down at the bedcover, rucked up under my feet. At least when there was rage and anger I had known where I stood – more or less. Now I was sinking, not knowing what to think. We had just kissed, hadn’t we? That had happened, hadn’t it?

  The sound of a zipper closing made me look up. Alex was throwing the bag over his shoulder. I watched as he pushed his gun down the back of his jeans. He glanced up at me and I was sure I detected a faint flare of embarrassment. He grabbed the keys and jerked his head towards the door. ‘Ready?’

  I stumbled off the bed feeling woozy and slipped on my shoes. My face was burning, my breathing still haphazard, my lips on fire. I could feel my emotions starting to flare. I couldn’t understand why he was ignoring what had happened and I wasn’t sure how to broach the subject. How did people do this? I had no clue what the protocol was. Was he embarassed because I was Jack’s sister? Was he disgusted by me? No, I couldn’t believe it. There had been no disgust in that kiss. So what else was it? Guilt, maybe? Because I was Jack’s sister?

  Oh no. Rachel. Of course. How on earth had I managed to forget about her? Selective amnesia, obviously. Or just complete denial.

  The bag Alex was holding suddenly slam-dunked into the bed. I bit my bottom lip and looked at him wide-eyed, waiting for his reaction. He was looking at the bag in bewildered shock. Then he looked over at me with disbelief painted on his face. Eeek. He looked back at the bag, lying on its side by the foot of the bed. I guessed it was lucky Rachel wasn’t actually there in the room because, for sure, furniture would have been flying, not just a bag.

  ‘Did you just do that?’ His voice was calm.

  ‘Um. Maybe.’

  ‘Lila?’

  It was just like the time I got called to the headmistress’s office about the flying jam roly-poly.

  ‘Yes. OK. I did it. It was an accident. I told you, sometimes it just happens.’

  ‘Like the scissors?’

  Crap. ‘Yes.’

  He nodded his head slowly. ‘I see.’ He looked up at me now and I felt a cramp of butterflies. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have taught you how to take the safety off a gun. Do I need to watch my back?’

  He gave me a little smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He was trying to joke but I didn’t feel like it. I was mad at him. Why had he kissed me if he liked Rachel?

  ‘Why are you here with me?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ He looked properly confused. ‘I thought I’d answered that one.’

  ‘I mean,’ I continued, my voice rising, ‘why are you here with me when clearly you would rather be with Rachel?’ I didn’t really mean here. I meant why was he kissing me if, he had a thing going on with I’m the boss don’t mess with me Barbie?

  ‘Rachel?’ He looked really confused now.

  ‘Yes. Rachel. Why don’t you go back to her? You have a choice. You don’t need to be here with me.’ I sounded so jealous and ridiculous. I wanted to slam-dunk myself with the bag and knock myself out.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  Oh, he agreed with me about the ridiculousness. Great. I turned away so he wouldn’t see the tears of anger that were starting to prick behind my eyes.

  ‘You think I like Rachel?’ Alex said to my back. He sounded surprised.

  I turned around, suddenly furious that he was making me spell it out. ‘You went on a date with her, didn’t you?’ I was thinking about the restaurant we’d been to for Alex’s birthday, but Alex seemed to be drawing a blank. He was frowning. ‘I saw you in the bar,’ I added, ‘I saw you laughing and joking with her. So, why are you here with me?’

  Suddenly the penny seemed to drop. I could see the moment of realisation and then his face turned serious. He brought his hands to my shoulders and this time I didn’t try to dodge them, they weighed me down like a diver’s belt.

  ‘Lila,’ he said, his eyes holding mine, ‘I don’t like Rachel. And I am here with you because it’s where I want to be.’

  He didn’t like her?

  ‘You don’t like her?’ I stammered.

  He shook his head once, firmly. ‘Not like that.’

  Oh. I took a moment to compute. This was quite embarrassing, then.

  Alex let his hands drop from my shoulders. ‘I’ve never been on a date with Rachel. If you’re talking about the comment Jack made at the restaurant, he was talking about a business lunch. All the team leaders were there.’

  Oh again.

  He waited a beat. ‘And what you saw in the bar was not what you think. When you saw me with Rachel, she was telling me something that I didn’t believe. That’s why I was laughing. Then I saw you and . . .’ He tailed off.

  Telling him what? A joke? Something about changes to the working hours directive? What could she possibly be telling him that was so funny? She was his boss. Bosses shouldn’t tell jokes. Especially black ops bosses.

  ‘What was she telling you?’ I asked, confused myself now.

  Alex looked at the ground then his blue eyes flashed to me and I braced myself. ‘She was telling me that she thought you had feelings for me.’

  I swallowed and tried to keep my face neutral. ‘Feelings?’ My heart rate started to accelerate like it was pumping amphetamine not blood round my body.

  He took in a deep breath. ‘She told me that she overheard you in the bar telling Sara you loved me.’

  Sounded out, echoing around the room, the love word settled on us both like a layer of ash after a fire. I couldn’t meet Alex’s eyes. I just stared at the floor in horror. Rachel had overheard that? Where had she been? The bar had been crowded but how had I not noticed her?

  Perhaps because I was only ever aware of Alex. So, Rachel had heard – but why had she told him? Why would she do that?

  Because she was a total bitch. That’s why.

  I replayed the scene from the bar in my head. Alex had been laughing because he’d just found out that I loved him. It put a new slant on things certainly, but not a better one. He found it hilarious that I loved him. I looked at the ground and visualised a hole. Nothing happened. Useless power.

  I needed to get into the bathroom. Somewhere I could lock the door and hide. I didn’t care about meeting Jack. Alex could go on his own. I’d wait in the bathroom for the Unit instead.

  But Alex got to the door before me, blocking my way. I tried to walk past him but he feinted and I couldn’t get around him. I spun round and crossed to the bed, dropping onto it like a rock and burying my head in my arms.

  There was a moment of silence and I heard my breathing loud and uneven in the cave of my arms. I waited, hoping Alex would just pick up the bag and leave. But he didn’t. He came and sat down next to me and I felt his hand on my back.

  ‘Lila,’ he said. ‘Please. Can we talk?’

  His voice was so gentle I felt myself start to turn, my body wanting to roll into him and find comfort. I stopped myself. I stayed quiet and held my breath. I really didn’t know what to say. He didn’t either obviously as he sat there in silence for another minute.

  Eventually, he spoke again, quietly. ‘When I said I had no choice about helping you, I meant it. There was no other option because you are the only option. I don’t trust anything at the moment. But the one thing I am sure of, the one thing that I do trust . . .’ he paused for a fraction of a second, ‘is the way I feel about you.’

  He stopped and my eyes flew open. How did he feel about me? I didn’t understand what he was saying. I rolled over slowly to look at him and his hand fell away, off my back. My voice when I found it was raspy. ‘I don’t – what are you saying?’

  Alex frowned, his jaw clenching then unclenching, like he was saying the words against his better judgement. ‘I’m saying that
the way I feel about you is not the way I should be feeling about you.’

  ‘What do you mean not the way you should be feeling?’ I could feel my body starting to shake.

  He rubbed a hand across his forehead like he had a migraine. ‘I like you. Too much.’

  I took in such a huge gulp of oxygen that the air turned thin around me. He liked me? Alex, who I had loved my entire life, liked me. And, from the sound of it, he meant like as in like. Not as in liking a great aunt or tea with sugar. But it didn’t make sense for him to like me. It didn’t add up. I sat up.

  ‘But you laughed. When she told you, you laughed.’

  Alex shut his eyes for a few seconds and when he opened them he seemed to have decided something. ‘I was laughing, Lila, because I didn’t believe her. I thought Rachel had to be joking.’

  Suddenly nothing mattered anymore. Not Rachel. Not the Unit. Not Demos. Alex liked me. He liked me. He liked me too much. I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. It was cracking it in two.

  ‘But Lila, like I said before, it’s not right. I’m not going to take advantage of you.’ He stood up.

  My smile dissolved. Was he kidding? I leapt off the bed towards him. ‘Take it. Take the advantage. You can have it. I’m giving it to you. It’s yours.’

  He took a step back. ‘No, Lila. You’re Jack’s sister.’

  I stopped in my tracks. ‘This is about Jack?’

  I couldn’t believe it. As if Jack would extend the same courtesy to Alex if the situation was reversed.

  ‘It’s a part of it. He’d kill me if he knew.’

  I couldn’t disagree with any vehemence. But it wasn’t Jack’s life. It wasn’t his business.

  Before I could put any of this into words, though, Alex carried on. ‘It’s more than just Jack. I can’t see you hurt and this – this will end badly.’

  What, he could see the future now?

  ‘This as in, this,’ I pointed at him and then me, ‘or this as in Demos and the situation we’re in? What’s going to end badly?’

  He gave a faint shrug. ‘I won’t hurt you.’ It was said like a promise. ‘And this is going to hurt you.’ He said it so finally. As though he had already made up his mind.

  The panic finally made it to my chest, filling my lungs with tar so I couldn’t breathe. ‘No it isn’t,’ I whispered. ‘Stopping is going to hurt me.’

  He couldn’t just tell me he liked me, kiss me and then take it all away.

  Considering everything else in my life I’d had taken away from me it really wasn’t fair. But this time I wasn’t going to let it happen.

  Alex was shaking his head. ‘I’m sorry, Lila. I really shouldn’t have kissed you.’ He was running a hand over his head as though trying to erase the memory. I stood there open-mouthed. ‘It was wrong of me. And I shouldn’t have told you how I was feeling. I just wanted you to know that what you were thinking wasn’t the case. I could see what was going through your head. And none of it was true.’

  ‘But if you feel something how can you just stop? How can you?’ My voice was shaking and I tried to still it.

  ‘Because it isn’t about what I want. It’s about what’s for the best.’

  ‘So you do want this? You do want me?’ Did he? I still didn’t know what he wanted.

  Alex paused. ‘I want you to be happy and I want you to be safe,’ he said finally.

  ‘I’m both those things with you.’

  Alex looked pained, his face reminding me of how I had felt when he hit the button in the car and everything turned to shattering white noise. When he noticed my face though, looking like I’d had my heart torn from my chest and wrung out in front of me, he reacted quickly. ‘Come on,’ he said, holding out his hand, ‘let’s talk about this later. Now’s not the time. We need to get out of here.’

  He pulled me over to the door, pausing to pick up the bag. I let him. Of course I let him, even though I wanted to resist and face him and demand to know when the right time was going to be. I was desperate to get him to promise he wasn’t going to stop anything, least of all the kissing, or the liking. I needed to convince him Jack wouldn’t kill him, which he probably would, that he wasn’t taking advantage and that he couldn’t just stop, because I needed him. Absolutely and completely needed him. I couldn’t imagine surviving a single second in the world without him next to me. And by that, I didn’t just mean in a world where the Unit was chasing me, I meant in any world.

  22

  We were at the base of the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, near to the ticket booth. I looked up at the mountain rising out of the desert like a giant’s table. The cable car looked flimsy, like a child’s toy, next to it.

  I glanced at Alex. ‘We’re going on that thing?’

  ‘Yes, we are.’

  ‘Cool,’ and then, after a moment’s pause, ‘Will there be lots of people at the top?’

  ‘No. That’s the point.’

  ‘I think people around us would be good.’

  ‘Oh really? You want to demonstrate your ability to an audience?’

  ‘What do you mean, demonstrate my ability?’

  ‘Lila, you’re going to need to show Jack. He’s not going to believe us unless you do.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘It’s the only way. Do you want to get out of the country? Do you want to be safe from Demos?’

  I sighed. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, then, come on. Let’s go.’

  Alex nudged me into the ticket booth. I stood there, staring up at the top of the mountain and then at the flat of the desert, wondering how this would play out. It was an awfully long drop. We had driven into Palm Springs, stopping for some breakfast at a roadside diner. Then Alex had called Jack from a payphone and arranged to meet him here. Or rather at the top of the cable car ride in the San Jacinto State Park, to be exact.

  When he had the tickets, Alex walked back towards the car.

  I followed after him. ‘Where are you going? Aren’t we going up? Did you change your mind?’ I was hopeful.

  ‘We’re waiting,’ he said to me over his shoulder.

  I glanced back towards the cable car entrance. ‘What for? There’s no queue.’

  ‘For Jack – I want to see he’s alone first. We’ll let him head on up first and then we’ll follow him.’

  We got in the car and I felt the first spirals of angst start to wind their way up my body. My feet started to tap the floor, my fingers playing a melody on the window ledge. Alex glanced over at me a few times and I gave him fleeting smiles that didn’t kid him for a second.

  ‘It’ll be OK,’ he said.

  I just nodded and kept on tapping.

  At midday we saw a red blur on the horizon. It looked familiar.

  Alex sat up in his seat slightly and I kept following the blur as it became clearer. It was Alex’s bike. Jack was riding it. I hoped he’d give Alex the keys to it before he asked about the Audi. I sank down in my seat, hiding behind the dash.

  We waited while he parked up and my heart started to gallop. Jack pulled off his helmet and looked up, scanning the car park. No doubt looking for the Audi. Finally, he gave up the search and stalked over to the ticket booth and we watched him disappear inside.

  I looked over at Alex. ‘So, he’s alone – are we going?’

  ‘No, we’ll follow him up.’

  Fifteen minutes later we got out of the car. Jack was already dangling some two hundred or so metres above us in one of the cable cars. I wondered if he’d spotted us down below.

  Waving in the breeze, two hundred metres up, suspended on a wire in a little glass and metal box, I felt dangerously close to the edge of something – not the top of the mountain, something more like hysteria. My brother was waiting at the summit and I could feel the anxiety building with every metre we got closer to him.

  ‘Lila.’

  I looked up. Alex was standing over in one corner. I lurched over to him, feeling the car rock beneath me. When I got to him he stepped closer, so we
were brushing arms. I didn’t know what he was doing at first, not until he’d wrapped something around my wrist. Then he moved his hand away and I saw it was the strand of leather I’d given to him for his birthday.

  I looked up at his face and felt the blood rush from my cheeks to my head. I’d never tire of looking at him and for a few seconds my mind went completely blank with amazement that someone so beautiful liked me right back. He finished tying the knot and looked me in the face and I felt my gaze fall from his eyes to his lips and back again.

  ‘Why are you giving it back to me?’ I asked.

  He pressed his thumb to my bottom lip and I heard an intake of air. That was me, I thought, before my head started to spin. Then he bent his head and kissed me. Just lightly, for a short few seconds, before drawing away again. My bottom lip began to throb where the pressure of his thumb and lips had been. I looked down, only to catch sight of the ground about three hundred metres below, and felt myself start to sway. Alex caught me around the waist, holding me firm. I leant into him, pressing my forehead against his chest. What was going on? Not two hours ago he’d claimed this was wrong and told me he wasn’t going to take advantage – and now here he was happily taking it. I didn’t want to do anything that might make him reconsider, though, so I stayed perfectly still, breathing in his now familiar smell.

  The car jolted into the landing station at the top of the mountain and Alex took hold of my hand, giving it a squeeze.

  It felt like I had sea legs – they were wobbly and unsteady on the metal walkway that took us into the building and then out onto the mountain top. The air was cool, much cooler than down on the desert floor. Like being in the Alps. It was fresh and stinging and thin. I pulled on my sweater. Had Alex known back at the mall that we’d end up here? What else had he planned?

  We were standing amidst pine trees that were stretching up into the blue and all around was such quietness that it seemed to sing. It would have been somewhere mystical or other-worldly if it hadn’t been for the odd tourist milling about and a couple eating their lunch at one of the picnic tables.