Losing Lila (3 page)

‘He’ll be OK, Lila.’

Jack. He meant Jack.

‘Hey, don’t cry.’

I hadn’t realised I was, but tears were trickling down my cheeks and onto his chest. I tried to stop them, but they just kept coming.

‘We left him. We just left him, Alex.’

Alex’s grip on me tightened. His fingers went under my chin and he forced it up so I was looking him in the eye.

‘We had to, Lila.’

I stared at him.
Did we?

‘It was the only thing we could do,’ he said. ‘If either of us had gone to help him, we’d have been shot too. We’ve talked about this. Jack would have done the same thing. He would have wanted you to be safe.’

A part of me knew what Alex was saying was true, but it wasn’t enough to make the guilt untwist the knots it had made in my gut.

‘But Alex, what if he’s—’

I thought about Ryder lying dead in the dirt and of Jack at his side with a bullet wound in his chest and scrunched my eyes shut. He wasn’t in a good way. That’s what Key had said. He was in a coma. He could be paralysed. He could be
dead
. And I didn’t know because I was here. And Jack was there. And so was my mum. And there was no way of getting to either of them because between us and them was the Unit.

Alex put his hands on either side of my face. I opened my eyes. He was looking straight at me. ‘Jack’s fine,’ he said, ‘I know it. He’s too tough not to be. And anyway, Jack has a very good reason to stay alive.’

‘My mum?’ It was a good reason. We had thought she was dead, but she wasn’t.

‘That,’ Alex said, a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, ‘but I was thinking more that he’ll want the opportunity to kick my ass.’

I laughed through my tears. ‘Yeah, he wasn’t too happy, was he?’

‘No more than I deserve.’

‘No, don’t say that.’ I scrambled to sit up. ‘You can’t do that to me again. You can’t leave me again because of Jack. Because you’re scared of what he thinks. I can’t – I won’t go through that again—’

I thought back to the days just before all this kicked off. To Alex’s promise not to hurt me, and the way he’d left me so easily, thinking he was doing the right thing. When I thought about it, it made me feel as if the Unit had fired that weapon of theirs right at my heart.

Alex sat up too and took my hands in his. ‘Lila, I promise you I’ll never leave you again, ever. I promise you that I’ll keep you safe and that we’ll find Jack and your mum, and I promise that even if Jack does kick my ass, which one day I hope he will, I will still never leave you.’

I weighed his words, analysing their content. Alex had been known to twist the meaning of things. He’d tricked me that way before. I considered him: the arctic-blue eyes, the bruised shadows beneath them, the dark blond crew cut growing out, the soft curve of his lips, the familiar frown line running between his eyes that always made me want to reach out and smudge it away.

‘I promise, Lila,’ he said. ‘No hidden meanings. I’m not going to leave you.’

He leaned forward and kissed me, still smiling. My whole body melted away, the muscles becoming as soft as sponges dipped in a hot bath, all the guilt and worry disappearing back into the corners of my consciousness, where I preferred them to stay.

After a few minutes Alex pried me off him. I sat up grudgingly as he swung his legs off the bed and watched as he bent to plug the light back into the socket. We had taken to unplugging electrical equipment as a precaution every time we moved to a new hotel room. When it came to proximity to Alex, I couldn’t control my ability and we didn’t need to be advertising our presence to the Unit with a Vegas-style sound and light show.

‘Seriously, we have to focus,’ he said, rearranging his T-shirt and running a hand through his hair.

‘What do we have to focus
on
?’ I had thought the bed was a pretty good thing to concentrate on.

‘Get up,’ Alex said.

I narrowed my eyes in suspicion, but slowly got up off the bed and stood in front of him.

‘OK, we need to practise.’

I groaned. ‘I’m so tired.’

‘I know,’ he said, ‘but you really need to be able to defend yourself if you have to. So, don’t argue, OK? We just have one more thing to do then we’ll get out of the city and find somewhere safe to wait for Demos and the others.’

I froze, looking up at him. ‘We have to wait here. They’re coming
here
.’ I couldn’t hide the note of panic in my voice.

Alex shook his head at me. ‘We can’t stay in Mexico City. The Unit will be looking for us here.’ He softened his voice. ‘Don’t worry, Nate and Key will find us wherever we go.’

I hoped he was right. I hoped they hadn’t been caught. When we’d left them back in California, they’d been trying to draw the Unit north, away from us. A pretty futile exercise it now turned out because the Unit had been tracking us this whole time anyway. But it had been over eight days since we’d last had contact with Demos. When I’d suggested it would have been a good idea to swap cellphone numbers, Alex had rolled his eyes and given me a rudimentary introduction to evade-and-resist tactics, which apparently called for the ditching of all electronic, traceable objects. I hadn’t yet pointed out that he should also have ditched his arm. I must have been looking worried still, because Alex took my hand.

‘They’ll find us,’ he repeated. ‘They found us before, didn’t they?’ He tugged me to my feet. ‘Now come on, practise.’

How could I resist a face like that? Anything, he could ask me anything, and I’d do it.

He turned in a flash and picked up the gun from the bed. His finger was on the trigger before I had flung it out of his grip and back onto the pillow.

‘Good,’ he said, reaching to pick it up. ‘But you need to be quicker.’

Quicker, huh?
I spun the gun out of his reach to the foot of the bed.

He looked at me with a wry smile and I smiled back. ‘Quick enough?’

He considered me for a long moment and I felt my pulse start to speed up. Finally he strolled around and stood directly behind me. I stayed where I was, feeling his breath tickling the back of my neck and trying not to let it distract me.

‘So, if someone comes up behind you like this, what do you do?’ Alex asked, stepping even closer, his lips brushing the edge of my ear.

‘Smack him over the head with something?’ I suggested, trying to focus on the question and not the feel of his lips.

‘No,’ he said. ‘You can’t let people know about your ability. Try this instead.’ He put his hand on my shoulder and then, reaching over with his other hand, took my left hand and put it on top of his. ‘Now twist, like this.’ He showed me and I practised until I was able to extricate myself from a headlock. And then we kept practising, purely because I liked the feel of his arms wrapping round me, although I told Alex it was because I was trying to commit the move to memory.

Alex finally called a halt to the lesson and came to stand in front of me. ‘Do you want to try moving me?’ he asked.

I rolled my eyes. ‘You know I can’t. We tried already.’

‘You can. I know you can do it. Look what you did today, moving that dumpster. You just need to try.’

I sighed at him. ‘I’m not Demos, Alex. I can’t stop people in their tracks just by looking at them.’

‘Maybe not, but I’ve seen you move objects, big objects.’

He was talking about Humvees – cars as big as tanks that the Unit used. I wasn’t sure how I’d done that, though, except that they had been bearing down on us and there had been no other option other than a future as roadkill.

‘You can move a man,’ he said. ‘You just need to practise.’

He held his arm out in front of me. I stared at it. But all I saw was his arm – tanned and smoothly muscled – and all I could think about was how it felt when that arm held me in the night. Alex cleared his throat.

‘It’s too distracting,’ I said, flushing and shrugging at the same time. ‘It’s
your
arm. I can’t concentrate.’

He tried not to smile. ‘OK, try this.’ He stood behind me and put his arm round my neck in a stranglehold.

‘It’s still your arm.’

He squeezed a little until it was uncomfortable. I concentrated on trying to break his hold. Nothing happened.

‘Imagine I’m Rachel,’ Alex whispered in my ear.

His arm almost tore out of its socket as I flung it off me. He staggered back away from me.

I spun round. ‘God, I’m sorry, are you OK? Damn – I didn’t mean to – you just – you really shouldn’t mention her name . . .’

Alex was nursing his shoulder, his eyes wide with surprise or possibly shock. Then his face split into a wide grin.

‘Again,’ he said, wrapping both arms round my waist.

I closed my eyes and visualised Rachel’s beautiful, sneering face and the smirk when she told me that my mother was still alive. It took a few seconds but Alex’s grip broke apart as easily as if I was peeling a banana.

I opened my eyes and turned round. Alex was appraising me now with something approaching awe. At least I hoped it was awe. He stepped towards me with his arms outstretched.
Rachel
. I punched his arm away with my mind and it jolted backwards. This could be fun. Now I had it, it was easy. And all along Rachel was the key. I wasn’t sure why I was surprised, or why I hadn’t figured it out sooner. Every time I got angry or otherwise emotional, I lost control of my ability, so it made sense that Rachel would be my biggest trigger.

Alex was keeping his distance now and his smile had faded. He seemed almost too nervous to make another move towards me. And there – was that a slight wince of irritation I caught in his eyes? It vanished as soon as I noticed it and he gave me a brief smile.

I wondered suddenly if I could make him step towards me. Put his arms round me? Take off his T-shirt? Lie down on the bed again? Kiss me? I couldn’t stop the grin from taking hold of my face. A whole world of opportunity suddenly opened up, involving a lot fewer clothes between him and me and a clear way past Alex’s resolve.

No, bad Lila
, I told myself.
Bad, bad Lila. Control.

‘You don’t need to make me do that,’ Alex said softly, moving towards me and stopping just a few centimetres from me. The pull was too great. I leaned into him, running my hands up the ridges of his stomach and chest until they looped behind his neck.

‘Damn, you can read my mind,’ I murmured.

‘No. I just know you,’ he smiled and kissed my ear, then the hollow at the base of my throat and I felt the tremor in my body as my pulse quickened. I pushed my forehead against his shoulder and breathed in deeply. In all this mess, with this nightmare going on around us, at least I had this.

The taxi driver asked if we were sure.

‘
Si
,’ Alex replied.

I could only follow a bit of the conversation, my Spanish being remedial at best. I could order a burrito and ask for a double room and that was about it.

‘Why does he keep asking if we’re sure?’ I whispered to Alex.

‘Because tourists don’t usually ask to go to this part of town.’

‘I can’t think why,’ I muttered to myself, looking out of the window. There were a lot of red lights and dark alleys and flashing signs for Negra Modelo and Corona. It was nearly two in the morning and the streets were eerily empty. Even the locals obviously had more sense than to come out after dark.

I turned to face Alex across the back seat. ‘So, remind me once more what we’re doing here?’

‘We both need new passports. And we need them fast. We can’t use our old passports to cross back into the States. The Unit will have an APB out on us by now.’

‘And illegal passports aren’t something they sell in the supermarket. I get it, but why are we
here
?’ I wasn’t seeing a flashing sign for a passport shop.

‘I asked the driver to take us to the worst part of the city.’

‘OK,’ I said as if I understood.

Alex turned to the driver and spoke to him in fluent Spanish and I stared at him in surprise, wondering how many more skills he had that I didn’t know about.

‘
Aquí?
’ the driver said, gesticulating at the area around us like it was a plague zone. I was on the driver’s side. This didn’t look like too safe a place to be getting out for a stroll, even with Alex and his gun for company.

They spoke for a few more minutes before the driver, shaking his head, took the money Alex was holding out to him and killed the engine. We were sitting on the side of a narrow road, parked between two other cars. About fifty metres down the road was a building with boarded-up windows. A dark reddish light was escaping through the slats.

We sat in the dark for another ten minutes until I noticed that Alex was watching a man half-hidden in the shadows. He was hovering in a doorway, and every so often a car would pull up and the man would bend down and speak to the driver. An exchange would happen and then the car would drive off.

‘I thought we came for passports, not crack,’ I whispered to Alex.

‘Follow the street crime, which leads to the local dealer, which leads to the boss.’

‘What kind of boss? Who do they work for?’

‘The Mafia,’ Alex said, not taking his eyes off the man in the shadows. ‘In Central America there are various cartels. They control it all – the drugs, money laundering, arms, passports.’

I stared at him, wide-eyed, processing only the word
Mafia
. He didn’t look like he was joking. I nodded slowly. ‘So, we walk up to the nice man on the corner,’ I said, ‘convince him in Spanish to take us to his Mafia boss, and ask him nicely to give us new passports. Good plan.’

‘Thanks,’ Alex said, ignoring my sarcasm.

‘OK,’ I said, taking a deep breath, ‘are we going to stay here all night, or are we going to go introduce ourselves to the man on the corner with the drugs?’

We reached for the door handles, but then Alex turned suddenly back towards me, putting a hand on my thigh. OK, we could stay here all night. I sank back into my seat.

‘Lila—’ Alex started then stopped.

‘What?’

He shook his head and removed his hand. ‘Nothing. I was going to say stay close to me, but I don’t think I need to tell you how to look after yourself.’