“You need to do exactly what I tell you to do,” said Pablo.

I pressed my back against the wall, tangling my fingers in the velvet folds of my dress. He was loading up the magazine of his handgun, and I wondered if we really needed this many bullets.

“Once we’re out of here, you do not talk. Not a single word,” he told me. “No questions, no arguing, no whispering. Nada. Understood?”

Before I could nod, the lights flickered off, and the harmonizing hums of the room’s AC and minifridge went quiet. Pablo’s face, lit only by the faint orange glow of the city lights below, turned towards Beto.

“We cut off the power. There are six of their men stuck in the elevators,” Beto quickly explained. “That should buy us a few minutes.”

“Let’s go,” muttered Pablo as his fingers hooked mine and dragged me to the suite’s door.

“Hey, Pablo? Try not to shoot anybody,” mumbled Oscar. “Remember how things ended last time you tried to act like a coked-up cowboy?”

“He is a coked-up cowboy,” I snickered.

“What did I just say, Gordita? No talking.”

He took off his jacket, and put it over my head, pushing the back of my skull to make me bend down my neck.

The hotel’s hallways were empty, and eerily silent. The faint green lights of the fire exit signs hardly lit up the floor, and I couldn’t see where my feet were stepping. I followed Pablo down the corridor, guided only by his strong hand and the muffled sound of his footsteps dragging against the carpet.

He flinched with every sound, every door that opened or closed, every distant shout that echoed from a few floors below. His breaths were quick, his steps hurried, and his thoughts seem to race at a thousand miles per minute. Meanwhile, I only had one thing in mind, one word, one name.

Juan.

He was the one behind this, I was certain of it. Pablo, Beto, and all those who knew had been so careful to keep me a secret. No one else at the event was supposed to know who I was, and that only left me with one culprit.

At the end of the hallway, Pablo pushed a door open, and we entered a small, cramped staircase.

“Oscar?” he called out in a whisper. “Why the fuck isn’t he behind us?”

“I–”

His pulse throbbed in the palm of my hand as he pressed his finger against his lips.

“Don’t move,” he murmured, so low I could hardly hear.

He went back into the hallway, and the door shut behind him with a loud, metallic clang that echoed all the way down the stairs.

I waited, and waited for him to return, and long enough for my eyes to get accustomed to the dark. Moon rays trickled in through a grimy skylight just one floor above, tired-out emergency lights flickered across the walls. A gust of cold air blew past me, making the hairs stand on end. I let Pablo’s jacket slide from my head down to my shoulders, and quickly stuffed my arms into the sleeves.

The staircase smelled musty, like mold and poor ventilation, and it was quiet. So quiet. I could hear drops of water falling somewhere, a faint and regular sound, almost like a clock ticking.

Among the drips, there was a pop. It sounded like when your joints crack, in your hip or your knees. Then a small thud, like a heavy boot tip-toeing on cold concrete. And soon a beam of light hit the wall in front of me, brightening up the staircase as it reflected on a dozen glimmering streaks of humidity.

I held my breath, and walked down one step, and then another, and before I could step foot on the third, I was blinded by a searing white light.

I raised my hands, sheltering my eyes with my fingers, and the light lowered. Before me stood a young man I’d never seen before, his blue eyes wide open as he stared me down. I noticed the faint outline of a bulletproof vest peeking from under his shirt. His two hands kept a tight grip on his gun as he pointed it away from me and toward the floor.

“You should get back to your room, ma’am,” he said. “For your own safety.”

I opened my mouth, but no words came out. The man had a thick Southern accent, an aggressive twang in his voice. His skin was pale, his hair dark blonde, and he was taller than I was. This wasn’t one of Pablo’s men.

I looked over my shoulder. I was stuck on the staircase with a CIA agent, and Pablo and Oscar could walk in through that door anytime. Another door slammed, this time a few floors below us.

“I’ll escort you,” said the man, his voice so grave it made me shudder. “How far is your room?”

“Uh, one floor down,” I stuttered.

I followed the man down the stairs, still throwing glances towards that door, unsure whether I was praying that Pablo would walk out or not.

“Why were you up there?” asked the man.

“I heard some noise, and then the power cut off,” I lied. “I was wondering what happened.”

“Well, curiosity kills the cat,” he muttered. “My advice would be to stay in your room and away from the doors.”

“What’s going on?”

“Confidential.”

I nodded, which squeezed the lump in my throat, and stopped in front of a random room’s door. Our eyes swept across the hallway’s ceiling, following the sound of footsteps above us. Pablo, I thought. I’m in so much fucking trouble.

The man cocked his head to the side, ushering me to get inside this room that wasn’t mine. I shuffled around the jacket’s pockets, and found the credit card Pablo had been using to make his lines of cocaine on the coffee table just a few minutes ago. I wiped it across my stomach to get rid of any powder left on it, hoping it wasn’t enough for the CIA to arrest me for drug possession, or whatever they were here for.

“Were you at the charity event?” asked the man.

The beam of his flashlight swept across the hallway, and I swiped the credit card in front of the door. Nothing happened.

“Yes,” I breathed.

He shone his light in my face again. He took a good look at me, from head to toe and back to the head. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, and with a trembling hand, I pretended to swipe the card again.

“What’s your name?” he said.

It’s a test, said a voice in my head. It’s a fucking test. Juan wasn’t behind this supposed CIA operation, Pablo was. He’d been talking about trust all day, and this was his way of checking whether I was loyal or not.

I gulped. “Emilia Kovács.”

He squinted his eyes, and scrunched up his nose. “Why were you there?”

“Sir, my key card isn’t working,” I whimpered. “I guess it’s because the power’s off.”

“Those things have batteries,” he muttered.

“Maybe this one’s dead.”

The man flinched, and pointed his flashlight to the end of the corridor, just as a shadow darted around the corner. Shouts echoed in the distance, and the walls began to shake.

“Go down to the lobby, immediately,” he ordered, nervously dancing from one foot to the other, like a racehorse in the starting blocks. “Stay calm and keep your hands above your head in case you come across any of my colleagues.”

Beneath our feet, the floor rumbled, and a long, thundering sound filled up the empty corridor, growing louder and louder. Helicopters.

“On my own?” I asked him.

“You’ll be okay, Miss Kovács,” he shouted, already running to the other end of the corridor.

I hurried back to the staircase, and peeked over the handrail, gazing down into an endless pit of darkness about thirty stories deep. I could hardly hear anything over the deafening roar of rotor blades, but a dozen of flashlights, red and green laser sights, danced across the lower floors, like the world’s deadliest disco.

Instead of heading down to the lobby like the man had told me to, I went up to the roof. I climbed the stairs two by two, and was already breathless when I reached the door. It was closed, and locked.

I hammered it, banged it, rammed it with my fists and shoulders, yelled for help and for someone to open, but no one seemed to hear. The loud humming of the rotor blades turned into a high-pitched whirr.

Don’t leave me here.

I hit harder, screamed louder. My heart raced at a million beats per minute, and tears began to burn my cheeks like smoldering streams of fire.

As the helicopter’s blaring bellow started to fade away in the distance, and I could hear the shouts and stomps of the men below me, as they inched closer, climbing floor after floor.

Don’t leave me alone.

“Pablo, it’s Emilia,” I cried, slamming my hands against the cold metal. “Open the fucking door!”

It finally swung open, and I crashed the floor, as the cold night breeze stung every inch of my exposed skin. As I struggled to get back to my feet, heaving like a fish out of water, I looked around.

One of the men who was in the room earlier was standing behind me, holding a large rifle. He shut the door. Juan was leaning against another guy, his skin was a strange shade of greenish yellow, almost the same color as the vomit stains dribbling down his shirt. There were two more men, and then there was Pablo.

He ran to me, and grabbed me by the wrist.

“Where the fuck were you?” he yelled.

“There was a man, on the staircase, with a gun, an American,” I tried to explain, gasping for air between each word.

His eyes swept across my face like he was trying to read a book.

“He didn’t know who I was,” I breathed.

He wrapped his arms around me and held me tight, as the racing heart in his chest thudded against mine. He left a string of kisses from the center of my forehead down to my temple, and I watched over his shoulder as the second helicopter approached.

Our ride home.

“Did everybody make it?” I asked.

“The others just took off,” he answered. “Beto’ll stay hidden until things calm down.”

The ear-splitting sound of whizzing rotors pierced right through me, like a needle stirring the contents of my skull, startling a pain that dug right into the core of each of my bones. Yet, I felt so distant from it all. Speechless and empty-eyed, I looked up at Pablo. Was that tear in his eye because he was crying, or was it just the wind?

“Keep your head down,” he shouted. “Stay close to me.”

The very second that the helicopter touched down on the hotel’s roof, he grabbed me by the hand and we ran. He strapped me in my seat, slipped the ear muffs on my head, and I finally understood that this was all real.

The helicopter was real. The operation was real. The fear on Pablo’s face was real, as so was the panic that made each of his moves so jittery and fast-paced.

This wasn’t a test. I had just stood face to face with the CIA, and I told them my name was Emilia.

As soon as we rose in the air, the door to the staircase swung open again, and two dozen men in tactical gear spilled out onto the roof like ants swarming a picnic.

Pablo placed his hand on my cheek, and turned my face away from them. He made me rest it on his shoulder, nestled his nose in my hair. I could feel his warm breaths running down the back of my head.

The city lights trickled away, and were slowly replaced by pitch-black hills, and the occasional village. Pablo squeezed my hand the whole way. Sometimes he squeezed too hard, and made me wince.

“Sorry,” he mouthed out.

“It’s okay,” I replied with a soft smile.

Juan laughed. He was staring at us, but his black eyes seemed so glassy I doubted he could even see. He burped, and hiccuped, and coughed up some spit that nobody wiped from his lips.

The helicopter landed less than an hour later on a barren strip in the middle of a forest, some kind of remote airfield where the others were waiting.

Oscar rushed to hug his brother as soon as he stepped foot on the ground. Hernan stared at his son with a disgusted frown.

“How the fuck did we get here,” slurred Juan as he pulled himself out of his seat.

He tripped on the boarding step, and Pablo caught him before he hit his head on the ground.

“By helicopter, you dumb fuck,” mumbled Oscar.

“Some gringos came looking for us,” groaned his father. “CIA, apparently.”

Juan slowly turned around to face me. “Probably you,” he muttered. “You’re one of them.”

“She’s not a fucking spy, Juan,” spat Hernan.

“Yeah right, well I didn’t do anything,” he drawled. “Just so you know.”

“He’s drunk. Just take him to the car and put him in bed,” Hernan sighed, waving at a guard.

We climbed aboard a jet-black pick-up truck, and drove a while more. I fell asleep on the way, resting my head on Pablo’s shoulder, and woke up the next morning in an empty bed, hugging the dip he’d left in the mattress.

The loud roar of rotor blades now seemed like a distant nightmare, replaced by the low hum of a spinning ceiling fan. Gone were the cold winds of the hotel’s rooftop, gone was the darkness of the last night.

Dust danced in the golden light that seeped in through the room’s closed blinds. I got out of bed and peeked out of the window, only to see flowering trees and nothing more. This was a new house I’d never been to, perhaps someplace we’d gone to so we could stay hidden and lay low.

A slow salsa played from the floor below, wafting up to me as it mixed in with the enticing perfume of freshly-brewed coffee. I could hear the whispers of a distant conversation, and Andrea’s crystalline laugh.

There was a narrow staircase just outside of the bedroom, which led up to a small patio sheltered by a palm roof. It overlooked a long, overgrown valley that squeezed in between two mountains and opened onto a large lake.

The wooden planks cracked under my bare feet, waking up Juan, who had been napping there, curled up in a hammock.

“Hey Em?” he said, his voice so low I could hardly hear. “I just want you to know, what happened yesterday– I had nothing to do with it.”

“It’s okay, I know,” I whispered, as I settled down in another hammock.

“I just don’t want you to get mad at me for helping, or anything,” he continued. “But I swear it wasn’t me.”

I nodded, and stared into the distance. From this far away, the fishing boats on the lake looked like children’s toys. I’d slept on the thought, and figured out by myself that Juan wasn’t at fault for what had gone down the night before. Still, a tiny part of me wished that he was.

“It’s fine,” I mumbled. “They weren’t even looking for me.”

“They weren’t?” he frowned.

I shook my head. “I was face-to-face with one of them, and he didn’t recognize me.”

“And you didn’t tell him anything?” he asked. “Not even your name?”

“No, I did.”

He sat up in his hammock, and stared at me.

“Emilia,” he muttered. “You said your name was Emilia.”

“I thought it was a test.”

“I don’t know if you’re lying to me or if you’re lying to yourself, but that’s not true, Em,” he retorted. “You said it because you don’t want to leave.”

For a second I thought of standing up and walking away, because I would have rather jumped off the rooftop than have to stand up against such a stupid accusation.

But I had to face it. Juan was right.

“It’s not that I don’t want to leave,” I breathed. “I just don’t want to go home.”

“Then go to some other place,” he shrugged. “We live on a big-ass planet, you don’t have to go home.”

“And then what?” I replied. “You think I should risk my life just so I can be alone and miserable in some other part of the world?”

I gulped, he gulped, and we glanced at each other again.

“You love him, don’t you,” he said.

I shook my head no.

“You do. I’ve seen you two,” he muttered. “You’re actually in love, and it’s fucking with my head.”

“Even if we were, what’s it to you?” I spat back. “You wouldn’t care if you didn’t know.”

“No,” Juan smirked. “I’d still think he’s too old for you.”

“The age gap is the least wrong thing about our relationship,” I snorted.

“Still, it’s so wrong,” he whispered.

I was about to protest when Pablo’s voice echoed from inside the house.

“Gordita?” he called out. “Has anybody seen her? She’s not in the room anymore.”

“Rooftop,” I shouted. “Pablo, I’m up here.”

Loud steps came running up the stairs, and I turned around. Pablo’s face lit up when our eyes met.

“I forgot to tell you, I managed to grab your pills before we left,” he said, handing me a small plastic bag. “How are you feeling?”

“Very tired,” I mumbled.

“I’m not surprised. It’ll take a few days,” he murmured as he touched my forehead. “I’m going to make some quesadillas when the maids get back from the market. Juanito, how’s your hangover? Do you want some breakfast?”

“Sure,” he answered, holding back a grimace as Pablo tousled his hair.

“You guys just sit here and enjoy the view. I’d hang out with you but we have a lot of work to do,” chirped Pablo. “You know, like figuring out what the fuck happened yesterday and how can we stop it from happening ever again.”

“And so you never ever have to step foot in a helicopter again for the rest of your life,” I snickered.

“Exactly,” he grinned. “If you guys need anything, I’ll be downstairs.”

Pablo left, but the grim look on Juan’s face remained. He bit his lip hard enough that it started to bleed, and wiped it with a clenched fist.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “He seems in a good mood.”

“It’s fucking weird, Em,” he spat, his gaze lost somewhere in between the trees. “He’s still the exact same guy I used to look up to. I grew up thinking he was the coolest man I’d ever meet, and I wanted to be just like him when I was older, but now I know what he did and... I don’t know. Sometimes it doesn’t feel real.”

“Yeah. Guess how I felt when the worst person I’d ever met turned out to be the one who cared the most about me.”

Juan turned to me, pursing his split lips and arching an eyebrow.

“Rough childhood?”

“The fucking American Dream,” I scoffed. “Dad was killed by a drunk driver, Mom got addicted to booze and pills, my only friend ditched me for some rich girls, and then I worked three jobs that barely covered my bills.”

“Funny. That kind of rhymed,” he replied with a deadpan laugh. “Seriously though, how do you handle it all? Like, being stuck here, and you know... everything.”

“I gave up trying to handle it,” I sighed. “Now I’m just trying to forget.”

“Give up and forget,” he nodded. “Inspiring words.”

“Fake it ’til you make it.”

He chuckled at my joke, but although a smirk lingered on his lips, the spark in his eyes seemed to slowly dim. He pinched the bridge of his nose, and a line dug into his forehead, like a crack in dry earth.

“To be honest, you’re kind of right. I had a blast yesterday. Happiest I’ve been in the past two weeks, and by a stretch,” he said. “I met a bunch of people, drank a ton of champagne, got you off of my mind, and then I made out with the charity’s comms girl in the bathroom when no one was looking. She asked me to finger her under the dinner table, so I told her oh, behave, like a sexy Austin Powers.”

“Austin Powers is sexier than you,” I snickered.

“Stop lying to yourself, Emily Smith,” he tutted.

“I can’t, it’s the only thing that stops me from going insane,” I groaned. “That, and getting fucking wasted.”

Despite his tired, defeated eyes, Juan’s smile widened. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, and checked the screen.

“Hey Em,” he mumbled. “Do you think eleven in the morning is too early for a drink?”

I should have refused and warned him not to go down that path, because it was a slippery slope and climbing back up wasn’t easy. I should have told him he was a bad influence, and that I was still trying to get off the molly, but I was already halfway down anyway, and if we were going to fall into that hole together, we might as well hold hands as we did.

“Let’s go make mimosas,” I said with a grin.

Rock bottom was a nicer place now that I was in good company.

Kerning

Rooftops

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