The Search for Artemis

Chapter TWO

RUN AWAY


Landon stopped running when he reached the park. It was only a mile or two from the apartment, but he knew that it was large and dark and that there would be plenty of places to hide for the night. Thinking of the one place he knew best, he went straight for the lake. His mother brought him there so many times as a kid that he felt he could name every tree and animal in a fifty foot radius.

Choosing a weeping willow with a large patch of grass at its base, Landon curled up, trying to sleep. It seemed impossible at first. The adrenaline wearing off in his system made his body twitch all over, and his mind was still spinning from what he had seen in the apartment. He closed his eyes, but there was no closing his brain, which appeared inclined to assault him with a barrage of images from the crime scene. Landon resigned himself to a long, restless night.

Landon awoke the next morning to the sound of the ducks quacking in the lake. Somehow he fell asleep, and it was now early morning. He quickly got up and looked around. The sun peeked above the horizon, the light morning fog hadn’t lifted yet, and the ground was wet with dew. Landon immediately devised a game plan. First, he would scope out his surroundings and try to memorize all the other places he might be able to run to if someone came after him. Second, breakfast. Third, he would sit down and try to write everything he remembered from the night before. If he expected to ever rid himself of this nightmare, he needed to figure out what happened.

A number of locals ran through the footpaths of the park for a bit of morning exercise. Unlike them, Landon studied the paths, mentally noting every possible unmarked route into the trees and every dark spot behind a rock or root that he might be able to use for hiding in case of emergency. The park was more beautiful than he remembered. It was the middle of the summer; the flowers were in full bloom and the grass had filled in since the cold winter. Squirrels ran around playing in the grass and hoarding whatever they could find. Birds chirped and glided from tree to tree. The ducks and geese swam peacefully in the lake.

Once he finished his reconnaissance mission, the fog had lifted and the burdensome heat returned with a vengeance. Landon started to sweat profusely. For a reprieve, he left the park and went into a little bagel shop across the street. When he opened the door, the cool air conditioning blasted him in the face. It felt wonderful. Landon sauntered up to the counter and ordered himself a toasted everything bagel covered in a lox cream cheese spread. As he ate it, he realized there was no reason to go outside to work on his third task of his imaginary To-Do list, so he pulled out his notebook and pen and sat in the back of the shop to work.

He started by trying to remember everything he saw once he woke up in the living room, jotting down what he remembered of his father under the couch and his mother amidst the books with blood covering the floor. He noted the crumbling walls, the broken picture frames and light bulbs, the busted TV in the corner, and the overturned dining table pushed up against the back wall. After that, he couldn’t really remember anything. He closed his eyes and tried to think back to before he woke up on the floor. He remembered dinner, reading David Copperfield, falling asleep, waking up, and opening up his door while half asleep. Everything between opening the door and waking up on the floor was a haze; he just couldn’t remember. It was just black—a blank space in his mind. As he continued to hopelessly think back to the night before, Landon started to doodle little geometric shapes and lines in the margin of the notebook, but after about an hour of getting nowhere, he gave up and went back to the park.

For the next few days, Landon didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. Every night he slept under the willow tree, ate at the little shops and food carts around the park and watched the many people that passed through. He never stopped wondering, however, what he should do next. He wracked his brain for somewhere he could go—the apartment of a friend at school or the home of one of his mother’s co-workers—but without his cell phone he didn’t know how to ask them. He didn’t know a single one of their numbers to call, and Landon was afraid to just show up at their house and involve them in his mess. He wasn’t about to volunteer someone to become his accomplice. He was on his own, and he was on the run. Alone, he would have to figure out what was his next move.

But as the days passed, his thoughts of his next move didn’t go much further than where he was going to find money and how he was going to get food. No matter where he went, he always became aware of the person paying for a pretzel at the cart or the cash lying in a musician’s guitar case as they played to the passersby at the edge of the park. Since he’d run away from home, he’d burned through all of the money that was in his Treasure Island book.

After a week in the park, Landon thought he knew the place like it were his own room, but soon he began to notice men in black suits strolling around. They weren’t regulars; he would have known. The only people he ever saw in suits at the park came with a few other people and they’d sit on a bench and eat a sandwich for a quick lunch—in and out in thirty minutes tops. These other guys would wander around the footpaths for a while and just disappear. The first time Landon noticed them, he thought he needed to keep an eye out, and if they tried anything, to run as fast as his legs could carry him to one of his hideouts.

As the days passed, they seemed to multiply. What started out as two of them soon became five and then seven, and Landon got more nervous with each new addition. They still hadn’t tried anything, but they quickly moved from strolling the footpaths to loitering about thirty or so yards from Landon’s position, wherever that might be. That night, he decided to leave the park and relocate somewhere else under the cover of darkness. They were closing in and he still hadn’t gotten any closer in his attempts to remember that night.

His notebook contained the same information scribbled one page after the other with a bunch of random doodles and drawings covering the margins, but after the first few days, he began to believe he remembered other things from that night. First, he thought he possibly saw his father’s hand move from under the couch. It was nothing more than a flick of his finger, but Landon could see it. Later he could have sworn that he remembered seeing his mother’s chest moving up and down after he removed all the books from on top of her. After a week, Landon was convinced that his parents still lived, but he feared going back home until he could remember what happened during his blackout. He still didn’t know if he was responsible.

Since he couldn’t remember, Landon started to concoct all sorts of theories as to what potentially happened that night. In one scenario, the thud that woke him up in his room was the sound of a mobster breaking into the apartment and searching for something that he believed they were hiding. That explained the state of the apartment, as the thug would have torn through the place searching for whatever it was he wanted, and it explained why Landon couldn’t remember it. He thought that after he opened his bedroom door, the mobster whacked him on the head and knocked him out before he saw anything. It seemed like a plausible explanation, but what would his parents be hiding and why would Landon’s room be left untouched?

Another scenario involved his father not being a mechanic but instead a special weapons developer for a secret branch of the government. He’d brought his most recent project home, a fireless explosive device that only destroys the contents of a single confined space. It was developed with the intention to be used in special situations where the government wanted to eliminate a target while minimizing civilian casualties. That explained why Landon’s bedroom seemed untouched, but that didn’t explain why he survived. There were always holes in his theories.

One afternoon, Landon remembered something he read in one of his textbooks; the concept was called Occam’s Razor. Supposedly, when trying to solve a problem, the simplest explanation is generally the correct one, but Landon didn’t want to believe that. If that was true, Landon did it. It was the simplest explanation, but Landon couldn’t think of any possible way he could have caused all of that destruction. One day, Landon brought himself to write, “I did it,” into his notebook, but since then he’d scratched through it so many times that he’d torn three pages.

For the next week and a half, Landon never stayed in the same place for more than two nights. By then, the suited men started popping up in crowds and around corners. This constant worry of getting caught began to take its toll. Landon became afraid he’d underestimated the severity of his potential crime. He always thought that it would be the police looking for him since it would have been a simple case of domestic violence gone wrong, but these guys definitely didn’t work for the police. They were like FBI, CIA, NSA, or something. Why would they get involved in something like this?

After feeling particularly alone and frightened, Landon went back to his apartment building—the place where it all began. By the time he got there, a storm had rolled in, and it poured down rain. Lightning was flashing overhead and the sound of thunder bounced deafeningly through the city streets. He tried not to get too close; he stayed in a dark alley across the street and just looked at the building, counting the windows until he found his apartment. Once he located it, he noticed that the lights inside were off. He stayed there, staring at the window for quite a long time, imagining what his mother would be cooking for dinner and what random school activity she would try to convince him to join next. Then a cab drove up to the building and Mrs. Bradford got out.

Landon didn’t really have grandparents. His mother’s parents died in a car accident while she was in college and his father’s parents wanted less to do with him than his father did. While growing up, Mrs. Bradford sort of stepped in. Landon even called her “Nana.” Her husband had died of a heart attack a few years before Landon was born, and she lived alone in the apartment down the hall from theirs. Before Landon started high school, she used to walk him back to the apartment building from the bus stop and watch him while his mother and father were at work. She made him cookies and other baked goods, and they worked on random art projects or played card games. Her favorite game was gin rummy, but Landon always seemed to beat her. He never figured out if it was because he was so good at it or if she let him win. He eventually decided on the latter.

He watched her ascend the stairs into the building, noticing she was having a lot of difficulty juggling her bag of groceries, her umbrella and her keys. As she tried to unlock the entry door, her grocery bag slipped out from under her arm and tumbled down the stairs, spilling its contents all over the sidewalk. Immediately, Landon bolted across the street to help her. He wrangled up all of the loose produce and canned goods and placed them back in the grocery sack. He then went up the short staircase and handed them back to Mrs. Bradford while making sure to keep his head down.

“Thank you so much, my dear boy,” Mrs. Bradford said.

“No problem, Nana,” Landon replied.

“Nana?”

With a speed much faster than Mrs. Bradford should be capable of, she gently placed her hand under Landon’s chin and raised his head up to look at him. Mrs. Bradford saw the boy she helped raise over the past fifteen years.

“Landon?” Mrs. Bradford questioned. Her voice was barely audible as her tears held her words back. “Is that really you? I was so worried!”

Landon looked at Mrs. Bradford in horror. He pulled her hand away from his face and stumbled down to the sidewalk, never taking his eyes off of her. The rain beat down on his soaked body, weighing down his clothes and making it difficult for him to see. He realized that in an instant, he’d revealed himself and potentially jeopardized his freedom. He also knew by the face of Mrs. Bradford that he was wrong about his parents’ survival. They were not alive. If they lived, she wouldn’t have responded like she did. Once back on the street, he turned and ran into the alley. He heard Mrs. Bradford calling to him from the apartment steps, begging him to come back. That night was the first night Landon cried.

The next morning the men in black showed up again, and Landon moved to a dark spot next to a dumpster behind a convenience store.

• • • • •

Landon awoke with a start. The convenience store clerk had thrown a bag of garbage into the dumpster he was sleeping behind, and the metallic clank reverberated in his ears. Watching the rusty water drip from the back of the green dumpster, Landon came to reality. Fortunately, the heat wave had lifted, and a breeze coursed through the dim alleyway. The wind flipped through page after page of the notebook lying next to him on the pavement, each leaf covered in his doodles and notes.

Based on the date printed on the newspaper he’d slept on, it had been just over three weeks since he ran away. If he were at home, Landon would have woken up resenting the fact that he was about to spend another boring day walking the halls of his high school. Landon actually wished he were sitting in a sterile sophomore classroom listening to the monotone ramblings of a biology teacher. He even dreamed about the school lunches. After a week or so of living off of other people’s scraps, school lunches started to seem gourmet.

Landon slowly rose to his feet. His body ached from head to foot after sleeping so many nights on the hard asphalt. Once he stretched, he picked up his notebook, stashed it in his duffle bag, and threw the bag over his shoulder. Maybe he would be able to find a half-eaten meal lying on top of a trashcan. That would be the most luck he had experienced in a week.

The alley shot off of Hugo Street, one of the city’s major roadways. It was lined in dumpsters and garbage cans intended to serve the tenants of the storefronts and apartments and spacious enough for a garbage or supply truck to drive through. Loose pieces of paper and debris littered the ground and trickling down the middle of the asphalt, a small stream of grimy water snaked toward the open street. Even with its size, the alley was probably the most depressing and disgusting place Landon had slept since he ran away.

He stared at the metallic zigzag of a fire escape as it cascaded down the brick facing of an apartment building. Since he went back to his apartment complex, he had been haunted by random images in his dreams. They were never more than images, but they didn’t make any sense to him. How could visions of flying books or couches on the ceiling make sense to anyone?

After looking through the garbage the store clerk had thrown into the dumpster for a potential morsel of food that resembled a breakfast, Landon decided to move on into the streets of the city. He wasn’t sure of the time of the day, but the city was alive. Cars congested the roads and honked at one another as they drove to their respective destinations. The sidewalks teemed with people who fought their way down the narrow paths. Landon noticed over the past couple of days that he didn’t have as much trouble moving through the streets as everyone else. People seemed to want to avoid him in any way possible and making eye contact was out of the question. He felt like an outcast. Was it the way he looked or just the way he smelled? When he ran away that night, he hadn’t thought to grab his deodorant off the dresser. Even so, this was more than stench. People seemed to avoid him like a plague, as if he were some sort of diseased menace to society. It started to take its toll on him because apart from feeling like he was running for his life, he also felt more alone than he ever had before.

As he walked down the sidewalk, he noticed a woman that looked surprisingly like his mother. He stopped in his tracks and turned, catching a glimpse of the back of her head moments before a sea of pedestrians blocked his line of sight. Could it really be her? Without thinking, Landon began to weave through the crowd, determined to catch another look. He ricocheted off a businessman and tumbled into a crowd of teenage girls, but none of this could avert his eyes from this woman who may be his mother. He started to gain ground, and he couldn’t wait to see her again. She looked just as he remembered. Her hair was large, brownish-black and frizzy from all her wild curls. It lay right under her shoulders and bounced with life as she walked. She also wore her favorite color, emerald green, and she was right there. Did he look so different now that she hadn’t noticed him when they crossed paths moments before? That must be it. It made sense; Landon was covered in dirt, his hair was greasy and matted to his head, and stains overran his clothes. Then he crashed into something and seconds later was plastered to the sidewalk.

He thought he’d collided with a phone booth or maybe a street lamp. It took him a few moments to realize he was now sitting on the cold cement, but then he remembered his mother. He tried to peer through the legs and torsos of the crowd to see her, but she had disappeared. He’d lost her again. This wasn’t the first time he thought he had seen her since running away. Was she ever there or was Landon’s hunger and exhaustion playing tricks on him?

Defeated, he looked back to find out what broke his chase. He first focused on a pair of well-polished black dress shoes. They were big and wide, the laces were perfectly tied, and an even bow rested lightly on the shiny patent leather. As he raised his head, he followed the smooth legs of a pair of black pleated slacks. Once his eyes reached the man’s waist, Landon noticed the pressed white shirt with a sleek black tie and a boxy black suit jacket. The man was bulky and muscular; he hadn’t even moved an inch when Landon plowed right into him. Landon rose to his feet and looked back at the man he had run into. As he raised his head to apologize, a little scrap of paper in the man’s hand caught his attention. In a flash, Landon saw it. It was only a moment, but that was all it took for Landon to see that this suited man carried a picture of him. It was his high school photo they took for the yearbook that his mother had ordered personal copies of. Landon shot his head upward to see the face of the man who held it. He looked like all the rest of them. He had a square head and a clean-shaven, rigid jaw. His blond hair was cut the same as the others, and out of his right ear extended a coiled wire that disappeared under his white collar.

Landon began to sweat. Drops of perspiration beaded on his forehead and his hands became clammy. He felt his heart race as his body went momentarily numb. All the sounds of the busy street faded away. They found me.

In that moment, Landon thought of one possible thing to do. He turned on the spot and began to sprint down the sidewalk, running away from the mysterious man. He forced his way through the crowds of people, who cast agitated looks at him as he bumped and pushed them.

“Wait! Stop!”

Landon heard the suited man’s shouts as he pursue him.

“We just want to talk to you!”

But Landon didn’t want to talk. He sped through the crowds of people, and once he reached the convenience store, he turned into the smelly alley where he had slept for the past few days. As he ran, he jolted from side to side, pulling down trash cans and throwing boxes in the path of his pursuer, hoping it would slow him down. It didn’t seem to work. Landon could hear the staccato clapping of the suited man’s shoes as he raced through the alleyway, close on his heels. The small rests in his steps made Landon envision the effortless hurdling the boxes and trashcans he’d placed in his path.

Once he reached the end of the alley, Landon turned right and sped down the sidewalk. The sound of the man’s steps gradually increased in volume as he got closer and closer. When Landon looked, he saw the man was only about fifteen yards behind him, but he seemed to have more trouble working through the crowds of people.

He reached the end of the block and crossed the street. After a few days staying in the area, Landon learned this part of town well, and he figured if he got to the Financial District, he could lose himself in the thick crowds of commuters. Momentarily, Landon thought he might get away, but once he arrived at the other side of the street, he noticed another suited man running straight at him. He was almost a carbon copy of the other. If it weren’t for this one’s brown hair, Landon would have thought the blond man behind him possessed some sort of magical powers.

Abruptly, Landon stopped in his tracks. His brain raced with potential routes as he tried to devise a new plan of escape, calibrating a new route like a GPS. The sound of his pounding heart bounced around in his head, making it next to impossible to concentrate. Unable to think, Landon just decided to run. He moved across the intersection, putting as much distance as he could between him and his two pursuers.

As he flew down the sidewalk, he noticed a small alley to the left and darted in once he reached it. It was narrow, making it hard to move around the debris that littered the ground. Landon realized that he’d never gone down this alley before, and then he saw the brick wall directly in front of him—a dead end.

Frantically, Landon began to run from door to door, attempting to open any that he could. They were all locked. While gripping a new door, he looked back and saw the two men effortlessly jumping over the litter on the ground. Landon was caught. He was in a dead-end alley and the only exit available was behind two huge men determined to capture him. Landon tried the door once again, wishing it would unlock. Then Landon thought he heard a faint click, and when he pulled again, the door swung open.

He jumped through the door and found himself in the back kitchen of a restaurant. Based on the smell, he imagined it was a breakfast joint. The smell of bacon wafted into his nose, stealing him away from his purpose and making him salivate. Even though he ran for his life, feelings of hunger and exhaustion were starting to creep into his mind, and that bacon smelled fantastic. The startled staff and chefs yelled at him as he ran toward the service door leading into the dining room.

Landon determinedly bit his lower lip as he reached the door and lowered a shoulder, busted through it, and unexpectedly collided with a bus boy carrying a tray of dirty dishes. Their bodies flew to the ground in a heap, dishes crashing and glasses shattering as he and the bus boy bowled into a table. The diners rose to their feet to get a look at the cause of the commotion. Landon popped up to his feet amidst the gasps and hollers, and looked around at all the staring faces of the shocked patrons. Once he spotted the front door, he dodged back and forth around the tables, making his way to the exit. When he pushed the door open, the bell dangling from the handle made a short melodic ring. It prompted him to glance back only to see the suited men emerging from the swinging service door, and he knew he wasn’t in the clear yet.

Landon sprinted to the end of the block, but he could still hear the screams of the two men behind him as they tried to convince him to stop and talk. Landon had no intention of turning himself in for something he wasn’t sure he had done.

He turned the corner and rushed down the sidewalk. Sweat streamed down his face and his legs started to feel like Jell-O. He also cringed with pain. He hurt his shoulder in the restaurant, but he didn’t have time to dwell on it. Moving quickly, he turned, zigzagged through the cars that were stopped in traffic to the other side of the road, and dipped into another alleyway. This time it was one he recognized.

It was much wider than the last and there wasn’t much litter. For a brief moment, Landon’s mind wandered, and he contemplated why he hadn’t slept in this one for the past few nights. It seemed much cleaner than the alleyway behind the convenience store.

“Landon! Wait! Please! We aren’t going to hurt you! We just need to talk to you! We can help you!”

Landon halted to a stop at the intersection of another alley. But with no time to think, Landon just went to the right. Luckily, Landon found almost no one on the sidewalk. The street was congested with cars, but the sidewalks were empty, except for the occasional person or couple strolling. He ran down the street at a full sprint, but exhaustion started to take hold. Having eaten very little for days, he’d depleted all of his energy and his body wasn’t going to support the physical exertion much longer.

To make matters worse, he could still hear the clicks of their shoes on the pavement amid the city’s sounds, and it was getting louder by the second. The men seemed to move faster than ever when they didn’t need to dodge people or jump over garbage. Landon winced as he pulled the duffle bag off his shoulder and tossed it to the side of the road. He hoped ditching his only possessions would free himself up to run faster.

Turning up his speed, he dashed onto another road and ran down it as fast as possible to finally get away. But before he could lose his pursuers, a large crowd of people began to file out of a museum. The bodies were densely packed; Landon had no chance of getting through. It was an impenetrable wall of camera-bearing, fanny-pack-wearing tourists. Skidding to a halt, Landon turned to go back the way he came, but the suited men had crossed the street and moved closer and closer to him. He turned around to find the stream of tourists continuing with no end in sight. Again he spun around, the suited men were mere yards away. With the time leading to his capture ticking to an end and no option in sight, Landon bolted toward the road. He took two steps toward the busy street, noticing the small break in the traffic and for a moment Landon was filled with hope. However, that hope quickly turned to surprise as he felt his foot slip off the curb.

Suddenly, he was having an out-of-body experience. He watched as his body tumbled into the street. He watched the arms of the suited men as they reached out to catch him while continuing to run up the sidewalk, too far away to be of any assistance. He watched as his body flew in front of a parked red convertible. He even had enough time to watch as the black asphalt came toward him.

Once his injured shoulder struck the ground, time seemed to pick back up to its normal speed. He tumbled past the line of parallel-parked cars and rolled into the open lanes of traffic. He laid there, his chest heaving and his face cringing. Pain from his shoulder seared through his body, but slowly the sound of a deep horn forced its way through the pain. It stopped and then picked up again. It was loud and deafening. Landon raised his head to see a city bus coming straight at him. His jaw dropped and his eyes widened. He was frozen in place, paralyzed by the sight of Death as it came roaring toward him. Exhausted and with no time to get out of the way, Landon braced himself for impact, surrendering himself to his fate.

The horn got louder and louder as the bus sped toward Landon’s waiting body. In a last-ditch effort to protect himself, Landon’s whole body tensed up, he raised his hands toward the oncoming bus, and closed his eyes. Landon was out of time.

He sat there for what seemed like minutes waiting for the bus to strike. It was so close when he closed his eyes—it should have hit him by now. What happened? Landon could still hear the horn but it wasn’t coming toward him anymore. It sounded as if it was . . . behind him? Perplexed, Landon opened one of his eyes to see what happened.

In the direction of the oncoming bus, all Landon now saw was a line of stopped cars. He noticed the face of the man behind the wheel of a little compact car. His eyes were strained, his mouth gaped open, and he gripped the steering wheel so tight that even the little muscles in his hands were bulging. Landon looked to the left and saw the suited men and tourists standing along the road looking at him in horror.

To the right, pedestrians had stopped. People seemed to be taking pictures of him with their cameras and mobile phones. Others were pointing. He heard the constant roaring of the crowd as numerous conversations took place along both sides of the street. Thinking he was safe, Landon opened his other eye and then he heard something else. It was a fast hum and reminded him of the sound his fan made as it spun round and round on his ceiling at the highest speed.

Then Landon noticed some of the people weren’t looking at him, but more so above him. He jerked his head upward and was met with a roof of metal. Grimy steel pipes ran along it and large dirty tanks seemed to be attached with thin metal stripping. Landon gasped once he realized there were four wheels spinning rapidly overhead, creating the strange humming sound. Is that the bus? That’s impossible!

Suddenly, a voice filled his mind, speaking to him so loudly that it blocked out all the other noises around him.

“Landon, you must run. It’s the only way out.” Her voice was so audible as if she was screaming into his ear, yet it chimed soft and soothingly, like honey—the voice of an angel. “I can help you. If you want to understand what is happening to you, . . . If you want to remember, . . . If you want to be safe, . . . I can help you.”

Landon looked all around, searching amid the myriad of spectators that congested the sidewalks for the one speaking to him. But he couldn’t find the serafin who’s voice filled his mind. To his left, though, he saw the two suited men waiting just outside the bus’ drop zone, afraid to get closer should the bus fall.

“I am very close,” she said. “And I am waiting for you . . . but you must run!”

He wasn’t sure why, but he felt he could trust her. Without hesitation, Landon darted out from under the bus and forced his way through the wall of spectators on the other side of the road. The bus continued to float, dangling in the air, but Landon stopped paying attention to it as he sprinted to the end of the block.

However, after he turned the corner, he couldn’t tune out the sound of crashing metal and squealing tires that reverberated through the streets once it dropped back to the asphalt, falling as if the invisible string holding it up had snapped.

“There is an alley beside the Cathedral of Saint Christopher. I am waiting for you there. Just follow the sound of the bells.”

Landon halted in his tracks and looked toward the sky, listening for the rhythmic chime of heavy church bells.

Blurrung! Blurrung! Blurrung!

The tonorous sound of the bells reached Landon’s ears. They were loud . . . and near. Kickstepping, Landon continued through the city, letting the sound guide him, and soon he found himself standing across the street from the massive gothic cathedral that stood as a beacon of hope in the middle of the Financial District.

He was arrested by the sight. Two monolithic towers reached toward the clear blue sky and framed the intricately ornamented façade. They were adorned with statues of saints and grotesque gargoyles, and the outline of brass bells could be seen through the long, narrow windows. Above the center entryway, a massive circular stained-glass window shone like a mosaic of precious gems. Its colorful panes depicted numerous Bible stories Landon’s mother had told him during his childhood, ranging from Moses descending Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments, to Noah’s Ark, to David slaying Goliath.

“Hurry! They’re coming!” The angelic voice jolted Landon back to purpose.

He looked to the side of the cathedral and noticed a narrow, dark alleyway on its right. He rushed over to it, eager to find his guardian angel and finally be safe. There, in front of him, stood a beautiful woman waiting beside the open door of a large, black sport utility vehicle.

“Well, hurry up!” she said forcefully as she waved Landon into the large vehicle. “We don’t have much time before they find us.”

Landon didn’t hesitate and quickly jumped into the SUV through the open door.