“What about you?”
“I’ll be fine! Go!”
He pushes me up and over the fence and I land on the other side, splattering mud. I can hear him scrambling behind me. At the same time I hear someone yell, “There he is!”
Michael drops down beside me with a hiss. It looks like he’s sliced his hand, but there’s no time to check; we take off. We slide around a corner and Michael goes down, holding his hand to his chest. I catch a flash of dripping red as I grab him up by the elbow and we keep on, trying to listen for the splash of running feet behind us. Then without warning the shacks end and we’re at the edge of a half-finished apartment block, something that looks like it was way too ambitious for this place. Someone obviously didn’t anticipate the rainy season making this area a swamp, and water fills the bottom floor. Algae and duckweed and floating trash clump in the gaping spaces where doors would be. Michael starts down the path that leads back into the shacks, but I grab him—“This way!”—and we slip into the water, moving toward the abandoned building’s door.
We slosh through, and in the half-light I see there’s a man already inside the building, perched on a rickety-looking platform raised on concrete blocks, up out of the water. He stands, skinny, jaundice-eyed, ready to shoo us out. On the platform I see the minimal trappings of a squatter.
“Get your wallet,” I whisper at Michael.
“What?”
“Do it!”
Michael retrieves it, and the man watches hungrily as I yank out a handful of bills. “You didn’t see us,” I tell him, waving the money toward his nose. I make sure he’s paying attention, wad the cash in my hand, and pull Michael along with me, through the swamp and down a hallway, toward other rooms that I hope to God have an exit. We slosh through water up to our knees and turn a corner into a room with a stairwell.
I nod at it, and Michael follows me. We can hear more shouting now, and I can only hope the other guys won’t offer the squatter man cash too. We slide up the moss-slicked stairs and into a room with a window that looks back out the way we came. We crouch on either side of it, the spray of rain catching us, and it’s only then that I realize how crazily my heart is pounding.
“Who are they?” Michael mouths, breathing hard.
I shake my head and risk a peek out the window. I quickly pull back. “They’re right outside,” I breathe.
Michael sneaks a glance too, while I scan the room for something, anything, to use as a weapon, but the best we’ve got is an old beer bottle.
The men are stopped at the edge of the water, arguing over whether to keep going down the path or look in the building. I hear one of them whistle and shout, “Mzee! You seen a couple of kids? They stole my phone!”
I hold my breath and squeeze my eyes shut, hoping.
Below I hear a splash, which must be the old man climbing down from his perch and coming to the doorway. “They go that way,” he yells, and I pray his gnarled finger is pointing toward the path. “Girl and boy? You catch them! Beat them for me too!”
I hear feet running, wait a second, then take another quick look. The guys are sprinting away from us, down the path through the rain.
“Sweet Jesus.” I collapse against the wall. Michael does the same, and we just sit there for a few seconds, catching our breath.
A head pops up from the stairs. “Money!” the man says, sticking his bony hand out.
“Okay, okay,” I say, lumbering to my feet. “You earned it.”
“Give it all to him,” Michael says. “I’d kiss him, but I’m a mess.”
I’m shocked to find myself grinning like an idiot as I hand the money to the old man, who clutches it to his chest with a high little cackle. “Two minute,” he says, holding out his fingers. I don’t know where the old man comes from, but Swahili isn’t his forte. “Two minute, you go!”
“Sure, mzee, we will,” I say.
He disappears down the stairs and I collapse next to Michael, waiting for my legs to stop trembling.
Michael looks at his hand, peeling back a fistful of his T-shirt that he’s been using to stanch the blood. There’s a jagged cut through his palm. “What was that all about? Who were those guys?”
“I don’t know. Let me see that.” I take his hand and inspect it. “This needs to be cleaned out. We’ll get one of the nurses to patch you up when we get back to the guesthouse.”
Michael is quiet. I rip off the bit from his shirt that he’s already bloodied. My fingertips tingle as they brush against his chest in the process. I wrap the fabric around his wound.
“Are you sure you don’t know?”
I glance up at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’re keeping stuff from me about your mom. That hidden file behind her photo . . . Catherine—don’t think I didn’t notice you being weird . . . and who did you think you saw back in that alley?”