The sound of the phone vibrating made all four of them jump. "What does it say?" Doris asked before Chin had even picked up the phone.
"They're calling," he said. And into the phone, "Hey."
"Okay, we're out," said Kono quietly. She sounded tired. "We're trying to find a safe way out of the building. Where are you?"
"Headed that way," said Chin as he motioned to Danny.
"Be right there," he said as the car traced the now familiar route back to the hotel.
-H50-H50-H50-
Kono and Steve peeked carefully out of a back door to the hotel and saw no one. "Okay, I'm gonna call Danny and Chin, you keep an eye out, okay?"
She nodded, coughing into her sleeve again. Steve dialed the number and waited, watching the hallway leading back into the lobby. "Hey," he said. "We're around the back."
"Steve," Kono said suddenly, and he knew. When she said his name, it meant business. "Hang on," he said to Danny as he turned to Kono. "What is it?"
"That car over there. That's not them, is it?"
Steve looked to where she was pointing. No, it definitely wasn't them. The car in question sat about fifty feet away down the alleyway behind the hotel. It's lights were off but it was running.
"Okay," he said, pulling her back. "Get back in. Danny? Yeah, something's wrong. Don't come to the back of the hotel, okay? Pull up out front. Let's go," he said to Kono as he started back along the hallway.
But before they could take two steps a figure suddenly appeared from the lobby and blocked their exit. The man looked straight at them with no surprise and they knew. He whistled once and reached into his jacket pocket.
"Okay, go, go," he said quickly to Kono who was already pushing her way back through the door into the alley. As Steve turned back to look, two more men had joined the first and had guns drawn.
"Steve!"
He turned quickly and ran out the door after Kono, and the two took off.
The people in the car obviously hadn't expected them to come out running, but as soon as it was apparent they were trying to escape, tires squealed as the car rushed forward in their direction.
They were almost to the end of the alley. Kono got there first and made to turn left, to circle back around to the front, but stopped abruptly. "No, other way!" she yelled, and Steve didn't need to see what it was to listen to her. They ran off down the smaller street and into the night.
Steve could hear people yelling from the phone he was still gripping in his hand. "Hold on," he said quickly as he lowered it from his face again and ran. "Cross!" he yelled and he and Kono darted suddenly across the road. An oncoming car braked and honked at them, and in the momentary chaos Steve looked back to see the car inadvertently cut off three men who were chasing them. "Go, run!" he yelled.
They sprinted through another alleyway and came out onto a busier street. They cut through lanes of speeding cars, raced into a bar and out through its back door, made their way quickly down a very small street lined with storage units, and ran out onto another busier street. "Here!" Kono said quickly as she ran through the front doors of a nightclub.
It was perfect cover. The place was so crowded and so loud, full of people drunk or on their way to that point, that no one noticed or cared about them. Steve and Kono pushed their way through the crowd and into a hallway that led to the restrooms. Steve looked around the corner and watched the door, and that was when he saw him: a man he was almost positive had chased them out of the hotel. "Shit," he hissed.
"Are they here?"
"At least one of them is."
"In here." She grabbed Steve's arm and pulled him down the hallway and into the women's restroom.
"Hello?" she called out impatiently. A quick sweep of the grimy bathroom told them no one was there. She locked the door behind them. "Can't run anymore," she said, leaning back against the wall.
"All right, I think we're okay," he said. He held up his phone to his ear. "Danny? You still there?"
Kono could hear Danny, quite angry, on the other end of the phone. "I don't know, a nightclub," Steve was saying, pacing back and forth across the small room. "Yeah, we're fine, but these guys are everywhere." He listened for a moment and Danny could be heard ranting again. "Listen, where are you?" he asked. A pause. "Okay, listen. Just listen for a minute, okay?" He waited. "Hello?" He looked down at his phone, pulled it back abruptly, and stopped himself just before throwing it against the door. He looked at Kono. "Battery died."
Kono sighed in frustration and gripped her hair tightly. "Okay," she said. "Let's wait a minute, give them time to find this place, then go outside. Maybe they'll see us and pick us up."
"Somebody else might see us first though."
"Then we shoot them. Give me one of those guns."
Steve hesitated, thinking that in her current state she probably shouldn't be using a firearm, but for protection's sake decided she needed to be armed. "Here," he said, handing her one of the guns. "Oh, and here." He pulled one of the knives out of his boot and gave it to her. "Oh, and this," he said, reaching into a pocket of his vest and pulling out none other than a small grenade. "Only for emergencies," he said, placing it in her hand.
"Right, not like this," she said, waving her arm around the bathroom.
For some reason, whether due to the stress or because he was actually feeling a little better, Steve laughed. Kono looked at him, annoyed. "What?" she asked.
"Nothing," he said. "Just the way you said it. I've missed you," he said, suddenly serious.
"I missed you too. I want to get out of here so bad."
"Hey, we will. Promise."
Their eyes met, each remembering. She smiled a half smile at him.
"How long should we wait?" she asked.
"I don't know. Five minutes maybe? That'll give them time to circle around a bit. And if those guys go through here and don't find us, they might move on."
"I hope so."
"What, you don't like this? Isn't this nice?" he motioned at the mirror, where someone had drawn a sexually explicit drawing in lipstick.
"It's great, but the air vent was better."
"Yeah, that was refreshing. We should find a place at home to do that on a regular basis."
"Only if we follow it up with running through busy traffic."
They were both smiling by now, and they needed that.
Kono suddenly turned and began to cough violently. Steve walked up to her. "Hey, you okay?"
She nodded. "Dust," she managed to say before coughing for another full minute.
After it stopped Steve said, "I'd suggest drinking some water, but from the looks of this place you're better off where you are."
She smiled.
"Let's go out front now, okay?"
-H50-H50-H50-
"He said they were at a nightclub, probably to lose those guys, but then his phone died."
"There are a million nightclubs open right now."
"Adam, please, just calm down, we'll find them," Danny said, circling around another block.
Doris looked anxiously out her window as they wound through the streets of the crowded city. There were thousands of people out walking, hundreds of places open for business, and somewhere in it all was a group of gang members who wanted Kono and Adam dead. And by extension herself, the two other men in the car with her, and most importantly, her son.
She thought of the two of them out there, alone in a strange city, being chased by these guys, and at once the anger boiled up to rest next to the fear already inside of her.
Her son. Her only son. The one she hadn't seen for twenty years of his life. She simply couldn't stand the thought of something happening to him. He was undeniably good, and even if he weren't family to her she'd say the same thing.
And then there was Kono, who she hadn't spent much time around until leaving with her and Adam five weeks prior. In that time they had become very close, and Doris was reminded of her own daughter. She'd die before she let anything happen to either her or her son.
Her eyes scanned the passing sidewalks so intensely that she paid no attention to anything else. Luckily though, Chin did.
"Danny," he said sharply. Danny looked quickly over at him. "Behind us."
Doris and Adam quickly turned to look behind them and saw the van driving a little too close and only getting closer.
"Shit," Danny said, then abruptly swerved their car to the right and sped off onto the new street.
The car behind them did the same and accelerated as much as it could, nearly hitting several pedestrians in the process.
"We're getting further away from Kono and Steve!" Adam yelled.
"We've got no choice!" Danny yelled back. "They're gonna do whatever it takes to kill us, we've gotta lose them."
"Think like Steve, think like Steve," he muttered to himself as he drove the car through the streets.
It seemed to work. Fifteen minutes later they burst out onto a main road with no sign of anyone behind them.
Chin sat back in his seat and exhaled slowly. "Close."
"Too close. These guys are everywhere."
"So now we've got to go back for them," said Adam.
Chin sighed. "We can't in this car. If we do, they'll kill us and Steve and Kono."
"So what do we do?" Adam sounded near hysterics.
"We'll think of something," said Doris, though she sounded desperate herself. "We'll get back to them, I promise."
-H50-H50-H50-
"Do you see anything?" Kono asked, rubbing her hands over her arms in the chilly night air.
Steve looked up and down the sidewalk as far as he could see. "No," he said.
They were standing just outside of the nightclub they had run into earlier. They had been waiting for ten tense minutes for the SUV Steve had described. So far, nothing.
"Come on," said Steve, turning and walking through the crowd. "Let's find a phone, I'll call them again."
They made their way through the crowds of people, Steve feeling like an open target. He had on his vest under a shirt and was armed with two guns, one knife, and a small hand grenade. Kono had no vest but she did have the same weapons he did, except for only one gun. It was being out in the open that made him so nervous. A shot could come from nowhere at any time, and they'd never see it coming.
They walked down the street, away from the direction of the hotel. They passed a smaller hotel and Steve doubled back. "They'll probably have a phone in here," he said.
This hotel was smaller and nearly deserted at this time of night, so it was much easier to keep an eye out for people around them. They found a small room off the main lobby that had several payphones lining the walls. They each looked at each other and began searching their pockets.
Steve pulled some change out of his pocket and quickly counted it, only to have it knocked abruptly out of his hand when Kono grabbed him and pushed him as hard as she could back into the wall. A second later the glass door to the room shattered as bullets exploded through it.
They ducked to the floor, pulling out their guns and aiming through the door. Kono took one shot and Steve saw one of the men go down. There were two others though, and by the way they were walking and handling their weapons, they seemed to know what they were doing.
Steve shot at one but missed, and the second one shot back at him. He ducked behind a pay phone on the wall.
He saw Kono shoot again and peeked out briefly. Her second shot just missed one of the men. She turned to look at Steve, the question already in her eyes for him to read, but she asked it anyway.
"Is this an emergency?"
They both knew it was. Before he could pull his own grenade out of his pocket she held hers in her hand. She clicked the top and threw it hard around the pay phone and they both immediately ducked and covered their ears.
The explosion was instantaneous. The glass windows of the room shattered and debris rained down on them. They looked around amid the smoke and fire and needed no encouragement to know what to do.
They stood up, jumped through the broken windows, and ran.
-H50-H50-H50-
