“Don’t let go.” His voice rumbled in her ear.
“I won’t.” She held tight to him with her other hand, squinting to see if their pursuers had noticed their escape.
Something buzzed past her ear, stinging her earlobe. Milliseconds after the hot, angry buzzing, Wren heard a cracking bark, the report of a pistol. She touched her earlobe, and her finger came away with a smear of red. She felt intellectually detached, in some strange way, from the fact that she’d just been shot, that if the bullet had been a few inches to the right it would have killed her. Stone swung his body away from the jeepney and covered her body with his. She breathed in, smelled him, felt his heat. Another pistol report cracked the night air, and something thunked into the metal next to Wren’s knee. A third gunshot, and then a fourth, and then silence.
From within the jeepney came shouts and screams, laced through with a wail of pain. Stone glanced through the window. “Shit, they must have hit someone.” He glanced down at Wren. “Are you okay?”
She touched her ear as she rose up to peer into the jeepney. “I’m fine. I think the first one nicked my ear, but that’s it.” She could just barely make out an older woman leaning against the wall of the jeepney, clutching her upper arm, blood seeping through her fingers. A young man whipped off his shirt and tied it around the woman’s arm, cinching it tight. “They could have killed that woman, and she didn’t have anything to do with this.”
Stone kept his focus on the street behind them. “I think they’re still after us. They hijacked a taxi, it looks like.”
She tried to follow his gaze, and could just barely make out the shape of a vehicle barreling toward them, weaving recklessly through traffic. “What do we do?”
The jeepney slowed, pulling closer to the curb, and then stopped, disgorging passengers, including the woman who’d been shot and the now-bare chested young man who’d helped her. Stone hopped down, wincing at the jolt. Wren followed suit, and found herself pulled into a run once more, dodging through thick traffic carving in an arc around a mammoth traffic circle. Multicolored lights shone from the center of the circle, the source of the lights blocked by trees. Gasping for breath, she held on to Stone’s sweat-slippery hand, hearing his breath going ragged now too. They pushed through knots of tourists all moving in the same general direction, toward the changing lights.
“What is that?” she asked, between breaths.
“I think it’s…the Quezon…Memorial…Shrine,” Stone responded, panting. “There’s some kind of…dancing fountain too. Big…big tourist attraction.”
Blue neon tube lettering spelled out words in English: Circle of Fun. Shapes hulked, inscrutable, in the darkness beyond, some now-closed attraction.
They passed it by.
Ahead of them, the shrine was visible. They were part of a huge crowd gathered in a wide courtyard, the central attraction of which was a tall three-pronged structure bathed in color-changing lights. As she watched, the lights changed from red to deep blue, paused for a moment, then changed to green, and then each of the three square pillars were bathed in individual colors, one red, one blue, one green. At the very top of the shrine, the three pillars became angels of some sort, it looked to Wren, although it was too far away and too dark to make out anything more specific than that. Between the crowd and the shrine was a circular fountain, surrounded by a thick curb of stone. A plume of water jetted up from the center of the fountain, turning the same shade of purple as the shrine. The plume rose to something like thirty feet, then ceased momentarily, only to rise up once more, joined by thinner, shorter spouts in a circle around it. Wren didn’t have a chance to watch any longer as Stone drew her in a stumbling jog around the fountain, closer to the shrine itself.
Behind them, shouts and angry voices reminded her that they were being pursued.
The base of the huge, white-stone shrine was triangular in cross-section, the walls rising several feet in height, the bright-hued lights of the shrine casting shifting shadows. Knots and clusters of people gathered, chattering and laughing as a remix of a popular American song played. Stone led Wren into the crowds, putting his back to the stone and pulling Wren against his chest.
The crowd shifted and changed, but never thinned, providing effective cover. The pursuers were pushing through the crowd, shoving and elbowing, drawing dirty looks and Filipino curses that quickly faded when the offended tourist saw the brandished pistols. Using Wren’s body as cover for his actions, Stone checked the loads in his magazine and slammed it home once more, then returned his attention to their pursuers, who were now spread out in pairs. One of the men pulled a cell phone from the hip pocket of his khakis and dialed a number.
Wren tried to regain control of her breathing, tried to suppress the burning in her lungs and the screaming of her injured ribs. Stone had one hand against his side, his face a mask of concentration. When one of the men turned their way, Stone ducked his head, but wasn’t quick enough. The man whistled for his nearest friend, who trotted over. The first one pointed at Stone and Wren, the second nodded, and they moved in tandem.
Wren’s heart was pounding out of her chest, both from fear and exertion. “They’ve seen us,” she whispered.
“I know. I’ve gotta even the playing field a little.”
“What? What are you going to do?”
Stone stepped in front of Wren, putting his back to her front and pinning her against the base of the shrine. “Buying us time.”
Wren felt panic shoot through her. He was going to fight again. Right out in the open, in the middle of a crowded park. People were being hurt, maybe even killed because of her. Stone was tensed in front of her, his stance wide, pistol held by his thigh.
All Wren could see was his back, the flagstones under her feet, the spuming fountain off to the right. She heard Stone pull the slide on his pistol, felt him step away a couple inches.
Shoes scuffed to a stop, dirty white ADIDAS sneakers. Wren wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn’t. She peered around Stone. Two men, both armed, less than six feet away.
“You come now. Give us dis girl, Cervantes, he let it all go, let you go home. All he wants is da girl.”
Stone laughed, a mirthless bark of disbelief. “Yeah, okay,” he said, his voice dripping sarcasm. “How about you two walk away now, while you’re still alive.”
Wren tasted the tension in the air, felt the danger like palpable waves. The other park-goers had noticed the standoff and were quickly scattering. Wren wanted to run too. She wanted to close her eyes and pretend this wasn’t happening. But she forced herself to watch, to pay attention, to be ready. Stone’s fist rose, his palm cupping the butt of the pistol.
Seconds passed like hours, drawn out like stretched taffy.
She saw it happening. She watched one of the Filipino men raise his pistol as if in slow-motion, his lips drawing back in a rictus. Before he could get his gun level, Stone’s pistol barked—BLAMBLAM—and then Stone shifted, just the tip of the barrel twitching slightly, and then—BLAMBLAM—and both men dropped to the ground. Screams echoed, shrieks and shouts. Blood pooled like spreading inkblots.
Wren felt herself jerked into a run, and she ran, but she couldn’t wrench her gaze away from the dead men, eyes open and staring at the dark sky, holes in foreheads, lives ended. Dead men. Dead men. She tried to breathe, but the sight of the blood glinting purple and blue and red in the shifting technicolor fountain lights stole her breath.