Chapter 4 - The Vanishing Sanctuary
Lily didn’t look back a second time. ""Run, Mia,"" she hissed, scooping the toddler into her arms despite the burning ache in her shoulders. She bolted down the alley, her worn sneakers slipping on damp cardboard. Behind them, heavy footsteps splashed through puddles, followed by a woman's commanding voice shouting, ""Wait! Lily, please! We just want to talk!""
Panting, her lungs on fire, Lily rounded the corner onto a crowded commercial avenue. She ducked beneath the awning of a dry cleaner, slipping behind a rack of poly-wrapped coats until the pounding of her heart drowned out the street noise. Through the clear plastic sleeves, she watched a sharply dressed woman with an earpiece scan the sidewalk before speaking frantically into a phone.
They stayed hidden for an hour until the coast was clear. When Lily finally crept back to their tenement building, dread settled into her bones like ice. The apartment door, previously locked, stood wide open.
Inside, the meager contents of their lives were scattered. Drawers were dumped onto the floor, the mattress slashed open, and their mother’s battered suitcase was missing from the top of the closet. On the kitchen table, pinned beneath a kitchen knife, was a handwritten note in her mother’s erratic, looping cursive.
May you like
“They found me because of that video, Lily. Take the emergency cash behind the radiator and leave the city. Do not look for me.”
Lily dropped the groceries. Mia began to cry, but Lily couldn't comfort her; her eyes were fixed on the corner of the room. The old radiator was ripped away from the wall—and the secret hiding spot was completely empty.
