My immediate reaction is to clench my fists and cock back my arm. “What the hell has gotten into you!?” I shout through all the noise. “I’m not leaving without Catalina!”
“You have to,” he pleads. His tone is loud but calm, with an undercurrent of desperation to it.
Catalina steps around him and I grab her by the wrist. Her bandages are ripped off in the strong wind and I’m laid witness to her wounded arms.
There’s no way I’m letting her go back to that monster...
“You have thirty seconds!” the megaphone somehow reaches my ears through all the other noise.
I pull my girl in close and move for the escape hatch.
Juan changes up his tactics. He knows there’s no convincing me, so he speaks directly to the girl on my arm. “Catalina, you can’t go. If you’re not here, they’ll go looking for you, and there’s no covering up this mess, not for long. They’ll find the hatch and then they’ll find you. It won’t take them long; they have too many men...”
“I can’t go back,” Catalina cries through the chaos. She digs deeper into my side and I hold her a tight as I can. Without giving her the time to reconsider, I start pushing her down towards the ladder inside the opening.
“If you lead them down there, they will find Oscar.” There’s a restraint in Juan’s voice, but something about it knocks Cat off of her feet. Her foot slips on the first rung of the ladder and I have to grab her wrist and yank her back onto the surface to keep her from falling to her death.
Suddenly, Cat’s whole demeanor changes.
“Who the fuck is Oscar!?” I demand, completely confused by the exchange.
Juan doesn’t answer, but his eyes dart towards Cat—there’s a pleading desperation in his gaze that I don’t understand.
“Angel, you have to go,” Cat’s voice cuts through my soul like a knife. Suddenly, the pain of my singed hands isn’t hidden by adrenaline anymore, and an anguished tingle comes rushing back over my skin. I wince and try to pull Cat closer to me, but, this time, she resists.
“What the hell are you talking about!!? All of this was for you!”
“Ten seconds!” the megaphone blares. The helicopter’s spotlight passes dangerously close to us.
Cat trembles beneath me. she doesn’t dare look me in the eyes. “You have to go, please.”
“I’m not leaving you. Never again.” I bend down and take her fragile hands between my wounded fingers. Her tender touch eases my physical pain, but my heart hurts so bad I might as well be drowning. “I’d rather die with you right here and now than leave you again.”
“I can’t die here,” Cat whispers.
“You’d rather go back to my brother?”
Cat flinches at the thought, but a hard look of sorrowful determination quickly glazes over her features. Her head drops as she responds. “Things have changed, Angel.”
“What does that mean?”
“FIVE SECONDS!”
“It’s not just the two of us against the world anymore.”
“I don’t care about anyone else,” I tell her. My heart beats through my chest; I can’t move.
“You should...”
I shake my head. “No one else matters.”
“THREE, TWO...”
Suddenly, Catalina’s hung head snaps up and her eyes greet mine in an explosion of regret and sadness and pure determination. “Leave!” she orders through a trembling voice.
“Why!?” I boom back, hardly able to believe that this is happening again. Flashbacks of our last encounter at my burning compound threaten to cripple me, but I can’t give in. I won’t.
“... Because our child needs you.”