A beggar who became a billionaire

Chapter 6: Run

The footsteps in the dark stopped moving.

For one long second, nobody in the warehouse breathed.

Then a second man stepped into the lamp light, broad shouldered, his hand already resting inside his jacket. He did not look at Andre. He looked at Mara, the way a hunter looks at something he had been chasing for a very long time.

"Hello, Mara," the man said. "Voss said you might still be alive. I did not believe him."

"Grant." Mara's voice stayed level, but Andre saw her fingers curl tighter at her side. "Still doing his errands, I see."

"Somebody has to." Grant's eyes finally moved to Andre. "This the new one?"

"Enough talking," Voss said, stepping closer, his calm expression unchanged. "Andre. The phone. Now."

Andre's mind raced. Two of them. One door, and Grant was standing near it. No weapon in his own hands except an old chair leg that suddenly felt like a very small thing to be holding.

"Andre," Mara said quietly, not looking at him, her eyes fixed on Grant, "when I move, run."

"I am not leaving you here."

"You will do exactly what I say," Mara snapped, "because you are the one they actually want. I am simply in the way."

Voss sighed, almost bored. "This does not need to be complicated."

"No," Mara agreed. "It really does not."

She moved so fast Andre barely saw it happen. She grabbed the lamp from the table and threw it hard at Grant's chest, plunging half the warehouse into sudden darkness. Grant shouted, stumbling backward, and in that same instant Mara's shoulder slammed into Andre, shoving him toward a gap between two stacks of old crates.

"Go!" she shouted. "Now!"

Andre ran.

Behind him, he heard Voss curse, heard the scrape of a chair, heard Grant's heavy footsteps crashing after him instead of Mara. Andre's lungs burned as he wove between the crates, his shoes slipping on loose dust and broken glass.

A hand closed around his jacket.

Andre spun, swinging the chair leg blindly, and felt it connect with something solid. Grant grunted in pain but did not let go, his grip like iron around Andre's arm, dragging him backward toward the light.

"Small mistake, boy," Grant hissed. "Give me the phone before I take it off your body."

Andre's heart pounded so hard he could barely think. His free hand slid into his pocket, fingers closing around the phone.

The screen lit up on its own, blinding white in the darkness of the warehouse.

Grant flinched, his grip loosening for just a fraction of a second, staring at the glow as if he had never quite gotten used to it, even after all these years.

That fraction of a second was enough.

Andre tore free and ran for the gap in the crates, bursting out into a narrow alley behind the warehouse, cold night air hitting his face like a slap. He did not stop. He did not look back. He ran until his legs screamed and his chest felt like it was on fire, cutting through alleys and empty lots he had never walked before, driven purely by fear.

Only when he reached the lit streets of the market district, surrounded by late night vendors and the noise of a city that had no idea what had almost happened to him, did Andre finally stop and press himself against a brick wall, gasping for breath.

He pulled the phone from his pocket with shaking hands.

The screen was still glowing, though the message on it was not one he expected.

[THREAT DETECTED.]

[USER SAFETY: CONFIRMED.]

[SECONDARY SIGNAL: LOST.]

Andre stared at the last line for a long moment before understanding hit him like cold water.

Secondary signal. Mara's phone. Or whatever was left of whatever connection the phone still had to her, all these years after it had marked her as deceased.

She had stayed behind. For him. A man she had known for less than an hour.

Andre pressed his back harder against the wall, guilt twisting sharp in his chest, mixing with the fear still pounding through his veins.

He reached into his jacket pocket for the small folded card Mara had given him, the only way he had of finding her again, of possibly helping her.

His pocket was empty.

He must have dropped it somewhere between the warehouse and here, lost in the panic of running, in the dark, in the fear of a man's hand closing around his arm.

Andre closed his eyes, his forehead pressed against the cold brick, and for the first time since Claire closed that door on him in the rain, he felt something new mixing in with all the grief and anger and confusion.

Responsibility.

Somewhere behind him, in a warehouse he could probably never find again, a woman who had once carried the same phone he now held in his hand had just traded her freedom, or possibly her life, for a stranger's chance to keep running.

And Andre had no way of knowing if she was still alive to regret it.