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out into the open.
    I stop cold in my tracks.
    He looks at me.
    I look at him.
    He notices the blood on my hands and then glances at the door and then back at me.
    “Go,” he urges, nodding toward the dumpster to my right.
    I know I don’t have time to be confused, time to ask him why he’s letting me go, but I do it anyway.
    “Why are you—?”
    “Just go !”
    I hear footsteps echoing through the stairwell behind the door.
    I thank the man with my eyes and run around the dumpster, down the alley and away from the restaurant. A gunshot sounds seconds after I round the corner and I hope it’s just that man pretending to shoot at me.
    I stay out of the open, running behind buildings in the cover of darkness, as much as my high-heeled shoes allow me. When I feel far enough away for time to stop, I hide behind another dumpster and step out of the shoes. I take off my blonde wig, chucking it inside the dumpster.
    I can’t breathe. I feel sick.
    Oh God, I feel sick…
    I fall against the brick wall behind me, arching my back and planting my hands against my knees. I vomit violently onto the pavement, my body rigid, my esophagus burning.
    Snatching my shoes from the ground, I take off running again toward the hotel, trying to hide the fact that my hands and dress are stained with blood, but I realize that’s not so easy to do. I get a few suspicious stares as I walk briskly through the front lobby, but I try to ignore them and hope no one calls the police.
    Instead of further risking being seen by someone else, I take the stairs up to the eighth floor. By the time I get there and after all of the running I’ve done, I feel like my legs are going to collapse beneath me. I lean against the wall and catch my breath, both legs trembling uncontrollably. My chest hurts, as if every breath I take I’m sucking in dust and smoke and microscopic pieces of glass deep into my lungs.
    The room I share with Eric is locked and I don’t have my room key. In fact…
    “Oh shit….”
    I throw my head back, shut my eyes and sigh miserably.
    I no longer have my purse. I lost it sometime during the struggle in Hamburg’s room. My room keys. My cell phone. My gun. My knife. It’s all gone.
    I pound on the door but Eric’s not inside. I didn’t expect him to be really since it’s barely eleven o’clock. But just in case I’m wrong, I try Dahlia’s door next.
    “Dahl! Are you in there?” I rap on the door quickly, trying not to disturb any of the nearby rooms.
    No answer.
    Ready to give up, I drop my shoes on the floor and brace both hands against the wall, my head falling forward between my shoulders. But then I hear a faint clicking noise and the door to Dahlia’s room opens slowly. I look up to see her standing there.
    Not stopping long enough to question the strange look on her face, I push my way inside the room just to get out of the open. Eric is sitting in the chair by the window. I notice his hair is slightly disheveled. So is Dahlia’s.
    My instincts are kicking me in the back of the head, but I don’t really care about what they’re trying to tell me. I just stabbed a man in the throat and tried to kill another. I was almost raped. I just ran for my life through the back streets of Los Angeles from men with guns chasing after me. Nothing they could ever do could top that.
    “Oh my God, Sarai,” Dahlia says stepping up in front of me, “is that blood ?”
    The strange, quiet demeanor she was displaying when I first walked in disappears in an instant when she takes stock of me in the full light of the room. Her eyes are wide and filled with concern.
    Eric gets up quickly from the chair.
    “You’re bleeding.” He looks me over, too. “What the hell happened?”
    Dahlia’s eyes scan my clothes and my oddly pinned hair and wig cap.
    “Why—ummm, why are you dressed like that?”
    I look down at myself. I don’t know what to tell them, so I say nothing. I feel like a deer in headlights, but my expression remains