Gone: An Emma Caldridge Novella: Part Two of Three Read Online Free PDF

ground.
    “Stop! I’m coming over. Stay there,” Emma called over the wall.
    “Okay, but hurry!” the girl said. “There are more.”
    Emma rammed the gun back in the holster, placed her foot into the crater, pushed the tips of her fingers into the grout line between the stones and uncoiled her legs. After years of ultra running, her legs were the strongest part of her body. She slid straight up, keeping close to the wall, and managed to grab at the slender pole attached to the base of a camera mount bolted into the wall.
    Leon fired three more rounds, and this time the men in the yard fired back, almost in unison. Emma winced at the noise and smelled the scent of gunpowder. She heard the girl on the other side sobbing. Skittering her foot along the wall, she looked for another place to gain some purchase so she could rise over the top. She jammed the rubber edge of the running shoe into another grout line and this time relied on her arms to haul herself higher. When her head came even with the wall’s edge, she switched hands, using her left to grab at the camera’s slender pole and removing the pistol with her right.
    Now comes the hard part, she thought. Once she cleared the wall she’d be a target. The last thing she needed was to act like a jack-in-the-box and get her head blown off in the process, but she could imagine no other way around it. She needed to get over the wall if she was going to help the girl.
    “Go,” she said out loud, pushed with her legs, rose to the top of the wall and flopped onto her stomach on its flat surface. She found herself parallel to the front edge of the garage and breathed a sigh of relief. The stables cut into her sight line to the men in the yard, and the garage kept her from the two who hid on the other side. The girl pressed against the wall below her. Emma swung a leg over, then another, and leaped down onto the grass.
    “Give me your hands and I’ll untie you,” Emma said. The girl turned her back, and she worked at the heavy rope, undoing the knots. Leon released a volley of shots and the response was closer this time.
    “They’re at the stables,” the girl said.
    Emma finished untying her. “Get that robe off and let’s move,” she said.
    The girl ripped the robe over her head. Underneath it she wore a sheer white cotton nightgown that ended above her knees. She had the thin, knobby-kneed legs of a little girl.
    “There’s a big crack in the wall at the back of the garage,” the girl said. “It’s too small to squeeze through but we can climb over.”
    Emma waved her gun in that direction. “I’ll follow,” she said. “But stop at the corner of the garage and let me go ahead to clear the way.”
    The girl ran toward the wall while Emma jogged backwards, keeping her gun up. Leon hadn’t shot in a while, and she was concerned that he’d run out of bullets. She had twelve more in her pistol. She’d conserve them if she could.
    At the corner of the garage Emma moved ahead of the girl, but saw nothing that would indicate that the two on the opposite side of the structure were doubling back around. She shoved the gun back in the holster and made a cradle with her palms, lacing her fingers together.
    “Step in. When you get over, run to the trail that goes through the Needle Tunnel.”
    The girl put her bare foot in Emma’s hands and Emma catapulted her upward. The girl grabbed at the edge of the wall and scrambled over with the agility of someone who’d done it before. Emma heard a noise to her right and saw the tip of a gun as one of the original two men inched his way out. She yanked her own weapon out of the holster and fired. The gun tip disappeared from sight. It was past time to run away.
    Emma shoved her toe into the wall, grabbed at the grout, and pushed upward. This attempt wasn’t as smooth as the last. Her weight shifted and she began to tip backwards. She hopped onto the grass and tried again, slid upward and heard her gun scrape against