Chapter 4 - THE WARNING
The crowded market blurred into a smear of passing lanterns, moving umbrellas, and distant voices.
The boy grabbed the little girl’s hand tighter, taking one small, hesitant step backward. He looked wildly around the alley, like an animal calculating an escape route, but he was trapped by his own fear.
He wanted to run, but he was too terrified to choose the wrong direction.
He looked down at Linh, his young face hardened by a terrifying truth he had carried for too long.
Then he whispered, his voice thin with terror:
“Then why did she say to run from you?”
Linh froze. The tears on her cheeks felt cold against the night wind. “What?”
The little girl leaned forward from behind the boy, just enough for the amber light of a nearby hanging lantern to catch the fresh tears spilling down her cheeks.
“Before the bad men took Mom away last week,” the girl whispered, her voice trembling, “she gave me this bracelet. She told us to hide in the market. And she showed us a paper.”
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The girl swallowed hard, her chest heaving.
“She said if we ever saw the woman in the grey coat from the photo... we had to run as fast as we could.”
