A Hurricane Called Katrina

ESTELA

Beckett rushes over to me and tells me that Katrina's had to run off and we need to help her. He says he thinks she's in danger, and I agree. There's a lot of people here who probably hate her. I throw her her jacket as she runs out the door, not wobbling once in those death traps she calls shoes.

Sapphire and Holmes are grabbing some stuff from the kitchen and meeting us in the car, and Ace and I are grabbing Katrina's stuff from upstairs. Beckett stands on the table Katrina was on earlier, and yells out Oh my God, I think she's dead. Nobody notices the calm people running around in the blind panic. A few minutes later, we all strap ourselves into Holmes' car. He tells us not to open the windows and to make sure we're wearing seatbelts. He rockets from the lot, and tears down the avenue. He merges without flipping a signal and accelerates to over 160 kilometers an hour. I watch closely as he tears off again, tires squealing as he spins the wheel and the car tips ever so slightly because of how close he's taken it. We rip through a red stoplight and pull up by the river.

"You want to walk along the concrete for a couple hundred meters. There'll be a space. Sapphire, you've been here before. Go careful. And for hell's sake, if any of you hurt my sister there'll be hell to pay. Go."

We run off down the concrete, and I stop everyone. I point to their shoes, and then the beam. I pull off my jacket, ignoring the cold, and wrap it around the flashlight beam to make it less noticeable. We all take off our shoes to be able to move more quietly and keep running. Sapphire directs us into an old outflow pipe and to a ladder. We climb it one by one, the creaking giving me anxiety, and end up in an old apartment building lobby. Sapphire directs us to the stairs, and we run up them, to the top. We push open apartment doors until we see a depressed figure staring out at the skyline of Los Angeles.