Café Rouge

Chapter 29: Adrenaline Rush, Hotel Crash

Either way he can't speculate right now. He needs to move and move fast. God knows if there are more of these hired goons coming. So first thing first, he needs to get Lola somewhere safe. Yeah. Protect. Clean up. Then...interrogate.

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"Sweetheart? Lola? It's me, I'm coming in, okay? Don't shoot."

It sounds like Carlos. Oh God, it sounds so much like him. And the relief filling her body from hearing his low voice is instantaneous but she doesn't trust herself. What if it's not Carlos? After all, she thought she heard gun shots and that's just crazy. She thought she heard furniture being destroyed and that's simply ludicrous and after all that there was silence. Not silence in her mind because that's whizzing away at a nonsensical speed but silence everywhere else. Only why would there be silence? Unless everyone's dead and if-

"Lola, piccola, it's okay. It's okay cara. Let go of the gun for me now, I've got you."
The soft soothing whisper beside her knocks her off her balance. Her stiff fingers are pried away from the object they're holding and her entire frozen body is huddled into a warmer one. One promising safety and comfort.
"I'm sorry, sweetheart. I'm sorry but I can't have you falling apart now. I need you here with me. Do you understand? Lola?"

Her eyes blink up at him, not taking in his face before that fogginess finally clears.
"Carlos? You're...here," she croaks out in a slight whisper.
"Yes. Yes I'm here and we need to go. Now."
This is obviously a lot for her. She is after all a well adjusted female and any normal person would freak out at this situation. He understands that. But none of that will help if she's dead.
Lola has a moment of frustrating confusion and unwarranted anger towards him before she shakes herself clear of it. It's not his fault. He's helping her. He's doing his best to be gentle with her and she needs to step it up. Allowing herself to feel all that fear, anger and confusion now will only drag them down and that may just get them killed. So she pushes it aside, locks up all the emotion into a dark steel cage and places it in the corner of her brain so she can become the mechanical being Carlos needs her to be right now.


 

"Good girl," he states encouragingly, "now, go to your room. Under the bed there's a suitcase. Pack a few pairs of clothes and essentials only. Don't think just move, okay sweetheart?"
She gives him a head nod.
"Alright, I'll be right there too. I need to grab a few things from here and my study."

Another head nod before she's hauled up to her feet.

With a kiss to her temple, Lola marches to her room, pointedly stopping herself from glancing over in the hallway to the living room.

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She's almost done by the time he joins her, his own bag slung over his shoulder. Zipping up the suitcase, he meets her eyes dead on.
"As much as I would like you to keep your eyes closed as we move through the living room I know you won't. So do not stop, got it? Don't stare, just keep moving."
Just how bad is it? His words do nothing to easy the terror she feels and for one second Lola is almost afraid of him. Yet however bad it is, Lola knows that everything he did, he did to protect them.

With him bringing up the rear carrying the bags, Lola has no option but to stalk through the living room, trying not to brace. She can't help but stalling though at the mess...at the bodies. Oh God, there's even one guy tied up in an extension cord and if everything else wasn't so horrific that may have been funny. Her stomach heaves as she switches her gaze to the slumped bodies, eyes drifting to one of them with his eyes still wide open and a hole through his throat. Oh God! Definitely going to throw up now.
"Eyes forward, keep moving Lola," snaps Carlos from behind her with a hand to her mid back, urging her forwards.

 Her feet stumble in that general direction before she takes a moment to tear her eyes away from Throat-Shot-Guy. Though her eyes may be solely planted on the splintered wood of what used to be the front door, beneath her eyelids the corpses are imprinted. Sure, she'd watched horror movies. Horror movies with far more gore and guts in them than this but...knowing that that's all theatrical, all for the camera, makes it somehow less real. It's easier to dissociate yourself from violence when it's behind a screen but to actually see it. Stand there and witness it? No words can describe that revolution and horror.