Hide and Seek by Jeff Struecker

They’ll figure it out. Being proactive is better than being reactive.” She lowered her hands. “I need you to trust me.”
    “I’ll go with you. I’m feeling better. I have the inhaler—”
    “No, Jildiz, I can move faster by myself. I will be back. I promise.”
    Tears brimmed Jildiz’s eyes and Amelia could almost smell the fear. “O-okay.”
    “There’s a couple of things I’m going to do first and I need you to pay attention. Will you do that?”
    “Yes.”
    There were no sobs, but the tears ran freely.
    Amelia tried to fight off the sense of guilt. She lost the battle.

    JILDIZ DID EXACTLY AS Amelia ordered: she locked the front door of the pharmacy the moment after Amelia crossed the threshold into the freshly dark street, a street made darker by the funerary shroud of smoke hanging over the city. The mere sniff of it made her chest tighten and she was sure another bout of asthma was on its way. To her relief the tightening in her chest eased, at least the tightening caused by the disorder. Fear continued to tighten around her thorax like a constricting straitjacket. She moved back to the chair behind the counter. Seated, she could see the glass front of the store and enough of the rear storage area to know if anyone came in the back.
    She sat and listened. She heard distant sirens, pops, and cracks as the old building settled in the cooling evening. With every unfamiliar sound her heart skipped several beats.
    Steady yourself. She wished she could be as strong as Amelia. The woman amazed her. Of course she knew Amelia’s background. In many ways, Kyrgyzstan was a backward country compared to those in the West. It wasn’t that her people were dimmer than the others. It was a national poverty, a fragile economy, high unemployment, limited goods to export, corruption in government, crime in the streets, the Russian Mafia, and its Chinese equivalent that kept them several long strides behind other countries. Her father was committed to changing that. So was she. If that was still possible; if her country could endure yet another round of riots and anarchy.
    Amelia was what Jildiz wanted to be, needed to be: firm, committed, and courageous. At the moment, she felt none of those things. She was a mouse hiding behind a counter in an ever-darkening store. Amelia’s fear was apparent on her face but not in her actions. She entered a fray most people would have fled. Using just her automobile she battled three men with weapons, killing two of them and rescuing her. Jildiz doubted she would have thought to do what Amelia did for her.
    If she were a jaded person, she might assume Amelia did all that to make Jildiz beholden to her, but at her most paranoid—a quality she possessed in large measure—she couldn’t bring herself to believe another woman would do all she did just to score . . . what did Americans call it? Brownie points. Yes, brownie points. If she and Amelia lived, she would have to ask what the origin of that phrase was.
    Before Amelia left, she helped Jildiz select several medications to help with her asthma, should another respiratory crisis arise. They even found self-injecting adrenaline pens. She also gathered snacks from the public side of the counter. Nothing healthy but it would keep her going if Amelia took longer to get back than she estimated.
    “You know what this makes you, don’t you,” Amelia said when she situated the materials around Jildiz’s “nest.”
    “I am afraid to ask.”
    “You and I are now official looters. Do you think your father can change the law for us?”
    “I’m sure the extenuating circumstances will help. I will make sure the shops get paid for the damages.”
    “Good. Also, I broke a nail so I’ll be billing for a full manicure.”
    Jildiz said, “I’ll go with you.”
    “Outstanding, I could go for a girls’ night out.” Amelia sounded too serious to be believed. She disappeared into the storage area and then returned. “In a larger pharmacy