Enemies in Embrace: Episode 22 – The Last Tunnel to Freedom

 

“Daylight exploded through the hatch, and for the first time in forever, I could breathe. I would have followed Yousef through hell if that’s what it took to reach that light.”

 

By Julia M Cross

 

The shot cracked through the silence like lightning ripping the sky. I didn’t know if it was close or far. Didn’t care. My body moved before my mind caught up—I grabbed Yousef’s arm and dragged him down into the mouth of the tunnel. He staggered, his weight folding over mine, and for a second I thought he had been hit.

“Are you—”

“I’m fine,” he grunted, limping as we ducked low beneath the collapsing beams and walls of dirt and clay. “It missed. Keep moving.”

We didn’t stop to check. We couldn’t. The tunnel groaned above us, the ceiling wet and sagging like skin over broken bone. I reached ahead with one hand, flashlight shaking, the other gripping Yousef’s fingers like I could fuse us together. My lungs burned. My heart thudded so loud I thought it would echo through the walls.

Behind us, footsteps.

Fast. Angry.

They knew we were gone.

“We’re not going to make it,” I whispered.

Yousef squeezed my hand. “Don’t say that. Not to me. Not now.”

We stumbled deeper. Mud squished beneath our shoes. The air grew hotter, heavier, like we were walking into the belly of the world. I thought of our sons. Their tiny hands. Their soft breath at night. I had to get back to them. I had to get him back to them.

A light appeared up ahead—a glint of something metallic. A gate.

“Run,” I said.

“I’m already running,” he rasped.

We reached it—rusted steel and bent hinges—but locked.

Yousef looked at me, eyes wild.

“They’ll catch us,” he said.

“No,” I said. “They won’t.”

I pulled the wire cutters Noor had tucked in my robe and began to cut.

Snap. Snap.

The footsteps grew louder. Voices now. Arabic shouts bouncing off the tunnel walls.

Two more wires. One to go.

“Leah—”

“Not now!” I hissed.

The final wire broke loose.

Yousef kicked the gate.

It groaned, then gave way.

We fell through into another chamber—this one wide, scattered with broken crates and the remains of a camp. I smelled gas. Oil. Blood.

“There,” I pointed to a ladder. “Up.”

We climbed, breathless, every second a gamble. The hatch above creaked as I pushed it open.

Daylight.

Blinding. Burning. Glorious.

We burst through into the ruins of a market. The stalls were broken. Dust floated in the air like ash. No one was in sight.

“We need to hide,” he gasped.

“No. We need to vanish.”

I pulled him down an alley, my mind racing. I remembered Noor’s words. A van would be waiting. A blue one. Parked near the collapsed water tower.

We ran.

I think part of me flew.

My legs stopped aching. My chest stopped heaving. I moved like fire—uncontrolled, unbroken.

And then I saw it.

The van. Old. Dusty. Blue.

I pounded on the back.

It opened.

Nadav.

“Get in!” he shouted.

We leapt inside, the door slamming shut behind us. The van peeled out, tires screeching on broken pavement.

No one spoke.

Yousef collapsed onto the floor, coughing.

I fell beside him, my forehead against his.

“You’re real,” I whispered. “You’re really here.”

“I told you,” he said, voice ragged. “We made something the world can’t erase.”

Nadav’s voice came from the front. “We’ve got maybe twenty minutes before they start looking at exits. I hope you’re ready for another tunnel.”

I wasn’t. But I didn’t say that.

Because I would have followed Yousef through hell if that’s what it took.

The next tunnel was older, narrower. A smell of sulfur clung to the walls. It led under a stretch of farmland near the edge of Rafah. When we emerged, we were in a barn.

Three men stood around us, guns slung over their shoulders. One of them handed Nadav a black duffel bag.

“Money?” he asked.

“No,” Nadav said. “Passports.”

I stared at the bag. “Passports?”

“They’ll get you through Jordan,” Nadav said, opening the bag. “I have people waiting.”

He pulled out two documents. They were worn, fake, but good enough.

Leah Cohen.

Yousef Barakat.

It was us, but not us.

I touched the photo of my face.

“I don’t want to be her,” I said.

Nadav looked at me. “You want to survive?”

“Yes.”

“Then be her for a little while.”

The journey to Jordan blurred. More roads. More silence. More waiting in places that felt like ghosts of towns. We crossed the border at night, through another contact, with bribes and a car with no plates.

By the time we reached Amman, I could barely think.

A hotel room. Warm water. Food we didn’t taste.

And finally, finally, a bed that didn’t shake from bombs or boots.

Yousef lay beside me, silent. His hand found mine under the sheets.

“I don’t know where we go from here,” I whispered.

He turned his head. “Where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere they don’t know my name.”

He kissed my shoulder. “Then we start over.”

I looked up at him. His face was thin. His eyes sunken. But his soul—his soul was still the man who’d brushed my hair behind my ear in a motel in Miami and told me not to be afraid.

“I almost lost you,” I said.

“You didn’t.”

I pressed my mouth to his.

This kiss wasn’t sweet.

It wasn’t gentle.

It was bruised and wild and full of everything we had survived.

He moved over me like a man returned from war.

And I let myself forget the past—for one night.

 

 

From the romance series by Julia M Cross. Next episode releases Thursday at 8 PM.