Free Ashes of the Red Heifer by Shannon Baker Page B

disbelieving look.
    He looked down again as if trying to build up courage to speak. He took a deep breath and searched her face. “I know you’re not going to like this. I hate it, too. But it is the only way to keep you safe.”
    Alarms went off in her head. She searched the crowd. A large man with dark skin and hair snaked toward her. She looked the other way and saw a smaller man every bit as focused on her. She spun to Hassan. “What is going on?”
    He put a hand on her arm. “I promise you will not be hurt. We just need to keep you out of harm’s way for a while.”
    She wrenched from his grasp and stood up. “You’re kidnapping me?”
    He shook his head, looking distressed. “No. We’re saving you.”
    The two men were closing in on her.
    Annie bolted through a tight group of older men in long robes. Whether their shouts and jeers were against her or for the vitriolic voice on the loudspeaker she didn’t care. She raced to the gates, shoving and dodging.
    “Annie!” Hassan shouted at her.
    He was following her, too. He shouldn’t run with his broken ribs and bruises. Let him run, she corrected herself. He lied to her and tried to kidnap her, why should she care if he hurt himself.
    Just as she reached a family group with men, women and children knotted together, a hand landed on her back, fingers scrambling to grab her shirt. She dropped her shoulder and plowed into two plump, middle-aged women in headscarves and loose knit pants. The hand on her shoulder lost purchase and a jolt of adrenaline shot her away from the shouting, complaining women.
    Annie flew out the nearly closed gates and down the stairs, taking several at a time, shoving and bumping faceless people.
    Hassan’s voice sounded further away. “Wait! Annie! Please…”
     

EIGHT
     
     
           Annie crashed through the gate and flew down the stairs, knocking into people and banging against the stone wall. Where was David?
    Behind her Hassan appeared in the gateway and started down the stairs, holding his ribs with each step. The other men stayed at the gate within the confines of Al Aksa. They probably didn’t want to venture outside into a crowd that wasn’t purely Muslim.
    It seemed to Annie that there were people everywhere, and they all had angry faces. She had no way of knowing if they were Muslim, Jewish, disturbed tourists, or like her, just trying to survive.
    The area before her opened into a wide plaza facing an expanse of wall. Across a low barrier Annie looked over an open courtyard with knots of people scattered throughout and a larger gathering around a man next to the wall. One side of the area was sealed off with a huge wall of sandstone bricks rising above the ground about fifty feet. Chairs were shoved against the wall, facing it, and twenty feet away stood a waist-high concrete barricade. The wide area in front of the wall was partitioned in two sections by a set of panels. A checkpoint, guarded by armed soldiers, stood at the left of the plaza.
    Blocks of sandstone looked to be about four feet high on the bottom and gradually decreased in size. Spidery green ferns grew out of cracks between broken and ill-fitting blocks.
    Annie searched for David, glancing over her shoulder frequently to check on the progress of Hassan. He had disappeared in the crowd or maybe given up and gone back to Al Aksa.
    She spotted David just as he saw her. He was on the other side of the plaza on the outskirts of the crowd gathering around the man with a bullhorn. He started for her, a look of concern clouding his handsome face. Annie fought the crowd to get to him, anxious to put more distance between her and whoever chased her. And even more anxious to be close to David.
    The man standing on the knoll at the other end of the plaza held a bullhorn to his face. He wore a white button-up shirt that had come untucked from black trousers. His long, curling side hair looked Orthodox, yet he seemed to be a mixed bag of different sects.