Page 73 of Enemy of the State

He growls in my ear, and I laugh as I gun the gas, speeding into the tropical, humid night.Practically speaking, since he’s in his uniform, Sean will blend in far better near the base than the girl in the black uniform, so it makes the most sense for him to drape his body over mine. At least I’m telling myself that’s the primary reason,notthat I want him to touch me.

I’ve been gulping down breaths of freedom from the moment I escaped Ex-I, but as this bike zips down the open road, the unbridled weightlessness I experience is something I relish to the fullest.

Hitting the gas harder, Sean leans forward, wrapping his thick, muscular arms around me tighter and I smile to myself. I continue to bob and weave, taking random side streets, being considerate of the weight distribution on the bike. The wail of a siren in the distance pierces the drizzly night, making Sean stiffen behind me, but it could be police, ambulance or fire. To be safe, I yank the bike down a dark alley, parking behind an industrial-sized dumpster. While we wait it out, I mutter, “Got any coins? A Quid or two?”

“Uh, no, who carries loose change anymore?”

I gnaw on my bottom lip as I ponder our options. The lackof money, specifically change, poses a problem, but we can work around that.

When the wail of the siren grows faint, I whip back out onto the road, my eyes darting around, taking stock of my surroundings. Suddenly, I spot a payphone outside of a dodgy petrol station, but the cameras fixed on the building would make stopping risky, and without any coins, it’d be pointless. It’d take me too long to make the phone operable, anyway, and that’s assuming it’d be possible at all.

Cameras all around the city are picking up images of us, and I curl my lip as my frustration gnashes its teeth. We need to ditch the bike, we still need a change of clothes, and I need to make that bloody call.

Eventually, the ocean comes into view up ahead, and I hang a left, backtracking a few blocks, and park the bike in a neighborhood, facing the other direction.

I whisper, “We’re on foot from here.”

We duck in and out of backyards and car parks until we reach the sandy shore. On the beach, I locate a phone booth to our right, far behind a lifeguard stand and just before a sand dune crests, but without change, it’s bloody useless.

Inclining my head, I indicate that we should try walking in the other direction. We navigate the beach for what seems like forever before we spot a group of teenagers enjoying a night swim.

Tugging on Sean’s shirt, we drift backwards before falling to our stomachs on the sandy dune covered in a weighted blanket made of grass and vines. The sky overhead is still thick and full of additional rain, bathing us further in gloomy darkness.

The four teens—two boys and two girls—are scampering around the beach, drinking from cans and laughing loudly. Their clothing spills from their bags like a candy container that’s just been busted into, overflowing with sugary temptation as I eye their belongings like I’m addicted to sweets.

“I need you to steal their shit, specifically their clothes and any spare change they have,” I whisper to Sean.

“Why me?”

“Because I’m in this bloody prison uniform and you’re in your military uniform. They’ll trust a bloke in the army.”

“Why can’t we just ask to borrow their phone and ask them nicely for their clothes?”

I turn my head toward him, resting a hand on his forearm braced on the uncomfortable ground next to me. “Sean, love, you’re not in the same world you were twenty-four hours ago. You now exist in a place where you’re on the run. Calls can be traced, fingerprints lifted, witnesses questioned. I need to make a call that can get us to safety, but we need to operate under the assumption that those teenagers will turn us in, so the less interaction we have with them, the better. We only need enough money for a one-minute call.”

His moonlight eyes dance like the morose thundercloud brimming with lightning and rain above us as he gazes back at me and I smile, delighting in what I see within them. He nods, and I squeeze his forearm a moment before he climbs to his feet.

You couldn’t pay me to go for a night swim in these waters, with the threat of sharks below the surface, but it doesn’t seem to be fazing the teenagers as they splash drunkenly about seventy yards out.

Sean’s gait is confident as he approaches the haphazardly strewn clothing and belongings. He plucks up as much as he can carry and stalks back toward me, undetected. None of the beachgoers appear to have even noticed that Sean was there at all, which is shocking. A shriek comes from the ocean, but Sean doesn’t break stride or glance back at the sound. Peering around him, they don’t seem to be shrieking because they spotted Sean, but for some unknown reason that would only be logical to a person utterly tanked. Until Sean returns, I monitor the four teens giggling and playing among the waves, oblivious to the danger lurking amid the grass.

I snake backwards a few feet before righting myself just as Sean reaches me. When we’re far enough from view and the massive dune stands between the teens and us, Sean drops a few coins into my outstretched palm.

“We’ve got two bucks,” he informs me, which is far more than we need, but I won’t complain.

He clutches the new clothes as we retrace our steps until wereach the payphone. I slip into the booth, unsurprised when Sean wedges his way in behind me, out of abrasive sea air.

Sea air whistles the tune of freedom as it batters against the exterior of the booth.

I’m free.Free to find Mercer, free to learn the truth of why he didn’t come for me, free to take a bubble bath with a glass of wine in my hand, free to live my life.

Free.

Holding my breath, I dial the numbers I memorized in case of an emergency I hoped I’d never have.

When a deep male voice answers the phone in Russian, I assert, “Viktor, it’s Louhi. I’m collecting payment.”

Sean

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