“Violet, our runner’s
real name is Victor Bales. He has a wife and three children who all attend the
same school of which the wife is a teacher. We believe he is headed there right
now; it is open day today so it should be a bit crowded. Get in there and see
what this school is about.”
Becky ends the call and taps Jake on the back. “Time to go.”
She puts on her jacket and opens the door of the motel they are lodged in. Jake
follows her out and heads straight for the car jingling the keys. He opens up
the car and slips behind the wheels comfortably.
Becky punches in the coordinates into the GPS “The school is
twenty minutes out.” Jake starts the car and takes off.
_
The little girl laughs as she is thrown up into the air and
caught by her aunt. The aunt gives a big spin to the delight of the girl. “You
are growing everyday my darling, now go and put on your shoes so we can go to
school. Today is the day aunty gets to talk to your teachers and sees whether
or not you are behaving in school.” The aunt pats her on the head as the girl
runs to put on her shoes. The aunt sees her sister helping her niece put on her
shoes. The girl then runs back to her and the two of them hold hands together
as they head off to school.
_
The aunt stares at one of the parents that are talking right
now and tries not to doze off. This is so
boring she thinks to herself, one of the parents is currently talking about
what kind of food they serve in the cafeteria. Let your child bring her own food the aunt thinks to herself again.
She looks down and smiles at her niece, if
not for you I would not be here she says in her mind. She turns away from
all of them and looks towards the door. There is a man and a woman just staring
into the room they are in. Her eyes and the man’s eyes meet for a second before
he looks away and heads into another direction with the woman leading the way.
For a moment she thinks about not following them but the journalist in her wins
and she gets up from the chair handing her niece over to her mother. “I have to
go and get something.” She mutters.
“Don’t be long.” Her sister responds.
The aunt leaves the hall and heads towards the direction that
the man took. She walks down for a minute and then hears “Burner, it appears
our runner has two homes in this part of town. They want us to check that out.”
“I do not think there will be any need for that.”
“Why do you say that?” Becky asks
“Because he is outside the building” Jake says as he looks
out of the window.
Becky quickly runs towards the window and sees him. “Let’s go
Burner.”
As they turn to run out, they see a woman at the entrance of
the door. She smiles and politely says “I was just looking for the restroom.”
Becky quickly replies “Just head down the corridor, it’s the
second door on your left.”
“Thank you.” The woman responds and heads off in that
direction.
Once she was gone, Jake and Becky run down the stairs headed
for the person they were here for.
The aunt heads towards the restroom but then turns around and
follows them down the stairs thinking to herself that there was something familiar about that man, it’s like she knew him
from somewhere. She stops at the end of the stairs and looks towards the
door and sees the two of them in a squatting position.
“Where did the six people around him show up from?” Becky
says out loud.
Jake just opens his bag pack and brings out a gun. “We are
taking him out of here dead or alive. Forget about the men with him, leave them
to me. Just get the target and let’s get out of here.”
“No.” Becky pushes his gun back into his bag. “It is too
open, there are too many witnesses. We have to wait and follow him; he will not
always be surrounded with these people.”
They hear a noise from behind them; Jake turns around quickly
with the gun pointed towards the direction the noise came from. “Don’t!!! Don’t
shoot!” The aunt shouts out.
“You again, why are you down here?” Becky asks
“She is following us, she works for him. Let us get rid of
her before she calls for backup.” Jake says as he clips the silencer on the
gun.
Becky once again pushes his gun down “Burner NO!” Jake looks
at her with annoyance and is about to say something when he notices from the
corner of his eye the woman holding a phone pointed at them.
“What are you doing with your phone?”
The aunt immediately gets up and starts to run as fast as she
could back up the stairs.
Jake leaves the gun in Becky’s hand and goes after the aunt
who is running like mad and screaming “HELP!”
Becky shouts also “Jake! Jake! Leave her. We have to go. We
have to go. She is not the target, we need to leave now.”
Jake knowing the implication of being caught listens to Becky
and stops chasing her. He turns around grabs his bag pack and jets out through
the door with Becky running behind him.
_
Now safe in the confines of her room, the aunt begins to
check the pictures on her phone breathing hard and not believing what she just
witnessed. She was going to the police with the story but before that, she had
to write the story down. This could give her an added boost in her career with
the evidence she had on the phone. A picture of the man with the gun, he could
be a terrorist or a wanted criminal. Who
are you? I know I have seen you before she thinks to herself. The
journalist in her ignores that for now, she enters work mode and begins to
quickly put a story together. Within 30 minutes she is done and she sends it to
her boss at the office. She immediately begins to check all her past pictures
to see if there is anything that would remind her of the man she just saw. Jake! Jake! Leave her flashes through
her mind, which is what the other girl called him as she ran away from them and
she also called him Burner before that. She grabs her notepad and writes remember to find out about the other girl
with him. Now she turns her attention back to the man.
Where has she heard
that name before? She
thought to herself. It dawned on her and she scrolled straight to the time when
she was in the states. No it cannot be,
there must be a mistake somewhere. She started flipping the pages and there
it was, the picture she did not want to see. It was her and Jake sitting
together smiling at the camera, the picture was dated over ten years ago.
She picks up the phone, makes a call “Boss, I need you to
please delay the story I sent you. I have to confirm some facts and we do not
want to release stories that are incorrect. Just hold on for a few hours on it
while I double check the story.”
“Do that quickly because this is good, I like it Sophia, I
really like it.”
“Yes boss, I will do that quickly.” Sophia hangs up and just
stares at the photos. The only thoughts running through her mind were, You are alive. Jake is alive but what
happened that night? What happened to you Jake? Where have you been for the last ten years? It was difficult to
believe that the man that just wanted to kill her couple of minutes ago was
Jake. The pictures on her lap made her believe that they were the same men,
very different in many ways but still the same man.
The issue at hand was how she was going to get in contact
with him. She had to talk to him to get his own side of the story and at least
to ask him the questions that have been haunting her for a while. What happened that night?’ where is Kevin?’
she pushes the questions out of her head and thinks of a way to get across to
Jake. If she can find him, she will get an answer to some of the questions she
has. An idea came into her mind, she opens up her laptop and types in her
website. She edits the picture of Jake to remove the gun in his hand and posts
it on her site with the caption ‘Urgent
News: the man in the picture has been kidnapped and is in danger. Please if you
see him contact me immediately. Amount of 2,000 pounds is available to the
first person that contacts me with credible information’ she drops her
number and address, which she normally does not do but under the circumstances
she was desperate. One person out there should see him, he could not have left
the country that quick. She sets the laptop down and begins to think of any
other way to reach him.
Ten minutes passed and she opens her laptop again to send a
mail to a private detective that she once wrote a story on. She saw a bunch of
messages from people saying different things like ‘we are praying that he gets found. He is not alone, we are all in this
together’ one person wrote ‘he is at
the bar with me, send me the money now’ another said ‘borrow me $1,000 please I need it’ she just shook her head as she
scrolled through the messages, but there was one message that caught her eye ‘Where do you know Jake from?’ she
straightens up and replies the message ‘I
know him from School.’ The person was online and responded immediately with
‘call you now’.
Her phone immediately starts to ring; she picks up the phone
on the second ring. “Hello.”
“Hi, am I talking to Sophia?”
“Yes you are talking to her.” Sophia responded as she placed
the phone on speaker and grabbed her notepad.
“I am a fan of your work. I always read your write-ups and I
check up on what you are up to from time to time.” The caller responds
“Thank you very much, always nice to meet a fan. You asked a
question about how I know Jake and I answered you. I also want to ask you the
same question, how do you know Jake?”
“We have history together, we go way back.”
“You must have been really close to him to recognize him so
quickly. It took me a while to know he was the one.”
“Yes like I said, we go way back. I have not seen him for
years though.”
Sophia scribbles on her notepad ‘not seen him for years’. “That makes two of us who have not seen
him for years.” Sophia says with a hushed tone.
The caller says “I can tell that this is just not a story for
you. He means something to you so I just wanted to call and offer my help
directly. If there is anything I can do, please do not hesitate to ask.”
“Thank you for saying that. He also means something to you
too if you still remember him. I forgot to ask, what is your name?” Sophia
hears a knock at the door.
“My name is Alexia Satton. But you can call me Alex.”
Sophia writes that down also. “There is someone at the door;
I will call you back soon. It is good to meet you Alex.” She says as she heads
for the door.
Alexia pauses for a second and says “Same here Sophia, Same
here.”