Runaways

Listen (13 min) | Short story | Action/Romance | Strong language, disturbing imagery, violence

Rose wanted a heart like the red neon light blinking above the Doxxx-E two blocks over. The flesh-and-blood one pounding in her chest made it difficult to look calm.

At the head of the alley, light from the club door shone and vanished with each entry and exit, bass thudding and muffling. Noodle vendors ran, pulling their carts. Cyclists zipped, spraying puddles. Rain tapped and trickled.

She held the umbrella over the two of them, her other hand in the pocket of her black leather duster, clenching a phone that would buzz any minute.

Ray pushed back his hood, his brown curls bouncing over his forehead. He was twenty-one all over, head to toe. A man on the run from the law who could still sleep nights.

Watching him, Rose knew she looked tired, felt it in the slump of her shoulders. Her work was taking it out of her.

A year ago, she’d been relieved, grateful to get the employment. Ray offered to help, but she wanted to make her own way. They argued. He disappeared into his hacker collective, and she went to work for Lee Sender’s outfit.

The gang treated her well, took her under their wing. The pay was fair. She couldn’t afford much, but she got a little apartment of her own. No more couch surfing. No more shelters. Food in the fridge.

But every job for Sender was risky. Rose was training to become a fixer, mostly obscuring or cleaning up crime scenes. Trouble was, so many ended with a corpse—hired guns who talked to the wrong cops, guys who got caught playing both sides. They’d all deserved it. That’s what she told herself.

On the first, she’d looked into the target’s eyes. Big mistake. She hadn’t pulled the trigger. That was the next stage of her education, handling a job start to finish. Even after her lead, Marty, had put a bullet in the guy’s head, the face had a wide, unanswerable look like a kid who’d been slapped.

The next one had the same look, and so did the one after him.

In her dreams, they all looked like kids, and she was always the one pulling the trigger.

Ray smiled. “It’s good to see you.”

She met his silver eyes, feeling younger in the glow, and pulled herself back to real life. “Do you have it?”

Raising his eyebrows, he snorted, shaking his head and digging in his breast pocket. He held out a thumb drive. “That’s all of it. Every video, picture, document, even the stuff that’s not admissible in court.”

“And the addresses?”

Ray put his hands in his pockets. “I told him no.”

Rose’s boss didn’t take no for an answer. The whole city knew that. All except Ray.

Lee Sender was a man on the rise with a small army of mercs and spies on the payroll, including a couple of low-level cops and someone at the mayor’s office. The only things standing in the way of his upward trajectory were the district attorney and two charges of conspiracy to commit murder.

Getting copies of everything in the D.A.’s file wasn’t a job for a street thug. It required finesse, and Sender could afford the best.

Ray, a hacker and identity procurer, had the necessary skills. There wasn’t much he couldn’t or wouldn’t do, but giving up witness locations was on the list.

Rose pressed the stick against his chest, forcing him to fumble for it. “One way or another, he’s going to find them anyway, the cops will break, someone will talk, so you can save him some time, or you can wait until he starts looking for your address.”

Ray glanced around and back at her. “Does he know where you are? Right now?”

Rose turned the phone in her pocket.

“It’s just strange, I didn’t imagine the handoff going this way. You haven’t been working for him long, he probably doesn’t know you exist. But here you are. All alone. Picking up a half million worth of documents.”

Rose tightened her grip on the umbrella. “He doesn’t—I thought if you dealt with me we might get somewhere. If you don’t deal with me, you’ll have to deal with him, it’s your choice, but he wants those witnesses. Give me the info, and I’ll make sure to leave it somewhere he’ll find it. You don’t have to have any more contact with him. You can disappear.”

Ray moved in closer. “The only reason I’m here, handing that over in person, is because it’s you. That number I gave you, no one else has that. Definitely not Lee Sender.”

“You think I won’t give it to him? Maybe I already have.”

“Rose, it’s me you’re talking to. You think I’m naïve because I do my work in front of a screen, but I know how his kind operate. If he knew how to draw me out, I’d be dead.”

His face was warm, steady, half-laughing. Rose’s chest tightened. None of this was funny, but he stood there, treating everything like it was no big deal, like when they were thirteen and he’d stolen hotdogs and ramen so they could eat, and the shop owner had taken five shots at him. Ray had sat beside the fire telling the story like it was an action movie.

He was still child-Ray, the boy she’d grown up with.

Rose ground her teeth. She shouldn’t have seen him again. If his gaze came up in her mind, it wouldn’t matter who was watching or who was on the other end of the barrel. She wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger. She’d see that wide, unanswerable kid’s look on the target’s face, and one way or another, that would be the end of her career.

Ray shook his head. “Look, I don’t care what men like him get up to. Anyone who pays my fee can have my services, but it’s one thing to let him take out another low-life and something else to hand over people who had no clue what they were getting into. People with kids and families. You and me, we’ve never had much in the way of morals, but we didn’t hurt the ones who couldn’t take it. That’s a place you don’t come back from.”

Resting his head on hers, he closed his eyes. “Rose, please don’t lose your soul to him.”

Souls were a luxury. They weren’t for people like her. That’s what she kept telling herself, but she still cried when she was alone, still woke up shaking, pointing a dream gun at the dark.

She trembled, breath burning her heaving chest.

Dropping the umbrella, she pressed her cheek into him, each gasp pushing the burning into her throat.

Sirens wailed. Bass thudded.

Rose slumped, howling.

Arms wrapped around her, lowering the two of them to the ground in a heap, holding her until she could speak. “It’s too late for me, I’m becoming like him. Oh god. I want to go home, and I don’t even know what that means. He’ll kill me if I try to leave.”

Ray picked up the umbrella and held it over her, wiping a new tear from her cheek. “You can make whatever life you want. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, but you adapt Rose, you’re good at that. It’s the reason Sender’s men grabbed you up. When we were kids, there wasn’t a fix you couldn’t get us out of.”

He laughed. “You remember when we were thirteen and that guy took a shot at us for stealing five dollars’ worth of food? He’d’ve killed us if you hadn’t known the back door of the next shop had a broken lock. We’d be dead now if it wasn’t for you.”

Rose stared back into the silver of Ray’s eyes, seeing her life. They’d always watched each other’s backs. Cold nights wrapped together in condemned shacks, nightmares that dropped her screaming into the waking world, empty stomachs. But there were also peals of childish laughter, memories of sunrise.

“And as for turning into Lee Sender,” he took her hand, “you could never be like him. Don’t get me wrong, you’re tough, I don’t know many tougher. You’ve done what you had to to survive. But you can love people, Rose. You love them even when it’s dangerous. Especially then. That’s why you’re here now with me.”

The phone in her pocket buzzed.

Jerking her hand away, she pulled out the device.

It buzzed again.

Jumping to her feet, she swore, taking a deep breath.

A third buzz tingled in her fingers.

Looking at Ray, she signaled for silence and hit the green button.

The voice on the other end cleared a lump of phlegm from his throat. It was Marty, her lead. “Checking in.”

Rose forced an even tone. “Nothing to report. Same shit, different day.”

“You’re supposed to be patrolling. Might try walking the neighborhood?”

“Yessir. Will do. Right away.” She waited to hear the click on the other end and hung up.

Ray put his hands in his pockets. “Tracking your phone?”

She nodded, feeling him watching.

“Are you going back?”

Rose dried her face.

She and Ray could never be on the right side of the law. That wasn’t in the cards for either of them. But somewhere else—where they could see the sky, where the stars weren’t drowned out by a million watts, where gunfire and corrupt cops and Sender didn’t exist—maybe in a place like that, her nightmares would fade away. In a place like that, she could begin to forgive herself.

The rain softened to a mist.

Rose watched the club door, waiting for it to open. “Can you make us disappear? Tonight?”

Ray pulled up his hood, grinning. “I’ve been ready to make us disappear since I got my first laptop.”

The club door popped open. Two men, shouting and laughing, stumbled out of the establishment.

“Then count to ten, and be ready when I get back.”

Rose ran down the alley towards the club. The two men, early thirties, wearing red and blue shirts too tight for them and shoes that cost as much as she made in a year, reached the sidewalk. No car. They were walking to the next club.

Taking out her phone, Rose pulled up the notes app and typed. Return to Lee Sender, adding a rose emoji.

It wouldn’t take Marty long to realize she’d ditched the device, and she didn’t want anyone else getting blamed.

Shutting off the screen, she arced and sped across the road, past a couple of girls from the Doxxx-E and a flock of bachelor parties. The street was filling up.

Red shirt and blue shirt fumbled towards her, squealing and punching each other.

Passing right shoulders, she stuck out her foot.

Red shirt went down, and his ass went up, unaware of the phone that found its way into his back pocket.

She lost him, swiping and swearing, in the crowd.

Ray leaned at the entrance to the alley, the umbrella resting on his shoulder. “That was fifteen seconds.”

Rose smiled. “Hey, I just gave us thirty minutes, don’t nag me about seconds.”

Ray took her hand and kissed it. “That’s all I need.”

Crossing the street, they slipped down the next alley, letting the sound of bass and street vendors fade in their footfalls.

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• This story was written for the Top In Fiction Valentine’s Day event. An earlier draft was sent in to meet the due date, but I’ve continued to work on it since. While the main story hasn’t been altered, this draft has been fleshed out and edited for clarity and quality.

• Feedback on this story was provided by my husband and by Greta Valentine at Labyrinth Editing.

• Photo by Olivier Collet on Unsplash