04/09/08
The sound of gunfire echoed through the streets, against the bricks, within the little shack that she had retreated to.
She wasn’t out there, where she should have been. Instead, she was in here, with her ear pressed against the peeling white paint of the wooden door, her heart hammering against her broken ribs.
“You’re running,” his voice stated from behind her.
The thudding of her heart stopped completely and she couldn’t breathe. Her neck snapped around and her eyes locked with his. She didn’t take in the way that he casually leaned against the grimy kitchen table, his fingers gripping the linoleum, his legs crossed, one over the other, straight, knees locked. She couldn’t move her eyes from his unreadable face.
She hadn’t known that he was the enemy, that he worked for the other side, that he was supposed to be the one to end her life. Despite being trained to suspect anyone and everyone, from the elderly man crossing the busy road with his walker to the giggling girl on the swing set with her father, she hadn’t had any inkling. All she had known was the sweetness of the maple sugar that coated his lips, the thrill of his hands running up and down her body (so different from the thrill of killing), and the explosion that had overtaken her senses the night that she had broken into his metal safe, finding her picture tacked there, marking her as his assigned target.
And now she would die.