Clandestine

seventy nine

-diane-

I glance at my phone screen. We have ten minutes until 8:13. At 8:13 it will be exactly an hour. If that passes and Julia's mother doesn't show, we will have to revise our plan. If she does show...we will have to revise our plan.

Once again we don't have a plan. We are stuck.

8 minutes.

Julia sits beside me, her arms crossed over her chest, shivering.

I've offered my shirt multiple times so that I would be just be in my undershirt, but she refuses every time.

6 minutes.

Julia pulls a handgun out of her nylons and stands, resting the handgun in her hand.

She glances at me and shrugs.

5 minutes.

4 minutes.

Julia shifts and says, "Maybe--"

Her clothes explode.

We duck behind the tree as heat singes past us. I press my shirt to my mouth and nose. Julia shoves her hand over her face, but it won't be good enough in case there's some kind of poisonous gas incorporated. I whip off my shirt and hand it to Julia, pressing my own tank top to my nose.

The blast passes and we glance over the tree. Leaves smolder on the ground where Julia's clothes used to sit. We are lucky that it just rained, else we might have had a fire to deal with too.

Julia whispers, "Was that...was that supposed to kill us? Did my mother plan to use me as a walking bomb to kill you?"

"She wanted to at least hurt us so that we couldn't get away."

"Why would she let us run, only to kill us?"

"Maybe she didn't want to kill everyone in my house. A lot of deaths would gain more attention than us, where she can simply make us disappear. Besides, it would ruin the house. If I'm dead, who knows who it will go to. She might be able to gain control of it and sell it."

Julia blinks, trying to keep her eyes clear of tears. "How can you be so calm? We almost got killed."

I shrug, "There's nothing we can do. We just have to do something to move forward. Do we run?"

As if on cue, a twig snaps. Julia shushes me and we duck behind the tree. We slowly peek out our heads to watch someone walk to the small fires still burning. They bend down and pick up a smoldering blouse, their face illuminated by the flames.

Marcia Quintana.

Did we really think we could escape her so easily?