Errand Runners

Chapter 12 - Part 2

They darted straight for the ladder, not daring to look back at the Enforcers, who were shouting after them to freeze and put their arms up. Once Nole was going down the ladder after Olivia, he could see that the Enforcers weren’t even following them. The female one was calling someone on her radio, while the male one was watching them escape. They’re rookies after all.

After getting down to the ground, they ran north, further away from the army of Enforcers stationed in and around the Square. Once they had sprinted four full blocks, they stopped to take a breather in an empty alleyway.

“We need to lay low,” Olivia suggested in between gasps.

“Oh, so now you have something to say?” Nole spat, regaining a regular breathing rhythm. Clearly embarrassed by her behavior on the rooftop, she avoided his eyes.

Their time of recovery was short-lived thanks to the blaring sirens going off around them. “What? They didn’t even see my face.” He looked around the corner for incoming vehicles.

“They didn’t have to,” Olivia stated. “You being there was confirmation enough.”

He snorted in response. So was it the Enforcer’s who tore the place apart? They were looking for me, but how did they know I lived there?

The deafening sirens made thinking impossible. “We have to hide for now,” Olivia said, taking the words right out of his mouth. Moving deeper into the empty alley, they avoided the main roads for fear of being seen. They discovered an elevated ladder going to the roof of another building. Nole boosted Olivia to pull it down, and they climbed to the abandoned area. “This should be a good place to hide out temporarily until things cool down.”

“Yeah,” Nole agreed. Now that they were off the streets, they could analyze the happenings without interruption.

“I’m sorry about what happened back there,” Olivia apologized. When she didn’t offer an explanation, Nole stared at her expectantly. Her long braid had come undone with all the running, and loose strands of her remaining ponytail stuck to her shoulders. Bunching them together, she untangled her hair with her fingers.

Nole sighed. “You always do that when you’re nervous,” he mentioned, not taking his eyes off her. Olivia’s fingers froze, immediately recognizing her tell. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were afraid of those Enforcers.”

When he saw her shoulders stiffen, he knew he’d hit the nail on the head. She took a deep breath and folded her hands in her lap. “I just don’t like their guns,” she explained curtly.

“You were fine at the press conference. There had to have been around twenty armed Enforcers there.”

“They weren’t readying an attack,” she defended. “The way they were shouting at us at the rooftop,” she paused, “I thought they’d drawn guns on us.”

Nole could tell the conversation was making her uncomfortable. It was clear she was referring to a sensitive issue, so he didn’t press her for more. But still, the fact that she didn’t like guns, and yet offered to assist the most wanted guy in Nova City, was a little contradictory considering all of the Enforcers that would be looking for him. Could it have something to do with what happened to her brother? He didn’t want to ask, and to be honest, he wasn’t sure if she’d be willing to answer such a question, but Nole had a feeling that her issue with Enforcers was rooted from her brother’s death.

The sirens were still going off around the city, but they were more scattered now. They hadn’t gotten a fix on their location, yet. Waiting it out would be the only way to continue the search unperturbed.

Olivia dropped her bag on the gravel surface of the roof and sat down beside it. Nole, too, rested on the tiny rocks, dipping his finger in the gray dust. It had been nearly two hours since the press conference and they still hadn’t made any progress. If anything, more questions were posed. Nole wanted to know who trashed the library rooftop and how the Enforcers knew he'd lived there. At first he’d assumed they initially searched the roof because his shouting at Olivia had drawn them, but after they made the call for so many Enforcer vehicles to find them, they must have known it was a high profile criminal. In other words, they knew it was Nole on the rooftop because they somehow found out it was his home.

The idea itself was improbable to Nole. There weren’t any obvious indicators among their belongings that could have hinted at Nole’s living there. They didn’t own any family photos and their names weren’t on any of their belongings. After going to so much trouble to keep their whereabouts a secret from potential gang threats, their location had been easily discovered by the city’s law enforcement.

Once he’d reached a dead end in his deduction, he put the speculation to rest and focused on the next step of his search. His options were dwindling with every day of the manhunt to apprehend him, and he was bound to run out of luck eventually.

He glanced at Olivia, who was now braiding her hair once again. If they identified me at the rooftop, then that means they saw Olivia too. Would they think she’s an accomplice? Whatever the Enforcers presumed her connection to Nole was, it didn’t seem to bother her.

He was staring at her for so long, that when her eyes drifted up, they made eye contact. Nole embarrassingly looked away before she spoke up. “Can they pin it on you?” she asked. “The murder.”

“My fingerprints are all over the shack, so probably,” he answered, still looking away.

“So if they catch you, it’s all over,” she concluded, tying the end of her braid off with one of the elastics wrapped around her wrist. Her words didn’t surprise him. He’d made the same connection days before. He must have put on a glum expression after she spoke, because she immediately changed the subject. “You never told me how you learned to fight.”

The question caught him off guard. It was only natural for her to ask since he had done the same earlier, but still, he hadn’t anticipated it.

“It was,” he paused, thinking back to that time, “my dad.”