On The Run: Part Two

Chapter Twenty-Six - "The Haunted Hunted"

Chloe

I was running. I have no idea why.

I peered behind me, and no one seemed to be chasing me, but I knew I needed to keep running.

My heart was racing and sweat was starting to pool around my neckline, even though the cold was so intense, it was biting my face.

The streets seemed way too empty for a Saturday evening, and since there was no one to show me reason, I kept running.

As I rounded the corner, I tripped over something and fell flat on my face. Blood seeped out of a smarting cut on my forehead as I tried to get up. I whimpered.

My stomach dropped as I turned to see what had caused the trip.

There was a person lying in the street. My first instinct was to let out a scream, but for some reason, I couldn't. I crawled over on my hands and knees and peered at the face. It took a while for my vision to clear and for the face to come into full view.

Only then, did I find my scream. I let it out loud and clear into the dead of the night.

It was Sarah - and she was, as far as I could tell, dead. Her clothes were ripped and she was bleeding nearly everywhere.     

I heard footsteps and looked up; there was a man - more like a shadow really - running away in the opposite direction.

I was torn between running after him and staying with Sarah.

Again, and I don't know why, I screamed. Loud and clear, into the dark, cold, empty night.

And it still wasn't loud enough.

That dream haunted me all day long. I was still thinking about it as I sat in the corner of a Starbucks, with my head buried in my history textbook.

Sarah had run in that morning, gun in hand as usual, and had shaken me awake from the nightmare. She tried to get me to talk about it, but this, I would not be open and honest about. There was nothing I could do to change the past, but I could prevent it from haunting somebody else. I'd mumbled something about Robert and she seemed to buy it. At the expense of her guilt, of course.

I just couldn't win.

I could still see everything so vividly, I felt like screaming right then in that back corner of Starbucks. But of course, I wouldn't.

I looked up from the swimming words.

I saw Jake Finchley, the cop, standing at the cash register. He seemed to spot me at the same time, and he waved.

I smiled. I liked him. He just seemed like the kind of person you couldn't not like. Slowly, he picked up his cup of coffee and walked over.

"Hey," he said, grinning.

It was contagious; I couldn't help it, "Hi."

"Been seeing you everywhere," he said.

I frowned confused for a second, and then it came to me. The magazines. I gave him a wry smile. It had been two days since the tabloids had caught wind of me and it was a little alarming to see how fast news spread. Even weirder was to see my face in the pages of magazines I'd always found so ridiculously pointless.

'Governor's Grandaughter: Revealed.'

'Meet the Barronesses.'

'Love child or wedlock?'