Story #17 - On the Run

Hi! This week's story is sort of a cross between a spy parody and an action story. There's not a lot of dialogue in it, which I didn't intend on but is kind of funny considering last week's story. Oh, and interesting writer's insight about this story - sometimes the writer chooses the point of view, but sometimes the point of view chooses the writer. In this instance, it was the latter. I was going to write this in first person, but in the very first paragraph I realized that it wasn't going to work out, so I switched to third person. ;) Another fun fact - the main character was called Sarah the whole time I wrote this, but then I decided that Bella sounded more Italian and fit her better so I changed her name.

Title: On the Run
Warnings: car chase, shooting, but not really detailed or graphic or anything
Summary: It's time for one spy to make her escape.
Length: 2,300 words
Notes: Third person point of view, past tense. Genre is action and parody.

Enjoy! :) And again, thank you for all the comments, and I'd love to know what you think about this story, too!

On the Run

            The phone’s shrill call snatched Bella from dreams of a wonderful, warm tropical island where the ocean was made out of chocolate and no one was around for miles. It was a nice dream. If only she could get back to it.

            The phone rang again. Bella sighed, sat up a little, and reached for it. She had a feeling about who it would be. She picked up the phone on the forth ring.

            “Hello?” she said.

            “It’s me,” answered the deep, slightly lisping male voice that she’d been dreading to hear from. “They changed the tea party from three p.m. to noon. And they have your address.”

            Bella swore. They knew where she was staying! And three hours – that mean they should be halfway to her house by now, or even closer! “So soon?”

            “Yeah, well… er, the tea party was more high-tech and informed than we expected?”

            He could be really bad at spy talk sometimes. But hey, he was new to it, as far as she knew. They didn’t tell you much about your informant, not even his or her name, ostensibly for the sake of secrecy but really (Bella suspected) to make everyone seem like fools when they met up in cocktail parties.

But anyway. She suspected he was new to the job. But he wasn’t half bad, especially compared with her. When she first started, her alerts had been absolutely inane. One time she almost blew a colleague’s cover by shouting, “Code Red, double-o-seven, the suspect has left the room!” as her alert. Accurate as it may have been, it was too obviously espionage-related.

            So, supposedly a high tech tea party was random enough to seem innocuous. At least it wasn’t immediately recognizable, unless the enemy thought they were making some Alice in Wonderland reference. Which wasn’t a half bad idea, actually.

            “Okay, I’ve got to pick up the ingredients, then,” she said.

            She heard him chuckle over the phone. “I’ll try to keep them occupied.”

            “Thanks.” She quickly hung up and jumped out of bed. She had only a few hours before they would get here. She needed to be far away when they did.

            She’d been a little overzealous on this mission. It was the first one she’d had in ages, since she’d gotten shot that one time, and she was ready for some action after months of bed rest and then house arrest. But those months that had made her so bored had also made her rusty.

            Bella’s mission was to get some information on a possible terrorist group in France. It was supposedly a simple reconnaissance mission, but then she’d gotten lucky. She’d overheard enough to believe that they actually were a terrorist group. She’d just decided to report back when one she’d found a way into their headquarters. From there, it was the logical next step to steal their files.

            It reminded her of happy days spent stealing her boss’s staple removers and pens. That was when she’d first realized she’d have a talent for espionage. Well, supposedly that would just mean she had a talent for petty thievery. It was overhearing her boss planning to fire her and then quitting because she was fired that made Bella realize espionage was her thing.

            But anyway. She’d stolen the files and gotten out no problem. But then she’d made the mistake of deciding to set out tomorrow. She’d crashed in her safe house and had planned to wake up with plenty of time to make it across the border to Italy before the terrorist group even found out that their security had been compromised. But that was clearly not the case.

            “High tech tea party, my foot,” Bella muttered as she ran around the room, collecting everything she needed. Just some clothes, her spy gear (aka binoculars, a pen, a notepad, and gloves), and her shampoo. Being on a mission was no excuse for slacking in her appearance, especially if she had to use the whole femme fatale thing to get some information. Bella never had before, but she was sure she would some day. Hopefully.

            In just about ten minutes, she’d packed everything into one small briefcase. Times like these were when Bella was glad she’d always been a light packer. Even her more permanent home in Italy didn’t have much in it. A friend had once remarked that she “lived like someone on the run”. To which Bella had thoughtlessly replied, “That’s because I am.”

            At the time that was true – there had been a bit of a misunderstanding between the government and her spy branch involving the proper use of grappling hooks and security records, and she was staying out of sight until they got to the bottom of it.

            Anyway, her friend had just stared at her strangely until Bella realized her mistake. One didn’t admit that one was a fugitive in ordinary conversation. After a bit of awkward hemming and hawing, Bella’d had a moment of divine inspiration and said triumphantly, “A runner! That’s because I am a runner. Didn’t you say I lived like someone who likes to run?”

            So, yeah. Point being that she didn’t own much stuff, even after that grappling hook thing had gotten cleared up and she didn’t have to run anymore. And it was nice when she had to pack up real fast.

            Which reminded her – she had to pack up real fast because somehow the terrorist had found out about the missing files and were already on their way! Time to harness her wandering thoughts!

            She hurried out the front door, hiding the key in the super secret place that only fellow spies would think to look. Then she put the doormat back over the key so it was hidden from sight. Perfect.

            She picked up her briefcase and took one last look at the house. It was small and old and worn-down, but cozy. She’d miss it, and she’d miss France. Strange how she never managed to visit France unless she was on some sort of mission. Sometimes the mission was more of the relaxed kind, such as “make sure none of the French wine is poisoned.” Bella liked those kinds of missions, but she didn’t get them often.

            She lugged her briefcase to her car (a Ferrari, that was one of the good things about being a spy, you can really nice cars, even if you did get shot at sometimes) and put it in the trunk. She hesitated for a moment, biting her lip, and then out of force of long habit she opened up the secret compartment on the bottom of the trunk. Her briefcase didn’t really contain anything very important, but she was so used to hiding everything that she put in it the secret compartment anyway. Bella had a nagging feeling that the next time she flew on a commercial airplane, she’d be looking all around for a secret place to put her bag.

            That would be when she’d finally quit and start up a coffee shop of something. But first she needed to get away from the enemy.

            Bella had only been driving for about an hour when she gradually became aware of a car following her. It was hanging back but keeping carefully close to her, slowing when she slowed and speeding up when she sped up. Beyond that, she’d caught a glimpse of the guy in the driver’s seat and he was wearing sunglasses. And it was a cloudy day. If that didn’t scream, “SUSPICIOUS!” then she didn’t know what did.

            Bella tapped her fingers on the steering wheel and tried to keep cool. She accelerated a little, noting that the car behind her increased its speed too. It wasn’t making a move yet, though, which meant that the back up hadn’t come yet. That was good. She was actually pretty close to the border – maybe she could make it across before the others caught up.

            However, just as she’d thought that, she heard the sound of more revving engines. She glanced behind her and caught a glimpse of three guys wearing sunglasses and riding Vespas. Vespas? Really? You’d think these terrorists would have more class. Or at least subtlety.

            Bella shifted her Ferrari into what she’d termed Super Spy Gear and put the petal to the metal. She figured that now that the back up was here and the Vespas were out, it was time to pull out the big guns. Figuratively speaking.

            Or not, Bella thought ruefully as she heard a gunshot. The bullet pinged against the thankfully-bulletproof back window of her car. Bella swerved a bit, trying to avoid any other bullets. She really did not want to get shot again right now, and she didn’t really fancy getting into a car accident, either. Good thing these roads were deserted. Then again, if people had seem them they might’ve just thought there were staging the next sequel of Fast and Furious, set in France.

            Despite her swift maneuvers, she heard two more bullets hit her car and she could see that the enemy was catching up to her. This called for some serious action. Bella spent a few precious seconds rifling through the secret compartment next to the cup holders before she came up with her gun, a simple but accurate pistol. Then she realized that she didn’t particularly want to roll down the window to shoot at them, because then they’d have a better shot at her.

            Perhaps that’s what skylights were for. One hand still on the steering wheel, the other holding the pistol, Bella managed to open up the skylight and fire a few shots through it. Miraculously, one of them connected and one guy was thrown off his Vespa. One down, three to go.

            The sunglasses-wearing guy in the car was practically tailgating Bella by now. You’d think he’d heard of manners, but apparently he hadn’t. Bella resigned herself to some more reckless driving. She moved over to the other end of the road, and fired off a few more shots before the enemy had time to follow her. She got another one of the Vespa-riding guys. She watched dispassionately as he tumbled off the Vespa, the vehicle still running for a moment before falling to its side. Then she set her eyes to the road and tried to push the Ferrari just a bit faster. She could literally see the border now.

            But it was too late. The enemy’s car was directly behind her now, and it rammed into her hard enough to knock a lesser car’s bumper off. The Ferrari’s bumper held firm, but Bella heard a strange noise and realized with horror that the trunk had popped open. What kind of security was that? At least her secret compartment was safe.

            As she heard the incongruent sound of paper rustling in the wind on top of the sounds of revving engines and occasional gunshots, it occurred to Bella that she’ hadn’t put the files in the secret compartment. She’d only put her unimportant briefcase in the compartment, the files she’d just stuffed in the trunk.

            Man. Bella glanced back quickly to see that her worst fears confirmed – the rustling papers were the top secret files that she’d gone to all the trouble to steal.

            Well, that was annoying. The good thing was that it got the terrorists off her back. The one that had rammed her trunk open with his undamaged, possibly-made-of-diamond car threw on his brakes and jumped out of the car. The remaining guy on the Vespa followed the other guy’s lead and jumped onto the road. Both of them ran around trying to gather the files, which were flying around in the air Bella’s Ferrari blew as it sped away from it all.

            They were still trying to get all the papers when Bella breezed across the border and made it into Italy. Her grip loosened fractionally on the steering wheel. She was safe here, and it looked like the enemy had no more interest in chasing after her, anyway. They had what they wanted, and they thought that she didn’t.

            That’s where they were wrong, Bella thought with a smirk. She dialed her informant’s number as she drove further away from the scene of the car chase. Spies could get away with driving while talking on the cell phone, especially when they had important things to tell people.

            “Hello?” answered the lisping, deep voice of her informant.

            “Hey,” Bella responded. “It’s me.”

            “Thank God! Er, I mean – how’d the tea party go? I’m sorry, I couldn’t distract them at all. They were really insistent on getting there by noon.”

            “They got there earlier than noon, actually, but I was almost ready by then. Here’s the best part, though – you know the, er, cup that I stole from them that they really wanted back?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Well, they got it back. It fell out of my, um, cupboard.”

            “Shoot!”

            “No, no, it’s okay. Because, y’see, I had already… faxed the cup to my friends.”

            “…You can’t fax a teacup.”

            Bella smiled. “Yeah, well, I couldn’t think of an analogy. Let’s not ruin this Alice in Wonderland reference thing we’ve got going on, mm’kay?”

            “We don’t have an Alice in Wonderland thing going on,” he protested.

            “That’s what you think.”

            “Anyway. Your friends have the teacup, then? In faxed form? And the people who were coming over for tea have it too, but they don’t know that your friends have it?”

            She thought that summed it up pretty well. We’ve got the files, they’ve got the files, but they don’t know that we’ve got them. “Exactly.”

            He whistled. “I don’t know how you always manage to pull this off, but I’m starting to see why people call you the best accidental sp – I mean, tea party hostess – of our generation.”

            Bella grinned. “Aw, don’t flatter me. My tea’s not that good.”

            THE END! J