I stared at the man for one beat, two, three, making sure he was dead. When he didn’t move, I turned my attention to Mia. As soon as her chair had connected with the man’s head, she had lost her balance. Now, she was laying on her side with her hands still strapped to the armrests.

“Are you okay?” I asked, pulling on the knot and freeing one hand and then the other. The hitman had no clue how to tie an effective knot.

As soon as her hands were free, she threw her arms around my neck. “You saved me, Jack. Thank you.”

I patted her on the back, strangely uncomfortable with the physical contact, even though we’d been naked on the kitchen floor only a few hours before.

“You actually saved me,” I said. “If you hadn’t hit him with that chair, I’d be the one rotting on the dining room floor.”

She looked at the man and then closed her eyes and turning her head away. “I feel so bad for the people who live here. By the time they get back from their cruise in two weeks, he will smell so bad.”

“We’ll call in an anonymous tip or something,” I said. “It will be taken care of.”

She nodded, and I was surprised by how easily I was able to quiet her fears. We were a long way from where we’d been that morning. She’d wanted to split up, go our separate ways and fend for ourselves. But now, Mia trusted me.

“What do we do now?” she asked. “We never come up with a plan last night.”

She was right. We’d been very distracted, and now we were in the same place we’d been in the night before. “My only thought is that we have to get out of the city. I’m not exactly sure how we’d do that, but…”

Mia interrupted me with a slight raise of her hand. “I know we talked about staying close to the crowds and blending in, but I think we’d be better to go now.”

“It’s not even dawn,” I said, looking through a crack in the curtains to the dark sky beyond. The only light came from a street light in front of the house.

Mia nodded. “I know, and I think that can work to our benefit. There won’t be as many officers manning the barricades, if the barricades are even still up, and we can claim a family or medical emergency. They’ll let us through and we will be a lot less likely to be spotted and recognized by any pedestrians or officers.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about venturing outside at such an odd hour, but Mia had always been the better planner. As long as I remained in control of the details, her plan could work.

“All right,” I said, stepping over the man’s body and the blood pool around him and heading back into the living room. “So, we spent the next thirty minutes cleaning up and getting ready, and then we are out of here. We should be able to steal a car nearby, and since it is so early, we’ll be a couple hours away before anyone notices it is gone.”

“That all sounds great, but before I do anything else, I have to shower,” Mia said. “It shouldn’t take more than ten minutes, but I feel disgusting.”

The thought of Mia, naked and soaking wet made me want to throw out our hastily constructed plan and follow her into the bathroom, but I knew I needed to focus. I’d allowed my emotions to run away with me the night before. One of us should have been on watch while the other slept, but I’d allowed myself to let my guard down. I couldn’t do that again. Clearly, our location was compromised, so we needed to spend as little time at the house as possible and remain vigilant the entire time.

“Be quick,” I said. “it isn’t safe here anymore.”

Mia hadn’t been lying. Almost exactly ten minutes later she walked out of the steaming bathroom with her wet hair twisted into a single braid that hung over her left shoulder and her cheeks flushed pink from the hot water.

“You finished everything,” Mia said, looking around the living room with her mouth hanging open.

During the ten minutes she’d been showering, I folded up all of the blankets from our pallet on the floor, packed both of our bags, gathered some basic non-perishables and water bottles from the kitchen, and wiped down every hard surface I could find to avoid leaving any fingerprints or obvious DNA.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

Mia didn’t answer, but instead crossed the living room until she was standing in front of me, stretched up onto her tip-toes, and pressed her warm lips to mine. “I’m ready whenever you are.”

So, with the sun just beginning to color the dark Eastern horizon, we left the house we’d called home for the night and walked into the crisp Autumn morning. The only sounds came from a few long-lasting Mardi Gras parties happening at various homes. Drunken shouts and group laughter filtered through open windows, and I wished I could join them. I wished my life could be so uncomplicated that I could sit around and drink with friends. Or have sex with a woman without worrying about being murdered while I was cuming.

I’d put myself in all of this mess. Even before everything had gone South at the parade, I’d made the choice to become a hitman. I’d allowed my life to take a nosedive into organized crime, and now I was paying the price. No matter how much I wanted to deny it, being hunted down this way was justice for all the things I’d done.

“Hey,” Mia said, her fingers tickling the inside of my elbow. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” I said quickly.

“You just looked a little upset.”

I shook my head. “Just thinking. Trying to plan out our next move.”

Over the course of the next few blocks, it was obvious the police presence had died down significantly since that morning. We only saw one police car, and the officer drove right past us without slowing down or stopping. When we came to a small black sedan parked along the side of a deserted road, I gestured towards it and Mia nodded in agreement.

It was easy enough to slip the window down, unlock the door, and then hotwire the car. Mia climbed into the passenger seat, and we took off before our luck ran out and someone noticed us.

“What do we tell the officers if we get stopped at one of the barricades?” Mia asked.

I’d been thinking about that same question myself, trying to decide how we could talk our way out of suspicion, but just as she finished asking the question, I noticed a roadblock sitting at the side of the road, partway in the grass. I slowed down and looked around, but didn’t see a police car or officer anywhere nearby.

“It doesn’t look like that will be a problem,” I said, amazed that our escape could be so easy. I’d expected at least a few officers to be posted up on the corners. An elected official had been assassinated, after all. But there was no one. We were out.

Mia bounced up and down in the passenger seat and clapped her hands once. “What are we going to do now? Honestly, I hadn’t expected us to make it past the barricades, so I hadn’t thought much about the next step.”

“I hadn’t either,” I said. Mia and I had agreed to stick together and help one another, but how long would the arrangement last? We were out of the cordoned-off area of the city and free to go anywhere we wanted, so were we going to continue traveling together or go it alone?

We were both quiet for a few minutes as I navigated the city’s grid and tried to figure out what we were going to do next. Then, I looked in the rear view mirror and noticed headlights behind me. It wasn’t immediately alarming—other people could be driving around the city, after all. But once I’d taken three random turns and returned to the same road I’d been on before, I knew we had a problem.

“We’re being followed,” I grumbled, my fingers tightening around the wheel.

Mia spun around in her seat and looked at the car. “Are you sure?”

I nodded. “Positive.”

She cursed and leaned forward to dig through her bag and pull out her gun. “Third one’s the charm, right?”

“I fucking hope so,” I said, turning left down a side street, hoping the car would continue on straight. But just as I’d expected, it took the left and began tailing us again.

She sighed. “I know a guy who might be able to help us.”

I glanced over at her and then back to the road. “Right now?”

“After,” she said. “Assuming we survive. He has a plane and does a lot of smuggling. Mostly stolen goods and drugs, but people in a pinch. And he owes me a favor.”

“You want to flee the country?” I asked, unconvinced.

“I have a stash of fake passports and IDs ready. As soon as I make a call, I can have a few ready for you, too. We can get out of the country, escape the hitmen. We could start over.”

I stared straight ahead at the road, trying to process what she was saying. We could start over. Together? She wanted us to flee the country together? We barely even knew each other. Plus, there was a solid chance she’d be sick of me within the week. I wasn’t built for any relationship, definitely not a long-term one. We’d escape to save ourselves, but end up killing one another, I was sure.

“We can talk about it,” Mia said quietly, turning to look out the passenger side window.

I felt bad for hurting her feelings, but it was all a bit much. “We just need to focus on getting rid of whoever is following us, and then we can get out of the city.”

“This doesn’t end when we leave the city!” Mia shouted. “We are being hunted for sport. We are the last two deer in a forest full of hunters. This will only end when both of us are dead.”

“Someone is feeling cheery today,” I said sarcastically.

Mia let out an annoyed huff. “I’m being realistic. If we don’t get out of the country and start over, we’re dead. My plan is the only valid option.”

“I’m not going to be pressured into a relationship,” I screamed, the emotional dam inside of me splitting wide. “I’m not going to run away with you and start a life with you. We don’t even know one another, Mia!”

“You son of a bitch,” she started to say before a car slammed into the driver’s side of the car and everything went dark.