I was pausing one more time by the side of the road, recapping my awful last few days.

My life was pretty much a success. I had a wonderful rich boyfriend, who let me paint as I wished in our penthouse apartment near central park.

For the first time in my life, I didn’t have to worry about paying rent, dragging my feet to work or even if I would have enough food to last the week, that is, until four days ago, when I saw a message on our answering machine when coming back from a walk.

“Hi Julie, it’s Brian. Listen, I have been lying to you. I am not a sales representative for an insurance company. I am a drug broker. I charter boats full of marijuana out of the Caribbean and I just fucked up, massively. I lost a boat, a whole boat. I think it was pirates, I don’t know. Your life is in danger. You’ll find in the guestroom a small box with a little black book in it. Read the book and destroy this tape. I love you”

I couldn’t believe my ears until I did find the box, with the book, around $5,000 in various bills, a fake id and a passport with my picture on it for a certain Alex Kelly.

I started reading the little book. “Hi, if I told you to read this book, I am in deep trouble and your life is in danger. I might or might not have told you I was a drug broker. I don’t take drugs; I don’t sell it to junkies. I just buy it from foreign countries and sell it to organized in the USA. Rest assured that I do love you, and I don’t want to see you hurt.

I have selected a few places where you can hide when I try to sort things out. I never visited them myself and made sure to forget about them, so I cannot endanger you even if tortured. I will e-mail you at your gmail address if I am ever safe. Wait until I give you the pass-phrase on the last page of this book before you contact me. If I die, my lawyer will e-mail you instructions. He will know the pass-phrase.

Do not take anything personal with you including your old ids and bank cards. Destroy any pictures of you from the apartment, including anything linking to you such as your paintings. Do not waste too much time, do it in the next hour or so, time is of the essence.

Then, take a bus to one of the destination and from there; buy a bicycle and some food to make your way to the safe house. Do not buy a car or take a cab. These leave a trace.

The rest were general tips on how to keep a low profile. I packed a backpack with what I absolutely needed and shoved the answering machine tape, my paintings and all our pictures in the lit fireplace.

I did a quick sweep of the apartment to leave as little evidence as possible of my existence other than the clothes and shoes I left behind.

I took my id, bank and credits cards with me in a little bag, after cutting them into pieces to throw them in a garbage can outside the apartment, in a park or something.

I ran outside, leaving by jumping on the roof of the building next door as I had been instructed, and discovered that two men were already watching the front door of our building in a black car, most likely checking our apartment.

I was scared and adrenaline was pumping thru my veins. I took the subway to the bus terminal, and in transit, picked one of the safe houses at random.

When I saw that I had to cross almost all of the east coast all the way down to Florida, I seriously thought about changing location but I thought the sun could help me wait until Brian sorted out his life.

The various bus changes over the next 2 days didn’t help me, nor was the arrival late in the night, so I picked a small cheesy hotel I could pay cash and fell asleep as my head touched the pillow.

Series Navigation

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