She draws the gun from the holster with a single harsh pull.
“I believe it’s goodbye after all,” she says silently. “But we’ll see each other again.”
And with that, she removes herself and walks away. Past Hedda without a glance, bumping slightly into her shoulder in a way that revokes my earlier impression.
Hedda waits until Avery is gone long enough.
“You will stay here,” she says. “Wouldn’t open the door until bomb squad arrives.”
With that, she is gone, and she mounts a lock to the handle of the glass door, with a box attached.
“Fuck,” I groan out.
5
AVERY
PLAYLIST: SONG 2 (2012 REMASTER) – BLUR
“You should be grateful for my little rescue,” Hedda tells me as our feet touch the concrete floor of the elevator shaft, and I remove the hook and grab the box with the hat that fell all the way down when that stupid agent shot after me.
I say nothing to Hedda. Her smell reminds me of what happened, and I am one second away from shooting her right here, right now. But if I do, Shaw will know it was me, and I am not going to add murder to my rather extensive catalog of rule-breaking.
No.
I will kill Hedda in a moment when she doesn’t see it coming. Right after, I made her life a living hell.
I slip into the hole in the ground and into the sewage, crawl through it, and twenty minutes later, we walk out of the underground of New York back into the streets.
“The hat,” Hedda says and holds out a hand.
“When I got the letter out,” I say. “Let’s get to my studio.”
The way to my studio is only a few minutes, but I take several detours, first and foremost to evade CCTV detection so no one can follow me to my home. I also need the time to figure out howto ditch Hedda, because she can’t have the hat. I need it, and she can’t have it.
It is that moment that I am pushed forward. I smash onto the ground and spin in an instant. I grab for the gun I took from Shaw. But it is gone.
Because Hedda is that good.
She took it from me in a moment of distraction.
Fucking bitch.
She smiles from above at me.
“You don’t mess with me, kiddo,” she says in her arrogant tone.
She grabs the hat, hits me full in the face with the gun.
The street lights blur with the night sky, and I can’t fully distinguish the world.
But I need to get up and away before anyone finds me.
Sirens blare from far away.
I slip around a corner and another into a rare, small cobblestone alley between red brick wall houses with their black fire ladders in front. It’s dark, and no one is to be seen.
I crouch into an entrance and breathe.
