Chapter 13

As I stood there in a pathetic stupor, the obnoxious squeal of air brakes pierced my ears. Twenty yards down the street, a city bus had pulled up at a stop. The doors creaked open and a pair of women in business slacks got off while an old lady with an umbrella and a cane waited to board.

Maggie's anti-telethesian potion had probably expired by now, and this neighborhood would be crawling with agents in a matter of minutes.

I bolted down the sidewalk. The slow granny had inched onto the bus, and I jumped in after her. She tapped her bus pass on the card reader next to the driver and it flashed green.

I, of course, was sans wallet. My bus pass was in the care of the MPD, along with my credit cards, driver's license, and a Starbucks gift card worth a whopping ten bucks.

Focusing on the bus driver, I stuck my arm out. The bus pass hallucination in my real hand tapped the reader, and I added an approving green light before shuffling toward the back of the bus. As I sank onto a seat across from the rear door, the bus accelerated away from the café.

Breathing slow and deep, I closed my eyes.

It hadn't gone to plan, but I'd done it. I'd escaped.

Well, sort of. There was the telethesian problem. All Agent Cutter had to do was find my trail at the bus stop and he could, in theory, track me forever. Imagine a predator—a bearded, plaid-adorned, axe-wielding predator—who could always find you. It was the ultimate "you can run, but you can't hide" situation.

It was almost as scary as the Predator predator.

I knew a few methods to slow down or throw off a telethesian, but they weren't all that convenient. My best shot was sticking to vehicular travel. Though it wouldn't obscure my psychic trail, it would hamper Agent Cutter's tracking progress.

The bus took me into the downtown core where I switched to another. After a few blocks, I got off and grabbed another one headed in a different direction, each time using my bus pass hallucination to board.

One more bus change and I found myself heading into a coastal suburb called Deep Cove that had a sleepy, Hallmark vibe to it. The sun had set and the streets were quiet.

Not good. Not good at all.

Don't get me wrong; I desperately wanted to buy an artisanal donut, get some organic kombucha, and book a week-long stay at a cozy bed and breakfast. But if I rounded up all the people I could see on the street, I wouldn't be able to field an entire baseball team, and that was a problem, because mixing in with a crowd was another way to muddy a telethesian's tracking.

But taking this bus back into the crowded downtown core, where Lienna, Agent Cutter, and any number of other agents would be tracking my wacky bus trail, wasn't smart either.

The thought of Lienna desperately chasing me across the Greater Vancouver area set off a pang of guilt in my gut that hit much harder than I'd expected. I didn't want to think about her reaction when she realized I'd tricked her—her shock, disappointment, shame, and vindicated loathing for the traitorous, untrustworthy crook. She'd vouched for me. She'd offered to take care of my most precious belongings. She'd given me an evening out of my jail cell, and it'd been the most pleasant night I'd had in recent memory—even before my arrest.

On top of the emotional slap to the face I'd given her, Captain Blythe wasn't the forgiving type. When Lienna returned to the precinct without me, Blythe could and probably would extract a career-destroying punishment from the rookie agent.

I clenched my jaw. Guilt pangs or not, neither Lienna's feelings nor her career ranked as high on my priority list as my life.

Standing, I pressed the "next stop" button on the pole beside my seat. The bus doors opened, and I hopped onto the sidewalk. I wasn't sure what time it was—I didn't have a watch or a phone—but my best guess was after ten p.m., which meant most businesses were closed.

Choosing a random direction, I started walking. As I rounded a corner, the sidewalk declined steeply toward the town center: a cutesy row of coffee shops and clothing boutiques. All closed. Apparently, Deep Cove wasn't a "lively nightlife" sort of place.

Near the end of the street was a small hotel with a French restaurant on the first floor. Behind the hotel, a pier stuck out into the town's eponymous cove, and a couple dozen boats were docked alongside it.

Jackpot.

The best way to elude a telethesian: water. Taking a long shower wouldn't hide me from Agent Jack Cutter, but taking a boat out onto the ocean would sever my trail. It was the only sure-fire way to escape those pesky, mythical bloodhounds—well, aside from jumping on an airplane, but I didn't have any of those handy.

I entered the hotel lobby, painted almost entirely in a pastel blue color. To match the ocean, I guess. The receptionist, a guy in his mid-thirties with spiky, bleach-blond hair and bags under his crazed-looking eyes, greeted me.

"Hey, man!" he said with jittery excitement. "How can I help you?"

"I'm just looking for a restroom."

The receptionist nodded with the same vigor as a mechanical paint shaker. "Yeah, man. We definitely have one of those."

He snatched up an energy drink from behind the counter, downed the whole thing, crushed the can in his fist, and tossed it over his shoulder. Holy balls. This guy was so damn caffeinated his heartbeat probably sounded like a hummingbird's.

"Bathroom?" I prompted.

"Right! Right, right, right." He twisted his arm to point down a hallway. "Head on down there, man. Third door on your right. No, fourth." He twitched a bit. "No, third."

"I'll figure it out."

Sure enough, three doors down on the right was the men's bathroom. Inside, I headed straight to the garbage can—one of those metal ones built directly into the wall. Lucky for me, it had a bag in it.

I carefully removed the black plastic bag, doing my best not to rip it, then dumped its contents back into the empty bin and turned it inside out. After picking all the tissues and gum off the bag, I crumpled it up, jammed it in my jacket pocket, and washed my hands.

I gave the chemical-powered receptionist a quick wave as I exited the hotel. Outside, I opted to head around the rear of the building instead of returning to the street. The more twists and turns I could take, the better. I passed through a small community playground—crossing the monkey bars like a pro, just for good measure—and headed down toward the marina. Keeping my ears alert for a raging smart car engine, I approached a big barred gate with a "Yacht Club" sign on it.

What did they do in a Yacht Club, exactly? Pondering the possibilities—Yacht-based mock sea battles? If so, sign me up—I scaled the gate and dropped down on the other side. The marina appeared abandoned, and if anyone spotted me, well, I wasn't too worried.

I ambled down the pier, checking left and right. Sailing a yacht was well outside my skill set, but just maybe… aha!

Moored in a corner and bumping against a post with each ripple of water was a little tin can of a boat, probably used to grab shit people dropped in the ocean or something. A small outboard motor was attached to the back, but more importantly, a pair of wooden oars lay in the bottom.

I climbed down, wrangled the mooring rope free, and shoved away from the pier. Grabbing the oars, I got in position.

"Row, row, row your boat, heading straight to sea," I sang under my breath as the oars dipped into the dark water. "Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, escape the MPD."

Ten minutes later, I was breathing hard and my arms were burning in a nice, "good workout" kind of way. That would soon deteriorate to a "this is hell" kind of burn, but I'd enjoy it while it lasted.

The lights of Deep Cove shrank, then disappeared as I laboriously rowed my way out of the cove and into the inlet. It was hella dark out on the water, the cool wind nipping at my face and aching in my ears. Picking out the coastline, I followed it south.

When I could no longer make out any lights on my right, I angled the boat toward the coast. Pulling the oars in, I tugged the hotel garbage bag from my pocket. Then I stripped naked.

Yeah, completely naked. I took every shred of clothing I had on, bundled it up into the garbage bag, then tied it around my wrist, ensuring it was sealed tight. With a deep breath, I positioned myself at the edge of the boat.

I really wished this wasn't necessary, but I wasn't bringing any boat evidence to shore. Teeth clenched, I jumped overboard.

Holy sweet yeti on an icicle cracker! Cold! So very, very cold!

Icy water engulfed my head, and I popped back to the surface, feet kicking. My teeth were already chattering and my lungs had contracted to a quarter their normal size. It might have been early June, but nighttime ocean water in the Pacific Northwest could never be mistaken for warm.

Wondering if I'd lost my goddamn mind, I glanced back at the boat, but my enthusiastic leap had pushed it away, and it was drifting farther while I treaded water.

Well, nothing to do but swim.

I pushed into a one-armed breaststroke, doing my damnedest to keep my head and clothing bag above the salty ocean water. The feeling in my hands and feet had vanished and my motor skills were rapidly diminishing, but I powered toward the dark shore. Not that far.

I squinted ahead. Actually, it was a good bit farther than I'd intended. Shit.

Don't think about sharks, I told myself. Don't think about the creature from the black lagoon. Don't think about frostbitten genitalia or what the newspaper headlines will say when they find my frozen, fully nude cadaver, half-eaten by fish, washed up on the shore of Japan with a garbage bag full of clothes tied to my wrist.

Think positive. This wasn't even the coldest I'd ever been. Crazy, right?

When I was thirteen, Douchebag Dwayne, the worst foster parent of all time, took me to basketball practice at my junior high school. He insisted I play, not because I was good or he had any love for the game, but because the other parents were perfect customers for the illegal lottery tickets he was selling.

While Dwayne tried to auction off scratch-and-wins, I pocketed the cash I'd stolen from his wallet, snuck out the back door, and took off into the night. Two problems immediately arose: my internal GPS failing me, and Dwayne failing to provide his foster son with a winter coat despite Canadian winters averaging roughly a billion degrees below zero.

So I ended up lost in a blizzard for over an hour without a proper jacket.

As I kicked my bare legs in the hypothermic water, I hoped this freezing cold experience turned out better. My thirteen-year-old self did survive. I even made it to the bus station, but the ticket kiosk lady pegged me for a runaway and, instead of selling me a ticket, called the cops.

I ended up right back where I began: in a bedroom with three other foster kids, wishing I was free. Thanks, kiosk lady.

My arm caught on a frond of slimy seaweed and I cringed. Kicking harder, I sliced a path through the marine vegetation. When my hand contacted another surface, it was the rocky bottom. Thank god.

I got my legs under me, only to realize my feet were entirely numb. After a few missteps, I waded out of the water and collapsed on a grassy patch at the tree line, puffing for air through violent shivers. My fingers were so frozen that untying the garbage bag from my wrist was impossible. I ripped it open and yanked out my clothes, which were, by some miracle, still dry.

Once I was dressed and my extremities had begun to warm up, pins and needles assaulted my nerves. I balled my hands into fists and shook my legs out, trying to drive the blood back into my veins, all the while gauging the surrounding landscape.

I was at the bottom of a hill, which was just awesome. A good ol' uphill stroll was exactly what I needed right now. Ugh.

Once the burning sensation in my feet subsided, I started my trek toward civilization. Back toward the city and crowds of people and, undoubtedly, back toward danger. But also, I hoped, toward freedom.