No Escape

6.12.21

Genre: Suspense
Action: Hailing a taxi
Word: Bubblegum
Word Count: 100

No Escape

Instinctively, his nerves fired a five-alarm siren. His cover was blown.

Protocol required proof. The predetermined signal: bubblegum affixed beneath a Central Park bench.

Irrefutable, his fingers groped the hardened plastic clump.

Before escaping to Montauk where a boat would transport him to an island safehouse somewhere in the Atlantic, he had to say goodbye.

The taxi dropped him off at her brownstone on the Upper West Side. Upon entering, he cringed seeing her gagged and bound. Before he could fight, a burlap sack stifled his cries, his limbs immobilized by zip ties.

The boat would have to wait.