A Girl Named Digit by Annabel Monaghan Page B

killed in solitude.
    We crossed Columbus Avenue against the light and were nearly flattened by a downtown bus. The taxi driver was gaining on us, mainly because he was not schlepping luggage and was sporting slightly more sensible shoes. As we got closer to Central Park West, the streets were getting quieter and the taxi driver was getting closer. We would have been better off staying on the busier two-way streets where we could have ducked into restaurants or subway stations, but John was leading me, and I knew that wasn’t how he wanted this to end. As it was, we were running down a fancier part of Eighty-fourth Street, quiet and tree-lined, toward Central Park. Which would be deserted.
    The street was so quiet that I could hear the taxi driver’s phone ring behind us. He must have looked down to answer it, because he missed John pushing me between two parked vans and flattening me face-down in the street.
    I looked up in time to see the driver’s feet run by in hot pursuit. Very Scooby-Doo, right? All I needed now was a sarcophagus to hide in and a really big sandwich. Silently, John pulled me up again and dragged me through an alley to Eighty-third Street. “We have about thirty seconds to get in another cab and get the hell out of here before he backtracks. Move!” We ran like mad into a crowd on Amsterdam Avenue. A taxi was waiting for a lady with two little kids who was struggling to fold up her stroller, keep the kids off the street, and send a text. We slipped into the other side of the taxi, John threw a fifty into the front seat, and we sped off before she could hit Send.
    “Where to?”
    “Please drive all the way downtown. In fact, take us to Brooklyn.” He turned to me. “Are you okay?”
    Since I didn’t know the answer to that question specifically, I just started to ramble. “My arm hurts, and I might have a blister on my left toe because I put my socks on wrong, but that was good that you had me change my shoes or I’d be dead. Did that guy want to kill me or get the bag or both? What’s in this bag, and how did you know that guy was going to try to kill us?”
And, believe it or not, I’m a little disappointed because I really thought you were going to kiss me in that cab while we zoomed along the Hudson River with no one but the city lights watching us.
    “Let me look at your arm.” I took off my suit jacket, and he gently poked the newly forming bruise on my left arm. “It’s going to be an ugly bruise, but it’s nothing to worry about. And I don’t know why you thought I was going to kiss you.”
Hello?! Internal dialogue? Can you hear me now?!
“I think you can see now how important the job is that I’ve been given. I am responsible for keeping you alive. And I nearly failed a few minutes ago. You are my charge, and I am an agent. I am an adult, and you are a minor. I could get fired or arrested, or worse. I am not going to kiss you. Clear?” He was all business; I was mortified.
    “What’s in Brooklyn?” My survival instincts told me I’d have to change the subject before I spontaneously combusted.
    “Nothing. I just want to get away. This guy’s okay,” he said, motioning at the driver. “But that last guy was talking into his cell phone in a rare dialect of Russian, and he was speaking very cryptically. These past few days, you must have turned me into some sort of code cracker. He was checking in with someone and told them that he had us and that, yes, we had bags with us. He confirmed that he’d dispose of us and our belongings.”
    “He didn’t want the diaper bag?”
    “No, I think that guy was just out to kill you.”
    I looked out the window at the city lights as we zoomed back down the West Side Highway. No kiss, almost dead, and fully mortified. What a day. I wondered why I didn’t feel worse. There was something so exhilarating about this whole experience, sore arm and hurt pride included. It was as if for the first time, I was fully engaged in life. The