The Jolene and Isabelle Chronicles

A Getaway to Get Away... From the Police

"ISABELLE CARTIER, THE HOUSE IS SURROUNDED. COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP!"

Jolene bolts awake beside me.

She stares at me in disbelief.

"You're still here."

I nod.

"I'm not going to leave you behind again."

"WE KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE MS. CARTIER. COME OUT NOW OR WE'LL BE COMING IN."

"We'll see about that," I mutter as I pick up my phone and press the self-destruct button for the house.

"What did you just do?" Jolene asks.

"This building will self-destruct in five minutes," says a computer voice.

"They can't catch us if they think we're dead."

We get up and calmly make our way to the living room. I have an emergency bag packed already in the basement and I stored all the jewels I have stolen in a case near it. I didn't want to leave so soon, but I wasn't going to let the cops catch me because I wasn't prepared. Where's the fun in that?

Jolene grabs her clothes and follows me as I lead her into the basement. The basement is attached to a network of caves and tunnels I constructed in case of an emergency like this one. When the house self-destructs, the rubble from the explosion will cover the caves. I also set up explosives near the entrance of the caves to make sure no one would find anything. I rigged the self-destruct sequence to cover up my coverup on purpose.

"This building will self-destruct in three minutes," says my cousin, the computer voice. It's a little joke I like to tell myself since I am a very realistic android. The real Isabelle Cartier built me before she died. She gave me her name and all of her memories in the hopes that I could steal jewels for her while she went back to Jolene. She died before she ever saw Jolene again.

I grab my emergency bag and the jewels and I urge Jolene to go into the caves. Once she's inside, I follow and blow the entrance up behind me so the police can't find our escape route.

We walk until the blast from my house self-destructing shakes the ground beneath our feet. The real Isabelle built stabilizers into my legs, so I don't fall but Jolene does. I help her up. She says nothing about my ability to balance while things are exploding. It seems she's more concerned with other matters.

"How did they figure out it was you who stole the gems from the museum?" she asks.

"I'm not sure. But now they think we're dead. We can slip away unnoticed."

"They'll comb the rubble looking for you."

I shrug, "by the time they finish digging we'll be long gone."

She stops dead in her tracks.

"Long gone? To where? Don't I get a say?"

"Not if they find out you slept over last night."

She checks her pockets, then she frantically checks them again.

"My phone..."

"It's okay."

I start walking again so she has no choice but to keep following me. It's not like she'd have much of a choice anyway since this is now a tunnel with only one true exit. I built a myriad of fake tunnels and fake exits to throw people off my scent. Every other exit I built will explode when someone tries to use it. A little bit heavy on the murder, sure, but that's what it takes to for a jewel thief be safe these days.

"They'll know I was with you."

"We're getting out of the city today."

"Where will we go?"