Sasha, Not Aleks

thirteen - chase

SASHA

Cora beats me down the tree and the second her legs hit the ground she's sprinting. I waste no time catching up, a light feeling in my body that I can only blame on adrenaline.

I keep my eyes on her, long legs, pockets full of tools, forearms that could strangle God.

I keep my eyes on her until the back of her head goes blue and I whip my head back only to spot a cop car on our tail.

"Sash!" She grabs my hand and pulls me down an alley. I'm not anywhere near good at running terrain, nor parkour, but somehow jumping fences is easy as shit when you're running from the cops.

"Have you ever done this before?" She shouts back to me.

"No, you?"

"Tons!"

"What?" I shout, letting her pull me through someones fucking back yard.

"You're telling me you're in the mob and you've never run from the cops?" She slams her back against the bricks against the side of a building, pulling me with her behind a dumpster. My foot hits a rock and I stumble forward, forearms on the brick behind her head, body against hers, reminding me again that she's hot enough to be personally crippling. Far past that benchmark, actually.

The lights from the cop cars flash past the alley but I'm very distracted, staring at the honey of her lips just a few centimeters from mine.

"Okay, where did you park?" She ask, quietly, placing a hand on my hip and pushing me to the side, looking out past the dumpster just in time for a police car to pull head first into the alley.

"Fuck," she grabs my arm and takes off, yanking me behind her.

"I'm parked three blocks over," I manage, letting her lead me away from the cops.

"Good, thanks," she pulls me left, around another series of dumpsters, and then around the back of a shop that smells violently of weed.

She glances back at me, flush on her cheeks from excitement, "tell me your car blends in."

I point down an open street to a little parking lot, "it's a second hand pickup, it's fine."

"Good," she slows to a walk behind another group of people, looking behind us at the cop car coming down the road.

I force my shoulders to relax, hoping I'm blending in with the college kids in front of us. She takes my hand and starts swinging it, grip far too tight.

The cop passes us.

She relaxes her grip on my hand but doesn't let it go until the cop turns the corner.

"We should've probably worn face masks or something," I lean over and say it close to her head so she's the only one that hears, my lips moving against her ear.

"Now we know for next time."

"Next time?"

"Well, yeah, we're going back. What do you think in the decoy room set off the alarm?"

I shrug, "maybe the latch. That's my best guess and it allowed for the most time. Because it wasn't shutting down the circuit boards, that would've meant that the cops would've been there much faster, so the earliest thing we did other than walking around was mess with the latch."

She nods, taking in that information and letting me walk toward the truck on the other side of the road. A cop turns the corner, still driving slowly.

"Fuck, Sash," she looks up at me and I yank the door open to the truck, hiding us from view and pushing her back into the passenger seat so when the cop passes he can only see my back. She's watching over my shoulder, breath coming out in short puffs against my neck.