The Hitchhiker

The hot sun blared through the tinted windows of my glossy, black Rolls-Royce Phantom.
It was a perfect summer's day. The road was empty, the fields were covered in yellows and greens and the trees in the wood swayed in the gentle wind.

I slowed the car and turned into a discrete opening in the woods. The path was overgrown and bumpy and soon became to narrow for my car to squeeze through.

I sighed and began to manoeuvre my car out of the hidden track. As I struggled out of the hidden path, I could almost see the boss's look or grim disapproval and hear Cynthia's mocking voice calling out: 'Really Owen, I thought you were a spy!'

The temporary relief from the hot sun disappears and I curse myself for wearing such a heavy suit.

I begin to drive down the road again but a figure, standing at the edge of the road catches my question.

A hitchhiker, thumbing a lift.

I slow the car and with a couple of swift taps on the dashboard screen, I open the window and pull up beside the figure.

She was tall and slim, dressed in all black with dark, shoulder length hair that covered most of her face. She seemed oddly familiar but I shook the feeling away.

"Alright sir, mind if hop in?" She says, poking her head through the window.

I unlock the door and let her slip into the car.

"I'm Eleanor, by the way. Eleanor Figware." She says and sticks out her hand.

I reach over and hesitantly shake her dirty hand.
Alarms were going off in my head. It wasn't because of the fact that she looked so dirty she could've passed for a garden. Or she had an indistinct aroma surrounding her, like the metallicy scent of paint or quite possibly blood.
No. It was the name she used.

Eleanor Figware

It just so happened to be the fake name used by the most dangerous people in the whole world. A person who I just so happened to be tracking down.

But I had to play it cool. It was just a coincidence. But I was wary.

"This is a nice car you got here mate." She says, swinging her legs up onto the dashboard. Her filthy boots smeared mud across my previously clean car interior.

I nod and keep my eyes on the road.

"Where are you heading?" I ask, trying to ignore the smell that was steadily getting stronger and more bloodier.

"Well, where are you going? I'll just hop out when we get near to my place" she says.

"Oh right. Okay." I murmur. This was seriously creeping me out. I was certain this was not Eleanor Figware but someone more sinister and incredibly more dangerous.

"You know, you're awfully familiar. I have a good memory, I do. And your face is quite distinctive." She says, brushing her tangled dark mass of hair out of her face and exposing a thin scar that ran from her eye to her mouth, a permanent blemish that arched across her pale cheek.

Then the full severity of the situation hit me.

I could die, right here, right now and no one would know. I think to myself.

I sneak a glance over at my passenger. Here eyes, like bottomless black pits, seemed to bore straight through me.

I snapped my head back to the road, I had to get back to the HQ.

I valued my life more than my car. I could survive scratched paintwork, but not a knife wound to the heart.

I mutter something about missing a turning and try to keep my cool.
As quick as I can, I drive back to the path through the woods.

"Hey, mister, what's this?" The Hitchhiker calls from beside me. Her voice had changed. It was sharp and angry but tinged with fear.

She was holding my identification badge. It was a simple slim card with the HQ logo and Agent C . Owen written underneath.

"Agent C . Owen. Curt Owen? The Spy?" She hisses.

Before I could even react, the badge drops and the door smashes open. She disappears into the woods.

One step behind her, I rip off my seatbelt and crash through the woods after her.

As I run, I tear my gun out if my pocket, remove the safety catch and give chase.

I follow the path of crushed twigs and disturbed undergrowth but then my trail stops.

I immediately look up. Taking to the trees had been an obvious option.

Now I just had to wait but appear ignorant. I didn't have to wait long.

She launched from the trees, slashing blindly with a knife, thirsty for blood.

She didn't land perfectly through, her ankle crumpled under her weight but she just grimaced and charged.

I was ready.

She was nothing the men I had fought before who were brutish and hardly capable of stringing two clever words together. By comparison she was nothing like the women I had fought before who seemed as though they didn't want to do any real harm to themselves.

She clawed and slashed and swiped. I retaliated with punches and kicks and blocks of my own.

At some point, she had wrenched my gun from my grasp and thrown it into the woods. But I had managed to claim her knife.

Finally after what felt like years I managed to connect a solid punch to the base of her jaw, knocking her out.

I hastily tied up her wrists and threw her in the back seat. Finally I had done something well.

We were sat in the bosses office celebrating. The team had toasted to me and my capture of the notorious villain who went by the code name of Eleanor Figware.

It had been rumoured that she had killed 1,147 people yet 1,147 was not enough to satisfy her bloodlust.

I politely excused myself from the impromptu party and hurried down the stairs.

The HQ had a small block of cells used for people that the public were too scared of or too dangerous to be with other people.

I turned down the corridor and marched across to the cell where I know my prisoner would be.

I turned around and took a deep breath.

Everything was quiet. Too quiet. Almost a quiet as it had been before the ambush from the trees.

The cell was empty.

I stood there, completely shocked as if someone had thrown a bucket of ice cold water over me.

My eyes swept the room again disbelievingly.

There was a crumpled piece of paper on the bed. I reached through the bars and grabbed it.

It was a note, it read:

'Nice of you to find me but you should know thers always ways to escape. Congrats on losing me, Curt Owen.
Your friend,
Ellie Fig'

I stood quite still, willing this to be a bad dream. But it wasn't. This was real life. I sighed heavily and marched up the stairs.

It was time to save the world again.

It was time to do or die.

It was time to stay alive.

It was time to be a spy again.