My Neighbor's Friend

CHAPTER 21: Arya

We stood in shock and I was in complete and utter fear as we noticed that Ferris was standing there in front of us a few feet away with a gun at his side in his hand.

He looked to have regret and remorse in his eyes as if he has done something bad. Which it seems like he is.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Gunner asks him.

"Making things right for my mistake and for being a horrible friend to the both of you." He says with a lot of guilt.

"What are you talking about?" I ask.

"I'm sorry Arya. I didn't mean to betray you." He starts telling me. "I swear I didn't know you guys would get hurt. He told me he knew you, Arya, from a while back and that you both used to be good friends as we shared a few rounds of drinks not too long ago in a bar. He seemed cool." He confesses.

"How could you man?!" Gunner asks him with what I heard in his voice that he felt anger but also pain from being betrayed.

"Look, I don't have time to explain. But Joshua is coming. You both need to leave. Go someplace safe and take this." He tells us as he hands Gunner the gun in his hand.

"But what about you?" I ask.

"Don't worry. I can handle whatever happens." He smiles and winks at me.

"This is fucking crazy." Gunner tells him.

"It is. But you should come with us. We can talk about this and..." I started but we were interrupted as soon as we heard pounding on the door.

"Open the door Ferris!" A man's voice said outside the front door.

"Go! You guys need to head out the fire escape." Ferris nods to the window.

"But..." I start to protest and insist he comes along with us again but just as he did a moment ago, he interrupts me.

"There's no time." He says. "Go!" He exclaims again then pulls put another gun behind his back in the back of his pants and cocks it as he heads towards the door.

Gunner quickly closes and locks the bedroom door before we quickly head over towards the fire escape.

He first looks out below to make sure that none of Joshua's men are down there....they aren't. So he has me go first and we can hear the front door had to be broken down and then we heard yelling and a gunshot go off.

Both Gunner and I knew what that had to have been. So we hurried out and went as fast as we could down the ladders to the very bottom and started running down the alleyway then went through the emergency exit door that lead straight towards the underground parking garage for the apartment complex and quickly ran as fast as we could to the car.

Once in, we next hurried out the parking garage and started to speed off down the streets towards the 'meet up' place where his Director, Healey had told us to meet him at very shortly actually.

While heading there, I kept replaying everything we just heard and experienced and still I was in shock and was confused more than ever. None of this made any sense once again. More questions popped up in my head.

"This is insane." I started to tear up.

"I know babe. But I promise everything will be okay." Gunner tries to soothe and comfort me by taking hold of my hand.

"What if it doesn't get better? What if this never ends? I can't believe this is happening. I feel I'm being punished." I start to cry a little bit.

He stops at a red light and has me look right into his eyes.

"Look at me." He begins while holding my face and looking deep into my eyes. "I love you. You are beautiful, smart, brave and strong as hell. We WILL get through this. I won't let you ever live in fear ever again. You have my word." He promises me.

"But I don't want to lose you." I admit.

"You won't." He tells me with a smile then gives me a quick kiss and the light turns green then we continue taking off and moments later get to that place his Director talked about.

This was it. Time was up and Joshua would soon know where we were. I couldn't tell you how but I know he's a great 'tracker' if you will. Also I knew that this all had to come to an end. This was my final chance to break free from all this bullshit and to have a chance to live a happy and better life.

Next chapter will be posted soon! :)