Steal My Heart/C10 He Escaped and Was Caught!
+ Add to Library
Steal My Heart/C10 He Escaped and Was Caught!
+ Add to Library

C10 He Escaped and Was Caught!

Right across from the complex stood an ATM. Clarissa inserted her bank card and watched the deposit amount flash on the screen. With a determined bite of her lip, she withdrew two thousand yuan.

Money in hand, she hailed a cab. "Take me to..." She realized, as she climbed in, that in her rush to flee, she hadn't decided on a destination.

"Where to?" the driver asked, his impatience evident.

Where to indeed? Clarissa paused, a sudden emptiness washing over her. In this vast world, she had nowhere to go.

"Are we going or not? If not, get out. I've got other fares to catch," the driver grumbled, eyeing Clarissa with annoyance. What a stroke of bad luck, not checking the horoscope before leaving the house and now stuck with this jinx.

"Sorry, I haven't figured out where to go yet," Clarissa said softly, offering a meek apology to the irate driver without a hint of resistance, which only made her seem more timid.

The old saying held true: a kind horse is often ridden, a kind person often bullied. The driver, emboldened by her submissiveness, unloaded his frustration from a losing mahjong game onto her.

"You, woman, you flag down my cab without knowing where you're going? You're just messing with me, aren't you? What kind of upbringing did you have, with no sense of morality? Get out, right now! Don't waste my time. Such bad luck, encountering a jinx like you today."

Clarissa was berated mercilessly. It wasn't that she wasn't affected, but three years behind bars had tempered her spirit.

Her eyelashes fluttered downward, and she looked up again, softly apologizing, "I'm sorry, I'll get out now." All she had wanted was a minute to think about her next move.

The driver, taken aback, had never encountered someone so devoid of backbone in his decade-plus career. As Clarissa opened the door slowly, he raised his hand in her direction...

"Ah! Don't hit me!"

The driver froze, staring at the woman on the passenger seat, arms raised protectively over her head, crying out in fear, "Ah! Don't hit me!" He scoffed, "You're nuts, I was just opening the door! My luck today, running into a lunatic."

He reached for the door, "Get out!" Maybe it was the sting of his gambling loss, or maybe it was because Clarissa seemed too easy to push around, but he was especially harsh with her, even telling her to "get out."

Clarissa exited the cab slowly, provoking another outburst from the driver, "Stop dawdling, hurry up! What, are you a cripple or something?"

A jolt went through Clarissa, and she looked up earnestly, correcting him, "I'm not a cripple, just slow-moving."

The driver, momentarily taken aback, dismissed her with a curse and urged her to leave. "Get going. You've brought me nothing but bad luck today. No wonder I've been off my game, losing so much over a few bad hands."

It was a classic case of finding a pretext to blame someone.

"Hey, hand it over," the driver demanded, grabbing Clarissa's wrist and reaching out with his other hand. Clarissa, puzzled, asked, "Hand over what?"

"The money."

"But, sir, I didn't end up taking your taxi after all," Clarissa replied, even more bewildered.

The driver rolled his eyes, clearly annoyed, "But you sat in my car, didn't you? You're so unlucky, I'll have to wash it after you leave. Car washes aren't free, you know?"

Seeing Clarissa hesitate, he urged her on, "Come on, stop dragging your feet, it's irritating!"

"But I..."

"Enough! One hundred yuan, now."

Clarissa's face paled. One hundred yuan felt like daylight robbery. She wanted to argue, she really did.

But prison had worn her down; the pride of being Miss Jenkins, her own dignity, had long since evaporated.

Suddenly, headlights flashed to her left. Clarissa instinctively looked up to see four black Audi A6s approaching in formation. The license plates were sequential, from "1" to "4." The streetlight reflected off the windshield of the lead car, and Clarissa squinted, making out the face of the driver in one of the cars—Michael, Hollis's right-hand man.

Panic spread across her face.

"Hey, the money... Eh? Why are you back inside? I said pay up."

"Driver! Quick, drive! I'll pay you!" In a flurry, Clarissa fumbled several red bills from her coat pocket and thrust them at the taxi driver, pleading, "Please, hurry! Drive!"

"What's this all about..." The taxi driver's words trailed off as he noticed another hefty stack of cash materializing before him.

Clarissa's hands shook as she fumbled to pull out every bill from her pocket. "Please, I'll give you everything I have. Just drive, for the love of God, hurry!" Her plea was punctuated by frantic glances over her shoulder... they were getting closer.

"Come on! Faster! You think this isn't enough money? I've got more, so much more, on my bank card! Just drive, and once we're safe, it's all yours." Her words tumbled out in a panicked jumble, her eyes wide with terror, her face ashen as if she'd seen a ghost.

The taxi driver gave Clarissa a look that said she might be crazy. But then his eyes fell on the wad of cash in her trembling hands, and he couldn't help but smirk at the sight of it.

Grabbing the money from Clarissa, he gruffly commanded, "Sit tight."

With the turn of the key, the engine roared to life and the taxi lurched forward. Clarissa was about to breathe a sigh of relief when...

A screeching sound of tires on pavement pierced the air. The taxi driver beside Clarissa cursed, "Damn it, can't anything go right today? Hey, are these people after you? What did you do, steal or rob someone? Why are they on your tail like this?"

He shot a disgusted look at the passenger seat, then abruptly fell silent, swallowing any further words. The woman beside him was shivering, her teeth chattering as she curled into a ball, her eyes fixed ahead in a mix of fear and despair.

Her look was more terrifying than a brush with death itself.

Then, in a nervous flurry, she slammed the windows shut and curled up even tighter, as if that could shield her from her pursuers.

"Jeez, how foolish..."

The driver was about to scoff when a knock on the taxi door interrupted him. "Miss Jenkins, please exit the vehicle." Clarissa turned ghostly pale, burying her head deeper, feigning deafness and blindness to the world outside.

Report
Share
Comments
|
Setting
Background
Font
18
Nunito
Merriweather
Libre Baskerville
Gentium Book Basic
Roboto
Rubik
Nunito
Page with
1000
Line-Height