“I’m going to skin you alive! I’m going to fucking skin you!” Sean threatened.
Jake took another good look at the laptop and still couldn’t understand why Susan Stein had his pictures or what she had been doing when she took them. The places differed, indicating she had someway managed to tail him around for miles without even making herself known.
“Susan was a fine agent and always got her mark but I guess you couldn’t handle it when she began investigating you!” Sean lunged at Jake and managed to grab Jake by his jean and dragged him to the ground.
Piling his weight on Jake, Sean clenched his fist tightly and jammed it hard into Jake’s face, “You lying snake!”
Jake felt the first jab connect and send jolts of immeasurable pain through his skull as he struggled to get Sean off him. Sean wouldn’t stop though, threatening to wrap his hands around Jake’s neck as the duo struggled badly.
“I swear… I never saw her! I never met her before!” Jake swore but Sean didn’t care.
His eyes were blood red and his lips curled with anger. His hands wrapped tightly around Jake’s neck successfully while he managed to subdue Jake by kneeling on his hands on either side of his body, leaving him defenseless and at Sean’s mercy. Jake could feel himself lose the ability to breathe freely as Sean pinned down hard.
“You need to get free!” Jake thought to himself inwardly.
Managing to get his left hand out from Sean’s captivity, Jake searched around the floor for something useful to help him get free. His breath had slowed and his eyes watered badly, giving him a minute or less before he would pass out. In a feat of luck, his hand connected with the stinging cold metal he soon realized to be the gun Sean had tossed to the ground after it jammed.
Groping it tightly, he lunged hard and fast towards Sean’s head, striking luckily against his temple and sending the man sprawling to his side, all passed out and cold.
Struggling to get the remainder of Sean’s body off of him, Jake coughed aloud and began breathing in relief. “I never touched her! I never even fucking knew her!”
He got to his feet, feeling his bloodied face dripping from cuts above his eyes and another just underneath his nose. Sniffing and wiping off his bloodied nose with the back of his hand, he jammed his foot into Sean’s chest and walked over to the laptop to have another look at the images with what appeared to be an attached document just underneath them.
He connected his phone to the computer immediately, while Sean remained out and cold before heading out within minutes with some spare cash and hopes of finding someplace to lay low, far off from wherever Sean could find him. He unlocked the front door and felt the fresh air hit his face warmly. The feeling of freedom felt like nothing he could explain.
Staring down the road and at the suspicious van parked away a few blocks from his house, he tucked his phone and cash into his pocket, wiped his face clean and waved down a taxi which had just happened to drop someone off a few blocks away.
“Just keep going until I ask you to stop!” he commanded the man while looking over his shoulders.
He needed somewhere calm to collect his thoughts and next cause of action. The world suddenly felt like it was closing hard and down upon him and he hated the feeling dearly. The taxi driver sped off immediately, granting Jake a sigh of relief but not for long, as Sean soon stumbled out of the house looking enraged as he stared down the street, unaware of the fact that Jake had boarded a cab.
“Fuck!” Jake mumbled.
***
Still bleeding from the cuts on his face as he arrived on the south end of town where those intending to keep away from the prying eyes of the modest public in New York resided, Jake stepped out of the car and paid the cab driver an extra fifty dollars to keep him satisfied enough not to rat him out should the case come to occur.
Wincing in pain, he hammered his fist into the front door of an old looking hotel by the name “Kanto” bearing faded prints on the billboard atop it. The door cranked open slowly with a rather burly man standing on the other side staring at him blankly and with suspicious eyes.
“State your purpose”, he said.
Dipping his hand into his breast pocket and retrieving five hundred dollars which he handed to the man, Jake replied, “I am not here… you never saw me”.
The man nodded, pocketed the cash and opened the door, granting him entrance without further questions. Jake headed to the reception to book a room before getting led to the last room on the second floor with no door number just like the others. He had spent a week in the same building years back while he ran some undercover operations.
Hearing the door slam shut behind him, he had never felt such relief as he took a look at the modestly furnished room consisting of a single bed, flushed carpet, a wardrobe and one dining table situated not far off from the window so he could have a good view through the blinds. The beauty was being able to see through the window but not being seen from the outside.
“This will do for now”, he sighed and headed to the bed.
He wondered what Sean must be doing next. The man seemed awfully enraged with the need for revenge and wouldn’t be going to the station to make a report for sure, but that made him even more dangerous since
