️Running With Scissors ✅

My legs, now numb from days of relentless walking across Texas, felt nothing. Cars zipped by, ignoring the filthy, bearded man trudging beside the highway. Seven months. Seven whole months since my life imploded. Charges of espionage, homicide, obstruction of justice – they'd frozen my accounts, depleted my assets. My destination: Brownsville, a border city, a potential escape.

The payphone at the old gas station buzzed as I dialed. "What do we got?" I asked Nick, my least favorite twin.

"Nothing," he crunched, "and everything. We found something... a very interesting kind of something."

He'd hacked personal emails, found a message that gave away my location in Oklahoma. "The email wasn't anyone's, it's a general work email used by an entire department. But the receiver... that's different. It was sent to an IP address in Miami."

"You couldn't narrow it down?" I snapped.

"No, they're using high-tech stuff, homemade, untraceable," he said between bites.

Then Nate, the better twin, took the phone. "The email has a fingerprint in it thanks to the encryption. If we find computers with the same fingerprint, we can match them."

"Finally!"

"You need to get your hands on the computer for us to confirm. Then maybe we can interrogate the owner."

"Okay. I'll head towards Florida in the morning."

"Wait!" Nick yelled. "The FBI saw you on a street camera. You need to lay low for a few days."

I scoffed. How much lower could I lay? I was already a hobo with questionable hygiene. I hung up. This could be the town I die in. If this was my last hurrah, I deserved some fun.

Then I saw her. A blur of blonde and pink, twirling in a shop window. Purely out of curiosity, I stopped. Impossibly long, slender legs met a very short skirt. I walked into the shop, my underused member making the decision for me.