23:09 - 18 hours since initial defect.
That’s the point Villanelle is sure of when she’s out here in the grand emptiness of the interstate highway in upper state New York off of a little place called Cuylerville. She isn’t sure of where exactly she is now because Cuylerville could of been an hour or five days ago. She had ditched the car she had been using back somewhere in Letchworth with the former owner dead in the passenger seat-it’s a long and simple story really but who has the time.
Now she’s grazing the side streets that are too long, too cold and too open on all sides to really read the queues, any sent handler could come along the grassy inlands and ambush her, bludgeon her in the dark and drag her open skull back into the forest. Yet, as her legs dragged her forward with astounding spite and a slim will to live, she spotted a gas station only a couple meters into the distance.
Villanelle appeared from out of the dark of the empty roads, limping ever so often from the wound on her left thigh branding dried splotchy marks against her faded blue jeans. She reached closer to the gas station and it declared itself useless as any other. Not many people were there, but a car in the front probably owned by the workers. She walked past the store front and up the back end and seen a pickup truck illuminated by the condescending fluorescent lights from up above. Her shiny little beacon of freedom calling out to her in it’s vintage raggedy siege. It was left unattended as she had hoped, it’s owner probably still in the store. Villanelle tried for the drivers side and of course it was locked, the passenger- that too. She had half the brain left to just hide out in the open trunk but her hand was already at the back door of the passenger seat.
It clicked and it opened. She slid into the back- and then to the front. Her eyes trained to the store front now, she could see two people at the check out, a customer with their back turned still shopping around. She would only need thirty seconds, less if she wasn’t exhausted. Yet, she still had the mind to hotwire the thing, and as the truck roared it self alive, Villanelle heard the door click.
They swung the door open. She startled, jolting up from her crouched position Quickly, she thought, hands in the air, a disheveled disposition- people respond better if you don’t outright attack them for stealing their car. Feign innocence or something similar stupidity maybe- she’s really good at that shit.
“Oh my god, oh my god! Please don’t hurt me.” She stammered her eyes wide, she skidded back practically into the passenger seat. “I just needed to use the car and get outta here. I’m in trouble.” Her eyes darted back and forth between the stranger, the gas station workers who didn’t look like simple gas station workers if she had the time to glance any closer. They were coming outside to investigate.
Villanelle looked at them and the obvious handlers approaching the truck one of them peeling out a pistol from their back. There was still some distance between all of them so that meant time. But not for long.
Her facade dropped, her accent slipped.“Get in the fucking truck.” She said,giving them about ten seconds to make up their mind before a bullet went through the windshield- and it did.
“Are you fucking stupid? You’re just going to stand there?”
