You'll Be Caught

12. a stranger collector

Phill

I sat with Wayne at the hospital's cafeteria. We had arrived here a few hours ago. Molly was keeping Magret some company in her hospital room. We had just bought coffees and some croissants filled with salad, tomatoes and cheese. I was so worried about Freya all the time. I couldn't even focus on drinking my coffee so some of it was on my shirt now. Freya's gummy bear showed that she was in Verona. I hoped she was alright.

"I got a message from some random number", Wayne said and sipped his coffee which was still too hot to drink and it burned his tongue. "What does it say?" I asked curiously. Wayne murmured and read from his Samsung Galaxy s9: "5 pm. 45°31'N 10°44'E. The sheep will be slaughtered, if the shepherd won't come to rescue it in the time with the change." I got the message right away. The sheep was Freya, we were the shepherds and the missiles were the change: "This can only mean one thing. I'll go with Molly. You stay with Magret and deal with the missiles." Wayne wrote Landar's number and called him right away. Wayne didn't say anything about Freya being kidnapped. Landar didn't still like that we needed his help with moving the missiles. He promised to send the Italian agent group to take the sidewinders back to New York, though.

We arrived at Magret's hospital room with Wayne and I asked: "What's your hand's future?" Magret looked at her hand and said: "Well, I've lain here for two hours and I've already had enough from hospitals... But my hand's having an operation tonight. At six o'clock, so it's after a few hours." I felt sorry for her, but I had to focus on our mission. This was about Freya's life and I didn't even want to think about what they could do to her. "I'm leaving with Molly to save Freya and Wayne will look after those Italian guys with those missiles, and of course Magret. And you'll come after us after you have dealt with everything", I said simply and after handing another few things, we broke into some nice sports car and got on our way with Molly.

Freya

I got out of the fitting room in h&m and Freddy was waiting for me outside. We went to the cash line and Freddy asked suspiciously: "Are you sure it's gonna work like that?" I looked at my grey college pants, white t-shirt and colorfull bleiser that I had left on me. "Oh please", I said and moved to the cash register. I handed out a one hundred dollar bill to the woman (that I had took out of an atm with my new bank card) and I said: "Keep the change."

Freddy had showed me some places in Verona and I had fallen in love with the city. It was full of life, love, happiness and friendliness. It wasn't as big as New York or Milan but it was so peaceful all around. I also started to like Freddy after I got to know him. We matched together very well and he made me laugh all the time. He told me that he was from South-Africa, Pretoria. He had born there but he had moved to Austria when he was three. His parents had got away and he was adopted. Then one day he found his love of the life but he also lost his job and he didn't have any other chance than Trevol Grians that he would live himself and his girlfriend. Then his girlfriend broke up with him. He was 25 now, and he was alone again. He had a tough life, I thought.

Later we both got hungry but we were fine with Starbucks's banana-strawberry smoothies 'cause Freddy hadn't tasted one yet. And when he did he just said: "Overvaluated." And I couldn't say anything else than: "Totally, but looks nice. I mean it's worth a picture." I took my phone out of my pocket and I took a selfie with Freddy showing our smoothies in it. I felt myself like a normal young adult that was hanging and spending holiday with her friend. That feeling was very normal and at the time it was the best feeling I could have.

When the night arrived, we went to watch the sun go down. We were sitting on some rock wall by the river and it was getting darker. The river wasn't frozen, though it was quite cold outside (11°C). The sky looked orange mixed with pink and purple. I took another picture of it. I looked at our selfie and I started to laugh. Freddy laughed also. We noticed some black skinned man standing behind us in the photo looking confused but when I realized what he was holding in his arms, my laughing stopped immediately. "He's got my gummy bear!" I shouted horrified and I felt the shivers going over me like hard intense wave. "Your what?" Freddy asked surprised. "My tracking system is inside of it", I explained in a complaining tone. "Oh gosh", Freddy said and took a closer view of the picture. "Wait! It's the Starbucks' waiter!" Freddy realized and pointed the man's shirt with Starbucks's logo. "You're right. Our only way to get it back is to go and ask if he kept it", I had some hope, but would've he kept it. "Let's go", Freddy said and hopped away from the rock wall. I followed him and we almost ran to the Starbucks.

When we made it back there some man was already closing the shop. Luckily it was just the guy in the picture. I walked towards him while he was dragging some commercial sign of new hot drinks inside. "Hey! Me and my friend, we stopped here earlier and I dropped accidentally something very important to me", I said politely and the man turned to face me open-mouthed. Freddy continued: "We think that you may have found it and kept it, so could we have it back, please?" The man looked from me to Freddy and scratched his head. "Well, nothing comes to my mind", he said slowly with an Italian accent. "We have a picture, actually", I said and I grabbed my phone again from my pocket. "Okay, okay", the man said and took my gummy bear from his pocket and said, "you'll get this if you tell me where you got this." "Whaat?" I asked. I didn't think of any situation like this. "I'm a huge collector and this is an interesting piece", the man said while showing some moves with his hands. "A gummy bear collector?" Freddy asked laughing, "Okay my girlfriend used to also collect the tops of the Coca-Cola bottles, but I think gummy bears win." I looked at the man and said: "I bought this from Genova from a little market next to the gas station in Oregina, Via Vesuvio." And that was the truth. Phill had tuned it a little. The man took his note book from his pocket and wrote something down. "Okay, thank you very much and you keep it", he said, nodded to us and walked away. "That was quite interesting", I said and put the gummy bear back to my backpack. I took Freddy's hand and wrapped my fingers around it. He did the same and we walked back to our loft happily.

Writer's note

Next chapter will be a little smutty!!