Unadvisable- Ch. 1

Chapter I

“I gotta get out of here,” he said frantically.

“Get out of here? Get out of here and go where?” I asked.

“Somewhere. I’ll catch a ride. Wherever they take me, that’s where I’ll go.” He continued to quickly throw things into a duffle bag. He seemed very out of breath.
Tom was always getting into some kind of trouble ever since I had known him. The kind of trouble that was easily rectified with a call from his parents to the dean or the frat guys pooling together money for bail. This time there didn’t seem to be a fix at all.

“Tom slow down. What happened?”

“I can’t, I gotta get out of here. Tonight. Now.”

“So let me take you somewhere. I can drive you any where you need. We can talk about it on the way,” I said slowly.

“Whatever,” he said packing the last of his things and throwing his bag over his shoulder. I grabbed my keys and jacket and rushed out the door behind him. On the drive “just head south” he had directed, Tom was looking around himself constantly, eyes darting. He checked all the windows every few seconds and it began to make me feel anxious.

“All right buddy, start talking.” He took a deep breath, rolled down the window and lit a cigarette. Taking a few long puffs his breath slowed down.

“Who would you say is the most famous person in the world? The President?”

“Sure.”

“Well let’s say it is the President. He surrounds himself with the smartest, most capable people. People with nothing to hide and a lot to loose, right?”

“Right.”

“Well what if a few of these people, a few of these advisors did have some to hide? If you knew their dirty little secret would you expose them?”

“What are you getting at here, Tom?”

“What I’m getting at is that if you knew a secret that could bring down one of the most powerful person in the world’s advisors you’d do it, right?”

“I suppose do. It’d be the right thing to do.”
Tom took another drag from his cigarette, continuously looking out the windows; he said “That is unless one of them found out you knew before you could do anything about it.”

I paused. “Wait wait wait are you saying , are you actually trying to tell me you have a dark little secret about the President’s advisors and they know you know?”
Tom continued staring out the passenger window. “And now they’re after you?!”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” he said.

“Well come on then,” I said with a small smirk on my face. “What is it?”

“I’m in a shit storm of trouble, scared for my life because of this information and you think I’m gonna tell you and endanger one of my closest friends?”

“Well, yeah.”

He looked at me for a moment and then back out the window lighting a fresh cigarette with the end of his old one, flicking his old butt out the window. We sat in the car for a few minutes in silence, my car snaking through mountains with only the car’s headlights and moon to guide us.

“Ok well if you won’t tell me what it is can you at least share how you became privy to this top secret information?”

Tom looked around and behind us as though he expected to find someone in the back seat. Then he started talking.