Tamara let out a sigh of relief. "Thanks Tay, I knew I could count on you."
"Of course you can," Tay said, giving her a hug. "Even if you're not Tamara Souder or Tamara Azkaban, someday you'll be Tamara Hanson, so it won't even matter."
She stared at him for a second and then burst into tears. "I don't deserve you!!!" she wailed.
"Yes you do," said Taylor calmly. "Now settle down and let's try to think of a plan."
Tamara hiccuped and then looked behind her shoulder. "Shoot. I better get back to Diego, or else he's gonna come looking for me. How about this, meet me behind my house, behind the porch tonight at 9:00. Here, I'll give you the address," she said.
"No, I know where it is. I followed those guys you were with this morning," he said. She nodded.
"Okay, 9pm then," she said, giving him a quick kiss. "See you later." She took one last look at him before she disappeared into the crowd. Taylor watched her go, with a nervous feeling in his stomach. What was he getting himself into?
It was 9:00 that night when Taylor crept around the side of the Azkaban estate. It was dark and every little sound was making him jump. He hid around the back of the deck for a few minutes and soon the door opened and Tamara came outside. She hesitated, looked behind her at the house and then walked over to the area where Taylor was, pretending to look at the ocean.
"Tay?" she whispered into the darkness.
"I'm over here," he said, moving closer to her. "Come down here." She sat on the edge of the deck and fell down to the ground. Taylor went over to her quickly, pushed her down on the ground and kissed her on the lips. She giggled and kissed him back. He pushed her hair out the way and looked at her in the eyes. "I can't let you stay here, living like this. You've got to get out of here. Come with me, we can leave tonight and go to California," he said, giving her another kiss. She returned it, but then broke away.
"I can't just leave my mom here!" she said. Taylor thought for a moment.
"Well, she can come with us too," he said. "Both of you can sneak away tonight."
She sighed. "But don't you think we would have done that already if we could have? It's impossible! We're watched 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That's why I couldn't even call you." She continued. "There's no way of escaping them, they're all over town, the estate, even back home."
"Who, the mob your dad's part of?" he asked. She nodded. "So just running away is out of the question. There's got to be another way..." He thought for awhile again. "Did you ever see that movie, The Whole Nine Yards?" She shook her head. "It was with Bruce Willis and Chandler from Friends. Anyway, this guy finds out his new neighbor is hiding from the Mafia. His neighbor has signed some contract for splitting a million dollars with three people, but the other guy wants him dead so he can have all the money. So everyone is trying to kill each other. Finally they decide to stage their own deaths so that they won't have to be killed and they get the money anyway. So they do all this stuff to their teeth and pretend to blow up in a car and they get away safe and alive. The mob thinks they're dead! See where I'm going?" She shook her head yes.
"I think so. You want us to pretend to die?"
"Yeah! Only they'll never find the bodies, they'll just think you died."
"Okay...but how are we going to pull of that?" she asked.
"Well, they used a car in the movie, put the bodies inside and lit it on fire. But...do you have a boat?"
"Yeah...it's down by the dock," she said. "I think I see where you're going with this."
"It's going to be really risky," Taylor said. "If something would happen to you, I'd never forgive myself."
"I think I know what we can do. There's this tiny island off the coast of our beach, about 600 yards away," she said. "I can rig something to blow up the boat, and me and my mom can be off the boat and on the island before it goes. They'll think we died in the explosion. And dad won't even think twice about it, stuff like this happens every day with the mob."
"Okay! So can we do it tommorrow?" he asked.
"Yeah, we can try," she replied. "I'll tell mom the plan tonight and we'll try to go out on the boat around, um, 2:30."
"I'll be on the island with a boat, waiting for you," Tay said. They looked at each other. "Well..."
"Well...tommorrow then," she said sadly. "Oh, I hope this works, Tay. What if I...die?"
"Don't say that," he said. "We can do it. 2:30. I'll be waiting." He gave her a kiss and crept off into the darkness. Tamara sat there for a while thinking about the plan. Could they pull it off?