Hit and Run: A Mafia Hitman Romance (8 page)

The skillet sizzles as she puts a thick pad of butter on it, the fat skittering across the pan.

Cain returns and gets busy lighting a fire in the clean but empty fireplace. Within a minute, he has the logs roaring. “What else can I do for you?” he asks.

“Go upstairs. Second door on the right. Left dresser. There are clothes in there for you. You look about the same size as my oldest son. He never came back to clean out his room when he left for college. Take what you want; there’s probably a coat and different shoes in the closet.”

Cain stops and stares at her. “Why are you doing this for us?”

“Because as I was telling your betrothed here, I was a runaway once, too.” She gives him a smile. “Now hurry. I’m nearly done with this first batch of cakes and I’ll be damned if I’m letting you eat these cold.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CAIN

Thirty minutes later, stuffed to bursting with pancakes, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and farm-fresh scrambled eggs, Elizabeth and I are in the truck. I have to crank the starter about five times, but it rumbles to life.

I adjust the fur-earflap hat on my head and glance over at her. “You ready?”

She nods. “Do I have a choice to
not
be ready?”

I pretend to think it over. “I don’t know. Wouldn’t be such a bad life, living out on a farm like this.”

“I’m a city girl. Don’t even joke about that,” she replies. “Now drive before I change my mind and go sacrifice myself for whoever’s after us.”

Soon we’re driving down two-lane, curving, ribbon-like roads in complete silence. I realize after a while that she’s drifted off to sleep. Good. She’ll need as much of it as she can get.

The day dawns cloudy and cold once again. Elizabeth wakes up when I stop for gas at a falling-down station.

“I need to pee,” she announces.

I look around. “Be quick.”

She rolls her eyes at me.

I’ve got the truck running when she finally returns. “Took long enough,” I say to her.

“Sorry I can’t pee faster,” she snaps at me. “I guess they taught you how to train your bladder when you were in snitch school?”

I laugh and pull back onto the road. “Very funny.”

“Where are we headed?”

“Upstate New York,” I reply, watching the sky. The clouds have turned from a solid silver sheet into something darker and more ominous. “Hopefully we’ll make it to where we need to be before snow flies.”

Elizabeth sighs and leans back in her seat. “You know how much I’m trusting you right now?” she says. “I’m only doing it because I don’t have any other choice.”

She says it like she’s trying to convince herself. “Yeah, I know,” I say. “I’d tell you more about where we’re going but then I’d have to explain about a dozen other things.”

“And God forbid you keep me in the loop,” she says drily.

“Lizzy-“

“Forget it,” she replies. “Just drive. I’m napping again and I can’t do that with you spewing your usual bullshit.”

It takes us another two hours to get where we need to be. It’s so dark right now I can barely see the road, even though it’s not even mid-day. I pull the truck over and set it in park. Elizabeth jerks awake.

“Are we here?” she asks, looking skeptically at the thick pine forest to our right.

“We’re here,” I reply. I hop out of the truck and pull out thick branches that are there just for this purpose. I throw them over the truck to conceal it. It only takes me about five minutes. “I think that’s good enough, don’t you?”

Elizabeth nods. “Yeah, I think so.” She’s rubbing her hands together. If I thought it was cold in New York, the city feels like the Caribbean compared to where we are now. “Could we get moving? I can barely feel my toes.”

I set off into the forest, checking the trees for the telltale small arrow carvings. I don’t see any.

“Are you sure this is the right place?” she asks me.

“No,” I reply. “But I hope it is.”

We keep walking and finally I see an arrow. “Okay, we’re good.” I wave Elizabeth over to the tree. “See this? Look for more of those.”

“God, how did you even find this?” she asks.

“Training at snitch school, I guess.”

She laughs.

We call out arrows as we find them, and soon enough, I see the peaked roof I’m looking for, along with the thumping sounds of techno music.

“That’s it?” Elizabeth asks me. “That’s where we’ve been headed this entire time?”

I nod. “That’s it.”

“It looks like a doll house. Does somebody live in there?”

I sigh. “Yeah, part time.”

Elizabeth steps forward into the clearing where the house sits, but I pull her back.

“Wait. He’s a little paranoid. You don’t know what kind of traps he has around this place.”

I cup my hands around my mouth and yell. “Flea! It’s me! Cain! Can we come in?”

The music cuts off and I see a human shadow dart past the curtained windows. The front door opens and I see the ruffled-hair head of Flea.

“You scared the Christ out of me,” Flea yells back. “Just give me a minute to reset everything. Don’t move.” He looks over at Elizabeth and furrows his eyebrows in surprise. “Hi,” he says awkwardly. Then he darts back inside the house.

I see Elizabeth appreciating the diminutive architecture. The house is on a flatbed trailer and can’t be more than twenty feet long, maybe eight feet wide. But it is unmistakably a house, with a tiny front porch, red door, and paned windows. The siding is cedar shingle and the roof is made of red-painted metal. The snow that’s hanging in the clouds above us will make it look like a gingerbread house.

“How did he get this out here?” Elizabeth asks me.

“Like a ship in a bottle,” I reply. “Cleared trees for the trailer, then built it all out here.” I look around and point to the other side of the clearing. “There. You can just make out the trees he re-planted in the trailer path. They’re small.”

Elizabeth nods in recognition. “This is so bizarre,” she whispers.

“That’s Flea,” I reply. “And speak of the devil.” He’s returned.

“Come on in!” Flea calls out. “I think I got everything disarmed.”

“That doesn’t make me feel confident,” I call back. “Let me go first,” I say to Elizabeth. She doesn’t object. She actually still looks a little scared.

As I start walking to the house, flakes of snow swirl around my face.

We made it just in time.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

ELIZABETH

“You know, I think I read about tiny houses on the internet,” I announce to the room. The really, really tiny room.

The walls are panelled with thin planks of wood, and there’s a carved wooden ladder leading up to a small loft with a mattress. The front half of the trailer is filled with a small, white sofa covered in flannel blankets. A fireplace the size of a textbook hangs on the wall pumping out a fair amount of heat with its tiny, propane flames.

The kitchen is the size of a bookcase, but holds a metal sink, cabinets, a two-burner stove, and a tiny fridge. And on every available square inch of wall not covered by windows there are screens.

It’s like a log cabin tech den. It’s bizarre. It’s weird. But that’s nothing compared to its owner.

“Yeah, well. I had this built before the movement became a commercialized thing,” Flea says defensively.

I laugh. “You’re such a hipster.”

Flea looks wounded. “I don’t think so.”

I’m not dropping this. “Seriously? You’re wearing skinny jeans, a flannel checked shirt, and horn-rimmed glasses. You live in a tiny house in the woods. You only own Apple products. You’re a hipster.”

Cain looks upon this situation with amusement. “She’s right, Flea.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t
live
out here. I’m out here on what was
supposed
to be my vacation.” He looks significantly at Cain.

“Business never sleeps. You should know that by now,” Cain replies.

Flea rolls his eyes. “You could have compromised my position out here.”

“Don’t insult me, Flea. There’s no way I would have let anyone follow us out here. You question my abilities again, and I’m snapping your fingers into pieces one by one.” Cain flexes his muscles and Flea winces, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

“Alright, alright. Calm down. Who wants kombucha?”

“What the hell is kombucha?” Cain asks.

“It’s a fermented tea,” Flea says, sounding annoyed. “It’s good for your digestive tract. I made it myself.” He opens up the cabinet and reveals a large glass jar of amber liquid with what looks like some kind of space monster floating in it.

“What’s that floating in it?” I ask him, trying not to feel sick.

“That’s that SCOBY,” he says like a proud mother. “I grew this baby myself.”

I glance at Cain, trying not to laugh at the look on his face. He seems a little green around the gills staring at it, too.

“Yeah, I didn’t come here for some freak hipster foodie festival,” he says. “I need your help.”

Flea grabs a mug and decants some of the liquid from the silver tap at the bottom of the glass crock. “I kind of gathered that much.” Flea sips the drink. I wait for him to gag, but he looks refreshed. “I knew it was a mistake when I told you my vacation schedule.”

“This is the last place on earth I want to be,” Cain says, looking around. “I need to pee. Does this shack have a bathroom?”

Flea nods. “Two steps forward, one step left,” he says.

Cain looks comically large in this space. He groans when he sees the bathroom stall. “I don’t even know if I can stand up in here.”

“Duck down, you’ll be fine. Oh, and it’s a composting bucket toilet, so be sure to put sawdust down when you’re done.”

Cain curses and shuts the curtain that acts as a bathroom door.

Flea turns to face me. “You doing okay, following this big guy around?”

I nod. “This is undoubtedly the strangest day of my entire life, but yeah. I guess so.”

Flea finishes off his kombucha and rubs his hands together. “I’m guessing I’ll need to be hacking something illegally in a minute. Could you?“ He motions to the sofa, mostly so I’ll get out of his way.

“Sure,” I reply, perching on the tiny cushions. “This is surprisingly comfortable. You know, for a Barbie’s dream house couch.”

Cain laughs from the bathroom.

Flea calls out to him. “She always like this?”

The curtain opens. “If by ‘this’ you mean full of piss and vinegar, then yeah. She is.” Cain washes his hands in the kitchen sink and dries them on his jeans. “So. I need you to tell me what the hell is going on in New York right now.”

“I’m going to need some more specifics,” Flea replies.

Cain takes a deep breath and launches into his story. A few minutes later, he’s done. “So I have no idea who, exactly, we’re running from. But it sure would be nice to know.”

“And I want to know if my sister is okay,” I add.

Flea nods and starts typing furiously. I can’t follow what he’s doing, but green text fills up the largest display, and the smaller screens are filled with what look like databases. After a few minutes of nothing being said, Cain leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, Flea stops what he’s doing and turns around.

“Your sister is fine, I think. I’m not positive. But she’s smoking hot, by the way.” He grins but neither one of us are amused.

“And there’s some definite bad news. I can’t find your file, man,” he says nervously. “I think you’ve been decimated.”

Cain laughs. “Excuse me? What do you mean you can’t find my file?”

Flea clears his throat. “When an agent’s been compromised, the feds cover their tracks so no one can know that they messed up. This usually involves hard-encoding virus software into their own system and erasing all the traces of the agent.” He bites his lip and pushes his glasses up his nose again. “Usually, that’s not where they stop.”

“I’ve never heard of this,” Cain says. “I’ve literally never heard of something like this.”

“Yeah, well. You wouldn’t hear about it, would you? That’s sort of the point of decimation.” Flea opens his mouth and closes it several times without speaking.

“Spit it out, Flea,” Cain says. “You clearly have something else to tell me.”

“Decimation isn’t just lines of code. They…well. The agency’s going to make sure
you
are erased.”

I glance at Cain. Surely this doesn’t mean what I think it means. “Sorry. Are you saying the government is trying to kill Cain?” I ask.

Flea nods slowly. “They’re not just going to kill Cain. They’re going to erase everyone who ever knew he was a part of this.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CAIN

His words sink in faster for me than they do for Elizabeth. I’m in action mode.

I always am. It’s how I’ve stayed alive this long.

“I’ll need a plane. Passports. Anything you have, Flea.”

Flea scratches his irritatingly awful hipster haircut. “All of my main stuff is in New York, I’m not sure I can-“

I slam my hand on his desk and get in his face. He looks scared. Good. “Then
get
sure. You know why?” I poke him in the chest and he nearly falls backward in his chair. “Because you know me. And you’re in this shit show, too, because as you just said, the government is cleaning out everyone who knows that I’m involved in all of this. If you don’t find a way,
you’re dead too
. So get me whatever the fuck I need to get out of this country. Understood?”

Flea coughs. “Yeah, I got it.”

I can’t bear to look at Elizabeth. I can’t bear to have her ask questions I don’t have answers to. And I can’t fucking bear thinking that I might lose her.

I’ve always lived my life going from zero to sixty in under five seconds.

It seems like me meeting her follows that rule. From strangers to me caring about losing her in under three weeks.

I move fast.

I step out of the house into the snowstorm. The air is thick with white flakes, swirling and falling. The wind is picking up. Already, there’s an inch of perfect powder coating everything in sight.