Run (Run Duet #1) (6 page)

“Liv, she’s a licensed hair dresser. She works at one of the top salons here in Manhattan,” Tyrone explained.

“I’m not an amateur if that’s what you thought.” Anica dragged from her cigarette before she put it out in a lead crystal ashtray and stood. “Let me get my tools of the trade.”

A
s much as I didn’t want to admit both Tyrone and Anica had the skills anyone needed to escape a former life, before they were through with Liv and us, they’d not only done better than I thought but excelled at everything they did.

Tyrone had shorn my hair to a cut similar as his own. I still had hair on the top, which Anica dyed white blond and messed around with a lot of different products until it was spikey. I looked like your average hipster.

Hell, it was what she did to Liv that turned my head. She cut her hair in an asymmetrical bob with bangs and dyed it dark auburn. Liv was virtually unrecognizable, and that was a plus because no one could ever manage to forget those gorgeous violet blue eyes of hers with the green surrounding the pupils. It was good that she could look down and away when not wearing a pair of sunglasses.

I ended up parting with twenty-five thousand of the cash we had but they’d provided New York Driving licenses under the false names of John and Cynthia Marquette plus New York state tags for the Charger so we would be harder to find. Both Tyrone and Anica assured us they would hold up under scrutiny but advised us not to get stopped by anyone in law enforcement.

That was all I needed to hear.

We both took showers and got a change of clothes from Tyrone and Anica. She and Liv were about the same size so it was easy for Liv to transform into an everyday, all-American girl in a pair of skinny jeans and a black tank top. Anica gave her a few more outfits.

I wore a pair of baggy black jeans—not too baggy that my underwear were showing—courtesy of Tyrone and a white tee-shirt. He also gave me a couple days’ worth clothes so we could change our outfits.

Looking into a mirror, I didn’t feel like myself. I didn’t look like the old Shaw. I could have been a dead ringer for a Justin Bieber type if my eyes weren’t so shockingly blue. No one would know it was Liv and I who were on our way out of the country.

Tyrone halted us as he gave us a Whole Living bag full of protein bars and water. “I’m assumin’ whatever y’all got involved in, you need to leave the country. Liv’s cousin—and my sister—Shannon, lives down in Ensenada. It’s in Baja California. She’s made a life there and has been down there for at least three years. She can offer you shelter until you find your own place. Here’s her address.”

He handed it over to me and I glanced down at his handwriting, which was quite neat for a guy.

Liv embraced her cousin and kissed his cheek. “We were never here. Povikov shouldn’t come after you two but if he does, we had the wrong address, we held you two against your will and then fled with papers you did not make for us willingly, okay?”

Anica laughed at that one. “You think they’ll believe that and we don’t have a scratch on us?”

I silently agreed with Anica and swung my right fist right into Tyrone’s eye before my left fist hit his jaw.

“Fuck, man, I know you gotta make it look realistic but I am gonna be fucked up for at least a week!” Tyrone exclaimed.

“Hit me with your gun in the head, along my hairline—that’s what you would do.” Her eyes never left Liv.

She grabbed her nine-millimeter pistol and swung it harshly at Anica’s head. The young woman fell down but she stood, blood leaking from a wound to her head. “Perfect. I can cover it up for work but if the Bratva come down here and pay us a visit, I have wounds from two psychos who were trying to get out of dodge and didn’t care who they hurt to do it.”

Liv looked at Tyrone. “Sorry about that. I feel like shit we had to hurt you at all—”

“Your twenty-five grand makes up for it,” Anica responded as she held a paper towel to her head. “Now get the fuck outta here. We gotta call the cops to make this legit. We’ll lie about the car type and give them your old descriptions but you wanna get outta New York as soon as possible.”

Liv looked at me and threw me the keys. “Let’s go. I don’t want Povikov to be able to trace our journey. We gotta get on some off roads real quick and head down to Nevada via the south. The mid-west is too obvious, and we’re bound to run into some of his thugs.”

As much I hated her plan of taking the southern route, she had a point. We’d never make it if we went through the mid-west.

“I’m ready whenever you are,” I murmured toward her.

She walked past me and fluffed my newly blond spiked hair. “I’m ready now.”

W
hile Shaw hauled ass, passing New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland, I didn’t breathe right until we entered Virginia. It wasn’t like Povikov didn’t have guys there because he did—we were still too close to Washington, D.C.—but we planned to keep going south until we entered the Carolinas and then start to cross over.

I studied Google Maps and tried to plan out our destination. It was a funny thing but I’d never seen most of the United States and neither had Shaw so I wanted to make this into a road trip despite what we were running from.

“Hey, sweetie, you with the map, where are we restin’ our heads tonight?”

I looked over at him and couldn’t help but smile. He did look a lot like Justin Bieber but the look suited him. Plus, he was built in ways that Bieber could only imagine. I knew for a fact that it wasn’t just Shaw’s dick that was huge.

He’d worked out in prison so he’d built his body. Although still on the lean side, he had to be at least two hundred and twenty pounds on his six feet, four-inch frame, and it was all muscle. Hell, when he slipped his shirt off and I got a look at his chest, his pecs were built and he had an eight-pack instead of a six-pack.

His whole body had my girly hormones working overtime but I wasn’t stupid. Shaw and I had a tentative relationship, built on mutual love and respect but there was no way he would disrespect me. I didn’t even know if he’d have the nerve to initiate sex between us despite it being him who broke my hymen four years ago just so I could save him from Vladimir Povikov’s death, which he’d caused.

Our relationship was weird. He looked at me as a sister one minute and the next, the look in his eyes was of a man looking at a woman. I was never afraid of him—that was an impossibility because the man would lay down his life for me—but I did often get frustrated with him.

I was a red-blooded woman, not a goddamn statue of Madonna and child. I hated our Catholic values grilled in our heads that there were good girls and bad girls. I wanted to be very bad for Shaw but the real question was would he let me?

“Earth to Liv! Babe, where are we stayin’ tonight?”

I looked over at him and checked the time. It was barely past three in the afternoon. “Where are we?”

“Just passed Blacksburg.”

“Nashville is six hours from here. Wanna see if we can make it and rest up there?”

“And take you to the famous Bluebird Café? Sounds like a plan.”

I reached over, wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. “That’s what I love about you.”

“Hell, you used to watch
Nashville
like a damn religion. At least that’s what you told me when you visited me in Walpole. I’m assumin’ nothin’s changed.”

I shook my head adamantly. “Nothing except our location.” I grabbed a pre-rolled joint from his box of Camel cigarettes and lit it.

“You think that’s wise?” Shaw looked over at me with those crystal blue eyes that could soak my panties if I let him but I only rolled my own and dragged from it.

“We’re on the run from gangsters—twice as bad as being on the run from the law. At least you know they’ll give you a chance to surrender, make a deal and get maybe five, ten or even fifteen years instead of a life sentence. These people want us dead, sweetie, might as well live life to the fullest.” I exhaled the strong smoke from my lungs. “Damn, this stuff is potent.”

“Povikov likes it that way. He always adds a little cocaine in its liquid form into his marijuana. It’s the reason why everyone wants Povikov Fifty-Seven on the streets. He can charge as much as he wants because people can’t get that same high from anyone else’s chronic.” Shaw grabbed the joint from me and dragged deeply before he handed it back.

“And you would know this how?”

“I’ve been a dealer for him since I was fifteen. That’s when he told me the big truth about my deceased mother messin’ around with him.” He exhaled and pushed the engine to ninety miles an hour. “I didn’t believe him at first but then as I developed, I started to see my resemblance to him. Ness was a Shaughnessy and I wasn’t. I couldn’t even get my mother to admit the truth. All she told me was that she didn’t want to talk about that time in her life.”

I didn’t exactly know what to say. It wasn’t like my life was perfect but my mother had always been brutally honest with me. I knew the “family secret” of how when her parents divorced, her father took her because she could pass yet her sister couldn’t so my grandmother kept her and left Boston. She’d settled in Brooklyn, the same place my cousin had grown up as a Muslim when she converted as a young adult.

I couldn’t claim them until that old bastard of my grandfather passed on but it was good to know I had family. Tyrone had promised me to update about whether everyone died that night we fled. It was funny because that part of my aunt that was denied to her ended up being the names of her children. My cousin, Shannon, had been named after County Shannon in Ireland and Tyrone after County Tyrone. Although she’d converted to Islam, she chose names that celebrated the heritage she’d been denied by my bastard grandfather.

“Annabelle is performing at the Bluebird Café tonight—did you know that?”

I glanced over at Shaw and smiled. “Yep. I thought you could use some family to be around. You know country isn’t my favorite genre but your cousin is gifted. She is the perfect blend of Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift. I could see Annabelle McCarthy being a huge star one of these days.”

He grabbed my free hand that didn’t hold the joint and squeezed. “Thank you.”

“For what? Giving a shit?” I laughed before I dragged on the joint. “We’ll never know when we see family again so let’s celebrate with them while we can. All we have to do is avoid the Dixie Mafia and we’ll be good.”

“Shit, they hate the Russians and Italians more than the Feds. If anything, they could offer us refuge.”

“True but we can’t trust anyone, not at the moment, Shaw. We have to act like everyone is out to get us.”

“Jesus, Liv—paranoid enough?”

I hated how Shaw made me sound like some kind of conspiracy theorist. “Or maybe you just aren’t paranoid enough. We are running from some very dangerous people and don’t think just because you’re Povikov’s son he will give you mercy.” I crossed my arms against my breasts, angry because Povikov
would
give Shaw mercy—it was my
own
ass I was worried about.

“What’s this really all about, babe?” He looked at me longer than I was comfortable with especially since he was driving. “Do you think I would let anything happen to you? I’d take your punishment, even if it meant death. I’ve always looked out for you. My so-called dad isn’t gonna hurt you ever. I’d kill him first and have no problem sleeping at night.”

I rolled down the window enough to toss the small bit of what was left of the pot out of the car and rolled it back up. I knew he would protect me but I didn’t want any more death.

I felt bad enough about what I did to those dirty cops but that was a Darwinian situation. It was them or us—I didn’t have a problem pulling the trigger, not after what they had done. But I was no trained killer. Before then, I’d never murdered anyone in my life. Yes, I had gladly taken the fall for what Shaw did to Vladimir but even that was an accident. Shaw hadn’t murdered the guy on purpose; he’d merely thrown him off of me, and an ancient and very priceless antique piece of wood severed his spinal cord, causing instantaneous death.

However, I couldn’t deny that Shaw wasn’t a murderer. He’d been in prison and knew what it took to survive. He would kill for me and I’d let him do it too. Again, it was Darwinism at work. Our lives were the most important part of this situation. If we didn’t care about them then why the fuck were we running in the first place?

S
haw and I arrived in Nashville shortly after eight in the evening. Between his speeding and the CB radio we’d picked up to spot highway patrolmen, we’d made good time.

I wanted nothing but a motel room and some rest but hunger won out in the end. We drove to the Bluebird Café and managed to find a parking spot before we climbed out of the car, stretched and walked inside.

Live country music was playing and the place was packed but the waitress managed to find us a small table near the back and handed us menus. I was starving but I was also mystified by the vision that was Annabelle McCarthy. Why this young woman of twenty didn’t have a record dead was beyond me. Probably because she didn’t upload her music to YouTube. Every artist nowadays seemed to be discovered on YouTube and places like the Bluebird Café were becoming old fashioned and passé.

“Don’t you dare run up on me,

Like it’s gonna be you and me tonight,

Only thing I got for you is a shotgun and some buck shots, baby.

I don’t care what you say about us being all right,

I ain’t crazy when I saw you with peroxide blonde last night.

“Get the hell out—you better start runnin’

My daddy taught me how to shoot and I’m gunnin’

To litter your behind with half of the bullets in this sawed off.

All I gotta do is pull on the trigger,

Oh, baby, you’re gonna need more than liquor,

So go on and leave me in this broken down house . . . on my own.”

The crowd went crazy as she finished up and she smiled in return. It was the face that could launch a dozen country and pop albums. Annabelle had a gift for song and every time I saw her, she amazed me even more.

She’d come up to Boston while I was attending BU with nothing but an acoustic guitar and some spare panties on the Greyhound. We were the same size damn near except she was slightly slimmer than me. She wowed my friends and they didn’t even like country music but the dishwater blonde with the purple streaks in her hair had a strong voice and song writing skills that could break a million hearts. It didn’t hurt that her hazel eyes melted the soul of the meanest of them. She had that disposition no one could turn down.

Annabelle spotted Shaw and I but she couldn’t do more than wink in our direction.

“I wanna thank Ricky, Kyle and Billy for helping me out up here. I love this crowd and comin’ here to perform. I suppose the only place better would be the Grand Ole Opry but I won’t get ahead of myself just yet,” she said in her deep Louisiana accent.

“Now, as most of y’all know, I hail from New Orleans. Not the French quarter but deeper in the bayou. My crazy French Creole mama mixed with a foolish, charming Irishman and voila, y’all—out came me. I always say what I play is a mixture of country-soul ‘cause Lord knows I gotta few tales to tell about some people. But my mouth stays shut on who I’m talking about. So, my last song tonight is called ‘Fugitives’ and I don’t even have to give a hint to who this song is about. I think they already know.”