What a way to spend a wedding day.
“I don’t need to be carried like I’m some kind of child,” I protest, as he starts running again with me in his arms. “I just needed a damn second to rest.”
“We can still see the farmhouse, Lizzy. This is the only option, whether you like it or not.”
“Well, I don’t like it. For the record,” I retort childishly.
Cain leaps over a fallen tree like it’s a tiny hurdle. “Noted.”
I hang on for dear life.
Cain moves through the forest like he’s some sort of winged beast, jumping obstacles and barely crunching the leaves.
I’m starting to calm down. It’s Cain’s cologne. His musky natural scent. How he holds me so strongly and yet so delicately, like I’m a feather weighing hardly more than the wind I’m drifting across. My sense of humor is coming back.
“Admit it,” I say quietly. “You’re secretly a vampire.”
Cain looks down at me in confusion. “What?”
“You’re Edward. From the vampire book. You know. He runs really fast, he’s ridiculously strong, and his skin glitters in the sun.” I pause. “You know, come to think of it, I’ve yet to actually see you in pure sunshine.”
Cain gives me a wry smile. “I assure you I don’t sparkle.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Cain pauses. “If I remember right, the woman he carries through the forest ends up falling in love with him and having his baby.”
The words shimmer in front of me. “You’re kidding. You’ve read those books?”
Cain shrugs and deftly leaps over a pile of brush. “Hasn’t everyone read those books?”
“You even read the last one, since you know about the baby. That’s some true commitment right there.”
Cain stops running and stares at me. He speaks, words coming out of his beautiful lips. “You tell anyone about me reading those books, and I’ll have to kill you.”
“Noted,” I reply, throwing his own word back at him. It’s weird to be joking like this. It must be some sort of coping mechanism. Anything to keep me from thinking about what is actually happening.
Cain is finally panting. “I need to put you down. We’re nearly out of the woods,” he says. “Well, not metaphorically. We’re still in the woods metaphorically. You know. Being on the run and all.”
I laugh as he sets me delicately on the forest floor, pine needles crunching under my feet.
“But we’re literally nearly out of the woods. Good.” We stand there, my body still warm from the radiant heat of his against mine.
“Aren’t you cold?” I ask him.
He shrugs in his battle-worn tuxedo. “I’m fine. Don’t take that coat off. There’s no way I’m going to let a woman freeze on my behalf. No way at all.”
I let him catch his breath. “You know, vampires are already cold, so I don’t think they need coats, either.”
Cain laughs. “Let’s get moving, Bella.”
Totally against my will and better judgment, my stomach fills with butterflies over him calling me Bella. I pinch my arm underneath the down coat. I need to get a grip. This guy is a killer, a stone-cold killer. Not someone I’m supposed to be getting warm and fuzzy over.
But I do stare at his ass, tight in his tuxedo pants, as he walks in front of me.
Soon, we are actually out of the woods. There’s a farmhouse near us, one downstairs room illuminated.
“There,” Cain whispers. “We’re going there.”
I follow him, unquestioning. I have to jog to keep up with his confident strides. My breath is coming out in foggy puffs. When we reach the house, I hesitate.
But Cain knocks confidently on the door of the back porch, taking a few steps back.
He’s polite. I like that.
Then I immediately hate that I like that.
Killer. Henchman. Snitch.
I can’t possibly be with him.
The door opens and reveals an old woman, her spine slightly bent from old age, holding a candle.
“Yes?” she asks, looking somewhat confused. She eyes Cain’s clothes.
“Sorry to disturb your morning ritual,” Cain says, his voice deeper and smoother than I remember. I realize that he’s pouring on charm. I wonder if this is part of his training. “I’d like to buy your truck.”
Now that I wasn’t expecting. What truck? I peer around the edge of the porch railing and see an old beater truck with brown, dead weeds growing up around the tires.
“Will that thing run?” I ask, unable to keep my mouth shut.
Cain doesn’t answer, instead taking the moment to pull out a stack of hundred dollar bills from his tuxedo.
The old woman looks him dead in the eye. “You remind me of my husband,” she says. “I don’t think I could say no to those baby blues. Come inside.”
“We don’t have a lot of time so - “ Cain says.
“You want the truck? You’re coming inside.”
She doesn’t wait for us to deny her.
Cain holds out his arm with a sardonic grin to let me walk through the door first. “After you, milady.”
“Thanks,” I say.
The heavy boots I’m wearing make the floorboards creak. The kitchen smells like just warming up coffee and wood polish. This place is old, but it’s immaculate.
The butcher block countertop has been recently polished, and the dining table has a neat, crocheted lace doily in the center. On top of that is a blue ceramic bowl filled with oranges. My stomach rumbles and I clap a hand over it.
The old woman laughs. “Have a seat. I’ll make you some waffles.”
Cain opens his mouth again and the old lady actually hushes him with a sharp noise. “If I’m letting go of my favorite truck, we’re going to do things my way. And that’s not a question. I’m too damn old to be taking orders from anyone other than me.”
Cain pulls out a straight-backed wicker chair. I pull off my coat.
“What?” I say to Cain, who looks annoyed that I’m doing that. “She said to get comfortable. We’re clearly not going anywhere.”
“Get some more wood out back for me, will you, son?”
“Sure, ma’am,” Cain replies.
Unflinchingly polite. I hate how sexy that is. Cain walks outside and I watch the woman deftly assembling the ingredients for pancakes. The sound of the metal whisk churning through the thick batter reminds me of being at home. I relax instantly.
And then I feel a surge of guilt as I think of my father. My heart races.
“How did you know we were fugitives?” I ask her in an attempt to distract myself. I’m sure if Cain were here he’d shush me. But he isn’t.
The old woman laughs. “I meant it in the general sense. Your man there is wearing a tuxedo. It’s five in the morning. You must be running from something.”
“That doesn’t bother you, not knowing?”
She turns around and smiles at me, the whisk still in her hand. “My husband broke up my wedding, too. To another man. He stood up when the preacher asked if anyone had any reason why these two shouldn’t be married, and bam. Next thing I know, I’m running out of a church in my wedding dress. We got married in a courthouse the next morning.” Her eyes go misty and she coughs, waving away the tears with a wrinkled hand. “That’s all in the past now.”
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 y
our 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 ko
mbucha?” 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.”
Hit and Run: A Mafia Hitman Romance Page 6