We got out to the car and she shot me a nasty look. “You suck at being a fake boyfriend.”
“Yeah, well, you suck at…holding hands.”
“Ooh, that was a good one.”
“Hey, this is my second day dealing with this shit. Maybe you could cut me a little slack. I’ve never had to pretend to have a girlfriend, or pretend that I’m not on the run.”
“Then maybe you should work on that,” she said sweetly.
“I’ll get right on that. I’ll put it up there with trying not to get shot, finding a job that only pays in cash, and being okay with walking away from my entire life!”
“Great!” she shouted, slamming the gear shifter into drive. She peeled out, taking off down the road, driving much faster than she should be.
“You should slow down.”
“Are you the police now?”
“No, but if you don’t want to get pulled over and explain why you don’t have a license, I would slow down.”
“God, how did I get stuck with such a goody two shoes?”
“You know, I’m actually a pretty fun guy when I’m not on the run or getting shot at or having to deal with insane women!”
“Really? You could have fooled me.”
“Well, sorry to disappoint you.”
She snorted and pulled down Pine Street. I watched for three blocks until we finally pulled up to the two story house on the right. It wasn’t in great condition, but it wasn’t rundown either. There was a swing on the porch and a man standing on the steps smiling broadly at us.
“Are you ready for this?” Hannah asked.
“It’s not like I have a choice in the matter,” I grumbled, shoving my door open. Hannah and I put on our best smiles as we headed for the front porch. It was just another chapter in my life. That’s the way I had to look at this. I took a deep breath and held out my hand to introduce myself.
Hannah
I knew he was going to fuck this up the moment he held out his hand. I tried to jump in and speak first, but the real estate agent turned to him before I had the chance.
“I’m Dennis Langston.”
“Josh Cort-“ I saw his face freeze as he realized he couldn’t give his real name.
“Sorry, I didn’t catch that,” the man said.
“Josh Cort…isol.” He cleared his throat. “Josh Cortisol.”
“Cortisol,” the man said, his brows furrowing.
Josh laughed awkwardly and shrugged. “Yeah, I get confused with the cream all the time.”
“Right.” Then he turned to me with a quirked eyebrow. Luckily, I was better at this than Josh. “Hannah Martin.”
“Well, let’s see this house, shall we?”
I nodded with a smile and took Josh’s hand, giving him a hard squeeze. He glared at me, but didn’t make a sound. We followed the agent up the steps and into the house. All the furniture was covered in sheets and it was obvious that no one had lived here in a long time. It needed to be cleaned, but it was nice. It was an older house, probably early 1920’s. Most of the appliances looked like they were out of the eighties, but the agent assured us that everything was in working order.
“There are three bedrooms upstairs and a full bathroom. The downstairs bathroom is only a half bath.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I said. “How much is the rent?”
“A thousand dollars a month, plus utilities. And a five hundred dollar deposit.”
“We’ll take it,” I smiled. “Do you take cash?”
The man shook his head slightly. “Um…we don’t normally deal in cash.”
I could tell the man didn’t want to turn it down. The house had obviously been sitting vacant for a long time. Cash was not ideal, but we couldn’t afford to have the kind of documentation he would want.
“I’m afraid cash is all we can do right now,” I sighed, turning on my heel. Josh looked at me in confusion, but I took his hand and started pulling him toward the door.
“Wait,” the man shouted.
I turned and looked at him inquisitively. “Yes?”
“Well, technically, I manage this property, so I suppose I could take cash.”
“Perfect,” I grinned. “Can we move in right away?”
“Of course.”
I pulled out my wallet and counted out fifteen hundred dollars and handed it over. “Thank you very much for helping us out.”
The man nodded, obviously uncomfortable with all this, but handed over the keys and made his way out the door. “It was nice to meet you Ms. Martin, Mr. Cortisol.”
He shut the door behind him and I sighed, thinking of how much work this was going to be.
“Are we going to be able to afford this?”
“Well, I can start cleaning if you want to go start looking for a job.”
He sighed and ran a hand over his head. “I don’t even know how to apply for a job without giving references or a telephone number.”
“You can’t give your social security number either,” I pointed out. “If we’re going to stay here, there’s absolutely nothing about your life you can let on. You’re going to have to destroy your cards and basically create a new identity for yourself.”
He smirked. “As Josh Cortisol?”
I laughed. “I can’t believe you told him your last name was Cortisol.”
“I froze,” he huffed. “This is my first time doing this.”
“Yeah, it shows. Look, just find a mechanic shop and tell them that you’re willing to work under the table and that you’re willing to prove how good you are before they hire you.”
“You want me to work for free?”
“It’s only on a trial basis. You’re good, right?”
“I’ve worked on cars my whole life.”
“Then you’ll be fine.”
“And what if they say they can’t hire me under the table?”
I shrugged. “We’ll figure something out. Look, I’ve been doing this a long time. We’ll be fine.”
I handed him the car keys and he reluctantly left to go find work. I looked around the house and got to work taking off the sheets and dusting off everything. Despite the cold, I opened the windows to get some fresh air inside. While the first floor was airing out, I went upstairs to check out the bedrooms again. I found linens in the closet, but they smelled musty. I threw them in the washing machine and opened the windows upstairs as well.
As I was rummaging through the kitchen, I made a list of groceries we would need. We couldn’t just eat out whenever we wanted. We would have to really watch our spending. It was different when it was just me. I knew what I spent normally, but now I had a man with me, and I had no idea how much he ate on any given day.
I decided to take a walk around town and see what was available. If they had some self-defense classes, I could trick Josh into taking them. If he was going to be on the run with me, he was going to have to learn to defend himself. I also needed to find a gym he could join. I was serious about him needing to bulk up. He needed to look totally different than before. If we were lucky, those two guys that were after us had been killed for failing to capture us. If that was the case, they would send others after us, and they wouldn’t know exactly what we looked like at this moment. Now was the perfect time to change.
As I left the house, I thought about why those guys were after me. After four years, why now? What did it matter if I was alive? Obviously, it hadn’t mattered before if I was alive or dead, but now someone was after me, and I had to find out why. I just couldn’t let Josh in on this little part of my life. Although, with the way he reacted to everything that had happened so far, I was pretty convinced that he really didn’t have anything to do with the men that were after me. The only thing that made sense if he was in on it, was that he was trying to get me on his side, to trust him. But for some reason, my gut was telling me he was really an innocent bystander in all this. I wanted to trust him. For once in the four years that I had been on the run, I wanted someone on my side
.
I walked around town for a few hours, checking out some thrift stores and I found a local gym that not only was cheap, but also offered self-defense classes. I grinned as I took a pamphlet home. Home…that was a strange thing to say. Josh was essentially my home now, and that was just ironic considering we didn’t know anything about each other. When I walked up the sidewalk to our house, I saw Josh sitting on the swing, waiting for me. He came over and grabbed some bags out of my hands, waiting for me to open the door.
“Where did you go?”
“We needed to get some clothes, and I found a gym for you.”
“You were serious about that?”
“Yeah,” I said, shoving open the door. “We need you to bulk up. Also,” I pulled out the self-defense pamphlet and handed it to him. “I figured I could take some self-defense classes. I figured that at least one of us needs some proper training.”
His brows furrowed. “Shouldn’t that be me?”
“Why?” I asked innocently, baiting my trap.
“Well, because I’m a man and you’re a…”
“A what?”
He cleared his throat. “Well, you’re a woman. I mean, I’m the man. I should be protecting you.”
“Look, I’ve been doing this for a long time on my own-“
“Yeah, but I’m here now, and if anyone is going to be saving anyone’s ass, it’s going to be me. Besides, I’m bigger than you. I should be the one that does the ass kicking.”
I rolled my eyes, internally smiling. “Fine, but then I get to take the firearms class.”
I turned and walked away, smiling as I headed for the laundry room.
“Hold on, who says you get to take the class? Doesn’t that fall under protection?”
I turned, quirking my head at him. “Well, I just figured that since I already have the gun…”
“Yeah, and you shook the whole fucking time you were holding it. I grew up around guns. Granted, they were rifles, but I know enough that this will be easy for me.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, quirking my head at him. “Fine, you can do that too.”
He grinned, like he was proud he won me over, and I pretended to be annoyed by the whole thing. It really worked for us.
“Did you find a job?”
“I had some luck. It’s temporary, but I have a feeling if I do a good job, it could be a more permanent job.”
For the first time since this whole thing started, I felt really bad about ripping him out of his life. This was normal for me, but for him, he was starting all over when he shouldn’t have to.
I gave a tentative smile and held out a bag to him. “I picked up some clothes for you. They’re from the thrift store, but I figured that if you were working as a mechanic, it wouldn’t matter if they were new or not.”
He nodded and looked inside, pulling out a plaid shirt. “Really? Plaid’s not really my thing.”
“Well, you’re not supposed to be you, so that’s a good thing.”
“Yeah, but…it’s plaid.”
I shrugged. “I could have gone with some beautiful pink shirts they had on sale.”
He nodded, shoving it back in the bag. “Plaid’s good.”
“That’s what I thought. How about we go grocery shopping and then we can call it a day?”
“Sure. You know, I feel bad having you pay for everything. I only have like fifty bucks on me.”
“It’s fine. Really. I’ve saved plenty over the years.”
In truth, I took fifty grand when I ran. I had it stashed in various places around the country, but I always had ten grand on me, and continued to work and live off what I earned in case I had to run fast. As long as we both worked and lived off those wages, we had nothing to worry about and could replenish what we had spent.
Josh
“Hey, Cortisol,” my boss, Cyrus Nicholls, called out, shaking his head and laughing. The other guys laughed along with him. I sighed and climbed out from under the car I was working on and wiped my hands on a rag. He motioned for me to follow him to his office. I did as he asked, shutting the door behind me.
“Take a seat.”
I did, and waited for whatever he had to say. He stared at me for a minute. He was maybe thirty-five years old, but I could tell that he knew exactly what he was doing. He had years of life experience under his belt, and where he got those years, I was really starting to wonder. He had eyes in the back of his head and could read me like a book.
“So, you’ve been here a week and you do good work, some of the best work I’ve ever seen.”
I didn’t say anything, just waited for whatever he was going to say.
“Where did you learn to work on cars?”
“At home with my dad.”
“Yeah? And where’s home?”
I was silent for a moment, and then I grinned. “Kentucky.”
He nodded. “I grew up in Kentucky.”
“Really,” I said, swallowing hard. Fuck, I was so screwed. I had never even been to Kentucky before. Why the fuck had I said that?
“Yeah, what town are you from?”
“Grant,” I said, not knowing if there was even a fucking town called Grant in Kentucky.
His eyes twinkled in amusement. He leaned forward in his seat and rested his arms on his desk, interlocking his fingers. “Kid, can I give you some advice?”
I hated being called kid, but I had to suck it up right now. I needed this job, and I couldn’t afford to fuck it up. “Sure.”
“When you move on from here, and I know you will, come up with a better name than Cortisol. That was your first mistake. Second, if you’re gonna fucking lie about where you’re from, make it convincing. Pick someplace that you’ve at least passed through, so you know what the fuck you’re talking about. There’s no Grant, Kentucky, but there is a Grant County.”
Shit. I glanced away, not sure where the fuck to go from here. I had never been a liar, but it wasn’t like I had a choice right now. I knew I had fucked up, but it wasn’t like any of this came naturally to me.
“Is this shit you’re running from illegal?”
I shook my head once.
“Which means you stepped in shit and now you don’t know your ass from your head.” He sighed and leaned back in his seat. “Let’s go.”
“What?”
“Did I ask you to fucking question me?”
“Look, I know I’ve only been here a week, but I can work longer hours or-“
“Jesus, I’m not firing you. Now, grab your shit and let’s go.”
I had no fucking clue what to do in this situation. He seemed like a stand up guy, but that didn’t mean jack shit to me at the moment. I couldn’t trust anyone with what was happening. It wasn’t just my life on the line. I had to think about Hannah also, and there was no way I could put her in danger.
“You know, I’ll just find somewhere else to work,” I said, pushing past him. He grabbed my arm and slammed me up against the wall, pulling out a gun that I didn’t even know he had.
“Do you know what this is?”
I swallowed hard and nodded slightly. “Good. Have you ever used one?”
“Not a handgun.”
“But you have used a gun.”
I nodded.
“Good, this should be easier than I thought.”
He pushed away from me and shoved his gun into the back of his pants, then motioned for me to follow him. He opened the door to his office and shouted to the other guys. “Hey, I’m taking Cortisol to see a car. Close up the shop when you’re done.”
One of the guys lifted his hand and started laughing again. Against my better judgement, I followed Cyrus out to his truck and climbed in the passenger seat. I was sweating the whole drive out of town. Was he a drug dealer or maybe a weapons dealer? Fuck, this was bad. I rubbed the sweat from my hand on my jeans. The good thing was, Hannah and I had made a deal that if one of us didn’t make it home one night, and there was no contact by seven the next morning, the other
would leave. So, at least if I didn’t come home, she would know that it was no longer safe at the house.
“You doing alright over there, Cortisol?”
I swiped at the sweat on my forehead and stared out the window, trying to calm my racing heart. I was in so far over my head, I couldn’t see a way out. Apparently, I was a shitty judge of character. Did I really think that a guy that allowed another guy to work off the books wouldn’t expect anything in return? I wasn’t a criminal when I ran, but he was going to turn me into one. And what choice did I have? I was being dragged down this path and there was nothing I could do about it. When a guy shoved a gun in your face, you did what the fuck he said, no questions asked.
“Fine, let’s just get this over with.”
He snorted and pulled down a long driveway lined with trees. Great, I was being taken onto a property that was hidden from the road.
“Relax.”
“You relax,” I snapped. “You’re the one that pulled a gun on me, and now you want me to fucking relax?”
He started chuckling and parked the truck in front of a shed, putting it in park. “I didn’t bring you out here to shoot you.”
“Yeah, just to do your dirty work,” I muttered.
He shook his head and waved for me to get out. “Come on. I’ll show you what devious plan I have in place for you.”
I swallowed down the bile in my throat and shoved the door open. It was at this very moment that I wished I had contacted Derek to help me out. He had recently gotten out of the military. He probably could have helped me out. But no, I ran instead, and now I would end up dead in a river somewhere.
I walked behind him until we reached the back yard where there was some kind of open shelter set up. “Stay here.”
I nodded and glanced around, wondering where I would run. I had no fucking clue where I was. And he would probably hunt me down like a dog if I took off now that I had seen this property.
Wanted Dead or In Love: A Small Town Romance (The Cortell Brothers Book 3) Page 4