Blaire

“He’s okay.”

I sagged into the motel sofa, its lumpy cushions settling uncomfortably under my tense muscles. My body felt like it had consumed an inordinately high amount of caffeine and I was experiencing a crash.

“You’re going back to him?” Liam asked, presumably because he heard me give Grant directions to our location. My friend helped me escape from Grant and he tried to talk me out of it at first, but I threatened to leave on my own. We’d been holed up in a motel in Plymouth, an hour outside Boston. Liam and I used the Dark Web to keep tabs on the criminal underworld, anonymously monitoring common chatrooms to gather information and get a pulse on whether something was about to go down. We knew Russian Organized Crime (ROC) used it and, apparently, they knew we did as well. It was there we discovered that a couple of their associates went after Grant, but failed.

“He’s going to get himself killed if I don’t.”

“Sweetheart, I don’t think a man who’s made it to the top like Grant Thorne would be stupid enough to get himself killed.”

“He said he was going to dig deeper into who attacked him,” I snapped. “Why would he do that?”

“He’s getting you back, isn’t he?”

My relief that Grant was okay trumped my infuriation at his persistence. I looked regretfully at Liam. “I’ve wasted your efforts to get me away from him.”

“I tried to talk you out of it, remember?” Liam reminded me. “My opinion? You’re better off with him right now because he has the resources to hire enough security to protect you.”

“But it’s not about my safety anymore, is it?” I pointed out. “What about his family? His father is a United States Senator, for goodness’ sake. Who I am will ruin his family.”

“Never talk about yourself that way, Blaire,” Liam said. “We don’t choose our families and your father tried to do right in the end.”

“Grant knows about the guns and passports, Liam.”

“Shit. That means he has the flash drives as well. You’ll have to tell him something.”

“Will you come with me?”

“No,” he sighed. “It’s been two years. I failed you and your father the first time. You’re not hiding from Mikhail Orlov forever.” He returned his attention to the piece of wood he was carving. This had been his hobby for as long as I’d known him. He’d make intricate miniature wooden sculptures—animals were his favorite. Right now, he was working on a bear. He’d never given me any of his little masterpieces, though I asked him once.

“Maybe when I’m dead and buried” was his response, and I never asked again. I think woodworking relaxed him. I wished I could say the same with my painting. I couldn’t paint when I was tense.

The months I’d been with Grant, I hadn’t seen Liam consistently. It saddened me that the days of driving a mile down the road whenever I needed company were over. He was all I’d known since we’d run from the Russian mob.

“It’s my fault we’re on his radar again,” I said. “We were supposed to be dead.”

“He had suspicions we faked our deaths. I told you this. Grant may be our silver lining.”

“How so?”

“You’ll have someone else to watch over you now.”

My heart constricted. “Liam.”

“I won’t be able to protect you forever, Wren,” he said. “But I have a feeling Grant Thorne will.”

My throat burned at his words. “We’ll figure this out.” I echoed Grant’s words and reached out to hold my friend’s hand. “Please, Liam, come with me.”

He smiled sadly. “I’m so close to getting us what we need, but I will contact you. By the way, lose the phone you used to call Grant and use another burner.”

Liam had made headway in finding out who had the other piece of evidence that would support what we already had against the ROC. I knew he avoided taking risks because of me. He didn’t want me to be alone in this world, but he’d developed a grudging respect for Grant in the past months, especially in the way he cared for me. I was afraid of what was to come, but if there was one thing life on the run had taught me about Liam, he wasn’t afraid of anything except abandoning me to the mercy of the Russian mafia.

“Grant may drop us when he realizes how much trouble we’re in,” I told him in part because it was a strong possibility, and partly because I didn’t want him to be suicidal.

My friend appeared to consider this. “Then he’s not the man I thought he was. But, my advice? Don’t dump all our shit on him at once.”

“I’m not lying to him anymore, Liam.”

“Then don’t lie. Let him know you’re not ready to tell him everything.”

“This is Grant we’re talking about here, you think he’ll be contented with piece-meal information given that he’d discovered our stash—”

Liam held up his hand as if to shush me and then cocked his head toward the door. He tossed his sculpture and knife into an open bag.

“What?”

The word barely left my mouth when my friend tackled me across the bed as the door exploded inward.

* * *

Liam had already drawn his gun by the time we fell on the other side of the mattress. Bullets flew through the room, lodged into the wall and shattered windows. I crawled to my bed and snatched my weapon from under the pillow. Lying on my back on the carpet, I cocked my gun. I scrambled to my knees and, using the bed for cover, returned fire. But the firefight was short-lived. There was a dead man on the floor and bullet holes on either side of the door frame. Our attackers had either fled or were dead. Liam was rarely caught off-guard. He had an uncanny “Spidey sense.”

“Are you all right?” he asked gruffly.

I nodded, but had trouble regulating the surge of adrenaline.

“Deep breaths,” my friend ordered as he got up to check on our unmoving attacker. He had prepared me for scenarios like this, but no amount of preparation could substitute for a real shootout. Oh. My. God. I couldn’t wimp out now. I stood and pointed the gun at the guy on the floor, nodding to Liam that I had his back. I tried to speak but my teeth only clattered, so I clamped my mouth shut.

He leaned against the wall beside the door, then quickly pivoted through the door to clear the hallway. His body relaxed. “They’re gone. There’s blood on the floor so we got some of them.”

“He’s dead,” I said, pointing to the man in our room. “I don’t recognize him at all.”

“Neither do I,” Liam replied. “He must be a low-level soldier. They’re not very experienced. Too eager. Should have used tear gas. The bad news is, it looks like their orders were shoot to kill.”

Versus being captured and tortured? Maybe death was preferable.

“We need to move,” Liam said as he shoved our things into a duffle. “The cops will be here in seven minutes or less.”

“What about Grant?” Given that this place would be crawling with uniforms soon, I doubt he’d think I’d bailed on him again, but how would he find us?

“We’ll drive around the block. It’ll take him an hour at least to get here.”

I nodded shortly. Calling him wasn’t an option. Our phone call was the only way these ROC thugs could have tracked us down which meant Grant’s phone was the problem. Scant minutes later, Liam and I exited the motel. There’d been tentative spectators, doors slightly open and suddenly shutting as we hastened by. I was wearing a hoodie and had my head down. Liam had on a baseball cap. We both had our guns tucked into our pockets, trigger finger on the barrel, ready to engage if our assailants were lying in wake. Keeping vigilant, we moved in the shadows until we got into our Ford sedan. Liam gunned the engine, backed up, and left the motel parking. Two blocks up we parked at a diner to change clothes. I put on a sweatshirt while my friend donned a NY Giants jacket and took off his cap. Afterward, we got back on the road. It was only then that I noticed my hands were shaking. Cold and clammy with an uncontrollable tremor, I ended up sitting on them.

“You okay?” Liam asked.

“I’m shaking,” I gave a nervous laugh. “I’ll get it together in a minute. Dead bodies I can handle, just not used to getting shot at.”

“You did well back there.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m serious, Wren. You didn’t lose your shit.”

“I’ll be honest, I feel like throwing up right now.”

Liam glanced at me. “Want me to pull over?”

“Keep driving,” I said, rolling down the window. “The fresh air helps.”

“You’re a survivor,” Liam muttered and I wondered if he was trying to convince himself that I was.

Almost to the hour, we pulled back to the diner across from the inn. Blue and red lights from three police cruisers strobed and lit the scene. A crime scene investigation van was parked near the law enforcement vehicles. There was a bigger crowd of spectators now than earlier.

Liam swore under his breath. “We’re so screwed when they match those prints.”

“You fixed it right? It won’t link back to us?”

“Our prints have been scrubbed from most databases, but not all. Yours likely won’t find a match.” Liam hammered the steering wheel in frustration. “My fingerprints are a different matter. I’ve been with various government agencies for almost thirty years. There’s bound to be a record of my prints floating somewhere. If their forensic lab is tenacious in finding out who I am, I’ll be in deep shit.”

“We’ll be in deep shit,” I informed him. “I’m not letting you go down alone.”

“Blaire … shit,” Liam cut off when two men crossed the street from the inn into the diner property. One was wearing jeans and an Oxford blazer, while the other was in a suit.

“What—”

“My guess are detectives. Let me do the talking.”

When the men walked into the parking lot, they made a beeline for us. My heart was in my throat and Liam brought out his gun, but kept it on his right side.

Suit guy knocked on the window. My friend powered it down.

“What’s going on over there?” Liam nodded to the motel.

“We’re investigating,” Suit guy replied. “Did you two just come from the diner?”

“Yes.”

“See anything suspicious before the cop cars got here?”

“Can’t say I did. Just the regular coming and goings past midnight. Besides, I was entertained by my beautiful companion here.”

Suit guy leaned over and looked at me. I didn’t like his smirk. I would have smacked Liam later if I didn’t know I was a diversion.

“How about you, ma’am? See anything?”

I shook my head.

“Heard anything?”

Again, I shook my head. “The diner was loud.” And thankfully still crowded to support my claim. “I hope everyone is all right.” I gave my best impression of a concerned, sympathetic citizen.

Suit guy’s face tightened. “If you do remember anything, give us a call.” They gave Liam their cards and said their goodbyes.

“We can’t stay here,” Liam said, looking in the rearview mirror. “We’ll figure out another way to get you to Grant.”

“I’m not going back to Grant,” I said. My friend looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “What if this blows up in our faces? Can you be a hundred percent sure those prints won’t link back to Paulina Antonova? They’ll have my face and I’ll be on a BOLO everywhere for homicide.”

“Blaire, you’re blowing this out of proportion.”

“Am I?” I challenged. “Just look at those flashing lights, Liam. I don’t want Grant to see me handcuffed and led to the back of a police car. I can’t do that to him. Just … just get us out of here.”

“Listen, sweetheart …”

“Fucking now, Liam!”

“Jesus, all right. Calm down,” Liam grumbled as he turned the engine on. I leaned back in my seat, drained by the roller coaster of emotions I’d gone through in those past two hours. Scared to death that Grant was hurt, hopeful that he wanted me back, fear at nearly getting killed and then, that hope was gone again. I didn’t know where Liam and I would go after that. Grant had all my falsified documents. He wouldn’t be giving them back without answers … answers I wasn’t ready to give.

Liam swore. “Looks like you have no choice now, Blaire.”

In all my self-pitying scramble of thoughts, I noticed we had not moved from the parking lot exit. There was traffic, but not too bad that a driver of Liam’s caliber couldn’t pull away. It was then I noticed a familiar Black Escalade making a turn from the opposite lane into ours.

“Go, now!”

“Fuck this,” my friend said and pulled into traffic.