Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 6

my actual leg. There was enough blood that it was staining my footprints, so I knew it wouldn't be pretty.
    Damn it. How in the hell had they found me here? I'd fled 2,300 miles and had been living essentially off the grid for almost two months.
    I took a deep breath, pushing that thought to the back of my mind as I braced myself to look at my leg. I had to lean my head against the wall and take several deep breaths to avoid passing out at the sight. There was a five-inch laceration marring the leg, and the stark smears of dirt and blood against pale skin were enough to make my head spin. I'd careened into a wall with an exposed screw or some such as I had looked over my shoulder in order to see how much distance I had put between myself and the goons chasing me.
    They were far enough back that they were tracking me by the gap I left in the crowd rather than by sight. That was good at least.
    "Jason," The voice was clear over the murmur of the crowd, calling my name in a teasing singsong. "Jason, where are you?"
    The last time I had heard that voice, I hadn't known. I'd thought he was just one of my boyfriend's many cousins. Now I knew better. That voice belonged to Tommy Doherty, one of the top enforcers for the Boston Irish Mob.
    ****
    Two Months Ago
    My breath whooshed out of me as Shea slammed me up against the wall. His mouth latched onto my neck like a starving leech searching for breakfast. A month ago the slick glide of his tongue over my pulse point and the rough burn of his stubble against my throat would have had me panting and ready to be taken. Instead, my mind was wandering– a sure sign that Shea and I were not meant to be. I'd just been too complacent until now to break it off. Soon . I sighed internally as I tried to focus, quite literally, on the matter at hand.
    One hour and a mildly disappointing orgasm later, I found myself contemplating the pros and cons of counting the popcorn on Shea's ceiling and becoming increasingly frustrated by his erratic snoring. Eventually, I became annoyed enough that I rolled out of bed and wandered into Shea's office. I puttered around on his computer, checking my emails and reading Facebook updates from people I didn't care about. I was so bored it took me ten minutes to figure out I was in Shea's Facebook and not mine.
    Disgusted with myself, I closed all the browser windows and moved the cursor towards the shutdown icon in the lower left hand corner. On its ponderous journey across the sculpted pecs that Shea used for his desktop background, though, the cursor scrolled over an unlabeled icon and a login box popped up.
    I settled back in the chair, curiosity peaked. If only I had known then the chaos that little pop up box would cause in my life, I would have scrolled away and never thought twice about it. Alas, hindsight is always 20/20, as they say– and now sight is just about legally damn blind. Instead of walking away I found myself pondering what Shea was hiding behind a password. Porn? Confidential work files?
    The username was already auto-filled, so all I had to do was figure out the password. Shea was always forgetting things like passwords and PINs so it would be something obvious. I tried his birthday, forwards and backwards; my birthday, forwards and backwards; his address, with and without zip code; and a few other obvious things. Finally, it dawned on me. His username was s.doherty so I tried ytrehod.s in the password box and pressed enter.
    A file sharing folder popped up.
    I clicked on the first file, all the while knowing it was a bad idea. But the same they who know all about hindsight have another little gem– curiosity killed the cat. Sometimes I wonder why "they" had to be so literal in my case.
    An accounting spreadsheet sprang forth from my ill-fated double click. I glanced at the headings and didn't recognize it as belonging to any of Shea's clients from the firm at which we both work. It may seem like I have the common sense of a box of rocks at this point, but if there is one thing I know, it is numbers. Having so many shiny, new, as yet undiscovered numbers sitting in front of me begging to be made sense of was a temptation beyond my ability to resist.
    An hour later I was beginning to get an uneasy feeling at the base of my ribcage. Two hours later, that feeling had blossomed into full on nausea. Three hours later, it took everything in me not start hyperventilating. Somehow what looked like documentation of a massively huge money