Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 6

laundering scheme was in a password protected file on my boyfriend's computer. Not only that, but the same file also contained what looked like the books for various businesses ranging from completely above board to so illegal I could probably go to jail just for reading about them.
    I allowed myself a moment to have a minor– ok major– internal freak out, and then took a deep breath. As calmly I could, I opened Shea's desk drawers and dug around until I found a couple of spare USB drives. I carefully copied all the files from the password protected folder onto both USB drives, planning to keep one for myself and send one to… someone official. I'd figure that part out later.
    ****
    Across town an alert popped up on Andy's screen to say that s.doherty had just made a copy of all the files he had access to. Since s.doherty was the youngest son of Old Man Charlie Doherty– head of the Doherty Family, more widely known as the Boston branch of the Irish Mob– that was a pretty damn large number of files.
    Twenty minutes later Old Man Charlie growled, "Don't kill him but teach him a lesson he'll not soon forget," into the phone. As Tommy Doherty hung up, a grin spread across his face. Thinking about how much fun it would be to put that punk loser in his place, he grabbed his gun and stuffed it into his shoulder holster on his way out the door.
    ****
    I was lucky– extremely freakin' lucky. That is the only reason I survived that night. I was in the corner of the living room, half hidden in the three foot space between the end of the couch and the wall when Tommy busted in Shea's front door and barreled in, gun aimed at chest height. I heard Shea's startled cry from the bedroom and ignored it. I hunched smaller into the corner and slowly pulled my laptop off the end table where I had left it to charge. After I heard Tommy slam open the bedroom door I shoved the computer into my hastily packed bag and, after a moment's hesitation, headed towards the fire escape on the off chance that Tommy had other goons guarding the hallway of Shea's apartment building.
    I dropped the last six feet into the dark alleyway from the rickety ladder that had broken sometime in recent history. It was a sobering moment as I realized that I had no one I knew well enough, or who cared enough about me to help me escape from the mob. I might have said Shea but he was in the freakin' mob so he was out.
    I just started walking, trying to keep my panic at bay. I had no idea how they knew, but there could be no other reason for Cousin Tommy to be waving a gun around in the middle of the night. And eventually he would figure out that Shea had been sleeping– that I was not in bed where I was meant to be– and he would put the pieces together.
    For some reason I had this image in my head of one of those spy movies where they track people by their credit cards, and the people on the run can't get to their vast sums of money because whoever is chasing them will find them if they do. While I didn't have vast sums of money, I had a goodly sum. I began to formulate a plan. It probably fit better in a spy movie than in real life but at least it gave me something to focus on. I stopped at every ATM I passed and pulled out the maximum withdrawal amount. After wandering the streets of Boston for a good three hours, I had about $2,000 in my pocket and the extent of my plan was exhausted.
    I collapsed on a bench in the Common just as the first rays of sunlight were streaking across the predawn sky like brilliant scars. My clothes were a mess, my hair felt like it was sticking out in a hundred different directions and all my possessions I currently had access to were in a bag at my feet. If not for the $2,000 in my pocket, I would have felt like Boston's newest homeless person. I closed my eyes as the reality of my situation wrapped itself around my brain and fear settled into me for the first time since I had successfully evaded Tommy the night before. The chill of it seeped into my bones and I started to shake.
    If I was right– and Tommy bursting into Shea's apartment with a gun drawn pointed pretty clearly in that direction– the mob was going to be after me in the very near future. Whether my notions of the mob had any basis in reality or were completely fabricated from watching entirely too many episodes of the Sopranos, I figured I would get shot first on the off chance that the answers I might have given would have been the wrong ones.
    I must have