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  LIKE SO MUCH HOT AIR

  By

  Kathleen Hayes

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  PUBLISHED BY:

  Like So Much Hot Air

  Copyright © 2012 by Kathleen Hayes

  Thank you for downloading this free eBook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form, with the exception of quotes used in reviews.

  Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

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  This story was originally written as a part of the Goodreads.com M/M Romance Group’s Love is Always Write event. For more info visit us at https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/20149.

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  Dedicated to Sarah.

  She wrote the prompt that inspired the story.

  Thank you to my wonderful sister who reads everything I write. And thank you to Kelli for her knowledge of Iowa and for letting bounce about 12 different plot ideas off her.

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  LIKE SO MUCH HOT AIR

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  I looked down at my bloody pant leg and groaned quietly to myself. My jeans had a ragged tear down the side of my left calf, and I dreaded pulling the two pieces of red-

  stained denim apart to see what damage had been done to 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 2 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 5 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 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.

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  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.

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  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 3 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 gu
arding 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 sat there, paralyzed by my fear, for a good hour or so because the next thing I knew someone had sat down next to me and there were early morning joggers and commuters dotting the sidewalks and trails nearby.

  "Here," a rough voice next me said as I noticed a hand invading my personal space. I looked up and saw what appeared to be genuine homeless person handing me half a bagel. His blue eyes peered steadily out at me from under a ragged wool beanie, and the arm stretched between was covered in the stained sleeve of an ancient grey hoodie.

  I shook my head and said, "I'm good. I don't need any food." The last thing I wanted to do was take some homeless guy's breakfast.

  He smiled warmly at me and replied, "I didn't think you did, clean and pink as your skin is. You did look like you could use a friend though."

  My jaw dropped open and I gaped at him for a good ten seconds before I managed to stammer out a "Thank you" and take the bagel he was offering.

  He leaned back on the bench and stretched his arm across the back. We were just far enough apart that his hand didn't quite touch my shoulder. He took a deep breath and I could hear the smile in his voice as he said, "Beautiful morning innit?"

  For a moment I couldn't respond, and then I followed his gaze to the sky where the newly risen sun was heralded by a cacophony of colors I had never really taken the time to notice before. Warmth was just beginning to spread across the ground, and I couldn't help the laugh that escaped me as I watched a full grown duck trying to chase after a bunch of tiny ones near the water.

  In that moment, as a new day was starting, sitting next to a complete stranger and holding half a stale bagel, I laughed until I cried. I didn't stop until it had turned to laughing again. When I had settled back down into a normal breathing rhythm again, the stranger shifted forward and got up to leave. He patted me briefly on the shoulder and said, "There you go, son" before he walked off into the park again.

  After a few more moments on my bench, I grabbed my bag and decided I just needed to take things one step at a time. Step 1: Go to the bank and see if I can get any more money and then destroy my ATM and credit cards.

  As I was striding purposefully down the sparsely populated sidewalk, I almost had a heart attack as I heard my phone ring in my pocket. I looked at the caller ID and was completely flabbergasted to see Shea's name flashing across the screen. After one ring's deliberation I pressed the accept button.

  "Shea?"

  "Oh My God, Jason. Where the fuck are you?" He sounded beyond panicked.

  I put ice in my voice as I replied, "Not sure I want to tell you that right now. Especially after seeing Tommy bust into your apartment with a gun last night!"

  "Jesus, Jason. Whatever you took, you gotta bring it back. Do you have any clue who you're dealing with? He'll kill you."

  It was what I had been thinking all night but it didn't really help to have my fears confirmed. Rather than argue with Shea, which would have been pointless, I just hung up my phone and with a wince threw it in the nearest garbage can.

  I went to my bank and withdrew another $9,000 staying just below the $10,000 reporting minimum and just about cleaning out my savings account. I stopped at a thrift store and bought some clothes. I bought a pay as you go cell phone, and then I bought six bus tickets and four train tickets all going to different places across the US and Canada – all with my credit card.

  Finally I hopped on the next local bus that stopped and rode it until I was on the outskirts of the city. I got off the bus as soon as I spotted a cheap used car lot. I spent a good chunk of my cash buying the cheapest car on the lot and a little bit more to not have the paperwork processed for a week.

  I headed south for as long as I could stay awake, which turned out to be about 13 hours. I ended up somewhere in West Virginia. I traded my car for an even cheaper looking car at a local truck stop. I warned the guy that he might have trouble come after him but he pulled a fierce looking shot gun out of his trunk and just smiled at me. My nightmares will now be haunted by armed rednecks. I almost felt sorry for Tommy. But only almost.

  I drove for two more days before the car died completely just inside the Albuquerque city limits. It was getting dark outside so I left the car abandoned in a parking lot and started walking. I must have looked to be in a right state when a few minutes later a stranger stopped me on the sidewalk and asked if I was all right.

  It took a moment for my exhaustion addled brain to respond and before I could get a word out, a kind looking older man was leading me into the front of an adobe style building with some sort with blue painted wood trim. A tan face lined with wrinkles and laugh lines swam in and out of my vision as I collapsed into a chair in what looked like the lobby of a small hotel or inn. A few moments later a steaming cup of tea was pressed into my hands and I drank it without thought.

  It was too hot, especially for the summer in the desert, but after just a few minutes, I felt the caffeine working its magic-like fire in my veins. It burned away the worst of the fog in my brain and I shook myself the rest of the way alert.

  "Thanks," I said with a chagrined smile on my face.

  "You look rode hard and put away wet, kid." I rankled at that for a moment but then I figured compared to him, I was a kid. He kept talking, "My name's Air."

  "Jason." I said and held out my hand for him shake. Then, "Air?"

  "Yup. My Luann always said I was full of hot air. Somehow it became my name and 40 years later I'm still stuck with it." He sounded like he was complaining, but he said the whole thing with a grin on his face. It made my heart ache just a little. I wasn't really broken up about Shea in particular. Just lonely in general. Really damn lonely.

  "Hey, kid. Jason!" Air snapped his fingers in
front of my face and I jerked out of my reverie. "Let's get you settled into a room for the night, ok?"

  Without waiting for an answer he grabbed my bag from the floor beside and a keycard from the desk and herded me out a side door. I had enough presence of mind to mumble something about paying him but he brushed me off and said to come and see him when I woke up in the morning.

  The sun was shining down from almost directly overhead when I finally woke up the next day. Despite being cool from an intense air conditioning unit in the room, I almost broke into a sweat just looking at the bright hot heat that baked Albuquerque in the summer. My shower damp hair dried completely in the arid heat during the short walk from my room to the front lobby.

  Air looked up from the desk as the bell over the door rattled, announcing my entrance. "Well hey there sleepy head. You're looking much better today." He grinned at me in welcome.

  I returned his smile and said, "Thanks." Now, normally I am not all that shy but there were very few topics of general chit chat that I could honestly engage in now that I was on the run for my life. Also, I am a terrible liar. I wracked my brain trying to find something to say to Air and probably appeared slightly slow as I opened and closed my mouth.