On the Run

“Payne!” A grizzly voice yelled from behind a dark wood door alerting Liam that it was his turn to step through the threshold.

The boy with his shaved head sighed and stood from the stiff wooden chair. Fixing his suit jacket he walked into the large office where a burly man sat behind a desk. His cold dark eyes were attached to the young mans red tie before he slowly lifted his gaze to meet the pair of brown eyes.

“I’ve got a job for you,” the man said he shuffled a few papers about on his desk.

“Yes, sir,” Liam replied, a nod accompanying his words. He was a quiet man, but it was the quiet ones that often were most dangerous.

“I want you in on a bank job,” the man explained picking up a file before pushing his chair back and standing. He was tall with broad, intimidating shoulders and as he walked the picture frames on his desk shook. Handing Liam the file, he looked the short haired man in the eye, though he was a few inches taller than him, and said, “If you fuck this up. It’ll be the last thing you do.”

“I don’t make mistakes,” Liam said, his voice soft, yet strong. “If anything goes wrong, I’ll just assume you set me up.” Liam’s eyes traveled the burly man’s face before a smile crossed his lips and he laughed.

The man laughed after a moment. “That’s a good one Payne,” he said before his smile contorted and he grabbed the boy at the base of his skull, slamming the short haired man’s head into the dark wood desk. “But I don’t like jokes.” His tone was low as the words came out of his mouth in a growl. “And I’m not paying you to be a comedian. You say something like that again and the next thing you’ll be cleaning up is your own story of broken legs.” Pushing the boys head harder against the surface so that the coins and rings dug into his skin, the man brought his lips to Liam’s ear. “Do you understand me?” When Liam remained silent, the man pulled his head up and slammed it against the desk a second time. “I said, ‘Do you understand me?’”

“Yes,” Liam hissed through clenched teeth.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, sir.”

Letting go of Liam’s head the man let out a quiet chuckle, “Now was that so hard?”

Liam glared at the man before his lips parted to answer, “No, sir.”

“Good, now get outta my sight before I decide to just break your legs anyway,” the man said with a wave of his hand.

Liam walked calmly out of the room and down the hall, file in hand. He was surprised to be on a job as something other than the cleaner. Robbing a bank wasn’t in his job description. Stopping at the chair he had sat in before, he picked up the empty briefcase he had left and stuffed the file inside. It wasn’t a good idea to advertise that he’d gotten a job.

As he continued out of the building, he passed a short brunette on her way in. Her blue eyes met his for a moment and he would swear he’d seen her before, but he couldn’t place her delicate face in his memory. Maybe it was the rosy lips, or the wavy brown hair that reminded him of someone he knew.

Looking around the courtroom as the Judge slammed down his gavel to finalize his statements, Liam caught sight of the little brunette. She sat at the back of the courthouse a strange look on her face before getting up and quickly exiting. He didn’t know why she stuck out in his memory, she wasn’t the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, nor was she exceedingly attractive in anyway, but rather she was fairly ordinary looking. She had the kind of face that one might forget, but Liam couldn’t forget it, yet he couldn’t place it either.

As the thoughts bothered him, he turned to see the other boys. All in nice suits for the day, they hadn’t expected things to go down the way they did. The Viche were supposed to stop them from getting locked up. The Viche were supposed to protect them. Instead, Liam came to the realization that they had been set-up. There had been far too much evidence against them and the timing of the bust had been too precise. Liam knew that something was right the second he stepped foot into the bank, but it wasn’t his job to change plans. He was just following orders.

Now sitting in the court house, waiting to be brought back to his jail cell, he let his mind be filled with thoughts of revenge. He had sixty years of prison time ahead of him, but he also had some friends in highly-low places that would die for him. The last thing Liam Payne was going to do was sit back and let The Viche get away with locking him up. Selling him out. He would see that they knew that Liam Payne was not just some man to clean up their messes. No. Liam Payne was the Cleaner. He had connections and The Viche would see just how badly they’d messed up.

Turning to the man beside him, Liam said, “Those bastards set us up.”

The man looked at him, but kept silent. Gritting his teeth, Liam took a deep breath. He would do his best to calm his anger. The Viche would get what was coming to them in due time. Now he just needed to wait, but patience was a virtue that Liam possessed very little of.

A guard walked over with handcuffs, and proceeded to chain each boy’s hands. It wouldn’t be a long wait for transport it seemed, but Liam couldn’t help but wonder when they would leave the tiny local jail for a state or federal prison. He figured it would be five days at most. Less if the Viche were really a part of this, which Liam was nearly certain that they were behind it all.

Taking another deep breath, he let the guard lead him out of the courtroom to a hall where they would be handcuffed to a bench to wait for the transport to pick them up. Shaking his head, Liam decided to day dream while he waited. As his mind wandered, he let it rest on the image of the burly man. A wicked smile crossed his lips as his mind crushed the man’s head. He would know just how to clean up the mess that his mind had created, especially if the head had been crushed by a pair of heavy boots repeated slamming into the man’s skull. Oh, Liam knew exactly the way to get rid of that mess and the only disappointment that he had, was that he wouldn’t be the one to do it.