Velvet Mafia

by Lydia L Watts

  More to the point, Eli was a trained killer and he should have finished him off. But he hadn’t. As Walls grappled with this revelation, he wondered how long he had been knocked out. However long it had been, he knew Eli couldn’t have gotten too far. During their struggle, Eli had been shot. Walls didn’t know where Eli had been hit, but the shot had been close range. He also knew that because of his injury, Eli’s movement would be limited and he would be easy to track.

  Walls’s body resisted the effort to get up. He too was wounded and his body’s blatant refusal to respond was just another indication that it wanted to stay where it was, motionless, on the warm, wet ground. Each muscle, no matter how big or small, had been bruised and battered and some would take longer than others to heal. Yet, despite his brokenness, Walls had to move.

  Walls surveyed the area; the activity at the safe house told him his time was limited. By now, they had to know the fire had been used to conceal something bigger. Time was running out and he needed to find Eli. More importantly, he needed to find the satchel and the cooler so he could turn them over to the Others.

  As he began his search for Eli, even in the dim glow of the evening, he could see blood drippings that had found their home on the leaves of the thick brush. And he knew, based on a large cluster of blood and flattened debris that clung to the warm ground, Eli had been down. But he also saw something he wasn’t expecting — another set of footprints. Eli had had help, and he, the satchel and cooler were gone.

  After the fire was out, instead of the firemen providing answers to the neighbors, the police were asking questions of them — specifically, questions about the house’s owner and about its inhabitants. What the neighbors had thought was a gas leak was now becoming a criminal investigation.

  As the neighbors took in the news, they couldn’t believe the fire had been created to cover up a bigger crime. Not until they saw the paramedics wheel out what appeared to be a body, did it become real. As officials walked through the home’s remains, more and more media trucks showed up. For the residents, the attention was too much. What had once been a quiet little neighborhood was now a neighborhood that had been violated. Rather than hang around to watch what was actually happening, most decided to go in and see it on TV like everybody else.

  The fire on Beaver Park Drive was now the lead story on the evening news. The body confirmed the assumption that the fire had been created to hide the fact that inside the belly of the inferno, were the remains of a dead man. And not just any dead man. It was the body of Lance St. John, a former Washington Herald investigative reporter recently identified as a coauthor of the DaKira Papers — and the man who had helped to develop the antidote that would one day be used to cure the world’s most violent biological weapon ever produced.

  Eli awoke at Charlie’s safe house; he’d been unconscious for several days. As an undercover agent, Charlie had access to a lot of things, including some of the best unlicensed medical care available, and he used those resources to save Eli’s life. It was a risk, but one he had to take. Eli’s saving of Walls’s life begged for answers; Charlie wanted to know why.

  Unaware of his environment, Eli reacted like someone held in captivity. He knew better than most what it was like to be held against your will, so his instincts were to mimic what he had witnessed. As had so many of his captives, he tried to get away. But, in his case, there was nothing preventing him from getting up except for the IV in his arm.

  “Hello, Eli. Welcome back,” Charlie said. “At first I thought you weren’t going to make it, but you pulled through.”

  “Who are you?” Eli asked. “And where am I?”

  “You really don’t remember me, do you, son?”

  There was something about Charlie’s voice that seemed familiar, but the fact of the matter was, Eli didn’t remember too much.

  “Well, let me ask you this,” Charlie said. “Do you remember the last thing you did?”

  Eli lay there for a moment without responding. Nothing came to mind; whatever he’d done, his body was keeping the answers. As Eli stared at the man in the room, there was something familiar about him, but he just couldn’t figure it out. Nor could he figure out why he was hooked to an IV.

  For three days, Teddy needed constant supervision. The gash in her skull required that she rest and Blake never left her side. As he cared for her, he mulled over all that had happened. It hadn’t taken him long, now that he’d seen Eli in action, to realize the murderer wearing the mask in the picture was the same height and build.

  Blake was beside himself. He couldn’t believe that for ten years, he had been a friend and business associate of a serial killer — and hadn’t known it.

  As Blake dealt with the betrayal and his own lapses in judgment, the one small thing that gave him comfort was knowing that Eli hadn’t killed his brother. After watching Lance’s execution, he knew Eli was too sadistic for a simple hanging. Whoever killed Devon had wanted to deflect attention away from themselves, and Eli wouldn’t have cared about those formalities.

  For the most part, Teddy’s recovery was smooth. In some respects, what happened to her was a blessing. She had been under immense pressure and taking care of herself seemed to be the last thing on her agenda. For two days, she’d been in and out of sleep, but by the third day, she was feeding herself. For a slender woman, she had a voracious appetite.

  “So, young lady, how do you feel?” Blake asked.

  “I feel much better, Blake. Thank you,” she said, smiling warmly.

  “Thank me for what?”

  “You know what,” she said. “I’m alive because of you. You saved my life.”

  “I did exactly what you would have done, Teddy.”

  Teddy reached for Blake’s hand and squeezed. Nothing more needed to be said. She was thankful for being alive and grateful for what he had done.

  Then her facial expression changed. “Everybody’s dead, Blake,” she said. “Isabella, Basil, and Kennedy, and it’s all my fault. If only I hadn’t been so curious, none of this would have happened. I killed everyone who loved me.”

  As tears streamed down her face, Blake could see she had gained a better understanding of what happened in the safe house.

  “Hey, slow down, kiddo,” Blake said. “None of this is your fault and you have to stop blaming yourself. Let’s talk about something else. All this conspiracy stuff can wait until later.”

  “No! I don’t want to wait, Blake. I need to talk now. If I don’t, I’ll go crazy. Can you understand what I’m saying? Everybody I loved is now dead. And the worst part about it is, this shit’s not over. Who else will die? Are you next?”

  Blake could do nothing but listen. He could see the pain and anguish Teddy was going through and he realized that despite his need to protect her, he could do nothing but listen.

  Teddy continued, “You and Basil warned me about Lance. I should have known better, but I let my guard down. I wanted to believe so badly that he had forgiven me, only to realize as I stared down the barrel of his gun that he hadn’t. Even God had warned me, but I just wouldn’t listen. I should have died in that house, Blake, but instead, I am still alive and everyone else is gone.”

  As Teddy heard her death wish, her tears flowed uncontrollably. It was as if she had never cried before and all her life’s pains and sorrows were finally free. Blake watched as she went from being a tough, in-control, ex-FBI agent, to the woman he had fallen in love with. But even in her grief, and despite his natural inclination to reach out and hold her, he did nothing to comfort her.

  As Blake sat silently, allowing Teddy to grieve, he knew that despite the circumstances and pain, Teddy had been born for this moment in her life. This was her purpose, her destiny, her reason for being on earth. Her task was God’s assignment for her and he knew that God wouldn’t have assigned her the task if she wasn’t capable of doing it.

  After a while, Blake left Teddy’s side and found a place where he could weep, too. However, his tears were not tears o
f fear or sadness. He was crying because he had found someone he could be honest with, someone he could tell his lifelong secret to, someone he could trust. He was crying because he was grateful.

  Several hours passed before Teddy emerged from her room to find Blake asleep on the couch.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you,” she said.

  “It’s not your fault,” Blake said as he sat up on the couch. “I don’t usually have people over so I would have woken up no matter what. I know every sound in this place.”

  As much as Teddy didn’t want to admit it, Blake was a beautiful man. As he had slept, she had not been able to help but notice his physique and how gracefully his long frame laid across the couch.

  “How did you sleep?” she asked.

  “I slept fine. How about you?” Blake said as he reached for his T-shirt and slipped it over his head.

  “I don’t know. One minute I was crying like a baby and the next minute, I was sleeping like one.”

  “Been there on many occasions,” Blake replied. “But once I was up, I always felt refreshed. Whatever was on my mind or whatever pain I was feeling, it was like God took it all. And when I woke up, I was okay.”

  The entire time Teddy had known Blake, she had never questioned his relationship with God or his faith. There had been something about him that simply made her feel calm, and at that moment, she was still.

  “So, how about we grab a bite to eat?” Blake asked.

  “That’s fine, but I really don’t want to go anywhere. Why don’t we just order in?”

  “I don’t order in, but I tell you what, I’m a pretty good cook, and I’m sure I have something in the kitchen I can turn into a feast.”

  “A feast,” Teddy said casually. “So, if I hear you correctly, you’re good enough that you can boast?”

  “I’m not boasting,” he said with his signature smile. “But I’m confident I can prepare you a meal that will be pleasing to your palate.”

  “I always thought you were a smooth brother,” Teddy said. “But now I know.”

  “No, my friend, I am not smooth. Cooking is something I just enjoy doing. My mother was a domestic and I was determined that when she came home after cooking for someone else, I would cook for her. I wanted what she ate to taste better than what she had cooked for the family she served. So, I simply perfected my culinary skills by basking in the love I had for her.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing you loved your momma,” Teddy said. “I can’t wait to taste your motherly love.”

  Laughter consumed the room and they both noticed how foreign it had been without it. For the rest of the evening, they pledged to keep the conversation light. They knew that tomorrow would come soon enough and when it did, they would revisit the past. After all, it was just the two of them now.

  Despite the blood loss, physical wounds, and bruises his body had endured, Eli’s recuperation process was going well. His body was rebuilding itself. Charlie had seen many injuries and he himself had been in situations where his body had suffered as a result of his occupation, but Eli was different. His body was healing at a rate faster than that of most men in his situation.

  As Charlie looked through the material in the satchel, he could see it was nothing more than junk. The formula outlining the weapon’s molecular structure was a combination of several mathematical, word, and Sudoku puzzles. The majority of the documents were nothing more than famous equations from mathematics and physics, including mathematical constants, differential equations, variational principles, linear momentum, universal gravitation, and Newton’s Second Law of Rotational Inertia. Charlie recognized the scam immediately and couldn’t help but laugh. It had taken real genius to create such an elaborate illusion.

  He also realized that developing a deception that included the type of details used in the material found in the satchel had to have taken a long time. And that meant it had to have been kept under wraps for a long time, too. Based on Charlie’s analysis, Lance couldn’t have known the material in the satchel wasn’t real. That also meant that no one else, except for Teddy, knew either.

  As Charlie continued to marvel at the documents and how authentic they looked to an uneducated eye, he didn’t realize that Eli had awakened and was now watching him.

  “What’s so funny?” Eli asked as he leaned against the door frame to balance his weight.

  At the sound of Eli’s voice, Charlie turned toward him. “So, you’re finally up. How do you feel?”

  “Much better, Mr. Henderson, much better.”

  “You have to take it easy, son,” Charlie said as he stood up to help him. “That bullet did some damage even though it went straight through and didn’t hit any major organs. And that fight you had only made matters worse.”

  “So why I am here, Charlie?” Eli said as he grabbed Charlie’s arm. “I remember everything now, including you picking me up from the brush and carrying me out.”

  “Good,” Charlie replied. “Do you remember what you did before you passed out?”

  “Yeah. I was fighting and that’s how I got all these bruises on my body.”

  “Yes, you were,” Charlie said. “But what else do you remember?”

  “I remember that I stopped —”

  Charlie could see from Eli’s expression that during his pause he was experiencing a complete recollection of not only what he had done, but why he’d done it.

  “Did I kill him?” Eli asked. “I remember I pulled him from the creek. And when I left, he was alive. Did he die?”

  “No,” Charlie said, “he didn’t die.”

  Before Charlie asked why, he gave Eli the opportunity to compose himself. As much as Charlie couldn’t believe what he was witnessing, he had to. Eli was not only remorseful, but he also seemed thankful that the man commissioned by the Others to dispose of him hadn’t died.

  “This may sound strange, but why didn’t you kill him? It was clear he was trying to kill you, and we both know who sent him.”

  As much as Eli didn’t want to admit it, he knew where Charlie was going with his questioning. And he was taken aback by the fact that Charlie seemed to have knowledge of the Others and insight as to their ways.

  “Well, since you must know, I can’t kill anymore,” Eli replied.

  Charlie was dumbfounded. “What? Did you all of a sudden get religion?” Charlie said sarcastically. Charlie knew his response wasn’t called for, but he just couldn’t help it. Eli was a sociopath and killing was second nature to him.

  “I guess I did,” Eli said in a low voice. “I guess I did.”

  Teddy was ready to get back into the swing of things. She was no longer dealing with excruciating headaches and she’d had enough sleep to warrant an all-night work fest. Now, since she was the first one up, it was her turn to show off some culinary skills.

  As Teddy prepared breakfast, she couldn’t help but think about her night with Blake. She’d almost forgotten what fun was. Now she understood why they had been brought together. If anything, he would help her live again. While she prepared breakfast, she could not help but notice that Blake had exquisite taste. Fine art was everywhere and although the décor was very masculine, a woman could find great comfort in it.

  With Blake sound asleep, Teddy looked around. No room was off-limits to her illegal search, and surprisingly, what she liked most was that it had a minimalist feel to it, though that was something she wasn’t accustomed to. She also liked that it was culturally uninhibited. You could see several different architectural, as well as textile, influences throughout.

  Even his library was eye candy. Wall-to-wall books randomly placed on shelves were accompanied by large purple amethyst geodes and other objects. And — much to Teddy’s surprise — directly in the middle of the room, hanging from twenty-foot cedar beams, was a large Moroccan bed made of wood with ivory inlays. Even from the room’s entrance, she could see the richness of the bed’s duvet, made from Chinese brocade silk with tassels draping from each corner.<
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  Teddy approached the bed which hung just far enough off the ground to require two-tiered Chinese steps on each side. Who was this man? She climbed onto the bed and allowed the softness of the silk to consume her body. She couldn’t help but notice that directly above the bed was a skylight. How beautiful. She could only imagine what it was like when it rained; her most favorite time to read.

  She rolled around and discovered, underneath the large, but unassuming pillow, a book. Expecting to see something like Life of Pi or The Kite Runner or maybe even The Broken Wings by Kahlil Gibran — something that matched Blake’s disposition — of all books, she found the Bible. She couldn’t believe it. Out of all the books in his enormous library, bookmarked and tucked away awaiting his arrival was the Lord’s book.

  Suddenly embarrassed by her actions, she got up and went back to the kitchen to finish preparing breakfast. She hated that she had snooped, but was also glad she had. The peace she felt with Blake also emanated from his home and that was refreshing.

  “Hey, Blake! You up yet? Breakfast is ready. You better get up before it gets cold.”

  Not hearing a response, Teddy yelled again, this time a little louder.

  With still no answer, she began to feel anxious. “Oh, Blake … breakfast is ready and if you don’t hurry up … well, I’ll just have to eat it all myself,” she said as she turned down the elaborate concrete hallway leading to the only room at the end of the wing.

  Still hearing no answer, she approached the room with caution. She could see his door was ajar so she peeked in. Much to her surprise, his bed was made and he was gone. As Teddy surveyed her surroundings, she was no longer surprised by the décor. The room looked like one in a five-star luxury hotel, simple, elegant, beautiful. She could tell he loved colors and he used them well. No matter how bold the color was to the eye, it was only a hint of the hue’s magnificence.

  The only thing that seemed out of place were two pictures on his dresser, one of a woman and one of a man. Teddy assumed the woman was his mother. He looked exactly like her except that her complexion was a beautiful rich, deep chocolate, and Blake was a mocha color. The man, on the other hand, was white, and seemed familiar to her. She didn’t know where she’d met him, but she knew she had. Why would Blake have a picture of a white man in his bedroom? Could he be gay? As much as she didn’t want to think about it, she couldn’t help but wonder why she felt so disappointed.