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Unraveling Eli

Page 5

by Jake Irons


  Chapter 5

  Tara

  My feet are cold. Really cold.

  They’re still sheathed in a pair of Eli’s wool socks, but they aren’t in his old snow boots, they’re in my old, white Nikes with the pink swoosh, and they’re sinking up to my ankles in snow.

  We just ran/hiked nearly three miles across a snowy mountain. Now we’re crouching in snow behind a big rock and some scraggly looking bush-things. The road is about thirty feet in front of us. The main road, the only road that runs up Eli’s mountain. We have neither seen nor heard the men pursuing us since Acer led them away.

  “Are we going to cross it?” I ask.

  Eli peels his eyes from the road long enough to fix me with a glare. This is all your fault, it says, and it’s kind of right. More than kind of.

  But that doesn’t change the fact that my feet are about to freeze off.

  “I think I’m getting frost bite.” I gesture to my feet, and Eli’s eyes land on my completely impractical shoes.

  He sighs. “Let’s go.” I shift to stand, but he puts a hand on my shoulder. “We’re going to pick up the trail on the other side. Walk fast but not too fast. If you see any cars, or hear any cars, or if anyone yells your name or yells for us to stop, or—you know what, best to say, no matter what happens, just keep your eyes pointed forward and your feet moving. Let’s go.”

  I follow Eli to the road, and suddenly my cold toes don’t seem so important. By the time my sneakers touch asphalt, we’ve been out in the open for half a minute, maybe? It feels like an eternity, and the urge to break into a sprint is strong.

  “Knock knock,” Eli says. Is he telling a knock-knock joke?

  “Are you telling a knock-knock joke?”

  “Trying to. Are you not a fan? How about this then: What is a snake’s favorite subject?”

  “I’m fine with knock-knock jokes, and… I don’t know, what is a snake’s favorite subject?”

  “Hisss-tory.”

  I stare at Eli. He winks. I laugh, not because the joke is funny, but because if I don’t, I’m pretty sure I’ll cry.

  We make it across the street safe and sound, and Eli takes the lead. The trail, which isn’t entirely obvious to me right now, is leading us up a sloping hill. Eli’s keeping a brisk pace, which is good, because there isn’t much cover here. Or really any.

  “What happened to the trees?” There are a lot of stumps on this side of the road. A lot. I noticed this yesterday. “Was it some kind of fire?”

  “Over that way, yeah,” Eli says, pointing forward and right. “All around here it’s the pine beetles.”

  “Beetles ate the trees?”

  “Yep. They’ve been around for a while, but now that everything’s getting warmer, there are more of them, and they’re sticking around longer, and spreading out.”

  Fucking global warming. The hills around us are mostly bald, with only scattered patches of trees. I ask Eli why the beetles left the ones they did, and he shrugs and says they were probably the healthiest trees, or maybe not the right kind of pine.

  We’re heading to one of those patches now. It’s high on top of a hill and takes us maybe twenty minutes to reach at Eli’s punishing pace.

  By the time we get there, I want to scream—or cry again—so I’m relieved when he says, “We’re gonna chill here for a bit.”

  “Here” is maybe two dozen pines of various sizes—some spindly—growing together in an almost circle around a big, jutting rock that doesn’t seem quite natural. It’s not perfectly flat on top, but close.

  I sigh. “How long?”

  “A while.”

  “What’s the plan?” I ask.

  Eli points to the road, and…I don’t know. I can see the place where we crossed over. It looks a lot closer from this spot, than this spot did from the road. It’s still a long way down. So…what’s the plan?

  Eli must notice my clueless look. “We’re waiting for Acer,” he says.

  “Oh, right. Of course. Sorry, I…” I trail off, because Eli is not about conversing with me right now. I can tell by the way he is pretending I don’t exist. He’s turned his back to me, and he’s using his foot to brush clumps of snow off the rock, so I do the same. We get a big enough space cleared for us to sit, except the rock is wet from the snow.

  Which is pretty crappy, because now that we’ve slowed down, I feel the cold again.

  It’s actually a nice day. Probably mid-50s, and sunny. But all the snow on the ground and everywhere else just makes it feel cold. I don’t know physics, so I don’t know for sure that cold radiates like heat, and I don’t really have the time or desire to Google that right now—ah shit. Shit! My phone! I left it on the bed of Eli’s truck!

  Damn. I guess it doesn’t matter. I was going to leave it behind anyway. But what if it gets damaged? Assuming we survive all this, I can’t afford a new phone.

  I wonder if Eli would buy me one. Probably not. I wonder if he hates me…

  I look over at him. He’s rummaging around in his pack. I want to say something, but what? “Gee Eli, sorry I totally ruined your life. My bad.”

  Eli finds what he’s looking for: a thick blue and black flannel blanket. He spreads it across the rock, and I grab one of the corners to help.

  “Is this is for both of us?” I ask softly.

  “Of course.”

  I climb up on the rock and sit cross-legged. The rock is flat enough that I can lie down if I want to, but right now I’m sitting on the far left side, giving Eli as much room I can. He’s sitting on the far right side, with his legs up, arms crossed around his knees, gazing at the winding mountain road we just walked across. There are only maybe two butt-lengths between us, but those butts feel canyon-sized.

  And the quiet. You’d think it’d be a relief after all the gunshots, but things can’t be so painfully awkward when you’re running for your life.

  I wish he would talk, even if the things he says are angry, or sad, or anxiety-inducing. I need to know what’s going on—what’s really going on. Who are these guys? Why do they want to kill Eli—and now me? He still hasn’t told me what started all this, and I’m starting to go crazy wondering. Was he somehow involved in organized crime? Was he a witness to something? Does he owe money?

  I think that last one is least likely of all. Eli earned a cool thirty million from the sale of The Watcher. It’s hard to imagine he could have racked up so much debt he couldn’t cover it.

  I try to remember all the stories I heard about the founding of The Watcher, or anything that might connect Eli to some sort of criminal conspiracy, but there’s nothing. At least not in my brain. Or those E-facts.

  I feel a deep, sharp ache in my chest: Frankie. I—I don’t know what to think. It was her. It had to be, but I can’t accept it. I remember—God, I don’t want to remember, but I do… I remember how she slid her rolling chair halfway across the office to come sit by me. I remember how she brought up the idea to look for Eli: like it had just occurred to her.

  I remember telling Frankie about Chris…

  He’s dead because of Armand, and because of Borys, and he’s dead because of me, but he’s also dead because of Frankie, and “betrayal” isn’t a great enough word to cover what she did.

  I wonder if Eli feels the same way. About me. I did betray him—his kindness, at least—and brought his entire life crashing down around him.

  I look at him again. The sun is starting to set. It’s sinking behind the Flatirons, but it beams between the mountains’ crevices, shining through the trees and making his tanned skin seem to glow. Damn me, but he really is attractive. So well-built and handsome, with those blue eyes and his pretty man-lips.

  Attractive and silent.

  I wish he’d say something—anything—instead of sitting there looking so tired and worried. I’d take angry accusations over the silent treatment.

  With nothing else to focus on, my mind keeps reminding me of what Chris’s ruined face looked like. I can’t stop seeing Ar
mand’s brains spilling out of his cracked-egg head, either, or the big, red bloom on Borys’s chest right before he collapsed like an inflatable novelty man.

  “Tara?”

  I gasp, and I can feel my heart stop. I snap my head to Eli, and he stares at me like I’ve grown a second one. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Yeah.” I’m embarrassed. “I was…just thinking.”

  He nods. “You want this?”

  I notice his outstretched hand. There’s a granola bar in it.

  I think about saying no, but when I open my mouth, my stomach growls. “Yeah, if that’s okay.”

  “It’s fine,” Eli says. “I got more if you’re still hungry when you’re done.”

  “Thanks.” I hold the bar up and read the green wrapper: Kool Kale Bar. So, not a granola bar. A kale bar.

  I very much want to laugh at Eli for choosing kale bars for his emergency rations. Instead I open the wrapper, and…I have to say, the bar doesn’t look very appealing. It’s dark green, mostly, but with flecks of brown and other shades of green. It seems to be the consistency of Play-Doh.

  Hmmmm. Eli is almost done with his, so I take a bite of mine and…meh. This is definitely meh. I glance at Eli. He’s finished his bar and is back to staring intensely down at the road.

  I’ve lost my appetite again, and not because this kale bar tastes like grass. Acer is Eli’s companion. And I don’t mean just the normal guy and his dog stuff; I mean Acer has been Eli’s only friend for three years.

  It was like something out of a Disney movie, the way Acer led those men away. I’m hoping for a Disney-like ending, but I don’t know how likely that is. If Acer is hurt, or…or something else, I don’t know how I’m going to keep from losing my shit.

  “Eli, I’m sorry! I’m so, so sorry I did this. I-I can’t believe what happened and I didn’t mean for it to, but I’m sorry.” The words come out in a rush. I didn’t plan on saying anything. I know I’ve got to be super inarticulate right now. But I feel so terrible. “I’m sorry to you and Chris and Acer. I’m so sorry I did something so selfish and stupid. I’m sorry—”

  “It’s fine.”

  “What?” I must have misheard him.

  “It’s…fine.”

  I shake my head. “But I ruined your whole life! You might never be able to go back—”

  “I don’t want to go back.”

  My mouth opens and closes a bunch of times before I’m finally able to ask, “You don’t?”

  Eli sighs. He glances at me before setting his eyes back on the road. “I ruined my life. When I was in New York. This out here, it wasn’t much of a life, really.”

  “But…what about Acer?”

  “I hope he’s fine,” Eli says. “I think he’s fine. If those guys couldn’t hit us, I don’t think they’d be able to hit him.” It takes me a second to realize he probably means “hit with a bullet.”

  “If something does happen to him…I don’t know. I’ll be sad. But it won’t be your fault.”

  “But it is!” I can’t believe I’m arguing my guilt to him. “I lied to you!”

  “But you didn’t know what you were doing.”

  “I knew I was lying.”

  Eli considers this, stroking his beard. “Maybe.”

  “How are you not furious at me? You must be.”

  He sighs. “The truth is, I knew what I was getting into, even if you didn’t. I knew I was a dead man if anyone found out where I lived, but I still brought you back to my house. I could have patched your leg and sent you on your way, but I invited you to stay the night. I cooked you dinner. I—”

  “But I lied to you.”

  “Yea, but I kind of knew you were lying.”

  “You did?”

  He shrugs. “I mean, I didn’t know, but I had suspicions. Which I ignored.”

  “Eli!” I practically yell.

  His head snaps in my direction, and I see I’ve finally elicited some reaction. “Do you want to die?”

  My eyes bug. “No I—”

  “Then don’t scream while we’re hiding from people who want to kill us.”

  It was more of yell, but point taken. “Sorry. I just—I don’t get it?”

  Eli shrugs and returns his eyes to the road. I feel like I’ve poked the hornets’ nest enough already, so I adopt his pose: legs up, arms around my knees. Maybe I’ll lay my head on my arms. I do, and it’s nice here, in the little arm/leg cave I’ve made for myself. Quiet. No one trying to kill me. No hot would-otherwise-be-lovers scowling at me.

  “The truth is two fold,” Eli says, and I’m surprised to hear his voice. I raise my head to find him still staring at the road. “The first part is, I wasn’t happy living up here alone. The second part is that I could see myself doing what you did, in your shoes.”

  “Really?”

  He nods. “There’s a good enough chance, anyway.” He looks at me, a small smirk playing at his lips. “Do they not tell those stories around the office anymore?”

  He means about all the ethically questionable things he used to do to chase down stories. “Oh, they do.”

  He grins faintly, then frowns. “That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a shitty thing to do.”

  I nod. “I know.”

  Eli nods himself. “Tell me something.”

  “What?”

  “How am I remembered at The Watcher?”

  “Well,” I say quickly. “Like, really well. Sean and Nicole and all the higher ups like to pretend that The Watcher’s best days are now. But I think the staff that worked with you think of your time as the Golden Age.”

  Eli cracks a smile. “The Golden Age, huh?”

  I nod enthusiastically. “Sean just doesn’t inspire the same confidence.”

  Eli snorts. “I was surprised when MOFO gave him the bump. But he dresses up nice, I guess.” Eli is quiet for a moment. “Coverage has been good.”

  I nod, not entirely sure why we’re talking about this.

  And apparently we’re not.

  Eli falls silent again, but it’s not as still as before. He keeps shifting his legs, moving his arms, cracking his knuckles. I want to say more, apologize more. I want to go back and undo it. I want to have never told Frankie about Chris.

  “I keep thinking about Chris,” I say. “The Lyft driver. He’s dead. Because of me.”

  Eli shakes his head. “He’s no more dead because of you than he is because of me. And I’m not taking the rap for that.”

  “But if I hadn’t come up here—”

  “If you hadn’t come out here none of this would have happened,” Eli says. “That’s true. But that doesn’t mean you killed him. It was Borys and the other guy who killed him.”

  I swallow, remembering the explosion of glass and blood. “Armand.”

  “Who?”

  “It wasn’t Borys. I mean, I think he gave the order. But the guy who pulled the trigger was named Armand.”

  Eli’s whistles softly. “Armand, huh?”

  “Yeah. You know him?”

  Eli shakes his head. “I never met him. Just heard about him. And believe me, that guy was a murderer to the core. The world is a safer place now that he’s dead.”

  Eli says it with a lot of conviction. He even adds a nod at the end. I get the feeling he might be talking as much for his benefit as my own, and it occurs to me: Eli just for sure killed four guys, and maybe five. I know they were going to kill us, but still, it would be normal for him to feel weird about that, right?

  “Are you…okay?” I try, not entirely sure what I even want to ask.

  Eli sighs. “Yeah.” He nods to himself. “I said I would tell you why I moved up here.” He takes a deep breath.

  Chapter 6

  Eli

  Three Years ago

  I’m behind the wheel of a car in New York City. A dark blue, four-door Ford Fusion I rented earlier today. I don’t own my own car, and I haven’t driven one in almost a year—not since the last time I visited my mom in Georgia. I picked up thi
s hopefully reliable American-made, mid-size sedan this morning, and drove all the way to Jersey for practice. Of course now that it’s go time, I feel as confident in my driving abilities as I did when I was sixteen and failed my first driving test.

  Nadia and I are parked across the street and a block down from Seweryn’s Sausage House, which is not a male strip club, but a slaughter house where Michal sometimes conducts business. And yes, I feel like I’m in the fucking Sopranos.

  “Don’t be stupid, this isn’t that,” Nadia says, from the seat beside me. She’s dressed more down than I’ve ever seen her: blue jeans, a gray long-sleeve shirt, and tennis shoes. Usually she’s in designer everything. “Look at your hands! Calm down please.”

  I’m clutching the wheel like it’s a buoy keeping me from washing out to sea.

  “Why’d you have to meet him here?” It’s not even 9 p.m., but we’re deep in Michal’s neighborhood, and the street is eerily deserted. At least half the street lamps are out, too, so the neon red letters of the Seweryn’s sign glow with a horror-movie quality. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this.”

  Nadia groans. “I know your testicles have dropped because I’ve played with them. Otherwise I’d swear they hadn’t.”

  “You don’t even have balls,” I mutter.

  “I have bigger balls than you.”

  I give her the ole stink eye, which has never had a profound affect on Nadia. Now isn’t any different. “Please. It’s easy for you to be chill. He’s your uncle.”

  Nadia shakes her head. Her shoulder-length raven hair shifts and shimmers. I’ve always liked her hair; it’s thick, but it moves like it’s fine. “He might be my uncle, but unlike you, I’ve actually betrayed him. You’re just some guy who heard a few stories.”

  “I thought I was the guy who sullied his honor.”

  Nadia raises one meticulously shaped eyebrow. “Sullied?”

  “Yeah. You know…ruined?” I think that’s what it means. “Sullied” is one of those words I’ve only read.

  Nadia waves Michal’s sullied honor away. “He was mad when he first found out. Furious. But he’s cooled down.”

 

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