36. Eli
ELI
I lean forward on the couch, locking my hands behind my head to stretch out my neck as Freya calls Carmen for the third time.
She tried before we flew back but didn’t get through.
Same thing happened after we landed. She’s starting to get edgy, her knee jiggling up and down as she sits with her feet tucked up on the armchair.
Personally, I’m just glad to be back home and away from Jeremiah fucking Lock.
Freya still hasn’t told us everything he said to her, and I don’t like that.
I must be getting as obsessive as River because I want a blow-by-blow account of their entire exchange just so I can make sure she’s okay.
It will have to wait though because the phone finally stops ringing as Carmen picks up.
“Is everything alright?”
Freya’s leg stops jiggling. “Yeah. We’re okay, we just need your help.”
“I’m sorry. I would have answered sooner but Rebekah decided to take it upon herself to tag along on a retrieval.”
Freya grabs the phone off the coffee table. “Shit. Is she okay?”
Carmen sighs. “She’s fine. Though she might not be once I’m through with her. I swear to god, she’s worse than you, Freya. Why she thought she could handle seeing that shit I have no idea.”
Freya’s gaze flicks to me. “You’re on speaker phone with Eli, Carm.”
Carmen goes quiet. “Noted.”
Despite stepping foot in her private headquarters neither Freya nor Carmen have enlightened us as to what exactly she does. That doesn’t mean we don’t know though. Carmen’s retrievals are rescue missions and they’re not the kind a teenage girl should be involved with.
“How can I help?” Carmen asks.
“Jeremiah Lock wants to talk to you. He’s bank-rolling Zach and has agreed to hand over the relevant bank details but only to you, in exchange for a conversation.”
Carmen goes silent for so long I look over to see if the line is dead. Freya shakes her head and shows me the screen, the seconds still ticking over.
“Carmen?” Freya’s voice is soft.
“I’m here.”
“You know him, don’t you?”
We hear footsteps, then a door closing. “It’s complicated.”
Freya and I share a look. I know that tone well enough, having heard Freya replicate it on more than one occasion. Carmen’s version of ‘it’s complicated’ translates to seriously fucked up.
“You don’t have to do this if it’s going to put you in danger. We’ll find another way,” Freya says.
I rub the back of my neck. I don’t want Carmen doing this if it’s dangerous but we’re running out of time.
“Do you have any other leads on where Zach’s keeping Harley?”
Freya digs her teeth into her bottom lip. In any other situation that would have me hard as fuck but all I feel in this moment is her fear for Harley. “No. This is our first solid lead.”
Carmen drags in a breath so deep it’s like she’s drawing it down the phone line. “I’ll do it.”
“Carmen,” Freya starts only to get cut off.
“All that matters is finding that little girl, okay? That’s all that ever matters.”
Freya drags her thumb nail over her jeans. “Yeah, okay.” She passes on the number and then Carmen asks if Freya has a moment to talk to Sam. Apparently, the kid’s been asking after her nonstop.
Freya smiles so wide when he comes on the line that I decide then and there that we’re having kids one day.
I lean back on the couch, content just listening to them shooting the breeze and watching Freya laugh, when my phone buzzes in my pocket.
Ozzie: Heads up, your dad is currently sitting in his car, in our driveway.
My muscles lock. Oz set up a more advanced security system after Jude got shot, including cameras out front.
Him, Jude, and River are at the Lair, but Oz receives notifications on his phone when the cameras are triggered, a fact I’m very fucking grateful for right now because it gives me at least a moment to prepare.
My heart kicks up a storm as I stand and head to the front door. I’m not entirely sure I want my father in our house, so I open it to go meet him by his car but he’s already halfway to the door.
He stops when he sees me. His hands scrunch around the ball cap he’s holding and his tongue pokes inside his cheek.
He looks different from the last time I saw him but maybe that’s just because, other than a video call once or twice a year, I haven’t seen him for almost eight years.
His long gray hair is pushed back instead of messed up and he’s clean shaven. The coat he’s wearing is old, the brown leather battered, but at least he looks washed.
“What are you doing here?” The question comes out quieter than I intend and that pisses me off. My father doesn’t get to take my power anymore. He doesn’t get to make me feel fucking less .
“I, uh, I came to talk to you.” He rubs his hand on the back of his neck, and I hate that I see myself in him. Only my bad neck comes from an accident whereas his is from years slumped or passed out on the couch.
“Eli.” Freya swings into the doorway, coming to an abrupt halt when she sees I’m not alone. “Oh.”
I take one look at her and stop fighting myself.
Despite everything my father’s done I still want to hear what he has to say, and I’ve got questions of my own.
I’m not sure I could have faced the conversation we need to have if I was by myself but with Freya here it doesn’t feel quite so fucking terrifying.
If she can face her father, I sure as hell can face mine.
“You want to come inside? It’s fucking freezing out here.” I didn’t bother to put shoes on when I came out, and my feet are losing their feeling.
My dad nods, his hands flexing around his cap.
Once we’re in the house, I have no idea where to go.
Freya grabs on to the frozen tips of my fingers and guides me back into the living area.
My father’s walking behind me and it takes everything in me not to flinch at having him at my back.
He only laid a hand on me once as a kid before I hit him back and knocked him out cold.
After that he kept his hands to himself, but he still threw things.
Freya squeezes my fingers and I realize I’m standing in front of the couch. “Do you want me to go?”
“No, stay. Please.”
She squeezes my hand again. “Okay. Why don’t you two sit down while I make us some coffee?”
The question is for me but my dad answers. “Thanks, doll.”
My neck snaps round and I cut him apart with my eyes. “Don’t talk to her.”
His throat bulges as he swallows but he nods his head and after a taut moment we both sit down, me on the couch, him in the armchair to my right.
The clattering of the drawers and mugs is a soothing soundtrack, a reminder that Freya’s right here with me.
I set my gaze on my father. “So, talk.”
He stares at the worn red cap in his hands, scrunching the material between his thick fingers. Eventually, he looks up at me. “He really dead?”
A low, dry laugh huffs out of me. Of course, that’s why he’s here. The man spent the adult portion of my life telling me I’m a failure for not catching the man who killed my mother and the moment I do, he turns up like everything’s fucking dandy now.
I dig my hand into my neck only to regret it because the skin that got burned is still fucking sore.
“Yeah, Dad, he’s dead. I put a bullet through his brain. Are you proud of me now?”
Apparently ignoring the heavy sarcasm my dad shakes his head. “I’ve always been proud of you.”
I laugh louder this time. “You’re fucking kidding me, right?”
“Elijah—”
“Is that all you wanted? Just to check it wasn’t fake news?”
“No, I?—”
“And why now? It’s been over two months since we caught Maxwell.”
He waits a moment, ready for me to cut him off again. When I don’t, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small, circular chip. “I had to do something first.” He hands me the chip. “I’m two months sober.”
I turn the gold plastic over in my fingers. I don’t know what I was expecting but it wasn’t that. “Congratulations.” The word holds no weight, and a weird numbness douses the fire of my anger.
I spent my entire early teens wishing my dad would get sober, begging him to go to meetings, to talk to someone, anyone, about losing mom.
I was never enough of a reason for him to stop drinking and it fucking hurts that killing Maxwell is what finally did it. Like his sobriety has been in my hands this whole time and if I’d killed Maxwell sooner, I’d have gotten my father back.
Before my mom was murdered, he was a good dad. We’d watch hockey games together and every vacation he’d take me to my grandfather’s ranch and teach me to ride. It’s hard to reconcile that man with the one who missed my first high school hockey finals because he was passed out on the couch.
Freya hands my father a steaming mug and sits down beside me. She rests her hand on my knee and offers me the second mug.
I shake my head. Freya’s touch brings me back to the present, but it also reminds me that my father’s not the only one with questions. There’s a reason I let him in.
We learned something while hunting Maxwell and the potential implication of it has haunted me ever since. Part of me just wants to leave it the fuck alone. Who does it really hurt if I keep those happy memories, that decent version of a dad who actually loved me, alive in my head?
I owe it to my mom though, to know the truth. And maybe I owe it to my father too. He’s sober now and as much as I don’t want to admit it, that makes a difference. If I don’t like the answer to my question though, it won’t matter.
I rub at the good side of my neck, trying to find the nerve to speak.
Freya takes her eyes off me and turns to my father. “I’m Freya,” she says, buying me some time to get myself together.
My dad gives her a brief smile. “Eddie. Are you with my son?”
Freya nods and my hand clamps down over hers on top of my leg. It suddenly occurs to me that if my dad figures out Freya is Maxwell’s daughter, he’s not just going to sit there and smile at her.
I fight down the urge to hide her away. I know she won’t leave me to deal with this on my own, so I find the fucking words and ask my dad what I need to know.
“Did you ever hit Mom?”
His already sallow skin pales and a trace of the vitriol the alcohol ignites flickers in his eyes. “What sort of question is that?”
“Before we found Maxwell, we discovered all of the women he killed were victims of domestic abuse. I know better than anyone that you can be violent so tell me, Dad, did you ever hurt Mom?”
I expect anger, shouting. What I don’t expect is for his bottom lip to tremble as he collapses back into the armchair and bursts into tears. He buries his face in his hands, the sobs silent as they wrack his shoulders.
My blood runs cold. I thought I’d want to hurt him if it was true, hit him like he hit her, but I don’t want to touch this broken, pitiful man. I was scared of him for so many years but he’s not a monster. He’s nothing.
Eventually, he wipes at his cheeks and leans forward, bracing his elbows on his spread knees. “The drinking didn’t start after your mother was taken.”
“Oh.” His admission is an arrowhead buried in my stomach. I’m not sure I want to know.
Freya twines our fingers together and I stay quiet and listen.
“I lost my job about two months before. That’s when I started drinking.
” My dad’s eyes cut to mine, an iron will strong in their clarity.
“I never laid a hand on your mother, Eli. I promise. But one night…” He grimaces, then breathes in, pulling himself together.
“One night, she was telling me I needed to stop drinking, and I got angry. I threw a bottle, not at her, just at the wall.” He closes his eyes.
“But it smashed, and the glass cut her cheek.”
My brow knits together. “I don’t remember that.” I was fourteen, I would have noticed a cut on her face.
My father opens his eyes and now they’re clouded like I’m used to seeing but this time with tears not booze. “You never saw. The next day she was taken.”
Fuck.
My dad stares at the floorboards, his hands linked behind his head. “You’re telling me that it was my fault.”
“You didn’t kill her,” Freya says.
“But I’m the reason he chose her. That he hurt her.”
I don’t say anything. I can’t. He didn’t kill my mother. He didn’t abuse her. But he’s not wrong and part of me hates him for it.
Freya sits forward. “If you let this destroy you, if you start drinking again, you’ll be hurting your son. And I think you’ve done enough of that, don’t you?”
He drags his head up and shifts his tortured gaze from Freya to me. “I got a lot to apologize for.”
I stay quiet.
“Eli—”
“Not now. Not yet.” I’m not ready to hear him out. I’m not sure I’ll ever be.
My heart is twisted and mangled from what I’ve learned but the pit in my stomach is gone.
The worry that’s been haunting the corners of my mind has disappeared.
He hadn’t been abusing my mother behind closed doors.
My memories of her, smiling and laughing, spinning around and leaving notes for me to find, can rest untarnished.
Maybe that’s enough.
My father leaves after that but I have a feeling it won’t be too long before I see him again. Alcoholism is a disease, and a sober Eddison March is the closest I’ve ever come to seeing the father my dad was before we lost my mom. I wouldn’t mind seeing him again.
I’m still lost in my thoughts when Freya’s phone pings.
“It’s Carmen,” she says. “She’s got Zach’s bank details.”