Chapter 11 Eden
Chapter eleven
Eden
“Haven or Hostage”
When we reached town, he made me put a bag over my head.
Who has a bag hanging out in their car? Serial killers.
Kidnappers. I could tell we were in a parking garage from the way the exhaust echoed around us, and the rhythmic thumping of speed bumps under us, before the car came to a stop.
He got me out of the car and guided me by hand into an elevator, and we went up… and up… and up…
I didn’t know where we were until he unlocked a door down a short hall. He pulled the bag off as we went inside, and I realized this must be his apartment. The place was nothing like I expected – not that I had reason to expect anything at all… but still.
It was clean, almost too clean. Sparsely decorated. Cold, both in temperature and aesthetic.
A long wooden table against the kitchen wall was more of a workspace than a place to eat. No pictures. No personality. Just a gun safe and a stack of papers.
He kicked the door shut behind us and locked it with three separate latches. Deadbolt. Chain. Sliding bar. My body jolted as each sound echoed behind me. He didn’t speak, just guided me into the kitchen.
“We need to clean that.” He nodded toward my scraped leg and turned away to the cabinets. Now I was certain I recognized his voice. It was more than I’d ever heard him say, but it was definitely the weird guy from the cafe.
“Where are we?” My voice felt small in the room, but I was satisfied that I didn’t sound scared anymore.
“My place.”
He came over, lifting me up without asking permission. He set me on the edge of the table, and I squeaked in surprise. He scooted a chair in front of me and moved a lamp to the edge next to me.
“Yeah, well that tells me nothing.”
“That’s the idea.”
Up town. He said he lived up town. He left me for a moment, disappearing down the hallway. I could hear him moving things around, and when he returned, he held a first aid kit containing clean towels, antiseptic, and gauze. He sat down in front of me and pulled the lamp closer.
I put my hands out, pulling my knees together as he settled between them in his chair. “Don’t touch me.”
He looked up at me with the same cold and calculating look he'd been giving me the entire time I’d known him.
“I’m trying to help,”
“Yeah? You’re doing a shitty job convincing me.”
He sighed, the kind of sound that came from a deep, tired place. “You jumped out of a moving car, Eden. You could’ve broken your neck.”
My jaw dropped at the audacity of him blaming me for this. “You kidnapped me.”
“I was trying to keep you safe.”
His voice soothed something in me, something small and scared that had been clawing at my throat since the alleyway.
This time, I didn’t stop him when he reached for my leg. His touch was surprisingly gentle: hands steady, movements practiced like muscle memory. He acted like he’d done this before, maybe hundreds of times.
“Take off the mask.”
“No.”
“I already know who you are,” I insisted. “Even without your face, there can’t be two dudes walking around town looking like—” I gestured to him.
He hesitated. I wished I knew what he was thinking when he just stared at me like that.
He looked so conflicted. I wondered what kind of internal battle was going on that I just couldn’t see.
Finally, he reached up and pulled the black mask off to reveal the face I knew was hiding beneath it.
His lips pressed into a firm line as he watched me for some reaction that I didn’t have.
“Who are you?” I whispered.
He turned his attention away from me, taking a pair of small pliers and picking out pieces of gravel from my knee. He responded without looking at me, “Halo.”
“Okay, let me rephrase. What are you?”
He didn’t answer right away. Just dabbed antiseptic on my skin and winced when I winced. “I was hired to kill you.”
No apology. No sugarcoating. No hesitation. I looked down at his hands while they worked. They were so steady, precise.
“So why didn’t you?”
He glanced up, just once, and in that moment I felt it: the same thing I’d seen in him the first night he sat in the corner booth. Guilt, and something darker.
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
Silence spread between us, seeming to expand and fill the emptiness there.
I looked around again at the shadows in the corners and felt the absence of warmth. “No one else lives here?”
“No.”
“Why did you bring me here? To kill me now?”
He sighed through his nose, putting his tools down to use both hands to rip the leg of my already torn pants up my thigh. I reached down to shield myself, but he pushed my hand away and continued to work, cleaning the wound. He didn’t bat an eye at my exposed flesh.
“I’m giving you a chance,” he said. “To understand what’s going on, to stay alive.”
I folded my arms tightly around my stomach. “So, talk.”
He paused.
“You saw something you shouldn’t have.”
“The guys in the alley?” I asked, voice quiet.
He nodded. “An execution. It should never have been done where someone could see it.”
“But I reported it to the police; they should be investigating it.”
“That was a dirty cop. He went straight to the leader of that criminal organization, and they think you know too much. They want you quiet.”
My heart dropped. “I won’t say anything else. I can act like I never…”
“That’s not how it works.”
The sudden sting of something he had applied to my thigh surprised me, and I jerked away from him. He recoiled and then leaned back down, blowing gently on the spot and dabbing it with gauze until the trickle of blood subsided.
“Arms, now,” he demanded, and I presented them to him. He leaned over to get more supplies from the box, and I noticed the claw marks on his own arm. I reached out to touch them, and he froze at the touch.
“I’m sorry I did that… I was scared.”
He pulled his arm away from me, looking up for a moment before setting back to his work. “I know.”
“So you aren’t going to kill me then?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“Have you killed people before?”
He nodded.
“How many?”
“Too many. Stop with the fucking questions.”
“So what happens now?”
He was exasperated with me – I could tell – but he answered the question anyway. “I’m going to take you out of town. I have to get rid of all of the people who knew you were a hit.”
I blinked, mind reeling over what he’d just said. “Out of town? What do you mean ‘get rid of’?” I pulled my arm out of his grasp to put my hand to my head. “I’m going to be sick.”
He got to his feet. “Not in my kitchen, you aren’t.”
“Yes,” I choked.
He swept me off of the table, guiding me to the bathroom.
I sank to my knees in front of the toilet, clutching the sides of the seat as I vomited into the bowl.
The last thing I wanted to do was be on a stranger’s floor, getting intimate with his shitter, but I didn’t feel like it was the worst part of my day, so far.
He surprised me when I felt his hands brush my hair back, holding it out of the way as I heaved again.
“Done?” he asked, and he sounded so impatient that I wanted to kick him.
“I… think so,” I panted, leaning back as I swiped at the handle to flush.
He opened the cabinet and withdrew a washcloth, wetting it with cool water before handing it to me. Then he squatted down on the floor next to me.
“I need you to understand how serious this is,” he said, and I hated how he was talking to me like a child.
“Yeah, I think I can grasp that having people want to kill me is pretty serious.”
He seemed surprised by my response, and I swear he almost smiled. “There are a dozen, maybe fewer, people who know you are a mark.”
“You’re going to kill twelve people?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t do that.”
Halo regarded me for a moment and then got up from his place on the floor.
He disappeared again, and I struggled to get up to follow him.
I barely caught sight of him disappearing around the corner, still weak from vomiting as I tried to catch up.
He spun suddenly, so fast that it was hard for me to comprehend what was happening.
He had me like we were in the alleyway again, my back to his chest, except this time he only had one arm around me, holding me right around the neck.
A cold, metallic pressure pressed to the side of my skull, and I realized it was the barrel of a handgun.
Before he even spoke, I could feel his even breath on my ear.
His voice was low and quiet, too calm for what he was doing. “It’s you or them. That’s the choice. I need to know what you think is more important.”
I couldn’t breathe or think past the sound of my heart in my ears. Self-preservation should have been the first thing on my mind, but I couldn’t make myself think that way. My life wasn’t worth more than one other person’s life, let alone a dozen.
“The easy thing is to kill you right now,” he said, his grip unshaking. “End it. That’s what I was supposed to do.”
My voice trembled, but it came out steady, “I don’t think my life is worth the lives of twelve people.”
That gave him pause.
I swallowed hard. “So you do whatever you think is best.”
Silence stretched. The barrel stayed against my temple, but his finger didn’t move on the trigger.
I turned my head just slightly at his hesitation, and although his hand stayed on my neck, he let me make the movement. I saw it, just for a second: that war behind his eyes.
Then he pulled the gun away without a word. He turned and walked into the other room.
“Come with me. I have to show you something.”
I followed, legs still shaking and throat burning. He was in what passed for a living room, kneeling in front of a large, horizontal gun safe. He spun the dial with quick precision and yanked it open. Inside was a black box, and when he opened it, the pieces inside gleamed like something sacred.
It was a sniper rifle. I didn’t know anything about guns, but I had no doubt that’s what this was. I watched from the doorway, frozen. It felt like watching someone raise the blade of a guillotine.
He turned to me, holding up a single cartridge. He held it between two fingers and turned it toward the light. There was something scratched into the casing: rough, jagged letters. I took a hesitant step forward.
It was my name.
Eden. Etched by hand, like he’d been carrying it with him, waiting for me.
My breath caught.
“That one was yours.”
“Why are you showing me this?”
“Because I almost used it,” he said, “and because I need you to understand what happens next. They’ll come looking for you again. I can’t stop that, not yet. But I can use it.”
“How?” My voice was paper thin.
“I need them to think you’re still living your life: normal, safe. I need them to feel confident enough to get close. You’ll go back to work, and that’s all. Home, then the café. You’ll smile, and pretend this didn’t happen. I’ll be close by, and when they come for you, I’ll be there.”
My chest tightened. “You want to use me as bait.”
“I don’t want to,” he said, “but it’s the only way.”
“And you’ll be watching?” I asked. “The whole time?”
“Every second.”
“And then what? After you lure them out?”
His jaw tightened. “I need to gather some intel; there are some that aren’t going to be this easy. I’ll have to go to them. While I do that, I will get you out of town until it’s over.”
I crossed my arms, holding myself together. “And when it’s over? It’s like it never happened? Life will go back to normal?”
“For you, yes,” he said, voice low.
My chest ached.
He looked down at the bullet with my name on it, and then back at me.
“You’re insane.”
He leaned in close enough to brush my knee with his.
“Maybe. But I’m the only thing standing between you and a bullet. I was supposed to kill you, Eden. But now I’m doing everything I can to make sure no one else ever gets the chance, and I’m going to need you to trust me.”
That didn’t give me any comfort.