Chapter 50
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No matter how bad he felt, Eliot still had enough strength to grumble something about the awful rain, mud, and chill, using it as an excuse to go first in front of Hardison and Parker. Hardison tried – as he often did, and always futile – to explain to Parker that he was worried about her. Eliot didn't have to see the blank expression in the thief's eyes to know that this time, too, it would stay just an attempt. But, it was important to Hardison, so he let them follow him, step by step, taking their time. After all, he was freezing.
Darkness, silence, and sitting down – he needed that badly. His mind was able to process one thought every ten seconds, he could feel it shutting down, and he barely suppressed a relieved sigh when he opened the door.
In the next second he saw Florence, the tears streaming down her face, her eyes stricken and desperate, and he froze.
"What happened?" he whispered.
She gasped. "Sophie."
What?! Ten different catastrophes went through his mind, swirling one around another… police, mobsters, unknown enemies, known enemies, more police, and every combination of that. He looked at the screens, and saw Laura's face, looking exactly like Florence's, tears pouring out. "What?" he repeated, pulling out his phone. Nate should've called them. When he looked at the screens again, he saw different a scene, different face – the reporter in the Channel Six studio, sobbing her heart out, with her face buried in her hands. Live, on air.
Just then it dawned on him, and he put the phone back in his pocket. "She did her grieving mother speech?" he asked.
"You, you, you said that like it was nothing," she stuttered. "I saw one policeman falling to his knees, crying! She, she, she…"
He tapped her carefully on her shoulder. "It's okay. She does things like that from time to time."
"I have to get her on my show!"
Dear god. He wasn't sure if everything spun around because he took his first step toward his corner, or because he imagined that. Whatever it was, he crumpled on the floor. Okay, he had accomplished the sitting thing. Now he only needed darkness and silen-
The side doors opened again, letting the light in, directly into his face. "Florence!" Hardison sounded alarmed. And loud. "What-?"
"Everything's fine," he said before she could answer. "She wants Sophie to act in M7."
"Oh," Hardison gasped. "I would cry too, if I thought about that, that's for sure."
"What?" Now it was Florence's turn to look confused.
"Never mind." Hardison moved to let Parker in, and Florence got distracted – she almost hugged the thief. "Florence, can you drive?" Hardison continued, wrapping the thief in all the clothes he could find in the bags. "I have to continue monitoring all the reports and recordings."
"Sure."
The next thing Eliot noticed was that they were three blocks away from the park. And he had only blinked once. He needed to do one more thing before he finally stopped thinking, and he pulled himself out of the lulled floating where the soft chatter of reports and the purring engine had pushed him.
"Hardison, call Nate," he said. Fishing for his phone was too demanding now.
Hardison connected their earbuds back online, and put Nate's feed on speakerphone.
"Nate, you're driving home? Left the bridge?" he put all his strength into his voice, sounding almost like normal.
"Took a taxi for a few streets, and then took a rent-a-car. Why?"
"Can you stop on your way home and buy-" a loud screeching of tires covered his words. "What's going on? What are you doing?"
"What happened?!" Nate's voice went into a hiss.
"What would happen? I need a bigger vase for George. Can you buy it?"
"You fuck- no accidents? Flying, ricocheting, any sort of accidents?!"
He sighed tiredly. "You're strange. No accidents. Fifteen inch vase, okay?"
The low pissed off mumbling abruptly stopped, as if Nate pulled his earbud out, and instead of his voice, Sophie's smile trailed in. "Of course, darling, we'll buy a vase. Any particular color?"
"No, white will do. Thanks Soph."
He took out his earbud too, and the clear voices became just background chatter again. It didn't bother him, and he didn't try to follow the meaning. He knew Hardison was taking care of everything online. He could close his eyes and float away.
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Eliot scarcely remembered anything between the last part of riding in Lucille, and the moment the first cold drops whipped him in the shower. The shock gathered him almost instantly, and he quickly assessed the situation. Cold water to lower the fever, check. Bandages off, check. Thank god, his clothes were also taken off, he didn't crawl into the shower fully dressed. He even prepared the dressing in advance, and brought new clothes, double check.
He hoped he did have enough mind left to lock the door – all of them were damn free with his bathroom time.
This shit was helping, and he felt almost recovered, with his thoughts surprisingly his own, after all the blurry mess that crawled through his brain today. Yet, he knew it wouldn't last long, he had to hurry with everything before he crashed.
Towels, hair, bandages, pills, clothes. The line was tiresome but he continued with step after the step without stopping or resting, fueled by the brightness from the reduced temperature.
When it came to putting his shirt on – and at that point he knew he didn't have much more time – he regretted not being this clear-headed when he chose one of Sophie's shirts. He'd grabbed a white one with little blue flowers.
He cleaned up everything after himself and tied back his hair, now clean of mud. A quick check in the mirror wasn't encouraging, though. Nothing could cover up his drained eyes, glazed and burning from the inside. The half-darkness in the apartment would help, their windows were still shut and blinds lowered.
Nate and Sophie still hadn't arrived when he returned to the living room, although he was sure he spent much more than half an hour in the bathroom. Florence and Parker were on the sofa, clearly both had used the upper bathroom, and they were comfortably wrapped in blankets. Hardison typed something in his chair, and the screens tilted with reports.
"Good news," Hardison raised his head to him. "Look at this. CNN reported international actions."
The hacker put one recording on all six screens, and a CNN reporter talked about #SeaOfCrimson balloon actions spreading all over the world. Three short clips showed actions in Sweden, Malaysia and Australia.
He knew he should say something, but he couldn't come up with anything intelligible, except: good. The painkillers still hadn't kicked in. The good thing was that he didn't have to worry about it – Hardison just nodded and lowered the volume. He was free to continue to the bed.
George was alive and unspoiled, though there was soil around the vase again – but he looked strangely impatient today. He put him aside as well and climbed into the bed. Which squeaked.
He sighed and opened the blanket, pulling out a squeaky mouse that somehow got under it. He wasn't sure if it was a gift, or the first stage of attempted murder.
He had no strength to care about plants and cats right now – about anything, for that matter.
He rested on the pillows, finally. Before he could think of anything, which was a good thing, the darkness just sucked him in.
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For the past five minutes, relaxed and content for a change, Florence had been watching Nate.
He was sitting at the dining table with a laptop in front of him, but he paid no attention to the screen. He held a string in his hand, some sort of ribbon, and he played with Orion. Well, playing was a very generous description – he leaned on the table with one elbow, and held the ribbon in his other hand, letting it sway in front of Orion's nose.
Every ten seconds, Orion would move his paw towards the ribbon, and Florence knew he just wanted to be polite and entertain this strange human who was obviously bored.
Hardison's occasional glances told her that she wasn't the only one who found that scene a little strange. Parker didn't notice anything, she kept her nose stuck in the giant sheets of paper that Hardison had pulled out of nowhere. The thief went over it inch by inch, with a delight reserved only for readers enjoying a good book. That wasn't strange, not even for her, anymore.
But Nate…
He had no idea what was he doing, that was clear. And Florence could see and feel that his mind was doing something that had no connection to playing with the cat. Every few seconds, a strange, small smile would appear on his face, and she wondered what was really going on in front of his eyes.
"Oh dear." Sophie's quiet voice interrupted her thoughts. The grifter just came from the bathroom. Her hair was in its normal state, and she didn't have on all the make-up that made her look older. "Is Nate trying to train him?" Sophie continued, sitting by her at the sofa. Parker moved away to make space for her, still keeping her face just two centimeters away from the blueprints.
"I don't think so. Or, if he tried, he would find out it was futile."
"In Nate's vocabulary, 'to train' means 'to put a spell on somebody'," Sophie smiled at her, looking her directly in the eyes. "He ensnares people."
Damn, was there a significant tone in Sophie's words, or she just added it by herself? The truth was, every time Sophie looked at her, she felt that sharp mind probing. And she had learned that whichever accent she used, there was always one special note in her voice when she wanted to tell her something in no way connected with her actual words.
She looked at the man with the ribbon again.
Orion turned his back on him, annoyed.
"People, maybe. But ensnaring the cat… hardly."
"It seems so," Sophie stretched herself like a lazy cat, curling up on the sofa and grabbing a magazine, but she saw herself on the screen and smiled. "Look at that! It's disturbing, in fact, that I managed to look so old and ruined."
It wasn't the make-up, Florence knew that. She had seen her performance a few times by now, and every time she found something different in it. The way her eyes seemed sunken in her face, the downward twist of her mouth, wrinkles on her forehead – and she didn't have any now… Meryl Streep could eat her heart out. She decided to say nothing, though, because the somewhat strange reactions of the others told her that there was something very sensitive about the matter of Sophie's acting. Waiting to see what that was about was the best course now.
Hardison's quiet whistle drew their attention to him – he pointed to the screens, not raising the volume.
Breaking news. A day that America cried.
Sophie let out one small, joyful sound. Not only did Channel Six make a broadcast about the suicide, every large TV network did too, mixing it with the #SeaOfCrimson actions and YouTube video of Las Vegas fireworks spectacle. The Magnificent Seven had been trending the entire day on Twitter, and Florence simply stopped checking all of her social media notifications – it would take weeks to catch up.
"Nate, are you listening to this?" she asked in a short silence, when the CNN reporter sniffed and waved to her crew to take her off the air. "You know, I was skeptical when you started this, this… media campaign; but now, it's…real."
"You don't have to have a flying horse, Florence," Nate said. "You only have to get the media reporting about the other media who report the other media's report on the flying horse… and he is real, present, everywhere. If it's said on the news, if it's in people's ears and minds, he is flying. The same goes for M7 – if people constantly hear that M7 deserves a season six, it deserves it."
"And it will work even on Brewer?" she asked, almost willing to hope.
Sophie slowly turned her head from the screens to look at him.
He said nothing for a moment, waving the ribbon in front of Orion's nose again. Florence glanced at Hardison to see what he was thinking about it… and Hardison diverted his eyes from hers, pretending he was busy with his keyboard.
She opened her mouth, then closed it. Waited.
"Yes, it should work on Brewer," Nate's answer came after three seconds, said in a normal, light tone.
Hardison was still avoiding her eyes. Sophie watched Nate, her face expressionless.
"That's great," Florence said with a smile.
They were hiding something from her, she knew it. Not just the usual 'the less you know, the less you'll be involved' kind of hiding, no. There was something else here, something connected to the Season Six part of the job, and she had felt it before. She just couldn't decipher what kind of hiding, or lying, they were doing.
Mostly, why?
She trusted them, all of them – and still, one part of her brain, even now, was carefully studying everything that they did.
What if Nate's plans had something else in it, and she was only a useful circumstance? What if he was doing something else, more important than her show? What if she was being used for something? Put under his spell, right.
She sat motionless, with her heart sinking. It would be easy if they screwed her over the first or the second day – she had almost expected them to kill her in a bathtub then, for god's sake. But now, after she learned to trust them, after she liked them, it would be painful… No, she added to herself slowly… after they made her like them. They are grifters. They manipulated people for living. Maybe Eliot's job was to seduce her, to distract her from thinking about their motives. Maybe…
She took one deep breath and almost laughed at her own frantic thoughts – damn writer's brain, making up plots out of nowhere. They were close to the climax, only one day from the final battle, and her sense of dynamics naturally expected some twist, a turn of the tide at the start of the third act. Especially after everything went so well with Knudsen and the mine part of the job – a betrayal instead of a counterattack would fit perfectly in this deep breath before the plunge.
She forced herself to return to real life, to feel the real life around her. It wasn't fair of her to think like that, to doubt them, especially not now. They all risked their lives.
Parker jumped from the Zakim Bridge just to add some drama and feelings of guilt in their campaign. She didn't have to do that.
Her own guilt grew into shame.
They had every right to hide things from her – but one thing she had learned with them… they wouldn't betray her.
And that was the only important thing here.
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Eliot was sure that he woke up after only ten minutes of sleep, but his inner clock told him that more than two hours passed. It felt so easy to continue sleeping, he was just one second from falling back, but he forced his mind to start working. He opened his eyes to half-darkness and tilting screens in front of his face, and saw a bluish stage with two guys from Supernatural.
Last year's PVA ceremony, it could be only that. The volume was lowered almost completely, but loud applause could be heard. The guys were talking about something; how women could find those baby faces attractive to the point of twenty-four/ seven voting, was beyond his comprehension. They spoke in turns and he analyzed them quickly – relaxed with each other, very good friends, extremely high social skills, on the same level of attractiveness – nope, he could do nothing to them, not in this short of time. Besides, they looked likeable. But then camera showed the audience, groups of people – mostly women – applauding. They had different shirts, with two different names on them.
Interesting.
He watched it for a few more minutes, until they gave an award to some blond girl and left the stage. Then he paid attention to the room that surrounded him.
The silence was strange. The only sound was purring – Orion was curled on his arm, staring directly at his eyes, so he could guess what woke him up – and the sound of quick typing. Typing was expected, yet the direction from which it came was wrong.
Hardison was in the chair in front of the screens, and he had his headset on while watching the video. The typing was coming from the dining table. Nate had a laptop in front of him, and his fingers flew over the keyboard faster than he ever seen him type before. He also had a pretty smug smile. If he was writing down his plots, for a change, that would be a document worth learning how to hack. Or simply directing Hardison to do it.
"You're awake?" No matter how concentrated on his typing he was, Nate had noticed he opened his eyes. "Able to think and talk?"
Thinking was going okay, for now, but talking he yet had to try.
"If completely necessary," he said, carefully. That was going good, too.
"Okay then, jump in." Nate finished his document with one elegant click, and moved the laptop away. "The post–job briefing. We have to see what we have done."
Two blond and one dark-haired head emerged over the sofa's backrest – they were invisible until he sat up in bed. He couldn't see what they were doing, but the sounds of papers told him that Parker moved some blueprints, and something greenish mysteriously disappeared back in the box with the Louis Vuitton logo. Just great – he forgot about the PVA ceremony dress – they could expect hours and hours of panic and frantic preparations tomorrow, multiplied by three. Okay, two – Parker was out of it.
Getting up went better than he expected, the painkillers were doing their magic, but he took only two steps before stopping. Occupied with thinking about Supernatural and dresses, he picked up Orion to bring him to the sofa. Not George.
Jesus. He carefully put the cat on the bed, and took George, avoiding his stare. "Still half sleeping, don't start," he muttered quietly, just in case. Every damn leaf radiated the pissitivity level *don't try to measure*.
He shooed Hardison from the chair, sat in part of it, and put George next to him, not on the floor. Orion followed him, he noticed it when Hardison sneezed and moved away to the opposite chair. Orion jumped without any hesitation and curled up on his lap, just a few inches from George. He had a feeling he would pay for this dearly. Good thing she didn't have a parrot or something, the damn thing would sit on his head.
"I guess we are all… comfortable," Nate said, taking the stool for himself, and he knew that smirk. George knew it too. "Hardison, run the reactions to Knudsen and the mine."
"Shit, wait," he said, feeling his blood going cold. "I have to call Betsy and tell her not to come. I've delayed that for too long."
Identical little smiles flew over their faces, but nobody asked why he didn't want her to come.
"It's not safe for her," he said, pulling out his phone. They watched him with barely suppressed, annoyingly cheerful expectations. "Ever heard of privacy?" he growled, getting up. "Yeah, right, wrong people, how stupid of me." He went into the bathroom, feeling those damn smiles tickling his back, and locked the door behind himself with a loud click.
First of all, he measured the bathroom with one glance to see if there was enough space to put the hospital bed in it - it would be sensory deprivation he needed the most. Damn people. Annoying people.
He had practiced his speech to Betsy a few times during the calm parts of the day, and there wasn't any chance she would guess something was wrong. He sorted everything out, logical and reasonable. He found lying to her to be absolutely impossible – not because she was so good at figuring out his lies, but because he had trouble forcing himself to lie at the first place. Avoiding the truth was a better approach, and he had five possible courses for that.
He called the number and waited for her to answer.
"Wait just a second," she said instead of hi, and continued explaining a therapy change to someone. "Okay, I'm here," she said in normal tone after a few seconds.
"You're still working?"
"Just finishing paperwork, ready to go." He could hear the rustle of papers while she talked, and the closing of a cupboard. "Now, you're not calling because you missed me. To be honest, I can't think of any normal reason why you would call me. Which leaves us with non-normal reasons. What happened?"
"We had an attack on the apartment yesterday, they used a sniper. So we have over a thousand bullet holes in here, and metal boards over our windows. It's not safe for you to come. Going through McRory's isn't good enough anymore, I can't risk someone noticing you."
"Ah. Everybody is okay?"
"Yep, nobody was hit. But it could happen again, and I don't want you nearby if that happens." He listened to the short silence on the other end. "You don't have any objections?" he asked carefully.
"No. You said it would last just one more day, and you are finishing that tomorrow night. That's still in force?"
"As far as I know, yes." His caution grew with every second of this.
"Oh, that's great," she said gently, and he barely stopped himself from nervously tapping his hand on the sink.
"And you agree it's wise to pause for one day, not coming close until we finish this? Just like that?"
"Of course I do. You are a responsible, clever young man who would never do something stupid, reckless, or dangerous, and who is very reasonable."
Here we go. He took a deep breath. "Okay, what?!" he growled.
She chuckled quietly. "You are getting better and better at this," she said with a warm tone that almost made him smile. "But you said one wrong word in your explanation, just one. Yesterday."
"What's wrong with yesterday? It was yesterday, I wasn't- ah, shit."
"Exactly. That sniper attack was yesterday, and if there was any danger for me, knowing how overprotective you are, you would've called immediately, and not waited until now. So, scratch the danger part of this crap, and what's left? There's another reason you don't want me to come. What I must not see, Eliot? What have you done?"
Nah. He did try. "First of all, I wasn't lying – I don't want you near now, mostly because I'm selfish. I can't worry about you, on top of everything, and we don't know what can happen until tomorrow." Now he tapped his fingers on the sink, it felt good. Calming. "Second, I might've messed up my stitches a little. Not much, seriously. There wasn't any need to call you, I stitched it up myself, no problem at all."
Okay, this silence was dreadful.
Betsy cleared her throat – the best sign of accumulated anger. Yet her voice was calm when she spoke. "You do remember everything I told you about that? You do remember all complications I listed? You do-"
"Okay, no need to speed up, I'm fine. I was even out today. Briefly. And I'm planning to spend the entire day tomorrow just resting. Promise."
"Not good enough. Okay, you have two choices… first, I'm coming now-"
"Nope, out of question. And I'm not kidding, Betsy. They almost killed the woman who brought Florence's dress, right on our door step."
"So, the second thing – when you finish that PVA shit, you're going to Mass Gen to do all the tests, to see Sciortino, and see what needs to be done."
Okay, that wasn't so bad. Many things could happen up until then.
"Okay, deal."
"Nuh-uh. Promise."
"What?! Jesus, Betsy, if you want a pinky swear-"
"I want your word." Her voice fell, bleak and without any smile in it. "I know you hold onto that."
He bit his tongue. This was how he ended up with a Facebook account – but this wasn't as bad as it sounded. He could go to the damn hospital to check… maybe he ought to go anyway.
"Okay," he grumbled. "I'll go to Mass Gen after the PCA. Satisfied?"
"No, pissed off. You're in the bathroom?" How the hell she could know- probably because of the silence around him. "How many anti-inflammatory pills are left in the bottle?"
He tried, very quickly, to calculate how many would there be if he didn't take double doses a couple of times, but it was a lost battle.
"The highest temperature was 102," he sighed. Lying when sighing went better, always. "And it was going down during today. It will be alright very soon."
"I don't know what makes you so idiotic, but it really works," she said in an unimpressed voice, another sign of her real mood. He was glad she wasn't anywhere near. "I'll make sure to work the night shift tomorrow night," she said ominously, and cut the call.
Damn.
He glanced at the mirror, caught himself still squinting, and erased that shit from his face.
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Four cheerful expressions were waiting for him when he returned. Even Parker grinned briefly before diving back into the blueprints.
Only Hardison watched something on his laptop, with a frown close to unease.
"And, what did she say?" Sophie sang.
"All went well," he said shortly, returning to his chair. Watching Hardison.
Florence's eyes were wide open and innocent. "Ah, well as in I'll cry myself to sleep tonight, or well as in…well, it's Betsy, so there's no other option. Did she yell?"
Honestly, he had to do something with her attitude. He mourned the shell shock period. It passed too soon. He tried a dreadful glare, wordless and ominous, reserved only for lynch mobs over twenty armed people, and she chuckled.
"Nate, did you by any chance keep one or two of the Chinese boxes?" he turned to Nate.
"Hey! That's not fair!"
"It wouldn't be fair," Nate nodded. "His family needs all the parts for a proper burial this time."
"His family?" said Florence.
"Erm, Nate," Hardison raised his hand. "If you have a second here-"
"This time?" asked Sophie. "Bonnano found out who he was?"
"No, DNA analysis takes much longer-"
"Damn right," Florence grumbled.
"-and it would last for weeks if someone didn't tell him where to look." Nate stopped, watching them, waiting for them to speak. They all looked back with the same expressions. Hardison lowered his hand with a sigh. "C'mon, you all know who the guy in the packages is."
"We do?" Sophie asked carefully.
"A vampirized guy from the recording," Parker said. They all looked at her now. She raised her eyes from the papers. "A blood-drained-guy that they buried?" she explained.
Nate took the remote from Hardison's hand, and Eliot could swear that the hacker didn't even notice until he started to go through the menus. "Hey, wait, just tell me what you want to find-"
"Luigi Polenghi," Nate said. "Parker is right." The screens tilted with a short recording they all recognized now – a funeral with Don Lazzara and Knudsen, and many men dressed in dark suits. "Do you remember it now? A friend of Don Lazzara, killed shortly after the Boston casino mess. Police didn't find the body, but the amount of blood found at the crime scene confirmed he was dead without a doubt."
What Eliot remembered from this recording, was seeing Don Lazzara with cold, stone-hard eyes for the first time.
"And Don Lazzara's nephew had his body parts in his possession," said Sophie. "That's… interesting to know. You think they killed him together, for who knows what reason? It would be strange that Don Lazzara didn't know, or approve that."
"Wait!" Florence said. "If Bonnano knows, or he will soon know, who that man was, that means that Don Lazzara will be accused as an accomplice as well? Maybe, when dealing with Knudsen, we dealt with the entire mob threat."
Only in scripts, Eliot wanted to tell her, but he kept silent. He didn't have to say anything, because Nate's lack of response to that was enough for her. Her face fell a little, and she nodded.
"It would be extremely difficult to connect him to that murder," Sophie stated carefully. "But maybe it's not that important, maybe he is left out of equation, and off our backs."
"Nope," Hardison said, taking the remote back from him. "Can I have some attention now, finally? Forget about funerals and murder accusations, will ya?"
"Yes, you were trying to say something…?"
"No, I was trying to show you something." Hardison's voice was bleak. "Make yourself comfortable."
This didn't sound appeasing at all. Eliot leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms. Parker, reacting more to the sound of Hardison's voice than to his words, straightened herself up and set her face into concentration mode, the face she used when she tried to look as if she was participating in the briefing. He wondered, watching her, if she was still going through the lines of the blueprints inside her head.
The screens showed Bonnano giving a statement. The Detective opened his mouth and Hardison stopped it. "Nothing important, successful action, organized crime, smuggling ring broken, blah blah." He clicked the remote again, and another image appeared, a file. "This is the written statement of Commissioner Kimmel – nothing to worry about, no connection to us whatsoever, just mentioning the Concerned Lincoln Citizens, no names, no details, but the mine is going out of business for good." He kept it only five seconds, not enough time even to read the title. Another image showed some sort of analysis results. "This shit is connected to the monitors and silica particles, moving along…"
"Hardison, what the hell…" Nate started but Hardison raised his hand.
"Reactions to Knudsen and mine going down, in fast forward. There isn't anything that would demand our attention, I checked everything. And everything went well. They are screwed, we're covered."
"But?"
Hardison sighed. "This," he said, clicking the remote once more.
The reporters caught Don Lazzara in front of City Hall. Eliot remembered he was a member of the City Council. He didn't look upset because of many hands pushing microphones in his face, nor did he have someone with him who would help him go through them.
He just stood there, smiling – a good-hearted, benign old man, with a smile carved into his red cheeks. He smiled, and smiled, and the reporters, one by one, stopped shouting their questions.
The hands holding microphones moved away.
"Thank you," he said quietly, and they shut up completely to be able to hear him. "I don't have an official statement. I'm just an uncle who is worried for his beloved nephew, and very concerned because of these strange events that happened in his mine."
And he looked exactly like that, Eliot had to give him that. A simple, nice man, honest with his feelings. Damn grifter. He had heard the Death in his voice before – that sound he would never forget.
"I'm afraid my Robert is just a victim here – there are many people who would try to hurt me using the people I love and care about. He will have the best lawyers, and we will do everything in our power to prove this was a setup. Justice will prevail."
"Do you know, or suspect, who might be behind this – alleged – setup, Mr. Lazzara?" one voice from the crowd raised in question.
Don Lazzara turned to that man, directly into the camera. All six screens showed his face, his eyes and smile in every detail.
"I do," he breathed. The two giant eyes narrowed slightly, showing the small wrinkles in the corners. It was enough to completely change his expression, though the smile remained the same. Hard as stone. "I talked to my nephew. He has his own… suspicions." He paused and his eyes slowly moved, as if he was searching through the camera – it felt like he was watching them all, one by one, all of them just two meters from the screens. "I will do everything in my power, and I mean everything, to find them and… bring them to justice."
Just great. That little pause in his sentence sounded just like he wanted it to sound.
"And I have a message for them." The smile fell from his face in a second, shattered like a frozen glass, revealing the hard cut of his tight jaw and cruel eyes. Without that smile, his voice became the voice Eliot remembered, power and cruelty mixed into one, fueled with an icy cold rage that simmered under his skin almost visibly.
He slowly blinked, focusing his stare directly into the eyes of the viewers. "I am a Guest of Honor at the PVA ceremony. I'll be there. Waiting. And I'm looking forward to meeting you."
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