"Air-wick…Air-wick….Air-wick! Ake-up!"
Eric shrugged off the annoyance and turned away, pulling the bed covers up and over his face in an attempt to deflect any further encroachments into his blissful cocoon.
"Air-wick!"
Pity his attempts were totally ineffectual. "What the hell, Squirt?" Eric cried out in frustration as he flung back the covers and propped himself up on an elbow. "What could possibly be so important that you couldn't just allow me five more minutes of P and Q!"
"Momma says to tell oo da unch awr eady."
"When are you gonna learn to talk properly, Ott-aw-en? I have no idea what you just said. Are they ever gonna teach you to speak English at that fancy kindy of yours? No…?" Eric didn't bother waiting for a response as he scooted his legs out from under the blankets irritably and planted his feet on the carpet…. "No need. Luckily for you I can smell food on the table and my brilliant brain, unlike yours, can deduce the rest." Eric leaned forward, getting right into the little one's personal space and enunciated each word. "Elizabeth…said…to…come…downstairs…for…lunch?"
"Yeah…dats whats she saib," Scottie smiled, completely oblivious to the insulting remarks the older boy had just passed and seemingly happy that his instructions had been interpreted correctly.
"When you grow up the first thing you need to do is sue your speech therapist for dereliction of duty in allowing a lifetime of emotional scaring."
The younger boy stared ahead blankly, unable to follow.
"Never mind," Eric shook his head in disbelief at the immense dopiness that was capable of emanating from a single individual. "Well you can tell her, eyes nots hungwys."
"Okays, Air-wick," Scottie shrugged uncaringly, before turning happily on his little heals and trotting back out of the room.
Eric shook his head some more then leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. He was hungry, but he didn't feel like eating, and he certainly didn't feel in any way like sitting across the table from Scott-Allen while he and Elizabeth played 'happy families.' Being reminded that his own family was any thing but, was the last thing he needed at the moment. No, what he wanted more than anything was to be left alone…but the chances of that happening while Elizabeth still had air in her lungs and blood coursing through her veins, were zilch. Sooner or later he'd have to front up and face her all-suffocating mother-hen fussing, but for now, he was happy to have been able to get away with as little as a 'good to have you back' kiss' when they'd first arrived home in the early hours of the morning.
It had been a long, quiet, deflating journey back to New York with minimal conversation being the unspoken agreement after the bombshell of Lorekovic's death quelled a desire for any further disclosure. Peter had returned to the front passenger seat after the first bathroom pit-stop and thankfully the limited chit-chat that ensued required little more than yes or no responses. For the most part, Eric had continued to stare out the window while trying unsuccessfully to erase from his consciousness, the vision of his mom lying on the floor of the yacht beside the other dead body. Sadly however, it was impossible to shake the realisation of how close the nightmare had come to being a reality. The fear that had amassed from knowing how easily him and his mom could fall victim to the deranged drug lord who'd made their life a living hell from the moment their paths had crossed at a piddly little art show in Rijeka, had continued to haunt his dreams for the better part of a year, so he'd be damned if he was going to consciously decide to shut his eyes and willing go to that all too familiar place of monsters and mad men.
They'd made it almost all the way home before he finally succumbed to eyelids that were far too heavy to force open any longer and he could vaguely recall Peter whisking him straight up to bed and Elizabeth tucking him under the covers but thankfully, he didn't remember anything after that until the squirt came up and so rudely interrupted what was a rare, elusive state – dreamless slumbering.
"Hey, kiddo…"
Eric's eyes shot up, surprised by Peter's unexpected appearance in his room. Not only hadn't he been alerted by the sounds of approaching footsteps, but he'd assumed the agent was back at the office sorting things out.
"…Not hungry?"
"No," Eric stated bluntly before declaring, "I want to see Mom."
Peter paused on his way into the room and pressed his lips together in typical Peter fashion. Eric had seen it all before except this time the man looked even more dishevelled than ever, wearing the same old clothes he'd had on the day before. Eric momentarily wondered why he hadn't taken the time to shower and change. Certainly, a freshen up couldn't have done his overall 'I may look like I slept in the gutter but I didn't' appearance any harm.
"Listen-"
"No," Eric reiterated as he pushed off the bed and went across to his drawers. "Where is she? I want you to take me to see her."
"Eric…" Peter moved across to intercept the boy.
"Peter," Eric shrugged past and proceeded to collect a fresh shirt and pants. "I need you take me to Mom now, before she says any more to the feds. Has she asked for a lawyer yet?"
"Eric…" Peter snagged the boy by his upper arm and spun him around. "I need you to take a deep breath and calm yourself down before you go getting yourself all worked up again."
"No," Eric pulled his arm free and checked the time on his watch before tugging off his sleep shirt and slipping into the new one. "I've wasted too much time already. I need to get to Mom now."
Finally, it dawned on Peter to ask, "Why?"
Eric thought about giving the agent the run-around but for the sake of expediency he explained, "Because I need to tell her we can make a deal. I know where the jades are and she can use that to make an exchange for a reduced sentence. I can even make the exchange myself."
"Eric…" Peter took the boy's arm once more and led him across to the bed, forcing him to sit as he pulled the desk chair across and took up a seat of his own. "…We have the jades already."
"What?" Eric pushed back onto his feet and spat out disbelievingly. "You do not. We didn't bring them to the yacht. I swapped them over without anyone knowing…even Mom."
"Yes, I know but…" Peter gently put pressure back on the boy's shoulder till he was sitting once more. "We went and got them from the motel before we started back here."
"How…how did you…" Eric was having a hard time working out what to ask.
"How did we know where to look?"
Eric shrugged.
"Where else were they going to be, Eric?" Peter tried patiently. Obviously the kid was still struggling to think straight. "Your mom took us there and got them for us."
"But I'd hidden them so well."
"Under the basin, wrapped in toilet paper?" It was Peter's turn for disbelief. "It took your mom all of five seconds to work out where you'd put them."
Eric folded his arms and looked away, pretending like it didn't matter as he tried not to let Peter see the tears that had begun to well in the corner of his eyes. "So what now? That's all she had for bargaining power and she went a blew it."
"That's not it at all," Peter reassured. "Eric…I've been with your mom all morning and she explained to me what happened in Dubrovnik…"
Eric glanced back and locked eyes with the older man's but he couldn't bring himself to ask so Peter continued…
"She told me the whole story, Eric, how Lorekovic had initially asked her to find him the matching Spindle Neuron Jades to complete his collection and then after she turned down an exorbitant sum of money to steal the pieces for him, he held you captive in his compound as blackmail. She said that you were there for three days before she was able to rescue you but in the aftermath, as insurance, Lorekovic had planted the Whale Jade in her possessions so he could report her to the authorities for an art theft and have Interpol do the chasing."
"And who's going to believe her?" Eric asked quietly with sad blue eyes that reminded Peter too much of the young man who sat across the metal prison table from him every Saturday morning.
"I do, Eric and my team's going to put together a case for the prosecution that will look more favourably on your mom's actions."
Eric sat in silence, pondering what had just been offered before asking, "Why? You don't even like Mom. Why would you want to help her? Why even consider making it more 'favourable' for her?"
"Whether I like Alexandra Hunter or not," Peter didn't deny the accusation, "is irrelevant. Yes, your mom made very poor choices and I still think she should be held responsible for her actions, but at the same time, well…" Peter took a moment to release a long suffering sigh, "she believed that by doing what she did, she could keep you both safe from the threats Lorekovic had made. She figured by being in possession of the complete set of Spindle Neuron Jades, she could broker a deal that would absolve her from any and all ties she had with Lorekovic. Yes, I know it was reckless and…stupid that she honestly thought a man like Lorekovic could be bought off so simply. Apparently, in her mind though, it was the only option that appeared viable. Something you may not have known is that Lorekovic had loaned her the deposit for the villa in the Mediterranean and she needed a sure way of getting him out of your lives for good – according to your mom, the Spindle Neuron Jades were the only solution."
"I knew about the loan," Eric stated matter-of-factly. "My mom never kept anything from me. We're…partners."
Peter didn't want to have to comment about what was so fundamentally wrong with a mother turning her young son into a criminal partner so he moved on, "In any case, we – the people who are trained and paid to take care of this sort of thing, are working through everything with your mom. Your involvement has been officially, and unofficially terminated."
"What about Sir Marc? What's going to happen to him? I can tell you-"
"Eric," Peter shook his head in a warning gesture rather than reach out to shake some sense into the boy. "What say we go downstairs and have some lunch and then I'll take you in to see your mom?"
"I said I wasn't hungry."
"I don't care whether you are hungry or not," Peter stood up and pulled his young charge to his feet also. "First you are going to eat, then we'll go see your mom."
"And what if I just don't feel like eating?" Eric stated with obvious insolence as he followed the older man out of the room.
"Then," Peter shrugged while standing aside to let the kid move past, "I guess you'll just have to keep sitting at the table until you do. Of course, your mom is going to wonder why I didn't bring you back with me like I told her I would."
"You told her…" Eric paused and fixed the agent with an incredulous glare.
"Yep. But the FBI doesn't allow hungry children to pass through security so if I were you, I'd seriously consider not being, 'not hungry' for a change."
Eric considered challenging the agent on his load of BS but it would only mean having to delay seeing his mom even longer so he sucked up his pride, grumbled something that sounded to Peter suspiciously like a string of curse words and dragged his feet over to the stairs where he was hit immediately with the unmistakable aroma of hot pumpkin soup waffling up from the dining room. Suddenly, he didn't feel 'not hungry' any more.
# # #
"Eri!"
Eric found himself enveloped in loving arms before he'd fully stepped into the small FBI interrogation room. Despite his resolve on the way over that he wasn't going to succumb to accepting such a display of affection, he melted into the embrace and relished in the warmth emanating from his mother. As he snuggled in under her arms, he considered it wouldn't be the same the next time he got a hug from his mom – prison had a way of tainting the skin with a most unappealing odour that could only be eliminated through exposure to the uncontaminated air of the outside-prison world…or so he believed.
"You okay?" He asked quietly without lifting his head. Even though Peter had reassured him that she had been unharmed, the vivid images of her lifeless body continued to haunt his visions.
"Yes, I'm fine," Alex unravelled the boy from under her arms and pulled him away slightly so she could look him in the eye. "But what about you, my prince? You okay? How are you holding up?"
"How do you think I'm holding up, Mom?" Eric pulled away entirely and snapped, "What sort of a dumb ass question is that? I've been dragged from one end of the country to the other, manhandled by psycho, behemoth muscle heads, tracked and chased by the FBI and just in case I found that all too painless, which by the way for the record I did not, you went and almost got us both killed by that lunatic madman you just couldn't stay away from."
Alex reached out to take her son's hand but the boy instinctively stepped back. "Eric. It's okay, honey…"
"No mom, it's not. What's wrong with you that you couldn't see the writing on the wall? How did your brain get so screwed up that you figured you could deal rationally with these people when even me, a kid, knew you were just buying trouble? And Peter told me you went and blew any chance there was of making a deal. What's with that, huh?"
"Eric," Alex lowered her voice as her eyes darted first to the mirrors and then across to the door, like she was expecting their little reunion to be broken up at any moment. "Just calm down for a minute and have a seat. I don't know how much longer they'll let me be alone with you."
But unlike his mom, Eric was under no misconception that they were alone – not in an interrogation room lined with two-way mirrors and microphones on every wall bracket. He knew he should be appreciative that their get-together wasn't taking place through a glass wall, or worse, metal bars, but he didn't. Eric expected the only reason he was allowed this 'private' session with his mom was on the off chance that either one of them would disclose further incriminating evidence in the frenzy of the emotional reunion. "Whatever," Eric grumbled as he made a show of pulling out a chair and flopping down. "Happy?"
Alex smiled appreciatively before pulling a seat around the table and taking up a spot beside her son. "Listen, Eri," she lowered her voice to barely above a whisper, "I've only got a few minutes so I want you to listen carefully…okay?"
"No, Mom," Eric's voice wasn't nearly as quiet "it's not okay. How many times in my life have you said to me that we only have a few more minutes before something crazy goes down? I'm sick of it and I've had enough… You don't ever hear Elizabeth having to say to Scott-Allen, 'we're in serious trouble here – if you don't do exactly what I need you to do, it could mean the end for both of us!'"
"Eric," Alex rested her hand on the boy's shoulder. "That's not fair. You can't go making that comparison. Everything I've ever done has been so you and I can have a better life."
"No, it hasn't!" Eric pushed angrily to his feet and slammed his hand on the table in front of his mom. "Everything we've ever done has been for you! So you, YOU mom, can have just what you want. Do you think I care whether we have a Cezanne hanging over our fireplace or a Kandinsky on the wall beside my bed? Half the time I don't even know where my bed is. I wake up in the middle of the night and the first thing I think of after checking that I'm not in danger is, where the hell am I? You don't know this but Neal went and did a painting for me, of you and I, and it's better than any painting I ever saw mounted in one of those chic galleries down in the Mediterranean but I couldn't hang it over my bed," Eric paused to swipe away the tears that had begun to blur his vision, "because it wasn't even my bed. I don't have a bed of my own. But you wouldn't know about Neal's painting, would you, cause you were too busy gallivanting after those FRIGGEN JADES!" The last words were shouted and Eric registered the door opening off to the side, but he didn't care. He wiped his eyes across the sleeve of his shirt before leaning in close. "I hope you're finally happy mom," he stated in an icy whisper, "…I hope now you have everything you've ever wanted, cause I'm pretty sure you don't have any more chances…any more lives left." And with that final declaration, Eric stormed past the female agent that had entered the room, marched around the corner, and ran straight into Peter's waiting arms.
"Hey, it's okay," Peter started softly but Eric brushed him off.
"Why does everyone keep saying that?" he asked furiously. "Everything's not okay. It sucks…big time."
"Well, okay. Yes it does," Peter placated as he crouched down to the kid's eye level, "but getting yourself all worked up isn't going to help anyone."
"Do I look like I care," Eric spat out while throwing his hands in the air. "What does it matter anymore?"
"Eric, there's no need to be like that."
"Like this," Eric pointed to his chest. "Fine! You want to help someone, how about Neal? I'm obviously a lost cause so lets help someone who wants to be helped. I want to go on record that my mom confessed to being the sole perpetrator of the theft of the-"
"No," Peter cut the boy off.
"No, what?"
"No, you're not going to say anymore. You're not going to go on record for anything."
"What the hell?" Eric stormed off angrily in the direction of elevators while calling back over his shoulder. "This is the second time you've stopped me trying to tell you. What's wrong with you? Isn't it your job to want confessions to criminal acts?"
"Yes, Eric," Peter caught up with the kid in a couple of quick strides and snagged him by his arm before spinning him back around. "But this isn't the time nor the place."
"Why the hell not? I guess all that stuff about aspiring to half the man my father is was all a load of bull along with everything else you've ever crapped on about."
Eric tried to reef his arm free but Peter held a tight grasp. "No, it's not, Eric."
"Then let me say what I want to. It's my decision isn't it?"
"No, it's not. It's mine."
"Unreal!" Eric shook his head in frustration. "You adults really are a law unto yourselves – do what you want, say what you want, make rules for whatever you want." He looked up with wet, frustrated eyes that had more than reached their breaking point. "Can you at least explain why-"
"Because the next time you go and have an argument with your dad, I don't want the first words out of your mouth to be, 'I should never had helped them to set you free.'"
"I would never say-"
Peter glared at the boy, willing him even for a second to deny that he wouldn't do exactly that, but smartly, Eric clamed his mouth shut and simply shrugged – besides, he had no energy to do anymore.
Peter crouched down once more and softened his tone, "What's say you and I go home?"
Eric wanted to say that he didn't have a home, didn't have a bed of his own to hang a painting over, didn't have a parent that wasn't behind bars…but he'd said all he could manage for one day so he just nodded and allowed himself to be silently guided into the elevator...and back to the place that was home, by any other name.