Chapter Twenty-Nine
No Matter What We Breed
We Still Are Made Of Greed
This Is My Kingdom Come
This Is My Kingdom Come
Roughly 8:00 AM in Boston
Roughly 7:00 AM in New Orleans
Mikel slowly placed the cell phone that hadn't rang in four years down on the table; that was, it hadn't until now. She didn't regret owing Evan Chapman a favor. That's what happened in this business, but she was not looking forward to performing this favor.
She liked Eliot Spencer. She really did. After meeting the man two years ago, she'd come to respect him and knew he lived up to his reputation. He had once been in the same business she was still deeply rooted in; she even realized that she may have respected him for his being able to move out of this business, but a promise was a promise.
She didn't know what it was that Evan Chapman had done to deserve being owed a favor, but she realized she really didn't want to know. If her former commander felt he deserved it, then he did. Commander Allam Dayan had been her brother as well as her commander and it was because of him that she would follow through on this favor.
Her brother had been gone for close to three years now, and as such she was now responsible for honoring his promises. She didn't like Evan Chapman, and while she did like Eliot Spencer, it was still her family obligation to fulfill her brother's word.
She didn't really care one way or another what had to be done, she would do it. For Allam. She picked up the phone and removed any information on it and then placed it back on the table next to her empty breakfast plate. She wouldn't need to keep this phone any longer; it had served its purpose. She placed the money for her meal on top of it and quietly got up and walked away from the small outside cafe. She would need to catch a plane, so she headed off on foot back to her small apartment to pack.
She wouldn't be returning to this city again. At least not to stay for any extended amount of time. That was one of the rules in her world; you never stayed in one place too long. She would have to meet her contact in Boston to get whatever information she would need on Eliot. She had kept Nate Ford and his team on her radar since the job she'd done there. It was important to know where they were and what they were doing so she didn't run into Spencer again.
She turned right at the corner and quietly slipped into the doorway of a non-descript building and took the stairs to the third floor. She would be in and out in less than 30 minutes after packing and making flight arrangements; and while she'd grown to love the city of New Orleans, she knew it was time to move on.
She unlocked the door to the small, but comfortable apartment and moved quietly inside where she pulled out another cell she had hidden in her jacket lining. She may have to perform this favor, but that didn't mean she couldn't give Eliot a warning. She smiled as she punched in the number she'd memorized from two years ago.
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Emma sat next to Hardison at his computers while they both went through the files Hardison had downloaded from the warehouse. There wasn't much on it, nothing that mentioned Eliot at all.
"This is so frustrating." She replied as she ran her hands over her knees. "Why couldn't they just have a file that says, 'Here's where I took Eliot - go get him'?" She didn't care if she sounded whiny, she needed to do something and while it had been fun watching the monster mob bring the real shore patrol officers to the brink of confusion, it was over now and they were back at Nate's loft over the bar. "I don't care what time it is; I need a damn drink."
She got up and went over to sit next to Nate who had a cup of coffee and a bottle of Irish Whiskey at his elbow. He smiled at her as he pushed his fresh cup over to her and got up to get himself another.
Emma smiled her thanks as she accepted the cup and watched as Sophie frowned slightly at the gesture. Sophie looked from Nate to Emma and then she smiled at her. Emma thought maybe she'd done something wrong at first, but she soon realized it wasn't about her. It was about Nate.
"So, Sophie, tell me about Eliot. Tell me what he does here. He doesn't talk much to me about all of you." This wasn't entirely true. Eliot had told her a lot about his team. Enough that Emma knew he felt more at home here with them than he ever had with his own family. At first she'd been jealous that others were getting to spend time with her brother when she couldn't, but she soon learned that whatever they felt for each other, Eliot and this team, she knew it was real and it was good for him.
They were good for him; so, she'd refrained from saying anything negative to him where they were concerned. Her brother deserved a family, a real one.
Sophie watched Emma as she spoke. "Well, Eliot is... he's our... well... he's..." For the life of her, she didn't know how to answer. How do you explain to Eliot's sister that Eliot was more than just their hitter? She didn't want to offend Eliot's only real family by telling her that they were also a family.
Emma knew what was going through Sophie's head and she didn't want to make things hard for her. "I understand Sophie. Eliot may be my brother, but I also have my husband and my son. So, it's only fair that Eliot have others too. As I said before, we grew up differently. We may have lived in the same house, but we led different lives." She looked at the coffee in the cup in her hands.
She hated thinking about those times, especially for Eliot. She'd survived basically because she didn't know what else to do. But Eliot was always the emotional one; the one who took everything to heart. She didn't know if these people would be able to understand that or not. She didn't know for sure, but she did know that Eliot had chosen to stay here, to help them to be a part of not just a team, but a second family so she didn't want to jeopardize that for him.
Parker walked over to the table and sat down with a big bowl of dry cereal. "Whatcha talking about?" She asked between mouthfuls of the cereal.
Emma had to laugh at the girl. She was priceless. "I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you already know from Eliot that sugary cereals will rot your teeth."
Parker smiled. "Yep, Sparky tells me that every day." She scooped up another bite and shoved it in her mouth. "But... for some odd reason, there's always a big box of my favorite cereal in the cabinet; and Eliot's the only one who does the food shopping." She said as she swallowed. "Either he likes me, or the cereal fairy does!"
Nate laughed. "Something like that. The cereal fairy is probably related to the tooth fairy and they're in co-hoots."
Sophie smiled at Nate and reached out a hand to pat his. Emma watched the display of affection without comment. She finished the coffee and silently got up from the table.
"Well, I'm going to take a shower if I can get the key to Eliot's loft, Nate?" She asked as she placed her cup in the sink.
"Of course." The man got up and pulled open a kitchen drawer and reached in past the silverware to pull out a set of keys. "I keep the keys to Eliot and Hardison's apartments in here. I don't have a key for Parker's, she never locks the door since she never uses the door. And Sophie has her own place when she isn't staying here."
Emma smiled at him. She'd had a crash course in how Parker entered a room when they'd gotten back to the bar and noticed that Parker hadn't followed them upstairs. When she'd asked about it, Hardison just grinned and Nate had said that Parker had her own entrance.
When they'd arrived at the apartment and entered, there was Parker sitting on the window ledge unhooking her gear from her belt. She'd realized that Eliot hadn't exaggerated when he said Parker loved climbing buildings.
"Thanks. When Matthew and Vance get back, please call me. I don't want to miss anything." She waved at the others and grabbed her purse and bag and walked out the door to the apartment just across the hall.
Nate had told her back in Lucille that Hardison had bought the building over the bar and that he, Parker and Eliot had apartments here. There were the only ones on this floor, the top floor.
She unlocked the door and stepped inside to see a well-furnished room. She looked around and she recognized some of the furniture. The kitchen table and chairs, she thought. She remembered those from her home growing up. Her father had put them in a yard sale two or three years ago. She'd thought they'd been lost forever. Yet here they were, in this apartment. Eliot's apartment.
He'd made each piece by hand when he was eleven. It had taken him over almost a year, but he'd been so proud of it. Then their mother had died, and their father had moved the set to the garage when Eliot had left home and that's where they'd stayed until the yard sale. She didn't know how Eliot had done it, but he'd bought the set.
She felt a tear fall from her eye onto the surface as she reached out to gently stroke the tabletop. Damn it, Eliot. You... just damn it. She couldn't help the tears that fell now. She pulled out a chair and buried her face in her hands as she let the tears fall.
She didn't know if she could take anything else. Her brother was out there somewhere, possibly safe but she had no idea for sure. She really had no idea where he was and on top of the fact their father was dying, she had to face the fact that she may lose her brother as well. Then she'd truly be alone.
She had Matthew and Spencer, and even if she didn't see Eliot much, just the fact that he would no longer be around, well it just hurt too much to think about. She didn't know what to do.
She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out the letter that Matthew had given her. It was thick, and she knew they were Eliot's words just for her. She longed to read it and then again, she didn't. She knew he would have written it as if he were going to be dead soon, and even if he'd survived that time, it still meant the same thing was possible now.
She slowly reached across the table for a napkin from the napkin rack that also had belonged to their mother and she wiped the tears from her eyes. She looked around the kitchen to see a lot of things there she remembered. There was a lazy susan there on the counter holding his many spices. It was just like the one Eliot had made her for Christmas last year. She loved that thing. It was solid oak and it was so easy to use.
She turned to look at the living area and saw something she'd thought had been lost forever. She hadn't seen it since the day her mother and siblings had died. There on the back of a modern brown overstuffed sofa rested the quilt their grandmother had made. It had been a present to their mother on her wedding day and it had always been on their bed. Until their father had removed it. She hadn't known where it ended up, her father had said he'd given it away, but here it was.
She got up, the letter still in hand, and pulled the quilt off the sofa and wrapped it around her. She could just faintly smell the honeysuckle that their mother loved. She had this special recipe for laundering her delicate items and it included honeysuckle water. She felt the tears again as she slumped down on the sofa. Slowly she pulled the letter from the envelope and began reading.
Dear Em,
If you're reading this, then I'm sorry. I never meant to let this happen to you, but some things just can't be helped. I want you to know that no matter what, I did try. I really did.
I know I made you a promise over twenty years ago to always come back, but this time I may not be able to. And for that I am sorry. Just know that it was for a good reason and since you're reading this letter then it's a safe bet that you've met Nate, Sophie, Hardison and Parker. They are the good reason; I did this for them. I couldn't let them pay for my mistakes. I couldn't let them fight my fight.
And I want you to know that I also did this for you and Spencer; and maybe a little bit for Matt. You three will be fine. Just stay together and promise me you will always remember the fun things we did as kids.
Always remember that you were the best sister a guy could ever have and while I may not have said it often enough, I always tried to show it. You must know that after mom died, you were all I truly had left and for that you will always be first in my heart.
Take care of Matt and don't let him continue to blame himself for the choices I've made since leaving the service. They were all my choices. It was never his fault, no matter what I told him. He did his job and trained me well, and it's my fault I just couldn't focus on that anymore.
I'm not making excuses for my time serving my country. I would never do that, because I will never regret keeping her safe and her people safe. The only thing I regret is letting myself be led away from that life. I've made a lot of bad choices in my life, but none so bad as the choice I made to work for Moreau.
I know you know about him; I know Matt would have told you everything he could. Just remember that everything I'd done at the time I thought I was doing for the right reasons. But I ended up doing the wrong things and because of that, I know that made me a bad man. I know that deep in my heart.
I tried to make better choices, but things just didn't make sense anymore and nothing that has happened since my leaving the service behind has helped me to find myself. Nothing. I tried hard, but I just haven't seen the man I once was in a very long time.
You know about Evan and Eaton, and you know what I've had to do for Moreau. But you don't know everything; you don't know what I've had to do to try and stay sane. And in the end, nothing helped me with that. I'm still not sure if I'm sane anymore; all I know is that since working for Nate Ford, I've begun to at least feel like I'm able to make a difference. But I will never be free of the man I was for Moreau.
Whatever Matt has told you about what I'd become, multiply it by 100 because that will give you a better idea of what I really was. I was a bad man, Emmy. A really bad man; and I'm still that bad man. I'm not that little kid you once teased or fought with anymore. I'm not that boy who loved to work with his hands and ride horses and work the farm. Not anymore… not ever again...
I stopped being that little boy the day we put Mom, Elijah and Lizzie in the ground. That was the beginning of the end for me. No matter what I've done since, I can always trace it back to that day.
I worked the best I could to get you all the advantages for a better life and you still ended up attached to this life by marrying my ass of a drill sergeant, Matt... Still can't get over that. I truly hated the guy and here you go falling for him! Believe me, I thought about beating the crap out of him for that.
But when I saw the way he looked at you and the way you looked at him, well I just knew nothing I said would make a difference. I'm happy for you two, and Spencer is the best nephew ever. I really want you to be happy, so if Matt's what you want then I will never stand in the way of that. You deserve to be happy.
I've kept a secret from you for years. A secret I learned from our mom and promised her that I'd always keep. I can't keep that promise anymore. You know that Eaton and Evan were not our cousins; that they were our brothers, but what you don't know is that our mother didn't want to have them. She knew something didn't feel right about the pregnancy.
She tried... let's just say she tried to terminate her pregnancy. She tried to kill herself and she almost succeeded. She didn't want to tell me, but I made her. I made her tell me everything. That night when we were about 13 and Aunt Marie and Uncle Marty came to visit... well, you remember how our parents told us the truth that night. Mom told me first and I made her tell you too.
Later that same night I cornered our mother again and told her I knew there had to be more to it than just that secret. While it was a big one, it wasn't all that bad, and she'd said she'd done bad things. So, I made her tell me all of it.
I won't go into details, but the truth is she tried to end the pregnancy and because of that she blamed herself for how Evan turned out. He was never a nice person, you know that; but what you don't know is that mom thought she caused the damage to him.
She blamed herself for years for all the trouble he'd caused Aunt Marie and Uncle Marty. She blamed herself for all of it and she never told our father what she had tried to do. She made me promise to keep this secret.
And you must know that when Evan was killed five years ago, when Matt told you he'd been killed, well you have to know it was me. I killed him. He was working for Moreau and had turned on him and Moreau wanted him dead and he wanted me to do the job. He had me kill him.
Moreau didn't think I knew who Evan was and when I'd done the job and reported it back to him, he thought he'd try and knock me down by telling me that Evan was my brother. And so, help me, I will never forget the look on his face when I told him I already knew that.
Then I told him that he may have taken me in and taught me some things, but he didn't teach me to be a killer. That I taught myself. And that's when I tossed the knife I'd used on his desk and told him I was done. He could have me killed if he wanted, but he probably wouldn't find another man as bad as me who could pull it off. At that moment I knew what I was and what I would always be.
I turned and walked away, and I never looked back. Not until Moreau showed up here in Boston last year. I fought hard to keep my connection to Moreau hidden from Nate and the others, but it all came out and now we're headed to San Lorenzo where I plan on ending this once and for all.
No matter what Nate has planned you have to know that I will end Moreau. Nate's a good man, and he won't kill. But I'm not and I will end Moreau. He will never hurt anyone ever again.
In doing what I plan to do, I know I may not walk away. And I'm okay with that, because then all the people I love will be okay. I must do this Em, because if I don't, he will come after all of you and I'm not going to let that happen. I will end Moreau and if I die too, then I'm okay with that.
All I want from you Emmy is to understand why I'm doing this now and why I had to kill Evan then. He wasn't right in the head; mom knew it and I knew it after working with him and Moreau. He was a sociopath and I don't regret taking his life. He tormented everyone he came in contact with and I couldn't let him end our family.
He would have too. He'd just found out who he really was, and he planned on hurting our aunt and uncle as well as our father. So, I ended him. I don't regret one second of it. You are more important to me than a brother could ever be.
I just want you to know that no matter what anyone tells you later about me, that I have always loved you, Matt and Spencer. And I never stopped loving our father. I just wish he hadn't stopped loving me. I know you've mended fences with him, but I cannot forget how he failed you and me after mom. I can't let that go, not when he refused to love the family he still had.
I didn't plan on this letter being so long, but I guess since you are the only living person who has known me from day one, we share a history that is deeper and stronger than the ones I share with my team.
I love you Emmy and I won't forget you. Don't look back and see the bad me, remember me when we were young. Remember the good times we had. Just remember the good me... if you can... please just remember the good me...
Ellie
P.S. I know it was you who put the dead fish in Aimee's car when she moved to Kentucky!
Emma looked down at the last page and she knew without a doubt that she was going to find her brother and if any of the others had letters similar to this one, then they were going as a group to knock some sense into that damn man. She could not believe that he didn't realize just how good he was deep down. She couldn't let him continue to think those things about himself.
She didn't know how long she'd sat there, but she was still there when Matthew walked into the apartment. He looked at her sitting there still in her black clothing with a quilt wrapped around her, sound asleep. He smiled softly as he walked over to her.
He reached out to brush some hair off her face and he noticed the opened letter in her hand. He reached for it and moved her to lay back down on the sofa a covered her with another quilt from a nearby chair.
He looked down at the letter and moved silently to the chair where he sat down and read what Eliot had written for her. He knew he probably should have asked, but he also knew Emma would show him later anyway, so he read every word.
After he'd finished it, he laid it back in her hand and sighed as he realized he'd have to have a talk with Eliot when he found him. He hoped Quinn's friend was as good as he said she was, because he needed Eliot alive so he could set the man straight.
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The first thing Eliot saw when he opened his eyes was the carved wooden beams over his head. He slowly breathed in and realized it didn't hurt quite as much as it had before to take a deep breath. The next thing he saw was the machines next to his bed and then he looked down at the bed he was in.
Damn it, he thought. Kat had done it again. He didn't know how the hell she'd done it, but she had. When he got his hands on her he was gonna... well, he wasn't sure what he was going to do, but it would involve tying her to a damn chair where he could watch her like a hawk.
She had managed to not only drug him once, but three times now. And he'd somehow managed to let her. That's what made him the maddest. The damn woman was able to knock out Eliot Spencer without even trying.
He blinked at the brightness in the room. It was too bright to stand at first, so he let his eyes stay closed and relied on the rest of his senses to fill him in. He could only hear the beeping of the heart monitor at first, but then he became aware of the sounds coming from outside.
He opened his eyes and took in the fact he was in some kind of cabin, by the look of the wooden ceiling and walls. He turned to the window where the curtains were open to show him the source of the light in the room. Light...he thought. It had been dark outside when he'd woken up in the ambulance, but now it was light out, so he knew it was morning.
He just didn't know which morning. Had he been out only a few hours or days? He didn't know for sure, but he needed to know where he was and what was going on. He remembered Kat saying something about a cabin in Vermont. Manchester? That sounded about right. Okay, he was in a cabin probably in Manchester, Vermont.
Now, where was Kat. He slowly looked around the room taking in the sparse furnishings and stopped when he spotted Kat sound asleep in a rocker next to the heart monitor. She didn't look comfortable crammed in the small rocker, but he couldn't help smiling at the slight drool stain on her nurse's smock top. And he almost laughed out loud when he caught the soft snores emanating from her.
For some odd reason just the sight of her looking like this stirred something deep inside him. He'd been attracted to a lot of women in his life, but none since Aimee had ever touched that place he kept locked away, and it was there in that secret place he was feeling a very strong urge to reach out and gather this woman close to him and just hold her.
Something about this image in front of him led him to see how vulnerable she could be; and it surprised him to see that this image also made him feel vulnerable. He wanted nothing more than to just hold her close. He'd known her not even a whole day, and he only wanted to be with her. What the hell was he thinking?
He could barely think straight and here he was at her mercy. He knew that if she asked him at that very moment, he would have killed for her. Not that killing was something new for him, but he'd always had a reason to kill; for her he'd have done it with no questions asked. And that truly surprised him.
He cleared his throat in the hopes of getting her attention. It didn't work, she just let out this adorable little snort that made him chuckle. So, he carefully moved his hand to the monitor clipped to his index finger and carefully removed it. This caused one of the monitors to utter a soft beeping sound.
And it was that sound that had Kat jumping awake and falling out of the rocker to land with a thud on her butt beside his bed. She looked around confused until she settled in on Eliot's laughter. The man was laughing; at her she realized.
She took in the fact she was sitting on the floor and her clothes were twisted and... she slowly reached up to her mouth to find it wet and as she looked down at her shirt she saw the drool stain and realized she'd fallen asleep. She gave him the stink eye as she carefully got to her feet.
"That is not funny, Spencer." She remarked grumpily, as she tried to straighten her clothes and run her fingers through her shoulder length hair. "Not funny at all."
"Oh, but it is." He laughed. Surprisingly it didn't hurt too much to laugh. But that didn't stop the cough that snuck up on him as he switched from laughing to coughing in a blink of an eye.
Kat rushed to him to help ease him up a little so he could ease the coughing. She noted with relief that the coughing spell this time wasn't as bad as the one he'd had in the ambulance, and he seemed to quickly recover. She could feel his back as she moved to sit behind him to hold him upright and his breathing sounds didn't seem to feel as rattled as before either.
She knew these were good signs. He was healing, just slower than she'd like, but he was healing. She started to move away from him when he grabbed her hands that were wrapped around his middle to hold her to him.
"Don't." He said in a husky breath. "Stay. Please."
So, she did. She stayed behind him allowing him to rest against her as she continued to hold onto him from behind. She smiled a soft smile as she felt his hands cover hers holding him. She liked his touch.
And she continued to stay when she felt him drop off to sleep. She reached up and moved some of his hair from his face and shifted a bit to accommodate him, but she continued to stay there just holding him as he slept.