Chapter 14

Mordechai

It had been war last night, deciding who would sleep on the couch. A war quickly won, because Ellie had settled for hopping onto the couch and sprawling herself out. She refused to move, and I refused to carry a sober person to bed. I left her in the living room and went to enjoy my own bed.

When I woke up in the morning, I smelled food cooking. The sun hadn’t even risen and my alarm hadn’t gone off. It didn’t annoy me. Not in the slightest, even at the scent of burning eggs. I should have been annoyed. I wanted to be. I wanted to open that door, see her making a mess of my kitchen, and want her out of here. The noise of her did something to me. Even knowing I had another person in my home made me less anxious to be awake.

I opened the door, indeed finding my kitchen a mess. Ellie scraped blackened eggs into a bowl, cringing at it as the mess dropped. She sprinkled cheese on it as if that would make things better. Next up came the toast, surprisingly not burnt. She did, however, burn herself getting the toast out. She cursed, shaking her hand out before she put it all on a plate.

I changed my clothes and went to make sure the building didn’t burn down. I waited behind Ellie, smirking when she jumped in surprise at the sight of me. If I had a dollar for every time I had made someone do that…

“You aren’t supposed to be awake yet,” she snapped at me, pointing at my face before she shoved me aside to get the very, very hot pan she’d fried bacon in into the sink. I didn’t get the chance to tell her to stop before she let cold water blast it. She squirted way too much dish soap into the pan, then decided to let it soak.

“Why are you cooking?” I asked.

“To prove I can. I looked up stuff on my phone and I’m making you breakfast. You can sit your ass down or I can make you sit your ass down.”

Oh, and so began the unwelcomed stirring of things I would have preferred to not notice. It wouldn’t end well. Even if she hadn’t been a Locke, I knew it would be a mess that I had no right to get into. But I could let the painful feelings dwell. It would be useless trying to make them go away. I knew that.

I didn’t take a seat. I chose to start buttering the toast, earning a scathing glower from Ellie.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she asked in the same tone one would use to accuse someone of killing their dog.

“Buttering toast,” I answered.

“I’m cooking.”

“And I’m buttering.”

“Don’t make me hurt you.”

“Please, please hurt me.”

With a little snarl, she slid between me and the counter, pinning her body against me and the surface. She yanked the butter knife from me and took over my job. I had a few seconds where I couldn’t really think about much of anything, very aware of the pinning. Then Ellie bumped me back with her ass, so I took the chance to stand next to her instead. I thought I would attempt to finish cooking the bacon.

“I have the power to make you spend the rest of your life being a bagger at the store,” Ellie said. “I told you to sit down.”

“You can threaten me all you want, but the fact is that I’m bigger than you, Miss Locke.”

She frowned, as she always did when I called her that. The fact that she got angry only seemed good to me. If she had been at peace with it, then it might have been because she’d reached the same conclusion I had. I didn’t want her to reach that conclusion. We couldn’t work, but the idea that she would agree… I didn’t need that in my life. I could pretend. I could daydream about a softer world, where I could be a softer man.

“Size doesn’t matter,” she told me. “It’s what you do with what you’ve got.”

Swiftly, she slid back in the kitchen, took my hand, yanked me back, and sat me on the nearest chair by shoving my shoulders down. I sat with ease, as if I had no strength in me.

“Stay,” Ellie ordered me.

“Like a dog?” I asked with a smile.

She smiled back at me. “Well, I know you’re good at taking orders.”

“I think you would very much dislike finding out how wrong you are.”

I could have sworn something sparkled in her eyes. “Try me.”

“Best not to open doors that can’t close again.”

“Then don’t tempt me with promises you have no intention of keeping. You should know better than that.”

The loudest buzzing in the world cut off her words. She looked up as it buzzed again. I knew exactly where the sound came from, and her eyes landed on it. A locked drawer that held my real phone. It buzzed one more time, then stopped. I waited for Ellie to say something.

She sat up straight, eyes still on the drawer. I knew she had heard it in the silence of the room. There had been no missing it.

“The bacon was fine,” she said, returning to the stove.

I waited, not letting my face show a single expression. If she saw something that she could dissect and study, then I would have been doomed.

I let Ellie finish our breakfast, not fighting her on anything anymore. She didn’t so much as have me set the table. Soon enough, terrible smelling food and a bunch of dishes I would probably have to clean later surrounded us. But Ellie looked so proud of herself as she plated my breakfast and then her own. What could I do other than force it down my mouth? She’d done something for herself. That alone seemed like a triumph.

“Every time I asked if I could bake something, my mom said no,” Ellie told me, loading a bunch of egg onto a piece of toast. “She thought I would burn the house down. Even with someone watching me. I’ve never made cookies. Can you believe that?”

“Never? What about during sleepovers?”

“They were always at my house. Daddy insisted.”

“So he could keep an eye on you?”

“Probably,” she sighed, folding her toast in half. “I have no idea why he wouldn’t trust me. I’ve been so good, following every single rule. I’ve never so much as tried a single drug that wasn’t given to me by a doctor because they had to yank teeth out, and I didn’t drink until I was twenty-one. Other than when Daddy would give me wine at dinner, but that doesn’t count. And I only dated two boys, both of which he introduced me to. Sure, he has terrible taste, but he doesn’t know I know that.”

I chuckled. It kept me from choking on burnt food. “He was looking to marry you off?”

Ellie shrugged. “I think he liked the idea of me meeting my husband in high school. Something about being young is supposedly romantic.”

“Getting so much of your life with someone. Getting to know them from when you’re a teenager until you’re old. I get it.”

She smiled at me again. “Wouldn’t have taken you as someone to think like that.”

“I don’t look like I can understand wanting to spend your life with someone?”

“It’s not that. It’s that you dedicate your life to protecting other people, even though it can get you killed. You do something dangerous for a living. So I wouldn’t assume you cared too much one way or another about relationships.”

I couldn’t blame her for thinking that. “You want to wait to get married?”

Ellie had her eyes on the table, but it looked like she didn’t really attention. “It’s not that. I’m just constantly wondering which person I’m going to end up with because my father things it’s best.”

“But surely your dad wouldn’t actually make you marry someone if you really didn’t want to.”

She tapped her fork on her plate. “Yeah. Yeah…”

I took a bite of undercooked bacon, which gained her attention. It only lasted a second or two, but I could see this look in her eyes that almost looked like a thank you. Thank you for moving on. Thank you for pretending the food tasted okay. I didn’t know.

I heard another phone buzzing, unable to stop myself from jumping a bit. I managed to not look around to the desk, but that left me unsure of where the sound came from. Ellie grabbed her phone from the counter.

“My dad wants us to come home today,” she said. “Good, I can see my dog.”

It seemed soon to be going back to where everyone would have known exactly where to find Ellie. Though, what happened to her could have been an random act of violence. It might have been a troubled man who thought he could at least die with some fame.

“I’m going to shower,” Ellie said. “I’ll let the dishes soak.”

Obviously, I decided to do the dishes. The second she went into my bedroom and closed the door, I grabbed my real phone and checked the messages. It told me to call, so I did.

“Hey, she’s here,” I said. “I have fifteen minutes.”

“Everything going okay?” Jonathan asked as I turned the sink on. I started scrubbing at the dishes, knowing most of them were a lost cause.

“How did she react to our boy?”

I suppressed a sigh. I should have known. “You sent him?”

“I had him sent, yeah. I think it’s good to shake things up a bit. Rattle girl, rattle her father. It makes things easier in the long run if everyone is twitchy.”

“What did the guy do to earn a bullet in the head?”

“Nothing. His family needed money and I needed someone to die. Now, his wife is going to be set up for the rest of her life, as well as their kid when its born. Good timing too. They were about to lose their little house and car. That woman can run off and buy herself a mansion and it wouldn’t even be a drop in the bucket.”

I didn’t know what to say. “Should I expect any more surprises?”

“No, and I would have told you if I had the time. It all happened fast. What’s the reaction been? How’s Locke?”

“Angry,” I said. “He sent us away because he thinks she’s in danger.”

Jonathan chuckled. “Not quite yet. Okay, I should let you go. Keep me updated if something changes.”

I agreed, then went to stash my phone again. I turned it off, then locked it in a different drawer. I doubted Jonathan would decide to contact me again until I went to talk to him first. This business could either be so fast, or slow moving like nothing else.

“When should we go?” Ellie asked, walking back into the room. She had her bag with her, having changed and put her shoes on.

“Just let me change and I’ll get you home.”

I felt like I forgot something as I frantically got ready. I had everything I needed, but I still looked around like something hadn’t been taken care of. It made no sense. I looked twice more and left the room.

The drive to the house proved to be uneventful, and what more could one ask for. I had double checked to make sure that Mr. Locke really had called her back, seeing that he had texted me too. It would have been a bad plan anyway to lure us where two dozen armed guards spent their time.

I walked Ellie inside, adjusting my tie so I looked as put together as I could manage. I needed to look like I could get my job done when I had already failed once before. I hadn’t been worried when I’d first started with this family, but the heat began to rise as I walked into the house. Truly, I willfully played with that fire. Willfully might not have been the right word. Refusing Jonathan had never crossed my mind, but the idea of it made me wonder if I would have ended up in a river or in fifty pieces here and there. Even concerned, I couldn’t quite manage to make myself upset about it. Every time I tried, I thought about one of those other realities I liked to slip away into. Like my new one of being in high school and meeting Ellie. Having both parents, and being the kind of boy her father would have liked for her. My lack of power aside, I might have already been the kind of person he would have liked for her. Willing to do any means of awful thing as long as it got the job done. I could be covered in blood in the morning and be clean and fine by lunch. Hell, Jonathan liked me so much because of that. Locke liked me for that same reason. I didn’t need anything else to know that Ellie would have never had me, no matter what reality we’d found ourselves in.

“Daddy,” the girl breathed in pure relief when we met Mr. and Mrs. Locke in a sitting room. Two armed guards waited inside, and two outside. All men. They watched me walk in behind Ellie, who ran to hug her father.

“Are you all right?” Locke asked Ellie. “Has anything happened since you left?”

“It’s been okay,” she said. “We were just hiding at Mordechai’s apartment. Did you hear anything? What was going on with that man? Did you find out what happened?”

He told her to sit down, guiding her to a purple velvet armchair across from his and Mrs. Locke’s. I stayed standing. I didn’t think anything would come for us from the outside, but I couldn’t look at Locke and see anything but a threat.

“What happened?” Ellie asked. “Why did that man die?”

“You need to take a breath,” her mother said. “It’s okay. Everything is fine.”

“But why did he—”

“Breathe,” her mother said again. “In, out, and in again. Keep doing that. In, out, in.”

Ellie listened, closing her eyes and taking breaths even though she seemed perfectly calm. I’d seen her panicked. I’d seen what a break down looked like.

“What happened?” Ellie asked one more time.

Her father shrugged. “It was nothing. We looked into it, and it would appear the man was very mentally ill. On several medications that he lost because his insurance changed. It was a shame, but that’s the beginning and end of it.”

Ellie tapped on the arm of her chair. “He knew my name. He asked me if I was Ellie Locke before he did it.”

“Everyone knows who you are,” Mr. Locke said. “He must have seen you and thought he could, I don’t know, maybe convince you to fix it. I wouldn’t spend too much of your time thinking about it. The man wasn’t well.”

The lie seemed strange. As far as the public would know, it might have come off like the man just had problems. No doubt Locke had really dove into it, and he would have seen that mental illness hadn’t factored in. He would have found the same thing Jonathan found when he’d been doing research. If he suspected Jonathan—which I doubted he could have put together—I could see him lying.

“It was a coincidence?” Ellie asked. “I happened to be in the exact spot that man was when he decided to do that? And it was the one time that Mordechai left me alone? That man stands outside the door when I pee. This makes no sense.”

I felt the heat lick up my skin when Locke looked to me. I braced myself for blame. “The timing is odd, but it is what it is. I don’t recommend leaving her alone again.”

“I don’t plan on it,” I said.

“Good. I want the two of you to stay where you were hiding out for a little while longer.”

Ellie blinked. “What? If this was random, why would I stay hiding?”

I could see it on her face that she had doubts, but she didn’t quite know how to voice them. I knew how to stay quiet. I’d been trained to do as much, and the sinking feeling in my stomach told me that she did too.”

“You have to trust me,” Locke said to her.

She smiled at him, nodding as peace crested her face. “Of course, Daddy. I trust you more than I trust anybody. It just… it was random.”

“It might have been random, but this sort of thing can bring people out of the woodwork. I don’t want you hounded by the press to answer questions. Mort, get her out of here. Make sure you give her anything she needs to be happy.”

“Anything,” I promised.