TWELVE
Ellie spent two days on edge, stiffening any time she heard Xander walk into the room. But he never said anything. He never brought it up. Not the kiss, or the fact that she left the office and said nothing, that she came home freaked out.
She stopped in the middle of washing her tea mug, staring up at the wall. Home? She came home freaked out? This wasn't her home. This was Xander's home. She didn't live there. She was temporarily crashing there.
She never had "homes." She had places she stayed. She had hideouts. She had temporary shelters. She hadn't had a home since she was eighteen years old. That was with her father in her small room with sunny yellow walls with overflowing bookcases, piled three volumes deep on each shelf, her twin sized bed with a yellow and white patchwork quilt her grandmother had made her. Every inch of that room had her touch on it. Memories were mixed into every fabric.
That was what home was.
"Ellie," Xander said, loudly, making her think she had been fazed out for a while. "You alright, sweetheart?" he asked, and she wanted to deny the little flutter in her belly at the word. The word that meant nothing. It was just a word he obviously used very easily on women.
"Yeah," Ellie said, rinsing the soap off her cup, turning off the tap, and turning. "I'm fine."
Xander watched her for a minute with drawn-in brows. He had called her three times. And she had just stood there, back rod-straight staring at the wall while the water ran over her hands. She was usually so hyper aware of everything going on. It was strange to catch her off-guard, or completely closed-off.
He had meant to bring it up for the past few days. How she left the office leaving then came running back. Not the kiss. No. That really, really did not to be discussed. But where had she been? Who had she seen? She obviously expected trouble if she brought his baton. And she came home wearing someone else's jacket.
But that night he felt too awkward about the make-out session to actually speak to her. He stayed up until it was almost morning, searching around on his computer. He waited until he was sure she was asleep, took a frigid shower, and climbed into bed. Then the next morning, it felt like he had let too much time pass. It would be weird to bring it up.
So he didn't.
And the not knowing was driving him crazy.
"Okay," he said, his tone disbelieving. "Well, I need to run out for a while," he said. To make phone calls about her. He certainly couldn't do that while she was in earshot. "Can you just..." he put his hands into his pockets, rocking back on his heels, feeling uncomfortable making the request.
"Can I what?" she asked, keeping her eyes on safe places: the ends of his hair, his earlobe. Which she suddenly wanted to nip into. Okay. No earlobe. The collar of his shirt. Yeah, that was better.
"Stay here today," he finished, shaking his head at his own words. It wasn't his place to ask, or demand, she do anything. She was a client, not his sister or his girlfriend. "Christ," he cursed, moving away. "Never mind. Do what you want," he said, going into his office.
"I'll stay," she called to him. She had no intentions of going out again. And she was more than a little touched that it seemed like he was worried about her. Even if that worry was just as his client.
"Good," he grumbled and she heard the door close.
She scurried out to the office and locked it, taking her first real, deep breath in days. She moved into the apartment, slipping into a t-shirt and collecting all the cleaning supplies. She needed to get rid of all the nervous energy. She needed to lose herself in something to stop thinking about Xander's lips on her mouth and her neck, his cock pressed up against her heat.
Ellie groaned, going over to the sink and filling a bucket. It was going to take a lot of cleaning to get him out of her mind.
She was halfway through scrubbing the floor, her fingernails gripping the rag painfully, when she heard it.
The front door unlocked.
Her heart flew into her throat. She scrambled off the floor, frozen for the barest of moments. Xander always knocked. He knocked. And yelled. He didn't just let himself in. Without thinking, she ran across the floor and threw herself into the closet of pain, pulling the door closed silently. She reached for the brass knuckles, slipping her fingers through the holes and gripping it tightly. Slinking back further in to the closet, she listened to the footsteps. They were in the office for as long as it took to glance into the bathroom and the closets. Then someone was in the apartment, going over toward the kitchen, checking in the the other closet, closing it.
She had only two thoughts breaking through the fog of her brain.
It was definitely not Xander.
And she was going to be found.
The footsteps got closer. Then they stopped.
The insides of Ellie's chest and stomach felt like they got turned upside down and shaken. She took a deep breath, spreading her legs to evenly distribute her weight, and cocking her arm back. The door knob turned. As soon as the door was open wide enough, she launched her fist forward, feeling the satisfying and equally sickening sound of metal on bone.
"Fuck," the voice yelled, stumbling back a few steps.
She didn't even register that it wasn't him or any of his men. All she could think was survival and escape. She burst out of the closet, bringing her arm backward again.
But this time his hand grabbed hers, holding it, immobilizing her attack. "Easy tiger," the voice said, half amused. Then as she tried to strike with her unprotected knuckles, he said more forcibly, "Eleanor, enough."
She froze, her arm in midair for a second as her eyes finally landed on his face. Gabe. Her hand fell numbly down at her side. Her hit before had been true, landing just outside his eyes, making the skin underneath swell, turn red, and split open in one spot. It bled slowly down the side of his face.
"Jesus," he said smiling, shaking his head at her, "that was impressive."
"Let me go," she said, her voice firm. Her nerves snaked their way up her chest and to her throat, stopping there and strangling her. She hated being held down or detained in any way. She needed him to let go before she flew into a full blown panic attack.
"Only if you promise not to hit me again," he said, giving her a charming smile.
"No," she said, the word coming out low and vicious. She felt like her skin was tingling. She needed him to let her go. "Let. Go. Of. Me."
Gabe tilted his head at her, seeing something: the anxiety, or the fear, or the determination. He nodded once, loosening his grip on her hand, but pulling the brass knuckles off her fingers.
Ellie's hand dropped heavily and she immediately took a deep, steadying breath. She looked down at his feet for a second, pulling herself together. Whatever this was... it wasn't going to be good. For her.
"What do you want, Gabe?"
Gabe took a step back, sensing she needed the space. "I want to talk to you... Eleanor Piotrowski," he said, his tongue slipping easily over the soft guttural sound to her last name.
Her eyes shot up to his. She felt the air just completely leave her body, making her feel almost dizzy.
"Let's sit," Gabe said, motioning toward the dining table.
Ellie followed numbly behind him, moving her box of belongings to the floor and sitting down across from him. "Okay," Ellie said, folding her hands in her lap. Damn him for looking so calm, so collected. "What do you want?" she repeated.
Gabe chuckled, a low rumbling sound. "How about you tell me why the girlfriend of one of New Jersey's biggest drug dealers is taking refuge in my best friend's house?"
And there it was. She almost felt better hearing it. All the years of pretending to be someone else, of keeping everything of her life under lock and key had felt suffocating, difficult. All the time she felt foreign and uncomfortable. Here was the truth, slapping her right in the face and she could actually breathe again.
"Ex-girlfriend," Ellie said, looking him in the face.
"That's not the way I hear it," he said, sitting back in his chair, looking far too much like a catalog model for polo t-shirts to be sitting in Xander's rundown apartment talking to her about her sordid past.
"Then you need to get new sources," Ellie said, watching as he smiled at her words.
"Alright," Gabe nodded. "Then let me hear it. Straight from the horse's mouth as it were," he said shrugging at her. His calm body was at odds with his intense eyes.
"I left Nick four years ago..."
"Nicola Russo," Gabe cut in, for clarification.
"Yes. Nick Russo. We dated," she said, putting up air quotes on the word, "for... two years. Give or take."
"He must have made a helluva boyfriend," Gabe said, and she knew he was expecting more information.
"For five months, there was no one better in the world," she recalled.
"And then?"
"And then the beatings started," she said frankly, shrugging a shoulder. Across from her, Gabe's eyes winced at her words. "Slowly. Infrequent at first."
"You tried to leave?" Gabe asked, sounding like he knew the answer.
"Yeah," she snorted, shaking her head. God, she had underestimated Nick back then. "I spent six weeks chained in a cell for that," she said, holding out her scarred wrists as evidence.
"Jesus," Gabe said, looking a little sick. "How did you finally get out?"
Ellie sat back in her chair, allowing the memory to come back.
Nick had been having a meeting in his office, a huge group of men with him. Some of them she had known, suit and tie guys. Some she did not... teenagers in various forms of sloppy clothing. They were the small-time dealers. Something had been really wrong. Some deal had fallen through.
And she had her plan. She went into the kitchen, straight into the cleaning supply closet. She had a bag stashed there. It was the one place in the world Nick would never think to look. The maid watched her with wide, horrified eyes, knowing full-well the hell she had been living. Maria had been the maid to tend to her after her first stint in the cell. She had applied cold compresses to her face, gave her antibiotics, then forced her mouth open and poured in a God-awful tasting concoction to help her body finish the aborting process. She owed her life to Maria.
And Maria was looking at her, fearing for her own life. Because she couldn't be the reason Ellie got away. She would die for it.
Ellie picked up a huge cast iron frying pan from the kitchen island. "I need to go, Maria," she said and Maria nodded. She knew. She would die there if she stayed. Or, worse, she would spend a long life wishing she had died long ago. "And you can't be blamed for it. So, I am going to hit you with this. You will pass out for a while, and you'll have an awful headache after. But he won't blame you. I promise he won't blame you for this. I sneaked up behind you and knocked you out. You'll have no information other than that." Maria nodded again, moving to kneel on the floor so her fall wouldn't cause any other damage. Ellie overturned the chair she had been sitting on, raising the frying pan. "Thank you, Maria. I love you," she said.
"I love you too, miel."
Then Ellie swung before she could think better of it. The sound of the pan hitting Maria's head was a memory that kept her awake at night even years later.
She put the pan back on the island and ran. But this time, not to the access road, or to the main road. She ran through the woods. She ran until her legs felt like jello and her chest felt on fire. And then she ran further, until she got five miles out, the woods breaking to the side of the train station. She bought a ticket on the first train out.
And then she just kept running.
"I waited," she answered, finally coming back to the present moment, "and I planned. He was having a big issue with his supply so he had a meeting. I knocked out the maid... who was the only friend I had in the world," she admitted, "and then I just... ran. And ran. And ran."
Gabe nodded. "Where did you end up?"
"Portland" she said easily. It was as far as possible as she could get from him. It was a big, bustling city. She could get lost there. "I was there the longest, a year or so. I got a job at a restaurant and an apartment above a Chinese restaurant full of illegals," she shrugged. "They didn't like people around asking questions so they never asked me any."
"Portland," Gabe rolled the word around in his mouth. "Is that where you learned self-defense?"
"Seattle. I found a guy," she said, her heart constricting slightly at the memory of him. Tall, dark skin, bald head. He was in his thirties and built like a boxer. But he was a martial artist. She had walked uncertainly into his office. It was a normal office with a desk, chairs, fax machine. He had come in through the back, immaculate in a three-piece suit, his gait slow and deliberate.
K. He had introduced himself as K. And she had giggled slightly and introduced herself as E. He smiled at her, all big white teeth. "Nice scars," he said, gesturing toward her wrists. They had been bold and red then. New. Painful red reminders.
"I need your help..."
"Yeah, you do," he had said.
From that day on, he had been her everything: her friend, mentor, teacher, father, brother. He was everyone. He was all she had in the world.
"You found a guy..." Gabe pressed, watching her lost in her memory.
"Yeah," she said, shaking her head at the memories. "He taught me how to defend myself. How to attack. How to run. How to hide. He knew everything. Like he had helped battered women all his life. He still helps," she said sadly. Good, good K.
"But Nicola found you?"
Ellie flinched at his name. She would never get used to hearing it again. "Yeah." It might have been the most fear-filled night of her life. Because she knew what would be in store for her if he got her.
The door had been unlocked. She had reached for it and it was open. That was how she knew. Because she locked all three of the locks before she left, every time she left. She swore her heart stopped beating for a moment until she heard footsteps inside. And then she was running, taking off down the streets she knew as well as the ones she had grown up on. It wasn't long before he was behind her, yelling. Threatening. Telling her she would never get away from him.
She had hauled up and down streets, in and out of buildings. She grabbed her bug-out bag from underneath a bridge where she had covered it in black trash bags to protect it. And then she was on a train. For a new city. New life.
The phone call to K had been the most gut-wrenching call she had ever made. She had been sitting outside the third train station, sobbing big ugly tears, barely able to catch her breath as she listened to his calm, authoritative voice on the other end telling her to pull herself together, telling her what her next step was. And the one after that. Then the one after that.
"I'm never going to see you again," she had wailed, feeling like a five-year-old and not caring. K had paused at her words, taking a deep breath. Because he knew it was true. And he didn't want to lie to her. When he spoke again, he repeated her directions. Over and over. Until she stopped crying. Until a long time after that, she stopped sniffling.
"You take care of yourself," he had said. "Never get comfortable. Never let your guard down. I will be here for you," he had said, his tone sounding almost emotional. "Keep in touch, E," he said and the line went dead. She stared at the phone for a long minute before turning it, taking out the battery and tossing them in different trash bins.
"So, I kept running. Until I got here."
"What's so different about here?" Gabe asked.
"I don't know," Ellie said and meant it. She didn't know what changed. "I guess I'm just tired. Worn out. From new cities. From new people. From the same ghost chasing me around."
"So, you came to Xander?"
"No," Ellie laughed, short and humorless. "I went to just about every private investigator and private security firm I could find. I told them the truth. And they all pretty much laughed in my face."
"So, you came to Xander and lied..."
"That wasn't the plan," she objected right away. "Nick, he found me... I just... I needed somewhere to go. This was the first thought I had. I know I should tell him..."
"Why haven't you?"
"Gabe..." she started, closing her eyes. "Nick killed my father. He was a decorated detective in Trenton. And Nick shot him in the back of the head like some two-bit snitch. He wouldn't give pause to killing Xander, lowly private investigator. I don't want him involved."
"But you're here, so he is involved. And he will figure it out sooner or later. I know he seems like a lowly private investigator, but he is the best there is and he will put the puzzle together eventually."
"I know. But..." she shook her head. "I swear if it comes to that, I will be gone. He won't know anything. No one ever does. I'll be a ghost. The longer I do this, the less of a trail I leave. He won't ever see me again. He won't ever need to be involved with Nick." She looked into Gabe's eyes, pleading with him to believe her. "I swear... I won't let anything happen to Xander."
Gabe's head turned to the side, a small smile playing with his lips. "Okay," he agreed.
A strange silence fell before Ellie got up the nerve to ask what she had been dreading. "You're not going to tell him?"
"No. Not now anyway. If he needs to know, I will."
"Thank you," she said, amazed that there were good people in the world. There were still people willing to keep her secrets, keep her safe. First K. Then Xander. Faith. Gabe. The list just kept growing and she felt so unworthy.
"So, that's all settled..." Gabe said, putting his hands on the table.
"Not so fast," Ellie cut in, and he paused.
"What?"
"How do you know who I am?"
Gabe offered her a weird smile. "I have a friend in Jersey. Bail bonds like me. He had a bond on one of Nicola's enforcers. He didn't want to do it alone..."
"Which one?" Ellie asked.
"Antony," Gabe said, shrugging like it was no big deal. But it was a very big deal. Antony had blood on his hands. He had bodies piled up behind him. "But he was always around Nicola and Bobby and all the others. So, we followed him for a while. You were in the picture more than once."
"You got your guy," she said, nodding. She remembered how furious Nick had been, pacing the room like a caged tiger while she curled into herself on the bed. He'd thrown her onto her back and had hard, punishing sex with her because of it.
"And you got away," Gabe said, watching her eyes slip from haunted to neutral, impressed at how easily she slipped into her guards. "Well... Ellie," he said, using her chosen name. "I'm glad we cleared that all up."
"Why is the fucking door unlocked?" Xander yelled from the office and Ellie laughed. Quietly, to herself. He must have thought she was the biggest incompetent there was. Little did he know. "Oh, Gabe... what are you doing here?" he asked, throwing the newspapers in his hand onto the bed. He walked further into the room and stopped, looking at Gabe with lowered brows. "What the hell happened to your face?"
Gabe smiled, winking at Ellie. "I seemed to have startled your little guard dog here," he explained, holding out Xander's brass knuckles.
Xander took them, looking between them and Gabe and Ellie a few times before, finally, throwing his head back and laughing. He moved the weapon around in his hand for a second, looking up at Ellie. "Good girl," he said, nodding at her.
She wanted to rip his clothes off right then and there. In front of Gabe. It didn't matter. She just wanted him.
Instead, she took a breath and went into the kitchen, carefully making a fresh pot of coffee and then putting on tea. Then cleaning up her cleaning supplies and washing her hands.
Really, she was just trying to think of anything but getting Xander into bed.
At this, she failed. Miserably.