Haunted by the Past (Original)

Chapter 9

Never before had I considered Eli to be dangerous, but it was clear to me then Eli had been darkened by the world he lived in. He was no longer Meredith's socially awkward, but sweet computer geek half-brother who just wanted to save his sister from a cruel fate. This Eli was rash, unpredictable and dominating. You didn't want to be on his bad side, otherwise he'd strip you down, steal anything of worth, and leave you for dead. The way his eyes looked down upon me as if I were beneath him put me in my place. He was a lone, but vicious wolf and I was a mere lamb. Yet he had sympathy for me. He decided he was going to protect this pathetic lamb. Because of our past? Because he felt he owed it to me? Because he wanted revenge on Triple-6 and wanted to use me? Or for something else?

Eli reached down and grabbed my hand, pulling me off the floor, "You're going to help me."

"What? Me?" I questioned confused. "How can I possibly help you?"

He smiled softly and led me by hand back to his desk. He plopped down on his chair, lowered it to its lowest point, then tugged on my hand for me to sit down on his lap. He maneuvered me to sit across his legs with my head resting on his shoulder. With one arm behind my back and the other under my knees, he barely reached his keyboard, but he made it work. I felt so small sitting on his lap like that, but the closeness made me feel safe and protected. I wanted to stay like that, even though I knew it couldn't possibly be comfortable for him.

"The more eyes, the merrier," Eli mumbled in my ear as he brought up the footage from Penn Station. His voice gave me goosebumps. If it had been any other time, watching any other video, I wouldn't have stayed focused. As it was, I was already struggling not to think about his lips.

Watching yourself on camera will never not feel weird. Watching yourself on repeat from multiple angles, even worse. Eli scrubbed back and forth multiple times, trying to line up the the MTA's CCTV to the video from my phone. It had turned out that he had my phone sharing everything with his computer, and it was then logged and saved to his hard drive for situations like this. The metadata from the video call didn't tell him much other than the fact it was Heather's phone, which we later discovered was only recently reactivated and being prepaid anonymously. The origin of the call was behind several proxies, otherwise that would be too easy. Whoever it was knew they were dealing with a skilled hacker.

"There," Eli spoke up suddenly. "The one in the middle with the Bills cap."

"I can barely see him," I frowned.

"Yeah, it's not great," Eli sighed as he swapped cameras and continued to scrub back and forth to try to get a better angle. "That's him though."

"Are you sure?" I questioned.

"If you squint you can just see his phone between that couple," he mumbled as he went to the exact point that the CCTV camera was able to see his dark phone case.

"That's not a lot to go on," I winced.

"He's wearing a hood with a baseball cap and face mask," Eli pointed out as he tracked the mysterious person's movements. "It doesn't get more suspicious than that. That's coming from me, the expert on blending in."

"But they look so...," I searched for the right word, but came up empty. "Normal."

Eli gently placed his fingers on my chin to gently urge me to look at him. "He's just a human. I know he may seem like one, but he's not an immortal monster."

"He bleeds?" I asked half serious.

"He does. He will bleed red," Eli declared. "Don't know if he's capable of feeling pain, but it won't matter."

"You're serious about going after him?" I frowned. "What happened to staying far away from him where he can't find us?"

"Where he can't find you," he clarified.