The Lies He Spoke

THIRTY FOUR

"It's only your first semester. If I remember correctly, you don't even have to declare a major until your second year." He shrugged. "Don't worry too much."

Blake's serious, too deliberate smile faded into something softer, more comfortable. Elijah's heart felt ten times lighter on seeing his expression relax. He knew that Blake sometimes felt like he had to make sure that he stayed optimistic despite everything, but that wasn't always possible. Seeing that real, easy smile though - it put Elijah a little more at ease.

"I miss you," Blake said quietly into the phone. "I miss when you just came into my room and told me things like that even though I called you a know-it-all."

Elijah wished he could hug his little brother. Next time, he'd tell him to come during visitation hours so they wouldn't have to talk only through the phone.

"I miss you too, Blake."

Elijah watched him, waiting for a caustic response like Logan always fired back about getting out of prison if he really did miss them, but Blake only blew him a silly kiss that took the weight of the universe off Elijah's shoulders - his brother didn't hate him, he would still forgive him for this, he wasn't angry - and pulled his notebook towards himself.

"So, anyways," Blake began again. "You may be thinking to yourself, hm, I wonder why my angel of a little brother has come to visit me in this dark and dank prison that I am stuck in besides the fact that he is the ultimate angel of a little brother because although he is a precocious angel, he must have something important to say, and you would be right because I have something extremely important to say because Logan said we're all going to be very truthful with each other. So I'll be truthful with you to start."

Elijah frowned and tried to read what was written on the notebook, but Blake's handwriting was so bad he couldn't. What he could see though, was a drawing of thick blue shadowy figures converging on a smaller blue figure trapped in a small prison cell.

Blake put his pencil against the top line of the paper and whispered into the phone, "Last night, I went to 154 North Eastwood Street, Pontchartrain Beach, Louisiana. Does that address ring a bell?"

Pontchartrain Beach...that definitely rang a bell. Elijah's heartbeat escalated so fast his hands grew clammy against the phone. "Blake, what have you been doing-"

"In addition," Blake interrupted, continuing in a lowered, quiet voice, "when I went there, I heard two people talking about some things. You want to know what they said?"

Without waiting for Elijah's response, he read off his paper, "They talked about a prison rat. Is that you? And they were carrying these boxes and one of them said, quote, these are just the important ones. The rest of the hard drives we'll do next Saturday. End quote. Does that mean anything to you?"

Elijah wanted to grab Blake through the damn plexiglass and first hold him tight so he couldn't go off god-knows-where and then shake him hard enough to rattle some sense into him not to go off doing these same things that he'd tried so hard to protect Olivia from last year. What did Blake not understand? He had been there with Elijah when they had wondered where Olivia was going, why she was disappearing and coming back scraped and scared, how on earth they were supposed to help her.

And now he was doing the same thing.

"Then the other one said, quote, is Peters going to get here soon to fix this? End quote." Blake tapped his pencil onto his paper again. "Do you know Peters?"

Elijah almost laughed. Did he know Peters? Peters was the root of all his problems. He was the bane of Elijah's existence.

"And this is what was written on the sides of the boxes they were carrying." Blake pushed his glasses back to the bridge of his nose. "AF8-6511. Do you know that number?"