ELIJAH
Elijah hadn't seen Jimmy Peters since their conversation in the hospital room. No matter how hard he tried to get him alone, one of his men would always get in the way and stop him from going any further. They never tried to pick a physical fight with him again, but by the time he would manage to extricate himself from the situation, Peters would slip away and Elijah would be left groaning in frustration.
The Friday after his brief stint at the infirmary, Logan and Olivia came to visit him again. She regaled him with stories about Logan, her history teacher, and the unruly neighbors while Logan sat in silence with a grumpy look on his face. Still, Elijah could see that the corners of his mouth twitched when Olivia smiled, that even his frown was only half hearted.
Elijah felt some of the weight slip off his shoulders. He smiled at the two of them.
Logan caught his expression. "What?" he demanded in between Olivia's breaths.
But Elijah knew Logan would hate it if he brought up the change in him in the open. Instead, he said, "I'm just relieved you haven't killed each other yet."
Logan scowled and crossed his arms over his chest. "We can't have more than one family member in jail at a time, can we?"
Elijah leaned back in his chair, chastised, and let Olivia continue. When she finished grumbling about how the whole school pretended they thought she and Logan were dating and Elijah had reassured her that it would just be a passing phase, she turned back towards Logan.
"Sorry, Logan, did you want to say something?"
"Did you finally run out of things to say?"
"I didn't, so if you want to be a grump about it-"
"That's not necessary," Elijah cut in. Even though they were being civil to each other at the moment, he hadn't forgotten how quickly they could get into an ugly argument. "It's alright, Olivia, go on."
"No, tell me something about yourself. What've you even been doing in here?"
"I've been working in the kitchen. And I read books sometimes."
"What books? Do they have a library"
Olivia interrogated him for another fifteen minutes, during which Logan's demeanor suddenly changed. All at once, he stopped looking vaguely bored with everything and his eyes narrowed at Elijah. His thin lips became set in a hard line. He didn't interrupt Olivia, but he clearly was getting more and more pissed off as time went on.
The security guard to their left cleared his throat loudly and when they turned to him, he tapped on his watch twice. A gloomy look came down on his little sister's face. She put her chin in her hand and looked glumly at the guard. "It must be so lonely here by yourself, Elijah" she murmured.
Elijah reached across the table and gently brushed a hand down a lock of her curly hair. "It's alright," he said. "I know you two and Blake will come again."
"I wish we didn't live so far. I would come everyday."
"And who would get your homework done?"
"It's not like I wouldn't have an hour to spend with you."
He meant to reply, but Logan held up a hand and motioned to the door to the visiting room behind them. "Olivia, go wait outside," he told her. "I'll be there in a minute."
"I don't want to-"
"Go outside right now," he said through gritted teeth.
Elijah frowned at Logan's foul mood and sharp tone. He didn't miss the hurt look on Olivia's face. She chewed on her bottom lip and looked down at the floor before she murmured quietly, "Okay."
He waited until after she had hugged him and was safely behind the door to the prison to glare at his brother. "Logan, stop being so harsh with her-"
"Why are there a ton of bandages under your arm?" Logan interrupted in a voice no louder than a breath. "And don't give me bullshit or I swear I will strangle you."
Elijah's mouth went dry. He'd been so sure that neither of them had seen them. "What bandages?"
He scowled and pointed to the ever so slight bump on his bicep, where the badges were that were covering the stitches. "Stop playing dumb. It looks exactly like it did when you came home on Olivia's birthday."
"It's nothing," Elijah said. "Just a work injury."
Logan's dark eyes flashed angrily. "You see, that was what I meant by bullshit," he hissed. "Now the truth."
"That was the truth," he insisted.
"Were you fighting? Did someone hurt you? Why didn't they tell me? I thought I was listed as the emergency contact!"
"It's not important-"
Logan leaned over and grabbed him by the front of his shirt. "The hell it's not important!" he cried, his face turning red. "What the actual fuck is wrong with you?
Elijah growled in equal frustration and grasped his fingers and wrestled with his hand, pulling it from the fabric. He only had so long to see his brother and Logan always spent it fighting with him. "Logan, shut up and sit down right now," he said, eyeing the security guard in the corner who'd stood to attention and was now making his way to them. "Or you'll get thrown out again."
Logan sat down hard in his chair and faced forward. Elijah could practically see the steam rising from his ears. The security guard slowly walked over and stood directly behind Logan and folded his hands over his stomach and leaned back against the wall. He didn't take his eyes off the two of them.
But Logan was not deterred. "You know what, Elijah?" he said in a suddenly calm, eerie voice. His dark eyes were unreadable, his thin face showing no emotion.
Before Elijah could speak, Logan said, "I'm going to get you out of here. I don't care what the fuck you say. I don't care what shit you try to pull on me and all of these people. I'm going to find out."
A cold feeling suddenly engulfed Elijah's lungs and chest. If Logan decided to do something, he didn't do it half heartedly. He didn't stop until the job was done. He gave it his one hundred and ten percent or he didn't do it all. And if he started chasing down why he was in prison, there was no knowing what could happen to his little brother.
"Don't do it," he pleaded. "Just leave it alone."
"Well I'm not the one behind bars!" Logan stood up, chest heaving, fingers clenched into such tight fists that his whole hand was white. "You are and you can't tell me what the fuck to do anymore, can you?"
He slammed his hands down on the table and as Elijah tried to tell him to please calm down, he jabbed his finger right up against Elijah's chest, poking his shirt above his heart. "I will get you out of here you complete idiot," he growled. "Because we're brothers, and brothers don't give up on each other!"
He was panting slightly, his eyes crazed, his nose inches from his. Elijah saw the brother who had begged and quarreled and argued with their mom to keep Olivia with them, who had fought their father tooth and nail for fourteen years, who had been his every confidant ever since they were young - and for just a fraction of a second, he was desperate to tell him everything.
But when Elijah realized the danger it would put him in, he gritted his teeth and stayed silent. Logan seemed to sense the change in him and his face grew hard and cold again. He took a step back, roughly yanked his arm away from the security guard who meant to restrain him, and stomped off to where Olivia waited without a glance back.
*****
Elijah sat down on his bed and pulled up his sleeve. The gauze was getting bloody again. He hadn't exactly been careful with it when hugging Olivia and attempting to hug Logan. He winced as he slowly moved his stiff arm in a circle, pain erupting from where the stitches were. He was going to have to go back to the infirmary again.
"Your family comes to visit you often."
Elijah jumped and instinctively scrambled back a few feet towards the edge of the bed.
"Peters," he managed to say on seeing the white haired man standing in the door of the cell.
"You are a very lucky man," Jimmy Peters said, coming all the way inside. "Some people would do just about anything to have anyone visit them in here."
He casually walked over to Elijah's bed and stuck his head underneath the bottom bunk where Elijah was sitting, looking up at the base of the top bunk. Elijah scrambled to get off the bed and away from him. He pressed himself against the wall opposite the bunk bed, heart hammering.
If Peters thought anything of this, he didn't let on. He motioned to the empty wall around the bunk and the empty underside of the bed and said, "Yet you don't keep any pictures of them anywhere."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"Some would say you're just fresh meat, in denial about being here forever and refusing to make this place your new home. But even a newbie with a close family like that wants to keep a picture of them somewhere."
"Why are you spying on me?" Elijah demanded, trying to draw the attention elsewhere. He didn't keep pictures of his siblings for fear that someone would find out who they were, or the irrational notion that they would recognize them from back in Chicago and make hell for them. But he couldn't let Peters know that.
"Are they your siblings? You're a bit too young to have a child as old as the girl."
A shiver ran down Elijah's spine.
When had Peters been watching him and Olivia?
He crossed his arms tight over his chest and stood up straighter, but although he was taller than Peters, there was no way he could intimidate him. "What are you doing here?" he tried again.
Peters rolled his eyes. "I'm making small talk. Isn't it obvious?"
"You've been trying your best to avoid me for days and now you're making small talk?"
A grin appeared on his wrinkled face. "You've got quite the tongue, don't you?"
Elijah fell silent. He couldn't afford to make this man angry. He was supposed to be working with him.
"If you must know," Peters said, casually sitting on the bed. "It's not everyday the newbie risks his life against an entire prison gang to get across the message that he wants to get you out. So I was doing a bit of background research on you."
Background research? Like a background check? He was in prison for murder. What could get worse than that?
When Peters didn't continue, Elijah became curious. "And?" he asked. "What did you find?"
Peters shrugged. "That's the problem. Couldn't find anything at all."
Even if Elijah hadn't always kept his nose clean his whole life like he had, the witness protection program had wiped everything clean. Elijah Powers was a person whose life before last year was all artificially generated.
But Elijah could care less what Peters found. "Does that mean you've thought about what I told you?"
"No."
Elijah frowned. "You haven't?"
"I meant," said Peters, "the answer is no."
Elijah's mouth worked uselessly, lips moving without a sound. "Um," he managed to force out. "Sorry - what?"
"I appreciate the offer from an upright man like yourself, but I'm not leaving here."
Elijah's mind swam in a haze as Peters's words sank in. He swallowed dryly. He licked his dry lips. Everything about this was wrong. What kind of man like Peters didn't want to get out? He was facing life in prison. He wasn't about to get out anytime soon.
And Elijah couldn't leave and go back home unless he got Peters out.
They'd told him it would be a quick stint, just two or three months, tops. One month to get to know the guy, one month to gain his trust, and one month after that for the rest of the gang to set up the escape schedule and get it to him. Elijah had spent the first month fumbling for some sort of control of his surroundings, and now he'd already screwed up part two of the plan.
"Why so down? Just count yourself lucky that your gutsy but insane technique didn't get you killed. I gotta say though, the way you were so desperate even made me kind of curious."
Elijah hated the way Peters seemed to read his every thought. "I'm not desperate," he protested.
Peters laughed, a high, cold noise that made Elijah's toes curl. "Boy, if you ain't desperate, I don't know a soul alive that is."
Did it really show that badly on his face? Elijah had to try to get a grip on himself. He was supposed to be a jailbird, not the new fresh meat.
"And a word of advice, kid," Peters said as he got up from the bed. "When you want to bust someone out of a prison, you don't go saying it straight to their face the first time you meet them. You befriend them, you befriend their friends, you gain their trust by plying them with cigarettes and risque magazines and stolen chocolate - then and only then do you make your move."
Elijah pressed his fingers to his temples and sighed. Obviously he shouldn't have done it like he had, but he'd been reckless after being stabbed twice by Peters's men and being cornered by him in the hospital. He'd panicked, not wanting to make him angry right then.
"Don't worry, though. No harm done," Peters reassured him. "Because I would've said no anyways."
He clapped Elijah twice on the back, and then he was gone, leaving Elijah staring after him.
So sorry about the long wait guys. I had an important exam and then I went to go visit the cousins for a few weeks and wrote 60,000 words for a different story and took a much needed break from this one.
The next chapter will not take so long to come out and it will be longer, promise. How have you all been since last time? Anyone gotten the vaccine yet?
For next time: I have to try to remember where I was going with this but my plot map says something along the lines of Olivia and Logan at the grocery store and some bad people.