Mo took a step to the side, dragging Denise with him. He nodded to the door to his right. “Get the fuck out.” The crowd didn’t need telling twice. None of the team moved, and just as the ones nearest Caffrey ran, he looked up only to have Mo snarl at him.
“I said get up.”
Mo fired and a bullet pinged at the ground next to Caffrey, and he shrieked and tried to scramble to his feet, shaking and crying, raising his pudgy hands in front of him. “Let go,” Eli whispered. He could get to him. If Daniel didn’t have him in such a vise like grip, he could have reached Mo and gotten the gun before he pointed it back at Denise. Maybe. But he wasn’t sure enough to risk her life. Daniel’s grip on Eli lessened. He could stop the bullet hitting Caffrey, but if he didn’t get the gun, Eli knew Mo would turn it on himself.
Eli knew he couldn’t let Mo die. Caffrey had taken everything from them. Their dignity, happiness, self-respect. He’d destroyed their childhood, and they had never learned to live. Mo was going to get a second chance if it was the last thing he did, and he didn’t give a shit if he couldn’t stop the bullet getting Caffrey. It was exactly what he wanted to happen. If he tried to block the bullet aimed for Caffrey, he risked not getting back to stop Mo firing a second one on himself.
An easy decision.
In the same moment, he realized that not everyone had left and Richard still stood at the other side of the door. Sawyer simply stepped through the wall right behind Mo as Mo swung the gun, and Eli launched himself forward. Richard moved at the same time, nearer but obviously much slower, but a fraction too slow to stop the bullet Mo fired at Caffrey, but close enough to knock his arm.
Talon, Finn, the cops, everyone in the entire fucking world ran into the room just as Eli got his fingers on the gun that Mo was turning toward himself. Eli had it out of his hand and spinning across the floor as more hands grabbed for him and Mo, but it didn’t fire. Mo was alive, and Eli could have wept in utter relief.
Then, amidst the utter bedlam, the next shot rang out, and Caffrey—even as he had a small pistol clutched in his hand—flew back as the bullet hit him. Eli gaped as Richard swallowed and pocketed his. Richard had seen what all of them had missed.
“Eli!” Sam’s harsh cry rang out and Eli turned, his heart in his mouth, knowing what he was going to see before the sickening sight punched him in the chest. Sam was crouched over Daniel’s body, and a large red stain was rapidly spreading over his white shirt.
Eli froze even as more cops ran past him until he couldn’t even see Daniel for the people surrounding him.
My fault.
He had done that. Instead of catching the bullet which he knew he could, he hadn’t cared about it hitting Caffrey, he’d only cared about Mo. He’d wanted Mo to take Caffrey out so he didn’t have to. All his big talk, and in the end he’d been a coward.
My fault.
He’d as good as taken the gun and fired on Daniel himself. He’d killed the only person who had ever cared enough to give him a life. A jagged pain ripped through Eli as if his whole body tore in two, and he turned and ran. He ran so fast no one would catch him. He ran so fast he wondered if he would ever stop before he reached the end of the world.
Eli heaved a lungful of air, then regretted it immediately as he coughed. The stench from the containers crept over him, and he raised his hand and slowed. Eli stumbled and grabbed out a cracked and broken piece of wood that used to be a gate post and tried to take another breath, but it made him gag. He opened his eyes in confusion. Where the hell was he that smelled so… But his question fizzled out as he took in the crumbling house, the overgrown yard, the two abandoned trailers that rust was holding together parked in the corner, and the wired electric fencing that surrounded the property.
And realized where he’d come back to, and unbelievably how far he’d run. His legs shook with the effort of keeping upright, and he gagged again both at the smell and the sob that seemed to force its way up his throat. He didn’t even know exactly where he was. He knew they’d been near the port, but he’d never been back once. He knew to keep his sanity he could never come here.
So what had brought him now?
What he had seen when he had touched Caffrey? He knew the smell had been the same as the containers, but he’d never been somewhere damp. Why was he remembering a cellar when he knew damn well that no houses around here could have a cellar? It would simply flood. It made no sense, but in his nightmares not much ever did. He gazed at the house. It wasn’t the Addam’s Family mansion he remembered as a little boy. Just a worn-out, crumbling mess. It was also sinking heavily on one side, and he tried to remember why he thought there was a cellar.
A sloping floor.
Even then there had been a corridor off the kitchen that had seemed to go downhill. It had grown scarier in his imagination. He would wake up with screams and crying in his ears and wonder why no one else could hear them, and in his head he had always associated that corridor with his darkest fears because that had always been where he had heard the crying from.
Without even thinking, Eli laid his hand on the fence. He felt a faint trickle of heat which he absorbed and pulled at it until the wire snapped, and the light on the box next to the gate went out. Something had brought him here. Something when he had touched Caffrey’s hand. Something he had to see for himself. Caffrey was dead. He couldn’t touch him.
For a moment the vision of the red stain on Daniel’s shirt almost brought him to his knees, but he gripped the fence post until the wood bit into his skin and stepped into the yard.
It was dark, but he could see the ground from the floodlights over by the construction area and walked up to the door, frowning at the new lock. He guessed it was there to keep squatters out which made sense as they would be demolishing it soon. He walked past the door and came to the small window that led to the study. Caffrey had called it a study, but it was just somewhere to keep more crap. Eli slid his fingers over the seal, and the wood browned and splintered under his touch. The window swung open, and Eli climbed in.
He dismissed the room as unimportant and walked through the door into the short hallway. The door straight across from him led to the kitchen, and there was an empty packet of cigarettes tossed casually amongst the dirt and the cobwebs on the floor. Eli bent down, his hand hovering over the packet as if he was going to do something really damn stupid and pick it up. He touched the pack almost fatalistically as if he was meant to.
“Señor?” A skinny kid covered in bruises and shaking with fear stood in front of a much younger Caffrey, and as Eli watched, the boy nodded and started undressing. There was something familiar—Cruz. Eli answered his own question as soon as it formed. He had been one of Caffrey’s boys, and an unbelievable sorrow clutched his chest.
So many different lives ruined.
He glanced across the kitchen to the door. In his head it had always led to what he called the cellar, but now, knowing that, it didn’t make sense he wanted to see where it went. It was almost as if he needed to see it. Eli walked across to the door and gazed at the padlock. The door had never been locked before. It had never needed to be. Not one of them would have voluntarily opened it. Of course, the padlock—even without Vance’s strength—didn’t put up much of a problem. He simply burned the wood surrounding it until the screws fell out, and he pulled open the door.