Secrets, Lies, and Double Lives

Chapter 3: Trust

Chapter 3: Trust“How are you feeling?” Zeke turns on a lamp on the bedside table. “You must be hungry, right? It’s been over twenty-four hours since you’ve had a chance to eat anything, and I take it by your escape attempt, you’re able to move again. How about I make you some food so you’ve got a bit of energy and can stop passing out on me?”

Elijah’s mouth feels numb, and his words come out mumbled. “I don’t understand this act. What do you want me for?”

Zeke has a kind smile. The type that makes Elijah want to trust him, but after everything that has happened, nothing feels real, and trust seems out of reach. Still, something about Zeke is making Elijah believe he’s safe.

“There’s a lot you don’t understand. The first thing being that I’m not a killer.”

“How can I know that? I get home and find someone killed my family, then wake up here.” Elijah winces at the pain in his head as he speaks.

“I’m not here to mess with you, and I’m definitely not here to kill you. Quite the opposite. It was too late for your family when I got there. I was only there to find the guy who murdered them. I’ve been trying to track him down for ages. You’re just lucky I got to you before he did,” Zeke says with a sigh. “What do you want to eat?”

“Nothing.” Elijah shakes his head, too deep in concentration on this new information to think about food. “You were looking for the man who killed my family?”

“Yes. Can you walk? I’d really like you to eat something. I know trauma can suppress your urge to eat, but I’ve heard your stomach while you’ve been sleeping. I know you’re hungry,” Zeke says, the gentle calmness in his tone sounds genuine.

“No, my legs are too sore.” In the beginning, Elijah wasn’t faking his mobility issues, but a test of trust is behind him deciding to act like he’s still too sore to walk. He wants to appear vulnerable, so Zeke can either drop the friendly act and try to attack him, not expecting him to defend himself, or continue to show kindness, proving his version of events likely to be true.

Again, leaving the door wide open, Zeke exits the room. Elijah waits only a moment before getting up, ignoring the rush of pins and needles again as he forces himself to attempt escaping a third time. This time, he only gets to the bedroom doorway, running straight into Zeke returning with a bottle of water in his hands.

Elijah hesitates as he and Zeke stand looking at one another, neither speaking nor moving at all. With a rush of adrenaline, Elijah throws himself forward, pushing Zeke and making a run for the door, only to trip over with his legs still clumsily waking up.

“Look, I understand you’re scared, and you don’t trust me. I get that and I’m not judging you for it. But please, at least let me help you get some strength back. It’s in your best interests to eat something now. You won’t be able to do anything with an empty stomach and recovering from an overdose. Don’t make me keep watching you fall over.” Zeke walks over and offers Elijah a hand up.

Elijah accepts it, not taking his eyes off Zeke as he gets up to his feet again.

“Thank you.” Zeke wraps Elijah’s arm around his shoulders and helps him walk, bearing most of his weight, down the hallway. Elijah notes each room as they pass it. There’s an office which contains a desk and a few filing cabinets, a futon lounge opposite the desk. There’s a living room that opens straight to the front room and front door of the house and across the hall from that is the kitchen. It’s a simple house. Not a lot of places to hide.

“How did you know he was there?” Elijah’s snappy attitude is fading as he begins to believe it’s possible he’s been wrong about this man. He’s wasted the day stubbornly assuming the worst and even attempted to take his life to get away from someone who does seem to want to take care of him.

“Because that’s just what I do. I was tracking him with my colleague, and when we got to the house, we saw a masked figure walking around upstairs. We were planning how we were going to go about catching him when we saw you walk inside. In fact, you walked right past our car outside your neighbor’s house. We were waiting for you to go past the house before we went in, then you went inside it and threw our plans out the window.” Zeke bites his lip as though wondering if he should go on explaining or if the starving i***t would accept that as an answer. “Please let me feed you now.”

Elijah nods and looks down as Zeke uses his foot to pull out one of the two chairs at the small, round table. He sits Elijah on it, then walks over to the fridge. “Is there anything you can’t eat?”

“Anything that bleeds. So, you got him, right? The guy who killed them?” Elijah watches as Zeke sifts through the food options in the fridge.

Zeke hesitates before answering in a solemn tone. “Not exactly. Once you were in there, our priority was to get you out alive. We assumed he didn’t know you were in the house, so our only chance was to get you out before he could find you. It went from an arrest mission to a rescue and retrieval mission.”

“So, there were three people following me around in my house?” Elijah asks, his eyes going hazy, and his head feeling like it is burning again. He doesn’t want to give in to the urge to pass out that his body is insisting on, but he can feel himself slipping again.

“Yes, we know what he’s capable of. We were trying to keep you safe.” Zeke turns and frowns, stepping towards Elijah. “You’ve gone pale again. Are you okay?”

“No. I’m not. Thanks for asking. Why did you cover my eyes if there was a murderer in my house?” Elijah mumbles. Lethargy is draining him.

“Because I couldn’t let you make a sound. The easiest way to stop that was to cover your eyes and knock you out,” Zeke says.

“What happened to my sister?” Elijah asks after a few moments of silence.

Zeke glances at him, bites his lip gently, and hesitates.

“Was it bad?” Elijah feels a sudden wave of emotion hit him. Goose bumps prickle his skin, and his body goes completely cold.

“I couldn’t let you see her,” Zeke says, lowering his voice.

Elijah nods, not quite registering the loss he’ll have to accept yet.

“I’m really sorry for everything. You look like a kind person, and you didn’t deserve this to happen to you or your family.” Zeke gives Elijah an apologetic look with his earnest, trustworthy eyes.

Elijah looks down and crosses his arms, almost reflexively hugging himself for comfort as the loneliness of his family’s death sinks in. “Yeah. Why did it happen to them?”

“So far, we haven’t found anything linking the murders. He’s an opportunistic serial killer. It doesn’t seem to be more than a game to him.” Zeke sits down at the table, passing Elijah a simple salad sandwich and a protein drink.

“You mean he had no reason? He just picked my house. Picked my family and killed them?” Elijah asks, shocked.

Zeke looks up at Elijah, then back down at his food. “That’s how it seems at this stage, yes. You and your family did nothing wrong. Serial killers take lives without reason. You’re safe here, though, I promise.”

Overwhelmed by it all, Elijah covers his face, exhaustion and shock combined with the distress finally getting too much for him again. “He can’t do it to anyone else now, right? You guys stopped him, didn’t you?”

Zeke doesn’t reply.

“He got away? Because of me?” Elijah’s shoulders sink and he hangs his head.

“You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was not your fault.”

Zeke’s words do little to reassure or comfort Elijah. “If you had let me die, would you have caught him?”

“No.” Zeke shakes his head. “Because we never would have let him kill anyone when there was the chance of us getting them out. There will be other opportunities to get him. There was only one opportunity to save you.”

“At the cost of his next victim? You should have let me die. I’m not hungry.” Elijah gets up and runs back to the bathroom, ignoring the way his muscles ache and his head throbs. He grabs onto the basin and looks up at the exposed shelves of the medicine cabinet, cleared and empty. Elijah turns and pulls the shower curtain back, finding a razor which he hadn’t thought of on his first attempt in the bathroom that morning.

Zeke snatches it from his hand and bear hugs him to stop him getting the razor back while he screams and begs for Zeke to let him die. After a few moments, Zeke’s hold on Elijah loosens and Elijah allows himself to be restrained in the comfort of Zeke’s arms, repeating, “You should have let me die,” over and over again.