Unraveling Eli Read online

  I turn to open the door, but Borys’s foot appears on the stoop beside me, blocking it closed.

  “Look, I’m not sure what issue you have with this Eli guy—”

  “Oh ho ho, really? No idea at all, Mr…”

  “Donaldson. Jeremy Donaldson.”

  “You don’t look like no Donaldson to me,” Borys says.

  “What does that even mean?”

  “It means our boss wants a word with you Eli Murphy.”

  “Your boss? What the hell are you talking about? I am not—”

  “Bullshit,” Borys says, no trace of smile on his face. “You are Eli Murphy—”

  “I don’t even know who that is,” I insist.

  “The fuck you don’t!” Borys and Peter are on me in an instant, slamming my back against the door. “We saw you enjoying your nice celebration dinner with your publishing friends.”

  “Let go,” I growl as I try to break free. I’m strong, but it’s two against one. “Fuck you, let me go!”

  “Fuck me, eh?” Borys slams me against the door again, and my head bangs on the glass. I see stars. “Where’s you’re wallet motherfucker!”

  Borys reaches for my wallet, and I manage to break my left arm free long enough to punch his fucking face. He stumbles back a step, but is back the next moment with his hands around my throat.

  “So you think you’re a tough guy?” Borys pulls his left hand back, probably to pound it against my face, but Peter lets go of me and practically leaps back onto the sidewalk.

  “Borys!”

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Borys demands.

  “Look!” Peter exclaims, pointing to something behind me.

  Borys’s looks, and his eyes widen. I push him away, and he backs off the stoop, hands held up. I look behind me—Daisy is visible through the door’s vertical glass pane, and holy shit she’s got a shotgun. It’s almost as big as she is, but she’s got it up against her shoulder and pointed at the door.

  I move out of her way, and Daisy kicks the door open. She steps onto the stoop and pumps the shotgun. “Get the fuck out of here before my itchy finger gets twitchy.”

  “Listen lady,” Borys begins, but Daisy isn’t having any of it.

  “The cops are on their way, so you if you stick around you’ll be leaving one of two ways: in the back of a cruiser, or in a body bag.”

  Borys closes his mouth and glares, before thinking better of it. “Fine. We’ll go. But we will most definitely see you—” he points to me “—again.”

  Borys follows Peter to a black sedan parked across the street. Peter gets in the driver’s seat, Borys in the passenger’s. Daisy doesn’t lower her gun until they’re out of sight.

  “Phew,” she sighs when she finally lowers her gun. I stare at her like she just appeared out of thin air.

  “What?” she asks. She sets the shotgun on the sidewalk and fishes her Camels from her front pocket. “Did you think all that Iowa farm girl stuff was bullshit?”

  I nod. “Yeah, I kind of did.”

  Daisy grins. “Not all of it. Wanna smoke?”

  Chapter 1

  Eli

  Present day

  I leave Tara in the parking lot and don’t look back. My arms move the steering wheel automatically. My feet push the pedals to accelerate and brake without any conscious thought. I’m on autopilot as I struggle to come to grips with what the fuck I did.

  Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuuuuuuuck! Fuck, what the fuck is wrong with me? Why the fuck did I do that!? I let a fucking reporter—a fucking reporter—into my fucking house. Because I thought that some girl just ended up jumping into the road in front of me by coincidence? What the fuck!? I was so mother fucking fucking stupid. Why? Just so I could get my dick wet!?

  Fuck! Fuck me, and fuck my stupid fucking dick.

  Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK! I need to think. I need to call Harris.

  I pull my cell phone out of my pocket. A flip phone. A dumb phone. I don’t need anything smart. I don’t have any friends.

  Fuck I hate how pathetic that sounds, even in my head, but it’s true. I never use this phone. Never. Let me see…yeah. The last call was eleven days ago. To my mom.

  My life wasn’t always this empty. There was a time I had friends. Colleagues. I was admired. Respected. I was banging models and lit chicks five days a week. Then I fucked up, and it was a big fuck up, a huge fuck up, a rewrite-my-entire-fucking-life-trajectory fuck up. And then I moved to this mountain, and I…planted some kale…

  Shit, no wonder I let Tara fuck up my world up. Doesn’t surprise me at all. Clearly I wanted it this way.

  And it is fucked up. It absolutely is. Tara’s eventually going to tell someone she found me, if she hasn’t already. She might decide to save her job and write the story; even if she tries to keep it a secret, eventually she’ll spill. I hope she won’t, for her sake; but for mine, I have to assume she will. Secrets are hard to keep.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. I need to focus. I’m half-way up the mountain. My cell service will get patchy soon. I flip my phone open and punch in Harris’s number. I don’t have it saved, I have it memorized—even after three years. I hit dial, put the phone on speaker, and wait through six rings.

  After the sixth: “This is Agent Harris. Leave a message.”

  Beep.

  Fuck. “Harris, this is Murphy. Eli Murphy. It’s been a while…” I’m not sure what to say. “I’ve been made. A reporter from The Watcher recognized me. Call me back. This number.”

  I flip the phone shut and almost throw it at my passenger’s side window. That won’t do any good, though.

  Fuck.

  I need to get home and pack. As much as I can. Clothes. Guns. Books. My DVDs. The Triceratops bone. Everything else I can’t fit into my truck—furniture, four-wheelers—I’ll have to leave behind.

  Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck! I don’t want to do this again. To start over. I kept myself un-entangled for this very reason, but I guess I still managed to settle into this life, as meh as it is. And there are people here who I know. At least in passing. Justin Chance at Chance Automotive is honest—that’s hard to find in a mechanic. The crew at Dozer’s always has smiles for me. Acer’s got his vet…

  My thoughts keep bouncing back to Tara. Tara, who I should hate. Tara, who lied and connived. Tara, who endangered my life.

  I feel depressed, deeply depressed, that she won’t know where I live. Where I am. I shouldn’t feel this way. It’s not the way a normal person would feel.

  Maybe this is too much like how I left New York. In a rush. Certain I was going to die. Leaving someone behind.

  Except Nadia knew the stakes. All I told Tara was that “bad men” are after me.

  Shit.

  I should have told her more.

  I should have gotten her number, too. Fuck. Should I turn back around? No, that would be pointless. I have no way of knowing where she is now. My best bet is to look her up. Find her e-mail address. Call The Watcher…

  I’ll tell Harris about her, too—if the fucker ever calls me back. I flip my phone open, see that I have two bars, and hit redial.

  To voicemail again. Fuck.

  Am I really going to pack up this truck? Am I really going to pack up and leave? I could barricade myself in the house and wait for whoever comes. Hell, I’m sure I could find a way to get in touch with Michal myself to let him know exactly where I am, just to speed things along.

  Except if Michal doesn’t come himself, the whole thing is pointless. He’d probably send some guys, and even if I managed to kill them—a difficult thing to imagine, as I’ve never killed anyone—he’d just send more guys. As long as Michal’s alive, I’m a wanted man.

  I think again about three years ago. I wanted to apologize. Instead, I ran, and now the knot of guilt in my throat is so thick I can barely breathe. But I have to. At the very least, I need to talk to Harris and make sure someone handles the Tara situation. My conscience doesn’t need any more guilt
.

  ****

  Someone’s been down my drive. On foot. Since I left an hour ago with Tara.

  At least one person. A large man. He did a decent job of hiding his tracks. Decent enough I might not have noticed if I hadn’t forgotten to check my mail yesterday.

  Just a minute ago I hopped out at the box, grabbed the stack of mail, and noticed the footprint, about twenty feet down the drive. Maybe it was an act of God that my eyes just happened to land in the exact right spot, because whoever is waiting for me did a decent job of hiding his tracks.

  Now I’m scanning the drive while pretending to check my mail. I spy what looks like another half-footprint fifteen or twenty feet down from the fist. My eyes narrow. I flip a my cable bill to the back of the stack.

  A chill runs down my spine. Michal. But how is that possible?

  Tara said—

  But why would I believe anything she said?

  Fuck. She must have told someone. I’m guessing her friend—the one she said encouraged her to look for me in the first place. Jackie, I think. Maybe she was with Michal from the beginning. Or Maybe Tara was.

  How else would whoever the fuck is at the end of my drive have gotten here so fast? He must have flown in with her…except why didn’t he come for me last night?

  Fuck. So Tara could be in danger—in real danger if there are already people waiting for me at my house. Or she could be an accomplice. Either way, I don’t know how to get in touch with her.

  I flip my power bill to the back of the stack and pretend to consider the brightly colored envelope promising HUNDREDS IN SAVINGS. I flip the coupon mailer to the back of the stack and search more openly now, but I don’t see anything else.

  It’s decision time, and I don’t know what to do. I have to go back to my house. All my shit’s there. Acer’s around here somewhere.

  I’ve got my .38 strapped to my ankle. I can move it to my pocket in the truck. But should I go in hot? Or should I pretend like I have no idea what’s waiting for me?

  Chapter 2

  Tara

  “Slower,” Borys commands, and Chris slows his Subaru to a crawl. We’re inching past Eli’s drive for the fifth time. I peer down it, but I don’t see anything I didn’t see the last four times: Eli’s drive. Melting snow and tire tracks. His green truck, at the end, driver’s side door wide open.

  “Drive to the same spot. Turn around,” Borys orders.

  Chris complies wordlessly. Part of me wishes he would do something crazy, like drive his car into a tree. Borys isn’t wearing a seatbelt. He’s sitting behind me, so that might be bad for me, but no worse than what’s happening right now.

  Borys’s partner, whose name I don’t know, is sitting behind Chris. He isn’t wearing a seatbelt either. He has a gun—some kind of pistol. I think it might be a Glock, but it’s been five or six years since I’ve seen one. And really, I don’t need to know what kind of gun it is to know that it scares the shit out of me.

  Borys has a gun too, I assume. He and his friend are some of the “bad men” Eli warned me about. They’re both big, thick guys with short hair and identical outfits: blue jeans and gray sweaters. Borys is maybe a few years younger than the other guy, or he’s aged better. He still has most of his hair.

  They’re working for someone, but I have no idea who. All I really know, based on the limited information exchanged between Borys and his friend, is that there are two other guys working with them, and that those two guys were supposed to take Eli at his house. But they haven’t checked in.

  Eli is Eli Murphy, a best-selling author and once-budding media magnate turned mountain hermit. He fled New York because his life was in danger. I didn’t even know him until yesterday, but less than twenty-four hours after meeting him, I’m a hostage and these guys are closer to killing Eli than they have been in three years.

  Because of me.

  Chris is a Lyft driver. He drove me around Boulder yesterday as I tried to track Eli down. He’s a hostage, too, because of me. He could very possibly die because of me. I could die.

  Oh fuck I can’t die! God, please don’t let me die. Please please please don’t let Eli die and don’t let Chris die. I fucked up, but I don’t deserve to die. Chris doesn’t deserve to die. Eli—God please don’t let Eli be dead already.

  “Peter,” Borys says into his phone. It’s got some sort of walkie-talkie function. “Peter, do you hear me? Over.”

  This is the tenth time Borys has called for Peter.

  “Peter, answer me, over.”

  Eleventh.

  I wish I had that walky-talky Eli gave me last night. I wish I knew his cell phone number. I wish I had never travelled to Colorado in the first place.

  I came here for Eli. To find him. He disappeared three years ago just as he was poised to blow up in the literary world. My plan was to write a story about him and save my job. I only told one person that I found him: Frankie.

  My best work friend at The Watcher, the online magazine we both work for. The one Eli used to own. She pretended to be an Eli super fan—one of legions of online people who had dedicated themselves to tracking down the missing author. She convinced me to find him.

  I can’t believe she betrayed me, but what other explanation is there? She sent me here. I told her last night I was in Eli’s home. I told her all about driving around town with Chris.

  “Peter, this is Borys, come in.”

  I hold my breath, feeling like I might faint. We’re passing Eli’s drive again. I strain to see around Chris; everything is as it was the previous six times.

  “Turn around at the same place,” Borys says, and Chris does. His hands are clenching the wheel so tight they’re as white as the snow that still coats the mountain.

  He probably never imagined himself in this situation. He’s driving for Lyft because he’s in a band. That’s what he told me. He taught music in a middle school for a few years, but quit to try to make it—

  “Pull into the drive, stop by the mailbox,” Borys orders.

  I really fucked up. God, I really fucked up. These men are going to kill us. Of course they are. I’ve seen enough mob movies. We’re just a job to them. Just non-entities.

  “I have a sister!” I gasp as Chris stops the car by the mailbox.

  “What?” Borys asks.

  “I have a sister! She’s in college! She really needs me—our parents are terrible and I’m the only one she—”

  “Tara, please, relax,” Borys tells me. “As long as you and your friend cooperate, you’ll be fine. Right, Armand?”

  I turn my head just far enough to the left to see Armand, in the back seat. He nods once.

  Borys tries his phone one more time. “Peter, hello?” When no one answers, he says, “Drive toward the house. Slowly. When I tell you to stop, stop.”

  Chris inches forward. I hear Borys load his chamber, and my heart stops. Fuck! They’re going to use me as bait. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it before. They’re going to use me as bait to lure Eli out, and then they’re going to kill us all. I want to scream at Chris, because isn’t it so obvious? Can’t he tell he’s driving us to our deaths at 2 mph?!

  I don’t scream at him. I don’t do anything. I should jump out of the car and make a break for it, but I’m stuck to my seat. My chest feels like someone’s sitting on it; my whole body feels leaden.

  “Stop,” Borys commands, and Chris stops the car with a jolt.

  Eli’s truck is thirty or so feet ahead of us. The door’s still open. I don’t see any bullet holes, or blood, or anything that suggests what could have happened between Eli and Peter and the other guy, or where any of them are now.

  Neither does Borys. “This is fucked up,” he mutters. “What do you think?”

  “Peter and Nicki are dead, and our Eli Murphy is waiting for us,” Armand says.

  “Kill the engine,” Borys says, and Chris kills the engine.

  Borys and Armand climb out of the car. Borys stops by my door and taps the window with
his gun. I look at him, shaking, and he motions for me to get out.

  I unbuckle my seatbelt and open the door, my stomach in my feet. My eyes search wildly for Eli while Armand stops by Chris’s door.

  “What about him?” he asks.

  Borys considers for a second, before muttering something in a language that isn’t English.

  Armand points his gun at Chris, and Chris holds up his hands. “I’m getting out,” he says.

  “No, you can stay,” Armand says, and I—BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

  Oh my God oh my God oh my God, CHRIS! I—I can see him, behind the spray of blood that hit the windshield. He’s got—his face…

  I cover my screaming mouth as the world careens around me.

  “Shut up,” someone snaps.

  Chris, Chris, Chris…

  I let out a lone sob as a hand closes around my upper arm. I don’t even realize how much I’m shaking until I feel the tight fingers.

  “I-I-I-I—”

  “Don’t worry,” Borys’s smile is thin. “That guy was a real dick when he first picked us up. Didn’t want to help at all. You on the other hand, you’ve been great. And I need you to keep being great. Now come on, stay with me.”

  Borys squeezes my arm in a vice-like grip and leads me down the drive, to Eli’s truck. My vision is blinking, like everything is a time-lapse video. Armand drops to his knees and peers under the truck while Borys covers him. Now Armand is up, and Borys and I are walking around the right side of the truck. Armand is looking in the driver’s side as Bory’s and I come around the front. The door is closed and Armand is beside us.

  They’re talking. I squeeze my eyes shut. I need to try to listen.

  Armand is pointing at the ground. “That looks like Peter to me.”

  He…must mean one of the footprints in the snow. How can he tell?

  “I don’t see Nick.”

  “So where is he?” Borys asks.

  “Nick?”

  “No. Murphy. You think he’s still alive?”

  Armand nods as a residual shudder ripples through me. “His truck’s here. He could have left on foot, but I don’t think so.”