Chapter 5: Unexplored Island
Knox
The next day when I left her bed in the infirmary I found Jax standing guard by the door. My heart skipped a beat as our eyes met. He was seeing through me, and I wasn’t sure he was allowed to see what was in there.
“What’s up?”
“How is she?”
“Fine. The look, what is it about?”
We walked side by side across one of the secret secure compounds, off the radar of any of our enemies and the preying eyes of law enforcement officers who couldn’t bent the rules in exchange for a dollar. Hidden in an emerald green man-made forest surrounded with well manicured lawns and black tall iron gates manned by armed guards and state of the art security system. It was the exact place I’d have been brought if I was that sick and that had Jax looking at me funny.
“What’s so special about her?” He asked rushing to get the door for me.
We walked past the living room decorated with antique furniture and expensive paintings collected through the generations of iron serpents. I stopped by the flight of stairs leading upstairs to the office and private living room and bedrooms.
“It’s been long since we’ve been here. We have been overworking you think?”
“So you don’t know”
“About what?” I picked up the pace and he was behind me struggling to catch up with my long powerful strides.
“The girl, clearly you’re doing so much than you’re supposed here and it has me…”
“Worried?” I smiled sheepishly opening the door to the home office and walked straight to the liquor, the curtains were drawn bringing in light and warmth of the evening sun that was disappearing behind the clouds.
“Thank you” he took the drink and joined me by the window as we watched the sunset together, “You’re my friend, best friend actually I’ve known you since we were mere errand boys in this organization”
Jax was trying to guilt trip me into telling him whether or not I liked the girl. But did I know? What is love? It was a feeling that had eluded me for the best part of my life, I had no idea how to feel it neither did I know how to show it and yet for her it was different.
Was reading her stories while she was in coma love? Could playing her music and dozing off in her room be described as love? Was it fair to call it love that I wiped her angelic face with a warm rug every morning and straightened her silky hair-maybe secretly sniffed it-and cut her tore and fingernails?
“Honestly I don’t know. I just know I haven’t been myself since I ran into her that night”
“You don’t know?”
“I mean look at her?” I pointed at Emily (from her ID) the nurse was taking her around the compound on a wheel chair and she seemed to be enjoying the smell of fresh air wafting as much as she could in her cute nostrils, "Isn't she the most beautiful thing you’ve laid your eyes on? Call the painter?”
“Dude”
It took me sometime to realize Jax was waving his hand across my face to confirm whether or not I was hypnotized by her bewitching smile. It made my knees weak and that image was engrained on my mind.
“You don’t even know this girl”
“And I don’t want to know. Isn’t that the beauty of it? Getting to know her, she is an unexplored Island waiting for an explorer to find the vault of treasures hidden somewhere in her body. Every inch of her skin is a holy grail I want to touch..”
“Beat it Shakespeare. Can’t you see she is on a wheel chair?”
“For some time though”
“What if she is married?”
Okay now he was just being jealous. Why bring that up but wait a minute wouldn’t her husband have already filed a missing persons report? Or maybe her family? Did she have any? What if she didn’t.
“No ring on her finger”
“I’ll let you take care of whatever this is”
“Don’t do it Jax”
“Do what?”
“The background check I’m serious I want to know her it’s my personal mission”
The truth of the matter was Emily’s condition had me thinking about myself when the chips are down, who would have been there for me like I was there for her? Leave alone my own crime family and a few friends whose loyalty was transactional would I have been lucky enough to get a stranger to sit by my bed and cut my nails, make my hair, wipe my tears after all you only know who’s there for you when you’re at your lowest. No one was there for her, no one had even noticed she was missing and that made me sick, it made me angry and empathetic at the same time. I had to make her feel like the world had not given up on her the same way some people made me feel years back.
Eleanor
I was lucky none of my legs were broken, they were just bruised and were already healing but the nurse insisted on taking caution before trying to walk merely 24 hours after recovering from a coma. I was glad to take the wheel chair as long as it got me a chance to see the world again, appreciate nature and another shot at life a chance to correct the mistakes I had made.
To my surprise we were far away from the hustle and bustle of the city, from the blocks on which I was being hunted and it made me feel safe but cautious at the same time. I also wanted to know where I was just in case I needed to get back on the run again.
“You know where we are?”
“Not really. We just get texted the address and get picked in some disguised van to any location they want us I’m part of his emergency medical team”
“You mean he doesn’t go to hospital?”
Of course hospitals were dangerous for a man like him, vulnerable to attacks from his rivals and chances of being nabbed by a cop not on his payroll. I was playing dumb to build a friendship that many weeks later would save my life.
“No. It’s too dangerous he is a criminal. But for you he risked it all and went to hospital he might have hit you with a bike but he saved your life”
Perhaps the rumors on the streets were not doing him any good. He was a kind man after all and the more we talked about him walking aimlessly around the garden the curious I got to maybe get to know him. To understand how a man could balance having ice in his veins and a kind human at the same damn time because from the look of things it was a combination that I needed to survive the streets. It was just a matter of time before someone else was sent after me or he realized I wasn’t Emily Dawson like my fake ID suggested and either kicked me out or finished what he accidentally started.