Dave stood in the back room looking around the back of the Crashdown. A small room still residing like it was a decade long ago. While the front of the restaurant had been spruced up over the years, with nothing changing of its paint or atmosphere, the back room had not much done to it in the years that have passed. It had surprised him that Phillip Evans was here because he had been aware that the Evans were not that close to their son’s wife’s family. “I am aware that you do not have very high opinion of your son-in-law?” Dave asked as he looked at both men and could not help feeling amused by the fact it, Phillip Evans son they were talking about in this instance. “It is a surprise to see you here Mr. Evans?”
“Why?” Phillip asked. “We are family, and we have kept our association up over the years” he lied because there was very little association except as patrons of this restaurant and since his wife was an accomplished cook, well, they rarely had a need to come to this establishment and had left it to the kids to come and he had known for his son The Crashdown had felt very personal because he had been smitten by the waitress, and so he knew his son and daughter had spent a lot of time in this establishment.
“As I said, I am aware of how you feel about your son-in-law?” Dave asked as his directed his glaze at Jeff who recoiled.
“Does not mean I would want to take it out on Phillip here, or his wife for that matter” Jeff murmured. “Plus, why would I want to lose business. So, yes, I can feel one way about their son and wish my daughter had a picked herself a different husband and yet say hello, especially if they were to come into my restaurant,” he sighed. “As I said before if this is about Max than you are asking the wrong person.”
“Why is that?” Dave asked.
“I know nothing,” Jeff said honestly. “So, I am the last person to be in the know,” he mumbled. And mostly I prefer it that way he told himself. Being in denial is a better life to lead so that you do not have to fear for your only child “I have rarely been told information in relation to my daughter or her friends, and that goes back to the beginning.”
“And that is September 18, 1999 when your daughter was a victim of a gun shot here in this very restaurant?” Dave wondered as the tension rose in the restaurant as it became clear to both gentlemen that the agent was on a fishing expedition. “She was lucky to survive?”
“Yes, but she did” Jeff murmured as it was the only thing, he gave his son-in-law credit for. Saving his daughter’s life. It was not an easy thing to know his daughter could have died at fifteen in his very restaurant if it had not been for Max. Still, though given everything else that had transpired in the following three years, it was hard to keep the positive thoughts even if he would never want his daughter to be gone from his life. Still, it was hard to think positive.
No matter how he tried. And even if it was hypocritical given his own difficulties when he was young. But he never was in prison even if he should have been, he thought as he remembered his former girlfriend before Nancy who had died in his car, because he was slightly too rebellious for his own good. And that is why he fought his daughter’s track down the same route. Fearful that she would be taken from them.
Only to find out she could have taken from him fore a very different reason, but Max had saved the day, but it still did not mean he liked the fact his daughter fell for a boy who had changed her life and taken her far form the route that she had been on until that September day. “I do not have the answers to any of your questions” Jeff murmured.
“I know that your daughter almost went to prison because of her association with the man she would later marry” Dave murmured.
“But she did not,” Jeff sighed. “She got lucky.”
“Yes, she did” Dave conceded. “It does mean that she has been in the middle of some incredible events that can be traced back to that day, in this very restaurant.”
“I do not know what you are after Agent Barker,” Phillip murmured. “Our children have kept to themselves, and the last thing Liz would do is tell her father anything about her husband given as you said yourself, he does not think highly of the man?”
“Your son” Dave asked.
“Yes,” Phillip acknowledged. “I am aware my son had done things that one would regret but it does not change how much I might love my son” he sighed as he wished he could say as much to his son face to face. Maybe one of these days I will
Dave did nod. “You have not visited your son at the prison that he has been a resident of, these last sixteen years,” he murmured. “Why is that?”
“That was my son’s choice,” Phillip muttered. “If it had been my wife or I’s choice. We would have been there, but my son wanted to keep his wife, and us, away from him” he sighed. “So, there was no reason to go, if our son did not want us there…”
“And now your daughter is his lawyer,” Dave asked. “Following in your footsteps?”
“Is that against the law to have a family member represent you?” Phillip murmured as he did enjoy the fact his daughter had found a love for the law. Even if the very nature of their family tested that love and desire with each passing day.
“Why did you not represent your son all those years ago?” Dave asked.
“It was not my kind of law,” Phillip murmured. “I do not have the experience in that kind of litigation” he gritted. “After all this is a small town. And there is not really a need for any other kind?”
“Yet your son challenged that view,” Dave asked. “And did you not handle your son’s case in Utah when he was picked up for robbing a convenience store with his girlfriend” Dave Barker asked. “Which is why this is federal, because his knack of committing crimes over state lines” he sighed the anger in both men’s eyes.
“Is this going somewhere?” Jeff asked as he recoiled against the memories of the past. “You are looking for my daughter’s husband are you not?”
“That is right, I am” Dave murmured. “Are you sure you do not know anything?”
“Why would I?” Jeff sighed.
“I am told your granddaughter comes here a lot, and you are quite close the girl. Maybe she said something about her father in the last twenty-four hours?” Dave asked as both men stepped back at the mention of their mutual grandchild. “Would a grandchild not mention their father in a course of a visit?”
Jeff once again recoiled at the use of Olivia to get at him, or to score points. Because no matter how he might feel at the child’s father. Jeff did love Olivia greatly, and was immensely proud of her, and did not want her hurt. “Why bring up my granddaughter?”
“Because she is part of this,” Dave Barker mused.
Shit came an irritated Zack as he and Amelia taking their turns eavesdropping through a heating grate, as it went I not the back room, and they were trying to overhear what was being said. And they had finally heard the cusp of the visit. Olivia is right Amelia mused. That idiot is going after her? as she stopped back and looked at Zack who was just as irritated as Amelia was herself. “They are looking into Olivia are they not?”
“Yup,” Amelia admitted as they left the area before being discovered, and quickly left the restaurant and stopped nearby. “Olivia told me herself that they were sniffing around, but it’s more than that, they are clearly interested.”
“They know she disappeared from the prison with her mother’s car?” Zack asked.
“And they have a missing ambulance,” Amelia murmured.
Which is not on her Zack muttered out loud as they continued to walk. “All she wanted is for her Dad to be free” he wondered aloud at his detachment of the fact Max was his biological father. Still to him, Max was more Olivia’s father than his because he did have a mother and father.
“Yeah,” Amelia allowed. “I do not think she set out to do it. As she said, she acted without thinking of the consequences. Which has been something she has been doing more and more recently,” she sighed. “Olivia all her life has been pretty cautious. But lately, that has been out of the window.”
Zack murmured. “That is normal?”
“Unless you never stepped out of line before,” Amelia murmured I am always stepping out of line. Olivia was a different soul. And it eventually wears on you, when you attempt to be someone different than who you are, she mused. “Which was Olivia before all this…”
“Still, she does not deserve this,” Zack murmured.
“None of us do,” Amelia murmured as for once she was thinking more and more of her mother’s line of worry that the legacy of the original generation that began with the shooting, was now moving onto the second generation, and how it would end, was anyone’s guess. She was a wildcard. She always knew it. But she could see her mother’s point. Messing with their futures makes you lose big once you bluff too much.
“Where is Olivia now?” Zack asked.
“Who knows,” Amelia sighed.
“That is not good,” Zack murmured.
“She probably went to see you know who,” Amelia murmured because they were still walking in daylight, and who knows who would have ears and make the connection if they were too implicit. “So, she is probably safe for now.”
“But for how long?” Zack asked.
“They can’t possible think she is guilty?” Amelia asked.
“She is,” Zack murmured.
“But they will never believe she could have done it alone. Given her condition. The idea she could have done it all by herself…”
“But she did,” Zack sighed as he remembered how she had maneuvered through all the security gates, and all he did was drive the ambulance. His half sister had surprised him with her moves. She was stronger than most would give her credit for being.
“What are you going to do about it?” Amelia wondered.
“Hell, if I know,” Zack sighed but he was thinking of doing something, and Amelia could sense it.
“Zack, you are not going to do something crazy are you?”
“I do not know what I am going to do,” Zack sighed, and Amelia knew he was lying as she had the guess that this was going to get messy.
Very messy.
Olivia did not care that others were worried for her as she stood back against the set of rocks, and the cave, as she sought the fresh air. She figured her mother and father were spending time together. She wanted that for them. She knew her mother had missed out on too much. Just like she had missed out on her father. Her mother of course had missed out on having her husband, and seeing that scene before, had allowed a whole lot to make sense again.
She had never seen her mother respond to someone like she had with her father. It showed how when two people made sense than the world can right itself, and make it the world go around, and make you truly understand the world, even when it was spinning out of control.
It made Olivia see that she had not found that herself, yet. As she though of what she had achieved with Alex. But now she was doubting it and she wondered if that was just childish fun. With consequences to be had. The way her mother had looked at her father, or her father had when he looked at her mother.
She saw love, and love that was real.
Adult and something special.
She was dreaming and thinking of when it all made sense and did not hear the Olivia come her way. “Olivia,” came the voice again, and finally she snapped out of her trance. “Oh,” she said as she saw her aunt.
Isabel was looking at her niece weirdly. “Where were you?”
“Dreaming,” Olivia smiled. “What are you doing here?” she asked as she had not expected to see her aunt. Maybe she should have. “Is everything alright back home?”
“I hope so,” Isabel smiled because she did not want anything else to be wrong still though, well, she knew Kyle was taking the girls out to dinner and a movie after school let out. So, she had a few hours to deal with collision of drama going on in the family. She had wanted to come to see her brother. She had yet to visit since Max had woken up because she had had wanted to give the time for her brother to be with the people he loved. “Why are you here?”
“I was visiting Dad, you know” Olivia allowed.
“Why were you not inside then?” Isabel wondered as she looked around. “Too many people out here, and people might wonder,” she asked even though they were up on the incline and out of the view of the expansive desert sands.
“I was letting Mom and Dad have sometime alone,” she sighed. “I did not want to go in there and intrude, you know.”
“I know,” Isabel smiled. “It was sickening back in the day,” she sighed as she remembered how lovey dovey her brother had been over Liz Parker back in the day when things were sane and had not gone out of control. It was sickening perfect and had made her want it, herself and eventually she had gotten it, the harder way and still she knew she had it easier than what her brother had been fated to “But they were decent, were they not?”
“Yes,” Olivia laughed as she hugged her aunt. “Thank you for coming.”
“You are welcome,” Isabel murmured as she took solace in her niece. “I am glad to see you too,” she sighed as she did not relish the drama that was coming their way. “You are doing okay, right?”
“Sure, why would I not be” Olivia wondered.
“I guess there is no reason,” Isabel lied. “Are you going to come back inside with me?” she wondered as she glanced at her niece and wondered what was going on with her. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Olivia lied “I was just thinking about things in my own life.”
“How about you take my car, and drive back into town,” Isabel murmured suddenly and without really thinking it through and she knew it was the right thing because the change in the cars would keep her niece out of the spotlight of Agent Barker. “I have some things I want to say, and I can get a ride into town with your mother, and pick up the car later?”
“Why?” Olivia wondered.
“I am being nice,” Isabel smiled.
“That is why I am worried,” Olivia asked warily. “You are going to talk about me, are you not?” she wondered.
“Maybe I will, maybe I will not” Isabel chuckled when she saw the weariness on her niece’s face “All I want to do see my brother, okay?”
“Okay,” Olivia conceded so that she did not have to wait for her mother to want to leave her father, and it would give her them more time together, without her getting in the way. If she agreed to take her aunt’s car then she could get home, and deal with whatever was happening back there without worry, because her mother would be fine here with her father.
She of course now knew that her father never willingly hurt her mother. Because she was everything to him.
“So, how about you do this for me, and I will let your mother know that she can meet you at home” she sighed. “It will give you some time to think…”
“If you are sure,” Olivia asked as Isabel handed her the car keys.
“I am,” Isabel murmured.
“I guess, I will” Olivia nodded as she hugged her aunt and walked away. Sighing with dread of what was upcoming. Isabel watched as her niece walk towards her car and get inside. When she knew that her niece was safe Isabel turned and put the hand towards the rock, and it opened, and she walked inside.
Inside the chamber. Max and Liz were in their own world once again. Neither though it was strange that Olivia had not come back inside once she had concluded with her call. They just took in each other and enjoyed spending time together.
Time that had eluded them for these past seventeen years. Since the time when they were only eighteen, and young and naïve. It was glorious to spend time together, and reality did not bust through, except when it did.
But for now, all they were doing was looking into each other’s eyes, and they then her the rumble of the door opening. Thinking it was Olivia, they did not think anymore. But then when a different sense came set in on the chamber. They knew it was someone different.
“Who is it?” Max called out into the cavern.
“It’s me,” Isabel said softly as she walked in and took in her brother and Liz together. She could not help but think everything was right when she saw her brother with the woman he loved. Too much had been taken from them, and from her brother.
She wanted life to matter again. For happiness to finally come to her brother.
“Isabel,” Max said softly as she got up from the rock they were sitting on together as his sister walked into the chamber. “What are you doing here?”
“Visiting you?” Isabel laughed as she and her brother hugged as they both took in the concept that they were able to touch each other. Something that had not been allowed for nearly seventeen years until recently. Max revelled in the moment.
While Liz sensed something was up “Where is Olivia?” she asked it finally dawned on her that her daughter had not come back inside the chamber as she too easily got drawn in by her husband. Isabel was a remembrance that she was no longer eighteen anymore. She did have responsibilities, and one of those responsibilities was her own sixteen-year-old.
“She is headed back to town in my car,” Isabel allowed.
“Why would you send her back to town in your car?” Liz asked.
“Because we have to talk” Isabel muttered in her professional tone, and both Max and Liz knew that would mean bad news.
Uh oh Liz muttered to herself, and even said it out loud too “What is going on?”
“We were right Liz,” Isabel mumbled. “Agent Barker has made it crystal clear when he found me at my office. That yes, we do have to worry about him coming after Olivia, but he is also coming after all of us” Isabel sighed “And while I wanted to see my brother. I knew now is the time we talk about this, and because of that, well, I felt it was better to speak of this matter alone without Olivia stressing out about it?”
“Agent Barker” Max asked clearly in the dark. Mainly because Liz had been unable to break from their glow to level with him about the federal government sniffing around them, and especially their daughter as she turned to face Isabel with a degree of misery. “What is going on?”
“The federal agent they sent in search of you” Isabel muttered.
“Shit,” Max muttered as if he should not have realized that they would have come after him, and by coming after him. It meant his family would be a target of their wrath. “I am very sorry…”
“Right,” Liz muttered as reality was breaking through the bubble and she did not know whether they would be able to get back to how it was, which was very appropriate she bitterly told herself. This is how it always is with us. One good moment in a ton of bad ones she sighed as she allowed Isabel to break the bad news as she took her husband’s hand as they both grasped it for dear life. “It’s not your fault. You did not ask for this to have happened,” she muttered because it had not been Max’s decision to break out.
“But it someone who we all love,” Isabel murmured as she saw the misery on her brother’s face and knew they all felt it. Because it was going to take a lot of effort “They were sniffing around Liz’s place last night and angling in on Olivia” Isabel sighed. “Which is bad news, because Olivia is actually guilty.”
“Zack is too,” Liz allowed.
“But Olivia was the mastermind,” Isabel mused. “She takes full responsibility, and that is bad news if they were to catch up to her?”
“Are they?” Max asked with fear because this was why he had confessed all those years ago. Taking the danger level away from his family and most of all his wife, and his sister who were in the lion glare of the federal government, and their military once they found his parent’s surveillance tape and they had gotten the witness that had been able to identify Liz’s powers to turn, and say Liz was one of them which was only half the story.
They had saved her, and the military had squeezed her, and she had admitted to such tactics by the military after she testified in court, and Michael and Isabel confronted her, and she told them what had happened.
Max did not blame her because anyone would have turned, and he compounded the misery in his clan by confessing and having to deal with what the government was putting them through so the last thing he would want to do now, so many years later, was to have either of his children facing the danger that came under the microscope.
And especially Olivia.
When all she did was want to know him, and she opened the pandora box of the past.
“We are trying to keep them away,” Isabel murmured. “It is not going to be easy. So far, the agent whose name is Dave Barker is asking questions without a lot of evidence to back up his suspicions. All he has is Olivia at the prison with Liz last night after they got word of what happened with you. The warden was not giving out any information, and so Liz went to speak with the warden…”
“Right,” Liz murmured. “Olivia stayed in the security area, and then she disappeared. I was not able to contact her, and when the warden discovered you went missing. I was with him, but he would not let me leave until I called Isabel, and she zoomed up to the prison and got them to release me by pointing out that the warden was my alibi. Which he was. I had been there for many hours in a stare down trying to get information on you, and neither of us left the room. So, I have an alibi. But Olivia does not, and then they discovered that she vanished herself. My car was gone, and so was an ambulance.”
“She would have taken the car?” Max asked.
“Yes,” both women agreed. “Zack admits being the driver of the ambulance. Olivia had contacted him and needed his assistance, and he came up via his own Uber driver, and they brought you here, and it took a little while before Isabel and me, along with Michael and Maria to figure out this was the destination. Amelia and Alex had gone missing themselves, and they helped aid and abet moving you into this chamber because you were still unconscious…”
“Jeez,” Max murmured as he felt the flashbacks coming to his brain of their own mischievous missions back when they were teenagers. Capers all hours of the day, and night, and their parents were oblivious until they were not and that ended up biting them, and especially him in the end.
“As I said, it has been a wakeup call for all of us” Liz murmured.
“Once again I am glad my own girls are too young,” Isabel sighed.
“One day Isabel, one day” Liz warned.
“I know,” Isabel sighed. “Kyle and I are armed for that day…” she muttered even though she knows that they were not truly.
“How do we protect Olivia, and Zack for that matter” Max muttered as he was once more remaindered how he was in a cocoon of sorts in this sealed caved, and still he did not know where that took him, from here on out.
No one did.
Because they knew sometimes the federal government was too armed, and they would win in the end.
But they had to try at least, right?
Zack walked into his motel room and started to plan while at the same time Amelia walked into her house and saw her mother. “We have trouble,” she muttered to her mother who was doing paperwork for the store which was closed for the day for inventory. She had staff doing it for her, because she felt the need to be home closer to the kids. Assuming her kids showed up, and now Amelia had, and she could see the concern on her daughter’s face. “What is it Amelia?” she asked. “Is everything fine with Greg?” she wondered as she remembered her talk with Ann Simpson.
“Of course,” Amelia muttered as a frown came over her mother’s voice as she became worried that she was missing something “What is going on Mom?”
“Nothing, just doing the books for the store,” Maria murmured as she sat in front of her laptop and thanked the lord for the creation of accounting software because she cursed not spending more time taking mathematics seriously in school. She had her other interests that took precedent, and doing math was not one of them.
She could not help but remember how when she first took over the store how she had been tutored by Liz on how to deal with the accounting programs, for payroll, and the store inventory because Liz had been an old pro because of her responsibilities at the Crashdown. It was always a laugh a minute to think of herself as a businesswoman, but it was largely working, and keeping the roof over their heads.
And that was important given her daughter was testing every limit.
“Do you something I do not with Greg?” Amelia wondered because this was not the first time, she had gotten the sense that she had not been told something. But with Greg, it was easy to ignore the feeling and spend time together, because in only a few days, he would be leaving again, and plus, he was being cagey with when he was coming back again, and that made her have different kind of worries than whether her parents approved of her friends or not.
“No,” Maria murmured. “You are spending more time with Greg honey than I am, so you would know more than I would” she smiled, and her daughter was not put off by the dodge because she knew a dodge when she saw one because she was an old hand at it.
“Mom,” Amelia wondered.
“Seriously honey, it is fine” Maria murmured. “I should be dealing with this tricky accounting program,” she sighed as she checked the clock on the wall “You should know that dinner will be later because your father is working on a case.”
“Okay,” Amelia muttered as she knew something was off with her mother as she remembered her own worries as her mother did not follow up with her earlier warning. “Mom.”
“What?” Maria asked as her concentration went back to the computer.
“I think the FBI is looking at Olivia,” Amelia muttered, and Maria went pale. “I thought you should know if you did not already know.”
“Oh god,” Maria muttered as she stopped focusing on the store and turned her concentration on her teenage daughter as if she had not already been warned about this development in their escalating story. I have been but still there was stuff she did not know “What do you know?”
“Some FBI agent were interrogating Olivia’s grandfathers, both of them, at the Crashdown just now when I was there,” Amelia muttered as she went onto explain why she would have been at the restaurant “I was finishing up lunch with Greg, and he had left to meet his mother and grandparents when I was talking to Zack…”
“Zack,” Maria muttered.
“Mom,” Amelia sighed as sent out of an eye roll. “All we were doing was talking, and we overheard a conversation which makes me think that they are looking into Olivia’s whereabouts last night…”
“Shit,” Maria muttered as she picked up her cellphone, and started dialing, “Michael, we have to talk” she sighed as Amelia knew trouble was in the offering as she did not tell her mother than she had the suspicion that Zack was going to be doing something stupid in protection of his half sister.
Something stupid was exactly what Zack was planning…