Jake pulled up into the driveway of his childhood home. He had dropped his wife off at her hair appointment and his daughter was being spoiled by her great grandparents, Phillip and Diane Evans and driving by the station to have a talk with his grandfather to see whether he was able to come back to his job now that his sister’s case was over. Jim wanted to talk it over. Jake did not know what that meant but he had to drop something off at his parents’ home, and he wanted to check on his sister.
Driving into the driveway, he had gotten out of his car and then saw the black car across the street, and knew that his parent’s home had been under protection for the last month over threats over his sister’s case but the threats were largely disappeared when it went out into the media, how Nicholas had tortured Elizabeth and she’s wasn’t some stone cold killer getting her freedom. The media did not know everything, but enough to tide them over despite a sizable percentage still outraged that Elizabeth had been given a lenient deal. His experience told him that this black car was different.
So, he needed help, and therefore he called Max. Fifteen minutes later, Max pulled up. “What was so important?”
“That car is suspicious,” Jake muttered as he pointed the car out to his father-in-law. “It doesn’t have New Mexico license plate. I called them in, and they came up blank” Jake asked. “I didn’t want to get Dad into this because he’s working hard at getting his business established again” he sighed as he knew how much of brunt his father took in the wake of his sister’s disappearance as being a private investigator stopped being something Michael had any interest in doing but as time went on, he started to want to get back into the game and was establishing his business again, and therefore and Jake didn’t want to get his father going again. Especially if this led to something. Unless he needed to alert his father, so he felt on safer ground with Max.
“Okay,” Max nodded as they walked to the car. And he maneuvered the car opened using his powers, and he went through the car, and started wondering what he was going to find when in the glove compartment. Only to find a spare gun, and ID. Taking out the ID, he swore when he saw it.
“What is it?” Jake asked.
“The FBI” Max murmured as he glanced down at the car and thought back to his talk with the prosecutor the night before and the nagging feeling he had gotten over the last hours only became more of a nagging one now.
“What does the FBI want with my family house?” Jake asked.
“One word. Your sister,” Max murmured as the situation was started to become clearer for Max and he didn’t like what he was thinking.
“What does Elizabeth have to do with this?” Jake wondered as Max stalked to the fence.
“We’re going in the backway to find out exactly that…” Max murmured as they went into the backyard, and now they were facing with Ava and Elizabeth. “We don’t want them the chance to leave before giving us the answers that we need.”
“So, wait, the suicidal torture victim was all an award-winning act?” Max asked off his client as Elizabeth defiantly shook her head. “It’s no wonder the prosecutor wasn’t convinced but her hands were tied, weren’t they?” Max asked as he turned his attention back to Ava. “So, I take it that you pressured Lisa into a deal?”
“Yes,” Ava confirmed. “We knew it wouldn’t be served for Elizabeth to be in prison when she could help us elsewhere” she muttered to the utter disgust in Elizabeth’s eyes as she could see her brother and Uncle’s reactions and the way looked at her change, and she hated seeing the disappointment on their face.
“You had us convinced?” Jake asked of his sister.
“She’s lying” Elizabeth muttered. “What she isn’t saying is that she forced me to stay with Nicholas. I wanted out eight months ago. Everything is true Uncle Max, Jake, I promise you. Up to eight months ago, I was this shell of the person I was. I was weak, and drugged to the gills most of the time, but I was close to getting out. I was almost there. When I had that abortion, I was going to leave. Hell, with the consequences. Nicholas was away or so I thought, and I thought I had the time to get away. So, yeah, I was thisclose to getting out, but Ava found me, and she told me it was all part of a larger scheme to get at Nicholas and Khivar and if I stayed with Nicholas and this time convince him that I was pregnant, and that they would work to get him in the meantime.” Elizabeth sighed as she looked at her handler. “Only for me to find out that he had made you, agent” she sighed. “You were working with him, weren’t you?”
“No,” Ava muttered. “He didn’t make me.”
“Yes, he did,” Elizabeth muttered. “I saw evidence that he knew you were on to him and he was diverting whatever case you were trying to make on him” she sighed. “So, it was all for nothing, but it kept me with him for another six months, with a lie that had a ticking time bomb attached to it, and you knew it. You knew if there was no baby, and that Nicholas could have found out at any time, and what the result would most likely be, and you kept me in…”
“You knew my sister was there with a mad man.” Jake asked with rage in his eyes. “You sent her back to her torturer, and you could have gotten her out, but you kept her there?” he asked with disgust on his face and Max winced at the knowledge that someone did know where Elizabeth was, and yet they used to her to get what they wanted and didn’t care about the abuse she was suffering or the despair she was being sent into. “You knew what he was doing to her and had done to her since her abduction?”
“We wanted his boss” Ava murmured and knew how it sounded and got anger from all corners of the room.
“And to be able to get to his boss, what, you forced my sister to submit to her abuser to get at Khivar?” Jake asked as he felt sick to his stomach at the thought of someone knowing where Elizabeth and yet kept her there because it suited their purpose at the end of the day. “That is sick”
“Jake is right, it is sick. And highly unethical” Max muttered. “I get that you wanted her to help your case, but how about human decency?” he asked. “And how were you supposed to get him anyways. He’s on Antar?”
“No,” Ava muttered as she knew was being forced to reveal something, she would rather not tell them. “He’s not.”
“What are you talking about” Max stammered as he could not believe what he was hearing. “Are you telling me he’s on his planet. If he is, and you knew this, then why didn’t you tell us?” he asked. “Why didn’t you warn us because if he’s knows where to find us then we are all in danger. Is Elizabeth right, you kept us in the dark all to serve your case?”
“What is new Uncle Max?” Elizabeth muttered. “That has been her specialty all this time,” she murmured with disgust. “Keeping us in the dark, and leaving especially me at the hands of the devil”
“He was in Los Angeles,” Ava admitted as she sighed and knew she had spill what she knew against her better judgment. “Years ago, Khivar was forced off Antar in a coup. Similar to the one who took us off the planet, So like us, to save himself, he found his way to Earth and looked at every angle in trying to get back to his home planet, and none of them worked, but while he was trying to find a way back, he did the only thing he had any talent for, and he took over the soul and body of a Los Angeles drug dealer, named Kevin Salazar and in his time on Earth, he eventually made the enterprise one of the most deadly in the United States. As you would assume Nicholas was one of his men. Someone who had climbed the ranks though out his years on Earth, and when Khivar showed up in California and they found each other. Khivar and Nicholas formed a partnership with Nicholas, and they struck a deal. Nicholas knew of the existence of us, and you guys. He came up with the brilliant idea that if they had access to a baby born from the original royal blood line then that baby might be a ticket back to Antar. Khivar had this feeling that he could get the country to see his side if he had a heir of the original royal family, but it couldn’t be any baby, but one that had alien pedigree so it couldn’t be any baby born of a union between one of us…”
“My royal line?” Max asked sickened by the idea. “Which is what he wanted back seven years ago, when he wanted to use Grace, but she and Jake got together, but because the seal goes to Michael if something goes to me and not to my sister. Jake is a Guerin via adoption and not Michael’s blood. So, they used Elizabeth endlessly to try to get the royal heir to go back”
“Yeah.” Ava admitted. “Something to that affect. But in his present form, Kevin Salazar was making good use of the drug trade here in the States and was becoming power hungry and he was using his powers for evil. He was causing destruction, and taking lives in many forms, and we were hoping that Nicholas would bring Elizabeth closer to Salazar. So, we could get at both but we didn’t bargain on Nicholas keeping Elizabeth in the same apartment and using her” she muttered as she didn’t want to finish what she was saying, as anyone could figure out what Ava was suggesting. “For his own purposes.”
“Then you were goddamn stupid,” Jake said with real anger in his voice. “Anyone seeing what he did to my sister back when she was fifteen could see that he was using her as a revenge against my family” Jake muttered. “If it led to helping Khivar, then perfect but he was finding great pleasure in getting revenge on my father, and it went beyond helping Khivar to how it was benefiting his own quest for revenge at the end of the day. He would never have given her up to someone else when he could have used her for his pleasure.” He gritted. “If it led to a baby, fine, then he would have used it, but would have kept Elizabeth as his personal toy, because he wanted to destroy my father…”
“Jake is right,” Max sighed. “As long as Elizabeth was his slave then he knew we would never have or find peace. Sure, he probably hoped one day she might one day give up what Khivar desired and he might have been getting to that point, that he would sacrifice her to because he was tiring of her. Given that he blackmailed Elizabeth into coming into his web using our secrets, it was about destroying us and using her for his own sick personal enjoyment” he muttered with great hatred.
“And of course, she was having other men’s babies” Ava muttered. “If only…”
“If I had given him what he wanted” Elizabeth muttered. “He would have set me free?” she asked. “Then you are as crazy as your duplicate was,” she sighed which led to Max’s wincing and Ava going pale at the mention of Tess. “If seven years I had given him a baby. Then I would be dead today. And while I might have hated the circumstances, they were born under still then I my sons would not have a chance to be here today. “I gave him enough. I was not giving him that. I stayed because it protected my family. If I stayed then he would not come after my parents, and my siblings. Especially Belle and Emily…”
“Nicholas wasn’t getting at Belle and Emily…” Ava muttered. “I told you that…”
“You knew he had me,” Elizabeth reminded Ava. “You knew and you kept me there until I served your purpose. And that happened eight months ago when I tried to get my freedom. When I went for my final abortion,” she muttered to her brother and Uncle. “I thought I had the time to get away from Nicholas because he was off on a sizable trip that time. I was in the hospital and Ava found me.”
“You weren’t getting your freedom,” Ava reminded Elizabeth. “Nicholas knew. He was biding his time. He might not have known yet, but we offered you a deal…”
“What kind of a deal?” Max asked.
“We would help her clean and she help us…” Ava muttered.
“So that is how you got clean?” Jake asked.
“Yeah,” Elizabeth admitted and yet she knew had found her rock bottom as that point. She was tired of the drugs and being strung out all the time. “But I wanted to be clean. I was tired. And I thought if I could get clean, then that might allow me a chance to figure where to go next”
“She was to stay clean and give us intel on Nicholas and we were hoping Khivar. To do this, we were hoping by thinking she was giving him a baby that it might soften him and bring him closer to Khivar.”
“But it didn’t…” Jake asked.
“No, but we had hope” Ava muttered
“You always have hope, but it never did pan out, right?” Max asked.
“Nope. And then she goes and kills the bastard,” Ava sighed. “Ending any chance at getting Salazar…”
“Otherwise I was going to be dead once he knew I was not pregnant, and you knew that I wasn’t going to survive this latest deception. Especially since he knew about my other attempts to go around him.”
“We would have saved you.” Ava sighed.
“You didn’t get her out when you knew he had her in his web,” Jake muttered. “How was she supposed to think she would have gotten out of there alive. If you knew she was there, and you kept it going because you wanted the big fish. Nicholas was too small, right. He was smalltime. A despicable bastard but a bastard who did not give you what your career would have needed, the big fish. “You didn’t care what he was doing to her…”
“That is unfair. We did.” Ava sighed as she hated having to defend herself.
“Why spring her from prison?” Max asked as he could not help but be curious about what gaining Elizabet’s release from prison helped Ava’s case. What does a mental hospital bring? “Tell us the truth. What does it get you?” he wondered. “How does her be in a mental hospital help the operation?”
“When Nicholas was killed. We though Elizabeth lost us our chance, but the situation has changed, and we have new life because Kevin Salazar, well, he got himself caught up in another sting, which we were not a part of. It took us awhile before we became aware that around the time that Elizabeth killed Nicholas. Because he’s so damn powerful, well, instead of jail, he claimed insanity and he therefore used his connections to get himself placed in a mental health facility, and that facility ended up being here in New Mexico while he awaits trial.”
“What is he doing here?” Jake asked. “Why not one in California?”
“Space issues,” Ava muttered.
“Or you used your connections to get him transferred closer to Elizabeth. You went to Lisa didn’t you and got her to make a deal with me so that Elizabeth who needs rehabilitation gets sent to the same institution,” Max muttered as horror came to his face as it struck him of what Ava was angling to be able to use his goddaughter for, and it made him sick. “You wanted to use her as bait. Attractive bait. Someone from our line. Michael’s eldest. His eldest daughter. Someone who is troubled, and a drug addict and who is a two-time killer and who was sentenced to a mental hospital? Because she’s Nicholas’ killer, you think that will attract this Salazar enough to bring her into his orbit and during time for Elizabeth to attract him so that you can ultimately take him down…” Max asked sickened by the idea. “You actually want her to team up with him?”
The room became eerily silent as the weight of what Max deduced sunk into the gathering and when Ava did not dispute it, he knew he struck at the truth. Horror came to Jake as it sunk into him of what Ava was asking of his sister, or her greatest desire would be in using his sister. “If that is what you want then HELL NO!” Jake said adamantly. “Absolutely no way, are you using my sister in that manner” as Elizabeth grew quiet as it started to sink in what Ava wanted her to do.
“We want access to Salazar,” Ava admitted. “How she gets that access is up to her?”
“Jesus. Then you’re as sick as your duplicate,” Jake stammered as he thought of what his sister might be forced to do to bring the case to a close as Elizabeth had stepped back as she went white at the mere thought of what the grand plan might be…
“You didn’t know Tess,” Ava sighed as she thought of Tess and glanced at Max who went white. “I don’t like what I often called upon to do, but if it leads us to taking down the kingpin that is killing hundreds of kids and adults all over this country. You got lucky Jake that drugs did not take your sister from you. She survived. Not everyone has the same opportunity. Lives have been lost, and so yeah, I will take it and furthermore, I will do what it takes to get Salazar off the streets, and his organization shut down. Tess often had no conscious in what she did. I do.”
“Do you?” Jake asked as he doubted it.
“You’re a cop, Deputy Guerin. I know what you have done in the name of the job. So, do not get so rigorous or moral when you know there is a line, and sometimes that line has be crossed to get the case to the finish line. We want Salazar and if I can get him by using Elizabeth in an undercover mission then I will do it. It will end him and rid of us of any threat from Khivar. So, yes, I will do it. Guerin, you didn’t know him,” Ava murmured as she faced Max and pointed to him. “We did. We might not remember all he did, but he was brutal dictator, and he has continued with his reign of terror on our planet. He is ruining lives all over the place. Shouldn’t Elizabeth want to help us?”
“You are asking her to sacrifice herself?” Jake demanded. “Her dignity?”
“I lost my dignity seven years ago” Elizabeth said softly to her brother. “Agent Stevens is right. I am a killer and I am a drug addict who will never live down what I did, and because of that I have been forced to endure more than most people in a lifetime have the misfortune to so maybe if it gets Khivar today, maybe I need to do it?”
“Hell no…” Jake demanded.
“There has to be another way?” Max asked as he wished he could cut down the temperature in the room and knew that Jake had a right not to like what Ava was asking of his sister. Max certainly didn’t like it, or what Elizabeth would be called to do to temp Salazar into bringing her into his organization.”
“Max, I want to think there is another way. But simply there isn’t” Ava murmured. “We have tried everything we can think of it. Do not think we have not but he has won every time, and while he might be behind cement walls now, still we know it is not going to end of him. He is going to find a way out, and he is going to return to his business if he is not already conducting it from the hospital. He is going to ruin lives. Elizabeth is our best chance to get to him. I don’t like what we’re asking her to do, but if it saves lives, shouldn’t we at least try?”
“She’s not a cop,” Jake muttered. “She’s not trained.”
“She’s been basically undercover all this time,” Ava asked. “She knows Nicholas’s world. She is stronger than she thinks. She stayed alive all this time for a reason…”
“I stayed alive not because of who I am,” Elizabeth asked softly. “But because I got lucky. Otherwise I would be long dead,” she muttered as she gritted her teeth and glared at Ava. “Isn’t he going to find it fishy if I am suddenly arriving into his orbit?”
“No,” Ava shook her head. “Killing Nicholas plays into perfectly…”
“So, now you’re happy she killed him?” Jake snidely remarked.
“I am not going to say this will be easy, because it won’t be…” Ava sighed. “As I said before, I wish there were another way but if she does this. And if it works. Then she takes him down. And when she walks free, she walks free. You will not have to worry that he is out there. Max, he took your wife from you and he would have used your daughter in the same manner that was done to Elizabeth. So, you got lucky. But should you not want him gone?”
“Watch it Ava. I would advise you to try again because if you think you can use my wife or my daughter as justification for this master plan of yours” Max bristled as if he was stabbed at the invocation of his wife and daughter into their conversation. “My daughter may not have been taken but she was not unaffected because she had her name and her reputation torn into tatters and it was the same for Jake. Which is something you would know if you are at all up on the havoc that Nicholas and Khivar pulled in destroying our lives. We might still be standing but we came too close to destruction. So, don’t use my wife or my daughter in you quest to hand Elizabeth to a shark.”
“You got lucky Jake” Ava said ignoring Max’s directive.
“How do you think I got lucky. My sister was kidnapped and tortured. While I might not have had my wife kidnapped but her reputation is mud. Agent Stevens, he shattered my family and it almost ended my parent’s marriage. Nicholas is the devil who succeeded in ruining my reputation and made it impossible for me to graduate, and while at the end of the day, not graduating is on me but my sister practically died because of the abuse Nicholas’s goons committed on her, and if she wasn’t who she was, or had good fortune of knowing Max here than she would have died that day. My wife was run out of town because of the rumors, and because of what Nicholas engineered. Our relationship was put under a microscope. I was accused of raping my girlfriend in the media and on social media. Sure, yes, we did end up together, but it was not because of Nicholas and Khivar. It was to the spite of them and to people out there in the world. Just because we did end up married, does not mean they do not still look at me suspiciously. I will never truly be able to go somewhere else without having to answer questions and so, no, I am not going to let you use my sister as bait to seduce the big fish into your net, so you can make your career.”
“That is for her to decide” Ava murmured as she glanced at Elizabeth and rejected his tirade. “She knows what happens if she were to say no, don’t you…” she asked as Elizabeth went white at the weight of the decision upon her shoulders, as both Jake and Max instantly recoiled at the threat issued towards the young woman
“Jesus Christ. Elizabeth, please… Jake pleaded in desperation as he was staring at the possible loss of his sister for a second time, and this time might be final if it were to go wrong. “If they want you so badly then they can find another way to get at Salazar. You shouldn’t let them use you…”
“Don’t do what,” came Maria’s voice as she came into the house and saw the gathering and the angry voice of his son and the paleness of her daughter. Max was not much better as he winced as he saw Maria walk into the living room and he forgot that they were not alone, and now there would be a lot more to decide. “What is going on here, what did I miss?”
“No Max, please no” Maria wailed a few hours later as she stood along with her husband in Max’s office. “You can’t let them do this. You can’t let them take our daughter from us…” she murmured as she stood looking like a ghost. Michael was not any better when Max finished filling them in with what he had learned since the encounter at the house. None of it was good, or easy to here. “We just got her back…” she moaned as she recalled how she had slapped Ava and kicked her out of the house when Ava tried to explain.
Darkness existed in the office as they were all forced to ponder the unfathomable choice Ava was giving Elizabeth, and the choice really wasn’t one at the end of the day because she didn’t really have a choice and Elizabeth knew this. “Mom, I have to do this,” Elizabeth murmured as she stood at the back of the room. She had permission to leave the house to go meet with her lawyer, and she didn’t like that they had to meet about her giving herself up as bait to lure dangerous drug kingpin who liked to pray on the innocent. “If this gets him out of the way?”
“No, let Tess’s duplicate find someone else to use as bait” Maria demanded as she felt hatred for Ava, and was heart sick at the thought of her daughter in such a situation. “If they want him so badly, then they can find someone else and that you don’t have to risk your recovery or your sobriety to try to get them someone who they should have found a way to get, way before now…”
“At the end of the day, it’s Elizabeth’s choice whether to do this,” Max murmured as Elizabeth nodded because they both saw that this was not something the young woman could deny. Max knew it as much as his goddaughter did. “Believe me, I don’t like it Maria and I truly wish there is another way but if Elizabeth doesn’t agree to do it then we all know that Ava will strike back at her, and us, as she will rescind the deal and go the judge and then Elizabeth will be looking at significant jail time. Lisa all but admitted to me that she thinks Elizabeth is a liar. If it gets out that she had a chance to get away from Nicholas months ago, and she stayed…”
“Only because the FBI forced her” Maria moaned at the despair she felt at the knowledge that people had known where her daughter was and yet they hadn’t come to her or Michael to try to rescue their daughter from her hellhole. The stunning realization that Ava had known her daughter and grandsons were in danger and yet it worked to their advantage to keep them there, and when Elizabeth was this close to getting out, they roped her back in until she went out firing and now she was asked to give something even worse, to try to bring down Salazar.
“Ava will rescind our deal Maria. She will play ignorance on all things that the FBI knew. We don’t have any proof she knew, and she’ll play dumb and they will rescind the deal and say that Elizabeth did have a way getting out from under Nicholas control and she didn’t, and she stayed of her own free will, and that she lied about the baby. And then she killed him when months earlier, well, she had a way of getting free. That she stayed because she planned to kill him. Maria, Michael, that goes to premeditation and the charges will get upgraded, and she’s looking at the rest of her life in jail.”
“You can’t let her do this,” Maria pleaded as tears fell down her face.
“Mom I did this to myself” Elizabeth muttered. “I stayed. I could have gotten free. Long time ago. I could have left. Before the FBI came and found me. Eight months ago, wasn’t the only time, but there were many times in the last five years, but I didn’t because I was worried not only that Nicholas would come after you guys or the kids once I got them out of the apartment. But maybe it was because I was scared to come home. I hurt you guys, and I screwed up my life. If I do this, and we can bring him down. Then maybe I can look at myself in the mirror at the end of the day or my sons and even Emily and know that I did to protect them. That I did something to help them, after having taken so much from. Nicholas and Khivar has taken too much from us. And I forced the boys to live with a monster. So, this is my chance to end this… maybe this is my time?”
“There has to be another way…” Michael asked as he took his daughter in this arms and hugged her as he looked at his best friend and both knew what they were doing in sending Elizabeth off to honor the deal with the FBI, and what will be asked of Elizabeth in order take down Khivar.
“Dad, there isn’t” Elizabeth admitted. “Max is right. I am risking too much if we bring the wrath of the FBI against us. I got a good deal out of this, because let us face it, I am looking at the rest of my life in jail if I do not do it. I screwed up, and it is on me. So, let me have a chance to move on from this. If I can take him down, then it is bringing it all to an end, and that helps us all, and future generations…” she sighed. “Then we won’t have to worry that someone is out there that will come and get us. I need to do this because it brings protection for our families. So, yeah… So, Max, take the deal…” she asked of Max who nodded as Maria could only look away and then rush of the office.
“I’ll see what terms I can get out of Ava” Max allowed because he knew that Ava and her bosses are going to have to pay big time to be able to use Elizabeth as bait… as Elizabeth nodded and turned to Maria as she came back into the room again slightly calmer. “Mom, can you drive me home. I want to see the kids?”
Maria who had not had the energy to say much of anything and Max felt for her as she nodded and followed her daughter out of the office.
“I am sorry Michael…” Max said solemnly. “If there was any other way…”
“God Max, you know what she’s going to be forced to do…” Michael asked tortured. “To get at someone as despicable as Khivar. If he is the big shot that Ava tells us, then to get at him, she’s going to have to sacrifice herself to get at him.”
“I know,” Max sighed as she admitted that Ava was speaking the truth about what kind of monster, they knew Kevin Salazar to be as he was a lousy human being if you could even call him a human being at all. As he had checked up on Salazar and found a track record that was almost as bad and demeaning as Nicholas's reign of terror had been and yet he knew that he could only know a fraction of what truly was going on. So, to send Elizabeth into the lion’s mouth was going to be hell of a decision. “But we don’t have a choice. Ava has us, and she knows it. So, all we can do is manage this into something we can live with…”
“I know,” Michael acknowledge. “But Max, you’re going to have to make them pay…” Michael murmured as he hated the FBI with every fiber of his being.
“I will…” Max promised as he watched Michael walk away.