Red Lady

-8-

Eden

For a private prison cell, the one that had been secured for me wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. I had thought it would have been grimy, unkempt, and insect infected. Almost like that apartment that I had back in New York. This, on the other hand, was beyond expectations. The barred window on the far wall let in the perfect amount of natural light that went good with the artificial lighting from the protected florescent light above my head. When I sat on the single bed in the corner, it wasn’t the most comfortable, but it was better than sleeping on the hard concrete that I walked on. I had been laying here for hours, just staring into space or thinking when I heard footsteps coming towards me. Sitting up, I saw a familiar red head behind Agent Donavan.

“You have yourself a visitor. I advise you to stay a safe distance away.”

Avian pushed his way passed the man, scoffing at him. He pulled the chair that was against the opposite wall from my cell and dragged it towards the bars, seating himself. “Do you think that you can give us some privacy?”

“No can do sir, I have to stay here and watch.”

“Fine,” my cousin said with a sigh while I smiled at him.

“What are you doing here Avian?”

“It was instantly on the news, Montgomery’s killing. I wasn’t expecting to hear that they actually caught you, what the hell happened?” Avian asked in our native tongue. I glanced over at Donavan, and his light eyes narrowed slightly.

“They can get translators for this you know,” I said.

“By the time that they find one, you’ll be out of here.”

I laughed at that, and both the men gave me a strange look. “How the hell do you expect to do that? I’m in a secure FBI building, under extreme lock and key.”

“I pulled in a lot of favors to get you out of here Eden. It will happen, don’t doubt me.”

I stared deeply into my cousin’s jade eyes, and they were full of fire and determination. I had known him most of my life, and it was hard to picture him as the leader of our country’s Mafia, but when I saw him like this, I knew that he really was the best person to be leading them.

I pressed my lips against my fingertips then laid them softly against Avian’s forehead. I saw the large man that was supposed to be guarding us move just slightly, but when he saw that it was just a small gesture, he relaxed slightly.

“Be careful Avian,” was all I could say to him.

He smiled at me and nodded his head. “We’re in this together, dear cousin. Until the end.”

“Until the end.”

“Okay sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave now.”

Avian continued to look into my eyes for just another moment before he got up. “I will try to see you again Eden, I don’t know how much longer I can stay here in America.”

“I understand Avian. Tell uncail and aintin I said hello.”

“They would be glad to hear from you.”

I watched him walk out the door, and when I was once again alone, I sighed. Did I really think that Avian was going to be able to bust me out of here? No.

But did I hope that he could? Hell yes.

---------

Dominic

I tapped my foot impatiently as I waited outside of the holding cell hallway, waiting for a man by the name of Avian Hayes to emerge from his visit to his cousin. He’d just gotten here not too long ago, and demanded that he speak to Eden. I was not alone in this wait. His lawyer, Irene, stood on the other side of the hall, her back straight as if she was guarding the people inside.

When she heard the door open, she was by his side so fast; it was like she had been with him the entire time. “Avian, agent Ramirez here as asked that you come into the observation room while they interrogate Eden.”

The man’s green eyes stayed emotionless as he turned them towards me. The cold way they pierces through me sent a shiver down my spine, but I kept it in my body.

“Why is this exactly?”

“My boss suggested it. You can refuse if you’d rather be on your way.”

Mr. Hayes turned toward Irene, who nodded her head once. He faced me once again with a slight smile on his face. “Why not?”

“Then, if you would follow me,” I said, turning on my heel and walking away. Donavan was instantly by my side, with the other two behind us. It took us only minutes to get to the observation room, and I let the man in before me. He walked in without a glace and stood close to the glass.

Myers was already sitting in the other room, his back to us with a note pad and a pencil lying on the table in front of him. His fingertips were pressed against each other while the index fingers rested against his lips. He sat like that until the door opened and Eden was escorted into the room.

The men that brought her in un-cuffed her hands before leaving without a word. Eden rubbed her wrists, then pulled out the chair and sat herself down.

“What can I do for you Mr. Myers?” she said, her voice silky smooth.

“I just thought that today we could delve into your past a little bit, maybe find out a little about you.”

Eden’s burgundy eyebrow rose, her facial expression questioning him. “What is this, a therapy session?”

“I guess you can call it something like that.”

“Not a problem, my life is nothing of a secret, but no one has ever asked to hear it. Where do you want me to start?”

“From the beginning.”

A smirk fell over her features. “Well, my mother and father were very in love with each other and thought that they could take the next step and-“

Myers cleared his throat, stopping Eden’s tale. “Not that far back.”

I looked over at Avian Hayes when a deep chuckle escaped him. He was staring intently at the scene before him, and amused smile on his face. “Typical of Eden, always the smart ass.”

“Just to save you some time, I’ll start from when this poor child went down the path of evil. You don’t care about my life, you just want something to use against me to make me obedient.”

By the look on the woman’s face, it seemed that what she had accused him of was correct. That didn’t stop her from giving him what he wanted though.

“At the age of six, my parents were murdered while I was awake. Automatic guns had shot them in their sleep, so they didn’t feel any pain, instant death. In the business my father was in, this was very merciful. The only reason I lived was because the men who had killed them were inexperienced and didn’t do their research. They never knew that they had a daughter. I saw my parent’s bodies, barely recognizable, lying in bed, blood pooled on the bed and dripping down to the floor. My uncle came hours later, finding the gory scene.”

“What happened to the men that killed your parents?”

“They weren’t heard from again.”

Myers scribbled down something on the pad, and then motioned for her to continue on.

“My uncle took me in for a little while, but he just couldn’t deal with me. I had become an entirely different girl. So, he sent me to a boarding school to get rid of me. A kind woman waved him goodbye as he left, not even giving me a second glance. That day was the beginning of my training.

“No one else at the academy was as young as I was, and they didn’t think I was quite ready for the physical part of the lessons, so I learned through books. What were the quickest ways to kill, how to torture someone until they cracked. Things you can even imagine I was taught, and not even ten yet.

“When I did grow old enough to be put into the training field, it was entirely different from anything I had thought. We were all put through grueling training, and the founders had no sympathy for us. If we didn’t do things to their perfection, we either did it again multiple times, or you were punished. A lot of people didn’t make it to the harder lessons.

“When we had perfecting our physical training, we moved on to getting comfortable with guns. They let us loose into the wild, where we were to hunt the animals around us. We all had a supervisor over us, to make sure they got their weapons back in case something happened to us. I had read few books about guns, but I still wasn’t as lost as others might have been. I found a large rodent scurrying around and aimed my gun.”

She pulled down her jumpsuit slightly, exposing her collar bone and pointing to a patch of pale skin. “I knew nothing of recoil, and the butt of the gun came back on me hard, and broke my bone. It broke through the skin and I passed out soon after.

“It took a long time to heal, and the teachers had no faith that I could handle anything larger than a hand gun. That injury pushed me forward. For the next couple of months, I lived and breathed anything to do with guns, getting to know every little piece the weapon. You can give me any gun and I can unassemble and reassemble it in less than three minutes. Other little sessions came after that, but nothing as big as our ‘final exam’.”

“And what was that?”

“We had to kill someone.”

“Who did you kill?”

She shrugged her shoulders, an uncaring look coming across her face. “It was so long ago, I truly can’t remember. We were assigned a name, and that was all. We had to use all our knowledge to track them down and kill them. We were given a month to complete this assignment before we could graduate. And graduation was a small one.”

“Why small?”

“The men and women we were tracking down were informed that they were being targeted, and they all were given body guards who knew what and who to look for. They had no mercy, and killed the testers on the spot.”

Myers let out a long breath before he asked his question. “How many graduated?”

“Nine.”

“How many were there originally?”

“Twenty-seven.”

I instantly felt sick to my stomach. Eighteen teenagers had been killed without a second thought. Eighteen.

“The rest you can fill in yourself. I was a hired killer for years, and I ended up on the America’s Most Wanted list, pretty big achievement for me.”

“What made you turn on your past teachers?” my boss asked, ignoring Eden’s last comment.

“One day after killing someone, I looked on myself and what I was doing. I had no guilt of sending people to their premature death, and sometimes, I actually enjoyed it. I realized what kind of person I had become, and I never wanted someone else like me in the world. I decided to get rid of the people that had done this to me. I was going to send them to hell where we could all suffer our fate together.”

“I thought the school had closed?”

Eden nodded her head, agreeing with him. “So had I. But when I returned home from a job in Russia, the news was spread all over the place that in no less than a year that it would be opened again. I wasn’t going to let that happen.”

“But killing them won’t make a difference. They can always get another batch of teachers to corrupt the children.”

“No,” the woman voiced, looking directly into Myer’s eyes, “I’m making an example of the founders. Once they are all dead, no one else will want to take the job, for fear that I’ll come after them next.”

Myers stood up from his seat, taking his pad and pencil. “You won’t get the chance to murder the rest of them Eden, you’re spending the rest of your life in jail, or worse, in hell when you get the death penalty.”

A large grin spread across her face, one full of malice. “That’s what you think agent Myers. I hope to talk to you soon.”