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As soon as those doors closed on an unarmed black man and those very white INTERPOL agents, Merritt knows his friend is a dead man.
As soon as he hears the sound of that lone gun shot, he knows.
He knows.
——-
Merritt prides himself on not being a complete asshole like the famed J. Daniel Atlas. He likes to think that he’s a pretty ‘chill guy’ as the kids would say. A ‘chill dude’ even as he wastes away in a depressive funk, with a drink in his hand on a beach in sunny Mexico.
He also prides himself on being pretty smart. He’d like to think that the title of smartest horseman goes to him, but he knows Atlas would have a conniption at the statement, so he keeps such declarations to himself (even if it is demonstrably fun to poke fun at the uptight younger man).
But, after their friend’s death, that ends. After the elation of seeing the woman who sent those INTERPOL agents after them and kidnapped Merritt, as all the original horsemen and their three newest members are walking, skipping, down a random alleyway in Abu Dhabi, still high on the rush of a job being done, something dawns on him.
Thaddeus Bradley should have never been at that chateau to begin with.
He was only there because-
They all were only there because-
It’s when everyone seems to collectively take a breath to settle their racing heartbeats that Merritt suddenly grabs Charlie and knocks the wind out of him with one solid, well aimed punch to the stomach.
The alleyway erupts in its noise quite the opposite of what it previously held. There is no laughter. There are no giggles or light hearted conversation and congratulations. There is just Merritt and his fist yelling, “You son of a bitch!” and the other horsemen around him pulling at him, yelling at him, while the younger magicians scream and shout at him to get away from Charlie, the mastermind behind all this destruction of the people Merrit holds dear.
Merritt barely gets in one more hit, in approximately the same spot, before Jack and Atlas are pulling him off the younger man, with Bosco grabbing at Charlie, and June looking ready to deliver a punch of her own to Merritt's face.
“Calm down, dude,” Jack tells him as the older man struggles in his hold.
“Merritt, what has gotten into you?” Henley asks in bewilderment.
The mentalist is surprised that none of the other original horsemen have put the dots together yet. Then again, Merritt always knew he was the smartest amongst them.
Was no one blaming this kid for any of this? Any of what just transpired over the last few, very hectic, days?
“That punk got Thaddeus killed!” The mentalists' voice is hoarse, even to his own ears. Merritt almost adds that Charlie had almost gotten all the older horsemen killed, too, by leaving them to fend for themselves with the trap Veronika had set for them (not to mention all the other near misses with law enforcement and security).
The mentalist has to wonder, would they even have cared?
“No,” June is quick to defend her little bosom buddy, who’s busy catching his breath in the arms of one curly haired Bosco. “Veronika did that.”
“Oh really?” Merritt huffs, shrugging Jack and Atlas off as his rage coalesces into a nice, low simmer. “She sent the tarot cards to all our houses? She got him involved?”
Charlie’s two defenders draw up short at that, and Merritt can feel his fellow older horsemen shifting, thinking, from their place behind him, as he’d somehow ended up in the middle of the two groups, divided by age, old versus new.
“Thaddeus said he was told to prepare the house, but the mansion was already perfectly prepared by you three amigos.” Merritt points at the younger magicians, finger circling the air to encompass all of them. “He didn’t need to be there. We didn’t need to be there.”
For the first time since Merritt had landed a hit, Charlie rasps, “I’m sorry. I needed your faces.”
Merritt’s eyes narrow as he accuses, “No, you needed a distraction. My friend, our friend, is dead because he was deemed ‘a distraction’!”
Charlie winces before he speaks, an arm holding his abdomen. Merritt vindictively hopes he broke a rib. “I didn’t mean for that to happen-”
“But you did it anyway! And now he’s dead!”
“Merritt,” Henley, ever the mother figure of their little group, says, “I’m sure he didn’t mean for-”
“He could have left well enough alone!” his voice booms, interrupting her. “You heard him!” He turns to the older horsemen. “Charlie needed our faces, yours and mine! Thaddeus was never outed as a magician to the world! He was retired with little grandchildren! He didn’t need to be out ‘preparing the house’ when these three already readied it for us!”
“We needed him to be the narrator-” Bosco tries to defend, but Merritt sees right through it for the bullshit it is.
“Right. And do his old ‘magic, wise person’ schtick to keep us interested and moving on your intended path for us,” the mentalist interrupts. “Tell me, were armed INTERPOL agents a part of that equation?”
“That’s not fair!” June says. “Veronika-”
“-was only one half of this family tree,” Merritt finishes for her. “My friend was shot dead because of boy genius here,” he gestures to Charlie, “getting him involved with her in the first place.”
“But Thaddeus agreed,” Bosco shoots back. “Veronika had to be stopped.” And maybe Thaddeus had, maybe he hadn’t. The mentalist is aware that the others were there for the older man’s departure from this world while Jack, June, and him were being hauled off to the nearest police station. Still, the kids are missing one fundamental key to this puzzle. One major flaw in their argument.
“Why?” Merritt chuckles. “Because of ‘The Eye’, whom you all were pretending to be, told him too?” He sees the way the three younger magicians all guiltily swallow. There’s no defending against this one.
The mentalist continues, “That old man should have been kicking it back on a porch somewhere with his granddaughter bouncing on his knee!”
That last proclamation seems to strike a cord in his fellow horsemen.
“That’s enough, Merritt,” Jack says. The edge to his voice speaks of grief and an unwillingness to consider their new charges as guilty in their friend’s death. It seems to speak for all of them as a silence remains in its wake.
Merritt uses the reprieve to meet the eye of Jack, Lula, Henley, and, finally, Atlas, finding the latter’s eyes particularly red.
“I can’t be the only one who sees any problem with this?!” Merritt all but demands as he stomps a foot in disbelief. “I’m not,” he presses, staring into Atlas’ watering eyes.
Blinking rapidly, Atlas sniffs, shaking his head.
“I think we need to regroup away from potential prying eyes,” the leader of the horsemen says.
Merritt holds the other man’s gaze for a long moment, before looking away to the building rooftops around them. Their legal status is a matter of speculation on any given day in any given place. So hard to tell what laws have been broken, what warrants are active, who may potentially be pursuing them.
“Fine,” the mentalist concedes. “We’ll table this discussion for now,” he looks at the three younger magicians, pointing, “but this isn’t over.”
Merritt’s forgiveness and trust will not so easily be won back, especially if it turns out, through this last part of the heist, that they all missed their friend's funeral.
Someone had to tell Thaddeus’ children and grandchildren that their father and grandfather had died a hero, after all.
(And if Merritt’s next conversation with Charlie didn’t end with the punk agreeing to pay for the man’s funeral, as well as his grandkids’ college, alongside a nice, fancy lawyer, the best money can buy, to sue INTERPOL for wrongful death due to extreme force, Merritt might just do more than punch the air out of the kid’s lungs.)