Chapter 5 JACQUES
Ezra stood in the hallway, looking at us.
This might’ve been the guy who I’d seen in here before I fell.
I swiped his legs out from under him, forcing him into the door, then to his knees.
I yanked off the black beanie with eye holes cut from it like he was some sort of cartoon villain, and I held the gun to his head, pressing the warmth of the freshly used muzzle to his skin. The smell of his flesh sizzled.
“Who the fuck do you work for?” I asked, my teeth gritting and my eyes narrowing as I scanned for neighbors in the hallway.
I didn’t know if they were going to come out, or if they would even have heard—I mean, it was a pretty loud noise, unless they were all out this early.
I wasn’t prepared for this. I hadn’t been briefed on what was about to go down.
“Don’t,” Ezra said, walking up behind me.
I glanced back at him, then my head flinched back to the man. His face was blank, zero expression. A trained killer. I wondered if his number matched mine—doubtful, and mine was about to have another added to it. “Who are you?”
“Ezra,” the man said with a growl to his voice. “I thought you’d be in hiding.”
“Speak fast,” I snapped. “Who are you?”
“This is Dane,” Ezra said, standing behind me, staring at the man. “We work together. Well, he works in admin, payroll.”
Dane smirked. “Dirty work,” he grumbled. “That’s what I do.”
I was antsy to pull the trigger and get this thing over with, alongside waiting to see which neighbors were in and whether or not they were going to come out and confront us all. “Speak faster,” I said. “Why are you here?”
“To kill me,” Ezra whispered.
His smirk stretched out further. “Bingo.”
I whacked him on the head with the end of the gun. “I’m not sure if now is the time for that,” I said. “Who sent you?”
He laughed. “Isn’t it obvious?”
Not to me. I didn’t know if I’d be able to get him to say anything else, especially not as quickly as I wanted, and it was unlikely that I could take him back to Sanctum. Mercy would have him killed before he could leave again. Although that fate was coming to him anyway.
“They’re coming for you, Ezra,” he said. “And when they do, you’re going to wish what you did had stayed hidden.”
“They’ve killed thousands of people,” Ezra grumbled. “They—you—you hid those files.”
“I can’t be brought in to testify,” he whispered, and from the hallway another man appeared. One shot to the back of the head. Dane was dead, and he flopped at our feet as the other man in the same makeshift beanie mask ran off.
* * *
Mercy was called in to help clean up the mess.
She sent a crew over and they arrived within ten minutes, but on the condition that I had to be back at Sanctum.
Alone. I hated owing so much of my life to her and that place, but I did owe them, for helping me stay alive, for giving me a family of people, and for helping me get my aggression out in the underground cage matches.
Ezra stayed with the crew back at the apartment building, while they tried their best to scour the surveillance footage for the people who’d come into the building.
There wasn’t much they could do now, but there was going to be something someone forgot.
I hated leaving him behind, and was told I could call him whenever, but Mercy was desperate to speak to me before anything else.
Mercy waited for me at the end near the elevator on the way into Sanctum.
She tapped her pointy heel at me while the people around looked at us, desperate to know what was happening.
It was times like this, when time fucking spun then pulled itself to a stop, that I realized I needed people around me.
I fucking hated so much of this job when it took me from joy.
The joy of Ezra, the joy of having him smile and eating the breakfast I’d been halfway through making him when that knock came at the door.
“You know, you could’ve gotten yourself killed,” were her first words to me, as she slapped a file against my chest and gestured for me to follow her. “I don’t know why you left without coming to me. The doctor still needed to give you a once-over before letting you out onto the streets.”
I paused, and she realized I wasn’t following her anymore.
People were looking now more than ever. I wasn’t known for being dramatic, in fact, I was known for being the opposite.
I was the type of guy who stayed quiet, didn’t scream or shout.
My muscles did the talking, whether that was talking with a hair-trigger pull on a gun or through choking someone out—they knew about the latter here, especially since the cages really got their fill of seeing me.
“Come on,” she said.
Disobeying her direct order as she treated me like a dog who was required to obey, I clenched up and swallowed some deep breaths. I wasn’t going to tell her about the seizures. I didn’t want to prove her right. “I wanna call Ezra first.”
She smirked. “Sure,” she said. “You’ve got one minute. And I’ll stand right here.”
“Why are you treating me like I’ve done something wrong?”
“Because you did,” she said, stomping her heels as she came closer to me. “Because, Jacques, you left, and nobody knew for hours. I thought better of you. You’ve never done that before.”
I was the little assassin who followed every order to a T.
It was one of the reasons I was hired out so much.
But there came a time where I didn’t want to be on-call, and that was when I was with Ezra.
Someone who didn’t mind my past or my job.
Even if he didn’t quite believe what I was telling him was true, he didn’t care, especially when it came to me saving his life.
After a single ring of the phone, he picked up, his voice still shaken.
“Sorry I had to leave,” I said again, those words repeated as if they could take back the pain of what might’ve happened to him without me there.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve been contacted by the FBI and they’re coming by to take me into their safety now.”
“No,” I let out in a low growl. I was supposed to be there protecting him, being there for him, taking him places, and making sure nobody would come knocking at the door the way they had today. “You’ve got to wait for me.”
He hesitated; there was something he wasn’t telling me.
“Come on,” I let out softly, looking around at the people who were back to relaxing and looking over their manila files. I hadn’t even thought about the one that was pressed to my chest. It wasn’t even in my mind right now. Mercy’s job could come second to Ezra.
“The guys left about a minute ago,” he said. “They told me to wait.”
“The fuck,” I let out, staring dead at Mercy. I marched toward her. “You told them to go?”
“Told who?” she asked. “I haven’t told anyone anything. I’ve been right here with you, Jacques.”
“Call me Reaper,” I said with a snarl. It was what I was known as down here, and that shouldn’t change.
Ezra thought I’d been talking to him. “Okay,” he whispered.
“No, not—” I began. “Ezra, get somewhere safe. Your closet.”
He chuckled. “I don’t really want to go back into the closet.” He was nervous but could still crack a joke. I admired that. It was his life on the line after all. “Please . . .” His voice was soft. “Tell me what to do.”
“You’re going to get in the closet,” I said firmly. “And wait for me.”
“Reaper,” Mercy said. “You can’t go anywhere.” Like she wouldn’t have done the same thing if it was her wife Marzia’s life on the line. “We need to talk about your case.”
“The FBI will come get me,” he said. “If they do, I’ll go with them.”
My eye twitched. I didn’t want to have a seizure again right here and now. I couldn’t—it was a sign of weakness in front of all these people. A weakness only Ezra had seen, and those fucking medical staff who’d pumped me full of drugs.
“Come on,” Mercy said with a whisper and a nod. “I haven’t ordered anyone to do anything with your—your thing. I have, however, ordered you come with me to my office.”
There was no getting around this. I was locked into Sanctum right now, and as much as I wanted to explode and go get Ezra, I owed Mercy my life—several times over—and she would use that as the emotional blackmail I knew it was always intended to be.
“Okay.” I gave in. “Wait for the FBI. But I still want you in the wardrobe until they get there. Also, I hope you’ve eaten.
You’ll need all your strength for how emotionally draining being in a safe house will be.
” I looked around, knowing firsthand the drain spending too long in one could be.
This one was an exception to that, mostly, since it was equipped with a full canteen, medical staff, and was almost impenetrable.
Once we were in one of Mercy’s many travelling offices—a security protocol to keep anyone from knowing where she’d be—she apologized that the crew had left after tapping into the security and cleaning away the body.
I wasn’t surprised it didn’t take them long, because I’d witnessed firsthand the speed at which those people could break down a body and have it inside bags.
“Your next job is in conflict,” she finally said.
Opening the file, it was Nexovex. “No,” I said. “And how do you—”
Mercy rolled her eyes at me. Sitting behind her desk, she gave her keyboard a tap. “I’m not sure what you think of me, but I will absolutely always do a full check on anyone you’re seeing. I need to know who they are, what they do, and why they do those things.”
I leaned in. “What did you find out about Ezra?”
She shrugged. “He’s clean, mostly. He attended Whitespire, which flagged the system.
” Her eyes darted to the computer screen, looking at it glow in her face.
“He’s some analytical prodigy, apparently.
He created an algorithm that detected the formation of cancerous cells.
Precursor markers.” She shrugged again. “I don’t know.
It’s just what I’m reading from the screen. ”
“Okay, so, what’s the job?” I looked at it. “No. Neutralizing a threat?”
“Nexovex have come under fire recently. The information we were given was that a threat has taken confidential documentation and are going to be selling it to the highest bidder.” As she said it, I was reading the words—all false, all of it.
“They’re fucking playing you, then.”
“We get played all the time in this business, and sometimes we’re the ones playing,” she said. “Now, the job doesn’t specify your—your Ezra, but the information does fit his description. He’s an analyst at the company, with access to documents.”
I shook my head, and slapped the file shut. “Yeah, well, that’s not happening,” I said. “Remove them as a client.”
Mercy became quiet, almost sliding across the desk to have her face meet mine. She shook her head. “Millions of our income would vanish,” she whispered. “They let us use all their drugs, and we work with them on ours. That partnership is what keeps our medical wing alive.”
My head continued to shake. “No.”
“I can see you’re clearly conflicted by this, J—Reaper,” she said, her tone noticeably much calmer. “If anything, I might need you to stay here so you don’t get between this and what we’re paid to do.”
“Mercy, you’re not going to kill the guy I’m dating,” I said.
Maybe not the perfect time to define the relationship, but it was done.
“So you can take whatever idea you think is going to happen and shove it.” My eyes were intense on her face, as if I was ready to burn holes through her.
“Hurt him and I go scorched earth, I promise you.”
“You want to do this over a guy?”
“Do you want to do this over money?”
We were at a stalemate. I hoped not, because I wasn’t going to let him be killed. She could lose money, but I couldn’t lose him.
After about five minutes of staring at each other, she finally broke her silence with her eyes narrowed to squints. “If you want to leave, you can, but Sanctum will have to cut ties with you if you come for us. Nexovex hasn’t specified Ezra, but it’s obvious from what happened today.”
I knew something she didn’t, then. I knew those files were already taken.
I knew the FBI had what they were trying their best to hide and keep secret.
I just shook my head slowly and tried to control my mouth muscles from appearing like I knew something she didn’t.
And she was able to read people well, but today, I couldn’t let that be true.
There was an ultimatum, and I didn’t like those. They weren’t ideal to give out, especially for something I would go feral for—something I would show people the true meaning of being a reaper for.
Standing, my chair almost went flying. “I’ll leave, I’ll protect him, and you do what you’ve got to do, Mercy. But if my friends here come for us, I’ll have no issues putting them in the ground. And if you force my hand on this, you know where to send my money from my account.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” she said, reaching out for the file, but I snatched it away from the table.
I’d only taken a brief glance, and I absolutely needed to know everything they knew.
She let me have it. I was afraid it was a parting gift, but I knew leaving meant no comms, no eye in the sky, and no cleanup crew.
I was on my own.