Chapter 6 EZRA
I waited patiently, anxiously. I waited, and I waited, my stomach almost sinking right out of my ass, but I did as I was told and I sat inside the wardrobe.
It was funny at the time to tell Jacques I didn’t want to go back into the closet, but in reality it was probably the safest place for me to be. I knew that now.
A knock came at the front door, and I could only imagine it was another person with a gun. Another person trying to end my life—someone I’d seen, probably, someone I worked with. Someone who was desperate enough for me to stop this campaign against Nexovex.
The knock came again, followed by my phone ringing.
I answered without saying a word.
“Hey, it’s Kalen O’Ryan,” he said. “I’m here to collect you.”
In a whisper, holding the phone up to my mouth and breathing heavily, I whispered, “From the FBI?”
“This isn’t a secure line,” he said. “We’ve spoken before.”
We had. I couldn’t recall a face, but the name was something I remembered. It was a unique name, and I was recalling something about him—perhaps he was a redhead? I stressed my brain trying to pull the image out.
“Are you in the apartment?” he asked at my silence.
“Where are you?” I didn’t want to answer the door.
I needed to wait. Ideally, I needed to wait for Jacques.
He’d saved my life already from an intruder, and I knew he would do it again if he needed to.
Jacques was coming back. I had to keep telling myself that, but I didn’t know what was going to happen.
“I’m outside your apartment,” he said, and I could now hear his voice coming through both the front door and the phone. My heart sank and skipped a beat.
From the closet, I lowered the phone just to double check that I wasn’t hearing things.
There was only one person I could trust and he’d told me to hide and stay hidden.
The last thing I wanted was to end up far away from him.
Jacques was the immovable force I needed to help me.
I hung up, hoping Jacques would call me again.
I didn’t know what he was doing, but he’d promised to protect me.
“Your friend isn’t coming.” The loud voice came through the front door now, louder, alongside several heavy knocks.
There was something unsettling about the knocks, almost like they were gun shots, each one more aggressive, and each one more gut wrenching.
I sat in the closet, trying my best to keep my breathing slow and easy.
“Come on, Ezra, you’ve been to enough yoga classes,” I said to myself, letting out a snort of laughter.
My mom was big into spirituality, and I was always there by her side when it came to all of it.
I wondered what she’d think now about me calling on the spirituality while I was being hunted for death.
It pulled my focus away from the life-threatening situation at least, just thinking that we might’ve been able to have some type of relationship.
It had grown strained and distant since I’d come out as gay—and then she and my dad had moved to Korea to take over my grandparents’ restaurant.
I only knew because my cousins from that side of the family posted photos.
Tears sprang to my eyes. Adrenaline fueled literally anything it seemed, and right now it was reminding me that I hadn’t spoken to my folks in years. They probably didn’t even care enough to know I was facing death—or had seen a dead body on my apartment floor.
“Ezra,” the voice came again. “Come on.” I hadn’t remembered him being quite so aggressive when he came to collect the evidence, and something in my gut told me he was going to kill me. I needed to wait for Jacques; he was the only thing in life I needed.
My nerves were shot to the point that any movement ached and burned. Clinging my arms and legs around my knees, which were hunched up to my chest, I didn’t move except for the occasional rocking back and forth, or flinching from the now itchy shirt fabric as it touched the sides of my face.
They broke in.
They were taking me.
There was no stopping them.
At least not by me. I’d signed my life to this.
I’d told them I would appear on record. I gave them everything they asked.
Except I wouldn’t live long enough to take it to trial; my life was going to end.
I was a soul worth maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars, minus the debt—probably zero dollars.
Nexovex was worth billions. I was a mosquito in their eyes, trying to bleed them.
The only thing I wanted was the truth.
The truth would set me free.
Whoever said that was a fucking liar.
Because I was face-to-face with a tall, tanned guy with two wavy brown strands of hair framing his face and the rest of it pulled up into a tight knot on the back of his head. Kalen O’Ryan. I remembered him now, and there was some relief to seeing him, but I didn’t want to leave, even with him.
“You’ve got literally no time,” he said, tapping his wristwatch while holding a black baseball cap in the other. “Put this on. We’ve got a van downstairs and we need to move now.”
“I’m waiting for someone,” I said.
“Jacques Harlan isn’t coming anywhere near this operation,” he said through clenched teeth. “You’re lucky we’re not going to wait here and arrest him as well.”
I yanked the baseball cap off. “No,” I said. “Jacques saved my life earlier. He’s the reason someone from—from Nexovex didn’t kill me. They came for my life. And apparently they’d been in here before, while I had the evidence boxes.”
Kalen sighed, rubbing at his eye where I noticed a mark on his eyebrow—the type you got from a piercing in that area. “You—you’ve just admitted that the evidence we’ve got could’ve been tampered with.”
“Or removed,” I said, not wanting to add to the clear breakdown he was going through—but I had it worse, he’d broken into my apartment, and now he was telling me I had to leave. “I still have my clearance, so I can make sure—”
He held his hand up at me, rudely shutting me up. “All we need is you alive and in the van. Everything else can wait. So pack a bag, quickly. And put the hat on.”
“I’m not a baseball cap wearer,” I said, but I didn’t get a response from him.
There was a real timer on me packing a bag, and as I rushed around the bedroom, I found the old pair of boxers that belonged to Jacques. They went into a backpack, alongside a very quick selection of shorts and jeans. I didn’t know what I needed.
Back in the living room, there was someone else there collecting things. A woman in an FBI windbreaker who looked familiar. I had no energy left in me to ask what she was doing. And she smiled.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Dina Castellano. We’ve spoken. I’m the lead on this. And I’ll be taking over from my colleague.”
As I turned around, Kalen was right there, smiling at me and shooing with both hands to keep me going forward.
“I need someone to make sure my boy—my friend knows where I’m going,” I said. “And he’s not answering his phone, and—”
Kalen pulled my phone from my hand after I’d taken it out of my pocket. “You can’t have this,” he said. “We’ll pouch it; better than destroying it.”
“Pouch?”
“A faraday pouch to block GPS tracking,” Dina said. “It’ll keep everything safe.”
Some relief swept through me. “So I’ll be able to contact Jacques, then, when we get to the safehouse?”
They were smiling at me like fools. I knew they didn’t want him to come and see me, but they needed to understand, he was the only person I could trust. He wouldn’t turn on me, and even though I was the one who’d gone to the Bureau, I knew they didn’t have my interests at heart.
They were either complicit in silencing me, or they were going to bring down a giant company and throw me to the wolves.
Clearly in the throes of a panic attack, I was malleable to do anything, and they got me into to the back of their van, telling me everything was going to be fine.
Any time I mentioned Jacques, it was met with zero acknowledgement, as if I hadn’t mentioned him at all.
But I knew he was going to come for me, he had to.
* * *
The drive took thirty minutes or so. The blacked-out windows of the van made it impossible to see where I was.
They commanded me to follow them, and I did, through an old apartment lobby, the baseball cap I was wearing pulled down in the front.
I saw my feet and the dirty grout-filled tiles as we walked over them, then up through the stairwell, several flights until we reached a room.
“You’re going to be in here until we can find somewhere more permanent,” Dina said, leading me inside a hotel room that hadn’t been updated in years—yellow walls, trampled carpet floors that brought back nauseating memories of being a child and getting carpet burn in school.
Dina and Kalen followed me into the room with my things, no sign of my phone or computer. They’d taken them both for the foreseeable future. It was just me, a TV, a box of DVDs, and whatever I’d packed—which they’d rummaged through to make sure I wasn’t bringing in anything that could be tracked.
I sat on the end of the hard bed, then dropped back on it, and the ability to scream had completely left my vocal cords. The curtains were closed, so at least I knew I’d have a view.
Nothing the agents said sank in after basically telling me I wasn’t a prisoner in this room.
I stared at the ceiling for what felt like hours.
I finally sat upright and found my brain to be better adjusted now—there was no spin or warping—nope, that’s just how the room made me feel. Sick to my stomach.
On top of a mini fridge, there was a note.
“There’s an agent stationed in the opposite room.
There’s tape on your door, so don’t leave. We’ll know if you’ve opened your door. This is for your safety.
You are a guest of the Bureau, so please let us know if there’s anything you require.
Thank you for your patience.”
I screwed the note up in frustration and threw it at the wall.
My weak throw barely hit, and reminded me of so many attempts my father had made to get me to join a little league or something.
He’d even got me a pair of ice skates once, thinking I’d taken an interest in playing ice hockey—turns out, I was just into the hot guys who played.
At least I had a window. Turned out there was no view, though. It faced out onto a brick wall so close I could touch it—if there wasn’t a mesh metal grid covering the window. I couldn’t even push a finger through it. I tried.
Five minutes felt like five hours. I knew they’d called me a guest, but I was a prisoner—and as a smirk formed, trying to make a joke to myself about how they’d got the wrong guy, I deflated, and crumbled in thought, letting myself fall onto the hard bed.
This wasn’t supposed to have happened like this.
I was supposed to get another week in at work.
But then Jacques entered my life, and something changed at work, something happened I don’t think I could have foreseen.
That Jacques had been telling the whole truth, and Nexovex knew about it—they knew about him—the Reaper.
There should’ve been a pit of dread in my stomach at the thought, but instead I was excited, ready, and hopeful he would come for me, my protector.
Then the dread appeared. I’d forgotten Mr. Thimble . . . crap.