Chapter 8 Ezra
I’d heavily romanticized what this was going to be like.
I thought I’d end up in some fancy row of houses where they’d allow me to go outside and lie to people on the street when they asked what my name was and what I did for a living.
It seemed like it’d be fun to play pretend—but I was just in a crappy hotel room with an old AC that sounded like it was going to clonk out and a bed that would’ve caused some serious issues if Jacques was here trying to jackhammer my fresh out of the oven pretzel legs.
There was nothing to do here. I couldn’t go over my notes, I couldn’t surf the internet, I couldn’t do anything except go through all the DVDs in the stack.
I’d found some Golden Girls and was able to go through a couple of episodes before realizing I didn’t have a glass of wine or any dessert and .
. . I didn’t know when the last time I ate was.
“Maybe we have,” I mumbled to myself, and hearing my voice in the room made me shiver.
I was used to being alone, and I never got lonely, I enjoyed my own company, but sometimes speaking my thoughts aloud was startling.
“Gone back in time,” I finished the thought out loud and giggled.
“Ezra, that’s stupid.” I lay on the bed and immediately got back up again. I hated it.
A knock at the door kept me from going crazy and wondering if I could unscrew the hinges of the cage. I didn’t answer, but my heart thumped in my throat, and my veins throbbed in my neck.
“It’s Dina,” the agent called out. “I know you’re in there still. You need food. What do you want?”
Honestly, I wanted to finish the breakfast Jacques had started for me this morning. And so I asked for him. “I need him with me,” was my argument.
“You know we can’t do that, and you know why. He’s—he’s dangerous,” she whispered through the door.
“No, no he’s not. He’s the only person I trust to look out for me,” I confessed, ready to collapse into a heap by the floor. I also wanted to make sure he wasn’t going to have any more seizures. He needed me as well. “Just reach out to someone, and see if you can find him.”
Agent Dina whats-her-face was the type of polite you got from HR.
They didn’t care for you, only the business—and the business right now was me testifying against Nexovex.
It was in me, and I should’ve been able to get what I wanted for it—not money, I wasn’t out to be bought or bribed, but someone who made me warm inside.
“I’ll bring you a burger,” she said. “And fries.”
“Water,” I added.
“The mini fridge has drinks,” she said.
“There’s a mini fridge?”
I looked around, frantic. I’d been here for hours, days, weeks, it seemed, and there was a mini fridge in here.
“Yeah, should be somewhere against a wall,” she said.
I opened every single door I could find, except for the one that mattered—the one that would let me leave.
Then I found it, hiding in the nightstand.
There was a hum coming from it, which I’d probably attributed to the AC unit.
My eye twitched as I opened it to see nothing but water.
That was not in the spirit of a mini fridge.
Of course, by the time I wanted to ram through the door and complain, she was gone.
I’d gone my entire life never feeling as angry as I did right now.
I wasn’t this angry when my parents said they were going back to Korea, after months of not speaking to me through college.
When they told me they couldn’t give me any more money, I was fine with that.
I had income from my scholarships. And even the time my mom pulled a face when I told her I was gay, I wasn’t mad at her.
I knew she was just from a different time, raised by conservative Korean parents, the same ones who I’d met once—they could probably see the gay coming right off me that time or when they’d seen the photos of me in my gymnastics gear looking like I was about to go in for cheerleading tryouts. And trust me, I almost did.
After a moment of some painful reminiscing, I actually found some comfort in knowing that my family weren’t here.
They weren’t going to be brought into all this mess.
Sure, they could fly all the way out to South Korea, threaten my parents, and hope we had a strong enough connection for me to say I’d made the whole thing up. But we didn’t, and I hadn’t.
All those documents were there, the chain of command was there, I had document logs on a thumb drive, and I knew there was more information inside.
The logs themselves contained boxes I hadn’t been able to get copies of.
And if they destroyed them before discovery, they knew they’d look even more guilty.
A scream startled me from outside the bedroom.
Nursing a bottle of water, I squeezed it a little too hard and soaked myself.
Three heavy thuds came to the door.
“Ez.” It could’ve been a dream, it might’ve been. I stood, my body vibrating.
“I’m in here.”
“Step back,” he said.
I wasn’t in front of the door anyway, but away I stepped.
A thick whack and the door folded inward, obscuring his body. I saw his face, and then I could relax.
Another heavy thud sounded on the ground. “Step away from the door, Mr. Harlan.” Agent Dina’s voice.
As the door hinge gave way, I saw him with a gun in one hand and Mr. Thimble in his other. I ran right to him, as if I was about to make my father proud and become a linebacker in my late twenties. He didn’t move as I tackled him with a hug.
“You came for me,” I said, turning slightly to see Dina with a gun pointing at him—now us.
The door opposite us finally opened. Another agent appeared. I assumed that’s who he was, from what I’d been told at least, and his shirt was partially untucked. “Sorry, boss, I was—”
“I don’t care,” she grumbled, lowering her gun. “Looks like we need to take you somewhere else.” She shook her head and gestured for us to go into my room, still shaking her head like she needed to wake up an idea.
Jacques wrapped his arm around me and squeezed. “He’s not going anywhere without me,” he grumbled. “You know what he’s been through?”
“I’m well aware of the situation surrounding Mr. Cross,” Agent Dina said, looking at the door and sighing. “It was open. You could’ve tried the handle at the very least.”
Glancing up at Jacques, I knew he didn’t care.
I think at any opportunity, he just wanted to kick a door in—and I was in awe of him.
He actually reminded me of the line backers I’d been imitating with my tackling hug, the guys who constantly made eyes at me, DL guys who wanted some action under the bleachers.
Something . . . maybe it was biological like Jacques’s pheromones that put me back in a place where I was either a teen or just starting college, full of hormones and excitement, except this time the DL jock was fighting for me instead of fighting his feelings against me.
“So, we’re at an impasse,” Agent Dina said. “I can’t let you take him, he’s got to be in our custody until the trial starts. And that could take months.”
Jacques chuckled, and the vibration of it against my body tickled. He pressed the teddy into my chest. “No,” he said. “You see, I don’t trust you, and you don’t trust me. I’m here to protect him—not for your use, but to make sure he stays alive because I love him.”
I squealed. It came right out of me. “Wha—”
“I love you,” he said.
Before we could even have a moment, Agent Dina snapped her fingers like she was bursting the bubble we were in. “I would love for this to happen, but I’m not letting Mr. Cross leave with you, especially not you. And Ezra—Mr. Cross—do you know how many people this man has killed?”
I looked up into his eyes and that smile hiding inside his thick facial hair, waiting for my lips to meet his lips, like they would lock in this magical future we were about to have together. There was something magical about him—maybe this was what unconditional love felt like?
“Do I get a say in this?” I asked.
“Did you hear my question?” she asked. “Do you know what Mr. Harlan does for work? How many people he’s killed?”
I nodded. “He told me on our first date.” Another giggle escaped, and I was swinging on his arms all smitten. “And I think he’d double that number for me. It’s why I know he’s got my back.”
“I don’t know what happened that seems to have trauma bonded the two of you,” she said, gesturing with both hands.
“But our first recorded contact between the two of you was three weeks ago, and there was a period of ten days where he wasn’t in the picture.
Listen, he might even be doing a job right now. ”
Jacques still had his gun out. It appeared near me as he hugged me close. “I’m not working a job,” he said.
“You know they call him Reaper?” Dina said. “That’s not the name of a man you want in your life, especially when you’re trying to get some evil men put away.”
Jacques chuckled again, and it held me tight within it’s vibration. “You know as well as I do, they’re not going behind bars,” he said. “Men like Victor Pemberton end up paying a couple of hundred million, starting a charitable venture, and killing off anyone trying to expose them.”
Dina scoffed. “And I guess you’d know that because it’s people like you who kill people like—”
He let out a loud shout. “I would never,” he said. “Ezra’s the most perfect guy I’ve ever met. I would never let a single hair on his pretty little head be hurt. Not by people like you, or by people from Nexovex.”
I looked between the two of them. “I’m going with Jac,” I said. “I’ll come to the hearings, but I don’t like it here.”
“Under the Whistleblower Protection Act, I must be available to help you,” she said.
I nodded. “I wanna speak to my lawyer.”
She sucked on her teeth. “If you let me continue . . . Your legal counsel was contingent on you being sued for work done at Nexovex. This doesn’t apply. You need new legal counsel.”
“When were you going to tell him?” Jacques asked. “You were just going to drag this whole thing out. Whose team are you even on? His or the billionaires’.”
I looked at her for an answer, but it didn’t come in the way I thought. “I’m on the side of justice, and however that justice is handed out. No court or judge has heard from either side yet.”
“And that’s another reason I’m going with Jac. He’s on my side,” I said.
He shook his head, his upper lip in a snarl almost as he glared at Dina. “Give me your card,” he said, switching the gun between hands and extending the now empty one closest to her. “We’ll call when we’ve got someone to represent him. And you can stop half-assing this entire thing.”
She handed him the card and licked her teeth. “You’ll do the right thing,” she said. “If you leave and don’t contact me, I can’t be too sure there won’t be a manhunt for the both of you. The government doesn’t take the act lightly.”
He nodded and so I nodded, although now I felt foolish.
I thought I’d done everything properly. I went to the New York State Inspector General’s office in Albany, made a protected disclosure, was briefed on my responsibilities and how to document.
Now, as we were walking out of the room, I realized I’d just been giving them information without actually having any cover for my ass—except for Jacques, who was all over my ass—but he wasn’t a lawyer.
Shit, maybe he was . . . I needed to get to know him better.