“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 somedeep 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.
