I nodded, even though I knew she couldn’t see me. “And do I have a safehouse ready to take him to?”
“You want a Sanctum issued one?”
“You’re right. No, I’ll take him up north. We’ll go to Canada. I have a nice, secluded place by the border.” I gently chewed on the tip of my tongue as thoughts came through like someone was squeezing my brain out like a wet rag into a bucket. “I could find Donovan.”
“Mercy would not like that,” she said.
“You’re right. She put him on ice. He’s probably still travelling the world. Or...” My brain was really working through it. “He’s in Maine. There’s a cabin there. Small town.”
“No,” she said. “I think you should go with your original idea, although keeping him local would help with the case.” She let out a scoff. “You haven’t read the file, but Ezra is needed to testify. Without him, Victor gets away with...”
I knew she paused for me to fill her in on what it was Ezra had uncovered, but I continued to pick at the cold food. It wasn’t too bad. I hoped Ezra had managed to eat before he was taken. I hoped they were feeding him properly as well. The FBI couldn’t be trusted either way. I explained the situation to her from Ezra’s perspective—the correct perspective, instead of theidea that he was a thief coming to attack a billionaire for money. I’d seen his bank accounts, and Ezra was doing well for himself.
“Okay, well, back to your other idea. I think it’s awful.Bringing D and A into this would cause too much heat. Right now, I know they want to keep this low. I’d either say stay local, or go far. But if you leave with him, you’ll be cutting ties with Sanctum. Mercy might add you to the list—and—and—” There was panic in Runa’s voice.
“I’m not going to let that happen. I’ll make sure I do what’s best. And what’s best is taking Victor Pemberton and his scummy little organization down.” My voice had turned to a growl by that point, all the vessels in my body feeling like they were going to explode. I was angry. I yanked open a drawer—cutlery went flying everywhere. “Let me find a pen, I need that address.”
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 someGolden Girlsand 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.
It had to be late lunch or dinner now. It was still light out, and I couldn’t trust the time on the TV. It wasn’t connected to the internet. Said it was two in the morning in 2011. And unless we’d traveled back over a decade, that was completely wrong.
“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 Dinawhats-her-facewas 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 wasnotin 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 speakingto 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.
