Joining
By StarwinderWarning: Graphic violence, bad language, sexual violence against an Original character by an original character. There is a warning above the scene for those who want to scroll past it.
Part 2
The brainstorming session to decide what they were going to do went on late into the night.
Vin suggested calling JD and having him check out Bill Hullet Imports and Exports but Ezra refused to let him.
"NO! I do *not* want JD mixed up in this. If Trevor became aware that he was asking questions about his front he might target him and if he harmed JD, I couldn't live with it."
Vin shook his head, "That don't leave us a lot of options. Since I reckon you feel pretty much the same way about asking, Nate, 'Siah, Buck or Chris to check it out."
Ezra dropped down into one of the chairs with a sigh. "Yes, I wouldn't want to put any of them at risk of becoming a target for Trevor's wrath. Nathan has Raine to think of. Buck and Chris have only just found some peace and happiness, I won't put that at risk. And Josiah... well, I just care too much for the man to put him in Trevor's path."
"Then that just leaves us. We fly back to Denver and do the leg work ourselves."
"Vin... I don't want you at risk either!"
"We go together or we don't do it at all. I ain't letting you go alone, that's for damned sure. If we go together then both of us have back up. I watch your back and you watch mine."
"We'll have to be back in time for the wedding."
Vin glanced at his watch. It was well past midnight.
"Today's Wednesday. We fly in today, we'll have the rest of the day, all day Thursday and most of Friday morning before we need to come back. Should be able to find something out."
Ezra frowned. "All right, but we don't fly directly into Denver. We'll fly into New York. I'll pick up my Cessna from LeBeau Aviation and fly us into a small private field that I sometimes use just outside Denver. That should keep us under Trevor's radar. We can come back on the flight that picks up the guests Friday afternoon. That will have the added benefit of allowing us to see who is actually coming to the wedding."
"Ez... uh...you know that I don't generally like flying... and I ain't ever flown on a small plane before."
Ezra turned to look at him then grinned. "I think you'll like it better than a commercial flight. In fact I don't think that you're actually afraid of *flying*. I think that your so-call fear of flying is actually a manifestation of your claustrophobia combined with your need to have some control over situations. This is supported by the fact that you showed no signs of your fear of flying on the flight down here on Kirk's private plane."
"I didn't even realize that, but I didn't react like usual, did I?"
"Indeed not and I think that was because the plane wasn't crowded and you knew every one aboard. I even introduced you to our pilot, co-pilot and engineer before takeoff. Unlike on a commercial flight where you are jammed into a too small seat, surrounded by strangers and know nothing about your pilot, it was more as if you were in a small room with just a few friends. Therefore you didn't even think about the fact that you were a few thousand feet up in the air."
He tilted his head and regarding Vin thoughtfully then went on, "I believe you'll actually like flying in a small plane. You can sit up front with me where you can see where we're going and know what's going on. In fact, afterwards you may find that you would like to learn to fly."
"You think that I could?"
"Certainly. You have excellent hand eye coordination and the best grasp of three-dimensional spatial relationships of anyone that I know. You will, most likely, take to flying like a duck takes to water."
Vin gave a nod, "All right. If you think that I won't have a problem with it, I'll trust your judgment." He turned to Kirk, "When can we leave? First thing in the morning?"
"If you want to wait that long," Kirk replied. "However, my pilots can have the plane ready in an hour if you wish."
Vin turned to look at Ezra raising an eyebrow in question.
"It might be best to leave tonight. I will need to collect some money in New York. I think it best we pay cash all the way on this trip."
"If Trevor has some way of monitoring your bank accounts the way that we have been monitoring his," Hans put in, "he'll know that you are in New York, not here on the island if you make a withdrawal from there."
Ezra frowned in annoyance that he hadn't thought of that.
Kirk spoke up, "In that case I'll simply give you the cash you need from the money that I keep here."
When Ezra started to protest he waved it away. "You can pay me back later, if you insist.
Ezra gave a sharp nod. "Very well. We'll be ready in an hour."
"I could go with you," Hans offered, his eyes bright with the hope of getting in on the adventure. "You might need a hacker."
Ezra shook his head. "I'm sorry Hans, I hate to disappoint you, but this will be old fashion legwork. I'll need to check in with my informants on the street and perhaps do a B and E at Hullet's office. We'll need to move fast and under Trevor's radar. Vin and I are intimately familiar with Denver's streets. You, unfortunately, would stick out like a sore thumb."
Hans looked disappointed, but then said, "All right, but take your laptop. I'm going to set you up a new e-mail account, one that Trevor can't possibly know about. I want you to check it regularly. I'll monitor his bank account and the e-mail accounts that we've found for him and let you know if anything shows up."
Ezra smiled at him, "I intended to take the laptop and I know you'll keep us informed." He paused and held out his hand to Hans. "I want to thank you for all the help you've given us so far."
"You're welcome. I love hacking and to actually do some good with it, feels pretty good."
Ezra turned to Kirk, "Thank you, too."
"No thanks are needed. You're family Ezra, the closest thing that I have to a son. You take care and don't go getting hurt and missing your own wedding."
He gave Ezra a quick hug and Ezra hugged him back, briefly.
Kirk turned to Vin. "You take care, too."
"I will and don't worry, I'll take real good care of Ez."
Kirk smiled at him, "I know you will, but take care of yourself as well. You're family, too, even if the wedding is still a few days off."
He turned back to Ezra, "You'd best stop and say goodbye to Maude. She'll have my head if she wakes up to find you gone and no one has told her."
A little over an hour later, they were in the air, heading for New York.
Vin stretched out in the comfortable reclining seat and looked around the spacious interior of the private plane. "You were right, Ez. I'm not scared. I know we're way up in the air, but that don't seem to bother me."
Ezra chuckled and came over to stand beside him, "I told you so."
Vin looked Ezra up and down, admiring the view.
Ezra had dressed for working the streets when they got to Denver. He had on blue jeans, a T-shirt and his hiking boots. His suede leather jacket and a matching black ball cap lay tossed across one of the other seats.
Ezra grinned at Vin and did a turn around so that Vin could get a good look at him from every angle, "Like what you see, Big Boy?"
"Oh, yeah. Like it a lot," Vin replied, grinning back at him.
"Then perhaps you'd like to join the mile high club... with me."
"You're a member?" Vin asked with a note of jealously in his voice.
"Not yet, but I have ambitions," Ezra said with a grin.
Vin stood up and pulled him into his arms, "Well, iffn you're joining the mile high club, it's damned well gonna be with me!"
"I was hoping you would say that." Ezra leaned in for a kiss.
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The sun was just rising as Vin followed Ezra from the jet across the tarmac to a hanger with LeBeau Aviation written in huge letters over the hanger door.
They entered the office to find a single occupant. Dressed in black Goth regalia, with straight, coal-black hair cut in a neat pageboy, she wore black lipstick, and eyeliner. She had one eyebrow pierced. She couldn't have been more than twenty.
She turned as Ezra greeted her with, "Hi Pepe."
"Ezra!" she responded and flew into his arms. "It's so good to see you again! I've got your plane fueled and ready. Is this your boyfriend? He's cute!"
As she chattered away Vin noticed that her tongue was pierced too. It didn't seem to slow her chattering down any.
She turned to Vin. "I'm Piper. Ezra is the only one that calls me Pepe."
"And why's that?" Vin asked.
Ezra reached over and tousled her hair, ignoring her protests. "When she was little her favorite cartoon character was Pepe LePhew, the skunk."
"I remember him," Vin said with a laugh, "he was always chasing after the cat, thinking it was a girl skunk."
"And for a while Piper bleached a white streak into her hair, so...."
"So, you started calling her Pepe," Vin finished.
Ezra turned back to her, "Piper," he said.
She quieted immediately, knowing that when he used her proper name he was serious.
"I'm not going to file a flight plan. If any one asks, as far as you know I was just going to take Vin up, fly him around and come back, but I don't want you to worry, so I'm telling you. We won't be coming back in."
She studied him for a long moment, her face as serious now as his. "You can't tell me what's going on, can you?" she said flatly. "I heard that you had left the ATF."
"I have... but whenever one works in law enforcement there's always old business that comes back to haunt you."
Her face went white, "Trevor's back. He killed Uncle Adrian and now he's after you again."
She threw her arms around Ezra and clung to him, "I don't want to lose you, too!"
Ezra held her, rubbing soothing circles on her back. "You're not going to lose me, darling. I promise."
"But you're not a cop anymore! You don't have any back up!"
"I have Vin. And not being a cop has its advantages. I am no longer bound by the rules and regulations that cops have to follow."
"Yeah," Vin put in, "*this* time Trevor's dead meat. He won't be coming back again."
She slowly let go of Ezra and stepped back, "There's nothing that I can say to stop you?"
"No, darling, nothing. This has to end."
"Fine! Fine, but you better take care of yourself!" She turned on Vin, "And you! You better take care of him! If anything happens to him, I'll hunt you down and kill you myself!"
"Trevor'll hav'ta go through me to get to Ez, so, if anything happens to him, there won't be nothing left of me for you to hunt down." Vin said quietly.
She looked at them for a long moment her eyes bright with unshed tears. Finally she reached up and swiped at her eyes before saying, "Fine, fine, go on with you then. The plane's on runway one."
She stood in the open doorway of the hanger and watched as the Cessna taxied into position, got clearance to takeoff and climbed into the sky. She reached up and tugged a medallion out of the neck of her shirt.
Closing her hand tightly around the medallion, she closed her eyes and prayed softly, "May the God of Justice, the God of Vengeance and the God of War walk with you. May they guide your path and your hand. May they guard and protect you. May you live to fight the war of justice again. Amen."
She opened her eyes and tucked the medallion back under her shirt. Turning, she walked back into the hanger. She'd do a formal invocation, ask the gods to protect her beloved cousin, well, step-cousin, and his partner, when she got home tonight.
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The sunrise chased them westward, the Cessna seemingly riding the dawn across the land.
Vin marveled at how different it was sitting in the cockpit beside Ezra than riding in a commercial plane.
Ezra had been right. He loved it.
Ezra had even let him take the yoke, as he told him the steering column was called, for a few minutes. Ezra had pointed out the level flight indicator and the compass heading indicator. He'd shown him how they changed when he dipped one wing and turned going off course then coming back to it.
By the time they set down in Denver, Vin knew that he wanted to learn to fly.
Ezra had called Mario from New York and the man was waiting for them when they set down. He had brought the SUV that they had rented from him before.
"Do you need a ride back to the lot?" Ezra asked.
"No, my son is here, He just wandered off to look at the planes," Mario said. "I'll ride back in with him."
They paid him the rental fee and told him that they'd drop the SUV off on their way to the airport on Friday, then dropped their bags in the back of the SUV and headed into Denver proper.
Vin flipped open his cell phone, and called the Youth Center in Purgatorio.
"Andrew? It's Vin. Look, me'n Ez are working on something. We're kinda flying under the radar, if you know what I mean, and we need a place to crash for a couple of nights. I was wondering if we could sack out in the back room at the Center?"
He nodded even though he knew Andrew couldn't see him. "We'll be there in an hour or so. Naw, it's better, if you don't know nothing about it. We'll be out most of the time. Just need a place to catch some shuteye in between working the streets. Okay. Will do. Bye."
He looked over at Ezra who was driving, "Andrew says we can use the back room and anything else we need."
"We'll leave a nice cash donation when we go. The center can always use a little extra money."
"Where do you want to start?"
"It's too late in the morning to do a B&E at Hullet's office now. That will have to wait until tonight. I think that we'll start with looking into the backgrounds of local PIs. He won't use a reputable firm. He'll want someone that is slightly bent, who will work outside the law, if the money is right. That means an independent operator. One or two man operations are the best bets. Some one who has possibly had a license suspended for crossing the line between bending the rules and breaking them."
"Then the first stop is the licensing agency. How far back do we want to go?"
"Lets go back five years. We'll make a list of anyone that has had their license suspended in that length of time and red flag anyone with more than one suspension."
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Warning: Violent scene follows
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James Barton was a broken man, completely bent to the will of the man he knew as Bill Hullet.
He sat, naked, on the edge of his bed, in blank-eyed silence, barely breathing as Trevor/Hullet made himself at home in the small apartment. The noose was still around his neck, the other end now tied to the headboard of his bed. His hands were cuffed behind his back.
Trevor strolled back into the room, carrying a cup of coffee and a piece of toast. He took a swig of the coffee, then ate the toast before approaching Barton, who cowed away as he neared.
Trevor laughed. "Time to go to work, little bitch. You're going to call your leg man, tell him to find out who moved the furniture out of Standish's place and where they took it."
Trevor set the cup of coffee down on the bedside table, and untied the rope from the headboard.
"Get up," he ordered, tugging on the rope, pulling the noose tight around Barton's neck.
It took Barton a couple of ties to make it to his feet. His knees felt like they were made of rubber and he wobbled as Trevor led him by the rope around his neck out of his bedroom and into the second small bedroom that he used as an office.
Pushing him down into the chair at the desk, Trevor ignored Barton's wince as his abused ass met the hard wooden chair seat.
Trevor pulled over the telephone and noted that it had a speakerphone feature. He nodded, pleased that he'd be able to monitor the call.
"Here's what we're going to do. You will tell me the number. I'll dial it and turn on the speakerphone. You'll tell him that you went back to Standish's and found that the place was empty and you want him to track down who Standish hired to move his things and where they took them. Do you understand?"
Barton nodded, slowly.
"Answer me, bitch!" Trevor snarled.
"I understand," Barton croaked, his throat raw and sore both from having the noose pulled tight around it several times and from Trevor having fucked his throat, ruthlessly shoving his cock down it.
"Shit!" Trevor swore. "You sound worse than a half dead frog." He tied the rope to the back of the chair and stalked off towards the kitchen, returning in a minute with a glass of water.
"Here, drink this. Your man needs to at least recognize your voice."
He held the glass up to Barton's lips and Barton eagerly swallowed the water, tears welling in his eyes at the pain of swallowing with his ravaged throat.
When Trevor was satisfied that Barton had drunk enough to sooth his throat some, he took the glass away. "Now say something," he ordered.
"I understand," Barton repeated. His voice sounded a little better, still hoarse but the words were understandable.
Trevor fished in his pocket a minute and pulled out a small orange box. Opening it he took out a couple of orange squares. "Here, chew these. It'll ease the pain enough for you to do what I want you to."
When Barton hesitated to open his mouth, Trevor snapped, "It's only Aspergum."
Barton finally opened his mouth and let Trevor put the gum in. He chewed slowly, the aspirin in the gun burned as it went down but after a minute it did begin to ease the pain.
Trevor let him chew it for several minutes before ordering him to spit it out and say something.
This time, Barton's voice was definitely improved. He still sounded hoarse, but no worse than if he had a bad cold.
Satisfied that Barton could do what he wanted, Trevor demanded the phone number of Barton's employee, the man who had been helping Barton watch Standish.
Trevor told Barton, "If he asks what's wrong with your voice, you've taken a bad cold."
Barton nodded.
Trevor dialed the number and as it rang he engaged the speakerphone so that he could hear both sides of the conversation.
Jeff Zorne, Barton's leg man, answered on the third ring. He apparently had caller ID as his first words were: "Yeah, boss?"
Barton cleared his throat and coughed slightly, before saying, "Jeff, I need you to do something for me."
He stopped and coughed again, then went on, hoarsely, "Standish has cleared out of the townhouse. He must have had someone pack and move for him. I want you to check all the moving companies that offer packing service and find out who moved him and where they took his things."
"Sure thing, boss. Damn you sound bad. What's wrong?"
Barton looked up at Trevor/Hullet and then croaked. "I've caught a cold. Be all right in a couple of days."
"Oh. Well, take care of yourself. I'll get right on to this for you and call as soon as I get anything."
"Thanks," Barton croaked and Trevor cut the connection.
Trevor reached out and tilted Barton's face up to look at him. "You did good, little bitch. I guess that I need to keep you around until he calls back so I suppose that I should feed you... something besides my cum." He chuckled evilly, "Then we'll just have to find something to pass the time until he calls back."
Barton shuddered to think what Trevor/Hullet might want to do to "pass the time".
Trevor untied the rope and pulling Barton to his feet, led him towards the kitchen.
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The list of Pis who had had their licenses suspended in the last five years was surprisingly long. It seemed that more than half the small one or two man operations had had their licenses suspended at one time or another for various violations.
Culling the list was a long and boring job, one that Vin and Ezra decided that they could do just as well back at the youth center.
Andrew greeted them happily, delighted to see them again. Vin had been less involved with the youth center in the year since he'd moved out to Larabee's. Ezra hadn't come around as much either, because helping out at the youth center had been something that he had done with Vin, a function of their friendship.
He didn't ask any questions just said, "I fixed up the back room a bit for you. I thought that you might need a place to work, so we added a table and some chairs along with the cots. If you need a phone, I'm sure that we can move one in there."
"This is fine, Andrew," Ezra told him. "We have our cell phones and my laptop has a Wi-Fi internet connection."
"Okay then, just let me know if you need anything else." He turned to Vin, "It's good to see you again. We were starting to think that you'd forgotten us."
"Never do that, Andy," Vin promised. "Sorry that I haven't been around much, but I'll be making an effort to get down here more, now."
Andrew nodded, gave Vin a quick hug and left them to get to work.
Several hours later, they had a list of about twenty small, one or two man, agencies that they considered to be possibilities.
Ezra sighed as he looked at the list. Reaching up he rubbed his eyes, tiredly. "The problem remains: How do we find out which one of these is *the* one that Trevor has hired, without him discovering our interest."
Vin stretched and nodded. "We're going to have to let someone else in on this. Maybe we should have let Hans come with us. He could've called them up, pretendin' to want to hire a PI. Claimin' that his friend, Bill Hullet, had mentioned having used a PI recently and been pleased with the results. Ask if this was the agency he'd used."
"But we didn't bring Hans with us. Still it's a thought...." He paused, then asked, "Do you think that one of your Hispanic friends might make the call? The accent would seem to link to Hullet who claims to be in the import-export business."
Vin grinned, "Tanner's Wrecking Crew, the kids that I got together to help remodel some of the elderly folks houses for them. They're all over eighteen now, so they could decide for themselves if they want to help. They all speak pretty good English, but still have accents. If you write a script for them to follow, they could do it."
"And there are nearly a dozen of them. They'd only need to make one or two calls each," Ezra said. "An excellent idea... but we'll need some way to keep the calls from being traced."
"New cell phones for each call. The kids use them once, we collect the phones afterwards and destroy them."
"The kids may want to keep the phones."
"Two phones per kid. One to make the call with. One for them to keep."
"Forty phones. We can't be seen out, especially not purchasing that many phones." Ezra tapped his pencil against the desk then nodded, a grin spreading across his face. "No one should buy that many phones at one time at one place. We'll have to split the purchases up. Have several people make the buys at different places. Ask Andrew if he will help. I will call Mario and Black Jack. Mario has ten children, with him and his wife that accounts for twelve phones. If he hits two different places that will account for twenty-four. Black Jack and Reva have five children. That accounts for another seven, times two places makes fourteen. Twenty-four and fourteen makes thirty-eight. Leaving us just needing Andrew to buy two phones. Have them buy pre-paid services. Fifty dollars worth per phone. That way there won't be any billing and the boys will have some compensation for their help beyond just getting a free phone. We'll send Andrew to take the money for the buys to Mario and Black Jack."
"You're sure that they'll do it?"
"For me? Of course." Ezra grinned cockily.
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An hour later, Andrew was on his way to take the money and instructions to Mario and Black Jack.
Ezra had finished the scripts for the phone calls and two of the teenagers from the youth center had been dispatched to round up Tanner's Wrecking Crew and tell them to report to Vin at the youth center first thing in the morning.
Ezra stretched and yawned, looking over at the cots that Andrew had provided them with to sleep on. "We should get some rest. We've been up all night. Neither your informants nor mine will be out and about before dark, so there isn't much that we can do until then."
Vin stood and stretched out his back groaning slightly as he did. "Can't do the B&E at Hullet Import-Export till after midnight either. Might as well get some sleep." He eyed the beds unhappily. "Sure miss that fine bed in your guest room. Not to mention the whirlpool tub. That'd feel real fine about now."
Ezra also looked at the beds with a small frown on his face. "Likewise, however, that isn't what makes me doubt that I will get much sleep on that cot. I have always been able to sleep almost anywhere...."
"Me too... thing is I ain't slept nowhere without ya in my arms since we slept together that first night. Ain't sure that I can."
Ezra sighed and came to him, slipping his arms around Vin's waist and laying his head on Vin's shoulder. "Precisely, my thoughts."
"Then how about we pull those mattresses off into the floor and cuddle up together. Door's got a lock."
Ezra leaned back enough to see his face and smiled at him. "I was hoping that you'd say that."
In just moments of lying down they were sound asleep, snuggled close together.
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Denver at night, like any other large city, was an entirely different world from Denver in daylight.
The two-legged wolves, rats and cockroaches crawl out from under their rocks at night, taking over the streets.
Decent, hard-working people go home, close and lock their doors, trying to pretend that there isn't anything out there.
Drunks, drug addicts, pimps and whores, street gangs, thieves and killers lurk in the darkened streets, preying on anyone unfortunate enough to get caught in their territory after dark.
Predators and prey, stalking and being stalked under the harsh glow of flashing neon lights or in dark alleys and dimly lit streets.
Into this dangerous world two more predators walked, shoulder to shoulder, dark and dangerous.
Ezra Standish, also known as Kyle Green, wearing his black suede-leather jacket and matching ball cap, in black jeans and black hiking boots, was all but invisible when he chose to fade into the shadows. Vin Tanner, AKA Victor Hawkes, swaggered at his side, in a dark brown, buckskin jacket, skin-tight jeans and cowboy boots.
They had used these covers before, had built an entire history for Green and Hawkes, yet had never gotten around to putting the cover IDs into their ATF files, making them completely secure.
The jackets covered the guns they wore but neither man made any effort to pretend that they weren't armed. Even the most dangerous of the street predators stepped aside as these two hunters prowled the night, moving into and out of sleazy bars, and pool halls, stopping to speak to a hooker or pimp along the way, dropping a word here and there. They let it be known that they had a need to know and would pay well for the information that they wanted.
No one needed to ask what would happen to anyone that tried to pull their chains. Green and Hawkes were known on the streets as hard, cold men, dangerous and deadly. Word was that they were a former coverts ops team, a hunter/killer unit, gone rogue and now selling their skills to the highest bidder. No one wanted to get on their bad side. People who got on their bad side had a tendency to disappear, permanently.
By two in the morning, they had spread the word of what they were looking for and had made their way to the building that contained the offices of Bill Hullet Import Export.
It was locked up tight but Ezra had the back door open and they were inside in next to no time. Interestingly, the building directory had no listing for Bill Hullet or any other Import Export business, meaning that they had to search floor by floor.
Fortunately, there was no security officer to avoid and the cleaning lady that they passed on the second floor didn't give them a first glance, let alone a second one, just went on about her business.
They found Hullet's office on the fourth floor. Trying the door revealed that it wasn't locked.
They both froze at that, going on high alert.
"Trap?" Vin queried in a soft whisper.
Ezra shook his head, replying equally soft, "Doesn't feel like one. Feels abandoned."
Vin closed his eyes and tried to sense if there was danger. His instincts had always been good in that regard. After a minute he nodded. "Don't sense no danger."
With that Ezra eased the door open and they slipped inside.
The light filtering in from the hall revealed that the office was virtually empty. A single file cabinet occupied one corner. A large desk with a big, swivel, office chair behind it took up most of the space.
Ezra moved to the filing cabinet and eased a drawer open. It was empty, as was the next one and the one after. He checked all four and found nothing.
Vin was checking the desk. It too was completely empty. Turning back to Ezra he nodded, "Abandoned. Ain't likely he'll be back."
"No. This is a dead end." Ezra stood a moment longer, looking around with a sigh. "We might as well go." He turned to leave but his foot slipped on something on the carpet. Looking down he saw a scattering of white paper strewed across the floor. He knelt and picked up a piece, looking at it curiously, he rubbed it between his fingers.
Vin came over to see what he had found then looked around, as well. He spotted a larger piece of paper and picked it up. "Envelope," he said, turning it in his hand, then frowning as he saw the name written on the front in Ezra's fine handwriting.
"Ez?" he held out the envelope to his partner.
Ezra took it, noting the name then looking back at the fragment of paper in his hand. "This is one of the wedding invitations that I passed out at the Federal Building."
"You think that someone from there is helping Trevor?"
Ezra shook his head. "No. It's more likely that the person threw the invitation away and Trevor's PI somehow acquired it, bringing it here to show him."
"He knows about the wedding."
"Yes, and from the way he shredded the invitation, I surmise that he is furious. I believe that, if you were not already a target for him, that you have now become one. He thinks of me as belonging to him, as his property. He will not be happy that I am marrying another."
"Might make him careless."
"Or more calculating. One can not ascribe normal behavior to a madman."
"Just have to wait and see."
Ezra nodded, then dropped the envelope and paper shard back to the floor as they turned to go.
Let the cleaning lady tend to it.
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Neither of them slept well in the few hours after they returned to the youth center and the time that Tanner's Wrecking Crew began filtering into the center just after seven in the morning.
Ezra finally gave up on sleep entirely and spent the time refining the scripts that the Crew would use to attempt to discover which private detective firm Trevor was using. He wanted them to be basically the same but not identical.
Once all the boys were there Vin called them to order.
"Listen up guys," he called over the general murmuring and teasing that the young men were engaged in.
"Before we do anything else, we need to tell you that what we're asking you to do has the potential to be dangerous. We've done every thing that we can to ensure that the man we're after has no way to track back the calls to any of you or to us. But the fact is that he's smart and damned dangerous, a cold-blooded killer with more'n a dozen victims to date. So, if any body wants to opt out, now's the time."
There was some general muttering but then Carlos and Miguel, the two natural leaders of the group had answered for them all. "We're in man. Just tell us what to do."
Vin gave them a nod then gestured to Ezra. "Ez will fill ya'll in."
Ezra stepped up in front of the group, "First let me say, thank you. While Vin is right in saying that this man is a dangerous killer he is also basically my problem, in that I am the one that he is currently obsessed with."
Ezra paced back and forth in front of the group. He really wasn't happy about asking the young men to help but they didn't have a lot of time or many options.
"Hopefully what we are asking of you will not in fact bring you to his attention. He normally hires private detectives to do his legwork, keep his intended victims under surveillance, dig up information on them, etc. We will be giving each of you a cell phone and the numbers of private detectives that we believe he may have used. I have written up a script of sorts for you to use when talking to the detectives. It doesn't tell you exactly what to say, it only gives a basic back-story for you to use."
He held up a folder and began passing the papers in it out.
"You'll note that I have given each of you an alias. The cell phones you will be using are set so that if anyone has caller ID, the number will show as "unavailable". If you reach an answering machine or voice mailbox, you are not to say anything. As a precaution, to protect you, I don't want your voices recorded. After you have successfully reached your assigned PI, the cell phone you used will be destroyed and you will each receive a new unused cell phone with fifty dollars of air time as a thank you for your help."
He paused again as the guys looked over the scripts, which he had written in both English and Spanish. "If there are any questions I'll be happy to answer them."
It was Miguel who asked, "Why is this man after you?"
Ezra sighed and shook his head. "I survived being kidnapped and tortured by him. I outsmarted him, escaped from him and testified against him. I was responsible for his being caught, tried and convicted of multiple murders. On top of that, I bear a remarkable physical resemblance to his original victim and I used that to trick him into losing his cool in the courtroom, into letting the judge and jury see the raving lunatic behind his carefully cultivated mask."
Ezra paused then went on, "I am literally 'the one that got away'. After he was convicted, he escaped custody and tried twice more to kidnap me. Both attempts failed. He doesn't like to fail. I believe that he is here in Denver now. If I am right, then he's here for me, to make another attempt at me."
"Why does he not simply kill you?" Carlos asked.
"He's a sociopath, in other words insane. He has specific ritual by which he kills his victims. First he needs to break them, make them give up and obey him, submit to him, acknowledge that he is superior to them. He's never been able to break me. Until he does, he *can't* kill me because he needs to feel superior to his victims. He needs to be able to see me not as a worthy opponent but as someone weak and useless, as someone, that in his eyes, is unfit to live."
The boys milled around a bit, talking among themselves then, Carlos and Miguel turned back to Ezra.
"We understand Senor Ezra that this man is muy dangerous, still we will do this." Miguel said firmly.
"Si," Carlos added, "he may be after you now but he could come after anyone if he escapes. We have families. We do not want this dangerous man loose in our city."
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