Page 65 of A Series of Rooms
“Okay. Let us know if that changes,” she said. “The doctor will be in to see you in a bit.”
“Thank you,” Marcus murmured to her as she passed him on her exit.
When it was just the two of them again, Jonah felt himself shrinking back, but Marcus didn’t crowd his space. Instead, he considered him from across the room, stepping just inside the threshold.
He pointed to a chair near Jonah’s bed. “Do you mind?” he asked.
Jonah had never been allowed to tell him‘no’before; he assumed that much hadn’t changed. He nodded, and only then did Marcus pull the chair up and sit down.
“How much do you remember?” he asked.
Jonah blinked a few times, trying to make sense of what was really being asked of him. It felt like a trap. There was always a trap.
He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said.
Marcus studied him. “About Shepard,” he nudged. “About what happened at the house. In the basement.”
Wood beam ceiling. A face overhead.
“You were there,” Jonah whispered.
The memory began to take shape: A photo of Liam on Shepard’s phone. A threat. An ultimatum. Bloody knuckles across his cheek. Hands around his neck. A loud bang. Someone beside him. The voice he couldn’t quite access but some part of him recognized right away.
“In the basement, you...” Jonah blinked as the threads between the images pulled taut. “You killed him. Shepard. He’s...?”
He couldn’t bring himself to say it, as if forming the thought out loud would crush the possibility to dust.
“Yes,” Marcus said, “Ross Shepard is dead.”
Jonah couldn’t wrap his mind around the words, let alone allow himself to do something as fundamentally reckless as believe them.
“I don’t understand.”
“He was killing you,” Marcus said slowly, deliberately, as if this was something he had rehearsed. “I did what needed to be done.”
Jonah almost laughed. “Don’t.” The word was intended as a snap, but it came out shaky and weak. “Why are you... Why would you tell me that?”
“Because it’s the truth.”
“Since when do you care about what happens to me?” Jonah shot back.
Marcus shifted in his chair, an agitated movement that put Jonah on edge. “There’s a lot you don’t know, because you weren’t ever supposed to. I’d like the chance to explain it.” When Jonah only stared at him blankly, he continued. “The name Marcus was an alias assigned to me by the Bureau. My real name is Antonio Ellis.”
“The Bureau,” Jonah echoed numbly. He heard the words from a perspective outside of his own body. “You’re...?
“I’m a special agent for the FBI,” he said. “I’ve been working undercover for the past three years as part of a joint task force.”
Jonah shook his head, failing to process the information he was being given. He pinched his thigh beneath the thin sheet, trying to wake himself from whatever strange dream he had fallen into.
“The assignment was ‘as long as it takes’ from the get, but none of us...” Marcus trailed off, shaking his head. “It took longer than we initially thought to get close to the target.”
“What are you talking about?” Jonah finally found his voice. “You were there every single day. You werepart of it.How was that not close enough?”
Marcus—Ellis?—grimaced. “Ross Shepard wasn’t the target,” he explained. “He was a link in a whole network of connections, nowhere near the top of the food chain. He was a means to an end.”
When he caught Jonah’s eyes, there was an apology there. He heard the part Ellis didn’t say out loud: Jonah was just collateral damage.
“Who was it, then?” Jonah demanded. “Who was so important you could look past everything Shepard did?”
