Page 11 of Danger Close
Still, he took the long way back to the hotel.Five left turns, two crossbacks.Standard counter-surveillance walk.No shadows.No tails.
But his stomach wouldn’t unclench.
His hotel was a three-story crumbling thing on the edge of the district.Cheap, anonymous, the kind of place where the clerk never asked for ID as long as you paid in cash.Room 203.Second floor, corner window.He kept his go-bag under the bed and his pistol in the hollowed-out drawer lining.
He was a step from the entrance when everything went sideways.
Footsteps behind him—too close.
Ezra pivoted.Saw the first guy too late.Fist connected with his ribs, hard and practiced.Another from the left—maybe the same man from the café.It felt like it.
He dropped low, twisted, brought his elbow up into the nearest attacker’s chin.Felt the crunch.Someone grunted.A blow glanced off his temple—sparks danced across his vision.He staggered into the alley between the hotel and the butcher’s shop next door.
Another hit—blunt force, something metal.A knee drove up into his stomach, and—fuck—a knife into his side.The warmth of his blood spilling down his side a clear sign that things had gone from bad to fucked, and the world tilted.
Ezra yanked his Glock from under his jacket.Fired once—missed.
But it spooked them.
He heard retreating steps, one of them limping.Ezra pushed off the wall, breath ragged, and forced himself down the alley.There was a metal stairwell at the back.He dragged himself up it, one step at a time, to the second floor.
Not to his room.To the utility closet beside it.
He jammed the door shut behind him and collapsed against the wall, breath stuttering.Blood ran hot down his side—he didn’t know if it was from his ribs, his head, or both.
He fumbled the burner phone from his jacket.Opened the secure app.Only one contact mattered.
To: R.Bowen
Subject: “I’m sorry”
Didn’t know how to say it before.Should’ve stayed.Should’ve told you.There’s something I need you to see.If this gets to you, I didn’t make it.The list attached—Van’s list—one of them is his.Please find her.Please keep her safe.I’m sorry.I’m so fucking sorry.Love E.
He hit SEND.
Watched the icon spin once.Twice.Delivered.
His fingers slipped.The phone hit the floor.
Ezra slumped sideways, head thudding softly against the concrete wall, vision tunneling.The rain was still falling outside, steady as a heartbeat.Somewhere below, someone laughed, a muffled voice echoing up the stairwell.
He thought of Van.
Then Ricky.
Then—nothing.
Nothing.
****
The job was simple.
Corporate security for a lobbying firm based out of Arlington.A rotation of private meetings, donor events, and motorcade routes so tightly controlled they might as well have been scripted.Ricky spent his days perched on rooftops or parked in black SUVs, earpiece in, eyes scanning for movement that never came.The men around him were ex-military, too, clean-cut, quiet, obsessed with time and protocol and who was sitting next to who at the next benefit gala.
They didn't ask questions.Didn’t care about the shadows under Ricky’s eyes or the way he scanned exits out of habit.As long as he made his check-ins and didn’t fuck up the perimeter, no one gave a shit.
Which suited him fine.
