Page 19 of Danger Close
The team said nothing.They didn’t have to.Years of muscle memory kicked in.Bags were dropped and sorted.Weapons laid out.Comms systems unpacked, synced, encrypted.Dale checked locks, then started going through all the data Kai had sent over.Hogan tested power grids.Marsh dove into the surveillance network with fingers twitching and jaw set like stone.
Bateman was in the corner, speaking low into his secure line with Kai.No raised voices.Just quiet, layered precision.
And Ricky—
Ricky sat on the edge of a ratty couch that smelled faintly of vinegar and smoke, elbows on his knees, Ezra’s message trembling faintly in his fingers.Not from nerves.Just too much adrenaline with nowhere to go.
He’d read it a hundred times.Maybe more.Each pass left a deeper groove in his chest.
Didn’t know how to say it before...Love, E.
He could still hear Ezra’s voice saying it.Could almost feel the heat of his breath against his neck.It pissed him off more than it hurt, now.
Mostly.
They had the list now.Names.Photos.Kids caught in the web of some cartel-backed orphanage scheme.The kind of polished humanitarian front that sold saviors to the public and shipped souls through the back door like inventory.
Kai’s data packet arrived an hour ago.Encrypted.Dense.Data that linked donor organizations to shell companies, shell companies to off-the-books relocation networks.Most of it was noise.A handful of camera feeds from known safe zones, a few old hits on customs manifests.A line of breadcrumbs with no end in sight.
And not a single whisper of where Ezra had gone.
Just enough to feel like the ground was cracking underneath them.
Ricky didn’t move.Didn’t speak.
He just kept reading the message.
“Got him,” Marsh said suddenly, voice low but sharp.
Ricky was on his feet before he realized it.The others clustered fast—Bateman moved in behind Marsh’s shoulder, Hogan crossed the room in two strides, and Dale paused just long enough to set his sidearm down on the crate before joining them.
On the laptop screen, grainy black-and-white footage flickered into life.
A café.Narrow street.Low awning sagging over chipped tile tables.The resolution was garbage, but the figure seated alone under the awning was unmistakable.
Ezra.
Hood up.Shoulders hunched.Coffee cup barely touched beside him.Every line of his posture screamed nothing to see here, not now, not safe.Ricky felt it in his gut.That tight, coiled tension like Ezra was trying to be invisible in plain sight.
Then, the man at the table near him leaned in to talk to him.Suit jacket.Clean lines.Casual confidence like he’d walked off a runway and into espionage.They conversed for a moment, and then there was a shift in Ezra’s body, barely visible—just a minute recalibration of muscle and instinct.But Ricky saw it.The movement of his head.The weight in the shoulders.Ezra wasn’t flirting.
He was reading danger.The man leaned in.Said something.Ezra didn’t move.
Then—something changed.Ezra’s head turned, jaw clenched, and just like that, he stood and walked out.Not fast.Not slow.Measured.
Marsh toggled the feed.
“Next angle’s two streets over.Hotel front camera.”
It blinked in.
Ezra moved toward the hotel entrance—a narrow, crooked building with a busted neon vacancy sign and graffiti so old it had become part of the paint.
“That’s his hotel,” Ricky said.“I remember the door.”
Then the ambush.
Two figures emerged from the shadows like wraiths.One came in from behind, slamming a hard fist into Ezra’s ribs.The movement was brutal, practiced.Ezra spun—elbowed high, caught the attacker in the chin—but a second figure surged in from the left.
