Awakening
Several hours later, Ezra stirred from his exhausted sleep. When he first awoke, Ezra was disoriented for a few minutes, and he remained completely still until he remembered where he was and what he was doing there.
Looking at his watch, Ezra found that it was late afternoon already. He pushed the blanket aside and stood to stretch the kink out of his joints after being still for so long. For once, he didn’t care if his clothes were a rumpled mess, first from the flight and then from being slept in. Ezra was wondering what he should do first when his stomach decided to remind him that the only thing he had eaten in the last fifteen hours was that pitiful excuse for breakfast the airline had served.
As Ezra padded out to the kitchen in his stocking feet, the
haggard man reflected on how he had come to be here, in
Mr. Larabee had not told him how he had come up with his name, and it concerned Ezra that he had as much information as he did. He’d worked hard to purge the records to make sure no one could find anything they could use against him, either his so called “colleagues” or his targets. Some of the things Larabee had mentioned were known only to himself and four other people in the world. Which of them Larabee had had contact with, Ezra had not been able to ascertain in the time he had.
Ezra gave himself a mental shake as he pulled out the makings for a sandwich. It had annoyed him that Larabee had neglected to provide him with any information on the other members of ATF Team Seven, not even their names; indeed it still troubled him that he was walking into this half blind, so to speak.
Ezra had been able to do some research on the team, but thanks to the FBI’s shenanigans the last two weeks, he had only gotten names for four of the six team members. And the information he had gathered on those men didn’t bode well for the future.
Ezra sat down and started eating his dinner as he considered the information he had gathered.
Chris Larabee was a former Navy SEAL with multiple commendations, and several reprimands for insubordination. Eventually, he had left the Navy, gotten married, and joined the Denver Police Department. Up until that point the man’s life look idealistic, then three years ago, his wife and young son were killed in a fire. A car bomb had been set in the pick-up he usually drove. Only his wife’s car had been in the shop and he had left his truck for her to use and caught a ride to work with his good friend Buck Wilmington. He arrived back home that afternoon to a horrific sight of fire trucks and ambulances.
According to Ezra’s information, Larabee had quit the police immediately and nearly killed himself with alcohol. He wasn’t sure what had woken the man up, but six months after his family’s death, Larabee cut his drinking back and went back to his ranch.
And that was where he stayed up until six months ago, when
Judge Orrin Travis, the Assistant Director of the
Ezra had information on only three of those five, and they were the best available in their fields…mavericks every one of them!
