Author's notes: I've tried to answer everyone's reviews but for those who don't enable private messaging or review as guests:
m – Thank you. I hope this chapter meets your expectations.
Kathy M – Repeated requests like yours are the main reason I'm finally tackling this story. I couldn't ask for a better compliment than knowing my stories are read again and again. Thank you.
lunaz – Thanks, I appreciate the feedback.
Tinwhistle – I'm glad to hear you're a fan of the series. Yes, there will be more chapters. It should be about three or four, but I never know for sure until I get it all down. You should also treat yourself to an ounce of dark chocolate for realizing the story Ezra was telling Vin was Chaos Rising. As the first fan fiction I ever tried to write, it holds a special place in my heart. I hope you enjoy the rest of the story.
Sisturnickyahoo – Thanks for saying I write the characters well. The Seven have long been favorites of mine and it's good to hear I'm not messing them up too badly.
Anonymous Guest – I'll do my best to update at least once a month.
Thanks again to everyone who is following or checked favorite for this story and its author. It really does warm my heart to know others are enjoying this labor of love. Now: on with the story . . .
Ezra carefully peeked out the shaded side of the window. After squatting in the abandoned house for three weeks, Vin and Ezra knew which of the surrounding buildings were most likely to bring trouble. The house to their south had a collapsed roof and significant water damage. Not even those wasted on booze and drugs ventured into that death trap. The two houses behind them included an apparent shut-in with bars on all of his windows, and a drug house which saw a brisk business of both junkies and recreational users.
To the north stood the barely maintained two story of a struggling single mother of three. In Ezra's opinion, Miss Tanya was a nice lady, who apparently possessed abysmal taste in men; since not one of her children's fathers bothered to stick around. Despite their best attempts to stay hidden in the vacant house, Miss Tanya not only noticed them after only four days, but offered to share food. In return, Vin helped out with small repairs to the house and yard while Ezra tutored the children. About a week into their arrangement, Miss Tanya broached the subject of the boy's lack of proper guardians. Ezra coldly responded that after the last person who had been granted custody tried to kill them, they decided they were better off alone. When Miss Tanya offered to take them in herself, Vin and Ezra were much more polite, though still firm in their refusal. After three months on the run from Humboldt and his arms dealing thugs, the boys weren't going to risk putting Miss Tanya and her children in danger. So their alliance continued for the next two weeks. Ezra had high hopes for all three of his pupils, assuming the current problems across the street didn't force them to flee again.
A familiar creek from the hall stairwell caused Ezra to turn. Relief filled him when he recognized Vin moving up the stairs.
"Looks like you noticed the ruckus across the way," drawled the ten-year-old Texan.
"It would be hard to miss the veritable legion of ATF agents swarming in and out of the abode across the street," insisted Ezra.
"Did you notice the blond fellow in charge?" asked Vin as he hunkered down next to his friend.
"Yes, I noted the fair-haired bellower of orders. Why do you ask?" Ezra knew Vin well enough to understand he was not the sort to engage in idle chit-chat. Vin must have a reason for singling out the ATF leader.
"You said we would never be safe until Humboldt either died or got thrown in jail," Vin reminded. "We could give Mr. ATF the information on the thumb drive your mother told you to steal. You said it proved he broke a bunch of laws. We could finally stop running."
"While I can't deny I've grown weary of our less than stellar accommodations, what makes you think we should trust this particular agent? How do we know he isn't one of the law enforcement officers on Humboldt's payroll?" questioned Ezra. It was the main reason they hadn't taken their evidence to the authorities already; information on the thumb drive indicated Humboldt had members of both federal and state law enforcement on his payroll, though sadly no names were mentioned. If they chose the wrong person to trust it would mean the end of both of their lives.
"I'm telling you, Ezra," Vin insisted with unexpected conviction, "there is no way Chris Larabee is on the take. He's a better man than that."
The way Vin glanced furtively towards the apparently empty corner of the room gave Ezra a suspicion who might be supplying Vin with his new information. Ezra sighed, wishing he could see the ghostly advisor Vin seemed to trust so much. "Am I to assume, you learned this Agent Larabee's name from your ethereal friend? Is he Adam's idea?" Ezra asked with unusual directness.
"We've talked about trying to get the cops to deal with Humboldt for a while now," reminded Vin. "Adam is just letting us know which cop we can trust."
Ezra pursed his lips in thought. The habit of trusting anyone had been drilled out of him long ago by his mother. It was only after Vin saved Ezra's life at great risk to his own that Ezra became willing to trust the young Texan. Ezra's trust wavered when Vin admitted he sometimes took guidance from the spirit of a boy named Adam. According to Vin, Adam was helping them, in part, to prevent them meeting the same fate he had. Ezra initially dismissed 'Adam' as an imaginary friend Vin should be too old for. Only Vin's persistent certainty, combined with numerous bits of information Vin couldn't possibly know, which he insisted Adam told him, made Ezra even consider the possibility.
In the end, it was two near misses with Humboldt's thugs which finally convinced Ezra of Adam the ghost's real existence. The first occurrence happened three weeks into their flight from the unlikely arms dealer.
They had taken refuge in a low rent motel, using the winnings from a shell con Ezra set up. Vin almost immediately fell asleep on one of the beds, while Ezra caught up on current events through cable news and the newspaper.
"Where?" Vin suddenly shot upright in bed. "How many?" Vin glanced over towards the door, even as he slipped his shoes on and began stuffing their things into a plastic grocery bag. "We've got to move, Ezra. Humboldt's thugs found us. I bet the manager sold us out."
Ezra tried to reason with his panicked friend. "Vin, you were sleeping. It's just a nightmare. There is no reason to believe our location had been uncovered," he pointed out logically.
Vin tugged Ezra out of his chair and over to the window, parting the curtains just a crack. "Does that look like just a nightmare to you?" he demanded.
Ezra's eyes widened at the sight of Humboldt's lead enforcer, John Renfrew, flanked by two others. "How?" Ezra gasped.
"Adam woke me," Vin replied. "Are you ready to climb out the bathroom window with me yet?" The two managed to escape through the window just before they heard the crashing of wood and glass from the motel's front door. They ran, with Vin in the lead, and never looked back.
Ezra considered himself a young man of reason. Believing in ghosts and spirits was for children and superstitious fools. At least that was what his mother insisted when using others superstitions against them in her cons. Yet Vin was far from being a superstitious fool in Ezra's estimation. Sure, the boy was only ten years old to Ezra's twelve, but living on the street and on the run didn't leave much room for childish behavior. After thinking the events through logically, Ezra felt certain Vin's dream about being warned by the spirit Adam, must have been a manifestation of his subconscious mind cluing together signs of danger, from his admittedly powerful senses. It certainly made more sense than believing some ghost boy had decided to join them on their flight from Humboldt. Ezra probably would have continued to assume Adam was merely an especially detailed figment of Vin's imagination if he hadn't encountered Adam himself five weeks later.
The pair encountered a string of bad luck, amplified by Humboldt's decision to circulate fliers with the boys' images, advertising a bounty for their return. Vin felt certain they were being followed. Ezra agreed now would be a good time to move on, before their luck turned even worse. However, some of their money and supplies were stashed at another location. Ezra went to retrieve them, leaving Vin to stay hidden in their current hideout; an abandoned café. Their plan called for Ezra and Vin to rendezvous at dusk, and hike to the next westward town under the cover of darkness. Ezra easily gathered their hidden stash, and even managed to squeeze one last poker game into his allotted time, adding to their sadly depleted funds. He decided to head back ahead of schedule, and was nearly to their hideout when he noticed Mr. Renfrew skulking about the alley next to the café.
Ezra hid behind a stack of empty boxes the instant he identified Humboldt's trusted right hand man. Part of him screamed to flee immediately. Ezra could hear his mother's voice reminding him: it was a cruel world, and he couldn't expect anybody to lookout for him but himself. A quieter voice reminded him that Vin, in fact, had looked out for him on numerous occasions, even to Vin's own detriment.
Ezra took a calming breath and cautiously looked for Renfrew's companions, knowing the thug never traveled alone. Ezra quickly identified Humboldt's driver sitting in a Cadillac a block and a half down the road. A second later, he saw one of Renfrew's men step out of an adult bookstore with more of those damned fliers in his grasp. Ezra tried to tell himself it was good their location hadn't yet been discovered, otherwise Renfrew and his goons would already be breaking down the café doors. Yet he couldn't deny they were closing in. The worst part involved a tattered ten peso bill hanging on a nail near the back door of the café. Ezra won it in a poker pot some time ago and the boys used it as a signal to each other. When one boy was waiting for the other to arrive, the peso was hooked on the nail, which it was right now. That meant Vin was inside the café waiting for Ezra. Usually, Ezra felt little concern for his self-sufficient partner, but the current situation had fear riding heavy on his shoulders. He needed to get past Renfrew and see if Vin was still inside.
Just as Ezra concluded he should risk crossing the alley, and potentially Renfrew's line of sight, the man left the alley to join his associate with the fliers. The instant Renfrew rounded the corner of the building, Ezra bolted for the café's back door. The metal door opened with surprisingly quiet ease thanks to the oil Vin had applied to the hinges the week before. Inside Ezra saw their belongings tucked under the deep counter's bottom shelf. His eyes searched the main café twice before they locked on Vin's too still form.
"Vin," Ezra called in a harsh whisper. When his friend didn't so much as twitch in acknowledgment, Ezra rushed to his side. "Vin, Humboldt's men are here. We need to flee!" he insisted with hushed urgency. Then he got a look at Vin's vacant face and realized his friend was again 'lost' within his own mind. It had happened twice before in Ezra's presence, and from what Vin said after the last incident, those weren't the only times. Ezra suspected Vin had some sort of seizure disorder, but it wasn't like they could afford to go to a doctor to get a proper diagnosis. Last time, Vin came out of it with just a bit of shaking, so Ezra shook both of Vin's shoulders even as he glanced out the front window to see what Renfrew and the others were doing.
Ezra shook with more force than he intended, when he saw Renfrew and another man approaching the café again. Vin continued to stare, vacantly unaware of the harsh treatment. Realizing if they didn't move soon they would be spotted, Ezra tried to drag Vin across the room and down behind the café's large counter. Vin should have fallen to the floor when Ezra stumbled under his friend's weight, instead Ezra swore he saw, for just a second, the ghost image of another brown haired boy holding Vin's left side, helping Ezra carry Vin to safety. It wasn't easy, but strengthened by the fear-tainted adrenaline coursing through his system; Ezra maneuvered his unresisting friend onto the counter's bottom shelf, which closed with curtains instead of the usual cabinet doors.
"Vin, please wake up!" he whispered again, crouching beside his companion. Yet again there was no response. The one other time Ezra drew Vin back from being 'lost', he had sung to Vin; using the lyrics of the first stupid pop song to enter his mind. Ezra feared if he started singing to Vin now, Renfrew or one of the others would hear him.
"Hide, Ezra, now!" a cold air urged. Noise at the café's side door forced Ezra to abandon his friend for the meager safety of the second shelf just above Vin. The wisp of noise made by the fabric curtains as Ezra pulled them closed fell insignificant compared to the clang of metal from the heavy door.
"Go check out the kitchen," Renfrew instructed upon entering the café. "Tony, you look behind the counter. That clerk, better not have been lying about seeing those kids sneaking in here."
Ezra held his breath when Tony leaned over the top of the counter to get a look behind. He found himself praying to angels he didn't believe in, to ensure the thug didn't realize he was practically on top of the boys he'd spent the last two months hunting.
"There's nothing back here, but I'm damned near freezing my balls off. How can it be colder in here than it is outside? " Tony asked Renfrew, moving away from the counter again. "How much longer are we going to keep looking for these worthless bastards?"
"Until we find them or Mr. Humboldt tells us to stop looking," explained Renfrew in the bored voice of someone tired of repeating himself.
"But what's the point?" whined Tony. "We haven't heard so much as a peep from the blonde bimbo Humboldt called his girl. Surely, if the kid stole documentation on Humboldt's business, he would have given it to his mom. Whether she planned to blackmail Humboldt or take it to the cops, we should have heard something by now," the thug repeated.
"Maybe," Renfrew conceded, "or maybe the kid never got the chance to hand off Humboldt's info. You know the bimbo disappeared before Humboldt saw the kid and his friend run with a copy of the hard drive. I'm guessing the boys are running scared and mommy's MIA."
"Odd, the boss leaving copies of important information just laying around like that," Tony muttered in ongoing disgruntlement.
"Humboldt didn't leave copies of anything lying around!" Renfrew countered in a sharp tone. "The kid had all the right equipment to make the copies himself. All he had to do was plug it into Humboldt's computer, and the information was his to steal." Shaking his head in disgust, Renfrew continued, "That's how we know none of them is likely to go to the cops. No way would they allow a kid to do such a dangerous thing. Who the hell ever heard of using a boy as a spy anyway?" There were a few more shuffling noises as the two moved about the abandoned restaurant. "Let's get out of here. Have John keep an eye on the place just in case the clerk wasn't lying."
Ezra lost the rest of their conversation as the men left via the same door they entered. For a moment, Ezra nearly hyperventilated, having held his breath for much of the discussion. Relief swamped him at hearing his mother was safe from the arms dealer. He sent her a message when he realized her 'easy mark' was a mass murder by proxy, but he and Vin were forced to flee before her reply arrived. At least now he knew his mother still lived. The idea that he could possibly track her down tempted, but he knew Maude would have no interest in taking on a second son. Most of the time she really didn't want to bother with her first born; thus his numerous stays at boarding schools and with distant relatives. Ezra only accompanied Maude to Humboldt's mansion because she needed his help with her con.
Vin was the only reason Ezra escaped Humboldt's heavily guarded mansion alive. Ezra refused to abandon his young friend, to either Humboldt's nonexistent mercies, or the world's unforgiving care. Everything within Ezra insisted Vin was his to protect. Vin, himself, claimed they were meant to be brothers, facing the world together. Ezra wasn't sure he believed Vin, but it at least sounded nicer than Maude's view of the world.
"It's safe now," assured the chilly ghost voice in his ear. Ezra glanced around, wondering if he would get another glimpse of the child specter; the boy Adam, who he so often heard about from Vin.
Suddenly, Ezra remembered the state he found Vin in before they were forced to hide from Humboldt's men behind the counter. Climbing off the shelf, he crouched next to Vin again. His friend continued to stare, slack-jawed and unaware. Ezra reached out to shake him, but nearly panicked at the chill of Vin's skin.
"Vin, please, please, please! Please wake up," he begged. "Don't panic, Ezra," he sternly counseled himself. "Last time, singing woke him up, so . . . 'You can run on for a long time . . . Run on for a long time . . . Run on for a long time . . . Sooner or later God will cut you down.'" Ezra kept singing as he awkwardly rubbed soothing circles on Vin's back. He gently closed Vin's eye lids, in part because he found the empty stare unnerving, but also because he felt sure they must be achingly dry by now. Ezra finished the first song and moved on to other Johnny Cash favorites of Vin's, including 'Ring of Fire', 'A Boy Named Sue', 'Riders in the Sky', 'I Walk the Line' and 'The Wanderer'. After nearly a half hour of singing, Ezra's throat was starting to ache. He was beginning the second verse of 'The Man Comes Around,' when Vin finally began to show signs of waking.
Vin moaned, scrunching his face in displeasure. It took several long moments for the soothing melody he heard to be identified as Ezra voice. He knew the pain ricocheting through his skull meant he must have had another one of his fits. They started happening after Grandpa died, and he got put in the system. Even the families who seemed nice weren't quite sure what to do with a boy who would suddenly start impersonating a statue and then 'wake' with a migraine. He had been taken to a couple of doctors who couldn't find anything wrong. When his case worker mentioned visiting a psychiatric hospital, Vin chose to run. The funny thing was, the first place he settled was as a gofer at the Humboldt estate, where he met Ezra. Vin knew Ezra was the reason his whatever-the-heck-they-were had nearly disappeared. His hands rose to his face and cradled his head. "Ow," the ten-year-old whispered. "Reckon my head is about to fall off."
Vin's words were quiet enough to force Ezra to strain to hear him. Remembering the way Vin's senses acted particularly chaotic after he 'got lost', Ezra quieted his own tone when he spoke. "I'm sorry I didn't wake you sooner. Renfrew and a couple other Humboldt thugs have been searching the area. I was able to sneak past them, to get inside, but you were . . . lost, and I could see them coming this way. I tried to shake you awake but it didn't work, so I hid us until they left."
"They were here? In the café?" wondered Vin. "How did they miss us?" Their location behind the counter wasn't in plain view, but neither was it all that well hidden.
"Tony never bothered to look behind the curtain," Ezra explained. "Clearly, the man wasn't hired for his intelligence." Ezra glanced towards the exit before admitting, "Adam may have lowered the temperature to encourage their hasty departure. We will have to be careful when we leave though. Someone told Renfrew they saw us coming in here, so he left John to keep watch."
"Not sure I'm up to moving just yet anyway," Vin admitted. They stayed hidden in the café until after dark, when Vin and Ezra snuck out the side door while John flirted with a waitress working the bar across the street. After the near miss, the boys kept moving until they reached Denver.
Now, sitting in the abandoned house watching the swarm of ATF agents mixed with local police across the road, Ezra wished he could speak with Adam directly and learn what their ghostly guardian knew about Agent Larabee. Rather than wait for Adam to magically appear and answer all of his questions, Ezra used his own skills, learned at his mother's knee, on how to judge a potential mark. Though Larabee was raising his voice to bark out orders, his language was firm and business like rather than vulgar or abusive. He noted the local police seemed to give the man a wide berth, more than one appearing to outright fear the man. Yet the other ATF agents showed no such hesitation to share the man's personal space. When they snapped to obey his commands, it was clear they did so out of respect, not fear.
Larabee deliberately ignored the gang leader spewing profanities and promising revenge. When the same leader threw his handcuffed body at the youngest of the ATF agents, apparently seeing him as the easiest victim, Larabee's response was swift and brutal, ending with the gang banger being thrown, bloody and face-down to the ground.
Larabee appeared to be one of those rare leaders who took the responsibility of protecting those he led seriously. Ezra felt certain he could convince Larabee to protect them once he saw how valuable their information was. There were risks, of course. Federal agents were just as likely as any other law enforcement official to try to place both boys in the foster care system. However, Ezra felt confident he and Vin could easily overcome such an obstacle, as long as they weren't also worrying about Humboldt's men trying to shoot them down in the street like rabid dogs.
"We will take the information to Larabee," Ezra decided, "but not now. Even if we can trust him, there are too many unknowns down there for us to risk making our presence known. I'll see about arranging a more private meeting. The opportunity to use our evidence to convict Humboldt should be enough to earn us protection." Ezra was already brainstorming ways to approach the agent while keeping their identities, especially their ages, secret. It would not do to be dismissed out of hand by the assumption that a child could never provide reliable information. Once he saw what they had, Larabee would have to accept its value.