Part 19

Ezra slowly fought his way back to consciousness again. It was harder this time. His mind stubbornly didn't want to return to the shrieking blinding pain that his body had become.

But he had to come back. Something was wrong. Something beyond his aching head, the fiery pain plaguing him. Slowly, tentatively, he opened his eyes.

He was face-up this time. He blinked until a ceiling came into focus above him. Well not a ceiling actually. More like the underside of a roof. Exposed beams and wooden two by fours steeply climbing up to a peak.

He moved his head to look around his surroundings. Not a good idea. Agony knifed through his skull. He gritted his teeth, closing his eyes tightly again and fighting a losing battle against the nausea. He gagged, the meager contents of his stomach boiling up in his throat and forcing between clenched teeth. The sour-smelling mess splashed onto his clothes and the sagging surface beneath him before puddling on the floor.

Groaning, he fell backwards, feeling beads of sweat pop out on his forehead. Dimly he could make out some words through the roaring in his ears.

"You finally decide to wake up, Fed?"

Ezra furrowed his brow. The voice was vaguely familiar-not someone he knew well but certainly he'd heard it before. He forced his eyelids to unglue again.

A man's face floated in the blackish mist above him. He could make out the fine-boned features, the short blond hair and the grayish-green eyes before he had to shut his eyes again. 'The man who stopped to help me,' he thought fuzzily. Then he realized 'He wasn't there to help.'

And then, suddenly, like the light bursting in front of his closed eyelids, he knew where he'd seen that face before. "Curran," he gasped. "Steven Curran."

"It's actually David Wyerly. Steven's cousin." The man sounded so uncannily calm. "Didn't know if you'd remember." A gloating tone filled the man's voice. "Glad you do. It'll make this so much better."

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The meeting broke up soon after Bobby Fewell and AAD Montgomery had left. Orrin Travis might be elderly, but he still commanded a power that drew every eye in the room to him when he promised Chris, "Anything you or your men need, Chris. Anything this agency or the government can offer-you get it. We'll get Agent Standish back."

Chris didn't say anything but nodded his head once. "Okay. Everyone knows what he needs to do. JD, I'll give you a lift back to the hospital. Take your laptop and your cell charger so we can keep in contact with you."

"I can-I can help search," JD offered. Everything inside him was shrieking to get back to his big brother but even as he said the words he knew how true they were. "Buck would...Buck would want us to concentrate on finding Ezra."

Chris stared at him, then the harsh lines around his eyes relaxed for just a fleeting second. "You're right, JD. He would. But I think the rest of us would feel safer if you were right there with him." As JD opened his mouth to argue, Chris held up a hand, stopping the flow of words. "Don't, JD," he said in the most gentle voice anyone had heard from him in days. "You'll do more good with Buck."

'Because we don't really have a clue where to look for Ezra.' JD knew that was the thought running through all their minds. He closed his eyes briefly. They would look...everywhere. Search through all of Ezra's old cases, check out anyone with a grudge. Josiah was doing that. Chris had contacts with the police, with his and Buck's old SEAL team. Vin was on the phone with his old CI's from his days with the US Marshals, contacting friends from the Army, as well as tapping sources from his days as a bounty hunter-the shadowy-rarely mentioned-part of his past. He was searching for some link to Bolo Orlowski.

That brought up something that had briefly occurred to JD somewhere in the long night of searching and waiting. "There's something I don't get," he said hesitantly.

"I don't get any of this," Nathan muttered.

Vin looked up from the table, his eyes tired and red-rimmed with lack of sleep. "What is it, JD?"

JD licked his dry lips. "We're thinking that Bolo Orlowski-" he felt Chris and Nathan both cringe at the name; knew their looks of sadness and hatred were reflected on his own face. "That he came after Buck in the hospital. That maybe he was the one who got Ezra?"

"He has a motive," Chris ground out. "Bolo Orlowski never fails. He didn't kill Buck in the loft, and he didn't kill Ezra with that bomb he planted in his apartment."

Vin took a deep breath. "I'm not sure he was tryin' to kill Ez."

Everyone stared at him, waiting. Chris' eyes narrowed. "You know something we don't, Cowboy?"

Vin looked at Josiah. The big profiler rifled through the stack of files in front of him, selecting one and handing it to Chris without a word. Larabee took it and somewhat impatiently opened it. His eyes scanned the contents. He stopped, reread something, then flipped the pages over again, his eyes darting back and forth, scanning the print. "Why the hell are we just finding this out now?" he snapped, rising impatiently from his seat and shoving the file back at Josiah.

"Investigative unit was backed up," Josiah said calmly, although his eyes were alive with blue fire.

"What is it?" Nathan and JD exclaimed, virtually in unison. Nathan reached for the file.

"That bomb...the one at Ezra's condo...it was a dummy. A fake," Vin explained. "It was never 'sposed to go off."

"Somebody is playing games with us," Josiah said.

"But the other bomb...the one in our place...it was real-" JD started.

"Obviously," Chris snapped.

"So...Bolo Orlowski...or whoever...was trying to kill Buck, but not kill Ezra? And Kevin Murine choosing that time to poison Ezra was just coincidence?" Nathan said the words as if he couldn't believe they were true.

"Mighty uncanny coincidence," Josiah pointed out.

"So...if it wasn't Bolo Orlowski...working for Hoyt...who would try to kill Ezra?"

Nathan snorted. "Who wouldn't try to kill Ezra?" He pointed at the stacks of files on either side of Josiah. "The man makes enemies just by breathing." He stopped suddenly, as if just remembering the man he was talking about was missing. "Hell," he muttered. "Coincidence, circumstance, maybe this or that...what do we really know?"

A long moment of silence.

"We know this," Chris said finally, firmly. "Someone tried to kill Buck. Three times. He's hooked up to tubes and machines in ICU because someone wants him dead." He paused. "And I know this, too: Ezra's out there, somewhere. And we will find him."

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Nathan stood and watched Vin nodding into the phone, doodling on a memo pad with a chewed-down pencil. Vin had only said a few words in the conversation, all of them in Spanish. Now, as Nathan watched, Vin broke the connection and dropped the phone to his desk, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his eyes. "Yeah, Nathan?" he said wearily.

Nathan hesitated, then made up his mind. He went over to his own desk. He'd hidden Buck's accordion file folder under it before the meeting, not wanting anyone to see it. Buck had been so insistent Chris not know about it-Nathan didn't know why, but he felt he needed to obey Buck's wishes and give the file to Vin. Slowly, he placed it on the blotter in front of Tanner.

Vin frowned, then he drew in breath in a sharp gasp. His eyes, faintly accusatory, met Nathan's. "That's Buck's."

Nathan nodded, surprised that Vin recognized it so quickly. "He wanted-wants-you to have it. Gave it to me to give it to you. Made me promise. And, he didn't want Chris to know anything about it." When Vin just sat there staring at the file and didn't open it, Nathan went on, "What's in it, Vin?"

The sharpshooter shook his head. "Not sure. Buck had me go to his place to get it, didn't want anybody to know about it then either. Especially not Chris."

Nathan frowned. "How'd you get it without Chris seeing it? All of Buck's stuff-I mean, what's left of his stuff-is packed in boxes at Chris' place."

"This was before the foundation started crumbling and they had us get everything salvageable out. I got it when I took JD over to check out the damage, get some of his clothes and stuff, after you guys got back from Florida. Buck wanted me to get it, told me where it was." Vin shook his head. "I never saw it-well, I saw it once after that. One night when I was stayin' on the cot in Buck's room. He thought I was asleep, I think. He was pullin' stuff out of it, just kind of studying it." He frowned as a stray wisp of memory teased him. "I saw it again. Right before... before we left for Hugo. JD and I went into Buck's room and Chris was just layin' into him about something." He nodded. "This was on the table." He shot a glance at the medic. "So why did Buck want me to have it?"

"Maybe something inside will tell us? He didn't give any explanation, just made me promise to give it to you and not to let Chris see it."

Vin started to loosen the string holding the folder together. "Don't know-" He was cut off by the ringing of the phone. Snatching it up, he barked "Tanner!" into the receiver.

"No, Larabee isn't here. He's...what? When? Damn it! Why didn't you call before...yeah, yeah, I know. Don't do a thing, hear? We're on our way."

"What?" Nathan was already standing, chilled by the look on Vin's face, the desolation in his eyes. "Something about Ezra?"

Vin swallowed hard, meeting Nathan's gaze with an effort. "That was the morgue," he said softly. "They got a body there...brought in last night...single stab wound to the chest. No ID. They think...they said...it meets Ezra's description."

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They didn't speak on the short drive to the County Morgue, housed in the same building as the District Attorney's office. 'Was only a couple of days ago Ez got hit by a car in this parking garage,' Vin thought as Nathan parked his Bronco. "Now-"

He didn't even know he'd said anything aloud until Nathan looked at him. "Now what?"

"Nothing. Just thinking out loud."

Nathan turned off the engine and the two men simply sat, looking at the elevators, knowing they needed to do it-needed to get out of the car, walk to the elevator, take it down to the basement. And then...

And then discover if a body-a naked, defenseless unknown remnant of a human being-was their friend. Their brother.

Neither one of them wanted to know for sure.

But both of them had to know for sure.

"Should we call the others?" Nathan broke the silence.

Vin shook his head. "No," he said quietly. "If it's...it is Ezra...time enough to tell them then. If it's not, we'd just get everyone riled up over nothin'."

Nathan didn't argue with Vin's logic although a voice deep inside cautioned him that the others, Chris and JD and Josiah, might feel differently if they were there.

They sat there a moment more and then, without even discussing it, both of them simultaneously opened their doors and stepped out onto the cold concrete floor.

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When civilians have to ID a body at the morgue, attempts are made to make the whole process more civilized, less cold and impersonal and just so damn painful. There's a viewing room, tastefully done up in soft green with a comfortable couch and chairs. The body is brought to an adjoining room and the beloved-or bereaved as the case might be-can look through a window lined with green drapes. The corpse is brought in on a rolling table, covered with a white sheet, and only enough of the sheet is lifted to allow for identification. The illusion is given that the dead one still has some dignity-that they are, indeed, a person, not just another cadaver for the county coroner's minions to slice and dice.

Because they were "professionals"-law enforcement officers, supposedly hardened and tough-Vin and Nathan were granted no such amenities. Instead an assistant, wearing a washed-out t-shirt and blue hospital scrub pants under a dirty lab coat, led them directly into what she called, with rather macabre humor, the "locker room"-the refrigerated room lined in metal lockers where the remains were kept pending autopsy or disposal. Chattering on and on about her boyfriend and how he'd kept her waiting thirty minutes for dinner last night, and how she was going to have sushi tonight if she had to kill to get it, she checked a clipboard hanging on the wall and then moved over to the long wall of lockers. "Let's see, twenty six...here we go." She swung the door open and pulled out the slab with a practiced hand. "This your guy?"

Vin and Nathan stared down at the naked figure, taking in the still, closed face; the clever hands, now stiff in death; the finely drawn features. Vin let out a long sigh. His eyes met Nathan's over the body.

"No," Nathan told the attendant. His voice was calm and quiet to his own ears-so strange when he wanted to laugh and cheer and then sit down somewhere and just cry until all this pent up worry and emotion was gone. It wasn't Ezra. There was still hope. "That's not Ezra Standish."

tbc