A/N: Sorry I've been away. Graduating and then moving twice is hard. I will remain extremely busy this summer finishing up classes to get my diploma while working, but I shall try to write still.
Ezra pressed his forehead to the cool brick wall as he listened to the phone ring, waiting for the other end to pick up. His eyes were closed, still trying to concentrate on figuring out the name of the voice he had heard while in Section F.
The phone ringed four times before he heard a familiar voice that instantly made him relax a little.
"Ezra?"
"Good afternoon, Mr. Dunne. I presume that the others are with you," Ezra drawled as he stood up straighter, head lowered, looking at his arm.
"Yeah we're here Ezra," came Buck's voice, "How're things going on your end? Any success?"
"More importantly, has anyone tried to kill you?" Nathan's serious tone seemed a bit further from the phone than Buck's.
"There have been a few attempts on my person, not all with the intent to necessarily end my life, but more along the lines of making me truly uncomfortable." There was a long pause and Ezra silently chuckled, "That would be a yes, Mr. Jackson. However, I think I'm as popular here as Mr. Wilmington is with the ladies, with less tack than our Casanova."
He heard the bubbly laughter coming from JD and even heard the thud from Buck smacking JD with something. No doubt the sports magazine he read about this time during the day during lunch.
"I'll try and take that as a compliment," Buck said over the phone.
"Have you found anything about Chris?" came Vin's voice finally.
Ezra gave a weary sigh, "nothing concrete, as of it. I have a lead I'm going to pursue, but so far it's just a hunch. I heard someone today who had a familiar voice that I just can't seem to place right now. We've dealt with him before, I'm certain of it."
"Another criminal locked up? I thought we got you in the prison where you wouldn't be seeing anyone from the cases we've worked on," came JD's concerned voice.
"That would be nearly impossible with our conviction rates, Mr. Dunne. Even more so with my past history with the FBI. This person though, he wasn't wearing this dreadful attire. He was in a suit."
"That's weird."
"He was talking about a patient, a Mr. Westman. Apparently, he's suffering from a 'mental break down'."
"You don't believe that to be the case?" Nathan spoke up again.
"The man didn't even put forth the effort to hide his sarcasm of regret to the man's declined health. Something is going on here that doesn't seem right," Ezra shifted his body to rest his back up against the wall. His shoulder accidentally bumped into the phone shield and he grunted in pain when it aggravated his sling.
"Ezra? Are you alright?"
"Merely a broken arm, Mr. Jackson," Ezra slurred.
"'Merely?! What the hell happened?"
"I asked my new acquaintance, Mr. Ripper to assist me in getting into the higher security-level Section. They usually only treat patients back there. Mostly if they are likely to hurt themselves and are unstable."
"Are you saying you're stuck in there?" asked Buck warily.
"No, I only went in briefly to get my broken arm reset. I-"
"You're broken arm?! Someone broke your arm?" exclaimed Nathan.
"Yes, Mr. Jackson. The only way I'd get back there was to need medical assistance that didn't just require a quick bandage. I was there for only thirty minutes to survey the area," Ezra looked around to make sure that he was completely alone in the hall, "I may have also gotten a way to get back in."
Ezra could hear one of the others trying to calm Nathan down as the doctor muttered in the background of none of this being a good idea anymore.
"Don't worry about Nathan. He's been a bit uptight and anxious since he had to falsify the documents on 'Chris's death'." Buck sighed, "We all are a bit worried about this."
"Shouldn't he be more upset with Mr. Tanner. I believe finding a look-a-like for Chris in the morgue was his idea."
"Yes, but the two of you seem to rush in with these ideas and by the time we come in to save your asses, you're about halfway deep into your messes."
"And for the record," Vin spoke up again, "Finding the body was me, but you infiltrating the prison was your idea after JD got the intel."
Another smack was heard and a yelp from JD.
"Gentlemen, I'll be needing to go soon. I'll contact you next week if there are any new updates. Mr. Dunne, if you would be so kind as to see if you can locate any information on a Mr. Westman that would be extremely helpful. That and a Zack Yates. He said he served with Mr. Larabee."
"I can answer that one for you Ez," Buck offered, "Yeah I knew Yates as well. The three of us served together. Great guy to talk to. Reminds me a bit of Josiah, except younger."
"He knows about us, apparently from Mr. Larabee," Ezra stressed.
"Chris told me a while back that he was talking to one of our men from our Navy days. He didn't say who though. Been spending the last year talking to the men who were under him. Some of the poor bastards are suffering still from the war."
"Don't you think it's a strange coincidence that Mr. Larabee somehow ends up in the same prison as one of his fellow officers?"
There was silence on the other end for a while.
"It does seem odd, and with Chris's behavior before his disappearance, it could be that he was hiding something."
"You think Chris was working with Yates with something going on in the prison?" asked JD to no one in particular.
"Baby Yates would definitely be the kind of man to seek justice, especially in dangerous places like this. If he was talking to Chris at the time, he may have asked for help."
"Baby Yates? Geez, and I thought it was bad being called 'kid'," JD murmured.
"It's cause he couldn't grow facial hair for the longest. For a time we did call him Peach Fuzz when he did manage to grow something."
"Well, I need to go. I'll talk to you all later," Ezra ran his hand over his face, tired from the medication he was given.
He received goodbyes from each of them before he hung up the phone with a sigh.
Heels from dress shoes clicked on the stone ground as they made their way down the cool hallway. Each cell they passed they would look inside the peephole to check the prisoner. His smile widened, licking his lips in pleasure as he saw one cradling form after another.
So many broken souls. So much successful cases. I'll be making thousands in no time!
The last cell he stopped at was his second to the last admission: Mr. Westman. His fingernails were bloody along with his arms from where he'd claw at them. This made him smile. If he wanted to, he'd be able to make these patients do absolutely anything to themselves, or to anyone.
That brought him to his final admission. Opening up the peephole, he expected to see a figure somewhere in the room. It looked empty. Frowning, he called for guards and typed in the passcode opening the door.
The guards got there just in time as a man jump out from the blind spot and wrap his hands around the other man's neck. The two guards pried the inmate off, beating him until he crumpled to the ground in pain.
Straightening his clothes and clearing his throat, the man dressed in the suit looked down at his assailant.
"It seems you still have some fight left in you, Mr. Gaines. No worries, we'll get rid of that violent tendency of yours. We can't have you attacking the other prisoners, no can we?"
Cold green eyes glared back at him.
"Oh, I do hope you keep up this spirit. It won't be near as fun if you were to break so easily."
The guards dragged the prisoner, who was too sore to fight back, to the far wall and chained him there.
The man in the suit sat down in a chair that was brought in by a third guard.
"Now, Mr. Gaines—"
"That's not my fucking name," growled the prisoner.
"But I believe it is, Mr. Gaines. You may have changed it, gotten a different identity, but that doesn't mean that your history is completely gone."
The prisoner clenched his fist and lowered his gaze to the floor.
The man pulled out an envelope from his jacket and dropped the contents on the floor just out of the prisoner's reach. They were pictures.
The prisoner looked up and saw the familiar faces and automatically tried to reach for them.
Cold metal pulled him back against the wall, stilling his movements.
"Now, we're going to do a little-controlled treatment. I can't technically harm you. Physically that is, but…" the man sprinkled a liquid onto the pictures that had formed a half circle around the prisoner, "I can mess with your head as much as I want."
A match was lit and dropped onto the igniting fluid. Immediately the wet paper caught the flames.
The green eyes grew wide in shock and horror. Wanting to lunge forward to save the pictures, but also fear kept him backed up against the wall. He watched in devastation as one picture after another was sent up in flames that now surrounded him, making the area around him hot. The faces were being swallowed up by black ash, smiles of familiar faces disappearing once more.
The man in the suit smiled in pleasure as he watched.