The same fucking thing happened now.
The phone rang out to voicemail so I ended the call. I’d left him enough messages for him to know what it was I wanted. I doubted though that I would have needed to say anything.
The hours that followed since we got back felt like eons, and now I was sitting on the front porch with a cigarette in my hand. It was one of Jack’s. I hadn’t smoked in years but this right now was something I needed to calm me down because everything had blown up in my face. Everything.
I glanced down at my watch, it was nearly nine.
It rained last night so there was a slight mist about the place and it wasn’t as bright as it usually was at this hour of the morning. The scenery suited my mood.
Jack opened the door and came out. He had a slight limp and his arm was in a sling.
He’d broken a few ribs yesterday and taken a bullet to his shoulder but it passed through at an angle that probably hurt like a bitch but wouldn’t leave too much damage. He’d been told to stay in the hospital for a few days. Jack being Jack however stayed long enough to get patched up with some stitches and discharged himself straight after.
He said staying in like that was for people who had nothing better to do and as long as he could move he was leaving and coming to help me.
He pulled out his lighter, lit up, and held the flame to me when I got out another cigarette. Jack then reached for a cigar from his back pocket and lit it up.
He sat opposite me on the porch, gazing out into the open the same way I was.
“I’m sorry Xander,” he said, voice just above a whisper.
I shook my head and looked at him.
“No, you have nothing to be sorry for,” I told him.
“I feel like shit. You asked me to watch her and she got taken on my watch. I had eyes in the sky and everything. She still got taken.” He took a draw on his cigar and blew out the smoke in a ring. “If it wasn’t for your friend Frankie I would have been a goner. They blindsided me big time and tried to undercut me. He had my back. We thought she’d be safe in the basement. They went down there and I don’t even know when they took her. There was no scream or anything. They just took her.”
“I need to get her back Jack. I have to. I can’t allow Balthazar to …” I couldn’t say the words.
He wouldn’t just kill her.
He wouldn’t.
He’d told me so himself when he went to her house. He knew what she meant to me and the things he said were the kind that were enough to make me end him if he didn’t have a gun pointed at her.
“Don’t think like that, son. Don’t. We just have to hope.”
I tossed the cigarette and redialed Ethan’s number.
Another fruitless attempt maybe, but it was what I had. We had Dorian track the number but it came up with somewhere listed in Vegas. Around the area we’d been when we were there. We knew then that he couldn’t have been anywhere near us because he was hours away.
It suggested he’d ditched the phone.
I hung up when the same fucking thing happened as before. But unlike before, my phone rang and it was an unrecognized number.
I answered straight away.
“Who is this?” I barked.
“Xander Cage is that any way to answer the phone? Really?” It was Ethan!
Jack straightened up instantly as I bolted up.
“Ethan, where the fuck are you? Where is Jia?” I was just talking. Not quite thinking about what the hell it was I was asking him.
Realistically I wanted to kill him. I wanted to kill him.
“Xander, I tried so hard to hide the truth from you. I really did. But it was to no avail. I suppose these things come out eventually. The way things were going meant they had to at some point.”
I seethed, trying hard to focus on the right thing to say.
“It was you. All of it. All along. It was you. Right from the damn start. You. When? When did you switch sides?”
Everything was tumbling through my mind. I wanted answers for all of it.
He cleared his throat. “Is that really relevant now?”
“Yes, you will tell me and then you’re going to tell me where Jia is.”
“Old friend, this is a courtesy call. Not one where you make demands. It’s one to tell you to give up the chase. We’re seeking other avenues now. The same way you like to get in and out and not leave a trace, the same way I like to be clean, not leave any baggage behind or shit that can follow you. I was the one who insisted on not taking her for leverage at the start. I really thought you would have stolen the prints and everything would have run smoothly. It might have worked if you hadn’t gotten involved with the girl. It clouded your judgment Xander and your ability to do your job. You got messy, you slipped up, you weren’t thinking straight. This is the result.”
“Son of a bitch, tell me where she is.”
“No. Like I said, I won’t be doing that. We’ll do things the dirty way from here onwards. She is leverage, so we’ll see just how important she is to Giovanni Marchesi. I guess though I can tell you when it was I changed sides.” He chuckled. “The truth is, I was always who I was. I was always part of The Ra. I’m a leader, just like Balthazar. The thing about leadership in The Ra is that we never wear the mark. The same way he doesn’t have any tattoos on him to give him away as a Spade or even part of The Ra, is the same way I am. It’s how we work. I worked my way in to get the intel. All the things I needed to get to report to my superiors. Years of work. We infiltrate and become part of the system until we need to strike. That’s how we’re always one step ahead of the game.”
My God.
That was exactly it. That was why it felt like Balthazar was always ahead. It felt like that because he was, he absolutely fucking was.
Ethan was the Joker Giovanni referred to when he tortured me. Giovanni, that asshole. He knew too that it had to be someone like Ethan that had sent me. That was why he asked the questions. I was such an idiot. I was such a fucking fool.
Fucking hell.
“How can you think this was all okay? We all trusted you. Me, Claire, Paul, Lucas, John. The Shadow unit, we trusted you.” That was the name given to the unit because of me, because I moved like a shadow. “You formed the unit to hunt the Ra.” That was the fucking irony in it.
“I did but only as a request from the ministry of defense. That wasn’t me. It came about as a response to The Ra becoming more dangerous. I just positioned myself so I’d be in charge of you. I knew if I had control over a unit like yours then I’d know who’d be hunting my people and where they’d be. Then you guys got good. Better than good. We had to find a way to eradicate you. But you got away, Xander Cage. You got away. And just when I thought you might be useful to me, you proved me wrong. You were useless. We should have just gone for the girl in the first place. Well, we have her now.”
My chest tightened up with fury and all the angst from the last five years. I was the one who wanted answers and vengeance. Right now I didn’t know if I could handle hearing the confession of what really took place. I couldn’t believe I’d allowed this man to fool me.
“You’ll pay for this Ethan. You evil piece of shit, you’ll pay. Mark my word.” I turned to see Jack, who’d been looking on at me and listening in. He nodded his agreement at my words.