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Seven |
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The flat bed truck drove up the mountain road, low gear all the way. Its ageing motor strained and coughed and echoed through the rocks - an abominable beast in a range full of hidden beasts and wild things. Icy roads almost ensnared it again and again in treacherous strips of frozen mud. Only thick tyres, four-wheel drive capabilities and skilful driving prevented looming disaster. It reached its destination without mishap and only an hour or two behind schedule.
It was an eerie silence that fell on the ears of the driver and passengers of the truck as the engine sputtered to a stop near the mouth of a deep-set cave. They waited a full thirty seconds before continuing on with the next step of the operation - a full heart-pounding thirty seconds before pulling out weapons and unhitching doors. These men were not green recruits overwhelmed by the scope of the operation they'd embarked upon, but men used to the wilds of concrete and metal, nature imprisoned in pots and behind iron bars. There were no iron bars holding back nature in the deep mountains of Colorado. In those thirty seconds the three men in the cab could have discovered every life meaning they may have ever searched for, but thirty seconds is no time at all when you're used to the hustle and bustle of modern life. The men disembarked from the truck with no further thought to nature, life or the depth of the silences in both and continued on with their allotted duties.
The truck was unloaded of its crates and boxes, only the subdued grunts of men moving heavy weights and the scraping of wood on metal breaking the silence of the wild. The load was shifted into the cave, lined against one wall and covered with a dark tarp that immediately blurred the strict lines and sharp edges of the packing crates, effectively hiding them from any but the most searching view.
When the truck finally roared its way back down the narrow road, a lone form broke from its hiding place amongst the trees and warily made its way to the cave. The figure stopped to listen for danger and, hearing none, slipped into the shadows of the cave. A small torch flicked on and traced a path along the cave walls. This was no casual perusal - the sharp beam picked out the tarp-covered crates as soon as it hit them. One gloved hand stretched out to lift a corner of the canvas covering and fold it back. The light now picked out each of the crates, noticing the shape and size of each, pausing a mere heartbeat of time on one before drifting to the next and finally settling on just one. The shadowy form, white intermingling with the grey of the finer shadows and the black of the deeper, drew a long, steady breath. This was not the time for irrational nerves.
The light wavered around the cave for a moment before coming to rest on the selected crate; a knife blade glinted in the torch's dim glow. The figure pried open the crate lid. Sweat poured down a face made hard with weather, age and the seriousness of his mission. The man's winter garb, the close confines of the cave and the knowledge that death lurked behind every shift of twigs on rough ground combined to keep the agent's nerves on red alert. The light wavered again as he dropped the knife beside it, bumping the casing in his haste to inspect the crate's content.
"Holy shiiiit!" The words were exhaled with an astonished breath. Contents of said crate were two guided missiles. The lid was placed back on the crate with barely a sound, the knife and flashlight retrieved, and the tarp replaced. An almost-silent figure retreated from the cave, talking quickly into a small, short-range transmitter. Urgent words were cut short by the ominous click of a semi-automatic pistol. It cut through the still mountain air like the fine edge of a meat cleaver. A soft voice came back over the airwaves, questioning, concerned - any message the voice may have been conveying was interrupted by the staccato beat of two more semi-automatics and a single machine gun.
In this section of the Great Divide, nothing would ever be quite the same again.+ + + + + + +
"What! Are you fucking crazy? You found someone snooping around our cache, minutes after it was unloaded, and you just up and shot the fucker full of holes? What do you use to shit with? Cause your asses are too busy doin' all your fuckin' thinking to have time for anyfuckingthing else!"
Three men stood in the tin shed that passed for the headquarters of the Colorado division of the Free America Militia. A fourth prowled around them like a wasp that's just had its nest poked with a stick. He was fast on his way to losing his cool - what little he had - and the results of that were often violent and bloody.
"What about back-up?"
One of the men braver or stupider than the others spoke up, his voice gruff in an attempt to hide the very real fear he felt churning his guts into a knot. "We didn't think back-up was necessary."
Declan Raddick had a short temper at the best of times. He'd soon as shoot a bird as listen to its song, squash a butterfly beneath his hammering fist without ever noticing the fine distinction of its colouring, and that was when he was in a good mood. He was not in a good mood now. Swinging around toward his henchman, his face was an interesting shade of purple and red. "Not you, fuckwit! NOT YOU! Him! The FBI agent you turned into fucking Swiss cheese! His back-up! Did you think he was just up here getting a breath of fresh air before dinner? Did you think he was in the cave so he could take a fucking piss without getting frostbite on his fucking prick??"
None of the men said a word not sure if the tirade was over. Raddick turned back to the window. Outside was a dull, grey world covered in muddy snow and slick shadows. The few vehicles allowed into the encampment had quickly turned the immediate landscape into something resembling an up-and-coming cesspit. He spat a few more curses out under his breath, the thick plastic covering immediately fogged over and the view became nothing but haze.
"Did he have a radio?"
"He might have, Mr. Raddick, but he was shot up pretty bad. Weren't much left of him to tell."
Raddick sighed - a deep, frustrated sigh that sent cold air burning down his throat and rushing back out just as frigidly. He seemed almost calm as he turned to the rickety table that substituted as his desk. "Where's the body now?"
"Back at the jeep." It was one of the other men that spoke this time. A little less eager than his compatriot to get his butt chewed, he'd kept his silence until now. Raddick had seemed to get distracted when he'd turned back to the desk. It looked the same as always, but Raddick could spot a stray speck of dust a mile away. You could never be sure what was going to piss the man off from one moment to the next. "Couldn't find nothin' that ID'd him as a fed. No ID at all."
Raddick's gaze was fixed on the desk. Something was wrong, he could feel it; it screamed at him. His nerves jangled, his fingers itched. He shuddered and tore himself away from the offending piece of furniture to stare at his men. The scowl on his face deepened as he tried to think through all the problems that might occur in the foreseeable future - think them through and solve or sidestep each one with as few changes to his plan as possible. He nodded his head. "Get it into the mess tent. I want to check it out myself."
The men strode out, relieved to be all in one piece, and headed straight for the jeep. Raddick stayed behind a moment longer, his attention back on the desk and in particular the old soup tin of pencils that sat directly in line with a narrow, tatty, grey box containing three erasers and four sharpeners, each of these in an orderly row inside the box. The pencils had bunched up, two of them in such a position that they appeared as one from the angle Raddick was standing. He stepped over to the desk and touched one finger to the pencils, spreading them apart so they no longer appeared as only six.
Order rectified, Declan joined his men at the jeep. Another man had joined them, the remaining two in the outfit still out disposing of the truck. He barked out orders that saw two of the men pick up the heavy duty plastic garbage bag - the dead FBI agent - and sent the other two running back to the camouflaged storage tent to collect shovels and start covering the obvious tyre tracks where the tree cover was most sparse.
Raddick shook his head. Stupid fucking shits! He then followed the men and the remains of the FBI agent into the mess tent. It was time to find out just how deep in the shit they really were.
Two
"Well, the shit doesn't get any deeper than this!"
The Assistant Director of Denver's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms strode into the briefing room and slammed the files he was carrying onto the polished oval table. Gathered around the table were the leaders of his three top teams. He glanced at each of the men.
"Are we all here?" He nodded as each met his stern gaze, but gave them no time for responses as he began to pace in front of the table, continuing on with the terse briefing. "Good. We have a situation, gentlemen. A definite lead, if you will, on the recent reports of weapons purchases around the country and the possibility of stock-piling in Colorado." Travis paused in front of his pile of paperwork to pick up three buff-coloured folders and pass them to the men.
"What's the lead?" Chris Larabee asked as he snapped open the file. The top page was an impressive list of weapons - enough to keep a small army in action through several incursions. Or one really big one, Larabee thought sourly.
Travis rested his fingertips on the edge of the table and pressed down so hard his knuckles turned white. Rumours had been flying for weeks about an underground network of militia making large purchases at arms shows and the illegal importation of weapons less easy to purchase. Rumours that had dispersed like a warm breath in the currently frigid air of the Mile High City. Until yesterday.
"As you're aware, the FBI and ATF have been conducting a joint operation in an attempt to track down these weapons. Numerous two-man teams were also sent out into various wilderness areas where reports of unusual activity have originated in the past. We've now got a positive report back from one of these teams."
The rumours were finally proven true by a reconnaissance team out looking for ghosts in Gunnison Gorge and the West Elk Mountains. Ghosts with handguns and a secret to protect.
"The list in front of you is just some of what is believed to be cached in the Gunnison National Forest. The location of the encampment as of yesterday is marked on the next page. Are any of you familiar with the area?"
There was a shuffle of papers as pages were turned to the map.
"Not personally, sir," Max Karr replied. Karr was leader of Team 2, a stout man who had seen more action in the field than either of the other team leaders. He scratched his shaggy, greying hair and glanced across the table at Larabee. "Didn't some of your team go fishing down that way a while back?"
Larabee nodded. "Further south, Lower Gunnison. It's a wild area, plenty of space. Tanner and Dunne know the trails around the Gorge. Been hiking down there a few times."
"A couple of my men are keen fishermen," Josh Little added. "They might know something of the area as well."
Travis nodded with a huff. "Good enough. We still don't know the identity of the bad guys we're dealing with. We do know there are at least six, possibly seven men guarding the cache, and their intent is anything but peaceful."
There was silence as the men read through the rest of the brief report. Only one of the two-man team had made it back to civilisation. The other had been murdered in cold blood, slaughtered under a hail of bullets. No questions asked, no quarter given.+ + + + + + +
Coulee was a river town that usually didn't see much excitement. People came and went - hunters in hunting season, fishermen in fishing season, hikers from spring right through to late fall. Businesses mostly catered to the outdoor way of life, and the residents fell into that category as well. Life ebbed and flowed with the seasons, as dependable as the river on whose banks the town was perched. Like the river, little ever happened to alter its course.
The last couple of days had seen all that change, and the town was buzzing with nervous energy. One place and one room, in particular. Only the day before, the room had been the Coulee Village community hall - home to the Coulee Chamber of Commerce, Coulee and District Mums and Bubs Club, and numerous other small town groups. Now it was a temporary in-the-field briefing room. The walls were decorated with maps, photographs and weapons specifications interspersed with crayon portraits and finger-painted landscapes.
Coulee was the civilisation the surviving member of the two-man reconnaissance team had made it to after the murder of his partner. It was the closest town to Gunnison Gorge and still a ten-hour drive/hike to the cave where the killing took place. A second team had been sent up on horseback with orders to stay clear of trouble and stay off the only road in and out of the area to avoid tipping off the gunmen before the ATF could get their teams into place.
Thirty-plus men, a mix of ATF, FBI and local Rangers were preparing to surround the encampment and take the bad guys out - bloodshed was deemed inevitable.
Orrin Travis stalked the streets of the town. It was early evening, barely dusk really, but the shadows were already long and the light dim. The tip of the ATF man's cigar glowed hotly as he sucked in a lungful of acrid smoke. Winter days were shorter, it seemed, this close to God's wilderness - much shorter than in the city with its artificial lights to stretch out every fading minute. The streetlights in Coulee had flickered to life as soon as the blue sky had begun to fade into twilight. One or two had failed, the globes burnt out and lifeless, and the shadows beneath their weather-stained poles were longer, darker - the starkness of the street more sinister in these places than elsewhere.
Travis shivered and dragged his mind away from the morbid turn it was taking, fixing his eyes instead on the nearby mountain range and its brilliant peaks - the last of the sun's rays lighting them up brighter than Cheops's gold-capped pyramid, but his mind once again turned dark as he realised he'd just compared the mountains to an ancient tomb.
"Goddamit!" he muttered fiercely. He had his best men in those mountains and had complete faith in every single one of them, but he was still worried. They had no reports on what to expect, had no idea who they were dealing with and had not an inkling of the purpose of the stockpile or the intent of the people who controlled it. Satellite pictures had shown minimal activity around the camp area, their only worth so far to indicate the number of men the government agents faced - seven. The satellite wouldn't be in position again for several more hours, and a whole hell of a lot could happen by then. The agents on horseback had little more to report. Once again, minimal activity. The cave had been found, a truck parked ready to be loaded at its entrance. No sign of panic or disorder amongst the quarry, no suspicious activity - other than walking around fully armed out of hunting season -and still no identifications to go on.
His men were going in blind.
Three
While Orrin Travis was striding back to a long night in the briefing room, Chris Larabee and the men of Team 7 were descending like ghosts down the mountainside toward the silent encampment. Max Karr and his team were already in position on the edge of the camp, their dark forms nearly invisible amongst the trees and rocks.
"Light isn't goin' to last much longer, Chris, and the place looks deserted." Vin Tanner had positioned himself on the edge of a flat rock jutting out at an upward angle from the ground. He could see the entire camp - each shadowy tent, each empty packing crate, and the single apparently abandoned jeep. What worried him was what he could not see - no light and no movement of any kind.
Larabee stretched himself down on the rock beside the sharpshooter and pulled a set of binoculars from his kit belt. The binoculars were small and compact but contained powerful lenses with a visibility range higher than its standard, bulkier counterparts. It also had a night-vision attachment that Chris flipped down as he surveyed the area below him.
Vin had been peering through the scope of his rifle and now turned back to his team leader. "They've bailed out."
"Shit!" Larabee muttered. "What the hell happened to the surveillance team?" He flicked his radio headset on and adjusted the microphone in front of his mouth - the previously ordered radio silence was over. "Max, this is Chris. We're in position, place looks deserted. You got anything?"
The moment of quiet was drawn out. Larabee could feel Tanner shift position behind him, could hear the faint shuffles of the other men as they spread out across the slope ready to proceed as soon as he gave the word. Somewhere further off, rocks were sliding down the slope and birds were singing their night songs and twittering to each other as they settled in the trees. A few feet away, Team 7's guide, a local NPS officer, had his own set of binoculars trained on the mountainside around and opposite them, watching the trees and bushes for anything out of place.
Finally, the voice he was waiting to hear came whispering through the receiver. "This is Max. The place is cold. Our little birdies have flown the coop. We're going in. Wait for the all clear then come on down and join the party. Back in five." The radio went silent.
Larabee contacted Josh Little. Team 5 had just reached the cave where the weapons were allegedly cached. There was no sign of life at the cave and the trucks were gone. A couple of his men were trailing tyre tracks, but the light was fading fast and snow was beginning to fall. Larabee swore and warned them to watch their backs when they entered the cave. Little had laughed and said, "No worries!" and signed off.
Chris checked in with his own men and ordered them to be ready to move in. It was less than five minutes when Max Karr's strained voice came back on the radio. "Larabee? All clear. We've got bodies."
"Fuck...! Who?"
Tanner slid down the rock and stared hard at Chris. They'd all heard Karr's report. The lack of contact with the surveillance team over the last few hours had been worrying - a signal on a different channel had been set up to camouflage the only radio use the teams had been allowed - but the channel had been all static and no contact, and there was not a thing they could do about it.
"Just get your asses down here. I've gotta report back to base."+ + + + + + +
"This operation is going to hell in a hand basket!" Travis roared. He'd just finished speaking to Max Karr. "I want to know who we're dealing with here! Makin!" Orrin glared across the table at Special Agent Paul Makin. "Get your people onto this. Dig all the way to China if they have to, but get me some information. How long before the satellite is in position?"
Makin had worked with Orrin Travis before but didn't think he'd ever seen him quite this upset. He's got every reason to be. Hell! Three more men dead. The FBI agent turned to another agent set up in the corner with a huge table of communications equipment.
"Two hours and 36 minutes, Sir," the agent replied.
Makin nodded. "Let us know the minute it starts to come around." The agent returned to his equipment and started adjusting dials and pressing buttons.
Travis had started pacing again. His eyes fixed now on some point in front of him. Makin was glad to have the man's piercing glare off him. He could feel his gut churning. This was not good and he had the sinking feeling it was only going to get worse. Just before the ATF man had returned from his walk, the FBI had got word on the possible target of the band. He'd been curious as to why they'd picked this patch of wilderness to set up camp. Their position was isolated, difficult and winter had all but hit the area. The camp was temporary and hardly suitable for seeing through the season. They were on their way somewhere else. Where that somewhere was, Makin had desperately wanted to know and now he thought he did.
"Did you know there was a CIA safe house in the area?"
Orrin stopped pacing instantly. "What? Where?"
Makin leant over the map pinned to the table and traced a line from the marked position of the weapons cache along the blue line that was the Gunnison River and through a shaded patch, finally stopping midway through the area. "Black Canyon. It's currently housing a small group of visiting dignitaries from various unfriendly nations."
Travis looked up, his expression as cold as stone. "I want a report from Little and I want to talk to Larabee, now!"+ + + + + + +
It was the surveillance team. Unknown to the ATF agents except for their crackling voices over the two-way radio, their loss nevertheless was a huge blow. It was also not a pretty sight. Nathan pulled a sheet up over the face of the third and final body and handed the dead man's wallet to Sanchez. "Can't tell if they died before or after being tortured," Team 7's medic said. His voice was low and husky.
Ravaged, Sanchez thought. He sounds ravaged. The same way I feel. He gripped the three wallets he now held in his clenched fist, feeling the ghost of living warmth on his skin. "No one deserves this," he muttered.
Nathan stood wiping his gloved hands on a cloth, staining its whiteness with coagulating blood before snapping off the latex gloves and dropping the lot into a plastic evidence bag. "All the wounds are the same - five stab wounds, all fatal in various degrees, and a shot to the head. There's also trauma and lacerations to the throat area."
"What are the various degrees of fatality, Nathan?" Josiah cut in.
Nathan was startled by the other man's harshness and would have made an angry retort if it was anybody else, but Josiah Sanchez and he had been friends of a kind for years. That itself allowed for a certain kind of leeway so, instead of the retort, Jackson sighed and rested a hand on his friend's arm. "Each single wound was enough to kill; the only difference between them was how fast death would have come. The gunshot wounds hardly bled at all."
"What kind of animal would kill like this?"
"The human kind, my friend." Josiah and Nathan turned to see Ezra Standish standing in the doorway to the tent. "Are you done in here?"
Nathan could feel Josiah tense at the southerner's apparently uncaring attitude. "For now," he replied.
Ezra avoided looking at the three shrouded bodies. He'd seen enough the first time he'd entered the tent and found their bodies laid out in the bunk beds as if sleeping, the blankets and sheets that now covered the pallid faces carefully tucked in around their bodies. A shudder threatened to break his composure and Ezra half-turned to stare out into the night. Pulling himself together, he turned back. "Team 2 found another body."
Nathan stepped forward. "Another? The FBI tracker?"
Ezra nodded, "Vin thinks so," and left the tent.
"Shit." Nathan pulled his hood over his head and stalked out after him.
Josiah remained behind. Moving closer to the bunks, he pulled the sheet back from the body it contained and opened the wallet that Nathan had removed from the man's shirt pocket.
"Ger McManus," Josiah mumbled. Stationed at Gunnison Ranger's Outpost. Young to be so alone, and now dead. He traced a cross on the dead man's forehead, mouthed a silent prayer and replaced the sheet.
The second bunk was head to head with the first. Josiah moved to it crouched over like an old man. "Robert Zimmer, Coulee." There was a family back in town missing a father and husband tonight. Josiah touched the photograph in the wallet - the dead man and his wife laughing over the antics of the child toddling toward them. He added a fervent prayer for the man's family as he crossed the waxen brow and then stood to minister to the third dead ranger.
"Fred Barry." An older man with a weather-beaten face, the neat hole in the side of his head covered by a shock of white hair. Cimarron, his ID stated, and little else - no pictures or family details, a committed bachelor to the end.
Josiah's joints creaked as he got to his feet. The weather had dropped a good ten degrees since nightfall, and he felt every one. Rubbing his hands, he turned his back on the dead rangers. He could hear the strained voices of Larabee and Karr as they discussed and argued their orders just outside the tent. Neither man was happy; both wanted to put an end to the mission as soon as possible. They were in total agreement on method - bring the murderous bastards in, preferably dead. Josiah ducked his head to the cold, ignored the flakes of snow covering his head, and walked up to the team leaders. They needed to discuss the profile of the killer.
Four
Their watches said dawn, but nobody had yet to tell the sun that. The sky was just as dark at dawn as it had been at midnight, as it had been as soon as the sun had dropped from view the afternoon before.
"Damn, nights are long up here," Buck Wilmington complained. "Don't remember them bein' this long last time."
"That's because you spent the whole night snorin' so loud you scared all the trout away for a mile up and down river," JD quipped. The two were sitting at the edge of the camp, mugs of hot coffee in their hands, waiting once again for the word to move out.
Ezra, standing a few feet away checking his weapons, snorted. "And contributing to the confusion of that elk that haunted our camp the entire time. Rutting season, wasn't it?"
JD laughed and elbowed Wilmington. "That buck was hornier than you, Buck!"
Buck rolled his eyes and drank his coffee. In the next instant he was standing and half his coffee had spilled into the snow at his feet. Two men had just materialised in front of him. "Holy fuck, Tanner! Didn't anyone ever tell you it just ain't polite to sneak up on a person?"
Tanner's smile was as ghost-like as his sudden appearance had been. The second man, Agent Wellman from Team 2, was openly smirking. Ezra suspected the pair had planned the stunt just to see Wilmington's reaction.
"Sun'll be up in twenty minutes," Vin said, ignoring Buck's exaggerated attempts at shaking the coffee from his hands. "We've found the trail up to the cache. It's fairly clear. Wellman'll take you up. Me and the ranger," Tanner jerked a thumb toward the barely visible ranger waiting in the trees, "are gonna fan out and see the lay of the land."
"Think someone's out there?" Buck asked.
Vin shrugged. "I'll meet you up top. Tell Chris."
As Vin disappeared back into the night, Buck turned to Ezra, eyebrows raised. The southerner nodded. "He thinks someone's out there."
The three men followed Wellman over to where Larabee and Karr were pouring over maps, meteorological reports and topographical charts with Ranger Brad Rafferty. The NPS Officer had known McManus, Barry and Zimmer well. It'd only been a week since the four men had spent a Sunday afternoon at Barry's property drinking beer and shooting the breeze. Now they were dead and Rafferty could barely control his fury.
Wellman reached them as they were discussing the terrain surrounding the CIA safe house. They looked up at his approach. Wellman's face was grim. "Time to go a'hunting."+ + + + + + +
Ezra found Josiah in the gang's makeshift office. He was sitting on a rickety chair behind the desk.
"The ultimate in nouveau trash," Ezra commented, passing a critical eye over the lime green card table and the several old soup cans that were home to a collection of pencils and rulers. "Quite the stationary collector?"
Josiah rested his chin on his steepled fingers, deep in thought.
"Mr. Larabee's looking for you. Wants to discuss profiles one more time before we head up-mountain."
There was no reply.
"Josiah?"
Finally, Josiah stirred himself and cast a quizzical glance at Standish. "What do you see in here, Ezra? Look around. What do you see?"
Ezra gave the room a fleeting look. "Extremely poor choice in interior designers?"
Josiah huffed and Ezra looked again more carefully. "I see a battered dresser covered in what could easily be a decade's worth of dust and grime sitting on a floor that was once a packing crate." He twisted his head trying to read the dirt-smeared delivery instructions on the flooring. "Obviously, he gave the cleaner the week off."
"How many drawers in the dresser, Ezra?"
"Seven."
"Open one of the drawers. What do you see?"
Ezra did as Josiah requested and slid open the top drawer. It was empty. "We don't really have time for this. Larabee's waiting."
"What do you see, Ezra?"
Standish sighed. "Nothing. The drawer is empty. Not a single pencil, no papers, no satin boxers." Ezra ran a finger across the bottom of the drawer. "Not even any dust." It was perfectly clean. The southerner turned a perplexed face to Sanchez.
"All the drawers are the same. The cupboard in the corner is the same. The filing cabinets are the same. Everything in here appears to be set in some form of pattern."
Ezra moved back to the desk and inspected the pencils. "These pencils have never been used." He scanned the rest of the items on the desktop. "And there's not a single pen. What's in that biscuit tin?"
Josiah lifted the lid. "The stuff he did use. One pencil and one red pen, both with their ends chewed, two erasers, one for ink and the other for lead, a steel fold-out ruler also with teeth marks, a stapler and a packet of staples."
"Where's the pattern in that?"
The older man stood and began buttoning his coat. "I don't know, but there is one. You can be sure of it." He stepped away from the desk and toward the door.
The camp was shades of grey in the early morning pre-light. Josiah stepped out and thumped down the wooden steps without another word. By the time he reached Chris Larabee he'd pulled a garish knitted beanie down over his head and shoved his hands into a pair of leather gloves. Ezra watched him. Wasn't there a pattern in everything? The way a person pulls on his clothes, the way he greets the dawn - everything was some part of a pattern in one way or another. He dropped the unused pencils back into the tin and followed Sanchez out of the dim office. A sudden gust of breeze blew a cloud of snow across the floor, further obliterating the last traces of a delivery address. Ezra's eyes glanced down as he reached for the doorknob, absently noting the vague outline of the address's street number just before the door brushed over it and clicked closed - seven.
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