could get him anywhere in the Middle East he wanted to go. There was information in this book that could land him in jail for sure.
Ezra was crying, still sitting on the floor. Henry looked at her as he closed the book. He put it back in the safe and closed it. He knew the NSA would not drop this. He couldn’t kill Ezra now that she had made contact with them. He would be the prime suspect. He had to make this end with information she could deliver that would lead to nowhere. He looked back at Ezra. She had been a good wife to him and put up with everything he had done.
Henry went back around the desk and bent down next to her. He reached out and cupped her face, making her look at him. “I know you’re scared. I’m not going to hurt you. I put you in this position, and I’ll get you out. If you help me stop the NSA from looking, I will give you your freedom.”
Ezra looked into his eyes. “What assurances do I have you won’t just kill me later?”
“None. You can help me and take your chances, or I will kill you and disappear in the Middle East. How do you want this to work?”
Ezra smiled. “I choose to live, so tell me what to do.”
Henry helped her up. “I will go out of town next week. I will give you the combination to the safe. You take the ledger to the NSA lady and let her copy anything she wants. When I get back, I will give you money and a divorce. You can go wherever you want and start a new life. I give you my word if you get them off me, I will leave you alone.”
“Obviously what I give them will not be the real ledger, will it?”
“It will be close enough to make them have suspicion but not enough to get me into trouble. I will break off my ties to the groups that do harm. It is not worth going to jail over.”
“And you will give me enough money to start a new life?”
“Yes. You help me, and I will help you. You are wrong about me. I do love you, Ezra, in my own way. No one ever loved me, and I have trouble loving openly. I have trust issues. You have been a good wife to me. I will let you go live whatever life you want.”
Ezra turned and walked out of the room. That day she moved her things into one of the other bedrooms. She didn’t know if she could trust Henry, but she would take the deal. She knew how to disappear as well. Once she had his money and the money she had hidden away, she would get the NSA to change her name, and she would vanish.
What scared her was that Henry knew that she had met with them, and he knew Bahar’s name. He had friends everywhere, and she knew he was dangerous no matter what he said. He needed her right now, and her life was safe as long as that was the case. She would give the information to the NSA and disappear.
Henry spent the next several days going through the ledger. He put as much information in the fake ledger as he could without incriminating himself with connections directly to any of the terrorist groups. A few that listed were sketchy but nothing that would bring him down. The NSA wouldn’t be getting the ledger in an illegal manner, so the information would just draw attention but nothing else. He would redirect funds as needed going forward, and the original ledger would be destroyed. He could get through this without any real trouble.
When Henry finished it, he called Ezra to his study. She came in, and Henry had the ledger lying on the desk. He watched her as she entered. She looked at the ledger. “Take it to your friends once I leave town. Tell them what I told you and then put it back in the safe. Make up some story about finding the combination in my desk. I will change it when I get back.”
“What about the money. Once I do this, I’m not coming back here. I will tell them I have to leave right then.”
“No money until I know you have delivered this ledger to them.”
Henry pointed at the fireplace, and Ezra turned to see the real ledger burning. She took a small step in that direction and saw Henry’s arm raise. She stopped and looked at him, only to see the gun pointed at her head. She froze in place.
“Take another step towards that fire and you will die right here. Double-cross me in our arrangement and I will have you tortured and killed. Do anything else that puts my freedom in jeopardy, I will have you killed. Do you understand me, Ezra?”
She stepped back toward the desk and picked up the ledger. “Yes, I understand, but when you leave here, you will never see me again. I want to live my life, Henry. Not in fear of you. I will play this part and then go away.”
Henry came around the desk and looked closely into Ezra’s eyes. “You open a bank account with the money you already have hidden. A Swiss account. Text me the account number and I will transfer the money next week when I get back. Can you handle that?”
Ezra again was shocked that he knew about the money. “You have spied on me every day of my life here, haven’t you?”
Henry smiled. “I pay people well to keep me informed. I needed to know what you were doing while I was away.”
Ezra turned and walked out of the office. “I will keep my word, you do the same.”
Henry turned and walked to the fireplace. He pushed the book around with a poker, making sure every page burned. The pages that had burned he stirred so that no page could be read. He had to be certain that nothing in the real ledger would ever fall into the wrong hands. He knew once the feds had the fake ledger, they would come with a search warrant. He needed them to find only one version of the book. He would send Ezra the money and then track it down and find out where she was. Once he knew, he would have her killed and erased from his life.
Ezra woke the next morning to an empty house. Henry left ten thousand dollars on the counter with a phone number. The note said to text the account number to that phone when the ledger was back in the safe. Below that was the combination to the safe. Ezra went to her workroom and got the burner phone. She texted Bahar to meet her immediately, that she had the ledger and they could copy it. She let her know that she had to return it to the safe immediately and that she wanted a new identity with passport and driver’s license.
Ezra stared at the phone, waiting for a reply. Nothing came. She paced around the room for ten minutes. Nothing. She texted again. “Must meet now. Have the ledger now.”
A few more minutes went by, and the phone dinged. “Good to meet now, same place?”
Ezra sighed with relief. “Yes. What about passport and ID?”
She waited. Ding! “Working on it. How long to the meet?”
“One hour.”
Ezra looked around her studio at the paintings and her supplies. She wondered if she should pack them now or do it later. She really didn’t want to even come back to this house, for fear Henry would blow the place up with her in it as soon as he saw her put the ledger back in the safe.
She grabbed her brushes and a few other supplies. She went to her bedroom next. She grabbed a medium-sized suitcase from the closet and began to put the items she wanted in the case. Once that was packed, she went downstairs to Henry’s study. She put the combination in the lock and opened the door to the safe.
The safe was pretty clean compared to normal. Henry had obviously cleaned it out. There was still a good bit of cash in there and a pistol. Some business papers and random other things. Ezra didn’t want to touch anything. The gun was probably a setup anyway. She didn’t want her fingerprints on it.
