Chapter Sixteen

There was a dream of a man that he remembered, but the real person who’d returned to Ronald was weathered and beaten. William had slept for hours after they had a few slices of pizza. He was relatively sure if they knew where William and Ronald were hiding, they’d have sent someone by now.

So, unable to fight exhaustion, William succumbed to the fatigue and the injuries and dropped into a fitful and long sleep. While William slumbered, Ronald took the time to regroup from the idea he was a wanted man, and not in any biblical sense. Someone wanted him dead, and he needed to know why.

The wi-fi at the motel required a password. But Ronald wanted to stay off-line. If William’s paranoia about being tracked proved right, he wasn’t interested in leading them to the musty motel room to finish the job. He deactivated the network connection and felt nothing was linking the laptop to the outside world. As far as he knew, they couldn’t track an IP address unless there was an active internet source. Ronald never left the laptop anywhere for any length of time. And it was turned off when he removed it from the satchel. Unlike the cell phone, he was confident they didn’t remotely activate it.

Instead of using the internet, Ronald looked at the details of his notes, and the article plans that went into exposing Edward Goldberg. There were a lot of misleading probes about the man’s businesses overseas. While Goldberg had financial ties to account holders in Washington and abroad, the man barely left the city. As far as Ronald could tell, the man lived in an expensive house with his wife off Jackson Avenue in Takoma Park,, right near the Maryland-DC border. Goldberg’s office was in DC. It was only a matter of tracking his off-shore business names and making a lot of phone calls to dead numbers for alleged front companies that helped Ronald make the connection. After he did all the work, the federal regulators and law enforcement agencies did the rest. They tied up the loose business ends and audited the guy to see his holdings were over and above anything he’d claimed. Ronald just posted the story; the government did the rest, indicting Goldberg for illicit funds.

“I know you’re not online,” William’s voice said weakly from the lumpy bed.

“Of course not,” Ronald replied. He smiled at William; sheet and light comforter covered his lower half.

His bare chest and bandage were exposed. The wound had stopped bleeding. The steri-strips would help with healing, as long as William didn’t have to do a lot of moving around. It was a matter of keeping the gash clean. There would forever be a scar; a permanent reminder that William had saved Ronald’s life. He winced when he pulled himself upright again.

“I was going over everything I had on Goldberg to see if there was anything I hadn’t followed up on where it came to the article.” Ronald slipped from the wobbly chair at the tiny table by the door and went to bed. He’d wanted to sleep but was uncomfortable with the idea of lying in bed with William. There wasn’t a tension between them. It was more of a decision Ronald came to on his own. He owed the man his life, but they’d stopped sharing a bed together almost four years ago when William went away.

“Did you find anything interesting?”

“Well, there is a guy who did a lot of local business with Goldberg.” He sat on the edge of the bed. The open space between them was a safe zone for him to discuss matters with William without getting too intimate. “I didn’t follow-up on his local businesses. I thought it was more interesting following the construction contracts he had outside the country.”

“I remember the article.” William frowned. “I don’t remember anything about local deals.”

Ronald shook his head. “I didn’t bother with that. Once I was on the off-shore dummy companies, I knew that trail was hotter than anything in the United States.”

“So, do you have information on the local business partner?”

“I have some notes. But most of the contact information and the business account stuff are in my cloud account.”

William nodded. “So we have to get that hard drive out of that computer and get you a new laptop to access your private accounts.”

“Can’t we just use a library computer or something?”

“Sure,” William agreed. “But if this gets sticky, I don’t want to put a librarian in the middle of a gun fight.”

Ronald was quiet for a long time trying to imagine the recourse of bad judgment.

“We can get a new laptop and a hard drive reader. What?” William asked, reading Ronald’s concerned face.

“I assume I can’t use my credit cards. I spent the last cash I had on our dinner, and I don’t have a considerable amount of savings to use for covert espionage.”

William smiled at Ronald. His hand moved over his chest and reached out to him. Reflectively, Ronald reached for it but stopped short of taking his lover’s hand. It stung; the past came back in flashes. There was a wall between them made up of lies and half-truths. Before Ronald could forgive, he had to understand.

“Can you hand me my wallet?” William asked. Ronald felt a flash of heat from embarrassment. He slipped off the bed and retrieved William’s wallet from the inside pocket of his ruined blazer.

William went through the stack of credit cards in the wallet. “There are a few cards here that aren’t activated. They are all maxed out for funds. He held up a collection of gift cards like presenting a royal flush. “I think we’ll be okay.”

“How are you feeling?” Ronald asked.

“I feel like I just slept ten hours in a shitty motel in the middle of nowhere.”

“Then you’re doing better than me.”

William frowned. “Did you get any sleep?”

“I didn’t want to bother you.”

William slipped from under the sheet. He wore black boxer-briefs. Ronald caught sight of the familiar bulge hidden inside the cotton briefs. William made his way to the bathroom. He left the door open when he used the toilet.

“How’s the shower?” he asked while washing his hands. Ronald waited, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“It’s okay but doesn’t get very hot.”

William stood in the doorway to the bathroom watching Ronald. “I’m going to take a shower. I want you to get into bed and get some sleep.”

“You think we’re okay here?”

“How long have you had your laptop on?” William asked casually. He looked at the small white computer on the table.

“About two or three hours, why?” Ronald asked with concern.

William shrugged indifferently. “If they know where we are, they’ll let us know soon enough.”