How Things Changed Forever...

Chapter 24 - Mysteries Unraveled

"Hmm", Kai answered. "Thank you for the information, sir. I'll-"

"Kai, wait!" Max said. "Don't you want to know what's been happening, what has happened till date in the case?"

"No, I don't." He answered, and didn't even spare Max a glance. Max looked highly pissed off. Hell, even my thoughts have got polluted with the foul language. Kai once again continued. "I'll take yo-"

"But I want to."

"Not my prob-"

"Well it is."

******

"Well it is." The last sentence was said with such conviction that it broke Kai'auto pilot state of working. He had barely given attention to anything other that to get himself some answers. He hadn't been giving any attention to what Max was saying until then. His mind felt like a traffic jam of thoughts. And he was the traffic police who couldn't control it.

Did he want to know what was happening? Of course Yes. But he also knew that most of the drama that had taken place was due to the mistake of sending the email to Jason's personal email ID,  rather than his professional ID. He was in a hurry to get to the hospital, to hand in the cheque and had not given it much thought.

He knew Agent Ellis was Jason's boss, how he was strict and hard on him alone, and would certainly know about the illegalities of Jason helping him in the last three years. Agent Ellis most probably had been waiting for Jason to make a mistake, and with a  mistake as grave as this, Jason was gone for good. He didn't want to discuss about it this soon. He wanted to postpone that conversation as long as possible.

He placed the handle down and muted the telephone. He snapped, "What the hell is your problem, Max!!?" his irritation was evident in his tone,  but this seemed to have just fueled Max's anger.

"Don't you dare brush my request like that, Hiwatari." Kai was very much surprised by the use of his last name. His hands were now crossed. He was sure that his eyebrows had gone up.

"We are sitting here not knowing what the hell has been happening to us all for a fortnight now. You wouldn't come forward to explain anything in the last one week, even after Tyson pestering you. Now, you suddenly tell us you have been invading our privacy without our consent for God knows how long, keeping an eye on who we meet and all that, and now you expect us to accept whatever you say when we could have at least some of the answers about what's going on. I don't know about Ray, but I'm not accepting this."

He didn't know of Max, but his outburst had surely helped him clear his mind. He knew this much for sure, now. Tyson was fine, Hillary was with him, both were heading for the hospital, the pain in his chest was now constantly there, Jason was fine, but most probably in trouble, the constant throb his temples had just gotten worse, everyone was safe. All his concerns were cleared. But he didn't want to oblige without putting up some resistance. He continued, "You don't even know who-"

"Well, my lucky stars seem to shine today. He's wouldn't be an Agent of the ISA, would he?" Max's words dripped with so much of sarcasm that Kai resigned himself to accept his stand by then. He always knew when a person was at the brink of an outburst and he wasn't even slightly interested in wasting his energy handling it. He accepted the fact that he had no way of walking out of the talk with Max at his throat. "Fine, ask whatever you want to."

The look of surprise was evident on his face. Max certainly wasn't expecting me to offer clearance so easily. He had been expecting a retort for which he would start another rant, as though the first one wasn't enough. He collected himself quite quickly, hesitantly turned to the telephone, cleared his throat and started. "Um,..Mr...."