“Doors don’t open for another hour,” he said, his thick voice gruff with an ambiguous drawl that could have been from anywhere. “Come back then. No loitering.”
“Not here for that, Drew,” Damon said, shoving his hands into his pockets, slowing as they drew closer to Gordon. “Damon Louis. Rian Falwell. We got a few questions to ask you, that’s all.”
Gordon Drew squinted at them suspiciously, then cocked his head and looked longer at Damon. “You’re that kid the Louises adopted, ain’t you? When did you get back into town?”
Damon lofted his brows and stared at him flatly. “About ten years ago. I teach up the hill now.”
Drew dragged his lips into a smirk and swiped back his greasy hair, iron gray that still retained hints of oily yellow. “Huh. ’scuse me if I don’t have anything to do with the fancy folk up the hill, Louis.” He took a few steps closer, his stride aggressive despite that leering smile that remained, fake and overly obsequious even as he darted another, longer look at Rian as he said up the hill, contemptuous. “You want something?”
“Yes,” Rian said, completely unfazed, returning Drew’s gaze with hazel eyes turned flinty and calm. “Considering you don’t have anything to do with ‘the fancy folk up the hill,’ but one of our students has a shirt from your...” Rian flicked a look over Drew from head to toe, before pointedly dragging his gaze up to look in him the eye. “... Roadhouse.”
Damon bit back his grin.
Sometimes, that snotty attitude Rian could put on came in handy.
Drew curled his upper lip. “And?” he spat. “It’s a fuckin’ shirt, he could’ve gotten it anywhere. Maybe someone else gave it to him.”
“So I guess he coulda gotten bruised up anywhere, too,” Damon said flatly, before Rian added in coolly articulated tones,
“Bruises that we have photographic evidence of. Documented for the police.”
“Can’t forget he comes back stinking to high hell, too. Every night.” Damon lifted his head, flaring his nostrils, breathing in deep of the evening air, cool and crisp but with a sour edge as oily as Drew himself. “Smells kinda like this place.”
Gordon Drew stared between them, his smirk vanishing to leave an expression of commingled disgust and dismay; Damon just looked at him steadily, while Rian folded his arms over his chest, pursing his lips and arching a brow.
“The fuck you want from me?” Drew demanded in a rough growl.
Damon narrowed his eyes. “Northcote. Chris Northcote. The fuck is he doing out here every night?” he asked. “What kinda shit you letting happen on your property?”
“Nothing,” Drew retorted immediately—too immediately, not exactly fucking convincing. “People come here, they get drunk, they go home by last call, I cut ’em off if they’re too drunk to drive. So maybe I miss a few, I ain’t perfect, but that’s it. We get a few brawls, nothing else.” He pointed a gnarled finger at them, keys still clutched in his fist, jingling. “Just ’cause you town fuckers look down on me don’t mean I don’t run a clean establishment.”
“Clean,” Rian repeated with lofty disdain, drawing the word out sardonically, cl-e-e-an. “So if I were to ask Chris, what would he say? What would he tell me, if I told him we’d discovered his connection to your bar and asked him to tell us the truth?”
Gordon Drew said nothing, avoiding their eyes—but he flinched as Damon took a step closer.
“We can hear it from him or we can hear it from you, Drew,” Damon bit off. “Might as well take your chance to tell your side of things first.”
Drew scowled, his face purpling in an angry flush; he pulled back his upper lip, baring his teeth, and Damon tensed himself, bracing for backlash, but after a moment Drew snapped, “He told me he was fucking eighteen.” He let out a furious sound of frustration. “He looked it, why the fuck would I figger he wasn’t old enough?”
“Old enough for what, Mr. Drew?” Rian said through his teeth, only to be met with mutinous silence. “Old. Enough. For. What.”
Balling up his fists, Drew put his face through a series of contortions like he was fighting his mouth to either get the words out or keep them inside, before he flared, “Fucking bouncing, aight? I ain’t letting some kid drink in my place, but he said he needed the fuckin’ money so I let him work door security under the table. What’s your fucking problem?”
“My fucking proble—” Damon broke off, cursing up a fucking storm, letting out every iteration and variation of fuck he knew; he had to turn away or he was going to do something immensely fucking regrettable.
“Do you hear yourself?” Rian snapped. “Our problem? You let a child be brutalized by adults. You violated child labor laws so you could save a few pennies paying someone illegally. And lest you forget and need to hear it again, that person you were paying illegally was. A. Child.”
“He fucking wanted it, why the fuck are you getting shitty with me over it?” Drew threw back. “He was fuckin’ begging me. And he was good at the fuckin’ job.” When Damon looked back... Drew had the nerve to be fucking smiling, like he actually had some kind of affection for Chris, or pride in him, but it was all so fucking fake. “Look, he muscled people good, but like...he wouldn’t let ’em start fights with him. Even when they were smashing up on him, he didn’t fight back. Kinda self-sacrificin’ like that. I’m teaching him good life skills, y’know. Whaddya call that? De-escalation?”
“I call it fucking child abuse.” Damon’s blood was rising, feeling like it was about to pop through his fucking veins, his fingers clenching so hard his knuckles ground into his palms.
This fucking explained everything.
The bruises. The sneaking out. The exhaustion, working late nights at a bar.
And why Chris had felt like he’d had to hide, and might get in some kind of legal trouble if he got caught.
Mother fucker.
“Yeah, well, you can fuckin’ rejoice, ’cause it’s over now,” Drew snarled. “Kid ain’t shown up for a week. He’s fucking fired anyway. Not even worth the six bucks an hour if you can’t show up to work.”
“Six dollars an hour isn’t even minimum wage.” Rian spoke with haughty scorn. “You really have no shame, do you? Do you know where your ‘generosity’ landed Chris?”
Drew let out a snort that was more of a barking burp. “Do I fucking care?”
“He’s in the hospital.” Damon tried to take several calming breaths before he just—just—he didn’t fucking know, he just knew he couldn’t, but whipping around to face Drew had been a mistake when he just wanted to rip that fucker’s smug, self-satisfied face off. “He’s fucking on a goddamned IV. Dehydrated, beat to fuck, hasn’t been fucking sleeping. You feeling good about that? You feeling good about those life skills, huh? Teaching him it’s okay to let people abuse him?”