“Your dad,” she whispered, correctly ascertaining why he’d been recruited.
It could be Jag shared with Carolyn and Carolyn shared with Georgiana.
But it definitely was Blood, Guts and Brotherhood.
Graham Black, his father’s story was out there.
Everyone knew.
Or at least everyone who’d seen that film.
What everyone didn’t know was right then, in the cab of his truck, sitting next to a gorgeous but paradoxical woman, he was wearing the leather cut his father was wearing when he’d had his throat slit.
“Yup,” he grunted.
“How did this kid’s dad get murdered?” she asked.
“They live in a duplex. Him, that being Carlyle, his little sister, mom, dad, and it’s the middle of the night, and the dad hears a racket coming from the other side. The mom calls the cops, but the noises aren’t good, so the dad grabs a baseball bat and heads over. Busts in. Tears up to the bedroom. He’s shot dead interrupting an attempted rape.”
“Oh my God,” she breathed in horror.
“That about sums it up,” he agreed.
“A boyfriend? An ex? A hookup?”
“What?” he asked.
“Did the woman who was being raped also get—”
“No, she survived.”
“So, it’s a stranger? A break-in? Did the dad hear the breaking-in part?”
“That’s the rub,” Dutch told her. “They heard the fight, not the break-in, and there was no evidence of a break-in, outside what Carlyle’s dad did to get in. But the woman contends it was a stranger. She’d never seen him, had no idea where he came from. She was sleeping and then he was there. There was hope in the beginning, they thought. The woman, their neighbor, she was cagey. They think she knows more than she’s letting on. And Carlyle, his mom, and his younger sister said there were folks who visited her that they weren’t real hip on, and the dad flat-out did not like having around. They just don’t know who they were.”
“And she’s not talking.”
“No.”
“Or she’s lying.”
“Yeah.”
“And this kid ran away from home because his dad died next door and he probably heard the gunshot that killed him.”
Dutch swallowed, feeling that for Carlyle in a big way, before he said, “Yeah.”
“What’s she saying about these folks who came calling?”
“That they’re just friends. Acquaintances, whatever. They have nothing to do with the incident.”
“Do the cops believe that?”
“I don’t know what they believe. I just know months have passed with no leads, no DNA that wasn’t supposed to be there, nothing this guy left behind, no other witnesses, but the dad, who can’t share what he saw, and the case will stay open, but they’re moving on because it’s gone cold and they got other shit they gotta do.”
“And you’re not getting through to the kid,” she surmised.
“Nope,” he confirmed.
“Maybe he just needs some time,” she suggested.
“Yeah. Time to get himself hooked up in shit he shouldn’t be hooked up in.”
“Is that happening?”
“Yup.”
“Well, damn,” she whispered.
“And she finds a reason to curse,” he muttered.
When he did, he felt a faint slap, but heard a definite one against the leather at his arm when she whacked him gently, like a man’s woman would whack him gently as a joke, all as she said an amused, “Shut up.”
Mm-hmm.
They needed to get to Governor’s Park.
Yesterday.
“How do you know he’s turning to the dark side?” she asked.
“Saw him with some dude who deals black market crap.”
“Sorry?”
“Saw him, at the back of a bar, with some dude who deals black market crap.”
“What do people involved with black market crap want with a seventeen-year-old kid?”
Dutch felt his innards seize.
Because that was a good fucking question.
“Dutch?” she called when he didn’t say anything.
“Deal it for them,” he pushed out.
“Is he doing that?” she pressed. “Dealing for them? Do you know that?”
“No,” he forced through his lips.
“Okay, I’m no authority on this, but I’ve done a few articles on gangs. And gangs deal, and they’ll use a seventeen-year-old to deal. Non-gang suppliers supply kids who deal in schools. These are easily picked-off, expendable soldiers in that war. One goes down, three pop up. But black market…”
She trailed off.
“No?” he asked.
“What’s their market?”
“Pharmaceuticals. Sperm. Maple syrup. Designer shit.”
“Okay, designer stuff, I can see. Kids want that. But Dutch, who is a seventeen-year-old runaway going to deal sperm and maple syrup to? He hardly has those connections and there is no way anyone who wants that kind of thing wants to see a seventeen-year-old front man. And maybe they need all hands on deck, they have so much product to move, but that’s thin. Especially considering they’ve got their fingers in so many pots, there’s way too much at stake to take on a recruit who’s so young, and green, what he can move would not outweigh the dangers of him being a weak link that could lead to it all falling apart.”
He could see she was a good journalist.
He could also see a hella smart kid who was witness to whoever walked into his neighbor’s house before his dad died, now out of that house, out of school, lots of time on his hands, spending that time picking at threads until he found one that led him somewhere.
Dutch’s dad died when he was five.
But straight up, if he’d been twenty-five, or seventeen, and the cops, or the Chaos brothers, did not take care of business…
He’d do it.
“Dutch?” she called.
“What?” he answered.
“You’re thinking about something.”
“It’s nothing,” he lied.
She didn’t say anything for a few beats before she asked, “Now…uh, are you okay?”
He was not.
But this might lead him to being okay.
At least about Carlyle being something closer to it.
“All good,” he said.
“Since we’re on Speer, maybe I should give you my address,” she noted.
“That’d be smart,” he joked.
She gave it to him, and he drove her there, both of them quiet.
Dutch was reflecting.
Georgiana was not.
He could actually feel her watching him and trying to dig into his head.
When he got to the address, he saw she lived in a high-rise condo complex. An ugly one that was probably put up in the '70s or '80s, and it would take at least another thirty, maybe forty years to make it retro cool.
Still, it was a hip location, even if the units probably sucked.
He pulled into the loading area in front of the building and stopped.
He also got out, even though she was out, standing on the sidewalk, with her backpack over her shoulder and her bag on its wheels at her side.
She smiled at him and he wished she didn’t.