Gage (Texas Boudreau Brotherhood #16)

Chapter Fifteen

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

D etective Jansen was late. He’d set up the meeting with the informant for seven o’clock, but he hadn’t been able to get away from the station, and now he was afraid the snitch hadn’t waited. The anonymous phone call gave him hives. He didn’t trust it for a second, but when the caller said they had information about Steven Dawkins’ murder, he couldn’t ignore it.

The place set for the meet up was in a lousy section of Dallas, best known for drug deals, cheap booze, and hookers working the corners. Rundown and dirty, the homeless population considered this area a haven, because most of the cops tended to ignore them, allowing them to sleep off their booze or drug-fueled days.

Turning into the alley between an all-night liquor store and a twenty-four hour condom emporium boasting their wares, he climbed from behind the wheel of his unmarked vehicle. He worried about not bringing his partner, but he’d been warned if the snitch saw anybody with him or if he was followed, he’d destroy any evidence and Jansen would never hear from them again.

The alleyway was dark and stand of garbage from overflowing dumpsters that obviously hadn’t been emptied in weeks and the stench of urine and other bodily discards he didn’t want to think about. All he wanted was to get the info promised. At first, this case had promised to be the one that propelled him toward a captaincy. Now it had morphed into the biggest headache. What initially looked like a slam dunk turned into conspiracy theories and corporate espionage allegations. Toss in Gustavo Sandoval and you had a cocktail of problems that seemed unending.

Now he had the feds breathing down his neck. Which meant he had to get off his keister and actually find out if Suzanna Dawkins was the perfect suspect or did the evidence point to something bigger, a threat that went far deeper than a murder for gain by a gold digger wife. Suzanna Dawkins didn’t look or act like anything but a grieving widow. Not a conniving murderer.

A lone shadow moved around from behind a dumpster, careful to stay in the shadows, a black hoodie obscuring his face. Jansen took several steps closer, until the figure held up his hand.

“Stop right there.” The voice was raspy and low, but Jansen could hear it clear enough to tell there was faint Hispanic accent. Not unusual in Dallas. It was a melting pot of every nationality under the sun.

“I’m here, like you said. What have you got for me?”

“There any kind of reward?”

Great, this is about money. Nothing but a waste of my time.

“There might be, if your information proves valuable.” Dawkins, Inc., had offered a fifty grand reward for the arrest and conviction of whoever killed Steven Dawkins, but that didn’t offer squat to a back alley informant.

“Figures. Okay, look. It’s going to work like this. I’m going to put this on the ground and then I’m going to leave. You aren’t going to do jack until I’m long gone. Then you are gonna retrieve the disk. What you do with it after that, that’s on you. I’m done.”

“It can’t work that way, pal. This might be the best information in the world, but unless there’s a way to corroborate it, it can’t be used in court. You’re gonna have to give me something, some way to contact you or prove whatever’s on the disk.”

The informant laughed, the sound long and loud, echoing in the dark. The maniacal sound sent chills down Jansen’s spine.

“Trust me, once you’ve looked at that disk, you’ll know exactly who you need to talk to, to verify the information. Pictures don’t lie. There’s enough on that little disk to bring down a whole lot of people.”

The sound of wailing sirens approaching screeched through the air, and Jansen turned, looking for the flashing red and blue lights. When he turned back around, the snitch had disappeared. The glint of a DVD case on the ground glinted in the near dark, and Jansen walked forward, stooping to pick it up. With a sigh he headed back to his car.

Here’s hoping this wasn’t a wild goose chase.

“A murder?” Suzanna took a step back, staring up into Gage’s eyes.

“My parents were killed when I was ten. It was a stupid, senseless killing. I didn’t grow up in the best neighborhood, but my folks did the best they could. Dad worked as a janitor at the local elementary school, and mom worked at a drug store as a cashier. We had a house that was right on the outskirts of what you’d call the wrong side of the tracks. I didn’t mind because there was a whole lot of love in that house.”

“That’s a good thing. Lots of people don’t have that much.”

“It was good. I had friends, played sports, all the usual stuff a ten-year old boy does. Everything changed on July 26 th . I was so excited. It was a big day. Huge. My tenth birthday. Mom had picked up a cake and dad was bringing home balloons and streamers and we were going to decorate the front yard for my party. All my friends from school and from the neighborhood were coming over. I already knew I was getting a ton of presents, because it was my birthday and you always get presents on your birthday, right?

He huffed out a breath, and she could feel the emotions rolling off him. She didn’t want him to go through this. Maybe he didn’t need to tell her any more. It wasn’t really her business anyway.

“Gage—”

“It was eleven o’clock in the morning. I was inside the house. I heard the car door slam and mom went out onto the porch to meet him. Me, I stayed in the kitchen getting the paper plates and the cups ready for cake and ice cream. That’s when I heard the shots. Over and over, rapid fire automatic weapons. I remember hearing screaming, loud and shrill and piercing. Didn’t realize it was coming from me. I plastered myself on the floor, and put my arms over my head. Even at nine—sorry—ten years old, I recognized the sound of gunfire. We heard it all the time in my neighborhood. When it stopped, I laid there, waiting for my mom and dad to come in and tell me everything was okay. Sometimes, guys would drive around and fire guns in the air, thinking it was funny. I knew that’s what it had to be. When that happened, nobody got hurt. Nobody got…killed.”

“Please, you don’t have to tell me any more.”

“It’s okay. This is the bad part, but it’s necessary so you can see that sometimes good things come from the bad stuff.”

“You mean like the Boudreaus.”

He laughed softly. “Yeah, like the Boudreaus. After my parents were killed—it was deemed a drive-by shooting—I was put into the system. There wasn’t any other family that could take me in. I’ll be the first to admit when I went into Child Protective Services I was not a model of goodness and light. I became sullen, angry, and combative. Anybody crossed me and I became violent. Went into a half dozen homes and lasted a couple of weeks and then was brought back again. I was a little monster who was unlovable and hopeless. Until this mountain of a man showed up at the facility.”

“Douglas?”

“Douglas Boudreau. I didn’t know it at the time, but there was a lady at the center, everybody called her Mrs. A. She kept an eye out for the troubled ones, the boys who needed an anchor, somebody to tell them that life wasn’t always pain and suffering. When she found somebody like that, she called Douglas. Anyway, I got placed with the Boudreaus and I swear I couldn’t have been a bigger disaster if I tried. I hated everything about Douglas and Ms. Patti. I despised all the other boys who lived at the Big House. I especially hated the little baby girl named Nica, who seemed to be the princess everybody adored. All the other kids there were supposedly like me, all foster kids who came from traumatic backgrounds, but they didn’t act like me. They weren’t all tough and mad at the world. No, they followed the rules, did their chores, and they knew there were people at the ranch who cared for them, cared about them.”

“You must have changed, because Douglas talks about all the time you spent with the horses and around the barn.”

He leaned against the top rail of the paddock, and the shadow from his cowboy hat shaded his eyes. She almost wished she could see them, watch the emotions roll across his face, but he remained guarded.

“It took a while, probably three weeks before I finally bent a little. Ms. Patti let me help in her vegetable garden. You try showing a ten-year-old kid the difference between a good plant and a weed. Let’s just say I’ll never be the greatest gardener in the world, though I did finally catch on. Fast forward a few months. We had some tests done at the elementary school I attended. Standardized stuff, you know the kind of tests every school administers. Only later did I find out these weren’t routine testing. These were specialized tests and I scored off the charts. I attracted the attention of an organization in the government, looking for kids like me, ones who could be trained early enough, given specialized education. They concocted a story about an uncle who stepped forward, wanted me to come and live with him.”

“That should be against the law. They didn’t have the right to rip you out of your home and taken you like that.” Her heart ached for the little boy who’d already had his world turned upside down again, who’d lost a loving family only to find another, and have that one stolen out from under him. Sometimes she didn’t think the world was fair. Poor Gage had seen more than his share of heartbreak.

“Who do you think makes the laws, Suzanna? I hated it at first. One more trauma on top of all the others? Again I wasn’t exactly the poster boy for family life. But I got over it, and I learned. I knew it was my one way out, to get as much knowledge as I could, because one day I’d walk away with an education unlike any other. I learned skills that have served me well. Languages, I can speak six fluently, and another couple passably well. After graduation, I immediately went into the military, where I excelled. That’s not bragging, simply stating facts. From there, I was recruited by the CIA to work missions, eventually going into black ops. Clandestine government operations so far buried beneath bureaucracy it would take a bulldozer to dig deep enough. But even through all that, I never forgot this place. Never forgot Douglas or Ms. Patti. Never forget little Nica or the other guys who were here. This place became my version of paradise. A fantasy that helped keep me grounded in reality when the world around me became a cesspool. I always had the Big House and Shiloh Springs.”

“I’m glad. You deserved to be happy, Gage. It’s a shame it was taken away from you.”

“That’s just it. It wasn’t, because Douglas and Ms. Patti finally got through to me, made me remember what it was like to have a family who loved and cared about me. Once I was able to, I dug into the Boudreaus, followed everything that happened here. Checked online, in the newspapers, I even hacked into government records. I did everything to keep tabs on them, because they were mine. My family. I never came back, but I could tell you everything. Where the guys were, what careers they went into. What college Nica attended. And when there was trouble here, I did what I could to ameliorate it.”

One of the horses meandered out of the barn, into the paddock and immediately came over to Gage, nuzzling against his hand. He scratched at his nose, ruffling his mane. Douglas was right, Gage did have a way with horses. Her heart broke for the boy he’d been, losing so much at such a young age. Seeing the man he’d become, she realized it had been worth it, because he was an honorable man. A man who stood up for others. Look what he was doing for her, a woman he barely knew, because a friend had asked him to help.

“Did they know?”

He shook his head, giving the horse a final pat. “No. Not until I ran into somebody else like me, who’d lived at the Big House and been taken from here. We worked a couple of small jobs together. I kind of got outed then. It’s funny, Ms. Patti calls us her Lost Boys. The ones who came and stayed for a little while and were forced to leave. I found out she and Douglas looked for those boys, tried to find them. Tried to find me. They couldn’t find me, the government made sure of that, buried my records and/or changed them. But even after nearly two decades, Ms. Patti recognized me the moment she saw me.”

Suzanna’s breath caught in her throat. That was the power of love. The heart never forgot one of its own, and she hoped one day she’d find that kind of love.

“Anyway, that’s my story. Now you know everything there is to know about Gage Newsome.”

“And I’m glad to know him. He seems like an amazing guy.”

“You know I’ll do my best to find out who killed your husband, don’t you?”

She nodded and reached for his hand. “I know. I trust you, Gage, and that’s not something I say to many people.”

“Thank you.”

“We need to head back to the house. I’ve got some calls to make, reports to dig into. Then I’m meeting Rafe and Chance. We’ll figure this out, I promise.”