Encouraged, Galen had tried harder, only to learn to his dismay that Zeke was as straight as an arrow.
“You’re a good man, Galen,” said Zeke, arms folded across his muscled chest, every inch of those muscles hard-won,honestly won, through long hours of work. “But I am straight. Why, I dated Betty Sue for three years before I busted my leg. She only wanted a buckle-winning kind of man. Not a broken one. Hence, I am on the shelf, on the lookout for a nice woman to settle down with.”
Galen had admitted defeat. Outwardly, he’d behaved in a gentlemanly manner. Only to feel, on the inside, like a loathsome worm for bothering Zeke that way. Practically throwing himself at a man who was straight? The worst manners. Theworst.
So, perhaps, packing up to go to training for team leads in Torrington, and then moving into a green canvas tent in the valley wouldn’t be such a bad idea. The change of pace might also do him good.
Absenting himself from anywhere he might run into Zeke was also a smart move. He could still remember the hard flush on his cheeks, the way the heat crawled down his chest when Zeke had turned him down. The maze of embarrassment that took him ages to work his way out of.
His training in Torrington included a whole lot of close-up examples that only supported his distaste for Leland’s valley program.
On his first day, one of the guards had taken him and a few other special guests on a small tour of Wyoming Correctional.
During the tour, one woman had remarked how polite and well-mannered all the prisoners seemed.
It was something that Galen had been thinking as well and he wasn’t altogether surprised when the guard said, “Many of them are at their most docile behind bars.”
After the fast-paced blur of his training at Wyoming Correctional, he had a notebook from his training, and the files on the members of his small team. He had read those files andshaken his head at the stupidity of any man who thought that the way to go about things was to simply take what they wanted.
Two of the men on his little team, Toby and Owen, were small-time crooks, arrested for a short string of breaking and entering.
From their descriptions, they seemed almost harmless. The kind that might be secondary characters in a cop show, low-level men to heighten the effect of another criminal, higher up in the food chain.
They were still stupid, even if their files didn’t describe either of them as particularly violent. He probably wouldn’t have any trouble with them.
The doubt in his brain sped up when he’d reviewed Obadiah Deacon’s file. If the darkly scowling mug shot of Deacon didn’t spell danger, then reading his file certainly set off all kinds of alarm bells in Galen’s head.
The image in the mug shot was rude, crude, and tattooed. Deacon was an oily haired thug in all the ways that mattered.
There were also surveillance pictures that showed Deacon in a three-piece suit, tipping a valet as he handed over the keys to a very nice sports car. Deacon slipping past a velvet gate that someone had lifted for him. Images in motion, images of a man of power.
Deacon’s file included not just information about his five-year stint in Wyoming Correctional, but also the fights he’d gotten into, his several sessions in solitary.
There was a long passage about his odd and unwholesome relationship with Kelliher Dodson, a parolee who’d entered the valley program a few weeks prior, and also the long list of crimes Deacon had committed before he’d gotten arrested. Drug-related crimes. Making, marketing,andselling.
And though the crimes didn’t include selling meth and cocaine directly to children while lurking at the edge of aschoolyard, the potential connection made Galen’s skin crawl just the same. Those drugs had probably been used by kids, because if parents were buying, their kids might have access.
If Galen might have some sympathy for Deacon, it was when he read about the shootout that had disrupted some tawdry drug deal. In that back alley, several drug dealers on both sides of the line had lost their lives due to the spray of bullets coming from all directions.
One member of Deacon’s gang had died, and three on the other side. Two cops had gotten injured. Blood had drained into the gutter in red ribbons before drying to brown. It had taken at least a week to clean up the mess, though Galen imagined the ramifications were still continuing.
Deacon had not been the only drug dealer arrested that day, though, due to overcrowding in the local jail system, he’d been moved up to Wyoming Correctional.
A hand-scribbled note indicated that the transfer had also removed Deacon from contact with the jailed members of the other gang. To keep the peace, as ironic as that was.
Galen had been hearing about the valley program for weeks before he’d moved into the valley. As far as he knew, Deacon was one of the most violent criminals, one of the most depraved, that the valley had ever taken on.
It might be the valley had other violent criminals, like Kurt, who’d tried to kill another ex-con, but for the most part, all the parolees seemed to be more like Toby and Owen. Low level crooks just looking for a handout. An easy way to do their parole.
Which begged the question: how the hell had Deacon slipped through the cracks? Just who the fuck thought it would be a good idea to let that guy walk free? Let alone breathe free air in the valley? Get handouts? Opportunity and training? It was all bullshit.
Well, his was not to judge, but rather to just do his job.
He was not like them. He would work for his pay and earn the bonus and the trust Leland Tate had invested in him. He could do that much. Then, at the end of summer, he’d just have to see which direction his life would take.
Chapter 3
Bede
