Dutch’s day looked up when he saw him there.
He didn’t hesitate moving right to the guy who was not atone of the couches around the big sixty-incher, watching some show where threebitches were wearing skintight mini-dresses and four-inch heels, shouting ateach other and pulling each other’s hair.
He was sitting at a table on the outskirts.
That was Carlyle.
The outsider.
Even at a shelter for runaway kids.
“The wig’sgonnago, wait andsee,” he declared as Dutch made the table.
Dutch turned his head and looked at the TV.
Carlyle was right.One of the women was shrieking becauseanother one had pulled off her wig.
Dutch sighed and looked back to a boy who was really nolonger a boy.
The kid was six nine if he was an inch.Three hundred poundsif he was an ounce.Dark skin.Brown eyes hard as marbles.
He was also seventeen, and if something wasn’t done, soon,he’d be free to do whatever he wanted.
And Dutch did not see this going in the right direction.
He knew why Carlyle was there.
And Dutch could be the only guy in Denver who could get himout of there.
And he needed to get this kid out of there.
Outside the obvious, Dutch had no idea what was at stake forthe future.
The cure for cancer.
A Nobel Prize.
Or just this kid becoming a billionaire.
All he knew was that whatever was at stake was big.
He tossed the book on the table.
Carlyle didn’t look at it, kept his eyes glued to the TV.
“Your mind’sgonnaturn to mush,you stare at that shit too long,” Dutch warned.
That brought Carlyle’s eyes.
“Yeah?”he asked, the word short and belligerent.
“Yeah,” Dutch confirmed.
Carlyle said nothing.
“I’m adding to the shelter’s library,” Dutch told him,dipping his head toward the book.
“And why would I give a shit?”Carlyle queried.
