She’d refocused her attention to King’s, but the Lore of TheLaw had not died, which was most of the reason why she had so many kids there,they’d had to build onto the shelter.
And her years with the kids, her husband, her own brood ofboys she and Vance had made, and her time on the streets meant she didn’t missmuch.
And she wasn’t missing much now.
“What do you know?”she asked.
“He’s not keeping good company, Jules.”
“And you know this…how?”she pushed.
“I know it because when he clocked me, I saw him slip outthe back of Shady’s when he’s too damn young to be in Shady’s in the firstplace.Shady’s is Resurrection’s hang.I asked one of the Resurrection brotherswho Carlyle wastalkin’ to and he shared it was adude I did not want to know, and he wouldn’t becomin’back to Shady’s because Resurrection wasn’t down with his presence there.Andhe hasn’t been back.And neither has Carlyle.”
She pressed her lips tightly together before she unpressedthem to ask, “What?Drugs?”
“Black market.”
“Black market what?”
“Black market everything.Designer gear.Pharmaceuticals.Maple syrup.Freakin’ sperm.Anything andeverything.”
She looked surprised.“Maple syrup?”
“Yeah.That was my reaction.I looked it up.It’s a thing inCanada.Farmers sell it under the table.”
“Whoa,” she muttered.
“This guy is part of a bigger operation,” Dutch told her.“An operation that gets their hands on a kid like that, with a brain like his,he’s hacking for the Russians at a million dollars an hour or worse.”
He now saw humor in her expression as she said, “You have avery inventive mind.”
He saw no humor in this situation at all and therefore laidit out.
“No, my dad’s throat was slit in the parking lot of a pizzajoint when he wasgettin’ into his truck to bringdinner home to his family.This put my mother in a tailspin it took nearly twodecades for her to haul herself out of, which meant the man who loved her whowasbreathin’, a man she also loved, didn’t have heruntil it was almost too late for them to make their own family.And I know,along that road, no matter how much support I had, I asked myself the questionof what the fuck’s the point?A good man tries to do good, and gets his throatslit.A good man tries to do good, and gets a bullet to the neck and bleeds outon his neighbor’s bedroom floor.So my mind isn’t inventive, Jules.I know thatdark place it goes when you think this world is so fucked, the only course yougot is to get what you can for yourself and fuck everyone else.”
“Point taken,” she murmured.
“Talk to Vance,” he ordered.
She shook her head.“I had Roam come in, chat with Carlyle,the wall he has up…” She paused, got closer, lowered her voice, and kept going.“I’m not saying I’m giving up on him.I don’t give up on them even if they walkout that door and give up on us.I’m just warning you, Dutch, that sometimes,there’s no help they’ll accept.Sometimes, they’re so set to stay in that darkplace, you could run yourself ragged, and there’s no pulling them out.”
Roam used to be a kid in that shelter.
Roam was now known off the street as Roman, and he was amember of the badass brotherhood at Nightingale Investigations.
“It isn’t a Black thing,” he told her, because Roam was alsoBlack.
“Roam was in this shelter.Roam gets it.”
“It’s a murdered father thing, Jules.”
She nodded.
“I fucked up, making it a Black thing,” he said.
“Yes,” she agreed quietly.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
