“I don’t give a fuck who these people think you are,” he said. “I know who you are. You’re a thug, a petty thief, and a waste of the money the foster-care system spent to drag you up. Sooner or later, Morgan, you’ll end up back. A little older and a little uglier every time. Until pretty boys don’t want to bail you out.”
“That’ll take a whole lot of ugly,” Morgan said.
“People like you don’t change,” Lo said. He rammed his shoulder into Morgan’s on the way past. “You don’t deserve the chance to try.”
He stalked away. Morgan turned to watch him go and then snorted to himself.
“Yeah, Lo, tell me something I don’t know,” he muttered.
He was a gutter rat. He always had been. His own parents had tossed him out like trash, and a dozen different foster families over the years had agreed with that judgment. And if Morgan were ever in danger of forgetting who he was, the universe was always happy to rub his nose right back in.
And so fucking what?
Call Morgan what you like, but he did what he wanted, when he wanted, with whomever he wanted. Meanwhile someone like Lo pissed his life away so they’d besomebody,and what did it get him? Flat feet and a wife who probably fucked the gardener just to feel alive.
Better to be a rat who knew the score than an idiot, and as far as Morgan could tell, those were the only two options.
He shoved open the heavy doors and stepped back out into the world. After three days in the air-conditioned chill of the police station, the midafternoon heat pushed down on him like a hand. He exhaled a lungful of stale air and closed his eyes for a second as he tilted his face up to the sun. The tension in his shoulders loosened, and the hot spike of frustrated anger that had screwed deeper into his brain with each minute he spent inside faded.
A bit.
“Our plane leaves in three hours. So if you want to bring anything with you, you’ll need to get it now.”
Morgan’s jaw tightened. That was short-lived. He rolled his head from one side to the other to crack his neck. Then he looked over at the rangy man with the salt-and-pepper beard who’d braced himself with one shoulder against a scrawny tree. Even if they hadn’t already talked, Morgan would have known what he was. It took more than faded jeans and a tight shirt to hide the stink of cop.
“Worried I’m going to skip town?”
Macintosh “Call me Mac” lifted his hand to lazily wave away a bug from his face. He stared at Morgan with cold gray eyes that seemed to know exactly what was in front of him.
“I figure you’ve thought about it,” he said. “Don’t. Boyd did you a good turn.”
“Didn’t ask him for anything.”
“No, you wouldn’t have to,” Mac said. He pushed himself off the tree and stepped forward. “I want to make something clear here before we get any further. If I bring you to my town and you hurt any of my people, you’ll wish Judge Gallen had slammed your ass in jail. Understand?”
“I don’t know what it is, Mac,” Morgan said as he walked across the grass. “But I don’t think you trust me.”
“I talked to Bennett. Lo. You’ve bounced in and out of trouble your whole life. Fights. Joyriding. Prostitution—”
Morgan spat on the ground. “Yeah, money only came up after I pulled the knife on him and the cops turned up.”
“Doesn’t sound fair,” Mac acknowledged. “Nothing to do about it now, though. I can’t go back and change it. What I can do is protect people who’ve gone through enough shit of their own, because we both know two things. What you are, and that you’re not Sammy Calloway.”
“DNA matches,” Morgan pointed out as he shoved his hands into his pockets. He didn’t know why; finally someone agreed with him. Maybe he was just sick of people who read a couple of files and thought they knew him, even if they were right. Or it was a knee-jerk reaction to be difficult.
“I know. Not the why or how of it, not yet, but I know,” Mac said. He scratched his jaw, fingers buried in the short beard that was cropped close to his face. He looked grim. “I figure there’s a seventy-five percent chance this will turn out to be a wild goose chase. A careless tech, a contaminated DNA sample, a payoff—”
Morgan snorted as he rocked back onto his heels. “In this fantasy of yours, I’m rich, huh?”
Mac ignored him. “But maybe I yank on this line, and somewhere a pervert yelps as the hook bites home. So change the habit of a lifetime, Morgan. Lie low, stay out of trouble, and don’t fuck anyone over. Do we understand each other?”
“Well enough,” Morgan said. He plucked his T-shirt away from his chest with one hand. It felt sticky with three days’ worth of sweat and anger. “I’ll need to change and get some clothes. How long do you expect this to take?”
Mac stared at him for a second and then laughed harshly under his breath as he started toward the parking lot behind the station.
“Fifteen years, so far,” he said. “And counting. So pack spare socks.”
EIGHT HOURSlater Morgan took one look at Mac’s spare room, with the fold-out couch and the empty shelves that lined the walls, and snorted.
